How to Be Both

 “George’s room, given time, enough bad weather and the right inattention, will open to the sky, to all this rain, the amount of which people on TV keep calling biblical. […] Her room will be stained with the grey grease and dregs of the dirt the rain has absorbed and carries, the dirt the air absorbs every day just from the fact of life on earth. Everything will rot.

She will have the pleasure of watching it happen. The floorboards will curl up at their ends, bend, split open at the nailed places and pull loose from their glue.”

The leak in the roof of George’s bedroom is a symbolic manifestation of her grief. The detailed, hyperbolic description of the physical consequences of the leak reflect the strength and tumultuousness of George’s emotions, while the use of visceral negative vocabulary such as “rot” and “dirt” emphasizes her current negative state of mind. That George intends to take “pleasure” in the destruction hints at her desire to escape the everyday burden of bereavement and embrace a self-destructive sorrow.

“A couple of times since that thing in the toilets happened, though, George has caught herself thinking something unexpected. She has caught herself wondering whether those girls, that girl with the phone—if the phone memory had survived—had deleted or maybe kept the film.

If that film still existed it meant there was a recording of her somewhere and in it she was looking straight over their heads into the eyes of Helena Fisker.”

This quote presents the motif of cameras that recurs throughout the novel, representing surveillance and invasion of privacy, but also art and connection. In this case, George recognizes that the video on the destroyed phone, in addition to being a violation of her privacy, is also a record of her connection with H. The repetition of the word “caught” as well as the rapid-fire use of existential words “survived,” “deleted,” and “existed” harks to both the positive and negative aspects of a camera’s power to capture and preserve a moment.

“[I]t is not fair for your friend, she is not going to get the important boredoms and mournings and melancholies that are her due and owing to her just from being the age that she is, for now it will be interrupted by real mournings and melancholies.”

H directly quotes her own mother, offering sympathy for George’s grief from an outsider’s maternal perspective. This quote acknowledges the injustice of loss, as well as the disruption that trauma can cause in everyday life and development. The alliteration in the repeated phrase “mournings and melancholies” creates a poetic and lyrical tone that renders the words and their sentiments more impactful and memorable.

“It’s not like the government would minotaur us, H says. I mean, not our government. Obviously all the undemocratic and less good and less civilized ones would do it to their citizens. But our own one. I mean, they might minotaur the people they needed to know about. But they’d never do it to ordinary people, say through their email or mobiles, or through the games they play on their mobiles. And it’s not like the shops we buy things from do it to us either, is it, every time we buy something. You’re deluded and insane. There’s no such thing as a minotaur. It’s mythical. And your mother was, what? Quite a political person? Someone who published stuff about money in the papers? And did disruptive stuff on the net? Why would anyone want to monitor her? I think your imaginings are dangerous. Someone should monitor you.”

In this quote, H uses sarcasm to humorously validate George’s belief that her mother was under surveillance. The use of ironic statements and rhetorical questions shows that H doesn’t actually agree with her own tongue-in-cheek assertions, and mocks the illogic of other people’s arguments against George. She uses word games, conflating the near homophonous words “monitor” and “minotaur” to poke further fun at those too naïve to recognize that government surveillance is far from “mythical.”

“Mrs Rock, since Christmas, has stopped repeating back to George what George says. Her new tactic is to sit and listen without saying anything, then very near the end of the session to tell George a sort of story or improvise on a word that George has used or something that’s struck her because of something George has said. This means that now the sessions are mostly George in monologue plus epilogue by Mrs Rock.”

This quote matter-of-factly outlines the structure of George’s counselling sessions, highlighting the artificiality of the conversational setting, and Mrs. Rock’s inability to convincingly connect with George. The final sentence provides a meta-commentary on the structure of the meetings using the technical vocabulary of theatre, “George in monologue plus epilogue by Mrs Rock.” This emphasizes George’s sense that the counselling sessions are formulaic and scripted, and it speaks to the isolation and alienation that George feels due to her grief.

“It is both blatant and invisible. It is subtle and at the same time the most unsubtle thing in the world, so unsubtle it’s subtle. […] It can just be rocks and landscape if that’s what you want it to be—but there’s always more to see, if you look.”

This quote emphasizes the theme of Ambiguity as an Inescapable Feature of Life by describing the painting in ambiguous and contradictory terms. The descriptions are oxymoronic, combining opposite characteristics such as “blatant” and “invisible,” and repeating “subtle” and “unsubtle” to emphasize the complexity of the picture and the subjectivity of art.

