Chapter 21 twenty one

I asked him to take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the way I bought a newspaper.When the food was ordered, I propped the newspaper on a bottle of St. Carmy and began to read.We ate without saying a word.I caught him looking at me now and then, but I ignored him at all.I was going to force him to speak for himself. "What's in the paper?" he began, towards the end of our silent dinner. Maybe this is just my hallucination, I seem to hear from his voice that he has lost his composure. "I like to read essays on plays," I said. I folded the newspaper and put it aside.

"It was a good meal," he said. "I think we'll just have coffee here, okay?" "Ok." We lit our cigars.I smoked without saying a word.I noticed that his eyes stopped on me from time to time, with a faint smile flashing.I wait patiently. "What have you been doing since we last met?" he said at last. I don't have much to say.My life is nothing more than daily hard work and no anecdotes.I fumbled and experimented in different directions; I gradually accumulated a lot of book knowledge and worldly wisdom.During the conversation, I deliberately kept my mouth shut about his life in the past few years, pretending not to be interested at all.Finally, my strategy worked.He took the initiative to talk about his life.But because he was too eloquent, he told his own experience during this period in fragments, and I needed to fill in many blanks with my own imagination.It was a tantalizing thing to be able to get only a rough idea of ​​a man so deeply interested in me, like reading a manuscript incomplete.My general impression is that this man has been struggling hard with all kinds of difficulties; but I have found that he takes no pains from what seems to most people simply intolerable.What sets Strickland apart from most Englishmen is that he is completely indifferent to the comforts and comforts of life.He wouldn't feel uncomfortable living in a shabby house all his life, and he didn't need pretty furnishings around him.I guess he never noticed how filthy the papered room was when I first visited him.He didn't need an easy chair, he felt more comfortable in a hard-backed chair.He has a good appetite, but is indifferent to what exactly he eats.As far as he was concerned, what he swallowed was only food to satisfy his hunger, and sometimes he stopped for a while, as if he still had the ability to starve.From his conversation I know that for six months he lived on one meal of bread and one bottle of milk a day.He is a man who indulges in food and sex, but he doesn't care about these things.He does not consider suffering from hunger and cold as suffering.He lived a spiritual life so completely that you couldn't help but be moved.

Nor was he discouraged when he spent the little money he had brought from London.He didn't sell his paintings, I don't think he tried very hard at that.He started looking for ways to make money.He told me, in self-deprecating tones, of a time when he had acted as guide to Londoners who wanted to see the night life in Paris.Since he was fond of sarcasm, it was a career that suited his temper.He gradually became familiar with the unseemly parts of the city.He told me how he walked up and down the Avenue de la Madeleine, hoping to meet some fellow Englishman, preferably a little bit drunk, who wanted to see something that the law forbade.If he is lucky, he can make a fortune.But then his rags frightened away anyone who wanted to see, and he couldn't find any adventurer who would dare take himself into his hands.At this time, by chance, he found a job of translating advertisements for proprietary drugs, which were to be marketed in the British pharmaceutical industry and required English explanations.During one strike, he even worked as a house painter.

During all these days, his artistic activity has not stopped.But soon he lost interest in going to the studio; he just shut himself up in his room and worked hard by himself.Being penniless, he sometimes couldn't even afford canvases and paints, which happened to be what he needed most.From his conversation, I learned that he encountered great difficulties in painting, because he was unwilling to accept other people's instructions, and had to waste a lot of time groping for some technical problems. In fact, these problems have been solved one by one by previous painters. .He's after something that I don't quite know, maybe even he doesn't know clearly.The impression I had had in the past was stronger this time: he seemed to be someone who was obsessed with something, and his mind didn't seem quite right.He refused to show his pictures to others, and I think it was because he was really not interested in them.He lives in a dream, and reality means nothing to him.I had the feeling that he had poured all his strong personality onto a canvas, and that he had forgotten everything around him as he struggled to create what his mind saw.And once the process of painting is over--perhaps not the frame itself, for he seldom finishes a picture, I suppose, I mean after he's done venting a passion that burns his soul, he says to himself You don't care about what you draw anymore.He was never satisfied with his pictures; they seemed to him so meaningless compared with the visions that haunted his mind.

"Why don't you send your pictures to the exhibition?" I asked him. "I think you'd like to hear other people's opinions." "Would you like to hear it?" I cannot describe the contempt with which he said it. "Don't you want to be famous? Most painters cannot be indifferent to that." "How childish. If you don't care what one person thinks of you, what does it matter what a group of people think of you?" "Not all of us are rational animals!" I said with a smile. "Who are famous? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women."

