The Electrical Experience (8 page)

It is a literary coincidence that Zane Grey once went eighty-three days without a bite and then caught the Tahitian Striped Marlin and that the Old Man in Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea
went eighty-four days before catching his giant marlin.

Procure a wire meat-safe—that is, a box with walls made of perforated metal, with a flyproof door. On top, place a pan filled with water. Take a piece of burlap the width of the safe and sufficient to wrap around the entire safe. Tack it fast where the door opens and closes. Tuck the upper edge in water. Place it where there is a draught and where the dripping will do no damage. This constitutes a well-ventilated refrigerator that costs nothing but the water to maintain.

The turning of the screw, stopped by the words, ‘The world is a long journey, Mr McDowell.' Scribner's head. Scribner bending down to see under the car, ‘Taking a journey, Mr McDowell?'

‘The Annual Conference of the New South Wales Country Cordial Makers Association, Mr Scribner,' he said from under the car, his voice cramped.

Scribner picked up and held an unnecessary spanner.

Scribner always made himself a part of the situation.

The screw turning completed.

He dragged himself out from under the car. ‘The world
is
a long journey,' he said to Scribner.

Scribner always made himself a part of the situation and addressed himself to the situation.

He ingratiated himself by slicing, pouring, or serving.

Yet he belonged in no situation.

Slicing, pouring, serving, holding or assisting.

Scribner was also good at quotation, which pleased him because he liked to hear a good quotation.

Scribner said, ‘I myself have been considering a trip to the city to buy my summer underwear.'

He dusted himself from being under the car and thought that he did not vary
his
underwear year-long. Why then did Scribner vary his underwear? And why buy it in the city? Was it education or was it because he and his mother considered themselves ‘above the town'.

He found himself quite easily saying, yes, that today he would not mind the company of Scribner.

On some days he could not abide the idleness of Scribner or his wandering, picnicking conversation.

He liked Scribner when he felt in a truant mood. He usually fought against this truancy in himself, but yet it did relax him—when he allowed himself to go like a balloon in the breeze. Babbling on with fantasy and speculation.

Being above the town did not save Scribner from being known as a glutton. His mother also, it was said, looked after herself at town functions.

‘I was reading only yesterday,' said Scribner, ‘talking of cordials—about the brewing of barley beer in Mesopotamia—they kept their brewing recipes secret. O they valued alcohol highly in ancient times.'

‘And today also, Mr Scribner.'

‘Yes, and today. also, Mr McDowell.'

Some in the town had wanted him to go into brewing, but he had decided to go the other way and stay in ‘temperance drinks'—aerated waters and maybe egg drinks and milk drinks, which he thought had a future when there was more refrigeration.

‘Above the town', but the Scribners, mother and son, never missed a town function invited or not, nor missed a sandwich, a sausage roll, a piece of sponge cake, a pikelet, a cup cake, a scone, a trifle.

Being a Bachelor of Arts was why he supposed that no one minded that Scribner belonged in no situation, did not work at a job. Although he did write letters to Government Departments for those people worried about the right way of doing so.

And Scribner was a speechmaker, invited or not, and always used a Latin line, which he liked, and had enough sense to explain it without implying that you did not know.

Of course, people said, and it was probably so, that the Scribners, mother and son, had little money. That explained, people said, why they ate the way they did at every town function. For a long time it was said that the Scribners had shares, but maybe the Depression had rendered these valueless.

It seemed to answer why they stuffed themselves at every town function.

Scribner made the occasional guinea by writing an advertisement for him, but always took the money offered in payment as some unexpected, though welcome, consideration.

‘Isn't there anything you wish to collect from your house before we set off, Mr Scribner? Your valise?'

Scribner said, no, he could go as he was and perhaps buy a toothbrush and toothpowder and stay at the Masonic Club.

He lent Scribner an old dustcoat for the journey up the coast.

‘Who told you I was planning a trip to the city, Mr Scribner?'

‘O I came across you simply by chance, Mr McDowell. I was taking a stroll.'

That was the whole damn difference between himself and Scribner. Scribner daily placed himself in the hands of fate. He, on the other hand, worked at making fate do what he wanted. The whole damn difference.

