Prochownik's Dream Read online

  PRAISE FOR Prochownik’s Dream

  ‘Assured and intense . . . truly gripping . . . This is a throughly engrossing piece of writing about the process of making art, a revelatory transformation in fact.’

  —Australian Bookseller & Publisher

  ‘With this searing, honest and exhilarating study of the inner life of an artist, Alex Miller has created another masterpiece.’

  —Good Reading

  ‘Prochownik’s Dream is an absorbing and satisfying novel, distinguished by Miller’s enviable ability to evoke the appearance and texture of paintings in the often unyielding medium of words.’

  —Andrew Riemer, The Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Prochownik’s Dream is a wonderful, stimulating and thought-provoking book.’ —Readings Monthly

  ‘Miller is a master storyteller.’ —The Monthly

  ‘Prochownik’s Dream . . . exemplifies everything we’ve come to expect and enjoy from one of Australia’s most accomplished authors . . . wonderfully absorbing and insightful.’ —Sunday Telegraph

  ‘A beautiful novel of ideas which never eclipse the characters.’

  —The Age

  ‘Miller has once again proved his own artistic prowess with a literary novel that can be plumbed for its depths and resonances or simply enjoyed for the vitality and interest of its well-constructed plot.’ —The Advertiser

  PRAISE FOR Journey to the Stone Country

  ‘The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me all the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for.’

  —Tim Winton

  ‘A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line.’ —Nicholas Shakespeare, author of The Dancer Upstairs

  ‘Miller’s fiction has a mystifying power that is always far more than the sum of its parts . . . his footsteps—softly, deftly, steadily—take you places you may not have been, and their sound resonates for a long time.’ —Andrea Stretton, Sydney Morning Herald

  PRAISE FOR Conditions of Faith

  ‘This is an amazing book. The reader can’t help but offer up a prayerful thank you: Thank you, God, that human beings still have the audacity to write like this.’—Washington Post

  ‘I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year . . . a singular achievement.’ —Andrew Riemer, Australian Book Review

  ‘A truly significant addition to our literature.’ —The Australian

  ‘My private acid test of a literary work is whether, having read it, it lingers in my mind afterward. Conditions of Faith fulfils that criterion; I am still thinking about Emily.’

  —Colleen McCulloch

  PRAISE FOR The Ancestor Game

  ‘A wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty.’

  —Michael Ondaatje

  ‘Extraordinary fictional portraits of China and Australia.’

  —New York Times Book Review

  ‘A major new novel of grand design and rich texture, a vast canvas of time and space, its gaze outward yet its vision intimate and intellectually abundant.’ —The Age

  PRAISE FOR The Sitters

  ‘Like Patrick White, Miller uses the painter to portray the ambivalence of art and the artist. In The Sitters is the brooding genius of light. Its presence is made manifest in Miller’s supple, painterly prose which layers words into textured moments.’

  —Simon Hughes, The Sunday Age

  PRAISE FOR The Tivington Nott

  ‘The Tivington Nott abounds in symbols to stir the subconscious. It is a rich study of place, both elegant and urgent.’ —The Age

  ‘An extraordinarily gripping novel.’ —Melbourne Times

  ‘Altogether brilliant. This man knows his hunting country.’

  —Somerset County Gazette

  ‘In a virtuoso exhibition, Miller’s control never once falters.’

  —Canberra Times

  ALEX MILLER is one of Australia’s best loved writers. Prochownik’s Dream is his seventh novel. His work includes Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (1988), The Tivington Nott (1989), which won the Braille Book of the Year Award, The Ancestor Game (1992), which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s premier literary prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the Barbara Ramsden Award for best published book, The Sitters (1995), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Conditions of Faith (2000), which won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Journey to the Stone Country (2002), which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

  Prochownik’s DREAM

  Alex Miller

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published in 2006

  First published in 2005

  Copyright © Alex Miller 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Miller, Alex, 1936– .

  Prochownik’s dream.

  ISBN 978 1 74175 013 3.

  ISBN 1 74175 013 X.

  1. Artists—Fiction. I. Title.

  A823.3

  Set in 12/18 pt Requiem HTF by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Stephanie

  &

  To the memory of Max Blatt

  We cannot arbitrarily invent projects for ourselves: they have to be written in our past as requirements.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Contents

  1 The Mistress of Trees

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  2 The Third Hand

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  3 Prochownik’s Dream

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  1

  The Mistress of Trees

  one

  I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late. The phrase arrested his attention and he stopped reading and looked up from the book. He was standing in the doorway of his studio, posing for his daughter, who was sitting at her little table within the shadows of the studio’s interior. She was drawing a picture of him with her coloured pencils,
her black and white Snoopy Dog propped in front of her. When he looked up from the book the little girl also lifted her head and studied him, raising her hand and shading her eyes from the light, her expression serious and concerned. ‘Are you all right, Daddy?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, darling, I’m fine,’ he reassured her. He was touched by the earnestness of her inquiry.

