Frost: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

further confusion, apathy, uncertainty. The disruptiveness and blandishments of sex further complicated the situation, how to deal with forbidden sights, illnesses that he had to cope with alone, perturbed him. How different it was for his siblings, who were allowed to stay at home with their parents, and “live life to the full.” Since everything was so confused, he ruined his prospects at school, with the result that one day there was nothing left but to accept a desk job in an office, from which he was only able to rescue himself by a terrible scene, and then on to art school. He won scholarships, and took his final exams, as required. “But nothing came of it,” he said. His early manhood was still worse. He might have had a little more contact with somewhat like-minded contemporaries, but “it was pretty mindless.” His early years had been hard for him. In many ways they reminded me of my own youth. I was sad as well, but neveras bitter as he was, and at such an early age. And yet, childhood and youth were the only things in him “he found hard to say goodbye to.”
    Today he admitted he had burned all his paintings. “I had to get rid of those things that were a perpetual reminder of my worthlessness.” They had been like ulcers, opening every day and silencing him. “I did it quickly. One day I realized I’d never make it as a painter. But then, the way everyone does, I refused to believe it, and protracted the agony for years. And then, the day before I was due to leave, it struck me forcibly.”
    “There was a time I would have thought it impossible for me to give in to myself so blindly,” says the painter. He stops, draws breath, and says: “I could be in a good mood, after all. Why am I not in a good mood? I’m not bored, I’m not scared. I’m in no pain. I feel no irritation. As if I was someone else, just now. And there it is again: I’m hurt and irritated. Yes, it’s my own doing. See: all my life … I’ve never been merry! Never joyful! Never what people call happy. Because the compulsion to the unusual, the eccentric, the odd, the unique, and the unattainable, this compulsion has wrecked everything for me, and in the creative field as well. It tore everything up, as if it were a piece of paper! My fear is rational, orderly, itemized, there’s nothing low about it. I’m continually testing myself, yes, that’s what it is! I keep chasing my own tail! You can imagine what it’s like, when you open yourself like a book, and find misprints everywhere, one after another, misprints on every page! And in spite of those hundredsand thousands of misprints, the whole thing is
masterly!
It’s a whole series of masterpieces! … The pain rises from below or comes down from above, and it becomes human pain. I keep banging into the walls that surround me on every side. I’m a cement man! But I’ve often had to hold on to myself behind my laughter!”
    “Do you know what I can hear now? I can hear charges being brought against the big ideas, a great court has been convoked to hear the case, I can hear them slowly beginning to arraign all the big ideas. More and more big ideas are arrested and thrown into prison. The big ideas are sentenced to terrible punishments, I know that for certain! I can hear it! Big ideas are picked up at border checkpoints! Many flee, but they are apprehended and punished, and thrown into jail! Life, I say, lifetime imprisonment is the least punishment to which the big ideas are sentenced! The big ideas have no one to defend them! Not even a wretched public defender! I hear the state’s attorneys laying into the big ideas! I hear the police hitting the big ideas over the head with their nightsticks. The police were always battering the big ideas over the head! They’ve locked up the big ideas! Not one big idea will be left at large! Listen up! Look! All the big ideas have basically got it in the neck! Listen!” The painter tells me to go on ahead, and I go on