The Electrical Experience by Frank Moorhouse

what’s-his-name have asked that?’
    â€˜Andrew J. Rowan.’
    â€˜Would Andrew J. Rowan have asked that question?’
    Flushing, George without another word got up, took a billy, put on a sweater, and tiredly, stiffly, set off. He knew that water, if any, would be found at the bottom of the valley. Way, way down. There would be a creek of sorts at the bottom. Perhaps.
    It took him well into the night to get to the bottom, after slipping, groping and being torn at by branches and under growth. After losing his footing, falling, grazing his hip, he found the stream by moonlight, scarcely trickling, but a stream, and there was water.
    He said aloud in the wide, empty gorge, ‘General Garcia, I presume’, without enjoying any humour.
    Why!
    Why, he did not really feel like Rowan at all and did not want to be Rowan. He wanted to be a Garcia.
    I am a Garcia.
    I am a Garcia, not a Rowan.
    I am a general, not a messenger of this world.
    He filled the billy, stood very still, looked all around at the stars and the black bush shapes, took a deep, cool breath, and started back.
    The doctor was asleep when he stumbled back upwith a billy of creek water, hardly any lost on the uphill climb.
    George slept late into the morning despite the flies.
    When he woke, the doctor had made tea and damper and also taken a reading of the depth of the bottomless pit and collected rock samples.
    â€˜Here you are, Garcia,’ the doctor said embarrassed, softer than his usual professional self, handing him a mug of tea. ‘About last night—the rum—shouldn’t take these things so seriously, George.’
    What pleased George was being addressed as Garcia, even if the doctor had not got it clear in his own head. Even if it was Rowan who took the message to Garcia. But in his head George was clear about the incident—he was a Garcia. He was a general.
    By the time they had reached town, he was stumbling with fatigue and unable to think or talk.
    The doctor said good-bye to him at the cordial works where he lived in a room at the back. The doctor patted his back and mumbled something.
    Next day George sat mixing syrup, thinking about having made the moonlight clamber down the valley to fetch water that was not wanted. He did not feel in any way a fool, although it seemed from every side to have been a foolish thing to have done.
    The whole thing had no purpose other than what he wanted to make of it.
    He had gone on and done something in the face of the meaningless.
    For all the meaninglessness, seemingly, George feltpersonally that he had accomplished something , even if it was not the fetching of the water, which was really only the surface of it all.
    It was something like this. He had forced the meaningless ness of it to a bitter end. He had played it right out. He had been relentless. He had turned the absurdity of it on its own head.
    If he had stopped short at any point it would have been absurd, but he’d taken the bait—and the rod.
    It had a certain perfection to it.
    His father called in and he told him of the events. His father laughed and said, ‘Maybe the doctor wanted a little quiet’, referring to George’s tendency to talk overlong.
    No, he had played the absurdity of it, forced it right through. Acted it right out.
    He’d been relentless.
    George felt perfectly all right about it, went on with his work, fully occupied with his work, with no loose thoughts of unease about it at all.
    He’d been relentless.

The Rotary Platform ( adopted 1911 Rotary Convention )
    Recognising the commercial basis of modern life as a necessary incident in human evolution, the Rotary Club is organised to express the proper relation between private interests and the fusion of private interests which constitute society.
    To accomplish this purpose more effectively, the principle of limited membership has been adopted, the Rotary Club consisting of one representative from each distinct