by Ali Smith
If it’s not far, Charlotte said. Whoever’d like to come.
Robert leapt up almost sending his chair over. He ran out of the pub and they heard him clattering up the wooden stairs towards the rooms.
I’m not coming, Grace said. Count me out. I’m fully committed to communing with Val here.
Friend on your phone? Charlotte said.
Val Policella, Grace said. How’s your hand, Sacha?
Same as it was the last time you asked, Sacha said.
We changed the bandage, Grace said. It was getting grubby.
Sacha held her hand out so Charlotte could see.
Is it painful? Charlotte said.
Only when Robert asks me if it is, Sacha said. Then it’s really really painful.
He can go if you go with him, Grace said.
There’s no way I’m going, Sacha said.
Robert burst back into the room waving an open book. He slammed the book down on the table sending the wine bottle rocking.
Roughton Heath, Charlotte said. Am I pronouncing it right?
Ruffton, Sacha said. Rowton. Pity nobody at this table speaks English.
But we don’t need to know how to say it to go there. Do we? Robert said.
You can’t go unless I go too, mum says, and there’s no way I’m going, Sacha said.
Robert, you know it’s a heath, Grace said. You know there’ll be nothing to see. It’ll be dark. It’ll be a lot of bushes and trees in the dark.
Still, Charlotte said. You can say you’ve been.
But only if I say I’m going, Sacha said. And I’m not.
You know my little brother is totally infatuated with you? she said from behind Charlotte in the driver’s seat half an hour later, when they stopped on a verge, its grass silver in the headlights, to let Robert empty his bladder into a hedge.
Her voice was serious.
He’s really easily hurt, she said.
Charlotte switched the little light above the rear mirror on and turned to look at Sacha.
When I was a bit younger than you, Charlotte said, I had an American cousin who came to stay. I still have her, I suppose, somewhere in the world, but I don’t know where, I’ve never seen her since. She came to stay with us for a summer, she was seven years older than me, I was ten. And I thought she was the best thing since sliced everything, the best most exciting person I’d ever met. And she knew I did. And she was kind to me.
My father and mother afterwards always remembered her visit as this terrible time, and my cousin as scandalous, as trouble, coming home at four in the morning covered in lovebites from the nightclub in town, a wild child they were scared to have to be so responsible for. For years I’d hear them talking about someone and a terrible time that this someone gave them, and I’d no idea they meant my cousin. It’s only later in my life I realized that’s who they were talking about when they said those things. My glamorous kind funny cousin. I think now that the fact that she was kind to me changed my life dramatically.
Uh huh, Sacha said as if saying I’m listening.
If people think you like them, Charlotte said, well, it can go either way. There’s a lot of powerplay in liking and being liked. Such a powerful connection, it’s a chance to make the world bigger for someone else. Or smaller. That’s always the choice we’ve got.
Uh huh, Sacha said.
That’s why we’re on the Einstein trail at eleven o clock on a Friday night, Charlotte said.
My brother’s had a lot of trouble with online bullying, Sacha said.
Ah, Charlotte said.
It’s pathetic, really, Sacha said. Some thug at his school found out he won prizes for singing when he was a little kid. He did, he had a really amazingly high singing voice and it made him a kind of local celebrity. When they found out, they started to make fun of him about it. Then they started taking the piss out of how clever he is then all these kids on social media and a bunch of people who trolled into the thread kept telling him to commit suicide.
Christ, Charlotte said.
So they moved him to a new school, Sacha said.
Thank goodness, Charlotte said.
But someone at the first school wrote to someone at the new school, Sacha said, and then it all started happening there too.
Tell you what, Charlotte said. I wish I had a sister like you.
What’ve you got? Sacha said. Have you got brothers?
Charlotte laughed.
I’ve got Arthur, she said.
You’re not related to him though, Sacha said. He’s not your actual family.
Do you think you have to be related, to be family? Charlotte said.
I think it helps, Sacha said. And hinders.
Robert got back in the car.
What? he said. What are you talking about? Are you talking about me?
Tell Charlotte about when you did the Facial Rec project, Sacha said.
No, Robert said.
Go on, Sacha said. It was really good. He did this project called F-ART, where he made a poster-screenprint series at school by mapping facial recognition technique faceprints like stars across a night sky, only he made them look like the linked-up drawings of constellations, you know, the ones where lines go between the stars to try to make pictures so you can see it’s a bear or a plough or Orion. Except, his constellations were all faces, he did one for me, one for our mother, one for our father, he wrote our names underneath each pattern –
But not Ashley, Robert said.
– then across the bottom of the pictures he wrote the slogan, CHANGE FRT TO ART, Sacha said.
That’s fantastic, Charlotte said. Why not for Ashley? I thought you were friends with Ashley.
Yeah, that’s right. Big friends with Ashley, Sacha said.
Ashley and I weren’t speaking to each other on friendly terms at this point in the trajectory of our very recent friendship, Robert said.
