The Empty Canvas Read Online Free PDF Page B

again I was forced to admire her power of self-control. Anyone else, in her place, would at least have shown some satisfaction. She, however, received the news with indifference. 'And why,' she inquired after a moment, in a tone of polite, idle, almost mundane curiosity, 'why have you decided to give up painting?'
    By this time we had almost reached the villa; and there was a smell of cooking, of very good cooking, in the air. At the same time I felt that my despair, instead of lessening, was increasing, though I kept repeating furiously to myself: 'It's getting better now, it's getting better now.' And then a recollection rose to the surface of my mind, a memory of myself as a child of five, with my knee bleeding, sobbing despairingly as I came up through another garden and ran towards my mother, into whose arms I threw myself impetuously; and of my mother bending over me and saying to me in her ugly, croaking voice: 'Now, now, don't cry, let me look at it, don't cry, don't you know that men don't cry?' And now I looked at my mother and it seemed to me that, for the first time after a long period, I had a feeling of affection for her. Then, in answer to her question: 'Don't know,' I said, speaking as briefly as possible, for I was ashamed of my despair and did not wish her to be aware of it.
    But I realized at once that it was no use saying: 'Don't know'; the feeling of desolation did not cease on that account; it made my flesh creep and my hair tingle, and round me the whole world seemed discoloured and shrivelled. Then a light puff of wind brought that smell of good cooking to my nostrils again, and I felt, almost, a desire to throw myself, sobbing, into my mother's arms, as I did when I was five, with the same hope that she would console me for my abandoned painting, just as she had done then for my wounded knee. Suddenly I said, in a quite unexpected way: 'Oh, by the way, I was forgetting to tell you that I'm leaving the studio, which serves no purpose now, and coming back to live with you.' I paused a moment, astonished at these words which I had had no intention of uttering and which issued from my mouth for no explainable reason. Then, realizing that I could not now withdraw again, I added with an effort: 'Provided you want me to.'
    In spite of the amazement into which I had been thrown by my own proposal, I could not help admiring, once again, my mother's capacity for dissimulation, the capacity that she, in her 'society' idiom, called 'good form'. I had said the thing she had been waiting to hear for years; the only thing, perhaps, that could give her real pleasure; nevertheless, not a sign appeared on her wooden, expressionless face or in her glassy eyes. Slowly she said, in a more than usually disagreeable voice, almost in the tone of someone, in a drawing-room, reciprocating a compliment of no importance whatsoever: 'Of course I want you to. In this house you'll always be more than welcome. When would you come?'
    'This evening or tomorrow morning.'
    'Better tomorrow morning; then I'll have time to have your room got ready for you.'
    'Tomorrow morning, then.'
    After these words we said nothing more for some time. I was wondering what it was that had happened to me; and whether my true vocation, now, might not be to stay at home with my mother and accept the fact of being bored and administer our property and be rich. My mother, on her side, appeared by this time to have got beyond the phase of surprise and complacency at her unhoped-for victory; and was already devoting herself, as could be concluded from the thoughtful expression on her hard, set face, to the organization of that victory—that is, to plans for my future and her own. Finally she remarked, in a casual tone of voice: 'I don't know if you did it on purpose, but anyhow it's a good omen. Today is your birthday and today you've decided to come back and live here. I told you this morning that I've prepared a surprise for you. Now it'll do to celebrate