produced by a
Dutchman, amounting to half a million francs. The concierge was smart enough to
see the point. She agreed to let the rent slide for a month, to lend him money
for paints and a little extra change for cigarettes while he painted something
as big as the wall of his cell. In return, with the prize money, he promised to
buy her a little house in the country for her old age—with garden. Now he could
paint all day. It was spring; he left his door open and the concierge settled
in the courtyard with her heavy red hands at rest on her lap and thought that
each brush stroke added to her house and garden. After two months she got
impatient. He was still painting, but he was also eating, smoking cigarettes,
drinking aperitifs and even sleeping at times more than eight hours. Peter
rushed to the embassy and asked his friend to pay him an official call. The
friend managed to borrow the official car with the Dutch coat of arms and paid
the painter a respectful visit. This reassured her for another month. Every
evening they read the booklet together: ‘the prize will be handed over in cash
one week after the jury decides upon its value…’ The concierge’s beatitude was
contagious. The entire house benefited from her mellowness. Until one morning
when the newspapers published the name and photograph of the genuine Dutch
painter who had actually won the prize and then without warning she turned into
a cyclone. Peter’s door was locked. She climbed on a chair to look through the
transom to make sure he was not asleep or drunk. To her great horror she saw a
body hanging from the ceiling. He had hanged himself! She called for help. The
police forced the door open. What they cut down was a mannequin of wax and old
rags, carefully painted by Peter.
“The funny thing,” added Jay after a pause, “is
that after this his luck turned. When he hanged his effigy he seemed to have
killed the self who had been a failure.”
The visitors left.
Then all the laughter in him subsided into a
pool of serenity. His voice became soft. Just as he loved the falsities of his
roles, he loved also to rest from these pranks and attitudes and crystallize in
the white heat of Lillian’s faith.
And when all the gestures and talk seemed
lulled, suddenly he sprang up again with a new mood, a fanatic philosopher who
walked up and down the studio punctuating the torrent of his ideas with fist
blows on the tables. A nervous lithe walk, while he churned ideas like leaves
on a pyre which never turned to ash.
Then all the words, the ideas, the memories,
were drawn together like the cords of a hundred kites and he said:
“I’d like to work now.”
Lillian watched the transformation in him. She
watched the half open mouth close musingly, the scattered talk crystallizing.
This man so easily swayed, caught, moved, now collecting his strength again. At
that moment she saw the big man in him, the man who appeared to be merely
enjoying recklessly, idling, roaming, but deep down set upon a terribly earnest
goal: to hand back to life all the wealth of material he had collected, intent
on making restitution to the world for what he had absorbed with his enormous
creator’s appetite.
There remained in the air only the echoes of
his resonant voice, the hot breath of his words, the vibration of his pounding
gestures.
She rose to lock the door of the studio upon
the world. She drew in long invisible bolts. She pulled in rustless shutters. Silence. She imprisoned within herself that mood and texture of Jay
which would never go into his work, or be given or exposed to the world, that
which she alone could see and know./font>
While Lillian slept Jay reassembled his
dispersed selves. At this moment the flow in him became purposeful.
In his very manner of pressing the paint tube
there was intensity; often it spurted like a geyser, was wasted, stained his
clothes and the floor. The paint, having appeared in a minor explosion,
proceeded to cause a major one on
Dutchman, amounting to half a million francs. The concierge was smart enough to
see the point. She agreed to let the rent slide for a month, to lend him money
for paints and a little extra change for cigarettes while he painted something
as big as the wall of his cell. In return, with the prize money, he promised to
buy her a little house in the country for her old age—with garden. Now he could
paint all day. It was spring; he left his door open and the concierge settled
in the courtyard with her heavy red hands at rest on her lap and thought that
each brush stroke added to her house and garden. After two months she got
impatient. He was still painting, but he was also eating, smoking cigarettes,
drinking aperitifs and even sleeping at times more than eight hours. Peter
rushed to the embassy and asked his friend to pay him an official call. The
friend managed to borrow the official car with the Dutch coat of arms and paid
the painter a respectful visit. This reassured her for another month. Every
evening they read the booklet together: ‘the prize will be handed over in cash
one week after the jury decides upon its value…’ The concierge’s beatitude was
contagious. The entire house benefited from her mellowness. Until one morning
when the newspapers published the name and photograph of the genuine Dutch
painter who had actually won the prize and then without warning she turned into
a cyclone. Peter’s door was locked. She climbed on a chair to look through the
transom to make sure he was not asleep or drunk. To her great horror she saw a
body hanging from the ceiling. He had hanged himself! She called for help. The
police forced the door open. What they cut down was a mannequin of wax and old
rags, carefully painted by Peter.
“The funny thing,” added Jay after a pause, “is
that after this his luck turned. When he hanged his effigy he seemed to have
killed the self who had been a failure.”
The visitors left.
Then all the laughter in him subsided into a
pool of serenity. His voice became soft. Just as he loved the falsities of his
roles, he loved also to rest from these pranks and attitudes and crystallize in
the white heat of Lillian’s faith.
And when all the gestures and talk seemed
lulled, suddenly he sprang up again with a new mood, a fanatic philosopher who
walked up and down the studio punctuating the torrent of his ideas with fist
blows on the tables. A nervous lithe walk, while he churned ideas like leaves
on a pyre which never turned to ash.
Then all the words, the ideas, the memories,
were drawn together like the cords of a hundred kites and he said:
“I’d like to work now.”
Lillian watched the transformation in him. She
watched the half open mouth close musingly, the scattered talk crystallizing.
This man so easily swayed, caught, moved, now collecting his strength again. At
that moment she saw the big man in him, the man who appeared to be merely
enjoying recklessly, idling, roaming, but deep down set upon a terribly earnest
goal: to hand back to life all the wealth of material he had collected, intent
on making restitution to the world for what he had absorbed with his enormous
creator’s appetite.
There remained in the air only the echoes of
his resonant voice, the hot breath of his words, the vibration of his pounding
gestures.
She rose to lock the door of the studio upon
the world. She drew in long invisible bolts. She pulled in rustless shutters. Silence. She imprisoned within herself that mood and texture of Jay
which would never go into his work, or be given or exposed to the world, that
which she alone could see and know./font>
While Lillian slept Jay reassembled his
dispersed selves. At this moment the flow in him became purposeful.
In his very manner of pressing the paint tube
there was intensity; often it spurted like a geyser, was wasted, stained his
clothes and the floor. The paint, having appeared in a minor explosion,
proceeded to cause a major one on
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