Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

For most of that day he told himself he had finished with impurity. He even kept away from Cornthwaite and his friends in the school-ground. But when he arrived home he saw his model railroad leaning against the wall in the shed. He whispered the names of landscapes he had still not explored — Great Smoky Mountains, Sun Valley, Grand Rapids — and he knew he would soon go back to America.

But he was not free to go back yet. On the following Sunday morning he would be at mass with his family. His parents would know that he had been to confession on the Thursday. They would expect him to go to communion with them. If he did not go, they would know for certain that some time between Thursday and Sunday he had committed a mortal sin. His father would start asking questions. If Mr Sherd even suspected the truth about the American journey, Adrian would die of shame or run away from home.

For the sake of his future, Adrian had to avoid mortal sin from Thursday until Sunday morning. And it was not enough just to stay away from America. Any impure thought, if he wilfully entertained it, was a mortal sin. Such thoughts could appear in his mind at any hour of the day or night. It would be a desperate struggle.

The Thursday night was the easiest. Adrian needed a rest. The last few nights before his monthly confession usually wore him out. On those nights he knew he would not be visiting America again for some time, and he tried to enjoy every minute in the country as though it was his last.

On Friday at school he kept away again from Cornthwaite and the others. For as long as Adrian was in the state of grace, his former friends were what the Church called bad companions.

On Friday night he did all his weekend homework and stayed up as late as possible to tire himself. In bed he remembered the advice a priest had once given him in confession: ‘Take your pleasure from good and holy things.’

He closed his eyes and thought of good and holy landscapes. He saw the vineyards on the hills of Italy, where ninety-nine per cent of the people were Catholics. He crossed the golden plateaus of Spain, the only country in the world where the Communists had been fought and beaten to a standstill. The whole of Latin America was safe to explore, but he usually fell asleep before he reached there.

On Saturday morning he read the sporting section of the Argus but was careful not to open the other pages. They were sure to have some picture that would torment him all day.

After lunch he went for a ride on his father’s old bike to tire himself out. He chose a route with plenty of hills and made sure he would have to ride the last few miles into the wind. On the steepest climbs, when he could hardly keep the pedals moving, he hissed to the rhythm of his straining thighs, ‘Chastise the body. Chastise the body.’

There were still temptations even in the bleakest suburbs. Sometimes he saw the backs of a woman’s thighs as she bent forward in her garden, or the shapes of her breasts bouncing under her sweater as she pushed a mower. When this happened he slowed down and waited for a glimpse of the woman’s face. It was nearly always so plain that he was glad to forget all about her.

He came home exhausted and had a shower before tea. (On other Saturdays he had a bath late at night. He lay back with his organ submerged and thought foul thoughts to make it break the surface like the periscope of a submarine.) The taps in the shower recess were so hard to regulate that he had no time to stand still. He came out shivering with cold. His organ was a wrinkled stub. He flicked the towel at it and whispered, ‘Bring the body into subjection.’

After tea he listened to the London Stores Show on the wireless to hear the football results. Then he played a game of football he had invented. He arranged thirty-six coloured scraps of paper on the table for men and threw dice to decide the path of the ball. He played the game until nearly midnight. Then he went to bed and thought about football until he fell asleep.

On Sunday morning the Sherd family caught the bus to nine o’clock mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel’s, Accrington. The people in the bus were nearly always the same from week to week. They even sat in the same seats. A young woman sat opposite the Sherds. Most Sundays Adrian took no notice of her. She had a pasty face and a dumpy figure. But on the first Sunday of each month the sight of her legs gave him no peace.

Adrian believed in the devil. It could only have been the devil who arranged for a pair of legs to lie in wait for him on the first Sunday of the month when he was within an hour of reaching the altar rails without sinning. To defeat this last temptation he recited over and over to himself from the Prayers after Mass, ‘…thrust Satan down into hell and with him the other wicked spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.’

He never looked at the legs for more than a second at a time. And he never looked anywhere near them when his parents or the young woman’s parents or the woman herself or any other passenger might have caught him at it. Sometimes he only saw the legs once or twice on the whole trip. But he knew by heart every curve and undulation on them, the freckles on the lower parts of the knee-caps, the mole on one shin, the tension of the stockings over the ankle bones.

The legs talked to him. They whispered that he still had to wait more than an hour until he was safe at the altar rails. They urged him to close his eyes during the sermon and visualise them in all their naked beauty and wilfully consent to enjoy the pleasure he got.

When he still resisted them they became more shameless. They kicked their heels high like dancers in an American musical. They even bared the first few inches of their thighs and reminded him that there was much more to see farther up in the shadows under their skirt. Or if he did not fancy them, they said, would he prefer some of the legs he would see during mass? The church would be full of legs. He would only have to drop his missal on the floor and bend his head down to retrieve it and there, under the seat in front of him, would be calves and ankles of all shapes to feast on.

Adrian never surrendered to the legs. Instead he made a pact with them. He promised that on that very Sunday night he would meet them in America and do whatever they asked of him. In return they were to leave him in peace until he had been to communion. The legs were always as good as their word. As soon as the pact was made they stopped bothering him and stroked and preened themselves discreetly out of his view.

During mass Adrian relaxed for the first time in days. He went to communion with his head high. On the bus trip home the legs caused no trouble. He found he could last for several minutes without looking at them. But before he left the bus he always nodded casually to them as a sign that he would observe the pact.

Only once had Adrian tried to break the terms of his agreement. He had made an unusually devout communion and on the bus after mass he was thinking what a pity it was that his soul would be soiled again so soon. He began to pray for the strength to resist the legs in future.

Across the narrow aisle of the bus the legs drew themselves up into a fighting posture. They warned him they would come to his bed that night and tempt him as he had never been tempted before. They would strip themselves and perform such tricks in front of his eyes that he would never sleep again until he had yielded to them.

Adrian knew they could do it. Already their anger had made them more attractive than ever. He apologised to them and hoped he hadn’t made too big a fool of himself in front of them.

Whenever Adrian’s friends started talking about sex, he had to use his wits to keep them from guessing his most embarrassing secret. This secret bothered him every day of his life. He was sure no other young man in Melbourne had such an absurd thing to hide.