Ali Smith - How to be both

Master Francescho! the pickpocket called now from below.

Ercole! I called back down.

I was reworking the Graces, paler reminders now: give, accept, give back : but adequate Graces, still substantial: I’d sliced them out and replastered and repainted but I’d kept them human, made them all Agnolas like a triplet of herself 3 different ways.

Forgive me! the pickpocket shouted.

For what? I shouted back.

For signing the letter on your behalf! the pickpocket shouted up

(cause there had been murmurings among the assistants and workshop painters that they were being refused more money precisely cause I hadn’t signed, cause I hadn’t asked for more with them the times they’d asked before, which might make it look to the Marquis, they said, like I believed 10 pennies a square foot enough pay).

But not by my name, Ercole? I called back down.

But yes by your name, the pickpocket shouted up. And I can well do your hand, Master Francescho, as you know. We need paid. And the more of us asking, the better.

I brightened the apple of the farthest right Grace.

Ercole! I called down.

Yes, Master Francescho? he called up.

I leaned over the scaffolding and spoke quietly direct.

I no longer need an assistant. Pack your things. Find another master,

cause I knew it was simply a mistake, my mispayment, and Borse a man who cared above all things for justice : hadn’t I painted his head there underneath the very word justice carved in stone under a fine garlanded stone arch in a lunette that resembled his own double-faced medal? and beneath that a scene of him dispensing justice to grateful townspeople? He cared about justice more than anything (perhaps cause his own father, Nicco, as we all knew, the same way we knew the legends of the saints and all the holy stories, had a reputation not just for favouring illegitimate sons but for unspeakable unjustness having decided in a temper that his second wife, the beautiful one, and his firstborn son, the handsome one, had fallen in love with each other, for which he had them both beheaded in a dungeon then buried somewhere, nobody knew where): Borse cared so much about justice that in the anteroom on the other side of this wall on which I was brightening the apples of the Graces he was having a room made where he planned to try small matters of civic justice and we all knew he’d commissioned stucchi of Faith, Hope, Fortitude, Charity, Prudence, Temperance, but that he’d asked the French stucchi master most specifically for 6 Virtues only and to leave Justice out cause he was himself Justice, Justice was herself him, and when he was present in the room then Justice was present too since Justice had Borse’s chin, his head, his face, his chest and moreover his stomach.

Good work, good pay, as the great Cennini says in his Handbook for picturemakers: this is a kind of justice too that if you use good materials and you practise good skills then the least you may expect is that good money will be your reward: and if it so happens that it isn’t then God himself will reward you: this is what Cennini promises: so I’d write to the Marquis: I’d write now on the eve of New Year or tomorrow on New Year’s Day cause it’s a time of generosity (and maybe it was true, maybe the generous Borse did believe, cause I’d not signed my name on the other petitions, that I did think 10 pennies enough).

I saw sadness in the pickpocket’s back below: you can tell many things from a back: he was packing away his tools and things in his bags: who knew, maybe if Borse were to read a letter from me he’d not just right the error for me, he’d maybe be persuaded to be more generous to those lesser workers too, with a bit of luck and justice, though they’d need the luck, not being as worthy of it as me.

(I am small, sitting on stone in the smell of horse piss holding in my hand the shrunken head with the wing stuck out of it: the thing in my hand is the start of a tree, with a bit of luck and justice.

Luck, I know, is to do with chance happening.

But what’s justice? I call at my mother’s back.

She is on her way to the barrel full of linens.

Fairness, she calls over her shoulder. Rightness. Getting your due. You getting as much to eat and as much learning and as many chances as your brothers, and them as much and as many as anyone in this city or this world.

So justice is to do with food then, and with learning.

But what’s a fallen seed from a tree to do with any of it? I call.

She stops and turns.

We need both luck and justice to get to live the life we’re meant for, she says. Lots of seeds don’t get to. Think. They fall on stone, they get crushed to pieces, rot in the rubbish at the roadside, put down roots that don’t take, die of thirst, die of heat, die of cold before they’ve even broken open underground, never mind grown a leaf. But a tree is a clever creation and sends out lots of seeds every year, so for all those ones that don’t get to grow there are hundreds, thousands that will.

I look at how over by the brickpiles there’s a straggle of seedlings in a clump, seedlings not even as tall as me: they look like nothing at all: I look up at the roof where the 3 thin twiggy arms are proof that a seed’s taken root at the gutter: that’s luck: But justice? And I am not a seed or a tree: I am a person: I won’t break open: I haven’t got roots: how can I be seed or tree or both?

I still don’t see how justice is anything to do with seeds, I call.

You’ll learn, she shouts back from in the barrel trampling the linens again.

In a moment I hear her singing her working song.)

Master Francescho?

The pickpocket.

Aren’t you gone yet? I called down.

I’ve one last thing to say before I go, the pickpocket called. Can I come up?

The pickpocket had learned good pillars from me: he’d learned good rocks and bricks: he’d learned the drawn bow of a curve and the perspective behaviour of straight lines and he’d learned how lines brought together like woven threads will make a plane: I’d let him do some buildings in the lower space of May and some work on the workers there going about their daily business.

He wasn’t yet 20 years old: his hair still fell over his eyes: he was good at colour and at mixing thicknesses of lime and plaster: he had the understanding that a fresco needs a wall and that at the same time the skin we apply to a wall is as sensitive as our own skin and becomes as much a part of that wall as our skin is a part of us.

I caressed the lip of a Grace: he clambered on to the platform and stood behind me and watched me work.

I know you have to let me go, he said. But you should have signed the letter. You should have signed the first 2 we wrote. It was wrong of you not to. So I signed you this time. It was for the good of us all that I did it. And Master Francescho, you should know this too. The Marquis won’t be persuaded to give you any more money than us. You’ll get 10 pennies per foot. He won’t give you anything more.

He will, I said. It’s a mistake. Cause above all Borse is fair. When he hears he will sort his mistake.

He won’t, ever, the pickpocket said. Cause you should know, Master Francescho. That he likes the boys. Not the girls.

I split the lip of the Grace.

I dabbed the split away: I steadied myself on the wood.

And I should tell you too, the pickpocket was saying behind me. That when we were working on the month of May I heard him ask the Falcon to bring you to him, in the way he likes the new boys and men to be brought, cause he likes to be entertained by talent and he likes a talent to belong to him. And I heard the Falcon refuse him. Which is why you were never called to serve him in that way. But it’s not the Falcon who told him anything about you, Master Francescho. The Falcon knows your worth. Now, I’ll go if you still want, though I don’t want to. But I’ll wish you a fruitful New Year.