“[W]hen you look away from this painting at the others in the room it’s like they’ve all been dwarfed. After this painting they look flat and old-fashioned, as if they’re stale dramas and pretending to be real. This one at least admits the whole thing’s a performance.

Or perhaps it is just that George has spent proper time looking at this one painting and that every single experience of looking at something would be this good if she devoted time to everything she looked at.”

This quote offers two alternative explanations for the seeming superiority of Francesco del Cossa’s work, one of which is linked to the quality of the painting itself, and the other to the quality of the viewer’s observation. This uncertainty links to themes of ambiguity throughout the novel, and encourages the reader through use of the second pronoun “you” to engage directly with questions regarding the subjective and objective appeal of art.

“It’s as if just passing from one side of the saint to the other will result if you go one way in wholeness and if you go the other in brokenness.

Both states are beautiful.”

In this quote, Smith comments on the theme of The Power of Art to Transform and Preserve as well as the impact that engaging with art can have on the viewer. The states of “wholeness” and “brokenness” are sharply delineated in the picture by the figure of Saint Vincent, but exist in tandem through the preserving power of art, and the hypothetical nature of their impact—as communicated through use of the conditional clause signposted by “if.” Both states affect the viewer, who is aligned with the reader through use of the second person pronoun “you.” That such opposite states are both “beautiful” speaks to wider messages of the novel, which emphasize that certain values and qualities (such as beauty or worth) are not diminished by damage or experience.

“But imagine if you made something and then you always had to be seen through what you’d made, as if the thing you’d made became you.”

In this quote, specifically discussing a director who projected his work onto his own chest, Smith makes a broader comment on the relationship between art and identity. She draws clear parallels between this artist and Francesco del Cossa, about whom little is known beyond his work. The imperative “imagine” pushes the reader to envisage themselves, prompted by repeated use of the second person pronoun “you,” in the same situation as such an artist—encouraging empathy.

“Perhaps somewhere in all of this if you look there’s a proof of love.

This thought will make George furious.

At the same time it will fill her with pride at her mother, right all along. Most of all she will wonder at her mother’s sheer talent.

The maze of the minotaur is one thing. The ability to maze the minotaur back is another thing altogether.”

In this quote, George’s heightened and complex feelings are made clear through emotive language like “furious,” “pride,” and “wonder.” Following her conversations with Mrs. Rock and H, George references the Greek myth of the minotaur and labyrinth as a euphemism for government surveillance, making unconventional use of the word “maze” as a verb. The final phrases form an antimetabole—a juxtaposing phrase repeated and inverted—to emphasize how exceptional and unanticipated George finds the fact that Carol seemingly managed to emotionally compromise Lisa back.

“Air came out of her mouth (by which I knew that what I’d done was good) : she nearly dropped the eggs (by which I learned that the making of images is a powerful thing and may if care’s not taken lead to breakage) : she checked the eggs were safe in her dress, all unbroken, before she called him over to see his faces.

When he saw the angry one he hit me over the head with the inside of his hand (by which I learned that people do not always want to know how they are seen by others).”

This quote uses a parallel structure (or parallelism) to create an iterative litany of repeating phrases. This occurs in the form of a simple statement, followed by Francescho’s inference in brackets, beginning with a variation of the “by which I knew that” and “by which I learned that” structure. This device succinctly and clearly provides information about fast-paced events and the character’s internal perception of those events, while also creating a tone of humor and levity through the matter-of-fact relation of comical reactions.

“Which isn’t necessarily the injustice that it sounds, my mother said. Cause imagine, the skin of Marsyas slipped off as easily as a tomato’s will in warm water to allow the red raw sweetness out of the fruit below. And the sight of such release moved everyone who saw it to a strength of feeling more than any music anywhere played by any musician or god.

So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us.”

Francescho’s mother’s unconventional interpretation of the classical myth foreshadows Francescho’s own production of an unorthodox painting of Marsyas’s skinning, significant because this drives a lasting wedge between Francescho and Cosmo. Her reinterpretation of the myth as an allegory encouraging bravery and risk-taking subverts the established reading and elevates the satyr’s fate from one of ignoble tragedy to exultant “release.” This is an example of Everyday Resistance to Injustice. The vivid sensory imagery in the simile “as easily as a tomato’s” creates a visceral tactile picture of the act of skinning.

“Hey : boy : you hear me? Saint Vincenzo, famed across all the oceans for making unhearing people hear. […]

The boy hears nothing : I can’t make him.

