by Ali Smith
So when I saw him look to my horse I liked him the better for it : then he turned to me, had a look at me, and I had a look back : he wasn’t old and wise, he was roughly the same years as me, thin for a scholar who’re usually heavy and inadequate from all the nothing but books : his nose was imperial Roman (the Marquis’d like that, they were mad for old Romans, the Ests, almost as mad as they were for the stories of routing the infidel and conquering Afric) and his eye was fast : he looked me up and down : his eye stopped at the front of my breeches : he stared there as he spoke : he’d heard I was good, he said.
Then he looked back up at my eyes and waited to see what I’d say and right then – my luck – the boy ran past us in the street, a beauty of a boy moving so fast that I felt the air shift (still feel it now when I remember) cause the boy was himself all air and fire, a lit torch in his hand, in the other a banner, was it? a long bit of tunic? he ran up the steps holding it up so that it caught the wind in the loops of it, he was off to the court : that’s where the jobs were, at the court, and the rumour was that the pictures they wanted in the palace this time were court pictures, pleasure pictures, not sacred things but pictures of the Marquis himself, of a year of his life in the town and him doing the different things he did in the months of his year with real everyday things running through them exactly like that boy running past : I thought to myself if I can catch that running boy I’ll show this Falcon whose eye (my own eye saw) was taken by the back of the boy how good and how fast and how well I’d
then they’d know how exemplary
and imburse me accordingly
so I said as the boy disappeared Mr de Prisciano, a pen and a paper and somewhere to lean and I’ll catch you that rabbit faster than any falcon he raised an eyebrow at the cheek of me but I was being comical, he saw (still not unsweet on me himself at this time) and called for the door girl to fetch the things I wanted while I kept in my head the speed and the shape of the boy, the way he’d held up the silk and caught the air as he went, a breathing thing in itself, that’s what I wanted, cause I’m good at the real and the true and the beautiful and can do with some skill and with or without flattery the place where all 3 meet : the maid brought the things and a board for bread (a wink to her without him seeing, she reddened a little under her cap, I reddened back, bianco sangiovanni, cinabrese, verde-terra, rossetta, also the cap, pretty thing, its edge all silk fray, I’d use it later on the thread-cutter’s head in the working women round the loom in the corner of the month of March cause though the Falcon specified he wanted Fates painted into March – like he wanted Graces painted into April – I wanted them real women and real working too).
I wiped the crumbs off the board in the doorway (the Falcon watched them fall on his threshold, narrowed his eyes) and on the paper though the boy had vanished I mapped his constellation there, there, there the back of his head, base of his spine, place of this foot, the other, this arm, the other, and sketch in a head (well the head barely mattered, it wasn’t what mattered) but I spent most time on his back foot, the place with the curve of the sole on the rise : get it right, how it sprung the whole body, just that single detail and it’ll lift the whole picture like the foot lifted him : get it right and the picture itself will lift (cause the way he’d gone up the stone steps had made even the stone of them unheavy) : he was off to a ceremony maybe, the boy? He had the torch lit though it was daylight, ergo I added the suggestion of a door so he’d need a lit torch, doubled a line into a lintel above his head for somewhere to go and I shaded in front of and round him so the torch in his hand had more purpose (made the flame on it like long hair flowing, but upward instead of downward, beauty of impossibility) then round him on the ground a scatter of small rocks, twig here, 4 or 5 by the wall, then right at the front 3 stones and a brickslice very like a slice of cheese all arranged round grassblades in a curtsey for the Falcon as if even grass will bow respectfully at such a man.
(After which, a final touch, there at the end of a grassblade, 2 or 3 points, a slip of the pen? a butterfly? for my pleasure alone cause no one else’d notice.)
Long gone, the picture, I expect.
Long gone the life I, the boy and the man I, the sleek good sweet-eyed horse Mattone I, the blushing girl I.
Long gone, torch bearer Ferara seen from the back, ink on paper folded torn eaten, wasp nest shredded into air burnt away to ash to air to nothing.
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 rin
g, 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.
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 h
andle 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.