Part Four – The Artist

The Artist from Vienna shook his head deprecatingly. “Mine is not like the tragedies I have just heard,” he mused. “It is a simple tale. It is strange though that it was the great war of the world that catapulted us all into the paths of living we would not have otherwise chosen – yet gave us, as the monsieur said, ‘A good life.’

“But what has happened to me concerned only myself. I was spared the torture that two of you spoke about. Therefore I should not consider mine a tragedy. It is just life. My career I had chosen when I was a mere stripling. There was support from my family in great abundance. They abetted the life I wished to have. They gave me the greatest masters of Vienna as teachers. They even tolerated this,” and with a smile his long fingers touched the pointed beard. “The journeys too, to other lands – to give me inspiration – they denied me nothing.

“My painting was everything. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was important. The things that go with youth I had no time for. Even the beauty of women gave me only one desire – the desire to reproduce their charms on canvas. When I had my first recognition it did not fill me with pride, it only made me work the harder. It was not the money I received, nor,” he said as if to himself, “was it my name at the foot of the canvas. Yes it was gratifying and satisfying to hear and see the pride of my family and of my friends. Yet even that was not a thing to fill me with pride. The gift to paint had been bestowed by some great divine power. It was not a thing I had achieved. It is difficult to explain, but I wished to lay before the human eyes beauty and reality, so they might pause and gaze in awe and wonder. I wanted to show the donor of my gift that I was worthy – and grateful.”

He paused as if he were not quite content, not quite satisfied with his explanation. I studied the other three faces. Not one had ever kept his eyes on the others while they were telling their stories. I was the only one who continued gazing, brazenly and intently on each narrator. They listened and heard, I knew, but their faces were passive, their eyes fixed on some object which they did not see.

“And then came the war. I was drawn into the army. I hated it. I had never wanted to fight and kill. Yet, so confident was I that it would soon be ended and that I would return to find all as I was leaving it – so confident that I left my last canvas carelessly covered, and my paints and brushes ready for me the moment I stepped back into my home.”

He uttered a bitter little laugh. “I had once boasted that one could find beauty in the most ugly. I vaunted that a star of heaven could be reflected in the mire of the gutter. But, that was because I had never been in a war. There is no beauty in war. It is stench and offensive death and horror. I had never wiped off the blood on a bayonet’s blade and rushed to plunge it into another’s breast. I had read of war’s glory, of gore and slime, of bodies lying in the sweetish reek of death. It was not real, the reading of it. I had not wanted to read of it. My classes at school required it. I hated history as I hated sin and ugliness.

“And now here, on the battlefield I was writing the same putrid words on history’s pages. I was causing human blood to flow. Mark you, I had no desire to do so. My country was forcing me. At night in our dugout I lay hour after hour sobbing at the memory of the dead expressionless faces I had seen during the day, the dead useless hands, some I myself had made useless and expressionless. I wanted so often to die before the next battle, and I hoped that after the next raid I would lie with my face dead and expressionless, my hands useless.

“I think God finally heard that silent prayer – but only in part. We were awakened early by the sound of machine guns rattling against the dugout. We climbed out and made the ordered charge at full speed. We had gone a hundred yards when hell broke loose. Something pierced me from the back and forcibly whirled me around. I could see the point of a bayonet come through my right shoulder, the point ending just below my chin. I fell over on my side from the impact. And while still conscious I saw a soldier brace his foot on me to hold my body down while he tugged and drew out the blade.

A week later I woke up. My right arm and shoulder were stiff with bandages. It was a few days later I discovered the truth. I had lost the use of my right hand; I could not move a finger. The surgeon cooly explained that the tendons of my right shoulder had been severed. The realization of what that would mean came to me slowly through the half fog that seemed all around me. I cursed myself for that unwitting prayer of useless hands. To pray for death merely – that was understandable. But for useless hands… for without my arm and my hand, it would indeed be death. A living death.

They dismissed me from the hospital with a dangling arm and a bitter soul. I was no longer of use, not even to my country. I went back to my home. My mother found me in my attic studio, sitting in front of my unfinished canvas. She did not give me futile words of comfort. I only remember she was silent, her hands smoothing my head which I had buried in her lap. She let me cry – and I was not ashamed of my tears. There had always been in her the power of soothing me. I had a strange faith in the touch of her hands, even as a child. So, when she calmly and in matter-of-fact voice suggested that we begin to try – little by little – to move my fingers, I agreed.

One day she asked me if I had ever believed in prayer. All the bitter hate came back to me. The prayer I had sobbed out in the war camp – I told her, and how it had been answered. Her eyes were inscrutable. ‘You have faith in prayer. So now we will pray for your hand, for your arm. If it is to be – then you will again paint. Perhaps success came too easily for you in the beginning. Some divine power wishes to test you.’ And for some reason I, too, felt the truth of her words. The bitterness was not quite so acute.

“For almost two months my arm and hand hung dead, unfeeling, unresponsive. It was only her persisting that made me keep up the working my fingers and arm with the other hand. One night while I sat reading, I moved my body to get a better light on my book. My right arm struck against the chair arm – and I knew it from from the tingling sensation in my fingers. Over and over again I did it – the same thing – it responded. Do you know what I did, gentlemen?” he demanded.

The three pair of eyes turned on him. I answered before I could stop myself. “You thanked God for answering your second prayer.” I was embarrassed, and regretted that I had spoken so quickly. But the Artist nodded, looking at me, I thought almost gratefully, then he went on.

“I called to my mother and rushed to her room. She showed no astonishment. She merely said ‘I knew it, my son. But it will still be a long time before you will be able to finish that painting upstairs.’

“With my left hand supporting my right I held the brush and learned again to grasp it and hold it properly. I was almost three more years before I could pick it up and lift it using only my right arm. Two more years before the fingers were obedient to my wishes. Then I finished the dusty old canvas I had started before the war called me.

Three weeks ago I found it stacked away with others in a dim closet of my studio. On the back I had scrawled these words, ‘The money I receive from this painting I will use to travel to Tahiti.’ That was many years ago when I was still full of young fancies and dreams – before the war made my dreams into nightmares. I sold it immediately, and here I am. It may be my last painting.”

The Russian Pearl Buyer sat up straight. The Czechoslovakian Consul frowned and leaned toward the artist. The Frenchman looked aghast. I think I was the only one who was not amazed at his words.

“But you showed me – I saw the sketches of the sea and of our native men and women. I do not understand what you mean when you say your last painting,” the Frenchman cried.

I sat silent. I had noted something while the Artist was telling his story, something that had puzzled me. The Artist shrugged his shoulder.

“At San Francisco, where I was spending a few days before my ship left for these islands, one morning I awoke and felt a strange, unusual numbness in my right hand. The physicians who I consulted told me then that it would be no more than two months before the whole arm would be useless. Complete paralysis. I told them of the war wound and of the years of slowly recovering the use of the arm and hand. That could happen, they assured me, after many examinations and much consultation. But the muscles had meanwhile been drying, the nerves dying. There was nothing that could be done. Absolutely nothing. But, they added to console me, I still had my left arm and hand.”

He lifted his right hand with his left. “They were not wrong.” The words came out dryly, ironically.

“Mon Dieu!” the Frenchman ejaculated. “It should not be – it must not be.”

“Oh, I shall paint as long as much as I can – as long as I can. And I shall continue praying.” He let his hand drop. Again he shrugged his shoulder. “I have finished, gentlemen. There are other stories to be told. Now you, Pearl Buyer from Russia. Your land is a volume of tragic tales.”

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