Ali Smith: How to be both

So things far away and close could be held together, in the same picture?

So there were ways to learn to do such a thing?

I reached for the lace ties at my chin. I held them in my hand.

All these things you will need to know, he said. And if we can’t find someone I’ll give you what training I can. I know a great deal about buildings and walls and the workings, the rules and the necessities of construction. The construction of pictures, well. It’s bound to have something in common.

I pulled on the ties and I loosened the gown front: I stood up and the whole gown slipped off the clothes trunk then slipped down away from me like the peeled back petals of a lily and me at its centre standing straight like the stamen: I stepped out naked over its folds: I held out my hand for the leggings.

He went through to my brothers’ things and came back with a clean shirt.

You’ll need a name, he said as I pulled the shirt on over my head.

My mother’s name began with an f: Ff: I tried it on my tongue to see where it’d lead: my father misheard me: Vv.

Vincenzo? he said.

He flushed up with excitement.

He meant Vincenzo Ferreri, the Spanish priest dead long long ago, 20 whole years or so and everybody saying for all those years he should’ve been made saint: the travelling sellers were already selling him like a saint in the pamphlet writ by the nuns full of the pictures and stories of him: he was famous for miracles and for converting 8 thousand moorish moslem infidels and 25 thousand jews, raising 28 people from the dead and curing 4 hundred sick people (just by them lying down for a moment on the couch he’d lain on when he was ill and got better on himself) and also for freeing 70 people from devils: his hat alone had done many miracles.

But my father liked most the miracle of the hostel and the wilderness.

Vincenzo had been riding through the wilderness on his donkey praying very hard and he and the donkey were near exhaustion from the prayers when suddenly they arrived at the front door of a beautiful well-appointed hostel: Vincenzo went in: it was as beautiful inside as out: he stayed in it overnight: the service, the food, the bed were all very agreeable and gave him exactly the respite he needed to go on next day with his sojourn through the wild places full of infidels and unbelievers: next morning when he got on his donkey, that same donkey was like one 10 years younger and had no fleabites and wasn’t lame any more: off they went, and it was 6 or 7 miles later when the morning sun first hit his shaven head that Vincenzo realized he’d forgotten his hat.

He turned the donkey around and they went back over their own hooftracks to the hostel to fetch it: but when they got there there was no hostel and his hat was hanging on the branch of an old dead tree in the exact same place where the hostel had been.

This miracle was one of the reasons housebuilders and wallmakers wanted Vincenzo Ferreri a saint: they planned to claim him as patron.

My father prayed to him every morning.

I thought of my mother telling me the stories of some of the miracles of Vincenzo, her arms round me, me on her knee.

Vincenzo, petitioned by me, had made no difference to her going or her coming back

(clearly I had petitioned wrongly).

I thought of my mother’s French-sounding name: I thought of the French shape that means the flower her name meant.

Francescho, I said.

Not Vincenzo? my father said.

He frowned.

Francescho, I said again.

My father held his frown: then he smiled in his beard a grave smile down at me and he nodded.

On that day with that blessing and that new name I died and was reborn.

But — Vincenzo –

ah, dear God –

that’s who my sombre saint is on the little platform with his eyes averted and the old Christ over his head.

St Vincenzo Ferreri.

Hey: boy: you hear me? St Vincenzo , famed across all the oceans for making unhearing people hear .

Cause listen, when Vincenzo spoke, even though it was in Latin the people whether they knew any Latin or none at all knew exactly what he was saying — even people 3 miles away could hear him as if he was speaking right next to their ears in their own vernacule.

The boy hears nothing: I can’t make him.

I’m no saint, am I? no.

Well good that I’m not, cause look now, here’s a very pretty woman, well, from behind at least, stopped in front of my St Vincenzo

(4 to 1, and she chose me not Cosmo)

(just saying)

(not that I’m being prideful)

(another miracle, that she did, thanks be to St Vincenzo)

and since I’m no saint I can have my own close look at her, from the back, from her bare neck just peeking through her long white-gold hair down the line of her spine to her waist then down to her bit-too-thin behind –

but so’s that boy, look at him sitting up at attention, I swear he felt her come into the room cause I felt the hairs on his neck stand up when he saw her glide through the door over the floor like the room was incomplete without her, he saw her before I did, like struck by a shaft of lightning, and look at him now watching her settling her feathers in front of Vincenzo: I can’t see what his eyes are doing but I bet you they’re wide open and his ears and brow forward like goathead: plus I can tell from his back, he knows her already: boy in love? The old stories never change: but in love with this woman? Nowhere near his equal in years, far from it, even from behind I can tell she’s decades ahead, more than old enough to be his mother: but she’s not his mother, that’s clear, and has no idea he’s there, or his ardour, even though something between them’s as strong as hatred or a ray of heat from him that’s aimed at her .

Hello. I’m a no-eyed painter no one can hear and there’s a boy here wants you to — I don’t know — something.

She can’t hear me: course she can’t: but she’s giving Vincenzo a good look over and Vincenzo, being saint, is averting his eyes (though the angels with the whips and bows up there are ready for anything).

She’s standing with one foot up on its heel, a horsehoof at rest: so elegantly her body adjusts the weight of her head: she takes a look at St Vincenzo, up, down, up again –

then she turns on that heel and she’s off

(not even a single glance at a single Cosmo by the way,

just saying)

and the boy’s sprung up on his own feet like a leveret and off he goes too after her, and me too helplessly dragging after him like one foot’s caught in the stirrup of a saddle on a horse I’m unfamiliar with who does not know or care for me: and as we go, out of the corner of my no-eye I see a picture by — Ercole, little Ercole the pickpocket, whom I loved and who loved me! and wait — stop — is that, is it really? — dear God old Motherfather it’s Pisano, Pisanello, I know by the dark and the way it works the light.

Look all you like, since I cannot, cause it is as if a rope attached to the boy is attached to me and has circled me and cannot be unknotted and where the boy goes I must go whether I want it or don’t, through a threshold, through another room — look! Uccello! horses! –

I protest

cause this ejection is against my will: I do not choose it.

As soon as I discover to whom to complain I will do so, in a letter.

To whichever illustrious most holy interceding Excellency it concerns, this nth day of n in the year nnnn.

Most illustrious and excellent holy Lordship most inimitable and in perpetual honoured servitude: please deliver this petition of mine to God the Fathermother Motherfather One True Lord of All: I am the painter Franc. del C. who has made for Him in His honour and by His grace alone, so many works, of good materials, just saying, and done them with good honed skills, one of which said works I have witnessed is hung in His halls: and who worked alongside and as equal to other painters whose works also are hung in His halls: and here I make to Him my petition in the hope of His hearing me and granting me what little I ask: I —