The Electrical Experience (9 page)

‘I'm afraid there are some in the Science Club even, who by their general demeanour stop the ideas dead in your head. I must say, Mr Scribner, I find that my ideas are enthusiastic to meet yours.'

‘I wish I were more a man of affairs sometimes, like your self, Mr McDowell.'

‘But you are a Bachelor of Arts.'

‘All mysteries, Mr McDowell, find their resolution in human practice. A student only lists and classifies the mysteries. Karl Marx, ogre of our Times, said that.'

‘Even Mr Marx, then, knows something. They say, I believe, that truth is dispersed among us.'

‘But not equally, Mr McDowell. Believe me, in all humility, some of us have more than others. Believe me.'

Although there was little talk over the last miles, Scribner burst out at Sutherland, saying, ‘No, damn it, I am not a Dadaist. No, I am not. I am an Everydayist. I believe in the ultimate beauty of everyday things. I'm no Dadaist.'

He did not question Scribner about this or what he meant by it. It was, it seemed, a private tussle. He had feared through the journey the word ‘Dadaist'. Not
having understood it. He had understood and heard enough for the one day. He did not care to venture further than he had in the conversation. He did not want to ask about the word ‘Dadaist', because he did not know what lay behind it. He doubted that Scribner, anyhow, belonged to any of these organisations he mentioned.

His mind, also, was turning to tomorrow, the city, and the Annual Conference.

At Kogarah they stopped and removed their dustcoats and washed their hands in the park, before driving into the city. Scribner went over and stole a flower from a garden in a nearby house, called Denbigh, and put the flower in his buttonhole. This act of theft filled him with apprehension. Annoyed, he refused to accept the buttonhole flower Scribner had stolen for him.

That had been the only irritation of the journey.

Since he was staying at Adams' Tattersalls, he dropped Scribner at the Masonic Club.

‘It's good afternoon, or should I say evening, then, Mr Scribner.'

‘Yes, and a good evening to you, Mr McDowell. My regards to the cordial-makers of this State. Good conferencing and all that. Conference, they say, maketh a ready man.'

He noticed to his surprise that although Scribner was not a Mason, the doorman at the club knew him and tipped his cap.

Extraordinary.

When Frank Fowler rang long distance from Melbourne to wish the Conference all best wishes, it was George's idea for all those present to sing ‘For he's a Jolly Good Fellow' to Frank, over the telephone.

1. Natural juices and squashes do not produce a natural, convincing colour—the question of tinting and keeping the tint consistent from bottle to bottle is important. People suspect quality if the colour varies.
   
2. Sighting—the inspection of bottles before filling is of prime importance. One dirty bottle or one bottle containing a foreign substance can destroy your business. Inspection is tedious. Change your employees around, giving them each a turn at inspection and never one person longer than a couple of hours.
   
3. Your reputation is behind the name on your bottle. Watch out for Soda Fountain operators who illegally refill bottles branded with your name.
   
4. The word squash or crush must not be misused—it should be the juice of sound fruit with no added pulp or other substance, except for sugar and preservative.
   
5. Most town water-supplies are not pure enough for bottling of drinks. Organisms can cause ropiness. Settling tanks and filters keep the water free of dust and germs.
   
6. Most breakages occur because of bad boxes—keep them repaired.
   

What is the news from Berlin?

 

What is the news from Paris. London? Just how does one know what is really happening. Who to ask. On what does one construct one's actions in these times of allegation?

 

Where are the Rules of Conduct?

 

Dr Russell, a West End neurologist, said recently that the child of the thirties is already ‘out of hand'. He attributes this to too much reading of books and attendance at moving pictures in cinemas. By the time the child is twelve, more experience and sights have passed through the child's brain than would have passed through the brain of a man in a life-time previously. The brain wore out in the child's head.

 

Was this, in fact, correct?

 

Was electric light the unnatural extension of daylight?

 

George thought that when he had been younger he had not doubted. But it had been an illusion of certainty when young. As if certainty and ignorance were closely related. There seemed now to be too much information, but yet, however, just not enough. You put together a decision and ‘made up' your mind, when along came some fellow in a newspaper with ‘fresh facts' and ‘startling discoveries' and you were back where you began.

 

He could remember arguing the merits of benzine against kerosene. For why?

 

How did one ascertain true facts?

 

He stared down at the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and many voices spoke to him from many written pieces, all with equal confidence. Who were these Special Correspondents? One man?

 

Does one always have to find one's way through life in peril of being wrong?

