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

suspiciously like a girl dressed as a boy, and who happens to be wreathed in chains. Not that Fidelio’s a prisoner, no. Apparently the chains have beenbeing repaired by a blacksmith (whom we never see), and Fidelio, the girl’s father’s assistant, has brought the mended chains back to the gaol.
    But it seems that Fidelio isn’t much interested in marrying the boss’s daughter. Fidelio, instead, is unnaturally keen to meet a mysterious prisoner who’s being kept in the deepest, darkest underground cell in the prison. This particular prisoner has been down there for two years and is receiving almost no food or water any more. This is on the prison governor’s orders; the prison governor wants him starved to death. He’s clearly a man who’s done great wrong, Fidelio says, fishing for information – or made great enemies, which is pretty much the same thing, the gaoler says, leaning magnanimously back in his kitchen chair. Money, he says. It’s the answer to everything. The girl looks at Fidelio. Don’t let
him
see that dying prisoner, the girl says. He couldn’t stand it, he’s just a boy, he’s such a gentle boy. Don’t subject him to such a cruel sight. On the contrary, Fidelio says. Let me see him. I’m brave enough and I’m strong enough.
    But then the prison governor announces to the gaoler, in private, that he has just decided to have this prisoner killed.
I’m
not murdering him, the gaoler says when the governor tells him to. Okay, I’ll do it myself, the prison governor says. I’ll takepleasure in it. And I’ll give you a bag of gold if you go and dig a grave for him in the old well down there in his cell.
    It’s agreed. In the next Act, the gaoler will take the boy Fidelio down to the deep dungeon and they’ll dig the grave for the man who, we’ve begun to gather, is Fidelio’s imprisoned husband. Meanwhile, as the First Act draws to a close, Fidelio has somehow managed to get all the other prisoners in the place released out of the dark of their cells into the weak spring sun of the prison yard for a little while.
    They stagger out into the light. They stand about, ragged, dazed, heartbreakingly hopeful. They’re like a false resurrection. They look up at the sunlight. Summer time, they sing, and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high.
    Then they all look at each other in amazement.
    Fidelio looks bewildered.
    The gaoler shakes his head.
    The conductor’s baton droops.
    The orchestra in the pit stops playing. Instruments pause in mid-air.
    The girl who was doing the ironing at the beginning is singing too. She’s really good. She shrugs at her father as if she can’t help it, can’t do anything about it. Your daddy’s rich, she sings, and your mammy’s good-looking.
    Then a man arrives in a cart pulled by a goat. He stops the cart in the middle of the stage. Everybody crowds round him. He’s black. He’s the only black person on the stage. He looks very poor and at the same time very impressive. When the song finishes he gets out of the cart. He walks across the stage. He’s got a limp. It’s quite a bad limp. He tells them all that he’s looking for Bess. Where is she? He’s heard she’s here. He’s not going to stop looking for her until he finds her. He glances at the gaoler; he regards Fidelio gravely for a moment. He nods to the girl. He approaches a group of prisoners. Is this New York? he says. Is she here?
     
    Yeah, but, you say. Come on. I mean.
    But what? I say.
    You can’t, you say.
    Can’t what? I say.
    Culture’s fixed, you say. That’s why it’s culture. That’s how it gets to be art. That’s how it works. That’s why it works. You can’t just change it. You can’t just alter it when you want or because you want. You can’t just revise things for your own pleasure or whatever.
    Actually I can do anything I like, I say.
    Yeah, but you can’t revise Fidelio, you say. No one can.
    Fidelio’s all about revision, I say.