“Boys, what do you think of it?” he asked in a tone of confident fatherhood.
Kone and Carl scanned the painting. It was a mother-goose transfiguration, too quick in its acceptance of violent colors and bearing a blandly forced simplicity. Red, indigo, and orange trees were lining both sides of a road, and the trees were painted in such a manner that they seemed to be kneeling at the roadside. In the distance white mountains, resembling the suggestion of upturned cups, refused the blue wine of sky, and in front of them were fields that looked like wrinkled, green tablecloths spread out to dry. In the sky one large pink cloud forlornly squandered its innocence.
“Pleasant—pleasant,” said Kone. “Not realistic, and not fantastic. It deceives both of its mistresses.”
“You don’t see what I’m trying to get at,” answered Jenesco. “I’m trying to make reality turn an amiable somersault, as Carl would say. I want to avoid the two extremes of painting the usual photograph on the one hand and making something that no one can understand on the other.”
Carl listened to the seething argument that followed, with the feelings of one who hears an exquisitely worthless routine of sound. He was always amazed at the fact that people could argue about art—a word pilfered from that last desperate undulation with which an ego decorates the slavery of mud. Arguments on art to him were like the antics of a sign-painter defending the precious label which he has painted upon certain of the more indiscreet and impossible longings within him—a piece of inflexible nonsense. He felt that works of art so-called could be described and admired with a novel and independently creative bow of words, but never defended and explained. Books on art were to him a futile and microscopical attempt to inject logic into a decorative curiosity. As he listened to the wrestling sounds of the present argument, words within him began to flatter his indifference.
“While Kone is talking, Jenesco sits, trying to frame his reply and paying little heed to Kone’s words,” he said to himself. “If Jenesco hears a point that he has not previously considered he will make a hasty attempt to shift his answer—a quick sword-thrust at the new opponent—and then proceed to forget about the matter. Serious arguments might be of value if they were not windy and elaborate. If men could decide to condense their views into neat typewritten sheets, carried in a coat pocket and distributed among people, they could save a great deal of cheated energy.”
“The poet has been sitting here like an amused statue,” said Kone, after the argument had collapsed to the usual stand still. “Come, we are waiting for you to flay us.”
“Splendid. Another tense battle. Haven’t you had enough?” said Carl. “I would suggest that we hold a debate on whether that spider on the wall will crawl into the sunlight near the window, or whether it will remain in the shade. In this way we can speculate upon how much the laws of chance may alter the spider’s conception of the universe.”
“Get away with that satirical pose!” cried Jenesco.
Carl smiled without answering, while the others derided his self-immersion. Jenesco knew no other weapon save an emotional club. He was a machinist who had taken up painting two years before this late winter afternoon and he still kept a little shop where he occasionally sold and repaired machines. This combination of rough mechanic and art-desiring man had given its surface lure to Carl’s imagination and he had commenced to spend most of his time at Jenesco’s home. Short, and with the body of a subdued, light-weight prize-fighter, Jenesco was a small hurricane of physical elations. He had the face of a corrupted cherub that had sold its innocence to mental inanities, and his mind was a conceited confusion of naive ideas. He had been attracted to painting because it brought his hands into motion, thus encouraging the habit which they could not forget after their working hours, and because it taught color and flexibility to the hard greys, browns, and blacks of his daily toil. He belonged to that band of men who spend a lifetime in stubbornly walking down a road of artistic effort which does not lead them to any distinct surrender. Their imaginations are not weak enough to kneel before the drab regularities of life and not strong enough to escape from the instinctive push of dead men’s realities.