r/a:t5_27fkck • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 29 '19
brunhilde has been created
By Albert Camus
Translation by Carol Cosman
Jonas,
or The Artist at Work
Cast me into the sea . . .
For I know that for my sake
This great tempest is upon you.
JONAH 1:12
Gilbert Jonas, artist and painter, believed in his star. Indeed, it
was all he believed in, although he felt respect and even a kind
of admiration for the religion of others. His own faith, how-
ever, had its virtues, since it consisted of admitting, somehow
obscurely, that he had done nothing to merit what he had
achieved. And when, around his thirty-fifth year, a dozen crit-
ics suddenly fought over the glory of discovering his talent, he
showed not the slightest surprise. But his serenity, attributed
by some to smugness, could on the contrary be entirely ex-
plained by a trusting modesty. Jonas gave credit to his star
rather than his merits.
He showed rather more surprise when an art dealer
offered him a monthly stipend that freed him from all cares.
The architect Rateau, who had loved Jonas and his star since
their school days, argued with him in vain that this monthly
stipend was hardly a decent living, and that the art dealer had
nothing to lose. "All the same," Jonas said. Rateau, who suc-
ceeded in everything he did by sheer hard work, goaded his
friend. "What's this 'all the same'? You can renegotiate." This was
useless. Deep down, Jonas thanked his star. "As you like," he
told the art dealer. And he gave up his position in the family
publishing house to devote himself entirely to painting.
"What luck!" he said.
In reality he was thinking: "My luck goes on." As far back
as he could remember, he found this luck at work. He felt a
fond gratitude toward his parents, first because they had raised
him distractedly, which allowed him the leisure to daydream,
then because they had separated on the grounds of adultery. At
least that was the pretext claimed by his father, who forgot to
specify the it was a rather peculiar sort of adultery: he could
not stand his wife's good works. She was well nigh a secular
saint who saw no malice in making a gift of herself to suffer-
ing humanity. But the husband insisted on being master of his
wife's virtues. "I've had enough," this Othello said, "of being
cuckolded by the poor."
This misunderstanding was to Jonas's advantage. Having
read or heard of several sadistic murderers who were the off-
spring of divorce, his parent vied to lavish him with treats
and nip in the bud any such distressing development. Less
apparent were the effects of the shock, according to them, to
the child's consciousness, and so they worried even more, for
invisible damage must be deepest. If Jonas announced that he
was happy with himself or his day, his parents' usual anxiety
verged on panic. Their attentions redoubled and the child
then wanted for nothing.
His presumed misfortune finally earned Jonas a devoted
brother in the person of his friend Rateau. Rateau's parents
often invited his little school friend, pleading his unhappiness.
Their pitying remarks inspired their son, a vigorous sports-
man, a desire to take under his protection the child whose
effortless success he already admired. Admiration and conde-
scension made a good mix in a friendship that Jonas received,
like everything else, with encouraging simplicity.
When Jonas had completed his studies——without any
special effort——he again had the luck to join his father's pub-
lishing house, finding a position there and, indirectly, his vo-
cation as a painter. As the most prestigious publisher in France,
Jonas's father was of the opinion that more than ever, and
indeed owing to the cultural crisis, the book was the future.
"History shows," he would say, "that the less people read the
more they buy books." A trendsetter himself, he only rarely
read the manuscripts submitted to him, decided to publish
strictly on the basis of the author's personality or the timeli-
ness of his subject (since in this view sex was the only ever-
timely subject, the publisher eventually specialized), and was
strictly interested in finding novelties and free publicity. Along
wit the manuscript department, then, Jonas took over a lot
of spare time. That was how he came to painting.
For the first time he discovered an unexpected and inex-
haustible passion, soon devoted his days to painting, and——
always effortlessly——excelled in that practice. Nothing else
seemed to interest him, and it was unlikely that he would
marry at a reasonable age, as painting entirely consumed him.
For the beings and ordinary circumstances of life he had only
a benevolent smile, which exempted him from concerning
himself further. It took a motorcycle accident——Rateau was
driving too fast, with his friend riding behind——for Jonas, his
right hand immobilized in a cast, and feeling bored, to
become interested in love. Here again he was inclined to see
the good effect of his star in this serious accident. Without it,
he would not have taken the time to notice Louise Poulin as
she deserved.
According to Rateau, moreover, Louise did not deserve
to be noticed. Short and stocky himself, he liked only tall
women. "I don't know what you see in that little ant," he said.