"Isn't it comforting to think that people you've never known, never seen, are touched by your brush, or have thoughts, or emotions? Everyone loves power. If you can touch people's souls , or make them mourn, or make them panic, isn't this also a wonderful way to exercise power?" "Burlesque." "Then why do you care so much whether the drawing is good or not?" "I don't mind. I just want to draw what I see." "If I were on a deserted island, knowing for certain that no one but my own eyes would see what I wrote, I doubt I would be able to write."

Strickland was silent for a long, long time.But there was a strange gleam in his eyes, as if he saw something that kindled his soul and made him ecstatic. "Sometimes I think of a small island surrounded by the boundless sea. I can live in a secluded valley on the island, surrounded by unknown trees. I live there quietly and peacefully. I want to live there That's a place where I can find what I need." These are not his exact words.He used gestures rather than descriptive words, and he stammered before he could complete a sentence.I am now restating in my own words what I think he meant to say.

"Looking back at the past five years, do you think it was worth it?" I asked him. He looked at me, and I knew he didn't understand me, and he explained: "You've lost a comfortable family, and a happy life that most people lead. You've had a good life. But you probably don't even have a meal in Paris now." I can’t even get enough to eat. If you are asked to choose from the leader, are you still willing to go this way?” "It's still the same." "You know, you never asked about your wife and children. Haven't you ever thought about them?"

"No." "I hope you don't say a goddamn word all the time. Don't you regret it for a minute when you've caused them so much misfortune?" He grinned and shook his head. "I can imagine that sometimes you still can't help thinking about the past. I don't mean thinking about six or seven years ago, I mean earlier, when you and your wife first met, you loved her, and at the same time She's married. Have you forgotten the joy you felt when you held her in your arms for the first time?" "I don't want the past. For me, the most important thing is the eternal present."

I thought about the meaning of his answer.Maybe his semantics are very vague, but I think I still understand what he probably refers to. "Are you happy?" I asked. "Of course." I didn't say anything.I gazed at him thoughtfully.He also stared at me intently, and after a while his eyes sparkled with sarcasm again. "I suppose you have something against me?" "Your question is meaningless," I said quickly. "I have no objection to the habits of the boa constrictor. On the contrary, I am very interested in its psychological activities."

"So you are interested in me purely from a professional point of view?" "Exactly." "It's only natural that you don't object to me, and your character is really annoying." "Maybe that's why you feel so natural with me," I retorted. He just smiled dryly and said nothing.I wish I could describe the way he smiled.I dare not say how beautiful his smile is, but when he smiles, his face glows, which changes his usually gloomy face and adds a certain kind of meanness.His smile came on slowly, often starting at the eyes and disappearing at the tip of the eyes.In addition, his smile has a sensuality, neither cruel nor benevolent, reminiscent of the bestial joy of the satyr god.It was this smile on his face that made me ask a question. "Have you been in love since you came to Paris?" "I don't have time for such nonsense. Life's too short for both love and art." "You don't look like a hermit." "This kind of thing makes me nauseous." "Human nature is a nasty liability, isn't it?" I said. "Why are you smirking at me?" "Because I don't trust you." "Then you're a big fool." I didn't answer right away; I fixed him with searching eyes. "What's the use of lying to me?" I said. "I do not know what you mean." I laughed. "Call me for it. I suppose you are in such a condition. You have not had it on your mind for months, and you can even convince yourself that you are completely cut off from it. You get Happy to be free, you feel like you are finally the master of your own soul. You seem to be walking among the stars with your head held high. But suddenly, you can't stand it anymore. You find that your feet have never been pulled out of the mud .You want to just lie down and roll in the mud. So you go to find a woman, a rough, low, vulgar woman, a sensual and repulsive animal woman. You are like a beast. Jumping on her. You're drinking like hell, you're hating yourself, you're going crazy." He stared at me without moving.I, too, stared intently into his eyes.I speak very slowly. "I'm going to tell you now something that must seem strange: after that is over, you feel amazingly clean. You have a sense of the soul throwing off the body, a sense of being out of form. You seem to be able to touch beauty as soon as you stretch out your hand, as if 'beauty' is a tangible entity. You seem to be closely connected with the rustling breeze, the trees with tender leaves, and the changing water .You think you're God. Can you explain to me what's going on?" He kept looking me in the eyes until I finished speaking.Only then did he turn his face away.He had a strange look on his face, which I thought a man might have when he died of torture.He was silent.I know our conversation is over.