by Ali Smith
Do tourists see differently from other people? her mother says. And how can you have grown up in the town you’ve grown up in and not consider what the presence of the past might mean?
George yawns ostentatiously.
Best place in the world to learn how to ignore it, she says. Taught me everything I’ll ever need to know. Especially about tourism. And growing up around historic buildings. I mean. They’re just buildings. You’re always talking such crap about things meaning more than they actually mean. It’s like some drippy hippy hangover, like you were inoculated with hippiness when you were little and now you can’t help but treat everything as if it’s symbolic.
That castle, her mother says, was built by order of the Estense court, the d’Estes being the family who ruled this province for hundreds of years and the people responsible for so much of the art and poetry and music. And therefore for the art and writing and music that followed it, which you and I take for granted. If it wasn’t for Ariosto, who flourished because of this court, there’d be a very different Shakespeare. If there’d even be a Shakespeare at all.
Yeah, maybe, but it’s hardly relevant now, George says.
You know, Georgie, nothing’s not connected, her mother says.
You always call me Georgie when you want to patronize me, George says.
And we don’t live on a flat surface, her mother says. That castle, this city, were built all those irrelevant centuries ago by a family whose titles and hereditaries come down in more or less a direct connection to Franz Ferdinand.
The band? George says.
Yes, her mother says. The pop band whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 brought about World War One.
World War One is like a whole hundred years ago next year, George says. You can hardly call it relevant to us any more.
What, the Great War? in which your great-grandfather, who happened to be my grandfather, was gassed in the trenches not once, but twice? Which meant he and your great-grandmother were very poor, because he was too ill to work and died young? And meant I inherited his weak lungs? Not relevant to us? her mother says. And then the break-up of the Balkans, and the start of the territorial trouble in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the civil unrest in Ireland, and the shifts of power in Russia, and the power shifts in the Ottoman empire, and the bankruptcy, economic catastrophe and social unrest in Germany, all of which played a huge part in the rise of Fascism and in the bringing about of another war in which, as it happens, your own grandmother and grandfather – who happened to be my mother and father – both fought when they were just two or three years older than you? Not relevant? To us?
Her mother shakes her head.
What? George says. What?
A well-heeled Cambridge childhood, her mother says.
She laughs a laugh to herself. The laugh infuriates George.
Why did you and dad choose to live there, then, if you didn’t want us to grow up there? she says.
Oh, you know, her mother says. Good schools. Proximity to London. Buoyant housing market that’d always hold its own in recession. All the things that really matter in life.
Is her mother being ironic? It’s hard to tell.
Very good food-bank system for when you leave school and your father and I can’t afford to send you to university and eat, and for later too for you when you come out of university, her mother says.
That’s such an irresponsible thing to say, George says.
Well but at least it’s new and contemporary, my irresponsibility, her mother says.
The tables round them are emptying. It’s late and quite a bit cooler. There’s been rain beyond the arches while they’ve sat here eating and arguing. Her mother puts a hand into her handbag and pulls out a jumper. She gives it to George to put round Henry’s shoulders. Then she gets her phone out of her bag. She switches it on. Guilt and fury. After a moment, she switches it off. George feels so guilty she is nearly sick with guilt. She formulates, quick, the kind of question she knows her mother likes to answer.
You know that place we went to earlier today? George says.
Uh huh, her mother says.
Do you think any women artists did any of it? George says.
Her mother forgets the phone in her hand and immediately holds forth (just as George knew she would).
She tells George how there are a few renaissance painters they know about who happen to have been women, but not very many, a negligible percentage. She tells her about one called Catherine who was brought up by the court here, in that castle right there, because she was the daughter of a nobleman and one of the women of the Estense court took her under her wing and made sure she had a superb education. Then Catherine had gone into a nunnery, which was a good place to go if you were a woman and wanted to paint, and while she was there she became a celebrated nun and she wrote books and painted pictures on the side, about which nobody really found out until after she died.
Her paintings are quite lovely, her mother says. And you can actually still see Catherine today.
You mean through sensing her personality by looking at the paintings etc, George says.
No, I mean quite literally, her mother says. In the flesh.
How? George says.
In a church in Bologna, her mother says. When they made her a saint they dug her up – there’s all sorts of testimonials about how sweet the smell was when they dug her up –
Mum, George says.
– and they put her in a box in a church dedicated to her, and if you go there you can still see her, she’s gone black with age and she’s sitting in the box and holding a book and some kind of holy monstrance.
That’s insane, George says.
But other than something like that happening? her mother says. No. It’s pretty unlikely that women worked on much that’s extant, certainly on anything we saw today. Though if I had to, I don’t know, write a paper about it or try to make a thesis about it, I could make a pretty good one about the vaginal shape here –
Mum, George says.