  But perhaps she was not reassured after all, for she continued to examine him for a long moment before returning to her work, her head bent close to the paper, her free arm around her drawing, shielding it within the circle of her embrace. ‘You can move now, if you like,’ she said.

  He looked at the book in his hand, wondering if he might go on reading it. He had picked it up at random from the table by the door, to occupy himself while he posed for her, and had not registered either its title or the name of its author. It was one of many that had belonged to his father. On the cover there was a reproduction of a familiar painting by Salvador Dali, The Triangular Hour. The unearthly glow of the yellows and greens of Dali’s imaginary landscape. He read: A novel of the alienation of personality and the mystery of being. Inside the front cover at the top of the page, above the brief biography of the author, his father had pencilled his name, Moniek Prochownik. He could see his father now, seated on the couch in the evening, exhausted after his shift on the moulding line at the Dunlop factory, staring vacantly before him, the book face down in his lap, lost in the thoughts inspired by the words in the book, at that time of the evening needing only one good phrase in order to surrender himself to the uncertain universe of the book. His father’s apologetic smile on such occasions at finding himself caught gazing absently into space.

  He stepped out of the sunlight into the studio and stood looking down with distaste at the pile of old clothes and timber racks that filled his workspace. There were overcoats shagged with use, frayed skirts and blouses, dresses stained and un-hemmed, the dark trousers and jackets of men’s suits; and, here and there among the grown-up things, the small garment of a child. The summer heat was drawing from the old clothes the dispiriting smell of napthalene. It was a smell that reminded him of the closets of old people and of their preoccupation with the preservation of their things against the inevitability of decay, as if by preserving their most intimate belongings they might thereby contrive the preservation of themselves. His wife had urged him weeks ago, a touch of impatience in her voice, Why don’t you begin a new project? Take all this stuff back to the op shops and forget about it, or it will depress you. Although he knew that it was good advice, he had been unable to summon the resolve to act on it. He was still troubled by a resistant element of these dismantled installations, something unremembered that tugged at him and awaited resolution. He had been unable either to continue with them, or to conceive a convincing new project to take their place. The smelly pile of old clothes had begun to sicken him. He realised it was beginning to stand in his mind for his failure as an artist. Teresa was right, he must get rid of it.

  He looked away. Out in the courtyard the water was spilling from Teresa’s stone fountain and splashing into the sunlit basin: the courtyard and the house in the sunlight, the tall windows of the kitchen and the French doors reflecting the studio. How carefully, how lovingly, Teresa had planned it, speaking of it as their home and as his place of work while it was still little more than an idea in her mind. She did not reproach him, but he knew that he had not fulfilled his portion of her dream. He had begun to wonder lately if it might be the very perfection of the conditions she had organised for him that had silenced his imagination. He had felt a traitor for even thinking it. He hated and feared the silence in his mind, but he could not pretend to work when there was really nothing there. He could not do that. Not even for Teresa’s dream.

  His daughter called to him and he turned from the doorway. She was standing behind her chair holding her drawing by its top corners for him to see. He beckoned to her with the book.

  The little girl crossed the studio and handed him the drawing, then she stood in front of him, watching him examine it. Her manner was expectant, reserved and attentive. She had drawn the figure of a man, the man’s outline rendered by a single firm blue line. There had been no attempt at a likeness of himself, no reference to his pose in the doorway. The figure had no hands and its pointy feet were poised, like a ballet dancer’s feet, on a green sward of spiky grass. It leaned to one side from the waist up, as if it were being bent by a powerful wind, or was about to execute a difficult leap that would test its agility to the limit. Spears of red hair issued from its head like flames—its hair anticipating the violent energies of its intended leap, or perhaps the panic in its mind. Above the portrait, in black pencil, she had written the word Dad. The confidence of her line astonished him, and he envied her the unconsidered liberty of her pencil. There were no crossings out, no correcting, no second thoughts. The image must have stood whole and complete in her imagination before she made her first mark on the paper.

  ‘It’s wonderful, darling,’ he said with feeling.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said, the certainty of her work in the assurance of her gaze.

