Our sharp method grew dull in time, however. The house-owner became accustomed to the thought of death. Antek had the idea to finish three pictures in the style of Würtz, "Death," "Burial," and "Waking from Lethargy." Naturally our man was to figure in all of them.
Such funereal subjects became a specialty for Antek, who, as he says himself, paints "corpses big, medium, and small size." This is the reason, of course, why no one buys his pictures; for, subjects aside, he has talent. He has sent to the Paris Salon two "corpses," and as I also sent my "Jews on the Vistula," which in the catalogue of the Salon are christened "Jews on the Babylon," we were both waiting impatiently for the decision of the jury.
Of course Antek foresaw that the worst would happen, that the jury would be made up of perfect idiots, and even if not made up of idiots, I am an idiot, he is an idiot, our pictures are idiotic, and reward for them would be the summit of idiocy!
How much blood that monkey has spoiled in me during the two years that we have lived in one studio, I cannot tell.
Antek's whole ambition is to pass for a moral "corpse." In company he poses as a drunkard, which he is not. He will pour down two or three tiny glasses of vodka, and turn to see if we are looking; if not sure that we are, he will punch one of us with his elbow frown and say, in subterranean tones,—
"Yes, how low I have fallen, that far! Is it possible?"
We answer that he is a fool. He falls into a rage then; nothing can bring him into worse humor than to show disbelief in his moral fall. Still, he is an honest fellow to the marrow of his bones.
Once he and I went astray in the mountains of Salzkammergut, near Zell am See. Since night had come it was easy to break one's neck.
"Dost hear," said Antek to me, "thou hast more talent than I, therefore life is a greater loss to thee. I will go ahead. If I fall, thou wilt stay on the spot till morning, and in the morning thou canst save thyself somehow."
"Thou wilt not go ahead; I will go, because I can see better."