Anyway, the point is, he got into trouble from the school, Sacha said. They said he was only doing the screenprint series to get a rude word pinned up repeatedly on the walls of the art classroom. But I’m telling you. They were really beautiful. Revolutionary. I think that’s why they wouldn’t put them up.
Charlotte told the kids she once had an idea that she’d like to hack Facebook and replace everybody’s faces and bodies in their photographs with the faces and bodies of Pokémons. They both laughed out loud at that, leaning forward, hanging off the front seats from the back seat like much smaller children. Sacha said that her own revolutionary plan in Christmas week was to smash the glass doors of office buildings all round the city so homeless people would have somewhere warm and sheltered to stay in.
That’s because she’s got the hots for a homeless guy in town, and he’s a really old guy, in his thirties or forties, Robert said. OW.
It’s not the hots, Sacha said.
Just the warms? Charlotte said.
She wants to warm his heart, Robert said. Or his something. OW. She definitely gives him more than money. OUCH.
What about you, Robert? Charlotte said. Any plans to change the world?
I’m a realist, Robert said.
What does that mean? Charlotte said.
It’s a thing that can’t be done, Robert said.
Defeatist, Sacha said.
Yeah and you with your the day will come when we’ll all be wearing leaves instead of clothes vision of the world, Robert said.
It will, Sacha said. We’ll have to change everything. And leaves really matter. They’re how we get oxygen.
Overweening pride, Robert said.
What is? Charlotte said.
To think an individual can change the world, Robert said.
That’s an overweening kind of a thing to say on an Einstein-themed roadtrip, Charlotte said.
Yeah, but that was, I mean, h
e was Albert Einstein, Robert said.
And you’re Robert Greenlaw, Charlotte said.
Here lies Robert Greenlaw, Brother of the great Sacha Greenlaw, Sacha said.
Yeah, cause that’s what it’ll actually say on my gravestone, Robert said. Robert Greenlaw. Pity him. He was once somebody’s brother.
Robert Greenlaw, Sacha said. He was once somebody’s brother. Pity her.
Robert Greenlaw, Robert said. Renowned for making a fortoon. And his sister, Sacha Greenlaw. Renowned for spending a fortoon giving it to homeless people to buy boots.
I told you, he had his boots stolen, Sacha said.
That’s your excuse, Robert said.
People always steal homeless people’s shoes, Sacha said. It’s one of the cruel things that happens to homeless people quite often.
Or it’s the thing homeless people say to get you to give them more money, Robert said.
What’s a fortoon? Charlotte said.
A cartoon-sized fortune, Robert said. Are we here?
Charlotte has stopped the car in the dark in the middle of nowhere.
Look, she said.
She pointed to the satnav.
Off to the left of the cursor that meant their car the screen had the words ROUGHTON HEATH on it.
She switched the headlights off.
They all got out.
They stood around.
The moon was bright.
What they could see in the moonlight was a spread of undifferentiated darkness.
Why did he come here again? Sacha said.
It says in the book, Robert said, that the Nazis were distributing posters with his picture on them and the words Not Yet Hanged underneath. And he was in Belgium and someone told him the Nazis knew where he was and were coming for him. So he took up an offer of a hut on this heath from an upper class English guy in politics who’d started off being very right wing and thinking Hitler was a good thing, then changed his mind and invited Einstein to stay with him and live in a hut on the heath. So Einstein did, for, like, a month, and gamekeepers guarded him, and he spent the time in solitude and worked on theories, and then a month or two later he went to America. And that month when he was living here he used to go to the post office in the village and buy sweets. Can we go to that post office?
They got back in the car.
They drove to where the satnav told them Roughton Post Office was.
They peered at it through the car windows.
Do you think it’s the same one as it was in 1933? Robert said.
Hard to say, Charlotte said.
They drove up the road a little further and stopped next to a shut pub.
Look, Charlotte said. Robert.
She said it quietly because Sacha was asleep, curled into herself with her bandaged hand at an angle away from herself.
Near the shut front door of the New Inn there was a circular plaque, like a blue plaque. It had Einstein’s name on it.
She got out of the car. Robert did too. They both left the doors a little open so as not to wake Sacha.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
fleeing Nazi persecution stopped off en route for America to live in a hut on Roughton Heath, September 1933
Underneath, it said the plaque had been made by the Eastern Daily Press and the Norwich School of Art & Design.
Art and design and the fourth estate, Charlotte said. Here’s to them.
Do you think he came to this place? For a beer? Robert said.
I’ve a feeling that if he did, Charlotte said, then this pub would have a sign up saying Albert Einstein fleeing Nazi persecution stopped off en route for America at this pub for a beer, September 1933.
But he could’ve, Robert said. It says in the book nobody in the village knew who he was. He could’ve come here for a beer and people might just not have known it was him.
That’s possible, yes, Charlotte said.
Possible, Robert said. Possible possible possible.
He walked purposefully about back and fore in front of the front door of the shut pub saying the word possible.
Do you think I’m traversing some of the same ground he did? he said.