Yet here they were, in the same car, going to the same destination.

Scribner, he was sure, did not know from day to day his income or even his possible whereabouts. Except that if the town had a banquet, a ball, a garden party, dinner, reception, afternoon tea, Scribners, mother and son, would appear and Scribner would, unsolicited, begin to pour, slice, or serve. They belonged to no local organisation. Or did they consider themselves members of every organisation ex-officio?

The town's social calendar guided Scribner through life. He, on the other hand, organised the social calendar.

Scribner asked about the Cordial Makers Association, saying, ‘I always believed that “two of a trade did never agree”.'

‘Hard times have hurt the Association, but we've agreed on standards. I've opposed Major Adcock's move to put a Jusfrute Factory in every town. Wanted the
Association to oppose this. I'm for every town having its distinctive local products.'

He then asked Scribner if he worried for the future, given his style of life.

Scribner replied that he sometimes felt himself to be the embodiment of the Greek god Perseus.

‘Which was he, Mr Scribner?'

‘Perseus—as though I have the helmet of Pluto which makes me invisible. O everyone expects me to be where I am and no longer notices me. Therefore I am invisible. O and the wings of Hermes because I move where I want and there is always a way—today, thanks to your fine motor-car, Mr McDowell—' Scribner patted the dashboard—‘and the Mirror of Athene, which permits me to avoid looking into the dangerous gaze of Mammon or the snakepit called the Opinions of Others, and so I avoid the anxieties of life.'

Scribner, some said, was also close to being mad.

He liked Scribner for talking in an educated fashion and he, himself, found that he talked in a more elevated way when with Scribner.

Both sat over the dusty miles in their dustcoats.

‘It has always struck me, Mr Scribner, that as an educated man you could have done more with your talents.'

‘What more could I offer life, Mr McDowell? Why I have written a number of immortal labels for your aerated waters!'

It was true that Scribner could always find a new word for ‘refreshing' and could tread the difficult line
between a ‘fancy' invented name and a simple descriptive name and yet still get registration. All Scribner's names for new lines had gained registration. The last had been ‘Green River' for the lime.

‘One day, Mr McDowell, the label, the advertisement, will be considered works of art. O yes, demeaned today, but in the future—say in 1950 or 1960 when people fully understand the meaning of Art—I predict that they will be considered the Art of Our Times. The embodiment of our Dreams.'

‘You think so, Mr Scribner—that advertising could be, for instance, the poetry of commerce?'

‘Indeed, I do. And the machines we use—the sculptures of industry.'

That was a tickling idea.

‘Some of the French already do, Mr McDowell. I myself am a French Futurist in Art. Yes, indeed. We wrap our life in words, Mr McDowell. Our poor mundane daily existence would be nothing without the illusions we weave about them. Illusions, Mr McDowell, are the game we play with our selves and life. Words are the “Sparkling Juices from the Fountain of Delight”.'

‘That was one of your best, Mr Scribner.'

‘Thank you, Mr McDowell.'

‘Unfortunately, isn't it true that once you recognise these illusions, as you call them, once you see it is a “game”, Mr Scribner, don't they disappear? Is that not the case?'

‘A painful philosophical truth, painfully true.'

He raised with Scribner his own belief in the
‘speech' and the ‘business letter' as the practical arts of commerce.

‘Noble arts, Mr McDowell, with a long tradition—“When he killed a calf he would do it in high style and make a speech.” Why, you're a Futurist yourself, Mr McDowell.'

He told Scribner he did not know about that, but he was against the trend to shorter speeches.

Scribner said with great feeling and some emotion, and not altogether to the point, that the Letter was a failed form. ‘We taught the People to write and they never made anything of the Letter. I have read many attempts at the Letter. The greatest condemnation of Mass Literacy has been the failure of the People to produce Great Letters. The Letter to the Editor is also a failed form.'

Scribner was spluttering and salivating with feeling for his words.

‘The telephone has harmed the letter, don't you think, Mr Scribner?'

‘Ah, but then we must make the telephone the instrument of Art. The Telephonic Essay.'

‘I myself plan out each Telephonic Conversation.'

