He had a friend, a Christian boy, named Artie Beech, who adored him even as Abramovich adored his father. Golda was alarmed by this friendship, thinking no good could come out of the Christians, and she tried to forbid it, but the boy had his way, and he loved Artie Beech as a child loves a doll or a king his favourite. Together the two boys used to creep home from school gazing into the shop windows. One day they saw a brightly coloured advertisement of a beef extract: a picture of a man rending a lion. “It will make you stronger than a lion,” said Mendel. “Yes,” said Artie, “one drop on the tip of your tongue.” “I would be stronger than Harry if I ate a whole bottle,” replied Mendel, and they decided to save up to buy the strength-giving elixir. It took them seven weeks to save the price of it. Then with immense excitement they bought the treasure, took it home, and, loathing the taste of it, gulped it down and tossed a button for the right to lick the cork. Feeling rather sick, they gazed at each other with frightened eyes, half expecting to swell so that they would burst their clothes. But nothing happened. Mendel took off his coat and felt his biceps and swore that they had grown. Artie took off his coat: yes, his biceps had grown too.
They went through the streets with growing confidence, and at school they were not afraid. Mendel’s new arrogance led him into the only fight he ever had and he was laid low. Aching with humiliation, he shunned Artie Beech and went alone to gaze at the picture of the man rending the lion. It took him a week of hard concentrated thought to realize that the picture and its legend were not to be taken literally, and his close study led him to another and a strangely emotional interest in the picture. His eyes would travel up the line of the man’s body along his arms to the lion’s jaws, and then down its taut back to its paws clutching the ground. The two lines springing together, the two forms locked, gave an impression of strength, of tremendous impact, which, as the boy gazed, became so violent as to make his head ache. At the same time he began to develop an appetite for this shock, and unconsciously used his eyes so as to obtain it. It would sometimes spring up in him suddenly, without his knowing the cause of it, when he watched his mother sitting with her hands folded on her stomach, or cooking with her hand—her big, strong, working hand—on a fish or a loaf of bread.
One day in Bishopsgate, that lordly and splendid thoroughfare which led from the dark streets to the glittering world, he came on a man kneeling on the pavement with coloured chalks. First of all the man dusted the stones with his cap, and then he laid another cap full of little pieces of chalk by his side, and then he drew and smudged and smudged and drew until a slice of salmon appeared. By the side of the salmon he drew a glass of beer with a curl of froth on it and a little bunch of flowers. On another stone he drew a ship at sea in a storm, a black and green sea, and a brown and black sky. Mendel watched him enthralled. What a life! What a career! To go out into the streets and make the dull stones lovely with colour! He saw the man look up and down and then lay a penny on the salmon. A fine gentleman passed by and threw down another penny. . . . Oh, certainly, a career! To make the streets lovely, and immediately to be rewarded!
From school Mendel stole some chalk and decorated the stones in the yard at Gun Street. He drew a bottle and an onion and a fish, though this he rather despised, because it was so easy. Always he had amused himself with drawing. As a tiny child, the first time his father went to America, he drew a picture of a watch to ask for that to be sent him, and this picture had been kept by his mother. And after that he often drew, but chiefly because it made his father and mother proud of him, and they laughed happily at everything he did. The pavement artist filled him with pride and pleasure in the doing of it: and every minute out of school and away from the Rabbi he devoted to drawing. His brothers bought him a box of colours, and he painted imaginary landscapes of rivers and swans and cows and castles. Every picture he made was treasured by his mother. They seemed to her, as they did to himself, perfectly beautiful. He used his water-colours as though they were oils, and laid them on thick, to get as near the pavement artist’s colours as possible. At school there were drawing-lessons, but they seemed to have no relation to this keen private pleasure of his.
In the evenings he would lie on the ground in the kitchen and paint until his eyes and his head ached. Sometimes his perpetual, silent absorption would so exasperate his brothers that they would kick his paints away and make him get up and talk to them. Then he would curse them with all the rich curses of the Yiddish language, and rush away and hide himself; for days he would live in a state of gloom and dark oppression, feeling dimly aware of a difference between him and them which it was beyond his power to explain. He would try to tell his mother what was the matter with him, but she could not understand. His happiness in painting, the keen delight that used to fill him, were to her compensation enough for her anxiety and the stress and strain of her poverty.
