by Ali Smith
Ow.
I feel the loss, dull the ache of it
cause I had it, the place where his legs met his body, the muscular dark where his tunic flared up in the breeze as he went, I had it like telling the oldest story in the world cause there’s a very pure pleasure in a curve like the curve of a buttock : the only other thing as good to draw is the curve of a horse and like a horse a curved line is a warm thing, good-natured, will serve you well if not mistreated, and the curves of his sleeves concertina-ing down and back from his shoulders, blanket stitch then scallop-bite edge, round his waist a double yarnstrand to hold him well.
I like a twist of yarn, 2 strands twisted together for strength : I like a length of rope : the rope after a hanging they sold, I remember, in the market, was cut into pieces you’d buy for luck so you’d never yourself be.
Hanged, I mean.
What, – – was, was I? –
surely not – never, was I, hanged? – oh.
Oh.
Was I?
No.
Pretty sure : I wasn’t.
But how did I, then? End?
I can’t recall an end at all, any end I ever, can’t, any, demise, no –
cause maybe –
maybe I … never ended?
Hey!
I did that picture : hey!
Can’t hear me.
Sunlight hitting the yellowing leaves, I was a child, small, on a stone slab warm from the sun, almost too small to walk I think and something was twisting itself down through the air and landed in the middle of the pool of horse piss, the foam and the bubbles nearly all off it but the smell of it still fine in the dip in the stone between the old path and the new path that he’d made in the yard for the carts for the stones, my father.
The thing that fell caused a circle to happen, a ring to appear in the piss : the ring widened and widened until it got to the edges and vanished.
It was a small black ball like the head of an infidel : it had a single wing, a hard and feathery-looking thing stuck straight out of it.
The ring that it made in the pool when it fell, though, was gone.
Where’d it go?
I shouted the words, but she was trampling cloth in the big half-barrel : she was making the cloth turn white with the soap, she was singing, didn’t hear me, my mother.
I called again.
Where’d it go?
She still didn’t hear me : I picked up a stone : I aimed at the side of the barrel, I missed, hit a chicken in its sidefeathers instead : the chicken made a chicken noise, jumped and nearly flew : it ran about in a dance that made me laugh, it panicked all the geese and the ducks and the other chickens : but my mother had seen the stone hit the chicken and she leapt out of the barrel and ran towards me with her hand in the air cause she was a despiser of cruel things.
I wasn’t, I said. I didn’t. I was calling you. But you were preoccupied so I threw it to get your attention. I didn’t mean to hit the chicken. The chicken got in the way.
She dropped her hand to her side.
Where did you learn that word? she said.
Which word? I said.
Preoccupied, she said. Attention.
From you, I said.
Oh, she said.
She stood in the dust with her wet feet : her ankles were beaded with light.
Where’d it go? I said.
Where’d what go? she said.
The ring, I said.
What ring? she said.
She got straight down and looked in the pool : she saw the winged thing.
That’s not a ring, she said. That’s a seed.
I told her what happened : she laughed.
Oh, she said. That sort of ring. I thought you meant a ring for a finger, like a wedding ring or a gold ring.
My eyes filled with tears and she saw.
Why are you crying? she said. Don’t cry. Your sort of ring is much better than those.
It went, I said. It’s gone.
Ah, she said. Is that why you’re crying? But it hasn’t gone at all. And that’s why it’s better than gold. It hasn’t gone, it’s just that we can’t see it any more. In fact, it’s still going, still growing. It’ll never stop going, or growing wider and wider, the ring you saw. You were lucky to see it at all. Cause when it got to the edge of the puddle it left the puddle and entered the air instead, it went invisible. A marvel. Didn’t you feel it go through you? No? But it did, you’re inside it now. I am too. We both are. And the yard. And the brickpiles. And the sandpiles. And the firing shed. And the houses. And the horses, and your father, your uncle, and your brothers, and the workmen, and the street. And the other houses. And the walls, and the gardens and houses, the churches, the palace tower, the top of the cathedral, the river, the fields behind us, the fields way over there, see? See how far your eye can go. See the tower and the houses in the distance? It’s passing through them and nothing and nobody will feel a thing but there it is doing it nonetheless. And imagine it circling the fields and the farms we can’t see from here. And the towns beyond those fields and farms all the way to the sea. And across the sea. The ring you saw in the water’ll never stop travelling till the edge of the world and then when it reaches the edge it’ll go beyond that too. Nothing can stop it.
She looked down into the horse piss.
And all from the fall of a seed, she said. You see that seed there? You know where it came from?
She pointed above us to the trees behind our house.
If we put that seed in the ground, she said, and we cover it with earth and it gets the chance, enough sun, enough water, with a bit of luck and justice it’ll make another tree.
The trees were much bigger than even the brickpiles : the trees went way beyond the roof of the house made by my father’s father’s father : we were a family of wallmakers and brickmen : it was what the men of our family did when they left boyhood : my family helped build the Est palaces, the Ests had rooms at all cause of us : we were historic, as anonymous wallmakers go.
