The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923-1924/A Painter in the Village

by Géza Gárdonyi

A PAINTER IN THE VILLAGE

By GEZA GARDONY

COMING out of doors, I saw all the children running to the end of the village. I stopped young Burnoz, to find out what was happening.

“There is a gentleman at the top of the village,” he said, all out of breath and red in the face, “and he’s making a picture.”

A “gentleman who’s making a picture” must be a painter. I also went to the end of the village, and I found him almost at once.

He was settled on the goose green, among the willows. A little three-footed easel was in front of him, and behind him was Tiennot (short for Etienne) Konczol, flourishing his stick about, to keep back the children. The youngsters, naturally, had climbed up into the trees, and from these points of vantage were watching to see how the miracle was done. Who would ever have imagined that with little sticks like that you could manufacture pictures? Within a week all the children in the village would be painting.

The painter was a blond young man, a mere stripling, with long hair, such as one meets in every corner of the country during the summer. He wore a wide-brimmed soft hat on his head, and a velvet waistcoat, à l'Italienne.

The lad was a Hungarian, however. When they told him that the schoolmaster had arrived, he put down his brush and rose.

“My name is Etienne Rez,” he said. “I have just come back from Munich, to spend the autumn in my own country and to make some sketches.”

“How did you happen to drop into our little village?”

“I really don’t know, myself! I go here and there, just as the wind directs. I work a little. In another week I shall be going back.”

“But won’t you continue your work? We can talk mean while.”

He was painting a corner of the field, the bridge, the birch tree and some willows by the water side. He took up his brush and recommenced painting, raising his eyes from time to time from his work.

“It’s very easy to see that not many men of my trade come here! This village is full of paintable heads, and every one of them is finer than the rest, but every time I have asked one of them to act as a model he has cried out in terror!”

“Heaven knows what they understand by the word ‘model,’” I replied. “You should speak to them in their own tongue, Mr. Painter!”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. One of them, a youngster with a bronzed complexion, got over his fear when I offered him five cents, but the rest soon got him away from me. “Don’t let him spoil your face, you idiot!” they told him, and they convinced him so well that I’ve had to do these wearisome willows over and over again.”

“Wait a bit, and I’ll get you out of your difficulty. You have only to tell me whom you want to paint.”

“Well,” he said with his brush in the air, “I’ve seen one old fellow I’d give everything I have in the world to paint! I even know his name; it’s something like Kévési, or Képési, I forget exactly what. He’s an old man, a little bent with age. His hair is completely white and his face all red. With his white hair and ruddy cheeks, that man is all colour! gorgeous colours—cinnabar, carmine, cerise, burnt sienna and masses of shadow!”

“That’s Kévi!”

“That’s his name—Kévi! He lives near the church. I’ll slip Some blue holes in the carmine round his nose!” “Very well, then—finish your picture. The old man shall pose!’’

“Finish my picture? Not on your life! If you will bring the old boy within reach of my brush, I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life!”

He packed up his things and we went off at once to find Kévi. The old man was sitting on the trunk of a tree in the dooryard of his house, smoking his pipe. As we came in at the little gate he prepared to stand up, in order to come to meet us, but I signed to him and gave him to understand that if he got up we should go away. This threat flattered him, and he gaily held out his old wrinkled hand and shook ours boyishly.

“This gentleman,” I said, pointing to the painter, “is a man who knows how to make pictures—not those good for nothing things made of paper, but fine pictures, made with oil.”

“With oil?”

“Yes—like those of the saints you have seen in church.”

“Oh, good!”

“Well, what we have come for, Kévi, is because this gentleman wants to make a picture like that of you.”

“Of me? But I’m not a saint!”

“Well, it’s not quite that. He wants to paint a big picture with a good many Hungarians in it, and he wants you to be one of them.”

Kévi looked at us distrustfully.

“Eh,” he said, “I’m too old for things like that. Take my boys—paint them!”