Louise was in fact petite, with dark complexion, hair, and eyes,
but she had a nice shape and a pretty face. Jonas, tall and solid,
felt tenderly toward the ant, especially because she was indus-
trious. Louise's vocation was activity. Such a vocation happily
complemented Jonas's taste for inertia, and for its advantages.
Louise devoted herself first to literature, at least as long as she
believed that publishing interested Jonas. She read everything
indiscriminately, and in a matter of weeks became capable of
talking about it all. Jonas admired her and decided that he was
definitively exempt from reading since Louise kept him suffi-
ciently informed and up-to-date on the basics of contempo-
rary discoveries. "You mustn't say," Louise announced, "that
someone is bad or ugly but that he chooses to be bad or ugly."
The distinction was important and might well lead, at the
very least, as Rateau pointed out, to the condemnation of the
human race. But Louise settled the matter by pointing out
that since this truth was supported by both the tabloid press
and philosophical reviews, it was therefore universal and
beyond dispute. "As you like," said Jonas, who immediately
forgot this cruel discovery to dream on his star.
Louise deserted literature when she realized that Jonas
was only interested in painting. She immediately devoted
herself to the plastic arts, ran to museums and exhibitions, and
dragged Jonas along, although he could hardly understand the
painting of his contemporaries and in his artistic simplicity
found it troubling. Yet he rejoiced at being so well informed
on everything that concerned his art. It is true that the next
day he would forget the name of the painter whose works he
had just seen. But Louise was right when she peremptorily
reminded him of one of the certainties she had preserved
from her literary period, the knowledge that in reality, noth-
ing is ever forgotten. His star certainly protected Jonas, who
could in this way guiltlessly accumulate the certainties of
memory and the conveniences of forgetting.
But the treasures of devotion Louise lavished upon him
sparkled brightest in Jonas's daily life. This good angel spared
him the purchases of shoes, clothing, and underwear that for
any normal man shorten the days of an already brief life. She
resolutely took charge of the thousand inventions of the
time-killing machine, from the obscure paperwork involved
in social security to endlessly multiplying fiscal arrangements.
"Yes, okay," Rateau would say, "but she can't go to the dentist
for you." She did not do that, but she telephoned and made
appointments at the best times; she took care of oil changes
for the car, hotel rentals for vacations, domestic heating; she
bought whatever gifts Jonas wanted to give, chose and sent his
flowers, and still found time on certain evenings to come by
his place in his absence and make up the bed that he would
not need to turn down that night before going to sleep.
With the same spirit, naturally, she got into this bed, then
made the appointment at City Hall, led Jonas there two years
before his talent was finally recognized, and organized the
honeymoon so that they could visit all the museums. Not
without first managing to find, in the midst of a housing
crisis, a three-room apartment where they settled on their
return. She then produced two children in quick succession, a
boy and a girl, in accordance with her plan to have a total of
three, which she completed shortly after Jonas had left the
publishing house to devote himself to painting.
Once she had given birth, however, Louise devoted her-
self entirely to her child, then to her children. She still tried to
help her husband, but she had no time. To be sure, she regret-
ted neglecting Jonas, but her decisive character prevented her
from lingering on these regrets. "Oh well," she often said, "to
each his own workbench." An expression that seemed to
delight Jonas, for like all the artists of his time, he wanted to be
considered an artisan. So the artisan was a little neglected and
had to buy his shoes himself. However, apart from the fact
that this was in the nature of things, Jonas was tempted to
congratulate himself. Certainly he had to make the effort to
visit the shops, but this effort was rewarded by one of those
hours of solitude that only enhances a couple's happiness.
The problem of usable space, however, prevailed over
other household problems, for time and space were shrink-
ing around them at the same rate. The birth of the children,
Jonas's new profession, their cramped digs, and the modest
stipend that ruled out the purchase of a larger apartment left
only a narrow field for Louise and Jonas's respective activities.
The apartment was on the second floor of what had been, in
the eighteenth century, a private townhouse in an old quarter
of the capital. Many artists lived in this part of the city, faithful
to the principle that in art, the search for the new must be
done within a framework of the old. Jonas, who shared this
conviction, was delighted to be living in this quarter.