Why do you like Einstein so much? Charlotte said.
Apart from that he was one of the most brilliant minds that ever thought about anything on this planet? Robert said. Because he has a face like a lamb.
Ah, Charlotte said.
Because he was truly in love with the universe, Robert said.
Yes, Charlotte said.
Because he wanted to understand the architecture of light, Robert said.
The architecture of light, Charlotte said. I like that. That’s like the name of a poem.
Is it? Robert said.
Yes, Charlotte said. Did you think that up?
I don’t know, Robert said, I might’ve read it somewhere. It doesn’t sound like me. And if you and me, I mean I, were standing on the edge of a black hole. Which we’re not. But if we were to stand on the edge of a black hole. And say you happened to be standing closer to its edge than me.
Okay, Charlotte said.
And then we both came back down to earth, Robert said. Then I would’ve got older faster than you would’ve, because I was standing further away from it, and by the time we got back to earth we might’ve been able to catch up on an age difference.
That’s very interesting. Thank you for telling me, Charlotte said.
They decided to walk as far round the outside of the building as they could to maximize the possibility of walking where Einstein possibly once walked.
While they did, Robert told Charlotte about the day he saw a man, not an old man, he was quite a young man, stumble when he came out of a Wetherspoons, because he was so pissed, and fall flat on the pavement then crawl on all fours all the way to the seafront with his trousers and underpants down around his ankles.
And it wasn’t even a Friday, or a Thursday, Robert said. It was only a Monday. He wasn’t even with any other drunk friends or having a good time. He was just pissed. And you could, you could, everybody could, see all of him.
Ah, Charlotte said.
Primal, Robert said.
Good word for it, Charlotte said.
I don’t want to live in a world like that, Robert said.
We’re certainly living in one where the primal and the public have been getting more and more fused together, Charlotte said.
Yeah, Robert said.
He said it sadly.
But if we don’t attend to the primal stuff inside us all, Charlotte said, where will it go?
I don’t know, Robert said. Into our bones?
I think it surfaces so we have to decide what to do about it, Charlotte said. So, there’s that man you saw. And then there’s, well – you said it. There’s also the people who study all their lives to understand the structure of a shaft of sunlight.
But what if you’re a mix of all of the things. And it’s not possible to be just one of them? Robert said. What does that make you?
Human? Charlotte said. Like, you know. Someone who’d stick a glass thing to his sister’s hand? With superglue?
It wasn’t just glass, Robert said. It was so much more than just a glass thing.
What was it, then? Charlotte said.
It was time, Robert said.
Time, Charlotte said. Is that the gift we get to give to others, then?
Robert shrugged.
Don’t know, he said.
Me neither, Charlotte said. What would Einstein say?
He’d say, Robert said, that the human species got our best intellectual tools from looking at the stars. But that this doesn’t make the stars responsible for what we do with our intellects.
Wow, Charlotte said. Robert. What a great thing to say.
Is it? Robert said.
Pleasedness radiated off him.
But I didn’t say it, he said. Einstein did.
But you said it now, Charlotte said. You said it for now. You said it like, I don’t know, like you hit the target. Knockout punch. Perfect timing. Hole in one.
Black hole in one, Robert said.
They stood under a night sky in a car park where Einstein himself perhaps maybe possibly once stood and looked up at the lit pinpoints in the dark that meant the ancient and original and already dead stars, till Robert’s sister, waking up and seeing them wave to her, pulled her coat round her shoulders, got out of the car and came over to where they were standing in the cold and they all looked up together to point out which constellations they knew the names for and to guess at the ones they didn’t.
1 July 2020
—
Dear Sacha Greenlaw,
—
Thank you very much for writing to me. It was very kind of you.
Thank you for telling me many things about the bird.
I write to you today because I have seen this bird and its family in my sky. I want very much to tell you.
Our friends Charlotte and Arthur gave me your two letters. I really enjoyed them very much. Thank you for telling me stories of your life. Thank you for imagining my life. Thank you for allowing me to imagine your life. Thank you for telling me legends of the hero name. Thank you for the funny poem.
My name in Vietnamese English is ANH KIET. I cannot do a thing I need to do on the computer keyboard for the E in KIET to be correct, which requires a hat above it like a roof and also a small dot like a full stop beneath. In Vietnamese my name is like a picture of a figure with wide shoulders, or a house with two wide strong roofs, with one roof placed on top of the other roof. The words of my name when they are separate mean
ANH: brother / you
KIET: masterpiece
When they are together they make a meaning like the English word hero. I am not a hero! I am not a masterpiece! But I am a brother.
I am living now in a house with 15 other released people and our mutual friend Charlotte and her Aunt Iris. They are very, very kind. The immigration removal centre unlocked its doors and placed us out on to the road in a dark night. It was raining heavily so we went to the airport and slept on seats in Departures. We called on a phone to a friend. We are lucky. They came to find us. Friends drove us here in three trucks that sell coffee, very handy for the long trip!
