Exile and the Kingdom

  Thus the time went by for Jonas, who painted amidst friends and pupils seated on chairs that were now arranged in concentric circles around his easel. Often, in addition, neighbors would appear at the [130] windows across the way and swell his public. He would discuss, exchange views, examine the paint­ings submitted to him, smile as Louise went by, soothe the children, and enthusiastically answer tel­ephone calls, without ever setting down his brushes with which he would from time to time add a stroke to a half-finished painting. In a way, his life was very full, not an hour was wasted, and he gave thanks to fate that spared him boredom. In another way, it took many brush-strokes to finish a picture and it occasionally occurred to him that boredom had the one advantage that it could be avoided through strenuous work. But Jonas’s production slowed down in proportion to his friends’ becoming more interesting. Even in the rare moments when he was altogether alone, he felt too tired to catch up. And at such moments he could but dream of a new regime that would reconcile the pleasures of friendship with the virtues of boredom.

  He broached the subject to Louise, who was in­dependently beginning to worry about the growth of the two older children and the smallness of their room. She suggested putting them in the big room with their bed hidden by a screen and moving the baby into the small room where he would not be wakened by the telephone. As the baby took up [131] no room, Jonas could turn the little room into his studio. Then the big one would serve for the daytime gatherings, and Jonas could wander back and forth, either chat with his friends or work, since he was sure of being understood in his need for isolation. Furthermore, the necessity of putting the older children to bed would allow them to cut the evenings short. “Wonderful,” Jonas said after a moment’s reflection. “Besides,” said Louise, “if your friends leave early, we’ll see a little more of each other.” Jonas looked at her. A suggestion of melancholy passed over Louise’s face. Touched, he put his arms around her and kissed her in his most affectionate way. She surrendered to him and for a moment they were happy as they had been in the beginning of their marriage. But she shook her­self free; the room was perhaps too small for Jonas. Louise got a folding rule and they discovered that because of the congestion caused by his canvases and those of his pupils, by far the more numerous, he generally worked in a space hardly any larger than the one that was about to be assigned to him. Jonas hastened to move the furniture.

  Luckily, the less he worked, the more his reputa­tion grew. Each exhibit was eagerly awaited and extolled in advance. To be sure, a small number of [132] critics, among whom were two regular visitors to the studio, tempered the warmth of their reviews with some reservations. But the disciples’ indigna­tion more than made up for this little misfortune. Of course, the latter would emphatically assert, they ranked the pictures of the first period above everything else, but the present experiments fore­shadowed a real revolution. Jonas would rather re­proach himself for the slight annoyance he felt ev­ery time his first works were glorified and would thank them effusively. Only Rateau would grum­ble: “Weird ones . . . They like you inert, like a statue. And they deny you the right to live!” But Jonas would defend his disciples: “You can’t under­stand,” he told Rateau, “because you like every­thing I do.” Rateau laughed: “Of course! It’s not your pictures I like; it’s your painting.”

  The pictures continued to be popular in any event and, after an exhibit that was enthusiastically received, the dealer suggested, on his own, an in­crease in the monthly remittance. Jonas accepted, declaring how grateful he was. “Anyone who heard you now,” the dealer said, “would think money meant something to you.” Such good-heart­edness disarmed the painter. However, when he asked the dealer’s permission to give a canvas to a [133] charity sale, the dealer wanted to know whether or not it was a “paying charity.” Jonas didn’t know. The dealer therefore suggested sticking squarely to the terms of the contract which granted him the exclusive right of sale. “A contract’s a contract,” he said. In theirs, there was no provision for char­ity. “Just as you say,” the painter said.

  The new arrangement was a source of constant satisfaction to Jonas. He could, in fact, get off by himself often enough to answer the many letters he now received, which his courtesy could not leave unanswered. Some concerned Jonas’s art, while others, far more plentiful, concerned the cor­respondent, who either wanted to be encouraged in his artistic vocation or else needed advice or fi­nancial aid. The more Jonas’s name appeared in the press, the more he was solicited, like everyone, to take an active part in exposing most revolting in­justices. Jonas would reply, write about art, thank people, give his advice, go without a necktie in or­der to send a small financial contribution, finally sign the just protests that were sent him. “You’re indulging in politics now? Leave that to writers and ugly old maids,” said Rateau. No, he would sign only the protests that insisted they had no con­nection with any particular party line. But they all [134] laid claim to such beautiful independence. For weeks on end, Jonas would go about with his pock­ets stuffed with correspondence, constantly neg­lected and renewed. He would answer the most urgent, which generally came from unknowns, and keep for a better moment those that called for a more leisurely reply—in other words, his friends’ letters. So many obligations at least kept him from dawdling and from yielding to a carefree spirit. He always felt behindhand, and always guilty, even when he was working, as he was from time to time.

