Still Life

by Sarah Winman

Don’t wander off. I shan’t. I’ll just go to the edge of the road over there. Where I shall stand. Obediently. Hoping for a horse and cart to trample me.

You’re putting me in a bit of a bind, miss. Oh, I’m sure you’re no stranger to that. Do you believe in fate, Miss Skinner? Fate? It is a gift. According to Dante, anyhow.

We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn. And do you know what it’s capable of? I do. Grace and fury.

You were named after a greyhound? said Evelyn. A winning greyhound, Evelyn. Winning.

Oldest story in the world, said Evelyn. Which is? Grief, Temps. Just a lot of fucking grief.

So, said Evelyn. All this fuss? Evelyn laughed. The fuss, as you say, can certainly be exaggerated. But what it’s always about, for me, is response. It’s a painting that demands of us a response. All the best ones do.

It’s what we’ve always done. Left a mark on a cave, or on a page. Showing who we are, sharing our view of the world, the life we’re made to bear. Our turmoil is revealed in those painted faces—sometimes tenderly, sometimes grotesquely, but art becomes a mirror. All the symbolism and the paradox, ours to interpret. That’s how it becomes part of us. And as counterpoint to our suffering, we have beauty.

Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting. A meager stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are. A little mark of scuff. One hundred and fifty years ago Napoleon breathed the same air as we do now. The battalion of time marches on. Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other. Art is the antidote. Is that enough to make it important? Well yes, I think it is.

She could handle herself, always had, and the city never frightened her, especially at night. The canal drew the lonely and the dreamers, and in that moment she was both.

And for two hours the wine was poured, the cheese cut, and the two men talked. Of what? Who knows? Of love, of war, of the past. And they listened with hearts instead of ears, and in the candlelit kitchen three floors up in an old palazzo, death was put on hold. For another night or day or week or year.

Peg hated winter.

End of an era, said Cressy to Ulysses. Up to you now, boy. Ulysses was seventeen. Big words for slight shoulders.

The scale of man—spatially—is about midway between the atom and the star.

Ulysses and Peg locked eyes, and it was familiar and there was history and also truce.

Ulysses smiled. He liked Pete. Always had. Pete was as elusive as they came. Might’ve been rich or might’ve been poor. Might’ve been brought up in a castle or under a bridge. Pete had been a conscientious objector and had done a bit of time. Pete was bruised but Pete was kind.

How Evelyn had laughed at the snobbery of art, said that the responsibility of privilege must always be to raise others up.

So she’d told Eddie stuff, stuff that would make her toes curl now. Laid out her heart on the bed and had cut it open, a full autopsy of love. That’s what being in a hotel room could make a girl do. Sex in soft sheets and room service.

I heard you got a bit of troubling, Mr. Formiloe? he said. You need to talk, my man? Not to you, you cunt. Col, Peg and Tubby looked over to the counter. Never had there been a more unfortunate moment for a parrot to regain his voice.

Col said, My last meal would be between a woman’s legs. I think you missed your turning, said Ulysses.

Col loved the silence that followed; he could have fucked it twice and cooked it breakfast.

Ulysses passed the cherry tree again, the unadorned and silent witness to the comings and goings of that small corner of earth. In years to come, it would cower as the wrecking ball swung, would face its own demise as many a tree had done before, with grace and humility at the same old same old of human disregard.

There are moments in life so monumental and still that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.

Tree said, Thanks for everything. It’s been nice knowing you. You too, said Cress. Will you be OK? I’m a tree. I’ve done this a thousand times before. Done what? Good-byes. Really? Think about it. Leaves. —

The day was cold. The day was doing its best impression of November.

Ulysses got up and looked for a bottle opener. Cress said, We’re embarking on a world of new language and new systems. A world of stares and misunderstandings and humiliations and we’ll feel every single one of them, boy. But we mustn’t let our inability to know what’s what diminish us. Because it’ll try. We have to remain curious and open. Two words for you: ley lines.

The main news was that Massimo had got a haircut, which had taken three inches off his height and had plunged him into a pit of self-consciousness. It had been necessary after his nephew had infected him with lice. He said his mother’s kidney stones had returned. But what can you expect? She doesn’t drink water. He said he missed his new friends and told Ulysses to call him immediately and left a number at the bottom.

Look out there, said Cress. The solar system. Formed four point six billion years ago. And here are we. With a combined age of seventy-seven. How young we are! And the Earth spins at a thousand miles an hour and turns on its axis once every twenty-four. This is what we’re governed by, Alys. Space, time and motion. Hours, days, seasons. Our lives segmented into a series of moments. You see over there, that faint patch of light? That’s the Andromeda Nebula. When we look at it, we’re looking back nine hundred thousand years into the past. Big numbers, Cress. They are big numbers, my love. That’s why ten years of school will go by in no time. I see what you did there, she said. I thought you might.

