Ali Smith: Autumn

Don’t be rude, her mother said. And what you are is thirteen years old. You’ve got to be a bit careful of old men who want to hang around thirteen year old girls.

He’s my friend, Elisabeth said.

He’s eighty five, her mother said. How is an eighty five year old man your friend? Why can’t you have normal friends like normal thirteen year olds?

It depends on how you’d define normal, Elisabeth said. Which would be different from how I’d define normal. Since we all live in relativity and mine at the moment is not and I suspect never will be the same as yours.

Where are you learning to talk like this? her mother said. Is that what you do on those walks?

We just walk, Elisabeth said. We just talk.

About what? her mother said.

Nothing, Elisabeth said.

About me? her mother said.

No! Elisabeth said.

What, then? her mother said.

About stuff, Elisabeth said.

What stuff? her mother said.

Stuff, Elisabeth said. He tells me about books and things.

Books, her mother said.

Books. Songs. Poets, Elisabeth said. He knows about Keats. Season of mists. Opening an opiate.

He opened a what? her mother said.

He knows about Dylan, Elisabeth said.

Bob Dylan? her mother said.

No, the other Dylan, Elisabeth said. He knows it off by heart, a lot of it. Though he did meet the singer Bob Dylan once, when Bob Dylan was staying with his friend.

He told you he’s friends with Bob Dylan? her mother said.

No. He met him. It was one winter. He was sleeping on a friend’s floor.

Bob Dylan? On a floor ? her mother said. I don’t think so. Bob Dylan has always been a huge international star.

And he knows about that poet you like who killed herself, Elisabeth said.

Plath? her mother said. About suicide?

You so don’t get it, Elisabeth said.

What exactly don’t I get about an old man putting ideas about suicide and a lot of lies about Bob Dylan into my thirteen year old daughter’s head? her mother said.

And anyway, Daniel says it doesn’t matter how she died so long as you can still say or read her words. Like the line about no longer grieving, and the one about daughters of the darkness still flaming like Guy Fawkes, Elisabeth said.

That doesn’t sound like Plath, her mother said. No, I’m almost completely sure I’ve never come across that line in any Plath I’ve read, and I’ve read it all.

It’s Dylan. And the line about how love is evergreen, Elisabeth said.

What else does Mr Gluck tell you about love? her mother said.

He doesn’t. He tells me about paintings, Elisabeth said. Pictures.

He shows you pictures? her mother said.

By a tennis player he knew, Elisabeth said. They’re pictures people can’t actually go and see. So he tells me them.

Why can’t people see them? her mother said.

They just can’t, Elisabeth said.

Private pictures? her mother said.

No, Elisabeth said. They’re, like. Ones he knows.

Of tennis players? her mother said. Tennis players doing what?

No , Elisabeth said.

Oh God, her mother said. What have I done?

What you’ve done is used Daniel as my unofficial babysitter for years, Elisabeth said.

I told you. Call him Mr Gluck , her mother said. And I haven’t been using him. That’s just not true. And I want to know. I want to know in detail. Pictures of what?

Elisabeth made an exasperated sound.

I don’t know, she said. People. Things.

What are the people doing in these pictures? her mother said.

Elisabeth sighed. She shut her eyes.

Open your eyes right now Elisabeth, her mother said.

I have to close my eyes or I can’t see them, Elisabeth said. Okay? Right. Marilyn Monroe surrounded by roses, and then bright pink and green and grey waves painted all round her. Except that the picture isn’t literally of literal Marilyn, it’s a picture of a picture of her. That’s important to remember.

Oh is it? her mother said.

Like if I was to take a photo of you and then paint a picture of the photo, not you. And the roses look a bit like flowery wallpaper rather than roses. But the roses have also come out of the wallpaper and have curled up round her collarbone, like they’re embracing her.

Embracing, her mother said. I see.

And someone French, someone famous in France once, a man, he’s wearing a hat and sunglasses, and the top of the hat is a pile of red petals like a huge red flower, and he’s grey and black and white like a picture in a paper, and behind him is all bright orange, partly like a cornfield or golden grass, and above him is a row of hearts.

Her mother had her hands over her own eyes at the kitchen table.

Keep going, she said.

Elisabeth shut her eyes again.

One with a woman, not a famous person, she’s just any woman and she’s laughing, she’s sort of throwing her arms up in a blue sky, and behind her at the foot of the picture there are alps, but very small, and a lot of zigzags in colours. And instead of having a body or clothes, the woman’s insides are made up of pictures, pictures of other things.

He told you about a woman’s body, a woman’s insides, her mother said.

No , Elisabeth said. He told me about a woman whose body is made up of pictures instead of body. It’s perfectly clear.

What pictures? Pictures of what? her mother said.

Things. Things that happen in the world, Elisabeth said. A sunflower. A man with a machine gun like out of a gangster film. A factory. A Russian looking politician. An owl, an exploding airship –

And Mr Gluck makes these pictures up in his head and puts them inside a woman’s body? her mother said.

No, they’re real, Elisabeth said. There’s one called It’s a Man’s World. It’s got a stately home in it, and the Beatles and Elvis Presley and a president in the back of a car getting shot.

That was when her mother started really yelling.

So she decided not to tell her mother about the collages with the children’s heads being snipped off with the giant secateurs, and the massive hand coming out of the roof of the Albert Hall.

She decided not to mention the painting of a woman sitting on a backwards-turned chair with no clothes on, who brought a government down, and all the red paint and the black smudges through the red, that look, Daniel says, like nuclear fallout .

Even so, her mother still said it at the end of their talk

(and this is what Elisabeth does remember, verbatim, nearly two decades later, of the above conversation):

Unnatural.

Unhealthy.

You’re not to.

I forbid it.

That’s enough.

A minute ago it was June.Now the weather is September. The crops are high, about to be cut, bright, golden.

November? unimaginable. Just a month away.

The days are still warm, the air in the shadows sharper. The nights are sooner, chillier, the light a little less each time.

Dark at half past seven. Dark at quarter past seven, dark at seven.

The greens of the trees have been duller since August, since July really.

But the flowers are still coming. The hedgerows are still humming. The shed is already full of apples and the tree’s still covered in them.

The birds are on the powerlines.

The swifts left weeks ago. They’re hundreds of miles from here by now, somewhere over the ocean.

But now?The old man (Daniel) opens his eyes to find he can’t open his eyes.

He seems to be shut inside something remarkably like the trunk of a Scots pine.

At least, it smells like a pine.

He’s got no real way of telling. He can’t move. There’s not much room for movement inside a tree. His mouth and eyes are resined shut.