How to Be Both

by Ali Smith

  Silence.

  (What you might even call a stony silence.)

  Had George really said all that out loud?

  No.

  Phew.

  George had said only the first sentence out loud. She hadn’t said anything past the words what stories are meant to mean.

  But think of her mother. Think of her smiling, looking the minotaur in the eye and – winking.

  Think of her father taking what was left of the shape her mother had when she was alive and driving round in the rain to find the places she’d want to be.

  This thought of her father freed for George a moment of future-tense vision, by chance a summer vision, in which she will come home from school or London one day in a couple of months’ time and find him standing on the front lawn with the hose in his hand and what turns out to be a Beethoven symphony playing into his ears through the precious Bose headphones nobody else is allowed to touch, while he conducts a spray of water con brio then andante over the green of the new grass he’s had put in.

  But back to now, or rather then, and Mrs Rock still a bit in shock at having been interrupted.

  Mrs Rock brought her eyebrows down from the top of her head, where they’d gone. She placed a look on her face to show that she was waiting a moment to see if George was going to say anything else.

  George placed a look in the same way on her own face to let Mrs Rock know she wasn’t going to say anything.

  Mrs Rock breathed out slowly. She leaned forward. She told George she was glad George had told her the truth about saying that word and pretending she hadn’t. Then she settled back into her chair, because George had stayed silent so far at least, and started on about the Greek notion of the truth-teller.

  This, Mrs Rock said, was a very important figure in Greek life and philosophy, usually someone with no power, no social status to speak of, who’d take it upon themselves to stand up to the highest authority when the authority was unjust or wrong, and would express out loud the most uncomfortable truths, even though by doing this they would probably even be risking their life.

  Upon himself or herself, George said. He or she. His or her life. And, just to say, I find this second allusion, or example or illustration, much more effective than your minotaur one.

  Mrs Rock put her pencil down on the desk with a click. She shook her head. She smiled.

  Georgia, she said. As I’m sure you’re aware. You can be a little draconian at times.

  I’ll take that as a compliment, Mrs Rock, George said.

  Yes, Georgia, you may. Same time next Tuesday, Mrs Rock said. See you then.

  George opens her notebook. It’s nearly noon.

  This is the point in this story at which, according to its structure so far, a friend enters or a door opens or some kind of plot surfaces (but which kind? the one that means the place where a dead person’s buried? the one that means the place where a building’s to be built? the one that means a secret stratagem?); this is the place in this book where a spirit of twist in the tale has tended, in the past, to provide a friendly nudge forward to whatever’s coming next.

  George is ready and waiting.

  She plans to count the people and how long and how little time they spend looking or not looking at a random picture in a gallery.

  What she doesn’t know yet is that in roughly half an hour or so, while she’s collating final figures (a hundred and fifty seven people will have passed through the room altogether and out of this number twenty five will have looked or glanced for no longer than a second; one woman will have stopped to look at the carving of the frame but not looked at the picture for longer than three seconds; two girls and a boy in their late teens will have stopped and made amused comments about St Vincent’s knot of monk hair, the growth like a third eye at the front of his forehead, and stood there looking at him for thirteen full seconds), this will happen :

  [Enter Lisa Goliard]

  George will recognize her immediately even from having seen her only once in an airport.

  She will walk into this room in this gallery, glance round for a moment, see George, not know George from Adam, then come and stand in front of George between her and the painting of St Vincent Ferrer.

  She’ll stand right in front of it for several minutes, far longer than anyone except George herself.

  Then she’ll shoulder her designer bag and she’ll leave the room.

  George will follow.

  Standing close to the woman’s back, so long as there are enough people to camouflage her (and there will be), she will say the name like a question (Lisa?) on the stairs, just to make sure it’s her. She will see if the woman turns when she hears the name (she will), and will pretend when she does by looking away and making herself as much like an ordinary disaffected teenage girl as possible that it wasn’t her who said it.

  George will surprise a talent in herself for being surreptitious.

  She will track the woman, staying behind her and aping the ordinary disaffected teenage girl all the way across London including down into the Underground and back up into the open air, till that woman gets to a house and goes in and shuts its door.

  Then George will stand across the road outside the house for a bit.

  She will have no idea what to do next or even where she is in London any more.

  She will see a low wall opposite the house. She will go and sit on it.

  Okay.

  1. Unless the woman is some kind of early renaissance specialist or St Vincent Ferrer expert (unlikely, but possible) there is no way she’d ever know about or think to make the journey specially to see this painting out of all the paintings in the whole of London. This will suggest that for her to have known anything about it, including the basic fact of its existence, she must still have been tailing, one way or another, George’s mother – unless she’s tracking George right now – at the time they went to Ferrara.

  2. George’s mother is dead. There was a funeral. Her mother is rubble. So why is this woman still on the trail? Is she tracking George? (Unlikely. Anyway, now George is tracking her.)

