“Maestro Van Gogh!”
The sitting man did not turn his head.
“Maestro, it’s a great honor, and all that… Your paintings cost many millions nowadays. To think that in your time, you could lack money for a dinner! Tell me, how did you manage to paint? Over two thousand works in ten years!”
The man at the table was still absorbed in his drawing.
“I know what you will say – that one must serve his talent disregarding anything material. Everyone says so, but not everyone can live up to it. Good for you, you’re a genius, you got it all covered. Me, I’m no genius…”
The stars above dimmed, the contours of the houses blurred, and the figure by the table started getting transparent. Yet, before vanishing completely, the bandaged genius held out something, without turning round, to his uninvited visitor. It was a brush.
The artist woke from his alcoholic oblivion. What he had in his hand was not a brush but a branch from his flower. When and why he had broken it off, he had no idea.
He was dripping with sweat and shivering. By a desperate effort, he sat up on the sofa and put his feet down on the floor. He could not walk, his legs refusing to hold him up, so he had to crawl on all fours all the way to the window. Here, he clung on the big bottle of spring water meant for the flower and chugged at least a liter of it. It felt a little better.
Only after that his vision focused on rusty patches which were leaping to his eyes.
The flower was dying. All covered in an awful blight, it had already ceased fighting for itself.
The guide was a bitch to find, but finally it cropped up under the sofa. The painter’s fingers would not obey him, and the letters were dancing before his eyes. It took him a while to find what he was looking for: “In case of blight damage, the Flower can be cured only by classical music.” An instruction printed in bold type said that only analogue records, on vinyl, answered the purpose.
Vinyl records were rare, cost a lot, and could only be found in music lovers’ collections. The painter was not into music but he possessed an Ella Fitzgerald vinyl record left to him by his melomaniac grandfather.
He retrieved the record from the top of the bookshelf. He even dug up an old record player which, miraculously, had never been thrown out and rested peacefully in the depth of the closet.
Issuing crackling sounds, the record filled the studio with a base, penetrating, black woman’s voice. It was neither Bach or Mozart, but it was classical music of sorts.
And it had its effect, the flower started coming back to life visibly.
Then the process reversed – the flower drooped, the rusty patches started growing again. Probably, the flower required some other kind of music, or it did not do to play the same record all the time.
For two days, the artist sat motionless in a chair, listening to Ella Fitzgerald and gazing at the dying flower.
On the third day, he unearthed the gallery owner’s address and set off to visit him.
Once the gallerist started his business in a suburb, in the basement of an abandoned building which was always crowded with penniless Bohemia. Now he had a spacious exhibition hall in the center of the city, where all the walls were hung with good paintings.
In the empty hall, there were smells of coffee and tobacco – the gallerist whose hair had turned noble grey was sitting at an antique table by the window, puffing at a cigar and contemplating the street bustle.
“You don’t seem to have a lot of visitors,” remarked the artist by way of greeting.
“I don’t need a lot,” responded the gallerist. He exuded Buddhist calm rarely found among the people associated with art.
“Do you recognize me?”
“Of course I do. I never forget either people or paintings. Do you bring something?”
The artist started showing the paintings he brought. The gallerist turned them over without any interest.
“You don’t like them?” asked the artist.
The gallerist sighed.
“Let me be honest with you. You painted all this in the hope of making money. You despised those who would buy it and you despised yourself for doing this. What is there to like in this?”