Winter

  By the same author

  Free Love

  Like

  Other Stories and other stories

  Hotel World

  The Whole Story and other stories

  The Accidental

  The Book Lover

  Girl Meets Boy

  The First Person and other stories

  There but for the

  Artful

  Shire

  How to be both

  Public library and other stories

  Autumn

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Ali Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd., a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2017.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Smith, Ali, [date] author.

  Title: Winter / Ali Smith.

  Description: First United States edition. New York : Pantheon Books, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017043695. ISBN 9781101870754 (hardcover : alk. paper). ISBN 9781101870761 (ebook).

  Classification: LCC PR6069.M4213 W56 2018. DDC 823/.914—dc23. LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2017043695

  Ebook ISBN 9781101870761

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover image: Above the river, Autumn, 1919 (detail) by Boris Michaylovich Kustodiev. Private Collection. Heritage Images/Getty Images.

  Cover design by Oliver Munday

  v5.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Titles

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Acknowledgments

  For Sarah Daniel

  in the lion’s den

  with love

  and for Sarah Wood

  muß i’ denn

  with love

  Nor the furious winter’s rages.

  William Shakespeare

  Landscape directs its own images.

  Barbara Hepworth

  But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world,

  you’re a citizen of nowhere.

  Theresa May, 5 October 2016

  We have entered the realm of mythology.

  Muriel Spark

  Darkness is cheap.

  Charles Dickens

  1

  God was dead: to begin with.

  And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead. Jazz was dead, pop music, disco, rap, classical music, dead. Culture was dead. Decency, society, family values were dead. The past was dead. History was dead. The welfare state was dead. Politics was dead. Democracy was dead. Communism, fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, all dead, and marxism, dead, feminism, also dead. Political correctness, dead. Racism was dead. Religion was dead. Thought was dead. Hope was dead. Truth and fiction were both dead. The media was dead. The internet was dead. Twitter, instagram, facebook, google, dead.

  Love was dead.

  Death was dead.

  A great many things were dead.

  Some, though, weren’t, or weren’t dead yet.

  Life wasn’t yet dead. Revolution wasn’t dead. Racial equality wasn’t dead. Hatred wasn’t dead.

  But the computer? Dead. TV? Dead. Radio? Dead. Mobiles were dead. Batteries were dead. Marriages were dead, sex lives were dead, conversation was dead. Leaves were dead. Flowers were dead, dead in their water.

  Imagine being haunted by the ghosts of all these dead things. Imagine being haunted by the ghost of a flower. No, imagine being haunted (if there were such a thing as being haunted, rather than just neurosis or psychosis) by the ghost (if there were such a thing as ghosts, rather than just imagination) of a flower.

  Ghosts themselves weren’t dead, not exactly. Instead, the following questions came up:

  are ghosts dead

  are ghosts dead or alive

  are ghosts deadly

  but in any case forget ghosts, put them out of your mind because this isn’t a ghost story, though it’s the dead of winter when it happens, a bright sunny post-millennial global-warming Christmas Eve morning (Christmas, too, dead), and it’s about real things really happening in the real world involving real people in real time on the real earth (uh huh, earth, also dead):

  Good morning, Sophia Cleves said. Happy day-before-Christmas.

  She was speaking to the disembodied head.

  It was the head of a child, just a head, no body attached, floating by itself in mid air.

  It was tenacious, the head. This was its fourth day in her house; she’d opened her eyes this morning and it was still here, this time hovering over the washbasin watching itself in the mirror. It swivelled to face her as soon as she spoke to it and when it saw her, it – can something with no neck or shoulders be said to bow? it definitely dipped itself, sort of tipped forward with its eyes down respectful then up again courtly and bright, a bow, or a curtsey? Was it male or female? What it was was very well mannered, polite, the head of a good polite child (still pre-language, maybe, because quite silent) now the size of a cantaloupe (was it ironic or a failing, to be more at home with melons than children? lucky for her, Arthur’d caught on quickly when he was small that she preferred children to aspire to being less childlike), though quite unlike a melon in that it had a face, and a thick head of hair a couple of inches longer than itself, straggly, rich, dark, wavy-straight, rather romantic like a miniature cavalier if it was male, or if female something like the child adorned in leaves in the park in Paris with her back to the camera on the old black and white postcard of the photograph taken by the twentieth century French photographer Édouard Boubat (petite fille aux feuilles mortes jardin du Luxembourg Paris 1946) and when Sophia’d first woken this morning and seen it there, the head with the back of its head to her, its hair had been doing the beguiling thing of lifting and falling slightly in the central-heating air, but only on the one side, the side directly above the radiator; now it swayed and wafted a fragment of a moment behind the head’s free-floating shifts and balances like a slow-motion soft-focus person’s hair does in a shampoo commercial. See? Shampoo commercial is not ghost or ghoul. Nothing scary about it.