  3. (and George will feel her own eyes open wider at this one) Perhaps somewhere in all of this if you look there’s a proof of love.

  This thought will make George furious.

  At the same time it will fill her with pride at her mother, right all along. Most of all she will wonder at her mother’s sheer talent.

  The maze of the minotaur is one thing. The ability to maze the minotaur back is another thing altogether.

  Touché.

  High five.

  Both.

  Consider for a moment this moral conundrum. Imagine it. You’re an artist.

  Sitting on the wall opposite, George will get her phone out. She will take a picture.

  Then she will take another picture.

  After that she will sit there and keep her eye on that house for a bit.

  The next time she comes here she will do the same. In honour of her mother’s eyes she will use her own. She will let whoever’s watching know she’s watching.

  But none of the above has happened.

  Not yet, anyway.

  For now, in the present tense, George sits in the gallery and looks at one of the old paintings on the wall.

  It’s definitely something to do. For the foreseeable.

  one

  Ho this is a mighty twisting thing fast as a

  fish being pulled by its mouth on a hook

  if a fish could be fished through a

  6 foot thick wall made of bricks or an

  arrow if an arrow could fly in a leisurely

  curl like the coil of a snail or a

  star with a tail if the star was shot

  upwards past maggots and worms and

  the bones and the rockwork as fast

  coming up as the fast coming down

  of the horses in the story of

  the chariot of the sun when the

  bold boy drove them though


  his father told him not to and

  he did anyway and couldn’t hold them

  he was too small too weak they nosedived

  crashed to the ground killed the crowds

  of folk and a fieldful of sheep beneath

  and now me falling upward at the

  rate of 40 horses dear God old

  Fathermother please spread extempore

  wherever I’m meant to be hitting

  whatever your target (begging your

  pardon) (urgent) a flock of the nice

  soft fleecy just to cushion (ow) what the

  just caught my (what)

  on a (ouch)

  dodged a (whew) (biff)

  (bash) (ow)

  (mercy)

  wait though

  look is that

  sun

  blue sky the white drift

  the blue through it

  rising to darker blue

  start with green-blue underpaint

  add indigo under lazzurrite mix in

  lead white or ashes glaze with lapis

  same old sky? earth? again?

  home again home again

  jiggety down through the up

  like a seed off a tree with a wing

  cause when the

  roots on their way to the surface

  break the surface they turn into stems

  and the stems push up over themselves into stalks

  and up at the ends of the stalks

  there are flowers that open for

  all the world like

  eyes :

  hello :

  what’s this?

  A boy in front of a painting.

  Good : I like a good back : the best thing about a turned back is the face you can’t see stays a secret : hey : you : can’t hear me? Can’t hear? No? My chin on your shoulder right next to your ear and you still can’t hear, ha well, old argument about eye or ear being mightier all goes to show it’s neither here nor there when you’re neither here nor there so call me Cosmo call me Lorenzo call me Ercole call me unknown painter of the school of whatever you like I forgive you I don’t care – don’t have to care – good – somebody else can care, cause listen, once an old man slept for winters tucked in a bed with my Marsyas (early work, gone for ever, linen, canvas, rot) stiff with colours on top of his bedclothes, he hadn’t many bedclothes but my Marsyas kept him warm, nice heavy extra skin kept him alive I think : I mean he died, yes, but not till later and not of the cold, see?

  No one remembering that old man.

  Except, I just did, there

  though very faint, the colours now

  can hardly remember my own name, can hardly rememb anyth

  though I do like, I did like

  a fine piece of cloth

  and the way the fall of a ribboned bit off a shirt or sleeve will twist as it falls

  and how the faintest lightest nearly not-there charcoal line can conjure a sprig that splits open a rock

  and I like a nice bold curve in a line, his back has a curve at the shoulder : a sadness?

  Or just the eternal age-old sorrow of the initiate

  (put beautifully though I say so myself)

  but oh God dear Christ and all the saints – that picture he’s – it’s – mine, I did it,

  who’s it again?

  not St Paolo though St Paolo’s always bald cause bald’s how you’re supposed to do St Paolo –

  wait, I – yes I, think I – the face, the –

  cause where are the others? Cause it wasn’t just it, it was a piece belonged with others : someone’s put it in a frame

  very nice frame

  and the stonework in it, uh huh, the cloakwork good, no, very good the black of it to show the power, see how the cloak opens to more fabric where you’d expect flesh to be, that’s clever, revealing nothing and ah, small forest of baby conifers tucked on the top of the broken column behind his head –

  but what about that old Christ at the top of it?

  Old?

  Christ?

  like He made it after all all the way to old man when everyone knows Christ’s never to be anything other than unwrinkled eyes shining hair the colour of ripe nut from the hazel tree and parted neatly in the middle like the Nazarenes straight on top falling curlier from the ears down countenance more liable to weep than laugh forehead wide smooth serene no older than 33 and still a most beautiful child of men old man Christ, why would I paint an old (blaspheming)?

