The Happy Marriage Read Online Free Page B

spread and what they must be saying behind his back: “You didn’t know he’d had a stroke? Poor guy, he can’t even paint anymore … now is the perfect time to buy his canvases!” Or even: “He was arrogant and selfish and now God has given him a sign: it’s a warning, the next time will be his last!” Or even more cruelly: “He’s completely fucked now, he won’t even be able to get an erection, a tragedy for someone who loved women the way he did!… As for his wife, that poor lady he treated so badly, she can at least rest assured now that his willy isn’t good for anything apart from pissing! There’s a poetic justice to that, isn’t there?” “The great seducer will now become acquainted with our solitude. I must admit we were jealous of his conquests, and after all that, his paintings even sold well!” He tried to picture what his art dealer would have said to thebuyers: “Whatever you do, don’t sell, wait a few months!” And what about his wife, what had she been up to ever since she’d learned the news? Would she not try to exact her revenge? No, no, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask those kinds of questions. He didn’t want to fight with her, he wanted peace, so that he could heal.
    Whenever you’re struck by misfortune, either through an illness or an accident, the people around you suddenly change. There are those who scurry off the sinking ship, like rats, those who wait to see how the situation develops before making their next move, and finally those who remain loyal to their feelings and whose behavior doesn’t change. Those friends are both rare and precious.
    He was surrounded by people who belonged to each of the three categories. He’d never deluded himself about this particular fact. Before taking up painting, he had devoted himself to studying philosophy. He had especially loved Schopenhauer and his aphorisms; those cutting remarks of his had made him laugh, and they had also taught him to never trust in appearances and to watch out for their traps. For a while, he had even resisted studying philosophy, because he had believed that painting and reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were irreconcilable. But he knew how to handle pencils and brushes better than anyone he knew, and his art teacher had strongly encouraged him to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Those encouragements had helped him put his dreams of being a philosopher to the side.
    And so one fine day he’d left Morocco for Paris. He hadn’t even been twenty years old at the time. In his mind, Paris had stood for freedom, boldness, and intellectual and artistic adventures. This was the city where Picasso had risen to fame and glory, and he had first discovered his vocation when admiring the master’s early canvases, especially those where the fifteen-year-old Picasso had painted his mother on her deathbed. Picasso had left a profound impression onhim, and he had wanted to follow in his footsteps. He perfected his style at the École des Beaux-Arts and found his own voice. He had distanced himself from the great names to forge a unique style of his own, a kind of hyper-realism that would eventually become his signature. His canvases, which were rigorously precise, were the fruit of long, painstaking work. He could not create art in any other way. He’d never been able to understand how his contemporaries could splash a bucket of paint onto a canvas or doodle a few lines. He thought their hands were guided by what came easiest to them, and that was exactly what he hated the most. He detested anything that came too easily, without any effort or imagination. He had wanted his painting to be like his philosophy (which he’d nevertheless abandoned): a precisely built edifice that left no room for vagueness, generalities, clichés or approximations. This had been the foundation on which he’d erected his life. As far as he was concerned, it was about being demanding. He took special care over the