I’m no saint, am I? no.”

There is dramatic irony in Francescho’s identifying a figure that is clearly George as “boy” because unlike Francescho, the reader is aware that George is a girl. Interestingly, in versions of the book where the part “Eyes” precedes “Camera,” the reader only discovers the truth of George’s gender when Francescho does, changing the whole tone of this section of the novel. Francescho notes the irony of his saint’s claim to fame given his own helplessness and inability to make himself heard. When it becomes apparent that no answer to his questions is forthcoming, Francescho uses hypophora: He asks a question—“I’m no saint, am I?”—only to immediately provide the answer, “no,” himself. That he continues to speak despite knowing that he’ll go unheard shows his desire for connection.

“This boy I am sent for some reason to shadow knows a door he can’t pass through and what it tells me just to be near him is something akin to when you find the husk of a dead ladybird that has been trapped, killed and eaten by a spider, and what you thought on first sight was a charming thing, a colourful creature of the world going about its ways, is in reality a husk hollowed out and proof of the brutal leavings of life.

Poor boy.”

In this quote, Smith likens George to a dead ladybird in an extended comparison or conceit. This comparison proposes that although externally George retains her good looks, inside she is suffering or “hollowed out” from the hardship she has endured, namely the grief over her mother’s death and her negative feelings toward Lisa. The comparison, along with the interjection “poor boy,” aims to evoke sympathy.

“Bartolommeo Gargaelli is very pleased, on this day auspicious to both of us, to make your quaintances, he said.

You might take as fancy as your clothes, I said. But even a common fisher of gutterfish knows you’ve just got that last word wrong.

1 quaintance. 2 quaintances, he said. And I’ve met more than 2, I’ve met 3 of you. Expert fisher. Expert fish-thrower. Expert in walls and their trajectories.

If you’d care to come down, I said, I’ll consider introducing you to the rest of me.”

Barto introduces himself formally, in the third person, by his full name. This speaks to his lofty pedigree and upbringing and contrasts with Francescho’s more modest comportment and background. Despite their differences, however, a connection is formed between them through witty banter—firstly through Barto’s play on the word “acquaintance” then by Francescho’s intimation that he has more facets of himself yet to reveal. The author establishes Barto’s tone somewhere between mockery and flattery with the use of anaphora, the repeated appellations beginning with “expert,” swiftly creating a sense of camaraderie and intimacy between them.

“Francescho, you’re as green as an early leaf, Barto said.

There are a lot of kinds of green, even in just the earliest leaves, I said. […]

And you’re all those greens put together, he said […]

My sweet 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.”

The repetition of “green” in Francescho and Barto’s conversation is akin to antanaclasis because the word’s meaning changes each time it’s used. Barto initially uses “green” in its figurative sense in the simile “as green as an early leaf” to imply that Francescho is innocent, unworldly and naïve. Comically confirming Barto’s assertion, Francescho takes the word literally, and begins to speak of literal shades of the color green in foliage. Barto lists the things that Francescho takes literally or “at their word” in order to emphasize his naivete, but also unconsciously echoing Francescho’s earlier listing of all the subjects he can paint. When Barto admits to loving Francescho for his “greenness,” the implication is that he not only loves Francescho’s naivete, but also the artistic temperament that has Francescho thinking so literally about colors.

“Only the angel with the swan wings didn’t look relieved : from above them as the new Duke bowed again to the crowd and the crowd went on cheering, I could see a redness at the angel’s shoulder and neck like the minimum pigment which is a red that soon turns to black it came from the hand of the Duke gripping it hard enough to leave an imprint on it : but it is a hard thing in the world, to be modest, and must probably result in bruises for somebody somewhere along the line.”

The Duke’s cruelty to the child with swan wings undermines his public persona of justice and virtue, showing the hidden darkness to his personality. This paints the whole performance and celebration in a sinister and ironic light. Francescho’s ambivalence and nonchalance speaks to the normalization of injustice and abuse within that society, as well as his own naivety.

“Ginevra I heard died of the blue sickness.

Isotta, my darling one, vanished.

I like to think she went by her own choice. […]

Agnola I heard years later was found in the river tied at the hands and feet.

So I understood plenty of dark things too, learned plenty of things that were the opposite of pleasure, at the pleasure house.”