 

He could not bear the waste of life involved in being wrong. They say that someone has to be wrong, so that someone can be right. That someone has to test the wrong way, so that the right way can be found.

 

Then why weren't those who were wrong also rewarded?

 

It seemed until now, this night, he had been a man of certainty. He could not now find the requisite number of facts.

 

Who cared whether benzine from petroleum was superior to kerosene from shale oil.

 

They say that too many bad decisions on matters such as benzine
v.
kerosene and refrigeration
v.
ice led to starvation of the race, the downfalling of culture, return of the savage, civilisation into a backwater, the failure of the harvest.

 

Do we approach perfection? Or is every generation con fronted with an equal number of problems? Different problems but still as many—still to be solved by men of action.

 

Do all solutions reveal an equal number of new complications?

 

The solution of the problem of flight created the problems of air navigation, the need for the parachute.

 

We think we progress because we know the answers to yesterday's problems.

 

Do all solutions, maybe, create even greater complexities? Are humans, in fact, bunglers? Is
civilisation a bungle? Will we soon reach the Perfect Problem and not the Perfect Answer? The Insoluble?

 

What would the world be like in 1950?

 

Of all the women who crossed one's path, how had he chosen Thelma? On what basis?

 

Of all the occupations, trades and professions, on what basis had he chosen aerated water and cordial manufacturing? What had been the guiding magnetism?

 

I do not know. I do not now know.

 

He was not ready, though, to believe in a god. Sensible men are all of the same religion. But now, when he went through the names and faces of his friends and business associates, he could not decide which were sensible and which were not.

 

I try to walk the footpath of goodwill.

 

Isn't that enough?

 

He sat before a shaded desk-light in his office. The centre of his life. All he ever wanted from life had been ‘an office'. An office of his own from which to control his life and works. His rank and his position. The staff had gone home. The factory creaked and the
machinery made cooling and settling noises after the heat and running of the day. He owned it, yet the noises of the empty factory sometimes made him frightened and alert.

 

He had talked to the Science Club some years back about O. C. Overbeck's theories that electricity would cure illness. How did he know that? How could he have spoken with such confidence then? How could someone like him in a country town know that O. C. Overbeck's theories were correct or not? How would he know whether the body was electrical and that illness was no more than a disturbance of the electric balance between negative and positive within the brain, that new cells generated electricity which became energy, that defective vision could be corrected by introducing electrical current into the brain, that the fibrils of the body were nothing more than electric wires? That acute depression could be cured by electric current? How could he have stood up before the Science Club and said that? What had the doctor thought? Shame burned in him for his youth.

 

He had no degree. Once it had not worried him at all. Now he would dearly love to be a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science.

 

He had been a real magsman in his day. Nothing more than a magsman.

 

Behind every word and every object lay knowledge which he did not have. Behind every leaf of nature, mechanism of life, trick of fate, lay knowledge he did not have.

 

He wanted dearly to be, say, a Master of Arts or a Doctor of Philosophy and be privy to the secrets in them contained.

 

What for instance was happening in Germany?

 

What was the news from Berlin?

 

When you lived in a town on the coast of Australia, how did you find out what was happening in private rooms and secret conferences in London, in Paris, and in Berlin?

 

Why would they tell George McDowell?

 

Did one choose a creed to carry one through one man's lifetime—caterpillar tracks to take one over those questions which could not be answered?

 

Why did the highly educated disagree among themselves? He could not fathom that.

 

Could one live without faith, live with the insoluble, unanswerable, unknowable, the untrustworthy, poor tradesmanship, back-biting, and the enclosing blackness?

 

What to answer his children? What if one generation had no answers for the generation which followed it?

 

Did the Rosicrucians know the secrets?

 

The Masons didn't. He knew that.

 

How did one group of people in life come by the Secrets and not everyone else?

 

Pelmanism?

 

He always said there were rules inherent in one's craft.

 

But one rule inherent in all crafts is the obligation, the exhortation, the stricture, to improve one's techniques, tools, to find the best way, to deliver the goods, and to perceive the ethics inherent, the way the craft was meant to serve the tribe.

 

He always said one worked not only with materials, but through the materials with people. What you made with your hands and offered to people was your gesture to people and the presentation of yourself.

 

Now all this did not answer him. It plagued him. How to perceive and interpret. What to change and what to leave untouched.

 

The making of foodstuffs was the most sacred of all crafts.

 

Even if it was only soft drinks.