– we’re in Italy, George, it’s all right, no one knows what I’m saying, her mother says drawing a diamond shape at her own breastbone, the vaginal shape here on that beautiful worker in the rags in the blue section, the most virile and powerful figure in the whole room, much more so than the Duke, who’s supposed to be the subject and the hero of that room, and which must surely have caused a bit of trouble for the artist, especially since that figure’s a worker or a slave and also clearly black or Semitic. And how the open shape at his chest complements the way the painter makes the rope round his waist a piece of simultaneously dangling and erect phallic symbolism –
(her mother did an art history degree once)
– and as to the constant sexual and gender ambiguities running through the whole work
(and a women’s studies degree)
– at least the part of it that this particular artist seems to have produced, well. Or if we want to be more detailed about it. The way he used that figure of the effeminate boy, the boyish girl, to balance the powerful masculine effect of the worker, and how this figure holds both an arrow and a hoop, male and female symbols one in each hand. On this alone I could make a reasonably witty argument for its originator being female, if I had to. But as to likelihood?
How does she even remember seeing all these things, George thinks. I saw the same room, the exact same room as she did, we were both standing in the very same place, and I didn’t see any of it.
Her mother shakes her head.
Slim, George, I’m sorry to say.
That night in their hotel room before they go to bed her mother is brushing her teeth in the bathroom. This hotel used to be someone’s house in the years when people made frescoes. It is called the Prisciani Suite and was the actual house of someone who had something to do with the making of the frescoes at the palace where they went to see the pictures earlier (it says so at the door in a long information panel which George,
who doesn’t speak Italian, has tried to decipher). There are still some bits of the original frescoes the man from back then will have lived with on the walls of this room – George has even touched them. They go right the way up the wall, up past the mezzanine where Henry is asleep above them on a small single bed. You can touch them if you like. Nothing says not to. Pellegrino Prisciani. Pellegrino, like the bottles of water, she’d said. And the bird, her mother’d said. What bird? George had said. The peregrine falcon, her mother’d said, pellegrino means a pilgrim, and at some point it also morphed into what we know as the name of the bird.
Is there anything her mother doesn’t know about?
The hotel is full of art. Above the bed she and her mother will sleep in is a modern piece by an Italian artist from now. It is shaped like a giant eye but with a propeller at one end like an aircraft, except the propeller looks like it’s been made with giant sycamore seeds. The strip of metal or whatever it is that’s meant to be the pupil has a snail shell stuck to the upper curve of it and the whole thing moves very slowly in the air above the bed so that it almost seems possible the snail might also be moving, even though it’s obvious it’s not. There is a panel on the wall about the artwork. Leon Battista Alberti regalo a Leonello d’Este un manoscritto in cui compariva il disegno dell’occhio alato. Questa raffigurazione allegorica rappresenta l’elevazione l’intellettuale : l’occhio simbolo della divinita, le ali simbolo della velocita, o meglio della conoscenza intuitiva, la sola che permette di accedere alla contemplazione e alla vera conoscenza. Leon Battista Alberti, whoever he was, regaled Leonello d’Este (important if he was an Este since they were, George has gathered, like the royals of Ferrara) a manuscript in which, something about comparing, and design, and some words George doesn’t know. But that one, occhio, might be eye or eyes, not just because the artwork is obviously an eye, but because of the word oculist. A refiguring allegory and represent and intellectual elevation, the eye symbolizes divinity, something symbolizes velocity, blah, intuition, permitting, contemplation –
George gives up.
Her mother’s phone, in its pouch, is on the bedside table.
Guilt and fury. Guilt and fury.
There is something her mother doesn’t know about, George thinks looking up at that eye.
The giant eye turns on its own in the air above the bed and George glows and fades below it like her whole self is a faulty neon.
George is tired of art. She is fed up of its always knowing best.
I want to come clean about something, she says when her mother comes out of the bathroom.
Uh huh? her mother says. What would that be?
It would be something I did that I shouldn’t have done, George says.
What? her mother says stopping halfway across the room, the moisturizer jar in one hand and its lid in the other.
I’ve been feeling bad for months, George says.
Her mother puts the stuff in her hands down and comes over and sits on the bed next to her.
Sweet heart, she says. Stop worrying right now. Whatever it is. Everything is forgivable.
I don’t know that this is forgivable, George says.
Her mother’s face is all concern.
Okay, she says. Tell me.
George doesn’t tell her mother about the time she looked at the phone and saw the text conversation about losing your voice and the carvings of angels. But she does tell her about the day when her mother’s phone had flashed on, on the sideboard in the kitchen, and George had seen the name Lisa Goliard lighting it up.
Uh huh? her mother says.
George decides to leave out the bit it said about her mother’s eyes.
It said How you doin what you doin where are you & whenll we meet, George says.
Her mother is nodding.
And the thing is, George says. I sent a reply.
Did you? her mother says. A message from you?
A message from you, George says.
From me? her mother says.
