How to Be Both by Ali Smith Page B

in Reggio at one of our houses.
    But your houses are nowhere near Reggio, I said.
    Francescho, you’re green as an early leaf, Barto said.
    There are a lot of kinds of green, even in just the earliest leaves, I said.
    How many kinds of green are there? Barto said.
    7 main kinds altogether, I said. And perhaps 20 to 30, maybe more, variations on each of these kinds.
    And you’re all of those greens put together, he said, cause anyone but you would already have gathered and would never have needed to be told that I’ve other plans for us than our spending the night at Reggio. Look at you, you’re still calculating, aren’t you, how to make how many greens is it?
    It was true : so he laughed and threw an arm round my shoulder and kissed the side of my head.
    Mysweet unassuming friend, taker of things, people, birds, skies, even the sides of buildings at their word, he’d said. I love you for your greenness, and it’s partly in honour of it that I want you to persuade your father to let you accompany me. So persuade him. Trust me. You’ll never regret it.
    Well, Barto was always wise to how to go about such things, cause sure enough the thought of a Garganelli bed with his offspring tucked in its sheets made my father blink, pause, then say the yes we needed though he gave me plenty ultimatums about behaviour and even had a new jacket made for me : I packed some things, left early in the morning and met Barto : we got to the town of Reggio and we saw it all.
    We saw more people than I’d ever imagined and all packed into the square of the small town and we saw the flags, we saw the white banners with the figures painted on them : we saw it all very well too from the balcony of the house of Garganelli family friends (who were off on a Venetian ship touring to the Holy Land, Barto said, so didn’t care who was on their balcony) : there were horsebacked courtiers : there were boys waving and tossing flags high into the air and then catching them : then a platform came pulled by horses so white they must’ve been white-leaded : on the higher bit of it there was an empty seat, tall, painted and cushioned like a throne and 4 youths stood at each of its cornersdraped in togas, meant to be ancient Romans of great wisdom with their faces charcoaled to make them look old and we were so close we could see the drawn lines at their brows and eyes and mouths : below them on the lower bit of the platform were 4 more boys, 1 at each corner, holding tall banners with ensigns of the town’s and the new Duke’s colours, that made 8 boys altogether and a 9th one too sitting at the front, and all 9 dressed-up boys struggling to keep their balance cause there was nothing to hold on to when the man leading the horses stopped them and the platform rocked to a halt below us.
    The 9th was a boy dressed as Justice : he sat at the foot of the throne : he was holding such a heavy-looking sword in the air that when the platform stopped he tipped sideways, knocked into the big set of scales in front of him and nearly toppled off the platform : but he didn’t, he righted himself by thumping the point of the sword off the floor of the cart : he shifted the fallen-forward fabric of his costume back up over his shoulder, used a graceful foot to tip the upended scales back to an evenness, got his breath and stuck the sword in the air again : everybody who saw it happen shouted hurray and clapped their hands, at which Justice looked mortified cause of the grimness on the face of the portly man who’d come to stand at the side of the platform facing the empty throne.
    Thisman was glinting with gems : he was why we were here, he was the kindly generous charismatic Borse d’Est, the new Duke of Reggio and Modena, the brand-new Marquis of Ferara (and a pompous self-regarding fool, Barto said telling me the story doing the rounds of all the rich families who weren’t Ests, about how the kindly generous charismatic Borse had been giving the Emperor gifts