  Wait – cause – think I remember : something : yes, I put some hands, 2 hands below his (I mean His) feet : something you’d only see if you really looked, hands that belong to the angels but all the same look like they don’t belong to anyone : like they’re corroded with gold, gold all over them like sores turned into gold, a velvet soup of gold lentils, gold mould as if blisters of the body can become precious metal

  but why on earth did I?

  (Can’t remem)

  Look at all the angels round Him pretty with their whips and scourges, I was good

  no, no, step back take a look at a proper distance at the whole thing

  and other pictures in this room : stop looking at your own : look at others for edification.

  Think I recog

  oh Christ – that’s a –

  Cosmo, isn’t it?

  A Cosmo.

  St Gerolamo –?

  but ha ha oh dear God look at it piece of oh ho ho ho ridiculous nonsense

  (from whom my saint averts his eyes with proper restraint and dignity)

  showy Cosmo’s showy saint, mad, laughable, his hand in the air holding the rock up high about to stone himself so the patrons get their money’s worth : look at the tree all gesture-bent unnatural behind him and the blood all adrippy on his chest : dear God dear Motherfather did I come the hard way back through the wall of the earth the stratifications the rocks and the soil the worms and the crusts the stars and the gods the vicissitudes and the histories the broke bits of forgettings and rememberings all the long road from gone to here – for Cosmo to be almost the first thing as soon as I open my

  Cosmo bloody Cosmo with his father a cobbler, no higher than mine, lower even : Cosmo high on nothing but court frippery vain as vain can : veering as ever in all his finery towards the gnarled and the unbeautiful : the fawning troupe of assistants attending to each mark he made like his every gesture was a ducal procession.

  Though that picture over there, also a Cosmo, is truthfully, yes I admit, quite good

  (but then the hanging baubles above her head I myself showed him how to make better when we worked in the, wasn’t it, palace of beautiful flowers? the time Cosmo feigned not knowing me though he knew exactly who I)

  and that over there, that’s him, isn’t it? Never seen it before but it’s him : yes : ah : it’s a beauty : and that one there’s him too, is it?

  That makes 4. In this 1 room.

  4 Cosmos to my 1 saint.

  Please God dear God send me right now back to oblivion : Jesus and the Virgin and all the saints and angels and archangels obscurate me fast as possible please cause I am not worthy &c and if Cosmo’s here, if the world’s all Cosmo same as it ever was –

  but then again

  from Cosmo I learned how to use the white lead to mark details in the underwash

  (I forgive)

  and from Cosmo I learned how to make the incision marks in the paint for the extra perspective

  (I forgive).

  And anyway, look.

  Up against Cosmo’s Gerolamo whose is really the real saint here?

  Just saying.

  And, just saying, but whose saint is it anyway that that boy with his back to me’s spending all his time

  torch bearer, Ferara, seen from the back, he was a boy who ran past me in the street : it was when they were calling for painters for painting the palace of not being bored and I was up for the job, I’d worked on the panels of the muses at the palace of beautiful flowers with Cosmo and the
rest and was now well known in Ferara and even more well known in Bologna, I didn’t need the court, no one in Bologna gave a toss about the court (anyway the court didn’t need me, the court had Cosmo) no, wait, start at the

  cause it truly began with the man they called the Falcon cause of his first name being Pellegrin : he was Borse’s adviser, a professor and scholar, he’d known Greek and Latin since he was a boy and he’d found some magic books in eastern languages that no one else even knew about : he knew the stars and the gods and the poems : he knew the legends and stories that the Ests all loved about the kings on their horses and their sons and half-sons and cousins and their magicians in caves and their joustings and maidens and rivals and who was in love with whom and whose horse was the best and the cleverest and fastest and most of all their neverending triumphant outwittings of the infidels and crushings of the moorish kings : the Falcon’d been appointed in charge of the new design of the walls of the big room in the palace of not being bored and he was looking for painters other than Cosmo (terribly in demand, going around town bejewelled like a Marquis and though it was said that Cosmo’d be playing a major part in the wall design for the palace of not being bored in reality Cosmo’d glide in and out like a swan, I myself saw him a total of twice doing the minimum of sinop, for which, being so in demand he was mightily well paid, I heard) anyway he (not Cosmo, the Falcon) summoned me to his house.

  The Falcon lived behind the building works for the castle : he came to the door when the door girl called him and first he looked my horse behind me up and down cause he was a wise enough man to know you can tell much about the person by the horse, and the coat on mine was glossy even after the road from Bologna, waiting for me with his head right down, his nose an inch above the ground and his nostrils connoisseuring the destination, never needing tethered or watched, cause let anybody but me try mounting Mattone they’d fly without wings through the air and hit the brickwork.