Ali Smith - How to be both

There doesn’t seem to be hunting or cruelty in the top parts, just the lower parts.

The unicorns have horns that look like they’re made of lit-up glass.

The clothes all the people are wearing look as if breeze is blowing through them.

George turns towards her mother and is surprised by how young and bright she looks standing under the blue.

What is this place? George says.

Her mother shakes her head.

Palazzo, she says.

Then she says a word that George can’t catch.

I’ve never seen anything like it, her mother says. It’s so warm it’s almost friendly. A friendly work of art. I’ve never thought such a thing in my life. And look at it. It’s never sentimental. It’s generous, but it’s sardonic too. And whenever it’s sardonic, a moment later it’s generous again.

She turns to George.

It’s a bit like you, she says.

Then she doesn’t say anything. She just looks.

The place is completely silent behind them except for the lady attendant who has been charmed by Henry into leading him from picture to picture and telling him the words for whatever he points at.

Cavallo, the woman says.

Horse, Henry says.

Si! the woman says. Bene. Unicorni. Cielo. Stelle. Terra. Dei e dee e lo zodiaco. Minerva. Venere. Apollo. Minerva Marzo Ariete. Venere Aprile Toro. Apollo Maggio Gemelli. Duca Borso di Ferrara. Dondo la giustizia. Dondo un regalo. Il palio. Un cagnolino.

She sees George and her mother are both listening to her too. She points at the blank and faded walls.

Secco, she says.

She points at the still-picture-covered walls.

Fresco, she says.

She points at the really good bright end wall.

Mando o andato a Venezia per ottenere il meglio azzurro.

I think she’s saying that the blue colour is Venetian, her mother says.

George’s mother goes over to speak to the attendant. She speaks in English. The attendant speaks back in Italian which her mother doesn’t speak. They smile at each other and have a conversation.

What did she say? George asks her mother as they leave the room through the curtained door and go down the stairs.

I’ve no idea, her mother says. But it was nice to talk to her.

Afterwards they sit at an outside restaurant table in the garden of this place. Yellow sweet-smelling flowers drop off the trees on to their heads and on to the table. George notices a huge crack in the outside of the palace building up near the roof.

The earthquake maybe, her mother says. Quite recent. Last year. I think we’re lucky to have got to see it at all. I think it’s just reopened to the public.

Is that why some of the walls have pictures and some just blank plaster? George says. And two of the people in the chariots on the end wall have faces and one of them doesn’t?

I don’t know, her mother says. I don’t know much about it. It was quite hard to find out anything. But I’m finding it quite enjoyable, not knowing.

But what about the moral conundrum? George says.

The what? her mother says.

The getting paid more for the better art, George says.

Oh, yes. That, her mother says. Well.

She tells George again about the artist who did part of the room five hundred and fifty years ago, who thought his work should be paid better than everybody else’s in the room and wrote a letter asking the Duke for more money.

In fact, what happened is something even more compelling, she says. Because that letter he wrote’s the only reason we know anything about that artist even existing. And they only found that letter a hundred years ago. Which was more than four hundred years after he painted his bit of the walls. For four hundred years he didn’t exist. No one even knew the room had frescoes in it till only about a hundred or so years ago, end of the eighteen hundreds. They’d been whitewashed over for hundreds of years. Then some whitewash fell off the walls and they found these pictures underneath. The room’d been lost till then.

So if you were in a room, I mean like if you were just sitting in a room. Could the room you were actually in get — lost? Henry says.

He looks stricken.

No, George says. Don’t be an idiot.

Don’t call your brother an idiot, George’s mother says.

You’re an idiot, Henry says.

Don’t call your sister an idiot, their mother says.

I didn’t call him an idiot, I said nidiot, George says. Nidiot is much worse than just idiot.

You’re far and away more of a nidiot than me, Henry says.

Than I am, George says.

Her mother laughs.

You can’t not do that, can you? she says. It’s your nature, isn’t it?

Do what? George says.

Henry runs off into the cow parsley at the rough end of the garden where there are some modern-looking sculptures and the meadow has been left to grow as high as it likes. Because the grass is so high he vanishes completely.

This is like a magic place, her mother says.

It’s true that it is kind of spectacular here, George thinks — and that’s the second time she’s thought the word spectacular — because when they walked out here a moment ago and down the garden path to this restaurant, which looked like it might be a junk shop but turns out to serve pasta and wine, a jazz track with old-fashioned piano and trumpets suddenly started playing as if by itself in the air (in reality out of one of the restaurant’s speakers) as if especially for them.

Now the garden fills with Italian schoolchildren younger than George and older than Henry. They sit round the tables and talk to each other.

Did he get the money in the end? George says.

Who? her mother says.

The painter, George says. Because he really was better. If he painted the part of the room at the far end.

I don’t know, George, her mother says. I know almost nothing about it. I only really know what I’ve told you, which is what it said under the picture when I saw it at home. When we get back I’ll read up about it. Though, you know, it might just be that our eyes are more used to finding some parts of the room more beautiful than the others, because of what we now expect beauty to be. It might be our standards rather than theirs . But I agree. I agree with you. Some of it is really outstandingly beautiful. Some of it is breathtaking. And I find it pretty interesting that the only reason we know that the painter who did that wall existed, even lived at all, is that he asked for more.

Like Oliver Twist, George says.

Her mother smiles.

In some ways, she says.

What was his name? George says.

Her mother screws up her eyes.

You know, I knew this, George, I did know. I read it when we were at home. But right now I can’t remember it, her mother says.

We came all this way to see a picture you like that much but you can’t remember the name of the man who did it? George says.

Her mother widens her eyes at her.

I know, she says. But it kind of doesn’t matter, does it, that we don’t know his name. We saw the pictures. What more do we need to know? It’s enough just that someone painted them and then one day we came here and saw them. No?

I could look it up on your phone, George says.

Then she immediately feels a mixture of things ranging from unpleasant all the way to bad.

(Guilt and fury:

— Sing me a love song

— No, my singing voice went with pregnancy

— I wonder where it went. I bet its in a cathedral city up in some fancy cathedral ceiling hanging out with the carvings of the angels

Fury and guilt:

— Howre your eyes today and how you doin what you doin where are you & whenll we meet )

Her mother doesn’t notice. Her mother has no idea. Her mother is looking down for where her phone is, checking it is safely in the pocket of her bag.