  (Unless shampoo commercials, or maybe all commercials, are actually frightful visions of the living dead and it’s just that we’ve become so accustomed to them that we’re no longer shocked.)

  In any case, it just wasn’t frightening, the head. It was sweet, and bashful in its ceremoniousness, and those aren’t words you can associate with a dead thing or the notion of the marauding spirit of a dead thing – and it didn’t seem in the least dead, though it looked like it might maybe be a little more grisly underneath at the place where a neck would once have been, where there was the rumou
r, just, of something more visceral, shredded, meaty.

  But anything too much like that was tucked well behind the hair and the chin, not the first thing that struck you, which was the life in it, the warmth of its demeanour, and as it bobbed and nodded merrily in the air next to her like a little green buoy in untroubled water while Sophia washed her face and cleaned her teeth, and as it skimmed airily the descent ahead of Sophia down the stairs and wove itself, little planet in its own micro-universe, in and out between the dusty twigs of the collection of dead orchids on the lower landing, it radiated more benignity than the head of any Buddha that Sophia’d yet encountered, painted head of any Cupid or stupefied Christmas cherubim.

  In the kitchen Sophia put water and coffee in the espresso maker. She screwed the top part of the espresso maker on and lit the gas. As she did the head veered away from the sudden heat. Its eyes were full of laughter. As if for fun it dared itself towards and away from the flame.

  You’ll catch your hair on fire, she said.

  The head shook its head. She laughed. Delightful.

  I wonder if it knows what Christmas is, if it knows about Christmas Eve.

  What child doesn’t?

  I wonder what the trains are like today. I wonder if it’d like me to take it to London. We could go to Hamleys. The Christmas lights.

  We could go to the zoo. I wonder if it’s ever been to the zoo. Children love the zoo. I wonder if the zoo’s open this close to Christmas. Or we could go and see, I don’t know, guardsmen, they’ll be there regardless of Christmas with the bearskins on, the red tunics. That’d be something splendid. Or the Science Museum, where you can see things like your own bones through your hands.

  (Ah.

  The head didn’t have any hands.)

  Well, I could push the buttons for it, the interactive things, I could do those things for it if it can’t do them for itself. Or the V and A. Things of such beauty, no matter how old or young you are. The Natural History Museum. I can tuck it inside my coat. I’ll take a big bag. I’ll cut eyeholes. I’ll fold a scarf for the bottom of the bag, a jumper, something soft.

  The head was on the windowsill sniffing at what was left of the supermarket thyme. It closed its eyes in what looked like pleasure. It rubbed its forehead against the tiny leaves. The scent of thyme spread through the kitchen and the plant toppled into the sink.

  While it was in there, the plant, Sophia turned on the tap and gave it a drink.

  Then she sat at the table with the coffee. The head settled next to the fruitbowl, apples, lemons. It made her table look like an art joke, an installation or a painting by the artist Magritte, This Isn’t a Head; no, like Dalí, or the De Chirico heads, but funny, like Duchamp who put the moustache on the Mona Lisa, even something like a tabletop still life by Cézanne whom she’d always found on the one hand unsettling and on the other refreshing given that he reveals, though it’s hard to believe, that things like apples and oranges can be blues and purples as well, colours you would never have believed they had in them.

  In one of the papers recently she’d seen a picture of what looked like a wall of people standing in front of the wall on which the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. She’d seen, herself, the actual Mona Lisa, but back before she’d had Arthur, which made it three decades ago, and it’d been hard enough even then to see anything of it because of the quite large mob of people standing in front of it taking its photo. It had also been remarkably small, the masterpiece, a lot smaller than she’d expected such a famous masterpiece to be. Maybe the crowd in front of it had made it seem smaller to the eye.

  But the difference was that the people standing in front of it now were no longer even bothering to turn towards it. They mostly had their backs to it because they were taking pictures of themselves with it; these days that old painting was smiling in its superior way at people’s backs, people with their phones held up above their heads in the air. The people looked like they were saluting. But saluting what?

  The space in front of a painting where people stand and don’t look at it?

  Themselves?

  The head on the table raised its eyebrows at her. As if it could read her mind, it gave her a little Mona Lisa smirk.

  Very funny. Very smart.

  National Gallery? Would it like the National Gallery? Tate Modern?

  But all these places, if they were open at all today, would be closing at noon like most places and in any case the trains, Christmas Eve.

  So. Not London.

  What then? A walk on the clifftop?

  But what if the head got blown out to sea?

