Peter Cowan (1914-2002) |
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| Peter Cowan © Copyright - Given with permission by Di Cowan - Daughter-in-law of the late Peter Cowan |
| The Sky Sometimes, in my thinking about all this, the results of which, by the way, I hope to suggest for publication under the title Small Nightmares For The Common Man, sometimes I think there was no beginning. I blame it, ultimately, on the sky. I had learned to live with it. To come to terms with it all. The point at which it slipped out of had, the word an unintended irony, let it stand, the signpost that clearly stretched towards this final condemnation, was perhaps only as far back as last winter. I knew then that while I might possibly escape, there was in fact nothing to escape to. The unfortunate incidents, the signposts, had begun to come more quickly, as if I travelled more and more rapidly and was able only to count the mile pegs. At my trial I did not show up well. I have always imagined myself possessed of a mild irony, a certain sense of the humour of things, trace-like perhaps, but it seems this must have been a delusion of mine, indeed it was suggested I was possessed with delusions, but the irony, the humour, too understated, because no one else seemed at all aware of them. Of course, it may be there is no longer, in this day, a place for irony. A term fading into an already distant past. So it was at my trial. I was in effect tried for all the wrong things, the things I had never wanted to do, never intended to do. And so, I tried to maintain, had not done. Now, the day is muted. I observe, when there is so little to observe. Being now quite removed from that empty, endless sky. There must be an irony here, because I accepted that sky. Did not try to make of it what it was not. To falsify it. To overpeople it. To enrich, if I may put it so, to lend it some baroque splendour. It is also perhaps an irony that I am deeply moved by what is often called the music of the late baroque, yet I do not quite see that music in relation to other aspects, other manifestations, of that term. A confusion of terms, terms have always confused me. To survive the trial, to have gained the plaudits of the people, of course I should have been an advocate of these things. I was stupid enough, at first, and later stubborn enough, to accept that this hard, empty sky was its own necessity, its own beauty, its own statement, its own finality. Such fellows are heretics. So, a voice rising to that sky. As a dog bays to the moon. If indeed they do. I have not observed them. I’m not sure that the incident of the woman had anything to do with it. A very trite story. I accept that this is the age of truism, and that the truism, uttered with just the right touch of panache, may lead to pardon, indeed to glory. This even was close to successful truism. Though perhaps not, a confusion of terms here, since successful truism is a god of our time, and I had need of such. A story beginning, though again that is the wrong term, at the bus stop. I had over time acquired a certain skill, or again, this was one of the things I believed. I had boarded the bus, and taken one of the only two seats vacant. Luck. Choice. Either of the essence of truism. It was after the schoolgirl experience, and I decided to forgo the pleasure of sight. In fact, in what was now my quarry, there was very little pleasure of this visual sort to be had. So it was not a sacrifice. Rather, as I have always had to do, a kind of coming to terms. If youth must not be seen, age might be touched. Brushed. With the greatest car. Subtlety. This woman was of indeterminate age. But of comforting expanse. I sat, my hand motionless yet vibrant, sensitive as radar, transmitting the warm signals, while the bus traveled. Past my stop. Through the central area. Into new suburban territory. The other seats emptying. To the terminus. She stood up. The driver turning in his small cabin, looking down the bus, yawning. I, too, had to rise. I stepped down to the pavement. She said: This way. I looked at her. Along here. I beg your pardon? I thought you might like to come in. A cup of tea. Coffee if you prefer it. Though I never drink it myself. Except in the early morning. It’s quite all right, I said. Good. You are coming. Not a question, of course. I said: I’m afraid I have to go. I could call a policeman, she said. This seemed to me to be one of the older truisms, and perhaps she sensed my feeling. She said: Or the bus driver. My mind simply turned off. The myriad cells I have read about, in an effort to understand, supplying suddenly nothing. A most potent short circuit. I followed. Though we walked together. Through the suburban gate and down the path. I could have run, leaped the fences into the suburban morning. But my brain had shut down my will, and as well, her quite formidable bulk must have halted me. To be held, ignominiously, like a child in the street. Protesting my innocence. Before the house. So into the suburban lounge-room. I don’t know whether the old, worn furnishings that had clearly not been worth trading, or the new gothic pieces direct from the manufacturer at considerable savings to all of us, were more depressing. Because I would have chosen some other place. She parked her handbag within the zones of the table, slipped off her jacket. Heaved, twisted, fumbled, yet her movements were possessed of an awful dexterity. Those other intimate things placed with the jacket. She sank back on the sofa, into it, one might say, her own luxuriance shaming it. Again, we seem in the area of truism. I wondered why she had not elected the bedroom which would have been, counter part to this, across the hall. Its window facing the street, as this window faced the street. Without looking at it. He is dead in there, she said. I think I began to perceive what was to happen, then. The shape of it all hardening, clearing. I could have run. Into the passage. Down the path. To the street. But not to escape, because she would have followed me, all that somehow shameful magnificence crying its own rape. Shrieking in most baroque tones her innocence. Nowhere to escape. She was smiling. Probably it is not relevant. At time, now, I am sure it never happened, that in fact I awoke from this particular small nightmare, and was in this way saved. A clairvoyance. The trial postponed. |
| Biography: Peter Cowan spent much of the 1930s working in rural Western Australia as a labourer, and in 1938 attended the University of WA. In the Second World War, he served with the RAAF, and his interest in modernist literature led to an involvement with the Angry Penguins movement in Melbourne during the war years. Teaching English and Geography at Scotch College after the war, he became a senior tutor in English at the University of Western Australia in 1964, and later an Honorary Research Fellow. He was co-editor of Westerly for many years. A prolific author of fiction and editor of numerous anthologies, Cowan also wrote in the genres of biography, essays and literary criticism. Exploring both suburban and more regional settings, his fiction demonstrates a thematic concern with isolation, and emotional and spiritual impoverishment in Australian society. Among his many other themes are the Australian landscape and environment, and the struggle to find a sense of "home". His writing style has been described as poetic, experimental and modern and focussed on the inner processes of his characters rather than external drama. Literary influences and models include Hemingway, Chekov and Pinter. Cowan was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987. |
| His short story The Sky is from Voices |
| Perth born Peter Cowan was one of Australia'a greatest writers. Peter lived most of his life in Western Australia. His feeling for the Western Australian landscape with its isolation is a recurring theme in many of his short stories and novels. Appropriately the Writers' Centre at the Edith Cowan University's Joondalup campus is named after him. Peter Cowan's achieve-ments as a short story writer, biographer and novelist and his support through teaching generations of Western Australians will long be remembered. Keith Sinclair Write Away, July 2002 |
| His works |
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