How to Be Both

by Ali Smith

  Once the girl held one picture of this woman so close to a source of light, to see it more fully, as if to illuminate things in its dark, that I thought surely the picture would burn : but the lights in purgatorium are an enchanted kind of flame and nothing in the end caught fire.

  Either this woman, or it is St Monica Victims who is the girl’s loss? Or perhaps one of the 2 girls in the picture on the sunlit street, the 2 friends, the light one and the dark one, one in gold, one in blue : maybe it is all of them who vanished : perhaps there has been a blue sickness here and they have all died of it.

  But the girl is an artist! Cause she has peeled down off her north wall all the many pictures of the house we sit and wait outside so often, and she has, on a table in the room, been making a new work out of them and I cannot help but feel I have hit target with her cause the new work is in the shape of – a brick wall.

  As if each of the little studies is a brick in this wall, she has lined them up with the right irregularity and she has drawn and shaded with lead the mortar lines round and between each and cut some pictures short for each alternating brickline at the ends of her wall, just like cut or turned bricks look, it does look very like a wall! She’s artisan and can very well make good things : the picture wall is very long and falls and curls off the table on to the floor and part of the way across the room as if the room is a divided territory in which

  yes

  here come all the memories complete with all their forgettings

  doing St Vincenzo for good money in Bologna, I’d got a thick aurum musicum (cause the great Cennini, who is only rarely wrong, is wrong about this gold when he says it is not as good to use as other gold) : I had painted my dead father up above Vincenzo’s head in the form of a Christ : not blasphemic I hoped cause my father had so loved and revered Vincenzo, the new saint patron of builders and brickmakers : my father had celebrated his saint day 8 times in the 8 years before he died

  (though I liked too the notion that the Christ might maybe have lived longer than they all say that he did, which, yes, is a blaspheming but worth darkening a corner of the soul for and with any luck forgivable).

  The painting was full of egg : I wanted it richer and richer, especially the cloakwork and the skin of the saint.

  You can’t use that much, the pickpocket said. It won’t set.

  Wait and see, Ercole, I said.

  And the lazzurrite is too thick, the pickpocket said.

  Wait and see, I said again.

  But I needed more of the gold so I went for a walk to stretch my eyes and to fetch more from the colourmakers, also to pay them fairly too cause I owed them a deal of money

  (had done a St Lucia with more of the gold on it than I could afford at the time : she had eyes on a sprig in her hand, eyes opening at the end of the sprig like flowers will, cause the great Alberti writes that the eye is like a bud, which made me think of eyes opening like plantwork, cause St Lucia is the saint of eyes and light and is usually seen blind or eyeless and many painters give her eyes but not in her face, instead they put them on a platter or set them in the palm of her hand – but I let her keep all her eyes, I did not want to deprive her of any.

  But Master Francescho, if the stalk has been picked, how long will the eyes last held up out of water like that? They’ll wilt and die, the pickpocket said.

  Ercole, you’re an idiot, I said.

  No, they’re every bit as fragile as real flowers, the pickpocket said. If not more so.

  He looked at the picture: he looked near tears.

  First of all she’s a saint, so the flowers are saintly. Which means the flowers won’t die, I said.

  Saints are all about death. It’s prerequisite, for saints, he said.

  Second, it’s a picture, which means the flowers can’t die cause they’re in a picture, I said, and third, if they do die, it’ll be in the special saint world of the picture that they do and she can always pick herself another sprig from whatever bush she picked those from.

  Ah, the pickpocket said.

  He went on with his work but I saw him keep glancing at the slender stalk with the eyes on the end of it in the hand of the saint : from his face, all unease, and his own eyes unable not to look, I knew it would be a good picture).

  On my way back from the colourmakers I was coming along the river near the place where people leave putrid things and I saw a good pair of boots lying on their sides behind a hill of bushes whose roots were all covered in rubbish and dumped guts and entrails.

