There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [82]
The fact is, every tree that ever lived or lives has a history just like that tree has. It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don’t know.
The fact is, history is actually all sorts of things nobody knows about.
(One evening about suppertime Brooke was worrying about what would happen if the walls and the roof just fell in, the ceiling just collapsed on top of you. Instead of worrying, she took the book down off the shelf, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. It was about Greenwich and the man blowing himself up in the park! Then Brooke found this thing: from p63 to p245 in this particular book there were pencil circles round certain words. Ostentatious. Transcendental. Ergo. Maculated. Physiognomy. Propensity. Pensively. Finessing. Brooke went through to the kitchen. Why did you put circles round some of the words and why did you choose these particular words to do it to? she asked her father. Her father was doing something with a packet. What words? he said. Brooke held the book up open at page 63. Her father put the spoon and packet down and flicked through the book. Interesting, he said. He looked inside the front of the book and showed Brooke where someone had written in pencil the price £2.50. Yep, he said, it’s second hand. Second hand! this was funny. First: because of the clocks and watches at the Observatory in the museum which have second hands, and second: in a sort of weird way because of the man with the hand that exploded off his arm. First hand. Second hand. It’ll be whoever owned that book before us, he’ll have done it, her father said. Yes, but it could have been a girl or a woman who owned the book before us, Brooke said. Very true, her father said. Which do you think it was? Brooke asked. I don’t know, her father said, there’s no way of knowing. There must be a way of knowing, Brooke said. She did a little dance leaning on the table. Her father gave her back the book. He began reading the side of the packet, which was something to do with rice. Unprecedented. Intimated. Brooke went back through to the front and sat on the rug and made a list on a piece of paper of all the words with pencil rings round them. Pristine. Unscrupulous. Then she went back through to the kitchen. What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don’t know, Brooksie, he said, I don’t remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you’d decided to buy it. But dad, why do you think a person who first owned this book would have circled these exact words? she said. Her father was holding a saucepan under the tap but not turning the tap on. Hard to say, he said. Augment, Brooke said. She flicked further through the book to find another one. Emulation, she said. They’re easy to say. Her father laughed. No, I didn’t mean it literally, he said, I meant it’s hard to say why he, or she, did it. Ah, Brooke said. Maybe the person was circling the words he or she didn’t understand or know the meaning of, her father said. Yip yep, Brooke said, that is a possibility. She went back through to the front room. She climbed up on to the sofa, balanced on her knees on its high back and reached down the big dictionary. Expedient: suitable or appropriate. Coruscation: glittering, a sudden flash of light. Augment: to increase, make larger. She knew already what lucid meant. Then she looked at the list of words on the page to see if the person who had circled them