“It is exactly because you are old that I want to paint you,” said the painter. “I will paint you as Homer, ruddy with health. That would be a new conception of Homer—blind of one eye only and sitting among the fallen timber, chanting the praises of heroes!”

“What?” growled the old man. “You want to make a hohér [the Hungarian for executioner] of me?”

“No, no! not an executioner!” I said, trying to calm the old boy.

And the painter added, “A Greek, called Homer.”

“A Greek?” repeated the old man, once more fearful.

“Ah, you don’t understand,” I said, again trying to soothe him, “it will be only the picture that will be Greek.”

Inwardly I wished something would strike the painter dumb, at least for a quarter of an hour. Unfortunately my painter wished at any price to take his part in the task of persuading the old man.

“It will only be a matter of adding a suitable beard to your head,” he said.

“Then you can be sure I won’t do it!” retorted the old man furiously. “I am very pleased to see you, Sir, but I won’t do it!”

“Oh, shut up!” I said to the painter, “and let me do the talking.”

The painter, quite upset, went and sat on the edge of the well and, taking up his brush, began to paint the hayloft.

Meantime, the women had come out of the house, and I addressed myself to them.

“You see, my good woman,” I said to the old man’s wife, “here we are in the midst of it. This gentleman is a painter, who has come a very long way to paint some pictures in our village. He wants to paint the finest child, the most beautiful woman and the handsomest old man. It isn’t my fault if he considers Father Kévi the best looking of the old men in the village. In any case, he isn’t asking much of him. All he wants is for Kévi to remain sitting down in front of him for a quarter of an hour-but Father Kévi won’t! But what an honour it will be, when the painter exhibits his portrait of Father Kévi in foreign countries, and says: ‘Come and see, emperors and kings, what handsome old men there are in Hungary!’ Praise and blessings will fall in showers on Father Kévi’s head. They will even talk about him in the newspapers.”

“Why won’t you?” asked the old woman, in a supplicating tone.

“There are plenty of youngsters,” responded the old man, a trifle softened. “You can’t teach an old dog like me new tricks!”

“But, my good Father Kévi, a young man would be useless where what is wanted is a veteran! What would you say, for instance, if you saw a picture where St. Peter was represented with the face of a man of twenty-five?”

“Look, there’s our loft!” cried young Imre, who was standing behind the painter.

And there, spread out all in yellow on the painter’s canvas was the hayloft. Even the big walnut tree was shown.

The rough sketch pleased the old man also.

“That’s good,” he said. “Make me look as big a fool as you like! I’ll do it, to please Mr. Schoolmaster!”

He stood up and turned to go into his bedroom.

“Give me my best suit,” he said to his wife.

“Oh, you’ve no need to change your clothes,” said the painter. “I only want to paint your head.”

“My head? And what sort of a fool shall I look without arms or legs?”

I made a sign to the painter not to speak.

“You will appear to be looking out of the window, Father Kévi,” I told him. “Those who saw you from the street wouldn’t be able to see either your hands or your legs, would they?”

The old man grasped this, but all the same he went indoors, in order to put on his best clothes. His soul insisted that, whether his clothes were painted or not, the hour in which his features were to be placed for all eternity was a solemn one.

He sat down in his chair and remained motionless. He placed himself in the hands of the painter.

Silence brooded over the dooryard. The painter, with a sure and rapid hand, sketched in the outline of the head upon the canvas. He touched in the nose, the moustache, and splashed in the deep chestnut colour round the head.

“It’s beginning all right,” observed the shoemaker, who was leaning over the fence, “but it isn’t him yet!”

In a short time the painter had put in the red for the face and white for the hair. The wrinkles were not yet indicated, while the forehead was still only a splash of colour; but Mother Kévi, clapping her hands together, cried:

“My word, he was just like that twenty years ago!”

Old Kévi took not the slightest interest in what he had been like twenty years before, and continued quietly smoking his pipe in his armchair. The spectators in the dooryard became more and more numerous.