I wrote it pretending to be you, George says. I’ve been feeling really bad about it. I know I shouldn’t have looked. I should never have invaded your privacy. And I know I shouldn’t have pretended to be you under any circumstances.
What did I say? Can you remember? her mother says.
By heart, George says.
And? her mother says.
I’m ever so sorry Lisa but I am very busy spending quality time with my family and am so taken up with all the loving things happening with my husband and two children that I’m afraid I won’t be able to meet with you for some considerable time, George says.
Her mother explodes into laughter. George is stunned. Her mother is laughing like it’s the funniest thing she’s heard in a long time.
Oh you’re a beauty, George, you really are, you’re a perfect beauty, she says. Did she write back?
Yes, George says. She wrote back and said, like, Are you all right you don’t sound like you.
Her mother slaps the bed in delight.
And I wrote back, George says, and said I am very well thank you just very busy with important and time-consuming private family matters but so busy that I no longer have much time even to look at this phone. I will be in touch with you so please don’t get in touch with me. Goodbye for now. And then I deleted my messages. And then I deleted her messages.
Her mother laughs so loudly and so delightedly that Henry, asleep above them, wakes up and comes downstairs to see what’s happening.
When they’ve got Henry back to bed and settled again they get into bed themselves. Her mother puts the lights off. They listen for Henry’s breathing to regulate. It soon does.
Then this is the story her mother tells her quietly in the dark:
One day I was waiting at a cash machine in King’s Cross and there was this woman ahead of me, about the same age as me.
As I am, George says.
George, her mother says. Whose story is this?
Sorry, George says.
She gave me a smile because we were both waiting our turn. The bag she had at her feet was open, it was full of things that interested me, rolls of artisan paper and a big ball of green yarn or wool or gardening string, and a great many pens and pencils and some metal tools and rulers. Anyway her turn came and she was putting her numbers in and then she started patting all her pockets and riffling through that open bag and looking at the ground all around her feet and I said, are you looking for something? can I help? And she clapped her hand to her forehead and she said when did I become the kind of person who panics about where her bank card is when she’s at a cashpoint in the middle of getting money out of it when the card is right there in front of her, it’s just that she’s forgotten she’s actually put it into the machine? Which made me laugh because I recognized myself in it. And we had a chat and I asked her about the rolls of paper in her bag and she told me she made books, one-offs, like artworks, books that were themselves also art objects. You know me. I was interested. We swapped emails.
About a fortnight later there was a message from this woman in my inbox, all it said was : what do you think? and when I opened the attachment it was some photos of a beautiful little book, all colours and swerving written lines and figures, sort of like if Matisse had written it, and I wrote back and told her I really liked it, and she emailed me back saying but should I be doing something different with my life? and I was struck by the intimacy of the question, from a stranger to a virtual stranger. I wrote back and said, do you want to do something different with your life? Then I didn’t hear anything and I forgot about her again. Until one day she left me a voicemail inviting me to lunch, which was odd because I didn’t remember ever giving her my phone number, you know me, I never give it out. The voicemail said she had something to show me and invited me to come to her workshop first.
It was pretty exciting going there. There was lots of printers’ type, drawers of it open and half open, and inks and paint everywhere, and machines for cutting, and a
n old press, and bottles full of who knows what, fixatives, colours, I don’t know. I loved it.
The thing she wanted to show me was a glass box. She was making a set of books for a commission for someone who wanted her to make three of these books then deliver them to him sealed in a glass case. So these books would be full of beautifully decorated pages that no one’d ever be able to look at, without breakage at least.
And she sat there and said, so my quandary is, Carol, do I even bother to fill these books with beautiful text and pictures or do I just rough up their edges so it looks like there’s something in them, you know, wear them out and smudge them about a bit so it looks like they’ve been well worked, and deliver them to him and get paid and get away with doing much less work myself? Do I choose to be a charlatan or do I make quite a lot of work that the risk is no one will ever even see?
We went for lunch and we got quite drunk. She said, this is exciting for me because I get to watch you eat, and I said, what? really? something like that excites you?
But all the same. How flattering. Someone wanted to watch me eat.
Weird, George says.
Her mother smothers a laugh to herself.
I liked her more and more, she says. She was repressed and respectable and anarchic and rude and unexpected, she was trivial and wild both at once, like a bad girl from school. And she was lovely. She was attentive, sweet to me. And there was something, some glimmer of something. She’d look at me and I’d know there was something real in it, and I liked it, I liked how she paid attention to me, my life. Like she personally cared how I was feeling from day to day or what I was doing from one hour to the next. And she did kiss me, once. Properly, I mean against a wall, a real kiss –
Oh God, George says.
That’s exactly what your father said, her mother says.
You told dad? George says.
Of course I did, her mother says. I tell your dad everything. Anyway sweet heart, after that I knew it was a game. You always know where you are after a kiss. It was a pretty good kiss, George, I liked it fine. But all the same –