by Ali Smith
Elisabeth goes to the Post Office instead.
Today the Post Office is near empty, except for the queue waiting to use the self-service machines. Elisabeth takes a ticket. 39. Numbers 28 and 29 are apparently being served, though there’s no one at the counter at all, on either the Post Office side or the customer side.
Ten minutes later a woman comes through the door at the back. She shouts the numbers 30 and 31. No one responds. So she forwards the lit machine through the 30s, calling out the numbers as she does.
Elisabeth comes to the counter and gives the woman her passport envelope and the new photobooth shots, in which her face is definitely the right size (she has measured it). She shows her the receipt proving she paid the £9.75 Check & Send fee last week.
When are you planning to travel? the woman says.
Elisabeth shrugs. Nothing planned, she says.
The woman looks at the photographs.
There’s a problem, I’m afraid, the woman says.
What? Elisabeth says.
This piece of hair here should be off the face, she says.
It is off the face, Elisabeth says. That’s my forehead. It’s not even touching the face.
It should be right back off the face, the woman says.
If I took a picture of myself with it not where it is, Elisabeth says, I wouldn’t truly look like me. What would be the point of a passport photo that didn’t actually look like me?
I’d say that’s touching the eyes, the woman says.
The woman pushes her chair back and takes the photo sheet round to the counter where Travel Cash is issued. She shows it to a man there. The man comes back to the counter with her.
There may be a problem with your photograph, he says, in that my colleague thinks the hair is touching the face in it.
In any case, the hair is irrelevant, the woman says. Your eyes are too small.
Oh God, Elisabeth says.
The man goes back to his Travel Cash counter. The woman is sliding the pictures of Elisabeth up and down inside a transparent plastic chart with markings and measurements in different boxes printed all over it.
Your eyes don’t sit with the permissible regularity inside the shaded area, she says. This doesn’t line up. This should be in the middle and, as you can see, it’s at the side of your nose. I’m afraid these photographs don’t meet the necessary stipulation. If you go to Snappy Snaps rather than to a booth –
That’s exactly what the man I saw here last week said, Elisabeth says. What is it with this Post Office and its relationship with Snappy Snaps? Does someone’s brother work at Snappy Snaps?
So you were advised to go to Snappy Snaps already but you chose not to go, the woman says.
Elisabeth laughs. She can’t not; the woman looks so very stern about her not having gone to Snappy Snaps.
The woman lifts the chart and shows her again her own face with a shaded box over it.
I’m afraid it’s a no, the woman says.
Look, Elisabeth says. Just send these photos to the Passport Office. I’ll take the risk. I think they’ll be okay.
The woman looks wounded.
If they don’t accept them, Elisabeth says, I’ll come back in and see you again soon and tell you you were quite right and I was wrong, my hair was wrong and my eyes were in totally the wrong place.
No, because if you submit this through Check & Send today, this will be the last time this office will have anything to do with this application, the woman says. Once the application goes in, it’s the Passport Office who’ll be in touch with you about your unmet specifications.
Right, Elisabeth says. Thank you. Send them. I’ll take my chances. And will you do me a favour?
The woman looks very alarmed.
Will you say hello to your colleague who works here who’s got the seafood intolerance? Tell him the woman with the wrong size of head sends her best wishes and hopes he is well.
That description? the woman says. Forgive me, but. Could be anybody. One of thousands.
She writes in ballpoint on Elisabeth’s receipt: customer choosing to send photos at own risk.
Elisabeth stands outside the Post Office. She feels better. It’s cool, rainy.
She’ll go and buy a book from that second-hand shop.
Then she’ll go to see Daniel.
It takes a fragment of a fragment of a second for Elisabeth’s data to go into the computer. Then the receptionist gives her back her scanned ID.
Daniel is asleep. A care assistant, a different one today, is swishing round the room with a mop that smells of pine cleaner.
Elisabeth wonders what’s going to happen to all the care assistants. She realizes she hasn’t so far encountered a single care assistant here who isn’t from somewhere else in the world. That morning on the radio she’d heard a spokesperson say, but it’s not just that we’ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging the opposite of integration for immigrants to this country. It’s that we’ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging ourselves not to integrate. We’ve been doing this as a matter of self-policing since Thatcher taught us to be selfish and not just to think but to believe that there’s no such thing as society.
Then the other spokesperson in the dialogue said, well, you would say that. Get over it. Grow up. Your time’s over. Democracy. You lost.
It is like democracy is a bottle someone can threaten to smash and do a bit of damage with. It has become a time of people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually ever becoming dialogue.
It is the end of dialogue.
She tries to think when exactly it changed, how long it’s been like this without her noticing.
She sits down next to Daniel. Sleeping Socrates.
How are you doing today, Mr Gluck? she says quietly down by his sleeping ear.
She gets her new/old book out and opens it at its beginning: My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind. You heavenly powers, since you were responsible for those changes, as for all else, look favourably on my attempts, and spin an unbroken thread of verse, from the earliest beginnings of the world, down to my own times.
Today Daniel looks like a child, but one with a very old head.
