Finland

 

Standing at Westgarth Station the anonymous author considers how clouds superimpose themselves on other clouds, cold as snow. The clouds are images in his mind, slowly ending up upon alpine plains. A high bridge arches across the sky in his mind. The anonymous writer wonders why Gerald Murnane never uses the name Gerald for the first-person narrators of his incremental fictions. But not for long, as he finds images in his mind are of white expanses of Finland. Snow footpaths and snow windows show at some unearthly hour and briefly the moon the same. There are ice rivers and ice rinks all day in daylight then candles in the windows when an unearthly sunset makes everywhere black and the winter sea. Westgarth platform is an arc. Large mirrors on sturdy stilts help the train driver see the back carriage exits and entrances. The anonymous author notices how superimposed clouds and a bridge in the sky are reflections in a large mirror on Platform 2. Surface glaze and white sprays of graffiti improve the superimpositions in his mind. He thinks it must be exciting for humans and wolves when the darkness breaks open with a red line that widens into pink and yellow, in Finland, in winter. Windows and exterior landscapes turn white, making space for memory. When a Hurstbridge express train hurtles through the arc of Westgarth, disappearing around the bend, the station is left feeling redundant. The anonymous author senses the loneliness experienced sometimes by characters in stories by Tove Jansson. A mirror on stilts temporarily reflects woodlands and cold lakes and pale blue skies. He sees the music of Jean Sibelius, chilly and austere sonatinas, proof, if only in his writing, that music is visible. The unnamed writer wonders why Tove rarely used the name Tove, though all the characters in her fictions were people in her life. Tove gave them special names, some of them look like clouds and the main ways to reach islands in Finland are by boat or bridge. The nameless composer in words considers it a great relief to know wolves were never introduced into Australia. He wonders if an academic living in Westgarth with nothing better to do will one day collate a who’s who key to all the people in the novels of Gerald Murnane, formerly of Macleod. He recollects images in his mind in a glass whitely on stilts of the frozen north, or is that the melting north, or the misty north, the slushy north, the pale blue north? A stopping-all-stations to Macleod rounds the bend, slows and halts along the arc, beneath the bridge in the sky. Five people get off and two people get onto the train, also the unidentified author into the second front carriage. The driver waits till all is clear then closes the long line of carriage doors.