Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

The dream had come to Adrian on the same night after he had fallen asleep in South Dakota. He saw a dark brown misty land on the horizon. It was England — a country he had never wanted to visit. (English film stars were too reserved and aloof. And except for Diana Dors they never appeared in bathing suits.) Something compelled him to cross damp treeless wolds towards a manor house or castle of grey stone. As he travelled he looked for places where a man might take his lady-friends for a picnic. But all he saw were a few copses or spinneys so small or so close to roads and lanes that the picnickers could never have run naked or cried out obscene words without being seen or overheard.

If he had been awake he would have despised this landscape. But in his dream he longed to know it better. It seemed to promise a pleasure more satisfying than anything he had known in America.

The stone house was on a hill. He stood outside it searching for a door or a low window to look through. Behind him, he knew, was a view of miles of green fields dotted with darker-green trees and intersected by white lanes. If he could find a beautiful young woman, even an English woman, he would enjoy to the full whatever rare pleasures the landscape concealed.

Brother Cyprian said, ‘The important thing to remember is this. We can’t help what happens to us while we’re asleep. We’re fully responsible for what we do in the daytime, but in sleep there are chemicals and forces at work that we haven’t the slightest control over.’

Somewhere inside the house was a woman or a girl of his own age with a face so full of expression that a man could stare at it for hours. She was wearing a turtle-necked Fair Isle sweater (so bulky that he saw no sign of her breasts), a skirt of Harris tweed and sensible shoes. As soon as Adrian found a window into her room they would exchange glances full of meaning. Hers would tell him she was willing to agree to whatever he asked. And his would tell her he wanted no more than to walk beside her all afternoon through the English landscape. And even if they found themselves alone in some green field screened on all sides by tall hedgerows, he would ask no more than to clasp her fingertips or lightly touch her wrist where it gleamed like the finest English porcelain.

Brother Cyprian said, ‘So you see, we can’t commit a sin in our sleep. No matter what strange things we dream about, there’s no chance of us sinning.’

Adrian groped through thickets of ivy. Even the walls of the place were becoming harder to find. Inside somewhere, the woman was operating her expensive film projector. She was showing an audience of hundreds of well-dressed English gentlemen coloured films of all the landscapes she longed to wander through, and hinting to them what they must do to earn the right to escort her on summer afternoons.

Adrian stood on the beach below a towering cliff on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall. High above, on the Sussex Downs, a young couple promenaded on the smooth sward. He heard the intimate murmur of their voices but before he could make out their words he had to escape from the incoming tide. When he saw the vast green bulk of the whole Atlantic coming at him he woke in his sleepout at Accrington.

Brother Cyprian was near the end of his talk. ‘One of the most alarming things that might happen to us is to wake up in the middle of some strange dream. You might find your whole body disturbed and restless and all sorts of odd things happening. The only thing to do is to say a short prayer to Our Lady and ask her for the blessing of a dreamless sleep. Then close your eyes again and let things take their course.’

Adrian had been desperate to get back to sleep and try again to enjoy the pleasures of England. But of course had never seen anything like an English landscape again.

In the schoolyard at morning recess Cornthwaite said, ‘Did you get what Cyprian was raving about this morning — all that about naughty dreams?’

O’Mullane and Seskis and Sherd were not sure.

Cornthwaite said, ‘Wet dreams. That’s what it was. You bastards have never had that sort of dream because you’ve flogged yourselves silly every night of your lives since you were in short pants. If you go without it for a couple of weeks, one night you’ll dream the filthiest dream you’ve ever dreamed of. You’ll even shoot your bolt in your sleep if you don’t wake up in the middle of it.’

Adrian tried not to look surprised. It was the first time anyone had explained wet dreams to him. He had never had one — perhaps for the reason that Cornthwaite had suggested. He realised why the brother had been so embarrassed talking about dreams.

For nearly a week Adrian kept away from America. He was waiting for a filthy dream. If the dream was as good as Cornthwaite had claimed, Adrian might have to make an important decision. He would carefully compare the dream and the best of his American adventures. If the dream turned out to be more realistic and lifelike than his American journey, he might decide to get all his sexual pleasure in future from dreams.

But whenever he remembered the young woman and the innocent landscapes of England he wished for dreams that would never be contaminated by lust. He decided to resume his American journey. If he wore himself out in America night after night, there was always the chance that he might experience again the pure joy of a dream of England.

Some nights when Adrian was tired of visiting America he thought about the history of mankind.

While he lived in the Garden of Eden, Adam enjoyed perfect human happiness. If it occurred to him to look at a naked woman, he simply told Eve to stand still for a moment. And he never once suffered the misery of having an erection that he could not satisfy. Eve knew it was her duty to give in to him whenever he asked.

After he was driven out into the world, Adam still tried to live as he had in Eden. But now he suffered the trials of a human being. Eve wore clothes all day long and only let him near her when she wanted a child. Every day he had erections that came to nothing. Many a time he looked out across the plains of Mesopotamia and wished there was some other woman he could think about. But the world was still empty of people apart from himself and his family. Even in the vast continent of North America there was no human footprint from the green islands of Maine to the red-gold sandbanks of the Rio Grande.

But at least Adam could remember his pleasant life in Eden. His sons had no such consolation. They grew up in a world where the only females were their sisters and their mother — and they always kept their bodies carefully covered.

When the eldest son reached Adrian’s age he still hadn’t seen a naked female body. One hot afternoon he could stand it no longer. He hid among the bullrushes while Eve and her daughters went swimming in the Tigris. He only glanced at Eve — her breasts were long and flabby and her legs had varicose veins. But he looked hard at his sisters, even the young ones with no breasts.

When he was alone again, he formed his hand into the shape of the thing he had seen between their legs and became the first in human history to commit the solitary sin.

Although it was not recorded in the Bible, that was a black day for mankind. On that day God thought seriously of wiping out the little tribe of Man. Even in His infinite wisdom He hadn’t foreseen that a human would learn such an unnatural trick — enjoying by himself, when he was hardly more than a child, the pleasure that was intended for married men only.

The angels in heaven were revolted too. Lucifer’s sin of pride seemed clean and brave compared with the sight of the shuddering boy squirting his precious stuff into the limpid Tigris. Lucifer himself was delighted that Man had invented a new kind of sin — and one that was so easy to commit.