In this quote, Francescho matter-of-factly lists the tragic fates of his friends and lovers. The lack of emotional language and detail counterintuitively communicates the depths of Francescho’s grief and sorrow by implying that he is unwilling to linger or ruminate on the losses. The fact that there is so much uncertainty surrounding the women’s fates, shown by Francescho’s reliance on hearsay “I heard,” shows how little protection they had, and how little accountability or justice there was at the time. The normalization of death, violence, and “the opposite of pleasure” reflects the hardship and normalization of death—and especially of violence against women and working-class people—which was endemic to the historical context of 15th-century Italy.

“That way I needn’t, the Falcon said.

THAT WAY I NEEDN’T, the boy shouted as if through a horn and in a voice unexpectedly deep for such a small boy.

Raise my voice, the Falcon said.

RAISE MY VOICE, the dipping boy said.

In this way the Falcon let us know what would be expected of us.

The walls will be THE WALLS WILL BE. Divided from left to right DIVIDED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT. Except here and here EXCEPT HERE AND HERE.”

Smith uses the repetition of truncated segments of speech to comically reflect the experience of listening to the Falcon and his helper give instructions. The elevated volume is represented by the use of capital letters, humorously translating the auditory listening experience into the visual format of writing.

“The people in your pictures these days, Francescho, he’d said. I mean, they’re still beautiful. But they’re strange. It’s like stone in their veins, where it used to be blood. […]

A bitterness was through it, Barto said. Not like you. Like you’re a different person.”

This quote explores the theme of The Impact of Grief on Personality by outlining how Francescho’s grief has impacted his art. Barto uses the simile, “It’s like stone in their veins,” to figuratively describe the changes. Francescho’s art is a reflection of his own identity, so the “bitterness” in his pictures mirrors the differences to his personality too. The author’s use of short, stilted sentences contrasts with the usual flowery eloquence used for Barto’s character, illustrating the delicacy of the subject matter and the character’s discomfort with formulating and communicating such intimate concerns.

“[B]ut what if I did by chance drink the forgetting and the remembering the wrong way round? I might end up roofless and open for ever, no memories at all of anything ever again : what I would give, to forget everything : cause as I know now from this place of purgatorium this would be a kind of paradise, since purgatorium is a state of troubling memory or the knowledge of a home after home is gone, or of something which you no longer have in a world which you recognize to be your own but in which you are a stranger and of which you can no longer be a part.”

Francescho’s experience with “purgatorium” retrospectively gives him a unique perspective on the proposed memory ritual, by allowing him to see the appeal of complete forgetfulness. This quote provides context to his feigned loss of memory, turning it from a prank to an act of unconscious wish fulfillment. This creates a bittersweet mood, highlighting the true hardship of Francescho’s current disembodied state. The use of hypophora (a question immediately answered by the asker), hypotheticals (“I might”), and long run-on sentences with clauses separated by colons during Francescho’s narrative show that the stream of consciousness prose is providing an unfiltered insight into the character’s state of mind and thought process.

“The story goes, the pickpocket said, that when the workers passing through the room of the months get anywhere near the far end of that room they veer towards the month of March where they stop below your worker painted in the blue and stand there for as long as they can. Some have even started coming in with their sleeves full of hidden flowers and at a given signal between them all they let their arms fall to their sides and the flowers fall out of their clothes on to the floor beneath him.”

Ercole begins his report using the formulaic opening phrase “the story goes” as though reciting a well-known folk tale or fairy story—already mythologizing Francescho’s work and its impact. This speaks to the apprentice’s pride in his master and emphasizes the importance of the fresco to the workers who visit it. Their tribute of flowers shows the impact of Everyday Resistance to Injustice.

“Shining Cosmo, favoured court painter who’ll oust the court painters favoured before you then be ousted in turn by my own beloved apprentice pickpocket (ha!) : bright bejewelled Cosmo old and ill […] I take my unfinished work of an old old story and unroll it over you, spread it all your length, tuck you in beneath it and fold its end down under your chin to keep you that bit warmer in the winters of being old—

I forgive you.”

The extent of Cosmo’s downturn in circumstances is shown through the juxtaposition of Cosmo’s former exalted state “favoured,” and “bright bejewelled,” with his final state “old and ill.” The complexity and depth of Francescho’s feelings toward Cosmo are shown in this quote; although Francescho ultimately forgives Cosmo, the interjection—“ha!”—shows that he retains a sense of satisfaction at his apprentice’s triumph. The sincerity of his forgiveness is nonetheless emphasized through the tenderness of the description of Francescho’s care for the elderly painter, and by the final line, “I forgive you,” directly addressing Cosmo and isolated on its own line.