  The telephone rang and he reached past his daughter and lifted the handset from the wall by the door. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Is that you, Toni? It’s Marina Golding.’ There was a slight pause, ‘We’re back.’

  He was very surprised to hear from her. ‘Yes, it’s me. You mean you’re back in Melbourne?’

  ‘We’re back in our house in Richmond.’

  ‘You’re living here again?’ He held his daughter’s portrait of him at arm’s length and smiled. It was so absolutely right. Her Dad was a perplexed and desolate pixie with his head on fire and no hands to beat out the flames.

  ‘For the moment, yes,’ Marina Golding said. ‘I’m sorry, Toni, we should have been in touch sooner.’ Her apology for their neglect was sincere. ‘We thought you might have heard by now. We’ve been back a few weeks.’

  He wondered why it was Marina and not Robert who had called. It was a year, more, since he had heard anything from them. ‘How’s Robert?’

  ‘Robert’s fine. He’s incredibly busy. He says to give you his love.’ She allowed a pause. ‘I’m interrupting your work?’

  ‘I’m in the middle of getting a big new project under way.’ It was a lie, of course, or rather it was a joke, but a joke addressed to himself. A private irony he was unable to resist.

  She made an exclamation of satisfaction. ‘Robert was sure you’d be working on something big.’

  Marina had taken him seriously, but he let it go. Within a month of Robert and Marina going to Sydney four years earlier, his daughter had been born, his father had died, and he had given up painting and turned to installations. His world had changed forever. Now, suddenly, Marina’s voice on the other end of the telephone, reminding him of those years of hope and excitement that they had shared.

  ‘We’ve got some news,’ she said. ‘Can you come for lunch? Say next Wednesday?’

  ‘I’d love to. Wednesday would be good.’

  ‘Come about one.’

  His daughter tugged at the pocket of his jeans. ‘Can we go to the swing park now, Daddy?’

  He cupped the phone and leaned down to her. ‘Yes, darling. In a minute.’ He straightened. ‘I have to go now. I’m taking Nada to the swing park.’

  ‘She must be four already. Is she at school yet?’

  ‘She’s at kinder. We have this bit of time together before Teresa gets home.’

  ‘And how is Teresa?’

  ‘She’s fine. Busy.’ He resented the forced, unnatural, stilted manner of the conversation with Marina and wanted to say something that would provoke a bit of reality between them. He could think of nothing that would not sound crass and pushy, however, so he said nothing.

  Marina said, ‘I saw your installation at Andy’s.’

  He waited. He would not ask her what she had thought of his work.

  Nada dragged a
t his pocket with both hands, her head thrown back, presenting the pale curve of her throat, pulling away from him with her full weight.

  ‘It was powerful,’ Marina said. ‘I found it very disturbing.’

  Powerful and disturbing! He let the book drop to the floor and transferred the child’s portrait of him to his telephone hand, then he leaned down and took hold of her wrist. Bending to her level, he begged her, ‘Wait for Daddy a minute! Please, darling! I’m coming!’ The puerility of his eagerness to hear what Marina had to say about his work shamed him.

  ‘There was no one else there. It was a weird feeling being alone in that vast space of Andy’s with your crowd of faceless people. I could smell them. They seemed to be standing there sweating and waiting for me to do something. I felt I was being accused. Of inaction, I suppose, was it? Something like that? A failure to acknowledge their plight? Is that what we were supposed to feel? Were they supposed to make us feel guilty? Well I felt guilty anyway. But perhaps that was just me. Though we’ve all got this guilt nowadays, haven’t we? About everything. I don’t know whether that’s what you meant. I should have called you before this and said something. There was a kind of eerie silence about it.’

  Nada released her grip, suddenly, and his hand slipped from her wrist. She walked over to her little table and began putting away her coloured pencils, her manner poised and self-sufficient, her head down, concentrating on her task, ignoring him.

  ‘Robert didn’t get to see it?’ He was dismayed to hear the self-pitying resentment of his tone.

  ‘It’s not been easy, Toni. The move back, I mean. It hasn’t been straightforward. There’s nothing wrong between us, it’s not that. It’s just that Robert hasn’t had a minute. He meant to go. You can’t imagine. He just didn’t get a chance. Then you’d dismantled it and taken it away.’

  ‘You needn’t explain. It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay.’ She allowed a pause. ‘I’m sorry, Toni. We seem to be like strangers.’ There was another pause. ‘Robert’s father has come to stay with us. So that’s complicated things as well.’