Among the others, Bozitsy’s wife came to see what was going on. She is a mournful and skinny little woman. Why she did so I don’t know, but she had certainly put on the black dress she wears on holidays. Some of the other women also came to see what was happening, but they only looked in as though in passing, and soon went back to their work. The little Bozitsy woman alone stayed and watched the growing picture attentively.

“How much are you going to pay for that?” she whispered. “What does it cost?”

“Goodness, you’re not going to have your picture done, are you?”

“My heavens, no! I was only asking—that’s all!”

“Well, nothing, then!” replied Mother Kévi. “We shall not have to pay anything. He is painting my husband merely to amuse himself. It’s coming up fine, isn’t it?”

“Whatever you do, Kévi, don’t move your ear!” cried the shoemaker, leaning on his elbows on the fence. “He’s just putting it in.”

The old man kept his ear very steady.

The marveling increased every minute. By the end of a quarter of an hour the dooryard was filled with delighted laughter and astonishment.

“It’s exactly like him, exactly like him!” everybody cried.

“Now there are two of you in the world, Father Kévi,” said the shoemaker.

“And when you’re finished they’ll hang you,” said the village policeman.

In the end the old man couldn’t resist any longer, but got out of his chair and trotted up to look at his picture. He shook his head.

“Am I like that?” he said jovially. “Yes, that’s just like me!”

“Oh, it’s not quite finished yet,” replied the painter. “I’ll come back again tomorrow. By that time you will have dried, and then I will put on the bitumen.”

“What will you put on?”

“Well, then the tar—I will touch you up here and there with some tar.”

“Me?”

“No, not you, of course, but your shadow, so that your eyes have more depth in them, Father Kévi.”

Out in the street the little Bozitsy woman was on tenterhooks.

“Upon my soul, Mr. Painter,” she ventured, when we had reached the bridge.

And as we stopped she clasped her hands anxiously:

“I ask you very humbly, Sir, and dear picture maker,” she said “if you could—my little girl—my little Helene . . .”

“I don’t know if I shall have the time,” replied the painter. “Which is your little girl?”

“She is dead, my poor darling—she is dead!” said the woman, her eyes bathed in tears.

“It was her only child,” I told the painter, for the woman’s voice was gone and she could no longer speak; “a pretty little thing with blue eyes.”

“Yes, yes!” sobbed the woman.

“It would be very difficult,” said the painter, shrugging his shoulders. “Have you a photograph of any kind?”

“Ah, no, Sir! That’s exactly why I want her picture done.”

As we went on to my house together, I told the painter that the little girl was not only dearly loved by her mother, but that she had been the nicest little fair girl with blue eyes in the village. She had died from croup, poor darling.

Then we went on to talk about other things. We spoke about shooting. This year we had lots of wild duck. In the evening, I said, I would take the painter with me and we would go out in a boat after duck.

The painter, however, did not want to go shooting. He stood gazing at the reeds in the evening light—the sunset in the reed beds. After a long silence, he said:

“Was that little girl very much like her mother?”

“If she had been grown up, she would have been exactly like her.”

“Then I will try and do something,” he said, good temperedly. “I will paint that woman as though she were still seven years old.”

“Would that be possible?” I asked.

“Why, yes! The hair will be fairer, the eyes larger and bluer. I will make the eyebrows thinner and higher. I will make the face rounder—or was the child thin?”

“My word, she was a kind of tiny little bird!”

“Oh, well, that won’t matter. Her features should be fuller, anyway, the little chin less defined, the complexion white and transparent, and the little neck thin.”

And on the following day he set to work to paint the portrait of the dead child.

The mother posed, full of zeal, without even knowing why. She only knew one thing—if she posed, she would have the portrait of her daughter.

It was very natural that she should pose!

When the portrait was finished, the painter improvised a frame, surrounded it with a bit of green drapery and we told the woman to come and see it.

The woman looked at the picture, and suddenly her tears began to fall.

“Do you recognise her?” I asked, much moved.

“How could I fail to recognise her, Mr. Schoolmaster?” she said; “but the poor darling has very much changed since she went to heaven.”