Swing Time

by Zadie Smith

What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission.

As a fact it was, in my mind, at one and the same time absolutely true and obviously untrue, and perhaps only children are able to accommodate double-faced facts like these.

People are not poor because they’ve made bad choices, my mother liked to say, they make bad choices because they’re poor.

She wanted to see a dancer on stage, sweating, real, not done up in top hat and tails. But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.

Carrapichano I didn’t know very well and the only time we’d spoken before I’d made a fool of myself. It was on the plane to Togo, six months earlier, back when Togo was still on the shortlist, before Aimee had offended that tiny nation by suggesting, in an interview, that its government did “nothing for their people.” “What’s it like?” I’d asked, leaning over him, looking out of the porthole window, and meaning, I must admit, “Africa.” “I have not been,” he said coldly, without turning round. “But you practically live here—I read your résumé.” “No. Senegal, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, Ethiopia, yes—Togo, never.” “Oh, well, you know what I mean.” He’d turned to me, red-faced, and asked: “If we were flying to Europe and you wanted to know what France was like, would it help if I described Germany?”

Maybe luxury is the easiest matrix to pass through. Maybe nothing is easier to get used to than money.