Gerald Murnane's Christmas Card

Murnane is with Henry James in the small class of writers whom I have never read because the idea of them is too wonderful to sully by reading.

Twas three days before Christmas when I opened the mailbox to find an envelope from Goroke, Australia. A Christmas card from Gerald Murnane.

Murnane is with Henry James in the small class of writers whom I have never read because the idea of them is too wonderful to sully by reading. No writing, however brilliant, could live up to the title Landscape With Landscape. But I could not not read his Christmas card with Christmas so near. For now the time draws near for our salvation; prepare yourself O cave: the Virgin draws nigh to give birth.

Presently I open the envelope. I read the letter.

It begins with anodyne greetings and well-wishing. I have never met or spoken to Gerald Murnane, but he writes to me with the familiarity of a second cousin. He mentions the goings-on in Goroke and his luck at the race track. He mentions names unknown to me (and to you). Slowly the anodyne opening gives way, and I find myself in the Keletcserháti forest outside Hollókő, Hungary. There is the forest and a map of the forest. There is a map of the forest and a man imagining a boy’s dream of a map of the forest.

The letter describes a series of Marian apparitions in the forest witnessed only by the trees and the dreams of the boy. In each apparition Mary is more visibly pregnant. She walks silently through the forest. The trees bow to her, their boughs dripping with oil like the oil running down Aaron’s beard onto the skirts of his garments. In the final apparition, the trees bow so low as to form a cave. Mary enters to give birth. At Christ’s birth every kind of magic is destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappears; ignorance is removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself manifests in human form for the renewal of eternal life. And now that takes a beginning which has been prepared by God. All things are in tumult, because He meditates the abolition of death.

Then Keletcserháti forest or the map of Keletcserháti forest or the dream of the map of Keletcserháti forest is a long hallway with high vaulted ceilings and narrow paned windows. The early afternoon sun comes through. The walls and ceilings of the hallway are the white of the columns and walls and ceiling in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation. The memory of the hallway is the memory of the boy as an old man. The now-agèd boy looks at the hallway with the eyes of its architect and builder or the son of its architect and builder, who sat beside his father as his father built, who watched the hallway emerge from a drawing of a hallway.

The letter ends with a demand and a question. Gerald Murnane is boarding a ship. He comes to put himself at my mercy. I read the letter to my wife and children. We prepare our home. We prepare our feast. The lonely Australian emerges from the ship and boards the bus. He draws near. Christmas is nigh! The virgin birth! Holy light! The father, accompanied by his sons, appears with an ax on the threshold of his dwelling.