As she watches him sleep she thinks about Anna Pavlova, not the dancer, the scammer, who registered a NatWest bank account at Elisabeth’s address.
What kind of scammer names herself – assuming it’s a her – after a ballet dancer? Did she really think people working at NatWest wouldn’t question someone using the name Anna Pavlova? Or are accounts all set up by machine now and machines don’t know how to quantify that stuff?
Then again, what does Elisabeth know? It’s possible that it’s not that unusual a name. Maybe there are a million and one Anna Pavlovas right now in the world. Maybe Pavlova is the Russian equivalent of Smith.
A cultured scammer. A sensitive scammer. A prima ballerina light on her feet brilliantly expressive prodigiously talented legendary scammer. A sleeping beauty dying swan kind of a scammer.
She remembers her mother believing at some point, way back in the beginning, that Daniel, because he was so thin, so Puck-like and lithe – so much so that even in his eighties he was better at getting up the ladder into their loft space than her mother, then in her forties, was – had once been a ballet dancer, was perhaps a famous dancer grown old.
Which would you choose? Daniel had said once. Should I please her and tell her she’s guessed right, and that I’m a recently retired Rambert? Or should I tell her the more mundane truth?
Definitely tell her the lie, Elisabeth said.
But think what will happen if I do, Daniel said.
It’ll be brilliant, Elisabeth said. It’ll be really funny.
I’ll tell you what will happen, Daniel said. This. You and I will know I’ve lied, but your mother won’t. You and I will know something that your mother doesn’t. That will make us feel different towards not just your mother, but each other. A wedge will come b
etween us all. You will stop trusting me, and quite right, because I’d be a liar. We’ll all be lessened by the lie. So. Do you still choose the ballet? Or will I tell the sorrier truth?
I want the lie, Elisabeth said. She knows loads of things I don’t. I want to know some things she doesn’t.
The power of the lie, Daniel said. Always seductive to the powerless. But how is my being a retired dancer going to help in any real way with your feelings of powerlessness?
Were you a dancer? Elisabeth said.
That’s my secret, Daniel said. I’ll never divulge. Not to any human being. Not for any money.
It was a Tuesday in March in 1998. Elisabeth was thirteen. She was out for a walk in the newly light early evening with Daniel, even though her mother had told her she wasn’t to.
They walked past the shops, then over to the fields where the inter-school summer sports were held, where the fair went and the circus. Elisabeth had last come to the field just after the circus had left, especially to look at the flat dry place where the circus had had its tent. She liked doing melancholy things like that. But now you couldn’t tell that any of these summer things had ever happened. There was just empty field. The sports tracks had faded and gone. The flattened grass, the places that had turned to mud where the crowds had wandered round between the rides and the open-sided trailers full of the driving and shooting games, the ghost circus ring: nothing but grass.
Somehow this wasn’t the same as melancholy. It was something else, about how melancholy and nostalgia weren’t relevant in the slightest. Things just happened. Then they were over. Time just passed. Partly it felt unpleasant, to think like that, rude even. Partly it felt good. It was kind of a relief.
Past the field there was another field. Then there was the river.
Isn’t it a bit too far, to walk as far as the river? Elisabeth said.
She didn’t want him to have to go so far if he really was as ancient as her mother kept saying.
Not for me, Daniel said. A mere bagatelle.
A what? Elisabeth said.
A trifle, Daniel said. Not that kind of trifle. A mere nothing. Something trifling.
What will we do all the way there and back? Elisabeth said.
We’ll play Bagatelle, Daniel said.
Is Bagatelle really a game? Elisabeth said. Or did you just make it up right now on the spot?
I admit, it’s a very new game to me too, Daniel said. Want to play?
Depends, Elisabeth said.
How we play is: I tell you the first line of a story, Daniel said.
Okay, Elisabeth said.
Then you tell me the story that comes into your head when you hear that first line, Daniel said.
Like, a story that already exists? Elisabeth said. Like Goldilocks and the three bears?
Those poor bears, Daniel said. That bad wicked rude vandal of a girl. Going into their house uninvited and unannounced. Breaking their furniture. Eating their supplies. Spraying her name with spraypaint on the walls of their bedrooms.
She does not spray her name on their walls, Elisabeth said. That’s not in the story.
Who says? Daniel said.
The story is from really long ago, probably way before spraypaint existed, Elisabeth said.
Who says? Daniel said. Who says the story isn’t happening right now?
I do, Elisabeth said.
Well, you’re going to lose at Bagatelle, then, Daniel said, because the whole point of Bagatelle is that you trifle with the stories that people think are set in stone. And no, not that kind of trifle –
I know, Elisabeth said. Jeez. Don’t demean me.
Demean you? Daniel said. Moi? Now. What kind of story do you want to trifle with? You can choose.
They’d come to a bench at the side of the river; both the fields were far behind them. It was the first time Elisabeth had ever crossed the fields without it seeming like it took a long time.
What’s the available choice? Elisabeth said.
Can be anything, Daniel said.
Like truth or lies? That kind of choice?
