The Impossible Artist

this essay is written as a reflection on Catherine Mansfield's story "Feuille d'Albume"


It is raining outside and I love raining…

When we met the first time she was standing in her raincoat holding a pot with daffodils under my window on a small Paris street and was feeding them with warm summer rain drops. She was like a daffodil herself with her slim figure and shining fluffy hair coming out her handkerchief. Drops were sliding slowly on her face and she was smiling. She argues that now and believes that she didn’t.
My wife thinks I am an impossible man. I should believe in it. Though such man as I can be found everywhere and every man has his own impossibilities and possibilities. I prove that and she is just smiling in return.

By the way, she is sure that she was the first who met me. According to her words I was sitting lonely in a cafй near her house and stroke people with my indifference to surrounding. Her girlfriends were first who noticed me and always chatted about my unusual indifference to women. “It is unbelievable! – they said. - Queer man. Impossible man. Lonely man”.

It is in woman’s nature to be a mother and they always need to care about somebody or something. While we, men are more egotistic, and it is impossible to change our nature.
My wife is such a woman. She needs to care about flowers, pets, children, people etc. When we moved to N* she found her mission in caring about old people in the old people’s home.

“I can prolong their grey life, make it brighter and more colorful, - she explains, - as you make people’s life essential drawing your pictures”. I never realize how my pictures can make people’s life essential but she truly believes in it.

It is still raining outside and it is getting dark. My wife is out in a hospital at her night shift. I have been drawing a crystal vase with daffodils since morning. Alive flowers are always in our home and their mixed smell makes me feeling euphoria. Lovers have the same feeling. Every day these flowers extend our love to each other. We haven’t had any quarrels since we met and it seems to be unusual for our friends. “How is it possible?” they ask. She smiles and says we are too different to quarrel. I think we are too busy with our life to have any quarrels.

I love raining because it helps me to feel my inside and concentrate. Raining used to make my soul lonely and melancholic. I am dipping my brush into whitewash oil and add some ochre to find a color that can show light’s reflection on a petal. An artist needs to have an attentive eye to find all differences in colors of nature… What makes our work creative is how we reflect life by colors. Looking at these fragile daffodils I remember how carefully she touched them with her warm ivory hands and looked at them smiling. I feel her lovely existence in all my paintings.

It is too dark to draw and it is still raining. I close the window and switch on the lamp. Night butterflies start their flying dance around the lamp and I choose the book to read before sleeping. My wife calls me before I go to sleep. I give up any reading and fall in darkness, still hearing rain’s sounds and it seems the rain is eternal. Its sound covers the whole world. I feel that rain makes me indifferent and impossible to this world. It would make me lonely this night but I feel her warm existence.

2006 February