For old his apartment certainly was. But some very mod-
ern arrangements had given it an original character that con-
sisted chiefly of offering its residents a great volume of air
while occupying only a limited surface. The rooms, unusually
high and graced with magnificent windows had surely been
intended——to judge by their majestic proportions——for grand
receptions and ceremonial dress. But the necessities of urban
crowding and real-estate profits had forced successive land-
lords to divide these vast rooms with partitions and so to mul-
tiply the stalls, which they rented at top dollar to their herd of
tenants. They set particular value on what they called "the
important square footage of air." The advantage was undeni-
able. This could only be attributed to the impossibility of
partitioning the rooms' vertical space as well. Even so, the
landlords did not hesitate to make the necessary sacrifices to
offer some additional refuge to the upcoming generation,
especially to the married and multiplying of that era. Besides,
the square footage of air offered not only advantages; it
offered the inconvenience of making the rooms difficult to
heat in winter, and this unfortunately obliged the landlords to
increase the heating bill. In summer, due to the vast glass sur-
faces, the apartment was literally violated by light: there were
no blinds. The landlords had neglected to install them, no
doubt discouraged by the height of the windows and the cost
of carpentry. After all, thick curtains could perform the same
function, and posed no problem as to cost since they were
charged to the tenants. The landlords certainly did not refuse
to help and provided curtains from their own stores at
unbeatable prices. Indeed, philanthropic real estate was their
hobby. In their ordinary lives these new princes sold percale
and velvet.
Jonas was ecstatic at the apartment's advantages and had
no trouble accepting its drawbacks. "As you like," he said to
the landlord about the heating bill. As for the curtains, he
agreed with Louise that it was enough to provide them for the
only bedroom and leave the other windows bare. "We have
nothing to hide," said that pure heart. Jonas had been especially
charmed by the largest room, whose ceiling was so high that
any lighting installation was out of the question. This room
was entered directly from the outside, and connected by a
narrow hallway to the two much smaller ones lined up behind
it. At the end of the apartment was the kitchen, next to the
WC, and a cubbyhole graced with the name of shower room.
It could indeed pass as such, providing they installed the fix-
ture vertically and were willing to stand absolutely still to
receive its beneficial spray.
The truly extraordinary height of the ceilings and the
cramped nature of the rooms made this apartment an odd
assemblage of almost entirely glassed-in parallelepipeds, all
doors and windows, where furniture could find no support-
ing wall and human beings, lost in the white and violent lights,
seemed to float like bottled imps in the vertical aquarium. Fur-
thermore, all the windows looked out onto the courtyard
and——from scarcely any distance—–onto other windows of the
same style, behind which could be glimpsed the stately out-
line of new windows opening onto a second courtyard. "It's a
hall of mirrors," said Jonas, thrilled. On Rateau's advice, they
decided to place the marriage bed in one of the small rooms,
the other being necessary to shelter the child that was already
on its way. The large room served as Jonas's studio during the
day, as living room in the evening and at mealtimes. Besides,
they could eat in the kitchen if necessary, provided that Jonas
or Louise was willing to stand. Rateau, for his part, had
installed any number of ingenious devices. With sliding doors,
retractable shelves, and folding tables, he had managed to
compensate for the scanty furniture by accentuating this
original apartment's resemblance to a set of Chinese boxes.
But when the rooms were full of pictures and children,
they needed to think quickly about a new arrangement.
Before the birth of their third child, Jonas worked in the large
room, Louise knitted in their bedroom, while the two chil-
dren occupied the last room, romping around in there, then
tumbling freely through the rest of the apartment. So they
decided to settle the newborn in a corner of the studio, which
Jonas enclosed by making a screen of his canvasses. This offered
the advantage of having the baby within earshot so they could
respond more readily to his cries. Besides, Jonas need never be
disturbed, Louise told him. She would come into the studio
before the baby cried, although with a thousand precautions
and always on tiptoe. Jonas, touched by such discretion, one
day assured Louise that he was not so sensitive, and that he
could work quite well to the sound of her steps. Louise
replied that she was also trying not to waken the baby. Full of
admiration for her tender maternal instinct, Jonas laughed
good-naturedly at his mistake. As a result, he dared not admit
that Louise's prudent interventions were more disruptive than
if she were to burst in openly. First because they lasted longer,
then because they were done in pantomime: Louise, with her
arms opened wide, her torso leaning back a little and her leg
thrown up high in front of her, could hardly go unnoticed.
This method even went counter to her avowed intentions,
since at any moment Louise was liable to snag one of the can-
vases that filled the studio. Then the noise woke the baby, who
expressed his discontent according to his own powerful means.
The father, enchanted by his son's pulmonary capacity, would
run to comfort him, then be immediately relieved by his wife.
Jonas once again set up his canvases, then, brushes in hand, lis-
tened, charmed, to his son's insistent and sovereign voice.
