One hot afternoon in the summer of 1910, or it may have been 1911 or even as late as 1917 or 1918…one hot afternoon in one of those years when my father was still a schoolboy at Camperdown in the Western District of Victoria or at Crabbes Creek in the Murwillumbah district of New South Wales or at Allansford on the Hopkins River and back again in the Western District of Victoria (you will notice that my father, like the father of one of the characters in Inland, led a wandering life)…one hot afternoon in the summer of one of those years more than seventy years ago, it was a freezing night on the other side of the world.
It was a freezing night on the other side of the world because, as every schoolboy knows (and even the wandering schoolboy who later became my wandering, eccentric father would have known in 1910 or 1918 or whenever it was)… as every schoolboy knows, things happen the wrong way round on the other side of the world.
On the other side of the world (where my father, for all his wandering, never dreamed of going and where I have sometimes dreamed of going but will never go)…on the other side of the world, things happen such as a decent Australian schoolboy (which I believe my father to have been and which I believe he believed me to be)…things happen such as a decent Australian schoolboy can hardly imagine. For example, on cold nights in winter on the other side of the world, snow falls out of the sky and ice forms on the water in wells.
My father travelled in every state of Australia during his fifty-five years but he kept to the plains and the river basins, and so he never saw snow falling. I have travelled much less widely than my father and yet I have seen snow falling. I saw snow falling faintly on my schoolground for a few minutes on a winter day in 1951.
Among you people here today, the few people who have already read Inland will understand the importance of what I am about to say. Those people will know that one of the many themes of the book is the theme of Australia’s having been corrupted by Europe. My father believed all his life that Australia had been corrupted by Europe. My father tried all his life to avoid the evils of Europe. He believed that snow was one of the evils of Europe. I had no reason for disagreeing with him.
Before I began to write this text I knew that I had seen snow falling somewhere once in my life. Not until a few minutes ago did I pause to consider where I had seen the European stuff falling out of the sky.
I saw snow falling on the suburb of Pascoe Vale, which is about ten kilometres north from the city of Melbourne and about three kilometres west of the place where I was born. The snow fell lightly on a winter day in 1951. The snow fell for only a few minutes, but afterwards I found small heaps of frozen stuff in corners of the schoolground. I was so unused to snow that I called the frozen stuff ice. I had thought it was snow while it was falling, but when I found it on the ground I called it ice.
I wish I had remembered while I was writing Inland what I only just remembered while I was writing this text. The people here today who have read Inland can imagine what meaning I could have found in the fact of snow – pure, white, corrupt, European snow – having fallen on Pascoe Vale, on the suburb where the red fish lived in the green pond, in the year 1951 of all years.
One hot afternoon in Australia more than twenty years before I was born, it was, as I said before, a freezing night in Europe. It was not a night to be out in. And any person who had to be out on that night ought not to have been barefoot.
I often think of that night on the other side of the world. I often try to see in my mind a district of low hills south-west of the Great Plain of Hungary. It is hard to see in your mind a place where you have never been, as it was on a night more than twenty years before you were born. Sometimes I read the words of a man who heard on many a night in his childhood some of the sounds that might have sounded on the night that I often think about.
Rarely did I succeed in catching something of the mystery. Somewhere a mother called her daughter. ‘Kati-i!’…and in the long, drawn-out cry something of the mystic charm drifted along under the vertiginously high stars. There was no answering cry. One of the pigs grunted once or twice and the hens flapped their wings in the coops.
The passage quoted is from People of the Puszta, by Gyula Illyes, translated by G.F. Cushing and published in 1971 by Chatto and Windus. People of the Puszta is not a book of fiction.
It was a hard night to be out in, but a young woman – scarcely more than a child – was out on that night, and she was barefoot. She ought not to have been barefoot. She was the owner of a pair of boots. But she had left her boots behind her in her hurry to be out on that night.
While the young woman was out on that night, certain sounds sounded such as did not usually sound on cold nights in that part of the world. The sounds were not heard by the boy who grew into the man who wrote the book called in English People of the Puszta. But on his way to school next morning the boy saw on the icy ground a sight that would have enabled him to hear in his mind on that morning, and many times during the rest of his life, the sounds that had sounded on the cold night. The sight that the boy saw on the icy ground is described in his own words translated from the Magyar language into the English language on page 188 of People of the Puszta and on page 161 of Inland.
The boy who saw the sight on the icy ground on his way to school grew up to become a writer of books. His books were all in the Magyar language, but one of the books was translated into the English language, and I happened to read that book in 1976.
After I had read the book I tried often to see in my mind the sight that the boy had seen on the icy ground on that morning more than twenty years before I was born. I also tried to hear in my mind the sounds that might have sounded on the cold night before the cold morning. At some time I began to believe that some of those sounds might have been words. I knew that the words would have been words in the Magyar language, but I began to believe that I understood what the words would have been in the English language. As soon as I began to believe this, I began to write Inland.
Of the three people that I named a little while ago as being alive on the freezing night, which was a summer afternoon in this part of the world…of the three people, the schoolboy who became my father, the schoolboy who became the writer of books in the Magyar language, and the young woman, hardly more than a girl, who had left her boots behind…of those three people all are now dead. But while I was reading Inland I began to think of those people as alive. Today, more than a year after my finishing the writing of Inland, I continue to think of those people as alive.
I have sometimes been able to suppose that my father has read, translated into the language of ghosts, certain pages the writing of which pages caused me to think of my father as alive.
I have sometimes been able to suppose also that the writer of books in the Magyar language has read, translated into the language of ghosts, certain pages the writing of which pages caused me to think of the writer of books in the Magyar language as alive.
I have never been able to suppose that the young woman who left her boots behind in her hurry to be out in the freezing night…I have never been able to suppose that that person has been able to read – even in the language of ghosts – any pages of mine.
Many times during the three years while I was trying to write the book now called Inland, I had almost decided that I could not finish the book. At those times I used to urge myself to go on writing by seeing in my mind myself sitting in front of a group of people such as you people here today. I used to see myself sitting as I am sitting here, and I used to hear myself saying in the English language, but as though my words would be heard in the language of ghosts by a person who would never read my pages – not even in the language of ghosts – because she had never been taught to read words written or printed on pages…I used to hear myself saying, at last, ‘Your book has been published; your story has been told.’
(Text of a speech given by Gerald Murnane at the launching of Inland in Adelaide on 9 March 1988; published in Meridian, vol. 7, no. 2, October 1988)