Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

The tall, hooded man who played the Jack with me, when I was a child.  He who cut wild flowers with his sickle and made me a hedge-chain I did not want to take off.  I went with him, hand in hand, child-crowned with his curious flowers.  It was easy to walk beside him while his steps were met to mine.  I never saw his face, only his hands, and the long days juggled.

When was it that he became impatient?  Insisted that we hurry, and hurry faster, though not through press of destination?  I had nowhere to go.  Why did the sun not lull him as it did once?  The still days and the luminous water.  The afternoons that lasted for years.  Wasn’t that him, dark shadow on the bank, unroused and unrousable?  He was deaf in those days and for every long and hated hour, produced another, a soft sewn ball thrown to me.  Yet I was happy and forgot.  When was it that he became impatient?

The little chain of wild flowers, sap stalks and sun heads, petrified.  I was fast-bound to him.  I am his bondsman.  Yearly now, he claims his feudal tithe, and I wither visibly.  Each year there is less, and less to claim, but he does claim it, no matter how thin the harvest.

I have seen his face close up, the strange lop-sided grin, that turns to me immobile, although everyday we are moving faster.  There are others, all of us, the chain gang on the charcoal hill, bound in the danse macabre.

Do I try to cheat him with wigs, dyes, concoctions, ghastly operations and lambskins for my mutton flesh?  Here I am, prancing on my back legs in a borrowed skin.  Must keep up with the times.  Must keep up with Time.  When was it he became impatient?

Too fast.  Kick off my dancing shoes and crawl on all fours.  Drag me, how he drags me, knows the creature that I am.  Beg him?  He is deaf still.  In spite of that I cry out.

On we go, the blurring body and the cheated soul.  Why did no-one tell me to provide for it?  Everything I have has been the outward show.  Everything I have belongs to Time.  Art?  Don’t be silly.  The contemplative life?  Where can I get one? What then  for my soul as Time pulls me on.  What then for my soul?

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies, pp 141-143)