  I went to see what size they were : flies rose : as I did I saw one of the boots move by itself.

  Behind the rubbish through the straggle of branches I saw hands in the air as if attached to no body : they were covered in pustules like coated in a deep soup paste made of lentils but lentils coloured blue and black : I remember the smell : the smell was strong : I came round the bushy hill and I saw that the hands were on arms and at the ends of the arms there were shoulders and a head but with this pox over everything, even the face : he was breathing : he was alive : something moved in the whites of his eyes, the eyes saw me and a mouth opened below them.

  Don’t come any nearer, he said.

  I stepped well back : I stood in a place where I could still see the hands through the twiggy stuff.

  Are you still there? the man said.

  I am, I said.

  Go away, he said.

  Are you young or old? I said (cause I couldn’t tell from looking).

  I think young, he said.

  You need a new skin, I said.

  He made a noise a bit like a laugh.

  This is my new skin, he said.

  What’s your name? I said.

  I don’t know, he said.

  Where are you from? I said. Is there no one to help you? Family or friends? Tell me where you live.

  I don’t know, he said.

  What happened to you? I said.

  I had a headache, he said.

  When? I said.

  I don’t remember, he said. I only remember the headache.

  Shall I fetch the nuns? I said.

  It was nuns who brought me here, he said.

  Which nuns? I said.

  I don’t know, he said.

  What can I do? I said. Tell me.

  You can go away, he said.

  But what will happen to you? I said.

  I’ll die, he said.

  I got back to the workshop and I was full of the vision : I shouted to the pickpocket that we were to paint strands of bush and tree, but to paint them like they were both seeing and blind.

  You mean with actual eyes on, like in your Lucia? the pickpocket asked.

  I shook my head : I didn’t know how : all I knew was I had just seen the man, the rubbish, the leaves, the twigs of the scrubland and I had understood pity and pitilessness both as something to do with the push of the branches.

  The imperturbable nature of foliage, I said.

  Eh? the pickpocket said.

  He painted me a branch exactly as branches look, that’s right –

  cause I remember everything now –

  say it quick before I forget again –

  the day I opened an eye, the other wouldn’t open, I was flat horizontal on the ground, had I fallen off the ladder?

  I found you wrapped in the old horse blanket half an hour ago, he said, no, don’t – don’t do that, the heat coming off you, you’re sweating and it’s so hot outside, Master Francescho, so how can you be cold? Can you hear me? Can you hear?

  What I saw was the pickpocket above me at my forehead, he poured water on to his sleeve and put his arm on my forehead again, too cold : people ran away out of the place : everyone but the pickpocket who opened the buttons of my jacket then took a knife to my shirt then cut further, deeper, sliced open the wraps of my binding and peeled it back and open saying forgive me, Master Francescho, it’s to help you breathe and I mean you no disrespect : I was worried, flailed my arms, furious, not about the cutting of the
binding but about the prophets and the doctors we were painting on the walls and the ceiling (cause there were no real doctors brave enough for that room that day and the only doctors near me were pictures), the best work I’d done so far, not finished yet and we’d been fully paid in advance for it : I told the pickpocket to finish the prophets but to paint out the doctors altogether : he said he would : I felt better when I heard it : never leave work unfinished, Ercole : he got me out of that place where we were now not wanted cause of the colours that had come in my skin and carried me on his own back to a bed, I don’t know where, it was next to a wall : whatever the room was it faded and sharpened and cracked round me as if a quake happened and when the whitewash cracked in the wall I saw the people –

  Ercole, tell me, I said, who those fine people are who are coming through the wall. I can’t make them out, quite.

  What people? Ercole said. Where?

  Then he understood.

