Ali Smith - How to be both

This boy is a girl.

I knew it.

I know it cause we sat on that poor specimen of wall (which will not last) until a much older woman, bent by the years, came out of the dwelling behind us making a great furore: she poked the boy in the back with the bristle end of a brush on a long wood pole and she shouted something and as we came away the boy made, I think, apology, very polite and in the unbroken undisguised voice of what can only be girl.

Also, this girl is good at dance: I am enjoying some of the ways of this purgatorium now: one of its strangest is how its people dance by themselves in empty and music-less rooms and they do it by filling their ears with little blocks and swaying about to a silence, or to a noise smaller than the squee of a mosquito that comes through the little confessional grille in each of the blocks: the girl was doing a curving and jerking thing both, with the middle of her body, she went up then down then up again, sometimes so low down that it was a marvel to see her come back up again so quick, sometimes pivoting on one foot and sometimes on the other and sometimes on both with her knees bent then straightening into a sinuous undulate like a caterpillar getting the wings out of the caul, the new imago emerging from the random circumbendibus.

Also, this girl has a brother: he is several years younger, of the same open countenance but also fatter, weller, much less shadowed at the eyes, and dancing can be as catchy as laughing and I was not alone in this knowledge cause into the room came this small boy with long and brown curling hair to dance the same dance very badly (boy I know anatomically cause bare as a bacchus cherub from the midriff down): he danced the dance badly and laughingly half naked round her till the girl, who could not hear him and did not know he was doing it till she opened her eyes and saw him, roared like a furious African cat, hit him over the head with her hand and chased him from the room, by which I gauged them sister and brother.

She started the dance again: she performed its strangeness with such deftness and attention that I was filled with verve by her taking of her own ups and downs so earnestly.

I’ve come to like this girl who will so solemnly dance with herself.

Right now she and I are outside the house that is home to her and the brother: we are sitting in a garden of shivering flowers.

Through the small window she holds in her hands we are viewing frieze after frieze of lifelike scenes of carnal pleasure-house love enacted before our eyes: the love act has not changed: no variation here is new to me.

Cold here and she’s shivering too: surmise she is watching the love act repeating like this to keep herself warm.

The little brother came out here too and by a single glance in his direction she both warned him and dismissed him: this is a girl with a very strong eye: he hasn’t gone far, he is behind a small wicker fence about as tall as he is, behind which there are tall black barrels hidden close to the door of the house and I think has some mischief planned: every so often he dashes out on to the grass in front of the fence and picks up a stone or twig then dashes back behind the fence and he has done this several times now without her noticing him once.

Girl, I remember it, the way the game of love makes the rest of the world disappear.

Best not to watch it through such a small window, though.

Best on the whole not to watch it at all: love is best felt: the acts of love are hard and disillusioning to view like this unless done by the greatest master picturemakers: otherwise the seeing of them being done and enjoyed by figurations of other people will always lock you outside them (unless your pleasure comes from taking solo pleasure or pleasure at one remove, in which case, yes, that’s your pleasure).

Now inevitably I am thinking of Ginevra, of most lovely Isotta, of silly little lovely little Meliadusa, and Agnola, and the others into whose company I came first in my 17th year the night Barto and I, having been to see the processions in Reggio, travelled back to the city and Barto took me to what he called a fine place to spend the night .

What do you think, Francescho, will we go and see the Marquis be celebrated becoming the Duke? Barto’d said.

I asked permission of my father cause I’d a longing to see a throng: he said no: he said it unblinkingly.

Tell him it’ll be good for your work, Barto said. We’ll go a journey and see history be made.

I repeated the gist of this to my father.

There’s much for a painter to see there, I said, and if you ever want me to get closer to the court and its workshops there’s much I ought to know, much I ought not to miss.

My father shook his head: no.

If these fail, Barto said, tell him you’re going with me and that this is an intelligent thing to let a painter do cause the more chance my family has to see your skill — you’ll draw the procession, won’t you — the more chance there is they’ll give you work when you’re fledged. And tell him you’ll be away for only one night and that my parents will give you your lodging in Reggio at one of our houses.

But your houses are nowhere near Reggio, I said.

Francescho, you’re green as an early leaf, Barto said.

There are a lot of kinds of green, even in just the earliest leaves, I said.

How many kinds of green are there? Barto said.

7 main kinds altogether, I said. And perhaps 20 to 30, maybe more, variations on each of these kinds.

And you’re all of those greens put together, he said, cause anyone but you would already have gathered and would never have needed to be told that I’ve other plans for us than our spending the night at Reggio. Look at you, you’re still calculating, aren’t you, how to make how many greens is it?

It was true: so he laughed and threw an arm round my shoulder and kissed the side of my head.

My sweet unassuming friend, taker of things, people, birds, skies, even the sides of buildings at their word, he’d said. I love you for your greenness, and it’s partly in honour of it that I want you to persuade your father to let you accompany me. So persuade him. Trust me. You’ll never regret it.

Well, Barto was always wise to how to go about such things, cause sure enough the thought of a Garganelli bed with his offspring tucked in its sheets made my father blink, pause, then say the yes we needed though he gave me plenty ultimatums about behaviour and even had a new jacket made for me: I packed some things, left early in the morning and met Barto: we got to the town of Reggio and we saw it all.

We saw more people than I’d ever imagined and all packed into the square of the small town and we saw the flags, we saw the white banners with the figures painted on them: we saw it all very well too from the balcony of the house of Garganelli family friends (who were off on a Venetian ship touring to the Holy Land, Barto said, so didn’t care who was on their balcony): there were horsebacked courtiers: there were boys waving and tossing flags high into the air and then catching them: then a platform came pulled by horses so white they must’ve been white-leaded: on the higher bit of it there was an empty seat, tall, painted and cushioned like a throne and 4 youths stood at each of its corners draped in togas, meant to be ancient Romans of great wisdom with their faces charcoaled to make them look old and we were so close we could see the drawn lines at their brows and eyes and mouths: below them on the lower bit of the platform were 4 more boys, 1 at each corner, holding tall banners with ensigns of the town’s and the new Duke’s colours, that made 8 boys altogether and a 9th one too sitting at the front, and all 9 dressed-up boys struggling to keep their balance cause there was nothing to hold on to when the man leading the horses stopped them and the platform rocked to a halt below us.