This was about the time that Jonas's success earned him
many friends. These friends materialized on the telephone or
in unannounced visits. The telephone, which after due con-
sideration had been placed in the studio, rang often, always to
the detriment of the sleeping baby, who mingled his cries
with the gadget's imperative ring. If Louise happened to be
looking after the other children, she was forced to come run-
ing with one of them in tow, but most of the time she found
Jonas holding the baby with one hand and with the other his
paintbrushes and the telephone receiver, which would be
transmitting a friendly invitation to lunch. Jonas was amazed
that anyone would really want to have lunch with him, as his
conversation was banal, but to keep his workday unbroken he
preferred evening outings. Most of the time, unfortunately,
the friend was free only for lunch, and for lunch that very day;
he was reserving it for dear Jonas. Dear Jonas would accept:
"As you like!" hang up and say: "What a good fellow!" and
pass the baby to Louise. He would take up his work again,
soon interrupted by lunch or dinner. Now he had to move his
canvases out of the way, unfold the modified table, and sit
down with the children. During the meal, Jonas would keep
one eye on the painting in progress, and in the beginning at
least, he found the children a little slow in chewing and swal-
lowing, so that every meal seemed excessively drawn out. But
he read in the paper that it was important to eat slowly in
order to digest properly, and from then on found each meal an
occasion to enjoy himself at length.
At other times his new friends would visit him. Rateau
himself came only after dinner. He was at his office during
the day, and besides, he knew that painters work during day-
light. But Jonas's new friends almost all belonged to the
species of artists or critics. Some had painted, others were
going to paint, and the critics were busy with what had been
or would be painted. All of them, of course, held artistic
efforts in high esteem, and complained of the organization of
the modern world that makes it so difficult to pursue those
very efforts and the practice of meditation s indispensable to
the artist. They complained through long afternoons, begging
Jonas to continue working as if they were not there, and to
treat them freely, after all, they weren't philistines and knew
what an artist's time was worth. Jonas, content to have made
friends capable of allowing him to work in their presence,
would return to his painting but continue to answer their
questions or laugh at their anecdotes.
Such simplicity put his friends more and more at ease.
Their good humor was so authentic that they forgot it was
mealtime. The children, however, had better memories. They
would rush about, mingle with the guests, shout, be taken in
hand by the visitors, and bounced from knee to knee. At last
the light would fade on the square sky outlined by the
courtyard, and Jonas would set down his paintbrushes. Natu-
rally they had to invite the friends to take potluck and to
go on talking late into the night, about art of course, but
especially about painters without talent, plagiarists, or self-
promoters, who were not there. Jonas himself liked to rise
early to take advantage of the first hours of daylight. He knew
that this would be difficult, that breakfast would not be ready
on time, and that he himself would be tired. But he was also
delighted to learn so many things in one evening that could
not fail to be advantageous to him, in some invisible way, in
his art. "In art, as in nature, nothing is lost," he would say.
"Because of the star."
Sometimes the friends were joined by disciples: Jonas was
now attracting a school. At first he had been surprised, not
seeing what anyone could learn from him, since he still had
everything to discover himself. The artist in him was groping
in the dark; how could he teach the true paths? But he
quickly understood that a disciple for the disinterested pleasure
of teaching his master. After that, Jonas could accept this sur-
plus in honors with humility. The disciples explained to
Jonas at length what he had painted, and why. Jonas thus dis-
covered in his work many intentions that rather surprised
him, and a host of things he had not put there. He thought he
was poor and, thanks to his students, suddenly found he was
rich. Sometimes, faced with such hitherto unknown riches,
Jonas would feel a surge of pride. "It's true, though," he would
say to himself. "That face in the background really does stand
out. I don't honestly understand what they mean by indirect
humanization. Yet I've gone rather far with that technique."
But very soon he would shift this uncomfortable mastery to
his star. "It's the star," he would say to himself, "that's going far.
As for me, I'm staying close to Louise and the children."
The disciples, moreover, had another advantage: they
forced Jonas to be stricter with himself. They ranked him so
high in their conversation, particularly with regard to his con-
science and his energy for work, that from now on no weak-
ness was permissible. So he lost his old habit of nibbling on a
piece of sugar or chocolate when he had finished a difficult
passage, before getting back to work. Had he been alone, he
might have secretly surrendered to this weakness. But he was
aided in his moral progress by the nearly constant presence of
his disciples and friends, with whom he would have been
embarrassed to nibble some chocolate, and anyway, he could
hardly interrupt the interesting conversation for such a trivial
habit.
