Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page B

other, the patterns of infection. They ate their family breakfast in solitary silence. Unclean, leper-spotted, found out over night.
    They wore their darkest clothes, their soberest expressions, they whispered like church wardens. They colluded in their grey, upright vanity, but when their eyes met they saw the stain.
    My mother poured the tea with trembling hands. Concentrate, concentrate, one cup, two cups, safe, safe. She dropped the pot. The white china shattered on to the white tablecloth and spread the tea in a five-point star of plum.
    ‘Why is the tea that colour?’ demanded father.
    ‘There’s no colour there father, no colour, just tea.’ She dabbed at it with the corner of her white handkerchief. She might as well have dipped it in blood. The family stared at the stain and the stain stared back. Impudent with summer, rich with fertile swelling, the plum stain on the Christmas tablecloth.
    ‘Go upstairs, why don’t you?’ My mother pleading, wringing her spotted hands on her spotted apron.
    They went upstairs. They went upstairs, two by two, to the comfortable ark of the Sunday parlour.
    ‘It’s raining,’ said Matthew, standing at the long window that overlooked the long garden. He saw his mother in the rain, orange arrows tangling in her hair. She was struggling to hang out the tablecloth.
    ‘Mother will get wet,’ he said to no-one.
    ‘Bit of rain won’t hurt her,’ said father.
    ‘It’s orange,’ said Matthew.
    ‘It must be the power station,’ said father.
    Picasso painted. She painted herself out of the night and into the circle of the sun. The sun soaked up the darkness from her studio and left a sponge of light. The light illuminated the four corners of the floor and the four corners of the ceiling in an octave of praise. As Picasso painted she sang in eight points of light. She opened her back to the sun and let it key her spine. She opened the window and the sun scaled her. She had the sun as a halo behind her head. She shone. The sun was in her mouth and it burned her lips. She held the sun between her teeth in a thin gold disc. It was winter but the sun was hot. She looked like a Buddha in gold leaf.
    Without thinking, Picasso ran into the parlour, into the newspapers, into the best clothes and the dead air. She was painted from head to foot.
    ‘Self portrait,’ she said to their astonished faces.
    ‘Call the doctor Matthew,’ said her father.
    The doctor packed his stethoscope, his gloves, his warrant and his syringe. The doctor got into his car and set off. The smooth powerful car purred underneath the purple clouds.
    ‘For God’s sake Matthew, the snow is NOT purple. Where is your sister?’ (Hello dear, you’re Picasso’s sister aren’t you?)
    Picasso packed her easel, her brushes, her paints, her bags. She packed her canvases and left her reviews. Outside, the sun had made a pole of light that struck through the cloudy hide. Picasso, in her camouflage, swung down it and on to the road.
    ‘It’s all over the tablecloth,’ whimpered mother.
    Picasso was wearing her deep boots, her leather jacket and velvet hat. She was warm because she had had the foresight to paint herself in for winter.
    ‘The central heating has broken down,’ said Matthew, kicking the white radiator.
    Outside, the snow was clean and fresh, it fell on her lightly like the touch of an old friend. She threw back her head, but when the snow touched her lips, it melted. She had the sun in her mouth. She smiled and walked through the silent city.
    On the way, after she had been walking for some time, a man skidded up through the breaks of snow, and asked her for help.
    ‘I am a doctor,’ he said.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Picasso. ‘I don’t take drugs.’
    She walked on, past his purple face in his snow-shot purple car, through the silent city and into the railway station.

SAPPHO
     

I AM A S EXUALIST . In flagrante delicto. The end-stop of the universe. Say my name and you say sex. Say my name and you