Ali Smith: Autumn

The white orange in his hand becomes its natural colour.

He nods.

He pulls the colours green and blue like a string of handkerchiefs out of the centre of himself. The orange in his hand turns Cézanne-colours.

People crowd round him, excited.

People queue up, bring him their white things, hold them out.

Anonymous people start to add tweet-sized comments about Daniel beneath Daniel. They are commenting on his ability to change things.

The comments get more and more unpleasant.

They start to make a sound like a hornet mass and Elisabeth notices that what looks like liquid excrement is spreading very close to her bare feet. She tries not to step in any of it.

She calls to Daniel to watch where he steps too.

Having a bit of time out?the care assistant says. All right for some, huh?

Elisabeth comes to, opens her eyes. The book falls off her lap. She picks it up.

The care assistant is tapping the rehydration bag.

Some of us have to work for a living, she says.

She winks in the general direction of Elisabeth.

I was miles away, Elisabeth says.

Him too, the care assistant says. A very nice polite gentleman. We miss him now. Increased sleep period. It happens when things are becoming more (slight pause before she says it) final.

The pauses are a precise language, more a language than actual language is, Elisabeth thinks.

Please don’t talk about Mr Gluck as if he can’t hear you, she says. He can hear you as well as I can. Even if it looks like he’s asleep.

The care assistant hooks the chart she’s been looking at back on the rail at the end of the bed.

One day I was giving him a wash, she says as if Elisabeth’s not there either and as if she’s quite used to people not being there, or equally to having to function as if people aren’t.

And the TV was on in the lounge, loud, and his door was open. He opens his eyes and sits straight up in the bed in the middle of. Advert, a supermarket. A song starts above the people’s heads in the shop and all the people buying the things, dropping them on the floor instead and are dancing everywhere in the shop, and he sat straight up in the bed, he said this one is me, I wrote this one.

Old queen,Elisabeth’s mother said under her breath.

Why him? she said at the more normal level of voice.

Because he’s our neighbour, Elisabeth said.

It was a Tuesday evening in April in 1993. Elisabeth was eight years old.

But we don’t know him, her mother said.

We’re supposed to talk to a neighbour about what it means to be a neighbour, then make a portrait in words of a neighbour, Elisabeth said. You’re meant to come with me, I’m meant to make up two or three questions and ask them to a neighbour for the portrait and you’re meant to accompany me. I told you. I told you on Friday. You said we would. It’s for school.

Her mother was doing something to the make-up on her eyes.

About what? her mother said. About all the arty art he’s got in there?

We’ve got pictures, Elisabeth said. Are they arty art?

She looked at the wall behind her mother, the picture of the river and the little house. The picture of the squirrels made from bits of real pinecone. The poster of the dancers by Henri Matisse. The poster of the woman and her skirt and the Eiffel Tower. The blown-up real photographs of her grandmother and grandfather from when her mother was small. The ones of her mother when her mother was a baby. The ones of herself as a baby.

The stone with the hole through the middle of it. In the middle of his front room, her mother was saying. That’s very arty art. I wasn’t being nosy. I was passing. The light was on. I thought you were supposed to be collecting and identifying fallen leaves.

That was like three weeks ago, Elisabeth said. Are you going out?

Can’t we phone Abbie and ask her the questions over the phone? her mother said.

But we don’t live next to Abbie any more, Elisabeth said. It’s supposed to be someone who’s a neighbour right now . It’s supposed to be in person, an in-person interview. And I’m supposed to ask about what it was like where the neighbour grew up and what life was like when the neighbour was my age.

People’s lives are private, her mother said. You can’t just go traipsing into their lives asking all sorts of questions. And anyway. Why does the school want to know these things about our neighbours?

They just do, Elisabeth said.

She went and sat on the top step of the stairs. She’d end up being the new girl who hasn’t done the right homework. Her mother was going to say any minute now that she was off to do shopping at the late-night Tesco’s and that she’d be back in half an hour. In reality she’d be back in two hours. She would smell of cigarettes. There’d be nothing brought back from Tesco’s.

It’s about history, and being neighbours, Elisabeth said.

He probably can’t speak very good English, her mother said. You can’t just go bothering old frail people.

He’s not frail, Elisabeth said. He’s not foreign. He’s not old. He doesn’t look in the least imprisoned.

He doesn’t look what? her mother said.

It has to be done for tomorrow, Elisabeth said.

I’ve an idea, her mother said. Why don’t you make it up? Pretend you’re asking him the questions. Write down the answers you think he’d give.

It’s supposed to be true, Elisabeth said. It’s for News.

They’ll never know, her mother said. Make it up. The real news is always made up anyway.

The real news is not made up, Elisabeth said. It’s the news .

That’s a discussion we’ll have again when you’re a bit older, her mother said. Anyway. It’s much harder to make things up. I mean, to make them up really well, well enough so that they’re convincing. It requires much more skill. Tell you what. If you make it up and it’s convincing enough to persuade Miss Simmonds that it’s true, I’ll buy you that Beauty and the Beast thing.

The video? Elisabeth said. Really?

Uh huh, her mother said, pivoting on one foot to look at herself from the side.

In any case our video player is broken, Elisabeth said.

If you persuade her, her mother said. I’ll splash out on a new one.

Do you mean it? Elisabeth said.

And if Miss Simmonds gives you a hard time because it’s made up, I’ll ring the school and assure her that it’s not made up, it’s true, her mother said. Okay?

Elisabeth sat down at the computer desk.

If he was very old, the neighbour, he didn’t look anything like the people who were meant to be it on TV, who always seemed as if they were trapped inside a rubber mask, not just a face-sized mask, but one that went the length of the body from head to foot, and if you could tear it off or split it open it was like you’d find an untouched unchanged young person inside, who’d simply step cleanly out of the old fake skin, like the skin after you take out the inner banana. When they were trapped inside that skin, though, the eyes of people, at least the people in all the films and comedy programmes, looked desperate, like they were trying to signal to outsiders without giving the game away that they’d been captured by empty aged selves which were now keeping them alive inside them for some sinister reason, like those wasps that lay eggs inside other creatures so their hatchlings will have something to eat. Except the other way round, the old self feeding off the young one. All that was left would be the eyes, pleading, trapped behind the eyeholes.

Her mother was at the front door.

Bye, she called. Back soon.

Elisabeth ran through to the hall.

If I want to write the word elegant how do I spell it?