  Ah, them, he said, they’re a troupe of young fine people, they’re coming out of the woods and they’ve wound oak leaves and branches through their hair and round their necks and round their wrists and their ankles, they’ve the scent of trees all round them like a garland too as if they’re dressed in tree and flowers instead of clothes, and they’re carrying great overflowing armfuls of the flowers and grasses they’ve picked in the meadow out behind the wood, grass and flowers so scented that the fragrance of them is coming ahead like a herald, and I know that if you could have seen them properly, Master Francescho, you’d want to paint them, and if you’d painted them you’d have caught them right cause they look the way that means they’ll never die, or more, that if they do, they won’t mind or hold it against life, shall I lower the blind, is it too bright for you in here? he said.

  I congratulate you, Ercole, I said. It is so bright it’s dark

  can’t remember

  what came next

  but that’s what a proper burnishing of gold does : properly done it will give out both at once darkness and brightness : I taught the pickpocket to burnish : I taught him hair and branches : I taught him rocks and stones and how they hold every colour in the world and how every colour in every picture ever made comes from stone, plant, root, rock and seed : I taught him the body of the son held in the mother’s arms, the last supper, the miracle of the water and wine, the animals standing round the stable and the day going on behind it all, in both the foreground and background of it all, from death to last supper to wedding to birth.

  I taught him, too, how things and beings shown to be moving upwards into the air always have about them the most and the best vitality : he was always loyal, sweet pickpocket : I remember now the winter after we finished the frescoes in the palace of not being bored sending him back to Ferara again, and he went without complaint, cause I wanted to know how the work was looking nearly one year dry.

  He went on the Wednesday and came back on the Friday straight to the church we were restoring the Madonna in.

  He’s only changed one thing since we were there, one thing in the whole room, the pickpocket said. His own face.

  Who has? The Falcon? I said.

  Borse, of course, the pickpocket said. He’s had his face redone throughout the months, including your months. I asked the man at the door, I know him, old friend of my father’s. He says Borse brought in his cousin Baldass to redo it.

  The pickpocket told me the doorman had welcomed him like a son and taken him through to the serving quarters where they’d all done the same and fed him and fussed over him and asked after me –

  (they asked after me?)

  – yes, he said. And listen, that’s not all. Borse is away a lot these days cause he’s decided to build a mountain – not just move a mountain, since faith can do that, easy, but make a mountain, a whole new one, big as an Alp, in a place there’s not been one before. So there’s a lot of dragging and shifting and piling of rocks at Monte Santo and a lot of stoneworkers being worked to near-death, and sometimes to actual death and when that happens Borse adds the bodies to his mountain.

  But Master Francescho, the pickpocket said. This other stuff they told me. Our month room has become quite famous among folk. There’s often a crowd comes to the palace from the town and when they get in there they go and stand in front of your justice scene. They just stand there and look. They never say anything out loud. Borse thinks it’s that they like to come to see the picture of him, you know, giving out justice. But the doorman says the people, when they leave that room, go on their way as pleased as if someone’s put money in their pockets. They come especially, his wife told me while she poured stew into my bowl, to see the face you painted in the blackness, the face there’s only half of, whose eyes – your eyes, Master Francescho –look straight out at them, as if the eyes can actually see them over the top of Borse’s head.

  They’re not my eyes, I said.

  Uh huh, the pickpocket said.

  You didn’t tell them they’re my eyes? I said.

  Wouldn’t matter if I had, he said. I know they’re your eyes. I see your eyes every day. But they think what they like. The doorman’s wife told me all the women who come to look go away talking about how the eyes are a woman’s eyes. All the men who come to look go away sure the eyes are a man’s. And you know how you made it only half a face, a face without a mouth? Like there are things that can’t be said? People come for miles to see it and nod their heads at each other about it. And they told me this too, listen to this – that a great many workers are always coming to the palace now, infidel workers and other field workers, workers from our own south and the poor working locals too, and they knock on the door in large numbers, sometimes as many as 20 at a time, to pay their respects, they tell the doorman, to show obeisance to Borse. By which they mean they want to bow before him in person, which Borse lets them do, if he’s there, and he always sees them in the virtue room.