 

He'd always believed that the Rules of Conduct grew outward from the rules inherent in one's work. He believed that general theories which grew from so-called ‘theorists', and not from practice and work, were dangerous. If only all people obeyed the Rules of Conduct inherent in their work.

 

He could no longer perceive the Rules of Conduct.

 

One moved from birth, it seemed, shaped and directed by others, to the making of decisions of minor importance which followed daily, one upon the other, until unnoticed they were decisions of importance about other people and you were then in full flood of decision, each built one on the other, until, viewed from Life's Lookout, they appeared as a terrifying torrent with uncontrollable consequence.

 

Where were the answers he once lived by—where had they gone?

 

He voted on everything: he had never abstained from life's decisions.

 

A newspaper reporter like Backhouse never voted.

 

Tutman was dead.

 

Backhouse knew the rules inherent in his craft. He simply had to print. The rest was up to those out in the world of meetings.

 

The World of Meetings.

 

Was there a rapid increase in sickness and more madness? Or was this scare talk?

 

Were men becoming more like women and women more like men? Zane Grey certainly thought so. It could be that there were too many women schoolteachers. How to know?

 

Who had stolen his leather coat?

 

Now that he had possessions and success, people stole from him, talked about him behind his back, tried to befriend him falsely.

 

Fred had rigged up an improvement for labelling, and the man doing the bottle-washing had sneered at him saying, ‘You'll get on.' He had overheard this. He did not sack the bottle-washer, he lectured him. Lecturing improved a man, sacking never did. He told him that he had no time for those who tried to hold others back. Australia was pinned down and kicked in the head by expressions like ‘She'll be right', ‘Near enough', or
‘Don't bust your gut', or ‘Leave it to George.'

 

Busting your gut was what life was all about.

 

Resentment of ability. Now he was for ever on guard against trickery, theft in the factory, false representation, flattery, and borrowers.

 

The trouble with the Unions and the Public Service was that they were making it impossible to work hard any more.

 

A person
should
be tired after a day's work. For god's sake.

 

Now someone had taken his leather coat.

 

It seemed that as public recognition grew, so did the private resentment. He'd noticed it against himself. That often those who gave the public recognition—made the speeches, moved the votes of thanks, nominated you for office—were also the people who resented, often saying the reverse of what they felt, and the opposite of what they said in private.

 

He liked to mix now only with successful men.

 

Where was the religion for the strong and successful? They need comfort as much as the humble and weak.

 

I am assailed.

 

The supernatural was the natural not yet explained.

 

But what to do in the meantime?

 

I believe only in the work I do.

 

Gwen was ten and another child expected. He had bought for Gwen, and the child expected, a horse, a cow, a goat, a pig, and a dog. He wanted them to know that we ultimately depend on animals and the things of nature. Or was this a form of madness?

 

The Royal Arch—trowel, sword and buckler—ineffable name and ineffable triangle.

 

Why did he go on with the humbug of Masonry.

 

I provide for myself and family and more. Through my ideas and management others have work to do. What more is asked of me?

 

He knew the arguments against carbonated drinks—that carbonated drinks retarded the digestion by interfering with the salivary glands. The Australian Wine, Brewing, Spirit and Aerated Waters Review had refuted this.

 

He pulped his own fruit and made his own essence.
Except for the lime drink, Green River. He triple-filtered his water.

 

Business was not ‘organised greed', it was the joining of skills of many men to one man's ideas.

 

He had started kiosks on three beaches. He believed in kiosks.

 

He ran a good business. Didn't that count for anything? No one thanked him.

 

Someone had stolen his leather coat.

 

Tears came to his eyes but did not fall.

 

He could not go on.

 

His leather coat.

 

There was no longer any point. He lacked certitude. Backhouse could publish in his newspaper that T. George McDowell had come to a dead stop.

 

T. George McDowell could not go on.

 

T. George McDowell was sorry.

 

A long silence came to his head.

 

No thought came.

 

The creaking of the factory no longer frightened.

 

The tears did not leave his eyes, but his eyes stayed moist.

 

Spittle from his mouth.

 

The ring of the telephone.

 

The ring of the telephone.

 

He looked across to the telephone on the wall which had rung.

 

He stood up, his ears still holding the telephone bell's ringing, and then went over and took the earpiece.

 

George?

 

We are waiting for you, George.

 

The meeting is waiting for you, George.

 

The meeting.

 

The meeting.

 

The Emergency Service Scheme—the motor unit.

 

O yes.

 

The car club.

 

Yes, the meeting.

 

George, are you all right?

 

George, we can't start without you.