Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

Someone else said, ‘But the Bishop told us there were millions of secret Catholics all over China — all the people the Columban Fathers had converted for fifty years. And if they get the chance they’ll rebel against the government and kick the Communists back where they came from.’

Adrian Sherd said, ‘I was reading in a Reader’s Digest the other day how the greatest allies the West has are the millions of Russians and Poles and Czechs and so on who hate Communism. They’re waiting for the chance to rise up if only we could encourage them.’

‘Well, why doesn’t America just send an army in? The Russian people wouldn’t fight for Communism, would they?’

‘But the Russians have got the hydrogen bomb. There was a story in the Argus one day about a foreign power dropping a hydrogen bomb on Melbourne. (They meant the Russians, of course.) Well, this old bushman from the Dargo High Plains rode his horse down to Gippsland once a year and caught the train to Melbourne. Only this year he wondered why everything was so quiet and the trees all looked as though a bushfire had passed through. And about fifty miles from Melbourne he started to notice all these dead bodies. Well, he headed back to the bush, but the whole of Melbourne was wiped out.’

‘But why would the Russians pick on Melbourne anyway? Wouldn’t they bomb New York or Washington first?’

‘You know Theresa Neumann. She’s a living saint in Germany. She’s still alive today in a village called Konnersreuth. For thirty years now she’s never eaten any food or drunk any water. The only thing that keeps her alive is her holy communion every morning. And every Thursday night she starts to suffer all the wounds and pains that Our Lord suffered in His Passion. And by Friday afternoon her face is covered with blood as if she had a crown of thorns pressing into her forehead, and all the marks of the stigmata appear on her hands and feet. The cleverest Protestant doctors in Europe have studied her for years and no one can explain how it happens. My mother wrote away to Germany once and got back a bundle of holy cards from Theresa Neumann’s own village. All the prayers were in German but my cousin translated some of them. And there was this little leaflet with the whole story of the Miraculous Stigmata of Theresa Neumann.

‘Anyway, Theresa Neumann has made some prophecies, and the worst one I can remember is that priests will be hanging from lamp-posts in Melbourne in 1970.’

No one spoke for a while. All round the tree where they crouched, the raindrops made little holes like bomb craters in the mud. On the far side of the deserted football field, a ragged file of boys stumbled and ran towards the pavilion. Further still, on the other side of the creek, was a long grey paling fence that marked the end of all the backyards in some street of a suburb that Adrian Sherd had never entered. (He guessed it was Woodstock or Luton or even the edge of Camberwell.) The back porches were swept by rain and the doors and windows were all shut.

A boy said, ‘What’s the percentage of Catholics in Australia, anyway?’

Adrian answered, ‘Only about twenty-five per cent,’ and looked at the rows of locked non-Catholic houses on the hills around them.

A man came towards them with a black oilskin cape hiding his face. It was a brother to tell them the football matches had all been abandoned and they’d better get for their lives back to the pavilion.

The football pavilion had timber nailed over the windows where the glass should have been. The sky was so dark that the boys inside could barely recognise each other. Some of them went on talking about prophecies while they changed into their school uniforms.

A boy said, ‘There was an old Irish monk centuries ago. His name was Malachy, I think. He made all these prophecies about the popes who were going to come after his lifetime. He said a few words about each pope like “Great Builder” or “Defender of the Faith” or “Destroyer of Heresies”, and so far they’ve all turned out true. He called Pius the Twelfth “Very Saintly Shepherd” or something, and it’s true he’s one of the holiest of all the popes.

‘Well, the scariest thing is — there’s only five or six popes left on Malachy’s list. So if he’s right, the end of the world could happen before the year 2000. Because the Catholic Church has to last until the end of time, and if there’s no more popes that’s the end of everything.’

A fellow said, ‘But the Antichrist still has to appear. He’s probably alive now — a young man growing up in Russia or China and planning to destroy the Church.’

They all joined in again.

‘Antichrist will have to beat Elias first.’

‘Who wins in the end anyway? Does the Apocalypse say whether the Catholics or Communists win the last battle?’

‘Our Lady told the children at Fatima that if enough people all over the world offered up prayers and penance, she would make sure Russia was converted and there’d be no Third World War after all.’

Adrian Sherd said, ‘We won’t have to fight the Russians on our own. I read a Reader’s Digest article about Turkey, and the Turks have always hated the Russians, even before they turned Communist. And they’re ready to fight them again if the Russians start anything. The end of the article was this big Turkish soldier looking across the frontier and saying, “One Turk has always been as good as three Russians in battle.”’

‘What about the secret message that Our Lady of Fatima gave to the children in a sealed envelope and told them not to open it for twenty years? And didn’t Francesca give it to the Pope and when he opened the first part of it a few years ago he fainted? And Francesca is a nun now, and her hair’s turned white because she knows the first part of the message too. When are they going to open the second and third parts?’

‘I’m not sure, but the nuns told us at primary school that when the Pope was seriously ill a few years ago he had a vision of Our Lord that he wouldn’t tell anyone about. But people in the Vatican think Our Lord must have told him something about the future and what will happen to the Church and he’s hardly ever smiled or laughed since.’

‘If only Our Lord or Our Lady would appear to the Russians and show them a cross in the sky to frighten them or convert them or make them leave us alone.’

‘Even if they appeared in Australia to tell us how many years we’ve got before the end of the world! If it’s only going to be a few years we all ought to study for the priesthood instead of going to work or getting married.’

‘Did anyone read in the paper last year about that woman who drowned her two little kids in the bath and tried to gas herself because she didn’t want to be alive when the Communists took over the world? They put her in the looney bin but one of my mother’s friends knew her well and she said she could understand how any woman with young kids would do a thing like that nowadays.’

Adrian and the little group around him were the last to leave the pavilion. They walked across the playing fields in pouring rain to the East Swindon tram terminus. No one talked any more about the end of the world.

In the tram back to Swindon, Adrian stood near the door because his clothes were too wet to sit in. He stared at the enormous houses along the tramline and wondered, as he always did, who else beside doctors and dentists and solicitors could be wealthy enough to live in such places. In all his life he had never been inside the front gate of any house like them. But instead of envying the people inside (as he usually did), he almost pitied them.

While hundreds of millions of Chinese and Russians were preparing for a Third World War, the people of Melbourne’s garden suburbs were going about their business as though there was nothing to worry about. They were thinking of wall-to-wall carpets and radiograms and washing machines while saints and prophets and the Reader’s Digest foresaw at least a terrible war and perhaps the last days of the world.