Ali Smith - How to be both

Wait — cause — think I remember: something: yes, I put some hands, 2 hands below his (I mean His) feet: something you’d only see if you really looked, hands that belong to the angels but all the same look like they don’t belong to anyone: like they’re corroded with gold, gold all over them like sores turned into gold, a velvet soup of gold lentils, gold mould as if blisters of the body can become precious metal

but why on earth did I?

(Can’t remem)

Look at all the angels round Him pretty with their whips and scourges, I was good

no, no, step back take a look at a proper distance at the whole thing

and other pictures in this room: stop looking at your own: look at others for edification.

Think I recog

oh Christ — that’s a –

Cosmo, isn’t it?

A Cosmo.

St Gerolamo —?

but ha ha oh dear God look at it piece of oh ho ho ho ridiculous nonsense

(from whom my saint averts his eyes with proper restraint and dignity)

showy Cosmo’s showy saint, mad, laughable, his hand in the air holding the rock up high about to stone himself so the patrons get their money’s worth: look at the tree all gesture-bent unnatural behind him and the blood all adrippy on his chest: dear God dear Motherfather did I come the hard way back through the wall of the earth the stratifications the rocks and the soil the worms and the crusts the stars and the gods the vicissitudes and the histories the broke bits of forgettings and rememberings all the long road from gone to here — for Cosmo to be almost the first thing as soon as I open my

Cosmo bloody Cosmo with his father a cobbler, no higher than mine, lower even: Cosmo high on nothing but court frippery vain as vain can: veering as ever in all his finery towards the gnarled and the unbeautiful: the fawning troupe of assistants attending to each mark he made like his every gesture was a ducal procession.

Though that picture over there, also a Cosmo, is truthfully, yes I admit, quite good

(but then the hanging baubles above her head I myself showed him how to make better when we worked in the, wasn’t it, palace of beautiful flowers? the time Cosmo feigned not knowing me though he knew exactly who I)

and that over there, that’s him, isn’t it? Never seen it before but it’s him: yes: ah: it’s a beauty: and that one there’s him too, is it?

That makes 4. In this 1 room.

4 Cosmos to my 1 saint.

Please God dear God send me right now back to oblivion: Jesus and the Virgin and all the saints and angels and archangels obscurate me fast as possible please cause I am not worthy &c and if Cosmo’s here, if the world’s all Cosmo same as it ever was –

but then again

from Cosmo I learned how to use the white lead to mark details in the underwash

( I forgive )

and from Cosmo I learned how to make the incision marks in the paint for the extra perspective

( I forgive ).

And anyway, look.

Up against Cosmo’s Gerolamo whose is really the real saint here?

Just saying.

And, just saying, but whose saint is it anyway that that boy with his back to me’s spending all his time

torch bearer, Ferara, seen from the back, he was a boy who ran past me in the street: it was when they were calling for painters for painting the palace of not being bored and I was up for the job, I’d worked on the panels of the muses at the palace of beautiful flowers with Cosmo and the rest and was now well known in Ferara and even more well known in Bologna, I didn’t need the court, no one in Bologna gave a toss about the court (anyway the court didn’t need me, the court had Cosmo ) no, wait, start at the

cause it truly began with the man they called the Falcon cause of his first name being Pellegrin: he was Borse’s adviser, a professor and scholar, he’d known Greek and Latin since he was a boy and he’d found some magic books in eastern languages that no one else even knew about: he knew the stars and the gods and the poems: he knew the legends and stories that the Ests all loved about the kings on their horses and their sons and half-sons and cousins and their magicians in caves and their joustings and maidens and rivals and who was in love with whom and whose horse was the best and the cleverest and fastest and most of all their neverending triumphant outwittings of the infidels and crushings of the moorish kings: the Falcon’d been appointed in charge of the new design of the walls of the big room in the palace of not being bored and he was looking for painters other than Cosmo ( terribly in demand , going around town bejewelled like a Marquis and though it was said that Cosmo’d be playing a major part in the wall design for the palace of not being bored in reality Cosmo’d glide in and out like a swan, I myself saw him a total of twice doing the minimum of sinop, for which, being so in demand he was mightily well paid, I heard) anyway he (not Cosmo, the Falcon) summoned me to his house.

The Falcon lived behind the building works for the castle: he came to the door when the door girl called him and first he looked my horse behind me up and down cause he was a wise enough man to know you can tell much about the person by the horse, and the coat on mine was glossy even after the road from Bologna, waiting for me with his head right down, his nose an inch above the ground and his nostrils connoisseuring the destination, never needing tethered or watched, cause let anybody but me try mounting Mattone they’d fly without wings through the air and hit the brickwork.

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).