Ali Smith: How to be both

(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.