Ali Smith - Autumn

Seriously allergic, the man says. Don’t even say the word. If I die this afternoon, I’ll know who to tell them to blame.

Shoulders. Up, down.

Then he puts the booth photographs down in front of him. He screws his mouth over to one side. He shakes his head.

What? Elisabeth says.

No, I think it’s all right, he says. The hair. It has to be completely clear of your eyes.

It is completely clear of my eyes, Elisabeth says. It’s nowhere near my eyes.

It also can’t be anywhere near your face, the man says.

It’s on my head, Elisabeth says. That’s where it grows. And my face is also attached to my head.

Witticism, the man says, will make not a jot of difference to the stipulations which mean you can, in the end, be issued a passport, which you will need before you are permitted to go anywhere not in this island realm. In other words. Will get you. Nowhere.

Right, Elisabeth says. Thanks.

I think it’s all right, the man says.

Good, Elisabeth says.

Wait, the man says. Wait a minute. Just a.

He gets up off his chair and ducks down behind the divide. He comes back up with a cardboard box. In it are various pairs of scissors, rubbers, a stapler, paperclips and a rolled-up measuring tape. He takes the tape in his hands and unrolls the first centimetres of it. He places the tape against one of the images of Elisabeth on the booth sheet.

Yes, he says.

Yes? Elisabeth says.

I thought so, he says. 24 millimetres. As I thought.

Good, Elisabeth says.

Not good, the man says. I’m afraid not good at all. Your face is the wrong size.

How can my face be a wrong size? Elisabeth says.

You didn’t follow the instructions about filling the facial frame, that’s if the photobooth you used is fitted with passport instructions, the man says. Of course, it’s possible the booth you used wasn’t passport-instruction-fitted. But that doesn’t help here either way I’m afraid.

What size is my face meant to be? Elisabeth says.

The correct size for a face in the photograph submitted, the man says, is between 29 millimetres and 34 millimetres. Yours falls short by 5 millimetres.

Why does my face need to be a certain size? Elisabeth says.

Because it’s what is stipulated, the man says.

Is it for facial recognition technology? Elisabeth says.

The man looks her full in the face for the first time.

Obviously I can’t process the form without the correct stipulation, he says.

He takes a piece of paper off a pile to the right of him.

You should go to Snappy Snaps, he says as he stamps a little circle on the piece of paper with a metal stamp. They’ll do it there for you to the correct specification. Where are you planning to travel to?

Well, nowhere, till I get the new passport, Elisabeth says.

He points to the unstamped circle next to the stamped one.

If you bring it back within a month of this date, provided everything’s correct, you won’t have to pay £9.75 for another Check & Send, he says. Where did you say you were thinking of going, again?

I didn’t, Elisabeth says.

Hope you won’t take it the wrong way if I write in this box that you’re wrong in the head, the man says.

His shoulders aren’t moving. He writes in a box next to the word Other : HEAD INCORRECT SIZE.

If this were a drama on TV, Elisabeth says, you know what would happen now?

It’s largely rubbish, TV, the man says. I prefer box sets.

What I’m saying is, Elisabeth says, in the next shot you’d be dead of oyster poisoning and I’d be being arrested and blamed for something I didn’t do.

Power of suggestion, the man says.

Suggestion of power, Elisabeth says.

Oh, very clever, the man says.

And also, this notion that my head’s the wrong size in a photograph would mean I’ve probably done or am going to do something really wrong and illegal, Elisabeth says. And because I asked you about facial recognition technology, because I happen to know it exists and I asked you if the passport people use it, that makes me a suspect as well. And there’s the notion, too, in your particular take on our story so far, that I might be some kind of weirdo because there’s an s in my name instead of a z.

I’m sorry? the man says.

Like if a child cycles past in a drama or a film, Elisabeth says, like the way if you’re watching a film or a drama and there’s a child cycling away on a bicycle and you see the child going, getting further away, and especially if you watch this happen from a camera position behind that child, well, something terrible’s bound to be about to happen to that child, for sure it’ll be the last time you’ll see that child, that child still innocent, anyway. You can’t just be a child and cycle away because you’re off to the shops any more. Or if there’s a happy man or woman driving a car, just out driving, enjoying it, nothing else happening — and especially if this is edited into someone else’s waiting for that person to come home — then he or she is probably definitely about to crash and die. Or, if it’s a woman, to be abducted and come to a gruesome sex-crime end, or to disappear. Probably definitely he or she one way or another is driving to his or her doom.

The man folds the Check & Send receipt and tucks it into the envelope Elisabeth gave him with the form, the old passport and the unsuitable photographs. He hands it back to her across the divide. She sees terrible despondency in his eyes. He sees her see it. He hardens even more. He opens a drawer, takes a laminated sheet out of it and places it at the front of the divide.

Position Closed.

This isn’t fiction, the man says. This is the Post Office.

Elisabeth watches him go through the swing door at the back.

She pushes her way through the self-service queue and out of the non-fictional Post Office.

She crosses the green to the bus station.

She’s going to The Maltings Care Providers plc to see Daniel.

Daniel is stillhere.

The last three times Elisabeth’s been, he’s been asleep. He’ll be asleep this time too, when she gets there. She’ll sit on the chair next to the bed and get the book out of her bag.

Brave old world.

Daniel will be so asleep that he’ll look like he’s never going to wake up.

Hello Mr Gluck, she’ll say if he does. Sorry I’m late. I was having my face measured and rejected for being the wrong specification.

But there’s no point in thinking this. He won’t.

If he were to wake, the first thing he’d do is he’d tell her some fact from whichever fruitful place in his brain he’d been down deep in.

Oh a long queue of them, Daniel’d say, all the way up the mountain. A line of tramps from the foot to the peak of one of the Sacramento mountains.

Sounds serious, she’d say.

It was, he’d say. Nothing comic isn’t serious. And he was the greatest comedian of all. He hired them, hundreds and hundreds of them, and they were real, the real thing, real tramps to his movie star tramp, real loners, real lost and homeless men. He wanted it to look like the real gold rush. The local police said the tramps weren’t to be paid any money by the producers till they’d all been rounded up and taken back to Sacramento City. They didn’t want them going all over the district. And when he was a boy — the boy who ended life as one of the richest, the most famous men in the world — when he was a boy in the poorhouse for children, the orphanage, when his mother was taken to the asylum, he got given a bag of sweets and an orange at Christmas time, all the kids in the place got the same. But the difference, here’s the difference. He made that December bag of sweets last all the way to October.