How to Be Both by Ali Smith Page A

house that day, he said
    (cause when I’d come to his house and drawn for him the running torch bearer, and the girl at the door had been sent finally to assure me of employment and dispatch me, I’d asked her could I borrow her cap just to have a look at and she’d taken it off, then I’d backed her gently further into the house off the street so no one could see us and I’d asked her kindly to take off some other things for me just to have a look at, which she smiling did, then I’d kissed her cause I should in the places bared, which she’d liked and had kissed me back and before I’d left she’d tied the cap sweetly in jest about my head and said
you make a very handsome girl, sir
).
    So you’re a little less, Francescho, than I believed, the Falcon said now.
    A very little thing less only, Mr de Prisciano, Isaid, and no less at all when it comes to picturemaking.
    No, you’re talented, true, all the same, he said.
    Exactly the same, I said. No less.
    I said it with passion but he wasn’t listening : instead he slapped the side of his own leg and laughed.
    I’ve just understood, he said. Why Cosmo calls you it.
    (
Cosmo? talks of me?
)
    Cosmo calls me what? I said.
    You don’t know? the Falcon said.
    I shook my head.
    That Cosmo, when he talks of you, calls you Francescha? the Falcon said.
    He what? I said.
    Francescha del Cosso, the Falcon said.
    (
Cosmo.
    I forgive.
)
    A mere court painter, I said. I’ll never be. I’ll never do anyone’s bidding.
    Well but what are you right now, the Falcon said, but a court painter?
    (It was true.)
    But at least I’ll never knowingly choose to be in the pay of the flagellants, I said
    (cause I knew Cosmo to be making a lot of money with the images asked of him by some).
    TheFalcon shrugged.
    The flagellants pay as well as anybody else, he said. And have you seen his St Giorgio for the cathedral organ? Francescho. It’s sublime. And – didn’t Cosmo train you? I thought you’d been apprentice to Cosmo.
    Cosmo? Train
me
? I said.
    Who then? the Falcon said.
    I learned by my eyes, I said, and I learned from the masters.
    Which masters? the Falcon said.
    The great Alberti, I said. The great Cennini.
    Ah, the Falcon said. Self-taught.
    He shook his head.
    And from Cristoforo, I said.
    Da Ferara? the Falcon said.
    Del Cossa, I said.
    The brickmaker? the Falcon said. Taught you this?
    I pointed down to my new assistant, the pickpocket, filling the time between plastermaking and colourgrinding by doing the drawing work I’d set him of the pile of bricks I’d made him fetch in from the gardens : I look back at my rich court babies pouring out of the hole in the stony ground into life as if the whole world was nothing but theatre and them its godgiven critics.
    Since I was infant I’ve lived, breathed, slept brickand stone, but you can’t eat bricks, you can’t eat stones, Mr de Prisciano, which is why –
    (and here I got ready to ask for my money).
    – on the contrary, the Falcon said. Best way to get birds to hunt well, no? Is to feed them stones
    (cause it’s true that this is what falconers will do to keep a bird hungry and sharp, they’ll fool it into thinking it’s been well fed by giving it pellets of stone so that when the hood is removed and the bird out working it’s surprised by its own hunger which makes it sharper-eyed than ever in finding prey).
    But it was a dodge to my question and he knew it, the Falcon : he looked askance, ashamed : he looked to my army of babies instead.
    Infantile sophisticates, he said. Bare of everything, seen for what they are. Good. And I like your Apollo. Where’s the lute? Ah. Yes. And I like very much the grace of your minstrels. And – these –oh. What’s this?
    The gathering of poets you wanted, I said, in the top corner, as required.
    But – is that – isn’t it –
me
? he said.
    (It was true I’d painted unasked a likeness of him, in with the poets : I sensed he’d prefer to be seen as a poet rather than a