I fished the seed out of the piss : it was a thing that has to fall to rise : it looked like a shrunken head like the heads that got put on the walls after uprisings but with a wing coming out the back of it : it smelt fine of horse : it had 1 wing not 2 like birds : perhaps that was why it fell : and cause it had, something would rise.
I dropped it back in : it fell again : 1 day right here cause of it a tree would be shooting upwards, with a bit of luck and justice.
A new ring formed, disappeared, went through me invisible and off out into the world.
My mother was back at the barrel climbing over the side : she started singing again : every time she tramped down rings like the seed-rings I’d seen appear and disappear came off her legs in the water in the barrel : the rings widened, came out round her round the barrel then they went through me and round me too (a marvel) and off into the rest of the world in a huge sort of holding that happened when something came into or passed through another thing : the sun was already shrinking the piss : a new ring formed where the piss had been and gone : in its going it changed the stone of the path to a lighter different colour.
Then it was another time : there were yellow flowers dropping off the trees : they landed with a sound : who knew flowers had a voice? I was much better at throwing now : now when I threw I could always hit the barrel – and not just hit it, I could choose where to hit it, on the metal buckle or the top or bottom rim or whichever stave I aimed at.
I could throw now too so that I never hit a chicken unless I wanted to : it was cruel, though, to want to, and tempting, so I’d become an expert at almost : since if I threw it so it almost hit (but missed) a chicken would still do the funny dance to the music of the general bird outrage : there were no chickens or geese to almost hit today though, cause every time I came out into the yard now all the chickens and geese and ducks ran away shouting to the front of the house, and every time I came round the front after them they ran away to the back.
&
nbsp; Ferara was the best place for brickmaking cause of the kind of clay from the river : you burnt the seaweed and stirred in the ashes and seasalt and baked the bricks : you could do anything with brickwork, all the colours, all the designs : then there was stone with all its many names and costs : my father held, sometimes, if he was in a good mood about money, a little piece of something up and we shouted what it was and the winner won the shoulderback round the yard with him the horse : perlato : paonazzo : cipollino with its coloured veins, my mother making me laugh pretending a stone held near the eyes could make her cry : arabescato, just the fineness of the word near made me cry : breccia, made up of broken things : and the sort I can’t remember the name of that’s 2 or more stones crushed together to make a whole new kind of stone.
But here in Ferara there was brick and we were a place you got bricks from.
I took aim halfway up the pile and I hit that exact right brick : a plume of brickdust flew up.
I scrabbled about at the edge of the pile for more broken bits, bunched my vest up and carried the pile of bits of brick in it back to the step : I sat down on the threshold ready to throw : it was even harder to keep your aim when you were sitting down : good.
Stop throwing bricks at my bricks!
That was my father : he’d heard the throwing and seen the dust flying : he marched the yard : he kicked away at the bits I’d collected : I ducked, knowing he’d slap me.
Instead he picked a broken piece of brick up, turned it over in his hand.
He sat down heavy on the step close beside me : he held up the bit of brick.
Watch this, he said.
He pulled at his trowel, got it out of his tool belt past his stomach then held the edge of it above the broken brick : he let the edge of the trowel hover for a moment at the brick’s edge : he touched with gentleness with the trowel’s edge a particular place on the brick : then he raised the trowel and brought it down very hard at exactly the place he’d touched : a bit of brick broke clean off and fell among the fallen flowers.
The piece of brick left in his hand was neat and square, he showed me.
Now we can use it to build with, he said. Now nothing’s wasted.
I picked up the fallen piece.
What about this bit? I said.
My father scowled.
My mother overheard me say it and she laughed : she came over, she was wearing her work dress the colour of sky, clay marks all over it like smudges of cloud : she sat on the other side of me : she had a brick in her hand too, she’d picked it off the pile as she passed : it was a nice thin brick, good colour, a doorway or window brick, from the ones made with the best clay : she winked at me.
Watch this.
She held out her other hand over my head for my father to pass her the trowel.
No, he said. You’ll ruin the brick. You’ll ruin the side of my trowel.
Sweet Cristoforo, she said. Please.
No, he said. Between you both I’ll have nothing left.
Well, when you’ve nothing –, my mother said.
It was what she always said : when you’ve nothing at least you have all of it : but this time when she got to the end of the word nothing she lunged out of nowhere for the trowel and he wasn’t expecting it, jerked his hand up and away too late, she leaned herself round me quick as a snake (warm and sweet the smell and her linen and skin) and she’d got it, she jumped up, twisted free, ran to the trestle.
She held the brick out in front of her, tapped at it hard 3 times and she scraped
(my trowel! my father said)
and she put the handle of the trowel on top of it and hit the brick and the trowel with the little stone mallet – once, then again : bits of brick flaked off : she tapped the brick with her finger : a large piece fell out of it : she stopped and wiped the dust off her nose : she held the trowel out to him : in her other hand she held up what was left of the brick she’d been breaking.
A horse ! I said.
She gave it to me : I turned it over in both my hands : it had ears : it had scrapes : the scrapes were what made the tail.