‘That is a credit to you, Mr McDowell, but we must not undervalue the spontaneous, the ephemeral, the extemporaneous. Why don't People take delight? Why! the Tele phonic Essay is one of the great extemporaneous arts. There is, Mr McDowell …'

Scribner was spluttering off again with great gusto for his words. ‘… the art, Mr McDowell, which comes
from striving, practice, revision and attachment to the traditions—poetry, painting and so forth—and there is the art which comes from felicitous practice in the daily run of our lives.'

Scribner wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘But we don't, but we don't become artists without an act of conscious dedication. No, no, no, there must be dedication to the Muse, dedication of one's Spirit to the idea of doing things superlatively. A dedication to the superlative. And the painstaking accumulation of the supporting skills.'

Scribner fell into exhausted silence, cooling himself by flapping his silk handkerchief, wiping his face, dabbing his neck. He seemed to carry more than one handkerchief.

‘I consider yourself to be so dedicated, Mr McDowell,' Scribner managed to get out.

‘Thank you, Mr Scribner.'

When he had recovered himself a few miles farther on, Scribner launched off again, saying, ‘I consider myself a Dadaist and of the Bohemian Tradition, but I salute you as a Business-man Artist.'

They had passed through the heavy, foreboding bush that closed in on the narrow road between Milton and Nowra, through which they sat silent, inturned, in the cold darkness of the overshadowed road. They grinned and talked a lot when they were out of it and into the open valleys of Berry and Gerringong. It was a relief to see the sea from time to time. Although they could not be lost, there was no way of being lost really, it was
good to be sure. They then hugged the embankment around the winding spurs of Kiama, looked and spoke, as everyone did, of the convict fences of the English fields around Kiama.

They were again silent through the tar roads of Wollongong, knowing at that point they had left well and truly behind the outer limits of the district in which they might be known. He did not care for the larger towns where there were more people who did not know you than people who knew you.

‘It is a lonely and unrewarding life being the only Dadaist on the coast, Mr McDowell.'

The other side of Wollongong the front tyre was punctured by a piece of broken horseshoe. They lunched at the tearooms at Bulli before trying the Pass and going back into the dark, empty bush before Sydney.

Scribner ordered double servings and blew his nose while the bill was being paid.

As they whined and chugged up Bulli Pass, he joked to Scribner that they were certainly not ‘Hope Bartletts' and the Chev was no racing-car. He asked Scribner how one became a Business-man Artist, in his opinion. He did not ask about how one became a Dadaist.

‘What is needed, Mr McDowell,' he said, above the motor, ‘is to have once
thought the thought
—about striving for the superlative. That's enough, to have
thought the thought.
To have
thought the thought,
understood it, cherished it, as an ideal. Of course, it cannot remain in the forefront of your mind for long,
but to have
thought the thought
means that you are then servant of the thought. Some thoughts, you see, contain imperatives and instructions, and once you have had them pass through your head, they affect the spirit. They leave behind instructions to be followed. Some thinking permits of no retreat. One cannot go back, Mr McDowell, to what one was before having come across the thought and allowed it to pass into the mind. Not all thoughts, just some thoughts. We never please an Ideal, Mr McDowell. O no. O no. O Idealism is a taskmaster, Mr McDowell, who makes us permanently dissatisfied with our self.'

He nodded at Scribner's words, trying to keep his own thoughts out of the way so he could fully listen.

‘Not a happy state, Mr McDowell.'

‘No.'

He had never heard these sorts of thoughts said before. He marvelled that a man like Scribner, who daily placed himself in the hands of fate and did not have goals and plans, should have such ideas. It convinced him that the town was wrong when it thought Scribner a joking matter, which some did, despite his Bachelor's Degree.

He then told Scribner that although the words just spoken were new to him, he had felt similar things. He found that in the town there were too few who could go along with such types of thinking.

‘They do not make the conversational possibilities—they keep certain doors closed. Do you know what I mean, Mr Scribner? They do not allow certain thinking
to come out because of their tightly closed demeanour. The ideas in one's head become shy and wary. Some people frighten ideas away. And words from your mouth.'

‘I am an enemy of those who frighten away my words and ideas, Mr McDowell,' Scribner said with vehemence, hostility.