Aminadab 0803213131 by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

rest. Let me help you over." The path was incredibly complicated. They had to pass through ropes, 13
    slide zigzag between benches, and back up again in order to avoid step ping on the portraits that the painter had painted directly onto the floor. It seemed that the journey would never end. When they finally reached the divan, Thomas thought the obstacles were overcome and let himself fall rather than lie down on the velvet-covered cushions. It was a real fall; the divan was very low to the ground. The shock was so great that he lay there as if inanimate. The guardian held him under his arms and raised him up, only to sink him into a heap of pillows, which he arranged not for the comfort of the position but for the purposes of the decor. This position did not suit him in any case. He lifted his model up again so that the jacket would be more visible, unbuttoned his vest, and finally crossed his two hands on his chest in an attitude of quiet self-absorption. Thomas, who had begun by cursing this tormentor, was finally grateful to him for this at tention. He felt a strange well-being, as if everything that was happening to him had already taken place sometime before. The rays from the spotlight gently bathed his body; it seemed that this light also gave him the form of a memory and that it made him lighter with the heaviest things, like marble and precious metals. Had all this not already happened? Had he not already once before witnessed this scene of crossing his hands, open ing and closing his eyes, being plunged into darkness by light itself, and had it not then had a meaning that it would never have again? He tried to lower his eyelids, for the brilliant light falling on him was burning him, but the painter called out to him: "Are you as tired as all that? Can you not re main a few moments without turning your eyes away? You're not making my task any easier." There was no pleasure in hearing this, but Thomas was not affected by it. He was no longer of a mind to be ruffled by harsh words, which, in this room, in any case, did not sound like threatening words but rather like true words before which one could only bow. So he looked directly at the painter. But the painter, who had so sternly demanded the attention of his model, seemed to have lost sight of him. His only thought now was to stir the contents of the carafe in which a horrid mixture of colored residues swirled around, and as he had not found the shade he desired, he began to spread onto the crystal a layer of dirty red that he scooped up from the puddles on the floor. "What a filthy worker," thought Thomas. "So this is the painter they have given me." All the same, he could not help looking with interest at these gestures; they recalled for him the childish behavior 14
    of great artists, steeped for too long in the seriousness of their task and intent on making the common world understand, by the frivolity of their distractions, the sublimity of the work that has drawn them into such fool ish obsessions. In any case, the painter did not altogether neglect his paint ing. For brief moments he worked at it with great ardor, without for all that worrying much more about his model. Thomas had the impression of not being there, or, by the fact that he had been put in this spot, of already being a part of the painting, such that the reproduction of his features no longer had any importance. From time to time the painter pulled from his pocket a miniature, which he consulted with care and which he then shamelessly copied. Copying seemed to be his preferred artistic method. He worried always about forgetting certain details, and three-quarters of his time was spent in a feverish comparison that left him simultaneously satisfied and worried. Thomas had great difficulty in maintaining his pose. Added to his fatigue was the temptation to change his position slightly so as to be able to feel the intensity of the painter's attention. No one both ered about him, and yet he was