Luckily, the less he worked, the more his reputation grew. Each exhibit was eagerly awaited and extolled in advance. To be sure, a small number of [132] critics, among whom were two regular visitors to the studio, tempered the warmth of their reviews with some reservations. But the disciples’ indignation more than made up for this little misfortune. Of course, the latter would emphatically assert, they ranked the pictures of the first period above everything else, but the present experiments foreshadowed a real revolution. Jonas would rather reproach himself for the slight annoyance he felt every time his first works were glorified and would thank them effusively. Only Rateau would grumble: “Weird ones . . . They like you inert, like a statue. And they deny you the right to live!” But Jonas would defend his disciples: “You can’t understand,” he told Rateau, “because you like everything I do.” Rateau laughed: “Of course! It’s not your pictures I like; it’s your painting.”
The pictures continued to be popular in any event and, after an exhibit that was enthusiastically received, the dealer suggested, on his own, an increase in the monthly remittance. Jonas accepted, declaring how grateful he was. “Anyone who heard you now,” the dealer said, “would think money meant something to you.” Such good-heartedness disarmed the painter. However, when he asked the dealer’s permission to give a canvas to a [133] charity sale, the dealer wanted to know whether or not it was a “paying charity.” Jonas didn’t know. The dealer therefore suggested sticking squarely to the terms of the contract which granted him the exclusive right of sale. “A contract’s a contract,” he said. In theirs, there was no provision for charity. “Just as you say,” the painter said.
The new arrangement was a source of constant satisfaction to Jonas. He could, in fact, get off by himself often enough to answer the many letters he now received, which his courtesy could not leave unanswered. Some concerned Jonas’s art, while others, far more plentiful, concerned the correspondent, who either wanted to be encouraged in his artistic vocation or else needed advice or financial aid. The more Jonas’s name appeared in the press, the more he was solicited, like everyone, to take an active part in exposing most revolting injustices. Jonas would reply, write about art, thank people, give his advice, go without a necktie in order to send a small financial contribution, finally sign the just protests that were sent him. “You’re indulging in politics now? Leave that to writers and ugly old maids,” said Rateau. No, he would sign only the protests that insisted they had no connection with any particular party line. But they all [134] laid claim to such beautiful independence. For weeks on end, Jonas would go about with his pockets stuffed with correspondence, constantly neglected and renewed. He would answer the most urgent, which generally came from unknowns, and keep for a better moment those that called for a more leisurely reply—in other words, his friends’ letters. So many obligations at least kept him from dawdling and from yielding to a carefree spirit. He always felt behindhand, and always guilty, even when he was working, as he was from time to time.
Louise was ever more mobilized by the children and wore herself out doing everything that, in other circumstances, he could have done in the home. This made him suffer. After all, he was working for his pleasure whereas she had the worst end of the bargain. He became well aware of this when she was out marketing. “The telephone!” the eldest child would shout, and Jonas would drop his picture right there, only to return to it, beaming, with another invitation. “Gasman!” the meter-reader would shout from the door one of the children had opened for him. “Coming! Coming!” And when Jonas would leave the telephone or the door, [135] a friend or a disciple, sometimes both, would follow him to the little room to finish the interrupted conversation. Gradually they all became regular frequenters of the hallway. They would stand there, chat among themselves, ask Jonas’s opinion from a distance, or else overflow briefly into the little room. “Here at least,” those who entered would exclaim, “a fellow can see you a bit, and without interruption.” This touched Jonas. “You’re right,” he would say. “After all, we never get a chance to see each other.” At the same time he was well aware that he disappointed those he didn’t see, and this saddened him. Often they were friends he would have preferred to meet. But he didn’t have time, he couldn’t accept everything. Consequently, his reputation suffered. “He’s become proud,” people said, “now that he’s a success. He doesn’t see anyone any more.” Or else: “He doesn’t love anyone, except himself.” No, he loved Louise, and his children, and Rateau, and a few others, and he had a liking for all. But life is short, time races by, and his own energy had limits. It was hard to paint the world and men and, at the same time, to live with them. On the other hand, he couldn’t complain, or explain the things that stood in his [136] way. For, if he did, people slapped him on the back, saying: “Lucky fellow! That’s the price of fame!”
Consequently, his mail piled up, the disciples would allow no falling off, and society people now thronged around him. It must be added that Jonas admired them for being interested in painting when, like everyone else, they might have got excited about the English Royal Family or gastronomic tours. In truth, they were mostly society women, all very simple in manner. They didn’t buy any pictures themselves and introduced their friends to the artist only in the hope, often groundless, that they would buy in their place. On the other hand, they helped Louise, especially in serving tea to the visitors. The cups passed from hand to hand, traveled along the hallway from the kitchen to the big room, and then came back to roost in the little studio, where Jonas, in the center of a handful of friends and visitors, enough to fill the room, went on painting until he had to lay down his brushes to take, gratefully, the cup that a fascinating lady had poured especially for him.
He would drink his tea, look at the sketch that a disciple had just put on his easel, laugh with his friends, interrupt himself to ask one of them to [137] please mail the pile of letters he had written during the night, pick up the second child, who had stumbled over his feet, pose for a photograph, and then at “Jonas, the telephone!” he would wave his cup in the air, thread his way with many an excuse through the crowd standing in the hall, come back, fill in a corner of the picture, stop to answer the fascinating lady that certainly he would be happy to paint her portrait, and would get back to his easel. He worked, but “Jonas! A signature!” “What is it, a registered letter?” “No, the Kashmir prisoners.” “Coming! Corning!” Then he would run to the door to receive a young friend of the prisoners and listen to his protest, worry briefly as to whether politics were involved, and sign after receiving complete assurance on that score, together with expostulations about the duties inseparable from his privileges as an artist, and at last he would reappear only to meet, without being able to catch their names, a recently victorious boxer or the greatest dramatist of some foreign country. The dramatist would stand facing him for five minutes, expressing through the emotion in his eyes what his ignorance of French would not allow him to state more clearly, while Jonas would nod his head with a real feeling of brotherhood. Fortunately, he would [138] suddenly be saved from that dead-end situation by the bursting-in of the latest spellbinder of the pulpit who wanted to be introduced to the great painter. Jonas would say that he was delighted, which he was, feel the packet of unanswered letters in his pocket, take up his brushes, get ready to go on with a passage, but would first have to thank someone for the pair of setters that had just been brought him, go and close them in the master bedroom, come back to accept the lady donor’s invitation to lunch, rush out again in answer to Louise’s call to see for himself without a shadow of doubt that the setters had not been broken in to apartment life, and lead them into the shower-room, where they would bark so persistently that eventually no one would even hear them. Every once in a while, over the visitors’ heads, Jonas would catch a glimpse of the look in Louise’s eyes and it seemed to him that that look was sad. Finally the day would end, the visitors would take leave, others would tarry in the big room and wax emotional as they watched Louise put the children to bed, obligingly aided by an elegant, overdressed lady who would complain of having to return to her luxurious home where life, spread out over [139] two floors, was so much less close and homey than at the Jonases’.