Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

‘If we feel like it we can both dive into a crystal-clear stream and swim around naked. You can even lie floating on your back all afternoon if you like and I won’t be the least bit interested. I won’t even have to be on guard against strangers finding our secluded spot. If a whole tribe of men and women saints suddenly appears beside our stream and stands looking down on us, we’ll just wave to them and go on swimming.

‘In fact our little outing will probably end with some handsome young man wading out to you and looking down on you with nothing but friendship in his eyes and telling you the story of how he was martyred fighting the Saracens in the siege of Acre. You and he will stroll off hand-in-hand, with you looking up into his eyes and telling him how you were married to a chap in the twentieth century and all about your children. I’ll watch you go, knowing I mightn’t run into you again for years, but I won’t be at all concerned.

‘Well, that’s what the Gospel teaches us anyway. I still think it’s hard that couples like us who love each other so passionately must be no more than good friends in heaven. Perhaps the trouble is that my love for you is far greater than God expects of a husband. After all, He only requires people to be attracted to each other so they’ll marry and ensure a constant supply of new souls to do His Will on earth and glorify Him in heaven. If you and I have the largest possible number of children and turn them out good Catholics, that should be a sufficient reward in itself. We’ve got no right to expect that we’ll enjoy for all eternity the emotional and physical pleasures of being in love.

‘If you look at the history of the Church you won’t find any saints who got to heaven simply because of their love for a wife or husband. The people honoured by the Church as saints are those who never yielded to their emotions or passions. And I don’t mean just priests and brothers and nuns. Only today I was looking through my Daily Missal at the notes on some of the saints who were ordinary lay people like you and me.’

Sherd picked up the missal from beside his bed and read from it.

‘“St Praxedes consecrated her virginity to God and distributed all her wealth to the poor.

‘“St Susanne, a holy virgin of high lineage, refused to marry the son of Diocletian and was beheaded after grievous torments.

‘“St Frances of Rome was the type of a perfect spouse and, after her husband’s death, of a perfect religious in the house of Oblates which she founded.

‘“St Cecilia, of an illustrious Roman family, converted her husband Valerianus and her brother-in-law Tiburtius, preserved her virginity and was beheaded.

‘“St Henry, Duke of Bavaria and Emperor of Germany, used his power to extend the kingdom of God. By agreement with his wife he preserved virginity in marriage.”

‘These are the people we’re supposed to model ourselves on. There’s no record of any man who was canonised because he had an extraordinary love for his wife and gave up every other happiness to serve her as I’ve done for you.

‘When the saints I’ve mentioned got to heaven you can be sure they didn’t moon around looking for their lost loved ones. St Henry would have smiled politely whenever he passed his wife on some heavenly avenue. He might not have seen her for months, but he didn’t miss her because he had learned on earth that there are things more important than conjugal love.

‘I’ve never mentioned this to you before, and I hope it doesn’t dismay you, but I think I envy the people who haven’t been baptised. At least they have a chance of meeting their wives or husbands again in limbo and continuing their great love affairs. Limbo, as you know, is a place of perfect natural happiness. It seems reasonable to suppose that the greatest natural happiness of all will be permitted there. In fact, when all bodies have been resurrected after the General Judgement, there might be nothing to prevent a man and his wife in limbo from enjoying also some of the purely physical pleasures they once enjoyed in this life.’

Early in the third term Adrian’s class went on a retreat at the monastery of the Pauline Fathers. For three days and nights the boys lived at the monastery and observed some of its rules. They kept the Great Silence from evening prayers until after mass next morning; they ate their meals in the refectory while a lay brother read aloud the life-stories of great saints; and they walked in the garden for a half-hour of meditation after breakfast.

The monastery was in a garden suburb a few miles from Swindon. Adrian arrived in a bus after dark. Next morning he stood at his upstairs window and looked across the huge lawns to the tall front fence and couldn’t work out the direction of Swindon or Accrington. He knew the name of the street and the suburb where he was. But it was a part of Melbourne he had never visited before. He might have walked for miles from the front gate of the monastery before he came to some tramline or railway station that could give him his bearings.

All the time Adrian was at the monastery he enjoyed feeling cut off from the world. He was hidden for a few days in one of the best suburbs of Melbourne for the purpose of looking into his soul and making sure he was on the right path.

Before the retreat, the brother in charge of Adrian’s class had suggested that each boy should take some spiritual reading. He said there would be free periods during the retreat when the best thing a boy could do was to read and chew over the sort of things he didn’t usually have time to read because of the pressure of his studies.

Adrian arrived at the monastery with three Australian Catholic Truth Society pamphlets and a Reader’s Digest in the bottom of his bag. The pamphlets were called Purity: The Difficult Virtue; Now You’re Engaged ; and Marriage Is Not Easy. The Reader’s Digest had an article entitled, Physical Pleasure — What Should a Wife Expect? Whenever the retreat program allowed free time, he went to his room and read.

On the last evening of the retreat, the priest in charge called the boys into the monastery parlour and invited them to start a discussion on some problem facing a Catholic young man in the modern world. The priest said he would act as chairman and perhaps give a short summing-up at the end.

The boys seemed embarrassed about talking in front of a strange priest, but at last John Cody stood up and said they ought to discuss the moral problems of boys and girls mixing together. The priest said it was an excellent topic and told Cody to start the ball rolling.

Adrian was glad he had taken a seat on the very edge of the boys and almost out of sight of the priest. He was angry with the priest for letting the boys choose such a frivolous topic.

The boys in his class talked for hours at school about girls they met on trams or at dances. They said such and such a girl was adorable or gorgeous or luscious or cute, but no boy ever dared to claim one of them was his girlfriend. Adrian knew that all these fellows dreamed of was to walk some girl home from tennis on Saturday or fetch her a paper-cup of lemonade at the learn-to-dance class and stand beside her while she sipped it.

Adrian was sure none of his classmates ever lay awake for hours at night planning seriously his whole future with the young woman he loved. They wasted their time on tennis and dances and parties, and yet they were ready to discuss in all seriousness (in a retreat house, too) the moral problems of their childish games.

Adrian was spared all the petty troubles of teenagers because he had found quite early in life a young woman worthy to be his wife. At the first sign of any temptation against purity with any female he happened to see in the street, he only had to think of Denise McNamara and the danger was over. But his danger was far less than other fellows’ anyway — knowing that Denise returned his affection, he didn’t have to worry about dances and parties and company-keeping and goodnight kisses and all the rigmarole of modern courtship.