They’re not all good.” “Who isn’t?” “Your painter friends, for instance.” “I know,” Jonas said. “But many artists are that way. They’re not sure of existing, not even the greatest. So they look for proofs; they judge and condemn. That strengthens them; it’s a beginning of existence. They’re so lonely!” Rateau shook his head. “Take my word for it,” Jonas said; “I know them. You have to love them.” “And what about you?” Rateau said. “Do you exist? You never say anything bad about anyone.” Jonas began to laugh. “Oh! I often think bad of them. But then I forget.” He became serious. “No, I’m not sure of existing. But someday I’ll exist, I’m sure.”
Rateau asked Louise her opinion. Shaking off her fatigue, she said she thought Jonas was right: their visitors’ opinion was of no importance. Only Jonas’s work mattered. And she was aware that the child got in his way. He was growing anyway, and they would have to buy a couch that would take up space. What could they do until they got a bigger apartment? Jonas looked at the master bedroom. Of course, it was not the ideal; the bed was very wide. But the room was empty all day long. He said this to Louise, who reflected.
In the bedroom, at least, Jonas would not be bothered; after all, people wouldn’t dare lie down on their bed. “What do you think of it?” Louise in turn asked Rateau. He looked at Jonas.
Jonas was looking at the windows across the way. Then he raised his eyes to the starless sky, and went and pulled the curtains. When he returned, he smiled at Rateau and sat down beside him on the bed without saying a word. Louise, obviously done in, declared that she was going to take her shower. When the two friends were alone, Jonas felt Rateau’s shoulder touch his. He didn’t look at him, but said: “I love to paint. I’d like to paint all my life, day and night. Isn’t that lucky?” Rateau looked at him affectionately: “Yes,” he said, “it’s lucky.”
The children were growing and Jonas was glad to see them happy and healthy. They were now in school and came home at four o’clock. Jonas could still enjoy them Saturday afternoons, Thursdays, and also for whole days during their frequent and prolonged vacations. They were not yet big enough to play quietly but were hardy enough to fill the apartment with their squabbles and their laughter. He had to quiet them, threaten them, sometimes even pretend to hit them. There was also the laundry to be done, the buttons to be sewed on.
Louise couldn’t do it all. Since they couldn’t house a servant, nor even bring one into the close intimacy in which they lived, Jonas suggested calling on the help of Louise’s sister, Rose, who had been left a widow with a grown daughter. “Yes,” Louise said, “with Rose we’ll not have to stand on ceremony. We can put her out when we want to.” Jonas was delighted with this solution, which would relieve Louise at the same time that it relieved his conscience, embarrassed by his wife’s fatigue.
The relief was even greater since the sister often brought along her daughter as a reinforcement. Both were as good as gold; virtue and unselfishness predominated in their honest natures. They did everything possible to help out and didn’t begrudge their time. They were helped in this by the boredom of their solitary lives and their delight in the easy circumstances prevailing at Louise’s. As it was foreseen, no one stood on ceremony and the two relatives, from the very beginning, felt at home.
The big room became a common room, at once dining-room, linen closet, and nursery. The little room, in which the last-born slept, served as a storeroom for the paintings and a folding bed on which Rose sometimes slept, when she happened to come without her daughter.
Jonas occupied the master bedroom and worked in the space separating the bed from the window. He merely had to wait until the room was made up in the morning, after the children’s room. From then on, no one came to bother him except to get a sheet or towel, for the only cupboard in the house happened to be in that room. As for the visitors, though rather less numerous, they had developed certain habits and, contrary to Louise’s hope, they didn’t hesitate to lie down on the double bed to be more comfortable when chatting with Jonas.
The children would also come in to greet their father. “Let’s see the picture.” Jonas would show them the picture he was painting and would kiss them affectionately. As he sent them away, he felt that they filled his heart fully, without any reservation. Deprived of them, he would have merely an empty solitude. He loved them as much as his painting because they were the only things in the world as alive as it was.
Nevertheless Jonas was working less, without really knowing why. He was always diligent, but he now had trouble painting, even in the moments of solitude. He would spend such moments looking at the sky. He had always been absent-minded, easily lost in thought, but now he became a dreamer. He would think of painting, of his vocation, instead of painting. “I love to paint,” he still said to himself, and the hand holding the brush would hang at his side as he listened to a distant radio.
At the same time, his reputation declined. He was brought articles full of reservations, others frankly unfriendly, and some so nasty that they deeply distressed him. But he told himself that he could get some good out of such attacks that would force him to work better. Those who continued to come treated him more familiarly, like an old friend with whom you don’t have to put yourself out. When he wanted to go back to his work, they would say: “Aw, go on! There’s plenty of time.” Jonas realized that in a certain way they were already identifying him with their own failure.
But, in another way, there was something salutary about this new solidarity. Rateau shrugged his shoulders, saying: “You’re a fool. They don’t care about you at all!” “They love me a little now,” Jonas replied. “A little love is wonderful. Does it matter how you get it?” He therefore went on talking, writing letters, and painting as best he could. Now and then he really would paint, especially Sunday afternoons when the children went out with Louise and Rose. In the evening he would rejoice at having made a little progress on the picture under way. At that time he was painting skies.
The day when the dealer told him that, because of the considerable falling-off in sales, he was regretfully obliged to reduce the remittance, Jonas approved, but Louise was worried. It was September and the children had to be outfitted for school. She set to work herself with her customary courage and was soon swamped. Rose, who could mend and sew on buttons, could not make things. But her husband’s cousin could; she came to help Louise.
From time to time she would settle in Jonas’s room on a corner chair, where the silent woman would sit still for hours. So still that Louise suggested to Jonas painting a Seamstress. “Good idea,” Jonas said. He tried, spoiled two canvases, then went back to a half-finished sky.
The next day, he walked up and down in the apartment for some time and meditated instead of painting. A disciple, all excited, came to show him a long article he would not have seen otherwise, from which he learned that his painting was not only overrated but out of date. The dealer phoned him to tell him again how worried he was by the decline in sales. Yet he continued to dream and meditate.
He told the disciple that there was some truth in the article, but that he, Jonas, could still count on many good working years. To the dealer he replied that he understood his worry without sharing it. He had a big work, really new, to create; everything was going to begin all over again. As he was talking, he felt that he was telling the truth and that his star was there. All he needed was a good system.
During the ensuing days he tried to work in the hall, two days later in the shower-room with electric light, and the following day in the kitchen. But, for the first time, he was bothered by the people he kept bumping into everywhere, those he hardly knew and his own family, whom he loved. For a little while he stopped working and meditated. He would have painted landscapes out of doors if the weather had been propitious. Unfortunately, it was just the beginning of winter and it was hard to do landscapes before spring.
He tried, however, and gave up; the cold pierced him to the marrow. He lived several days with his canvases, most often seated beside them or else planted in front of the window; he didn’t paint any more.
Then he got in the habit of going out in the morning. He would give himself the assignment of sketching a detail, a tree, a lopsided house, a profile as it went by. At the end of the day, he had done nothing. The least temptation—the newspapers, an encounter, shopwindows, the warmth of a café—would lead him astray. Each evening he would keep providing good excuses
