“You who write,” he said to Pei, “you will explain.”
They picked up their brief-cases. Pei was wiping his glasses. Ch’en pulled up his trouser-leg, bandaged his thigh without washing the wound-what was the use? It would not have time to get infected-before going out.
“One always does the same thing,” he said to himself, disturbed, thinking of the knife he had driven into his arm.
“I shall go alone,” he said, “and I shall manage alone, tonight.”
“I’ll organize something, just the same,” Suan answered.
“It will be too late.”
In front of the shop, Ch’en took a step to the left. Pei was following him. Suan remained motionless. A second step. Pei still followed him. Ch’en noticed that the youth, his glasses in his hand-so much more human, that youngster’s face, without glasses over his eyes-was weeping in silence.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m coming.”
Ch’en stopped. He had always believed him to be of Suan’s opinion; he pointed to the latter.
“I shall go with you,” Pei persisted.
He avoided speaking any more than was necessary, his voice broken, his Adam’s apple shaken by silent sobs.
“Pledge yourself.”
He clutched Pei’s arm.
“Pledge yourself,” he repeated.
He turned away. Pei remained on the sidewalk, his mouth open, still wiping his glasses, comical. Never had Ch’en thought one could be so alone.
Three o'clock in the afternoon
Clappique had expected to find Kyo at home. But he was still out. In the large room strewn with sketches which a disciple in a kimono was picking up, Gisors was 184
conversing with his brother-in-law, the painter Kama. “Hello, old dear! Into my arms!”
He sat down quietly.
“Too bad your son isn’t here.”
“Do you want to wait for him?”
“Let’s try. I need to see him like the devil. What is that new little c-cactus, under the opium-table? The collection is becoming worthy of respect. Ravishing, my dear friend, r-ravish-ing! I must buy one. Where did you find it?”
“It’s a gift. It was sent me a little before one o’clock.” Clappique was reading the Chinese characters traced on the flat stake supporting the plant; a large one: Fidelity; three small ones, a signature: Ch’en Ta Erh.
“Ch’en Ta Erh. Ch’en. Don’t know him. Too bad. He’s a fellow who knows cactuses.”
He remembered that the next day he would have to be gone. He must find money to leave, and not to buy cactuses. Impossible to sell objects of art in a hurry with the city under military occupation. His friends were hard up. And you couldn’t touch Ferral for money on any pretext. He had commissioned him to buy some of Kama’s wash-drawings when the Japanese painter arrived. Thirty or forty dollars in commissions.
“Kyo should be here,” said Gisors. “He had many engagements today, didn’t he?. ”
“He’d do better to miss them, perhaps,” Clappique grunted.
He did not dare to add anything. He had no idea how much Gisors knew about Kyo’s activity. But the absence of any question humiliated ^m:
“You know, it’s very serious.”
“Everything that has to do with Kyo is serious for me.”
“You haven’t any bright idea about how to earn or find four or five hundred dollars immediately?”
Gisors smiled sadly. Clappique knew he was poor: and his works of art, even if he were to consent to sell them.
“Well, let’s earn our few cents,” the Baron thought to himself. He came closer, looked at the wash-drawings scattered on the divan. Although he was sufficiently discriminating not to judge the traditional Japanese art in terms of its relation to Cezanne or Picasso, he detested it today: the taste for serenity is weak in hunted men. Dim lights over a mountain, village streets dissolved by rain, flights of wading-birds across the snow-that whole world in which melancholy prepared one for happiness. Clappique imagined without difficulty, alas, the paradises at whose gates he should remain, but was irritated by their existence.
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” he said, “naked, aroused, but with a chastity belt. For Ferral, not for me.”
He chose four, dictated the address to the disciple. “Because you’re thinking of our art,” said Gisors; “this does not serve the same purpose.”
“Why do you paint, Kama-San?”
The old master was looking at Clappique with curiosity, the light emphasizing his bald head. He too was wearing a kimono. (As Gisors was still in his dressing- gown, Clappique was the only one in trousers.)
The disciple left the sketch, translated, answered: “The master says: first, for my wife, because I love her. ”
“I don’t say for whom, but for what?”
“The master says it is difficult to explain to you. He says: ‘When I went to Europe, I saw the museums. The! 86
more your painters paint apples, and even lines which do not represent obj ects, the more they talk about themselves. For me it is the world that counts.’ "
Kama spoke another phrase; an expression of gentleness, barely perceptible, flitted across his face, which resembled an indulgent old lady’s.
“The master says: ‘With us, painting is what charity would be with you.’ "
A second disciple, a cook, brought bowls of sake, and immediately withdrew. Kama spoke again.
“The master says that if he were no longer to paint, it would seem to him that he had become blind. And more than blind: alone."
“Wait a minute!" said the Baron, one eye open, the other shut, his forefinger pointed. “If a doctor were to say to you: ‘You have an incurable illness, and you will die in three months,’ would you still paint?"
“The master says that if he knew he was going to die, he thinks he would paint better, but not differently." “Why better?" asked Gisors.
He did not cease thinking of Kyo. What Clappique had said upon corning in was sufficient to worry him: today serenity was almost an insult.
Kama answered. Gisors himself translated:
“He says: ‘There are two smiles-my wife’s and my daughter’s-which I should then know I would never see again, and I should be even more inclined to melancholy. The world is like the characters of our writing. What the symbol is to the flower, the flower itself-this one (he pointed to one of the drawings)-is to something. Everything is a symbol. To go from the symbol to the thing symbolized is to explore the depth and meaning of the world, it is to seek God.’ He thinks that the approach of death. Wait. ’’
He questioned Kama again, resumed his translation:
“Yes, that’s it. He thinks that the approach of death would perhaps permit him to put into all things sufficient fervor and melancholy, so that all the forms he would paint would become comprehensible symbols, so that what they symbolize-what they hide, also-would be revealed.”
Clappique experienced the atrocious sensation of suffering in the presence of a creature who denied suffering. He was listening with attention, without taking his eyes from Kama’s face, while Gisors was translating. With his absorbed look, his elbows against his sides, his hands joined, Clappique resembled a forlorn monkey.
“Perhaps you’re not asking the question in the right way,” said Gisors.
He spoke a very short phrase in Japanese. Up to this point Kama had answered almost immediately. He pondered.
“What question did you just ask ^m?” Clappique asked in a low voice.
“What he would do if the doctor condemned his wife.”
“The master says he would not believe the doctor.”
The cook-disciple came back and took away the bowls on a tray. His European garb, his smile, his deference, and his gestures which betrayed an extravagant gayety-everything about him seemed strange, even to Gisors. Kama said something under his breath which the other disciple did not translate.