  So? I said.

  Think, Master Francescho, the pickpocket said. Cause to get to the virtue room you have to pass through the month room, don’t you?

  So we’ve turned him into the popular man he wanted us to paint him as? I said.

  The pickpocket laughed : he took off his travelling coat : he’d been telling me it all so fast he hadn’t even put his bags down : he did now and sat on the softer of them at my feet and went on with his tale.

  The story goes, the pickpocket said, that when the workers passing through the room of the months get anywhere near the far end of that room they veer towards the month of March where they stop below your worker painted in the blue and stand there for as long as they can. Some have even started coming in with their sleeves full of hidden flowers and at a given signal between them all they let their arms fall to their sides and the flowers fall out of their clothes on to the floor beneath him. When they’re made to move on, they go in and they bow to Borse like they’re meant to, it takes about half a minute to, then they’re escorted from the palace back through the room of the months and they strain their heads round on their necks to keep their eyes on the picture for as long as they can the whole length of the room.

  And one day 25 or so of them got in there and were standing below him, dust coming off them from the fields, all looking up at him, and they refused to be moved on for nearly an hour, pretended not to understand the language when asked, though in the end when they went they went quite peaceably.

  And Borse hasn’t had it altered? I said (and my voice came out like the squeak of a mouse).

  Borse has no idea it even happens, the pickpocket said. Nobody’s told him. Nobody cares to, and he’s never seen it with his own eyes, has he? Since he’s always on the other side of the wall squeezed into the chair in the room of the virtues waiting to be bowed to. When he’s not off in Monte Santo, that is, making that new mountain.

  For that moment I felt a sorrow for him, Borse the Just, whose vanity reminded me of me –

  but what I really felt was frightened that something I’d done or made might
have such wild effect.

  Your stories are nothing but flattery, I said.

  They’re nothing but true, the pickpocket said.

  I don’t want to hear any more of your lies, I said.

  You sent me to see. I saw. Now I’m telling you, the pickpocket said. I thought you’d like it. I thought you’d be pleased. You’re such a vain cunt, I thought you’d be delighted.

  I hit him across the top of the head.

  I don’t believe you even went there, I said.

  Ow! he said. Right. That’s it. Hit me again and I’m leaving.

  I hit him again.

  He left.

  Good.

  I put away all the work things : I went off home to my rooms, to bed : I locked the door against the pickpocket, whose habit it was to sleep at the foot of the bed : he could sleep in the open air tonight

  (he came back 3 days later,

  sweet pickpocket, who’d die still young, though long after me, of too much drink, tempus edax, forgive me)

  as for me, I lay in the bed that night by myself and wondered if Cosmo had heard about my pictures and about all the people coming to look at them.

  Cosmo bloody Cosmo.

  I am small : I am only newly become Francescho : I am learning to tint parchments and papers and to mix colours for painting the range of different skin and flesh tones in all the different lights : I’m teaching myself from books while my father is working on a house near the edge of the town and one day in an empty room in the half-house I’m leaning out of the brickwork which will become a window and I see crossing the meadow the son of the cobbler, everybody knows who he is cause he’s been taken on at the court : he’s young, he’s to paint the pennants and horsecoats and the armour they use in tournaments, but those who know anything about pictures also know he is a painter of pictures himself so full of twisting and arguing life that they surprise everyone who sees them : as he crosses the meadow it is as if it is revealed to me : he is a being wholly formed of and giving off the colour green : cause everything about him as he walks through the high grasses (he has left the path the people generally use to cross the land and is making his way across a wild-grassed place instead) is green : his head, his shoulders, his clothes are tinted green : above all, his face is the greenest green : it is as if his body gives out a greenness, one I can nearly taste, as if my mouth has been filled with leaves and grass : although I know of course it is the meadow casting its colour on to him, all the same he’s the reason the grasses spread round him for miles are the green they are.