A bit oppositional, but yes, if you choose, Daniel said.
Can I choose between war and peace? Elisabeth said.
(There was war on the news every day. There were sieges, pictures of bags that had bodies in them. Elisabeth had looked up in the dictionary the word massacre to check what it literally meant. It meant to kill a lot of people with especial violence and cruelty.)
Lucky for you, you’ve got some choice in the matter, Daniel said.
I choose war, Elisabeth said.
Sure you want war? Daniel said.
Is sure you want war the first line of the story? Elisabeth said.
It can be, Daniel said. If that’s what you choose.
Who are the characters? Elisabeth said.
You make one up and I’ll make one up, Daniel said.
A man with a gun, Elisabeth said.
Okay, Daniel said. And I choose a person who’s come in disguise as a tree.
A what? Elisabeth said. No way. You’re supposed to say something like another man with another gun.
Why am I? Daniel said.
Because it’s war, Elisabeth said.
I have some input into this story too, and I choose a person who’s wearing a tree costume, Daniel said.
Why? Elisabeth said.
Ingenuity, Daniel said.
Ingenuity won’t win your character this game, Elisabeth said. My character’s got a gun.
That’s not all you’ve got and it’s not your only responsibility here, Daniel said. You’ve also got a person with the ability to resemble a tree.
Bullets are faster and stronger than tree costumes and will rip through and obliterate tree costumes, Elisabeth said.
Is that the kind of world you’re going to make up? Daniel said.
There is no point in making up a world, Elisabeth said, when there’s already a real world. There’s just the world, and there’s the truth about the world.
You mean, there’s the truth, and there’s the made-up version of it that we get told about the world, Daniel said.
No. The world exists. Stories are made up, Elisabeth said.
But no less true for that, Daniel said.
That’s ultra-crazy talk, Elisabeth said.
And whoever makes up the story makes up the world, Daniel said. So always try to welcome people into the home of your story. That’s my suggestion.
How does making things up welcome people? Elisabeth said.
What I’m suggesting, Daniel said, is, if you’re telling a story, always give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you’d welcome when it comes to yourself.
Like being on benefits? Like unemployment benefit? Elisabeth said.
The necessary benefit of the doubt, Daniel said. And always give them a choice – even those characters like a person with nothing but a tree costume between him or her and a man with a gun. By which I mean characters who seem to have no choice at all. Always give them a home.
Why should I? Elisabeth said. You didn’t give Goldilocks a home.
Did I stop her for one moment from going into that house with her spraypaint can? Daniel said.
That’s because you couldn’t, Elisabeth said, because it was already a part of the story that that’s what she does every time the story’s told – she goes into the bears’ house. She has to. Otherwise there’s no story. Is there? Except the part with the spraypaint can. The bit just made up by you.
Is my spraypaint can any more made up than the rest of the story? Daniel said.
Yes, Elisabeth said.
Then she thought about it.
Oh! she said. I mean, no.
And if I’m the storyteller I can tell it any way I like, Daniel said. So, it follows. If you are –
So how do we ever know what’s true? Elisabeth said.
Now you’re talking, Daniel said.
And what if, right, Elisabeth said, what if Goldilocks was doing w
hat she was doing because she had no choice? What if she was like seriously upset that the porridge was too hot, and that’s what made her go ultra-crazy with the spraypaint can? What if cold porridge always made her feel really upset about something in her past? What if something that had happened in her life had been really terrible and the porridge reminded her of it, and that’s why she was so upset that she broke the chair and unmade all the beds?
Or what if she was just a vandal? Daniel said, who went into places and defaced them for no reason other than that’s what I, the person in charge of the story, have decided that all Goldilockses are like?
I personally shall be giving her the benefits of the doubt, Elisabeth said.
Now you’re ready, Daniel said.
Ready for what? Elisabeth said.
Ready to bagatelle it as it is, Daniel said.
Time-lapse of a million billion flowers opening their heads, of a million billion flowers bowing, closing their heads again, of a million billion new flowers opening instead, of a million billion buds becoming leaves then the leaves falling off and rotting into earth, of a million billion twigs splitting into a million billion brand new buds.
Elisabeth, sitting in Daniel’s room in The Maltings Care Providers plc just short of twenty years later, doesn’t remember anything of that day or that walk or the dialogue described in that last section. But here, preserved, is the story Daniel actually told, rescued whole from the place in human brain cell storage which keeps intact but filed away the dimensionality of everything we ever experience (including the milder air that March evening, the smell of the new season in the air, the traffic noise in the distance and everything else her senses and her cognition comprehended of the time, the place, her presence in both).
There’s no way I can be bothered to think up a story with the tree costume thing in it, Elisabeth said. Because nobody in their right minds could make that story any good.
Is this a challenge to my right mind? Daniel said.
Indubitably, Elisabeth said.
Well then, Daniel said. My right mind will meet your challenge.
Sure you want war? the person dressed as a tree said.
The person dressed as a tree was standing with its branches up in the air like someone with his or her hands up. A man with a gun was pointing the gun at the person dressed as a tree.