  Something hurt inside across her chest at the thought.

  Whatever I do today you can come too, she said to the head. If you’re good and quiet.

  But I hardly need say that, she thought. I couldn’t have a less obtrusive guest.

  It’s very nice, having you around the house, she said. You’re very welcome.

  Certainly the head looked happy with that.

  —

  Five days ago:

  Sophia goes into the front room office, switches on her work computer, ignores the many emails with the red !s and goes straight to Google where she types in

  blue green dot in eye

  then, to be more precise,

  blue green dot at side of vision getting bigger.

  Do You Have a Spot on Your Iris? THIS is What it Means! -

  Spots, Dots, and Floaters: Seeing What’s Inside Your Eyes

  When I close my eyes ... I see colored dots : askscience

  Blurred vision, Floating spots or strings in vision, Sensitive to light and

  Seeing Colored Spots – Vision and Eye Disorders Forum – eHealthForum

  5 Signs You have Retinal Migraine - Headache and Migraine News

  Entoptic phenomenon – Wikipedia

  She looks up a couple of the sites. Cataracts. Light filter problem. Vitreous detachment. Corneal abrasions. Macular degeneration. Floaters. Migraines. Possible retinal detachment. Seek prompt medical care if your spots or floaters are persistent or cause you concern.

  Then she googles

  seeing a little green-blue sphere off to the side of my vision.

  Up comes The Art of Seeing: Third Eye Perception & The Mystical Gaze, a lot of stuff about psychics, and Why Seeing Lights is a Sign from Your Angels | Doreen Virtue - Official.

  Oh for Christ sake.

  She books an appointment in a couple of days’ time at a chainstore optician in town.

  The young blonde optician comes through from a back room and looks at the screen then looks at Sophia.

  Hello Sophia, I’m Sandy, she says.

  Hello Sandy. I’d prefer it if you’d call me Mrs Cleves, Sophia says.

  Of course. Follow me please, S–, uh, the optician says.

  The optician goes up a staircase at the back of the shop. Upstairs there’s a room with a raised seat in it, much like at a dentist’s, and various machines. The optician gestures to the seat to suggest to Sophia to sit in it. She stands at a desk making some notes. She asks when Soph– uh, Mrs Cleves – last visited an optician.

  This is my first visit to an optician, Sophia says.

  And you’ve come because you’ve been having a bit of trouble with your eyesight, the optician says.

  That remains to be seen, Sophia says.

  Ha ha! the young optician says as if Sophia is being witty, which she isn’t.

  The optician does distance reading tests and close-up reading tests, eye-blocking tests, tests where a puff of air hits the eyes, a test where she looks inside Sophia’s eyes with a light that means Sophia is astonished (and unexpectedly moved) to be able to see a branchwork in her own blood vessels, and a test where you have to press a button to register when and if you see a dot as it moves round the screen.

  Then she asks Sophia her birthdate again.

  Gosh. I thought I might have written it down wrongly, the optician says. Because honestly your eyes are in such great shape. You
don’t even need reading glasses.

  I see, Sophia says.

  You do, the optician says, and really well for someone in your age demographic. You’re really lucky.

  Luck, is it? Sophia says.

  Well, imagine it like this, the optician says. Imagine I’m a car mechanic and someone brings me in a car for a service, and it’s a car from the 1940s, and I lift the lid and find the engine still nearly as clean as when it left the factory floor in (the optician checks her form) 1946, just amazing, a triumph.

  You’re saying I’m like an old Triumph, Sophia says.

  Good as new, the optician (who clearly has no idea that a Triumph has ever been a car) says. Close as damnit to never been used. I don’t know how you’ve done it.

  You’re inferring I’ve spent my life going around with my eyes shut, or been remiss in some way in fully using them? Sophia says.

  Yes, ha, that’s right, the optician says scanning the paperwork and stapling something to something. Criminal underuse of eyes, I’ll have to report this to the eye authorities.

  Then she sees Sophia’s face.

  Ah, she says. Uh.

  Did you see anything at all in my eyes to concern you? Sophia says.

  Is there something particularly concerning you, Mrs Cleves? the optician says. Something you’re maybe not telling me or maybe worried about. Because underlying –

  Sophia silences the girl with a dart of her (excellent) eyes.

  What I need to know, and all I need to know, do I make myself clear, is, Sophia says. Did any of your machines indicate to you anything I should be worrying about as concerns my sight?

  The optician opens her mouth. Then she shuts it. Then she opens it again.

  No, the optician says.

  Now, Sophia says. How much do I owe, and to whom do I pay it?

  Nothing at all, the optician says. Because given that you’re over sixty, there’s no –