  Louise was ever more mobilized by the children and wore herself out doing everything that, in other circumstances, he could have done in the home. This made him suffer. After all, he was working for his pleasure whereas she had the worst end of the bargain. He became well aware of this when she was out marketing. “The telephone!” the eldest child would shout, and Jonas would drop his picture right there, only to return to it, beaming, with another invitation. “Gasman!” the meter-reader would shout from the door one of the chil­dren had opened for him. “Coming! Coming!” And when Jonas would leave the telephone or the door, [135] a friend or a disciple, sometimes both, would fol­low him to the little room to finish the interrupted conversation. Gradually they all became regular frequenters of the hallway. They would stand there, chat among themselves, ask Jonas’s opinion from a distance, or else overflow briefly into the little room. “Here at least,” those who entered would exclaim, “a fellow can see you a bit, and without interruption.” This touched Jonas. “You’re right,” he would say. “After all, we never get a chance to see each other.” At the same time he was well aware that he disappointed those he didn’t see, and this saddened him. Often they were friends he would have preferred to meet. But he didn’t have time, he couldn’t accept everything. Conse­quently, his reputation suffered. “He’s become proud,” people said, “now that he’s a success. He doesn’t see anyone any more.” Or else: “He doesn’t love anyone, except himself.” No, he loved Louise, and his children, and Rateau, and a few others, and he had a liking for all. But life is short, time races by, and his own energy had limits. It was hard to paint the world and men and, at the same time, to live with them. On the other hand, he couldn’t complain, or explain the things that stood in his [136] way. For, if he did, people slapped him on the back, saying: “Lucky fellow! That’s the price of fame!”

  Consequently, his mail piled up, the disciples would allow no falling off, and society people now thronged around him. It must be added that Jonas admired them for being interested in painting when, like everyone else, they might have got excited about the English Royal Family or gastronomic tours. In truth, they were mostly society women, all very simple in manner. They didn’t buy any pictures themselves and introduced their friends to the artist only in the hope, often groundless, that they would buy in their place. On the other hand, they helped Louise, especially in serving tea to the visitors. The cups passed from hand to hand, traveled along the hallway from the kitchen to the big room, and then came back to roost in the little studio, where Jonas, in the center of a handful of friends
and visitors, enough to fill the room, went on painting until he had to lay down his brushes to take, gratefully, the cup that a fascinating lady had poured especially for him.

  He would drink his tea, look at the sketch that a disciple had just put on his easel, laugh with his friends, interrupt himself to ask one of them to [137] please mail the pile of letters he had written during the night, pick up the second child, who had stum­bled over his feet, pose for a photograph, and then at “Jonas, the telephone!” he would wave his cup in the air, thread his way with many an excuse through the crowd standing in the hall, come back, fill in a corner of the picture, stop to answer the fascinating lady that certainly he would be happy to paint her portrait, and would get back to his easel. He worked, but “Jonas! A signature!” “What is it, a registered letter?” “No, the Kashmir pris­oners.” “Coming! Corning!” Then he would run to the door to receive a young friend of the prisoners and listen to his protest, worry briefly as to whether politics were involved, and sign after receiving complete assurance on that score, together with ex­postulations about the duties inseparable from his privileges as an artist, and at last he would reappear only to meet, without being able to catch their names, a recently victorious boxer or the greatest dramatist of some foreign country. The dramatist would stand facing him for five minutes, expressing through the emotion in his eyes what his ignorance of French would not allow him to state more clearly, while Jonas would nod his head with a real feeling of brotherhood. Fortunately, he would [138] suddenly be saved from that dead-end situation by the bursting-in of the latest spellbinder of the pulpit who wanted to be introduced to the great painter. Jonas would say that he was delighted, which he was, feel the packet of unanswered let­ters in his pocket, take up his brushes, get ready to go on with a passage, but would first have to thank someone for the pair of setters that had just been brought him, go and close them in the master bedroom, come back to accept the lady donor’s invitation to lunch, rush out again in answer to Louise’s call to see for himself without a shadow of doubt that the setters had not been broken in to apartment life, and lead them into the shower­-room, where they would bark so persistently that eventually no one would even hear them. Every once in a while, over the visitors’ heads, Jonas would catch a glimpse of the look in Louise’s eyes and it seemed to him that that look was sad. Finally the day would end, the visitors would take leave, others would tarry in the big room and wax emo­tional as they watched Louise put the children to bed, obligingly aided by an elegant, overdressed lady who would complain of having to return to her luxurious home where life, spread out over [139] two floors, was so much less close and homey than at the Jonases’.

  One Saturday afternoon Rateau came to bring an ingenious clothes-drier that could be screwed onto the kitchen ceiling. He found the apartment packed and, in the little room, surrounded by art-lovers, Jonas painting the lady who had given the dogs, while he was being painted himself by an official artist. According to Louise, the latter was working on order from the Government. “It will be called The Artist at Work.” Rateau withdrew to a corner of the room to watch his friend, obvi­ously absorbed in his effort. One of the art-lovers, who had never seen Rateau, leaned over toward him and said: “He looks well, doesn’t he?” Rateau didn’t reply. “You paint, I suppose,” he continued. “So do I. Well, take my word for it, he’s on the decline.” “Already?” Rateau asked. “Yes. It’s suc­cess. You can’t resist success. He’s finished.” “He’s on the decline or he’s finished?” “An artist who is on the decline is finished. Just see, he has nothing in him to paint any more. He’s being painted him­self and will be hung in a museum.”

  Later on, in the middle of the night, Louise, Ra­teau, and Jonas, the latter standing and the other [140] two seated on a corner of the bed, were silent. The children were asleep, the dogs were boarding in the country, Louise had just washed, and Jonas and Rateau had dried, the many dishes, and their fa­tigue felt good. “Why don’t you get a servant?” Rateau had asked when he saw the stack of dishes. But Louise had answered sadly: “Where would we put her?” So they were silent. “Are you happy?” Rateau had suddenly asked. Jonas smiled, but he looked tired. “Yes. Everybody is kind to me.” “No,” said Rateau. “Watch out. 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 [141] 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 [142] 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 [143] 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 [144] 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 [145] 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.