First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

and tied wire to the wheels so it would steer. I was seventeen. Then, when he was older, we used to just ignore each other. If we saw each other in the street, I mean. The man’s friend shakes his head. It’s so weird, he says. It’s so. It’s. It’s spring. It’s an early evening in April, the first mild evening of spring. A man is out on his flat roof with a hosepipe, aiming a jet of water at a small black and white cat. When the water hits the cat, the cat jumps in the air and runs a little, and then turns and stops and looks at the man.
    Go on, the man shouts. He waves his hand inthe air. The cat doesn’t move. The man aims the hose again. He hits the cat. The cat jumps in astonishment again, takes a few steps then stops and turns to look back at the man with its wide stupid cat eyes.
    Aw, a voice says.
    It is quite a high voice.
    The man checks all round him at the roofs and gardens of the other houses but he can’t see anyone.
    Go on, he shouts at the cat again. He stamps on the roof.
    When he’s chased the cat right down the back lane with the water, the man crosses the roof, gathering in the hose. He climbs in his window and turns to shake the nozzle outside. That’s when he sees the small boy, or maybe it’s a girl, edging down out of one of the sycamore trees at the back of the houses.
    The boy or girl has what looks like a book, or maybe a cardboard packet, under one arm. Biscuits? The man watches him or her negotiate a safe way down from quite high up in the trees, moving the packet from under one arm to under the other, careful from branch to branch until he or she is within reach of the roof of the shed in the garden below. Then the boy or girl slides downwards and out of view.
    That night the man can’t sleep. He turns in his bed. He sits up.
    A child believes I am cruel, he is thinking to himself.
    The next morning he is almost late for work, not just because he woke late, but because he goes and stands out on the roof for several minutes then leaves home later than usual. That evening he takes a taxi, but though he’s home half an hour early and goes straight out on to the roof, it’s raining, and it’s noticeably cold, much colder than yesterday.
    There’s no way a child would climb a tree in such weather. The tree would be too slippery. There’d be no point in sitting in a tree in the rain.
    The leaves are nearly out on these trees. It’ll soon be summer. The ends of their branches against the grey sky look like they’re swollen, or lit, or like they’ve been painted with luminous paint.
    It doesn’t look like it will brighten. It doesn’t look like anything is going to happen tonight.
    He decides he’ll wait out there on the roof for a little while longer, just in case.
     
    The third person is another pair of eyes. The third person is a presentiment of God. The third person is a way to tell the story. The third person is a revitalisation of the dead.
    It’s a theatre of living people. It’s a miniature innocent thief. It’s thousands of boots that are made out of glass. It’s a total mystery.
    It’s a weapon that’s shaped like a tool.
    It comes out of nowhere. It just happens.
    It’s a box for the endless music that’s there between people, waiting to be played.

 
     
     
     
fidelio and bess

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    A young woman is ironing in a kitchen in a prison. But she’s not a prisoner, no. Her father’s the chief gaoler; she just lives here. A young man comes into the kitchen and tells her he’s decided that he and she are going to marry. I’ve chosen you, he says. She is desultory with him. She suggests to the audience that he’s a bit of a fool. Then she sings a song to herself. It’s Fidelio I’ve chosen, it’s Fidelio I’m in love with, she sings. It’s Fidelio who’s in love with me. It’s Fidelio I want to wake up next to every morning.
    Her father comes home. Then, a moment later, so does Fidelio himself, who looks