A History of Books by Gerald Murnane Page B

woman had died. On the Saturday following the death of the woman, the man who had spent much time in her company reported to the other man, when they met at a certain race-meeting, that he, the owner of the substantial house and of the glass-fronted cabinets full of books, had been since his childhood a convinced atheist but that he had never considered himself a materialist and that he and the woman who had recently died had agreed some months previously that if some or another part of her remained alive after the event that other persons would call her death, then she would arrange for one of the racehorses that he backed on the Saturday following that event to win at odds of about twenty to one. Several hours after the convinced atheist, as he called himself, had reported these matters, one of the horses that he had backed won a race at odds of a little more than twenty to one, and soon after he had collected his winnings he invited the other man to visit him for a few hours after the race-meeting.
    The other man had never been able to decide what he believed or did not believe in any field of human enquiry. While he was enjoying the snack and the expensive whisky that his host served him during his visit to the substantial house, he did no more than watch and listen while his host opened one after another large illustrated book from the glass-fronted cabinets, declaring repeatedly that he, the host, could never be a materialist while ever racehorses such as those illustrated with jockeys such as those illustrated contested races such as those illustrated on racecourses such as those illustrated, thereby convincing personssuch as himself of the existence of as yet invisible racecourses on as yet invisible grasslands under as yet invisible skies where competed the immortals of the turf.
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    In the mind of a young man aged about thirty years, an image appeared of a large farmhouse surrounded on three sides by groves of image-trees and groups of image-outbuildings. In front of the image-farmhouse was a wide view of far-reaching image-grasslands beneath a far-reaching image-sky filled with banks of image-clouds between which, at distant intervals, one or another shaft of image-sunlight fell onto one or another zone of image-grassland. In each of these zones stood an image-farmhouse surrounded on three sides as the earlier-mentioned image-farmhouse had been surrounded and having at its front the same wide view.
    More than once during each of the forty years after the first appearance of the images mentioned, the same images appeared again in the mind of the man mentioned. Sometimes the images appeared unexpectedly, but often the man caused the images to appear.
    During the first few of the forty years mentioned, the man mentioned was sometimes uneasy because the image-farmhouses mentioned resembled some or other farmhouses that he had seen in the distance in a certain district where he had sometimes travelled during his childhood, whereas the words that had first caused the images to appear were part of a work of fictionwritten about forty years before the man’s birth by a man who had become famous as a writer of fiction after having worked until he was about thirty years of age in the merchant marine, and whereas the work of fiction was set, so to speak, in fictional places resembling places in South America.
    During the few years mentioned, the young man was sometimes uneasy also because the image-farmhouses and the image-landscape comprised many image-details whereas the only words that he could afterwards recall from the work of fiction mentioned were the words slumbrous and estancia .
    During the few years mentioned, the young man was sometimes uneasy also because the work of fiction mentioned had been one of the texts that he was required to study during the second of the three years during which he had studied English at the University of Melbourne. During those three years, he had never understood how his