Ali Smith: Autumn

You are a very smart young person, Daniel said.

I am planning to go to college when I leave school, Elisabeth said. If I can afford it.

Oh, you don’t want to go to college, Daniel said.

I do, Elisabeth said. My mother was the first in my family ever to go, and I will be the next.

You want to go to collage, Daniel said.

I want to go to college, Elisabeth said, to get an education and qualifications so I’ll be able to get a good job and make good money.

Yes, but to study what? Daniel said.

I don’t know yet, Elisabeth said.

Humanities? Law? Tourism? Zoology? Politics? History? Art? Maths? Philosophy? Music? Languages? Classics? Engineering? Architecture? Economics? Medicine? Psychology? Daniel said.

All of the above, Elisabeth said.

That’s why you need to go to collage, Daniel said.

You’re using the wrong word, Mr Gluck, Elisabeth said. The word you’re using is for when you cut out pictures of things or coloured shapes and stick them on paper.

I disagree, Daniel said. Collage is an institute of education where all the rules can be thrown into the air, and size and space and time and foreground and background all become relative, and because of these skills everything you think you know gets made into something new and strange.

Are you still using avoidance tactics about the question about the hotel? Elisabeth said.

Truthfully? Daniel said. Yes. Which game would you rather play? I’ll give you a choice of two. One. Every picture tells a story. Two. Every story tells a picture.

What does every story tells a picture mean? Elisabeth said.

Today it means that I’ll describe a collage to you, Daniel said, and you can tell me what you think of it.

Without actually seeing it? Elisabeth said.

By seeing it in the imagination, as far as you’re concerned, he said. And in the memory, as far as I’m concerned.

They sat down on a bench. A couple of kids were fishing off the rocks ahead of them. Their dog was standing on the rocks and shaking canal water off its coat. The boys squealed and laughed when the water fanned out into the air off the dog and hit them.

Picture or story? Daniel said. You choose.

Picture, she said.

Okay, Daniel said. Close your eyes. Are they closed?

Yes, Elisabeth said.

The background is rich dark blue, Daniel said. A blue much darker than sky. On top of the dark blue, in the middle of the picture, there’s a shape made of pale paper that looks like a round full moon. On top of the moon, bigger than the moon, there’s a cut-out black and white lady wearing a swimsuit, cut from a newspaper or fashion magazine. And next to her, as if she’s leaning against it, there’s a giant human hand. And the giant hand is holding inside it a tiny hand, a baby’s hand. More truthfully, the baby’s hand is also holding the big hand, holding it by its thumb. Below all this, there’s a stylized picture of a woman’s face, the same face repeated several times, but with a different coloured curl of real hair hanging over its nose each time –

Like at the hairdresser? Like colour samples? Elisabeth said.

You’ve got it, Daniel said.

She opened her eyes. Daniel’s were shut. She shut her own eyes again.

And way off in the distance, in the blue at the bottom of the picture, there’s a drawing of a ship with its sails up, but it’s small, it’s the smallest thing in the whole collage.

Okay, Elisabeth said.

Finally, there’s some pink lacy stuff, by which I mean actual material, real lace, stuck on to the picture in a couple of places, up near the top, then further down towards the middle too. And that’s it. That’s all I can recall.

Elisabeth opened her eyes. She saw Daniel open his eyes a moment later.

Later that night, when she was home and falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV, Elisabeth would remember seeing his eyes open, and how it was like that moment when you just happen to see the streetlights come on and it feels like you’re being given a gift, or a chance, or that you yourself’ve been singled out and chosen by the moment.

What do you think? Daniel said.

I like the idea of the blue and the pink together, Elisabeth said.

Pink lace. Deep blue pigment, Daniel said.

I like that you could maybe touch the pink, if it was made of lace, I mean, and it would feel different from the blue.

Oh, that’s good, Daniel said. That’s very good.

I like how the little hand is holding the big hand as much as the big hand is holding the little hand, Elisabeth said.

Today I myself particularly like the ship, Daniel said. The galleon with the sails up. If I’m remembering rightly. If it’s even there.

Does that mean it’s a real picture? Elisabeth said. Not one you made up?

It’s real, Daniel said. Well, it was once. A friend of mine did it. An artist. But I’m making it up from memory. How did it strike your imagination?

Like it would be if I was taking drugs, Elisabeth said.

Daniel stopped on the canal path.

You’ve never taken drugs, he said. Have you?

No, but if I did, and everything was in my head all at once, all sort of crowding in, it would be a bit like it, Elisabeth said.

Dear God. You’ll tell your mother we’ve been taking drugs all afternoon, Daniel said.

Can we go and see it? Elisabeth said.

See what? Daniel said.

The collage? Elisabeth said.

Daniel shook his head.

I don’t know where it is, he said. It might be long gone by now. Goodness knows where those pictures are now in the world.

Where did you see it in the first place? Elisabeth said.

I saw it in the early 1960s, Daniel said.

He said it as if a time could be a place.

I was there the day she made it, he said.

Who? Elisabeth said.

The Wimbledon Bardot, Daniel said.

Who’s that? Elisabeth said.

Daniel looked at his watch.

Come on, art student, he said. Pupil of my eye. Time to go.

Time flies, Elisabeth said.

Well, yes. It can do, Daniel said. Literally. Watch this.

Elisabeth doesn’t remember much of the above.

She does remember, though, the day they were walking along the canal bank when she was small and Daniel took his watch off his wrist and threw it into the water.

She remembers the thrill, the absolute not-doneness of it.

She remembers there were two boys down on the rocks and they turned their heads as the watch arced through the air over them and hit the canal, and she remembers knowing that it was a watch, Daniel’s watch, not just any old stone or piece of litter, flying through the air, and knowing too that there was no way those boys could know this, that only she and Daniel knew the enormity of what he’d just done.

She remembers that Daniel had given her the choice, to throw or not to throw .

She remembers she chose to throw .

She remembers coming home with something amazing to tell her mother.

Here’s something else from another time,from when Elisabeth was thirteen, that she also only remembers shreds and fragments of.

And anyway, why else are you always hanging round an old gay man?

(That was her mother.)

I don’t have a father fixation, Elisabeth said. And Daniel’s not gay. He’s European.

Call him Mr Gluck, her mother said. And how do you know he’s not gay? And if that’s true, and he’s not gay, then what does he want with you?

Or if he is, Elisabeth said, then he’s not just gay. He’s not just one thing or another. Nobody is. Not even you.

Her mother was ultra-sensitive and ultra-irritating right now. It was something to do with Elisabeth being thirteen, not twelve. Whatever it was about, it was ultra-annoying.