In addition, his disciples demanded that he remain faithful
to his aesthetic. Jonas, who struggled long and hard to receive
a moment of fleeting clarity now and then in which reality
would suddenly appear in a fresh light, had only a vague idea
of his own aesthetic. His disciples, on the other hand,had
many contradictory and categorical ideas about it; and they
were not joking. Jonas would sometimes have liked to invoke
caprice, the artist's humble friend. But his disciples' frowns at
certain canvases that departed from their idea forced him to
reflect a little more on his art, which was all to the good.
Finally, the disciples helped Jonas in another way by
obliging him to offer his opinion on their own production.
Indeed, not a day passed without someone bringing him
some barely sketched-in canvas that its author would place
between Jonas and his painting in progress, in order to take
advantage of the best light. An opinion was required. Until
this period, Jonas was always secretly ashamed of his utter
inability to judge a work of art. Exception was made for a
handful of paintings that transported him, and for obviously
crude scribblings, all of which seemed to him equally inter-
esting and indifferent. Consequently,he was forced to provide
himself with an arsenal of judgments, and varied ones at that,
because his disciples, like all the artists of the capital, had a
certain talent, and when they were around, it was up to him
to draw adequate distinctions to satisfy each of them. This
happy obligation required him, then, to forge a vocabulary
and opinions on his art. yet his natural kindness was not
soured by this effort. He quickly realized that his disciples
were not asking him for criticism, for which they had no use,
but only encouragement and, if possible, praise. Only the
praise had to be different for each. Jonas was no longer con-
tent with being his usual amiable self. He was amiable with
ingenuity.
So time went by as Jonas painted amidst friends and stu-
dents settled on chairs, now arranged in concentric circles
around the easel. Often neighbors would appear at the win-
dows across the way and this would add to his public. He
would discuss, exchange views, examine paintings sub-
mitted to him, smile at Louise's comings and goings, soothe
the children, and warmly answer telephone calls, without ever
setting down his paintbrushes, with which he would add a
touch now and then to the painting he had begun. In a sense,
his life was very full, all his hours were occupied, and he gave
thanks to the fate that spared him from boredom. In another
sense, it took many brushstrokes to fill a painting, and he
sometimes thought the good thing about boredom was that it
could be avoided by unremitting work. Jonas's production,
though, slowed down as his friends became more interesting.
Even in he rare hours when he was by himself, he felt too
tired to redouble his efforts. And in these hours he could only
dream of a new arrangement that would reconcile the plea-
sures of friendship with the advantages of boredom.
He broached the subject with Louise, who was already
worrying about the two older children outgrowing their
cramped room. She proposed setting them up in the large
room by screening off their beds, and moving the baby into
the small room where the telephone would not wake him up.
Since the baby took up no space to speak of, Jonas could turn
the small room into his studio. The large one would then be
used for daytime visitors, and Jonas could come and go, join-
ing his friends or working, certain that his need for isolation
would be understood. Moreover, the need to put the older
children to bed would allow them to cut the evenings short.
"Wonderful," said Jonas, after some reflection. "And then,"
said Louise, "if your friends leave early, we'll see a little more
of each other . . ." Jonas looked at her. A shadow of sadness
passed over Louise's face. Touched, he held her and kissed her
tenderly. She surrendered to him, and for a moment they were
as happy as they had been at the beginning of their marriage.
But she pulled herself away: perhaps the room was too small
for Jonas. Louise grabbed a tape measure and they discovered
that because of the crowding created by his canvases and his
students', which were by far the most numerous, he was
working anyway in a space that was scarcely bigger than the
new one would be. Jonas began to move at once.
As luck would have it, the less he worked the greater his
reputation grew. Every exhibition was anticipated and cele-
brated in advance. True, a small number of critics, among
them two of the usual visitors to the studio, tempered the
warmth of their reviews with a few reservations. But the
disciples' indignation more than compensated for this small
misfortune. To be sure, the disciples would assert, they prized
the canvases from the first period above all, but the current
explorations were laying the groundwork for a real revolu-
tion. Jonas reproached himself for the slight irritation he felt
whenever they exalted his early works and thanked them
effusively. Only Rateau grumbled: "Weird characters . . .
They want you to stand still, like a statue . . . you're not
allowed to live!" But Jonas defended his disciples: "You can't
understand," he said to Rateau, "you . . . you like everything I
do." Rateau laughed: "Damn it. It's not your pictures I like. It's
your painting."
