Free Where There's Smoke by Black Inc. Page A

children, Helen has always been the more reserved, the one who kept her mother at more of a distance. Never before has Helen spoken like this. Perhaps the car makes it easier, allowing the driver not to look straight at the person she is addressing. She must remember that about cars.
    â€˜That’s very kind of you, my dear,’ she says. The voice that comes from her throat is unexpectedly low. ‘I will not forget it. But would it not feel odd, coming back to France after all these years to die? What will I say to the man at the border when he asks the purpose of my visit, business or pleasure? Or, worse, when he asks how long I plan to stay? Forever? To the end? Just a brief while? ’
    â€˜Say réunir la famille . He will understand that. To reunite the family. It happens every day. He won’t demand more.’
    They eat at an auberge called Les Deux Ermites. There must be a story behind the name, but she would prefer not to be told it. If it is a good story it is probably made up anyway. A cold, knifing wind is blowing; they sit behind the protection of glass, looking out on snow-capped peaks. It is early in the season: besides theirs, only two tables are occupied.
    â€˜Pretty? Yes, of course it is pretty. A pretty country, a beautiful country, that goes without saying. La belle France . But do not forget, Helen, how lucky I have been, what a privileged vocation I have followed. I have been able to move about as I wished most of my life. I have lived, when I have chosen, in the lap of beauty. The question I find myself asking now is, What good has it done me, all this beauty? Is beauty not just another consumable, like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down, it gives one a brief, pleasing, heady feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue of wine is, excuse the word, piss; what is the residue of beauty? What is the good of it? Does beauty make us better people?’
    â€˜Before you tell me your answer to the question, Mother, shall I tell you mine? Because I think I know what you are going to say. You are going to say that beauty has done you no good that you can see, that one of these days you are going to find yourself at heaven’s gate with your hands empty and a big question mark over your head. It would be entirely in character for you, that is to say for Elizabeth Costello, to say so. And to believe so.
    â€˜The answer you will not give – because it would be out of character for Elizabeth Costello – is that what you have produced as a writer not only has a beauty of its own – a limited beauty, granted, it is not poetry, but beauty nevertheless, shapeliness, clarity, economy – but has also changed the lives of others, made them better human beings, or slightly better human beings. It is not just I who say so. Other people say so too, strangers. To me, to my face. Not because what you write contains lessons but because it is a lesson.’
    â€˜Like the water skater, you mean.’
    â€˜I don’t know who the water skater is.’
    â€˜The water skater or long-legged fly. An insect. The water skater thinks it is just hunting for food, whereas in fact its movements trace on the surface of the pond, over and over, the most beautiful of all words, the name of God. The movements of the pen on the page trace the name of God, as you, watching from a remove, can see but I cannot.’
    â€˜Yes, if you like. But more than that. You teach people how to feel. By dint of grace. The grace of the pen as it follows the movements of thought.’
    It sounds to her rather old-fashioned, this aesthetic theory that her daughter is expounding, rather Aristotelian. Has Helen worked it out by herself or just read it somewhere? And how does it apply to the art of painting? If the rhythm of the pen is the rhythm of thought, what is the rhythm of the brush? And what of paintings made with a spray-can? How do such paintings teach us to be better people?
    She sighs.