That night Ulysses lay next to her until she fell asleep. He looked about at her room. She’d chosen it because of the red and green wallpaper that had images of macaws and trees, a right ol’ jungle. These were the decisions she, as an eight-year-old, made. The way her mind worked, what interested her. Over there, a hook on which hung her swimming costume and diving mask. The side table where she kept her sunglasses and sketchbook. The dried shell of a sea urchin on the dressing table. Her guitar at the foot of her bed. The sign they’d made together to advertise the pensione. These things are the sum of her life now. And she will grow up and leave, he thinks. And she will make her way and not cast her thoughts back to him. Life in all its exaltation and complexity will devour her. She will love deeply to the exclusion of all else. And he wants to know everything about her before that happens, but wonders if you can ever know anyone truly.

He leaned against the statue of Dante Alighieri and lit a cigarette. He said, I was supposed to come and give you someone’s best a long time ago, so I’m doing it now. Evelyn is her name. Evelyn Skinner.

When he left, Evelyn said, Do I look as tipsy as I feel? No point asking me, dear, said Dotty, I’ve been talking to two of you for the last hour. Cheers, sweets.

The jug of wine, the ashtray, the cigarette nubs with their faint ring of red lipstick. The vase of wisteria clusters, the sticky tidemark around the espresso cups, the image muted by the haze of dust falling from the makeshift trellis. A story of lunch, yes; but also a story of them.

Sweet little film, though, right? Evelyn stopped. You didn’t like it? said Dotty. No, I didn’t, said Evelyn. Pinocchio is a poor provincial Tuscan boy and he was forced to cast off the clothes of his identity in order to wear the same white gloves as Mickey Mouse. White gloves, Dotty. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who notices these things.

Did you see how that woman back there looked at me? said Dotty. I did. I’ve still got it. You never lost it. I think I did. Just a bit. Not for long, though. No. Not for long.

Dotty threw a glance at the clock and said, We are actually approaching the hour when water yields to the cocktail. Come l’acqua cede a la cocktaila. And she rolled away from the wall and unexpectedly met gravity. She fell off the bed with a thump.

You could look for him, said Dotty. Why on earth would he remember an old woman like me? Because you’re unforgettable, Evelyn Skinner.

Evelyn! shouted kid. Evelyn stopped. Convent or marriage? Oh, convent! said Evelyn. Me too!

Some activities are exalted, others dismissed as lowly or humble or trivial, she thought. So who is it who decides? Privilege and male gaze, ultimately.

The power of still life lies precisely in this triviality. Because it is a world of reliability. Of mutuality between objects that are there, and people who are not. Paused time in ghostly absence.

They have become fixed and unremarkable in this world of habit and we have taken them for granted. Yet within these forms something powerful is retained: Continuity. Memory. Family.

Where does he get it from? whispered Cress. Search me, said Ulysses. Maybe he’s Shakespeare, said Pete. You what? said Ulysses. Maybe. He’s. Shakespeare, mouthed Pete, pointing at Claude. That parrot? said Cress. The greatest playwright that ever lived?

From an artificial compound of highly toxic resin comes beauty.

Pete had an unexpected stroke of luck when he got a part in a new West End musical called Oliver! Pete said it was based on a novel by Charles Dickens and Col said, It’ll never catch on.

At the age of eighty-seven Evelyn Skinner became an unexpected mother. A role she was far more suited to than she had ever imagined.

Alys sat on the floor of her mother’s room with a sketchbook on her lap. Her scrutiny was not loud and the sound of a pencil moving across the page was soft. Peg wouldn’t have agreed to this in waking life, but this was what Alys needed, not Peg, because in the space between artist and sitter could be found understanding and forgiveness and maybe love.

There was something noticeable about these globes. How sorrow ran tributary to beauty. There was a majesty to them, something delicate and precious and startling.

And Miss Everly looked about and lowered her voice. She said, Greek mythology says that the pomegranate grew out of the blood from Acdestis’s wounded . . . Evelyn leaned in closer. From his wounded what, Miss Everly? Miss Everly looked about her again and said, Penis, Miss Skinner. (Gasps from a nearby tour group.)

Things happen here, if you let them. Wonderful things, Miss Skinner. When you least expect it. Are you ready, my dear, for things to happen?

Love was resplendent that day. And when the light was angled right across Piazza Santa Croce, one could almost believe that Dante smiled when he heard a young woman called Evelyn whisper to one called Livia, You are my teacher and my author.

Only in the experience of love, do we know what it is to be human.

But when have women not sacrificed to live as they feel? Not all of us will embrace men, marriage, motherhood. Nor should we. We have one life, my dear Evelyn, one life and we must use it well.