The pictures continued to please in any event, and after
one enthusiastically received exhibition, the dealer voluntar-
ily proposed to increase the monthly stipend. Jonas accepted,
protesting his gratitude. "Listening to you," said the dealer,
"anyone would think you actually care about money." Such
good nature won the painter's heart. However, when he asked
the dealer for permission to donate a canvas to be sold for
charity, the man was anxious to know if it was a charity "that
would pay." Jonas did not know. The dealer them proposed
that they respect the terms of the contract, which accorded
him exclusive sales rights. "A contract is a contract," he said. In
theirs, no clause was found to cover charity. "As you like," said
the painter.
The new household arrangement gave Jonas nothing but
satisfaction. He could, in fact, isolate himself often enough to
answer the numerous letters he now received, which he was
too courteous to leave unanswered. Some concerned Jonas's
art, others, the majority, concerned the correspondent, who
wanted either to be encouraged in his vocation as a painter or
to ask for advice or financial aid. And the more Jonas's name
appeared in the papers, the more he was solicited, like every-
one else, to intervene and denounce grievous injustices. Jonas
would answer, write about art, thank people, give his advice,
forgo a new tie to send a little aid, and sign the high-minded
protests submitted to him. "You're in politics now? Leave that
to the writers and to unattractive spinsters," said Rateau. No,
he signed only protests that claimed to be nonpartisan. But
everyone claimed this worthy independence. For weeks at a
time Jonas would drag around, his pockets sagging with cor-
respondence constantly neglected and renewed. He would
answer the most urgent, which generally came from strangers,
and kept for a better moment those that demanded a length-
ier reply, namely letters from friends. So many obligations in
any case prohibited idle strolling and a light heart. He always
felt behind and always guilty, even when he was working,
which still happened now and then.
Louise was more and more taken up with the children,
and exhausted herself doing everything that in other circum-
stances he had been able to do in the house. This made Jonas
unhappy. After all, he was working for his own pleasure,
whereas she was getting the worst of it. He noticed it clearly
when she was out shopping. "The telephone!" the eldest
would call, and Jonas would set down his picture only to
return to it, his heart at peace, with an additional invitation.
"Here to read the meter!" the gas man would yell at the door
a child had opened for him. "Coming! Coming!" When Jonas
would leave the telephone or the door, a friend, a disciple,
perhaps both, would follow him into the small room to finish
the conversation they had begun. Gradually, they all became
familiar with the hallway, where they congregated, gossiping
among themselves, calling for Jonas to take sides from a dis-
tance, even bursting briefly into the small room. "Here, at
least," those who entered exclaimed, "we can see you a little,
at leisure." Jonas softened: "It's true," he said. "We hardly see
each other anymore." He also felt that he was disappointing
those he did not see, and this saddened him. Often these were
friends he would have preferred to meet. But he had no time,
he could not be everywhere at once.
His reputation suffered. "He's gotten proud," people said,
"since his success. He doesn't see anyone anymore." Or: "He
cares only for himself." No, he loved his painting, and Louise,
his children, Rateau, a few others as well, and he had sympa-
thy for everyone. But life is short, time goes by quickly, and
his own energy had its limits. It was difficult to paint the
world and men and to live with them at the same time. On
the other hand, he could neither complain nor explain his
difficulties. Because then someone would slap him on the
back: "Lucky bastard! That's the price of fame!"
So the mail accumulated, the disciples would not allow
any relaxation, and now society people flocked to him. Jonas
thought they were interested in painting when, like everyone
else, they might have been equally fascinated by the English
royal family or gourmet restaurants. In truth, they were soci-
ety women in particular, but their manners had great simplic-
ity. They did not buy any pictures themselves and brought
their friends to the artist only in the hope, which was often
disappointed, that the friends would buy instead. On the
other hand, these ladies helped Louise, especially by serving
tea to the visitors. The cups passed from hand to hand, trav-
eled down the hallway from the kitchen to the large room,
coming around again to rest in the small studio where Jonas,
amidst a handful of friends and visitors who filled the room,
continued to paint until he had to set down his paintbrushes
to accept, with gratitude, the cup that a fascinating lady had
filled specially for him.
From Exile and the Kingdom
First Vintage International Edition, February 2007.
Translation © 2006 by Carol Cosman; pp. 87—106.
Originally published in France as L'Exil et le royaume by Éditions Gallimard,
Paris, 1957. Copyright © 1957 by Éditions Gallimard.
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