Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

At the top of a low hill near Colac Adrian looked back towards the Otways. From that distance he could see only gentle grey-blue slopes rising up from the cleared country. He was relieved to think that none of the people in Warrnambool trains or the cars that passed along the Prince’s Highway would guess what was hidden beyond those timbered slopes. Even if the Malayan terrorists or the Chinese Communists invaded Victoria, the Catholic couples of Mary’s Mount might still be safe and undiscovered in their shadowy gully.

Mr McAloon said, ‘Now don’t get me wrong. Those people ought to put us to shame. One day the rest of Australia will copy their way of life. But there’s always got to be humble soldiers like yours truly to go on fighting Communism in the outside world. I could tell you about the Communists we’re up against in the Labor Party, but that’s a story in itself. You just wouldn’t believe the terrific battle that’s going on all round us right now.’

They left Colac behind and headed north towards Orford between tranquil green paddocks and through the long afternoon shadows of huge motionless cypresses.

Sherd and his wife spent several weeks planning their move from near Hepburn Springs to a Catholic rural co-operative called Our Lady of the Ranges, deep in the Otways. Denise was taking just two dresses, two sweaters, two sets of underclothes and her bathers. Her husband was taking one suit, one old pair of trousers with an old shirt and jumper to match, a pair of overalls and his swimming trunks.

They filled a small crate with all the books they would ever need — a Bible, the Catholic Encyclopedia, a History of the Church in twelve volumes, a bundle of Australian Catholic Truth Society pamphlets (mostly on purity and marriage to instruct their children in years to come) and some leaflets on farming published by the Department of Agriculture.

They were going to sell their house and furniture and pay the proceeds to the co-operative. They would draw a small living allowance if they needed it — Our Lady of the Ranges was a true community like a medieval monastery. (People often forgot that monks and nuns were practising the perfect form of Communism centuries before Karl Marx was ever heard of.)

One night just before they left for the Otways, Mrs Sherd asked her husband to continue the talks he had begun a little while before on marriage through the ages.

Sherd propped a pillow under his head, arranged the lacy collar of his wife’s nightgown into a pretty frame for her chin, and said, ‘Like everything else, marriage changed a great deal after Our Lord came down to earth to teach. We know that He made marriage one of the seven sacraments of His new Church, but we don’t know exactly when He did it. Some theologians think He instituted the sacrament of matrimony while He was a guest at the wedding feast at Cana. If so, then the lucky couple of Cana were the first man and wife to be properly married in the Catholic Church.

‘This doesn’t mean, of course, that all the couples who married in Old Testament times were not properly married. If their intentions were good and they were following their consciences to the best of their ability, then their marriages were probably valid. (It’s the same with well-meaning non-Catholics today — many of their marriages are quite valid.)

‘Anyway, the important thing is that Our Lord did make marriage a sacrament. And He taught his disciples quite a bit about it too. He said, “What God has joined together let no man put asunder,” which of course makes all divorce impossible. And He said those beautiful words about the physical side of marriage. (I used to feel embarrassed whenever the priest read them out in the Sunday Gospel, but I suppose they were over your innocent head.) You know — the bit about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife so they become one flesh.

‘But the words I can never forget, the saddest words, I think, in the whole New Testament, are the ones He said when the Scribes and Pharisees told Him about the woman who had seven husbands on earth and asked Him which one would have her for his wife in heaven. And He told them there was no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven.

‘They say everyone finds some stumbling-block in the Gospels — some teaching of Christ that doesn’t make sense and has to be accepted on faith alone. Well, those words about marriage are my stumbling-block. I think they’re cruel and unreasonable, I wish they weren’t true, but because Christ Himself said them I believe in them.

‘Bearing in mind what Our Lord Himself has said, let’s be coldly realistic about the life we’ll lead in heaven. After the end of the world and the Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgement we’ll all be given back our bodies. They’ll be glorified bodies of course. So, beautiful and flawless as your body is now, (Sherd gently stroked the whiteness of his wife’s throat) it will be a thousand times more perfect in those days. And let’s be quite frank about it — none of us will be wearing clothes. Theologians believe we’ll lose all our blemishes and moles and scars. I think myself we’ll probably also be without the ugly hair under our arms and elsewhere on our bodies.

‘There’ll be millions of people around heaven, but eternity is a long long time and sooner or later you and I will meet up with each other again. Our glorified bodies will be based on those we had as young adults. So there we are, just as we were in the early years of our married life, meeting in some place even more beautiful than Tasmania. How will we feel towards each other?

‘Well, because I’m in heaven and my soul is saved, it would be absurd to think of me having an impure temptation when I see you, even though you’re stark naked and more beautiful than ever you were on earth. Besides, I would have got used to seeing beautiful young women naked all over the lawns every day in heaven (including, I suppose, a few film stars who repented on their deathbeds). In fact, if Our Lord was right about heaven (and He should have known, because all the time He was on earth His Divine Nature was enjoying Itself in Heaven, and as God the Son He helped to create the place anyway) you and I won’t feel any more affection towards each other than we feel towards any of the millions of other men and women of all colours in heaven — because otherwise we’d start to fall in love again and want to get married.

‘But the unfortunate thing is, we can’t help remembering all our lives together on earth. So when I look at your perfect body and all its most striking features I actually recall how excited they used to make me, although I don’t feel the slightest excitement any more.

‘When I look at your firm young breasts I probably admire them for the part they played in God’s plan for us by catching my eye some nights as you slipped into your nightgown and prompting me to ask you to yield to me in bed. Or else I simply praise them for the wonderful job they did each time you brought another child into the world — swelling to a prodigious size before the great day and then pouring out gallons of nourishing milk through the conspicuous nipples during the weeks when your infant pressed its hungry mouth against them.

‘And when I happen to glance at your supple white thighs and my eye quite naturally travels up them and rests for a moment on the intimate place enclosed between them, I suppose all I do is praise God for designing your body so that a part of it could accommodate my seed and afterwards perform its noble task of propelling another new creature into the world.

‘And that, I’m afraid, is all that will happen between us in heaven. I still think we’ll be allowed to stroll now and then through pleasant groves that remind us of Tasmania or Hepburn Springs or the Otways. And because those places once meant so much to us, we surely wouldn’t be breaking the laws of heaven if we held hands now and then or even exchanged an innocent friendly kiss.