Ali Smith - Autumn

He doesn’t hear what she’s said until a moment after she’s said it. When he does he blushes to the roots of his hair. His whole body blushes. She sees him redden and she smiles.

Because I’m not meant to say that word, am I? she says. Even though that’s what the story’s really about. Even though hundreds of years of disguise are meant to keep me away from what the world’s stories are really all about. Well, foreskin. Foreskin foreskin foreskin.

She dances round the room shouting the word he could hardly say in her presence out loud himself.

She is mad.

But she is uncannily right about that story.

She is brilliant.

She is a whole new level of the word true.

She is dangerous and shining.

She comes over to the window and pushes it wider. She shouts into the street, into the sky (in English, though, thank God), foreskins come and foreskins go! But Mozart lasts forever! Then she skips back over to her seat at the desk, picks up the book she is reading and starts back into the middle of it again like nothing has happened.

He waits a moment then glances out and down to the street. A lady with a little dog has stopped and is standing there looking up, hand shielding her eyes; apart from that the street continues as ever, with no idea that his little sister is that mad, that brave, that clever, that wild and that calm, and that he now knows for sure that when she grows up she’s going to be a great force in the world, an important thinker, a changer of things, someone to be reckoned with.

Summer brother.

Old man in a bed in a care facility.

Little sister.

Never more than twenty, twenty one.

There are no pictures left of her. The photos at their mother’s house? long burnt, lost, gone, street litter.

But he has some pages, still, of the letters from when she was nursing their mother. She is eighteen. The clever forward-slope of her.

It’s a question of how we regard our situations, dearest Dani, how we look and see where we are, and how we choose, if we can, when we are seeing undeceivedly, not to despair and, at the same time, how best to act. Hope is exactly that, that’s all it is, a matter of how we deal with the negative acts towards human beings by other human beings in the world, remembering that they and we are all human, that nothing human is alien to us, the foul and the fair, and that most important of all we’re here for a mere blink of the eyes, that’s all. But in that Augenblick there’s either a benign wink or a willing blindness, and we have to know we’re equally capable of both, and to be ready to be above and beyond the foul even when we’re up to our eyes in it. So it’s important — and here I acknowledge directly the kind and charming and mournful soul of my dear brother whom I know so well — not to waste the time, our time, when w e have it.

Dearest Dani.

What has he done with the time?

A few trivial rhymes.

There was nothing else for it, really.

Plus, he ate well, when the rhymes brought in the money.

Autumn mellow. Autumn yellow. He can remember every word of that stupid song. But he can’t remember,

dear God, he can’t.

Excuse me, dear God, can I trouble you to remind me of my little sister’s name?

Not that he thinks there’s a God. In fact he knows there isn’t. But just in case there’s such a thing:

Please, remind me, her name, again.

Sorry, the silence says. Can’t help you.

Who’s that?

(Silence.)

Who’s there?

(Silence.)

God?

Not exactly.

Well, who?

Where do I start? I’m the butterfly antenna. I’m the chemicals that paint’s made of. I’m the person dead at the water’s edge. I’m the water. I’m the edge. I’m skin cells. I’m the smell of disinfectant. I’m that thing they rub against your mouth to moisten it, can you feel it? I’m soft. I’m hard. I’m glass. I’m sand. I’m a yellow plastic bottle. I’m all the plastics in the seas and in the guts of all the fishes. I’m the fishes. I’m the seas. I’m the molluscs in the seas. I’m the flattened-out old beer can. I’m the shopping trolley in the canal. I’m the note on the stave, the bird on the line. I’m the stave. I’m the line. I’m spiders. I’m seeds. I’m water. I’m heat. I’m the cotton of the sheet. I’m the tube that’s in your side. I’m your urine in the tube. I’m your side. I’m your other side. I’m your other. I’m the coughing through the wall. I’m the cough. I’m the wall. I’m mucus. I’m the bronchial tubes. I’m inside. I’m outside. I’m traffic. I’m pollution. I’m a fall of horseshit on a country road a hundred years ago. I’m the surface of that road. I’m what’s below. I’m what’s above. I’m the fly. I’m the descendant of the fly. I’m the descendant of the descendant of the descendant of the descendant of the descendant of the descendant of the fly. I’m the circle. I’m the square. I’m all the shapes. I’m geometry. I haven’t even started with the telling you what I am. I’m everything that makes everything. I’m everything that unmakes everything. I’m fire. I’m flood. I’m pestilence. I’m the ink, the paper, the grass, the tree, the leaves, the leaf, the greenness in the leaf. I’m the vein in the leaf. I’m the voice that tells no story.

(Snorts.) There’s no such thing.

Begging your pardon. There is. It’s me.

Leaf, did you say?

I did say leaf, yes.

You? the leaf?

Are you deaf? I’m the leaf.

Just one lone single leaf, are you?

No. To be more exact. As I’ve already said. As I’ve already made clear. I’m all the leaves.

You’re all the leaves.

Yes.

So, have you fallen? Are you still waiting to fall? In the autumn? In the summer if it’s stormy?

Well, by definition –

And by all the leaves you mean, you’re last year’s leaves?

I –

And next year’s leaves?

Yes, I –

You’re all the old long-gone leaves of all the years? And all the leaves to come?

Yes, yes. Obviously. Christ almighty. I’m the leaves. I’m all the leaves. Okay?

And the falling thing? Yes or no?

Of course. It’s what leaves do.

Then you can’t trick me, whoever you are. You don’t fool me for a minute.

(Silence.)

There’s always, there’ll always be, more story. That’s what story is.

(Silence.)

It’s the never-ending leaf-fall.

(Silence.)

Isn’t it? Aren’t you?

(Silence.)

Now that the actual autumn isn’t far off,it’s better weather. Up to now it has been fly-fetid, heavy-clouded, cool and autumnal all summer, pretty much since the first time Elisabeth went to the Post Office to do the Check & Send thing with her passport form.

It’s now that her new passport arrives in the post.

Her hair must have passed the test after all. The placing of her eyes must also have passed the test.

She shows the new passport to her mother. Her mother points to the words European Union at the top of the cover of the passport and makes a sad face. Then she flicks through it.

What are all these drawings? she says. This passport has been illustrated like a Ladybird book.

A Ladybird book on acid, Elisabeth says.

I don’t want a new passport if it’s going to look like this, her mother says. And all these men, all through it. Where are all the women? Oh, here’s one. Is that Gracie Fields? Architecture? But who on earth? and is that it ? Is this woman wearing the funny hat the only woman in the whole thing? Oh no. Here’s another one, but sort of folded-in at the centre of a page, like an afterthought. And here’s another couple, on the same page as the Scottish pipers, both ethnic stereotype dancers. Performing arts. Well, that’s Scotland and women and a brace of continents all well and truly in their place.