His little local fame procured her some relief. At school he won a prize accorded by vote for the most popular boy. This had amazed him, for he had very little traffic with the others, and during playtime used to stand with his back to the wall and his arms folded, staring with unseeing eyes. When his sister asked one of the boys why Mendel had won the vote, the answer she received was: “He can draw.” As a result his brothers were helped and his mother was able to get work as a sempstress. They were relieved from the poverty that paralyses. They could go from day to day and carry their deficit from week to week. They could afford friends, and the visits of friends on a ceremonious basis, and Abramovich was always trying to interest rich men in the wonderful family.
It was Abramovich who bought Mendel his first box of oil-paints, not so much to give the boy pleasure as with the idea that he might learn to paint portraits from photographs. That, however, was not in the boy’s idea. He abandoned his imaginary landscapes and began to paint objects, still in the manner of the pavement artist, thrilled with the discovery that he could more and more exactly reproduce what he saw. He painted a loaf of bread and a cucumber so like the originals that Abramovich was wildly excited and rushed off to bring Mr. Jacobson, a Polish Jew, a timber-merchant and very rich, to see the marvel.
Mendel was unprepared. He sat painting in the kitchen with his mother and Lotte, his younger sister. Abramovich and Mr. Jacobson came in. Jacobson was ruddy, red-haired, with a strange broad face and a flat nose, almost negroid about the nostrils. He wore a frock-coat, a white waistcoat with a cable-chain across it, and rings upon his fingers. Mendel had a horror of him, and was overcome with shyness. Mr. Jacobson put on his spectacles, stared at the picture. “Ye-es,” he said. “That bread could be eaten. That cucumber could be cut and put into the soup. The boy is all right. Eh? Ye-es, and a beautiful boy, too.” Mendel writhed. Golda was almost as overcome with shyness as he. In silence she produced all the boy’s drawings and pictures and laid them before the visitors. Abramovich was loud in his praises, but not too loud, for he knew that Mr. Jacobson loved to talk. And indeed it seemed that Mr. Jacobson would never stop. He stood in the middle of the room and wagged his fat, stumpy hands and held forth:—
“In my country, Mrs. Kühler, there was once a poor boy. He was always drawing. Give him a piece of paper and a pencil and he would draw anything in the world. The teacher at school had to forbid him to draw, for he would learn nothing at all. So one day the teacher could not find that boy. And where do you think they find him? Under the table. The teacher pulled him out and found in his hand a piece of paper—a piece of paper. The teacher looked down at the piece of paper and fainted away. The boy had drawn a picture of the teacher so like that he fainted away. Well, when the teacher came to himself, he said: ‘Boy, did you do that?’ ‘Yes,’ said the boy, ‘I did that.’ ‘Then, said the teacher, ‘I will tell you what you must do. You must paint a portrait of the King and take it to the King, and he will give you money, and carriages, and houses, and rings, and watches, for you and your father, and your uncles and all your family. Ahin and aher. The boy did that. He painted a portrait of the King and he took it to the palace. He went to the front door and knock, knock, knock. A lady opened the door and she said: ‘What do you want, little boy?’ ‘I want to see the King. I have something to show him.’ ‘I am the Queen,’ said the lady. ‘You can show it to me.’ The boy showed the picture and the Queen fainted away. The servants and the King came running in to see what had happened, and they stood like stone. ‘Who did that?’ said the King. ‘I did,’ said the boy. ‘I don’t believe him,’ said the King. ‘Shut him up for a day and a night, give him paint and brushes, and we will see what he can do.’ Well, they shut the boy up for a day and a night, and in the morning the door was opened and the King and the Queen came in. The King took off his hat and put it on the table and it fell to the ground. That boy had painted a picture of a table so like that the King thought it was a real table and tried to put his hat on it. It is true, and the boy painted the King’s portrait every Saturday until he died, and he had houses and money and footmen and statues in his garden, and his father and mother drove in their carriages and wore sables even in the summer. And some day, Mrs. Kühler, we shall see you in your carriage and this boy painting the portrait of the King.”