Artists -- Fiction; English fiction -- 20th century; Jews -- England -- London -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
"No; I don't know much about Napoleon."
"Ah! You should. I read every book about him I can lay hands on.
Gustave!"
The waiter came up and Logan ordered a very special dinner with the
air of knowing the very inmost secrets of the establishment. He
demanded orange bitters before the meal and a special brand of
cigarette.
"My day hasn't been wasted," he said. "I've been to Cluny's and I
asked to see your stuff. The little man there looked astonished, but I
told him people were talking of no one else but you, and quite
rightly. I talked to him from the dealer's point of view, and assured
him that there was a big boom in pictures, coming, and that he had
better be prepared for it with a handful of new men. I didn't let him
know that I was a painter, but I got him quite excited, and I did not
leave him until he had hung a picture and two drawings."
"Which picture?"
"The one of your mother's kitchen. It is one of your best. To-morrow
three men will walk into Cluny's and they will admire your work. On
the day after to-morrow a real buyer will walk in."
Mendel's eyes grew larger and larger. Was Logan a magician, that he
could direct human beings into Cluny's shop and conduct them straight
to his work?
Logan laughed at his amazement.
"Lord love-a-duck!" he said, "you're not going to sit still and wait
for commercial fools to discover that you know your job. At my first
exhibition in Liverpool I put on a false beard and went in and bought
one of my own pictures, just to encourage the dealer and the timid
idiots who were too shy to go and ask him the price of the drawings.
It worked, and this is going to work too. When I've warmed Cluny up
into selling you, then I'm going to make him sell me. If you don't
mind we'll have our names bracketed,--Kühler and Logan. People will
believe in two men when they won't in one. As for three, you've only
got to look at the Trinity to see what they'll believe when they get
three working together. . . . Oh! I forgot you were a Jew and brought
up to believe in One is One and all alone."
He laughed and gave a fat chuckle as he mimicked the little man in
Cluny's cocking his head on one side and pretending to take in the
beauties of Mendel's work as they were pointed out to him.
"I have enjoyed myself," said Logan. "By God! I wish there were a
revolution. I'd have my finger in the pie. Oh! what lovely legs
there'd be to pull--all the world's and his wife's as well. But it
won't come in my time."
Under Logan's influence Mendel began to enjoy his food, which he had
always treated as a tiresome necessity before. He sat back in his
chair and sipped his wine and crumbled up his bread exactly as Logan
did; and he had a delicious sense of leisure and well-being, as though
nothing mattered very much. And, indeed, when he came to think of it,
nothing did matter. He had years and years ahead of him, and here was
good solid pleasure in front of him, so that he had only to dip his
hands in it and take and take. . . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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