My father was pouting down at his trowel : he rubbed the dust on its point with his thumb and examined the handle, not laughing : but my mother kissed him : she made him.
Another time : hot, and the cicadas : my mother was drawing a line in the ground with a stick.
I saw what it was before it became it : it’s the neck of a duck!
Then she moved to a new piece of ground and drew a line and then another then joined them to 2 other lines and a curve : it’s the place where the leg of a horse meets its body!
She finished the horse, started again, drew a line, then another, made a scuff in the dust and drew lines in the scuff : it’s a house! It’s our house!
I found a stick of my own in the tall grass and broke it near the base so it had a thick end and a thin end : I came back to the pictures : with the thin end I added 3 curves to the roof of the house she’d drawn.
Why have you put a tree on the roof? she said.
I pointed up at the roof of our house behind us, at the place where a twig that had taken root in the ridge on the top stuck up in the air.
Ah, she said. You’re right.
I coloured with pleasure at the being right : with the thicker end of the stick I drew a slope, a circle, some straight lines then a curve : we both looked over at my father’s back : he was at the far end of the yard loading the cart.
My mother nodded.
That’s good, she said. It’s very good. Well seen. Now. Do me something you can’t see with your eyes.
I added a straight line to the forehead of her horse.
Very witty, she said, oh, you’re a very witty cheat.
I said I wasn’t, cause it was true, I had never with my eyes truly seen a unicorn.
You know what I meant, she said. Do as I asked.
She went to collect the eggs : I closed my eyes, I opened them : I turned the stick upside down, used the thin end of it.
That one’s him angry, I said when she came back. That one’s him kind.
Air came out of her mouth (by which I knew that what I’d done was good) : she nearly dropped the eggs (by which I learned that the making of images is a powerful thing and may if care’s not taken lead to breakage) : she checked the eggs were safe in her dress, all unbroken, before she called him over to see his faces.
When he saw the angry one he hit me over the head with the inside of his hand (by which I learned that people do not always want to know how they are seen by others).
He and my mother stood and looked for a time at his faces in the dust.
Not long after this, he began to teach me my letters.
Then, when my mother was gone into the ground, and me still small enough to, one day I climbed into her clothes trunk in her bedroom and pulled the lid down : it was all broadcloth and linens and hemp and wool, belts and laces, the chemise, the work gowns, the overgown, the kirtle and sleeves and everything empty of her still smelling of her.
Over time the smell of her faded, or my knowing of it lessened.
But in the dark in the trunk I was expert and could tell almost as well as if I was seeing which was which, which dress, which usage, by the feel of it between finger and thumb: kitchen use, Sunday use, work use : I went deep in the smell and became myself nothing but fabric that’d once been next to her skin : in the dark between the layers I shoved down or up with a fist and felt for a tapering strip, a ribbon or tie or lace coming off the edge of one of the sleeves or collars, a tassel, a strand of whatever, and was awake till I’d twisted and wound something of her round a thumb or a finger : at which point I was able to sleep : when I woke I’d have freed myself up unawares in my sleep from the tether I’d made : but there’d still be a curlicue shape in the strand of stuff afterwards which held for a time, before it went back to the shape of its own randomness.
One day when I woke and opened the lid and came back to the daylight the cloth I’d been aslee
p in dragged out after me, blue, still warm from me : I sat beside it on the floor : I put my head and my arms into it then my whole self inside it : it sat on my shoulders and spread out away from me, it so big and me so small it was as if I’d dressed in a field of sky.
I put my head through the slit in the sleeve as if it was the neck opening : I dragged the dress through the house, me in it.
I wore nothing but her clothes from then on : I dragged them in the housedust for weeks, my father too weary to say no, until the day he picked me up in his arms (I was wearing the white one, big, filthy now, ripped a bit where I’d tripped on the stones one day and where it’d caught on the doorframe another, today I was all sweat and heat in it, my face a colour I could feel) so that the trail of the heavy materials left the floor and hung behind us both over his forearm like a great empty fishtail as he carried me through to her room.
I thought he would beat me, but no : he sat me down still in her overgown on the shut trunk of clothes : he himself sat down on the floor in front of me.
I’m going to ask you kindly to stop wearing these clothes, he said.
No, I said.
(I said it from behind the stiff shield of the front of the dress.)
I can’t bear it, he said. It is like your mother has become a dwarf and as if her dwarf self is always twinkling away in all the corners of the house and the yard, always in the corner of my eye.
I shrugged.
(But cause the shoulders were so high over my own deep in the dress, no one but me knew I’d shrugged.)
So I would like to make a suggestion, he said. If you agree to put these clothes away. I mean stop wearing them.
I shook my head slow from side to side.
And if you were to put, say, breeches on, or these leggings I’ve here, instead –, he said.
He put his hand in his smock pocket and pulled out boys’ clothes, light and thin in the heat : he dangled them enticing like you do with a mouthful of green a mule that won’t be moved.
– then I can get you a job and a schooling, he said. For the job, you can come and work with me at the cathedral. It would be a help to me. I need help. I need an apprentice, about your age. You could be that help.
