The Masterpiece

by Émile Zola

  His speech slowed as he lay back with his eyes half closed, succumbing to the irresistible preoccupation with his picture until it became a distinct impediment to his expression.

  ‘Today,’ he went on, ‘I spotted Courajod himself on his doorstep, a wizened old codger, well over eighty, shrunk to the size of a small boy. Incredible! He had to be seen to be believed, with his clogs and his peasant’s jersey and his old woman’s headscarf! Anyhow, I walked straight up to him and said: “Monsieur Courajod, I know who you are. You have a masterpiece hanging in the Luxembourg. May I shake hands with you, as an artist, in acknowledgement?”—Oh, if you could have seen the way he took fright immediately and stammered and backed away as if I’d been going to attack him! He would have run away if he could. But I followed him, and he soon calmed down and showed me his hens and his ducks and rabbits and dogs, a full-blown menagerie, in short, including a raven! That’s all he lives for now, his pets. And the view he has to look out on! The whole plain of Saint-Denis, stretching away to the horizon, full of rivers and towns, smoking factories and steaming trains. A real hermit’s retreat, you know, up on the hilltop, looking away from Paris out over the limitless countryside. … Of course, I took up the subject of painting again and told him how much we all admire his genius. “You’re one of our glories,” I said. “You’ll be remembered as the father of us all!” At that his lips began to quiver again and he looked simply stupefied with horror; he couldn’t have turned me away with a more beseeching gesture if I’d actually unearthed some skeleton from his long-lost youth! What he said was impossible to understand, really; just a series of disjointed expressions chewed over by his toothless gums, the vague ramblings of an old man returned to second childhood: “Didn’t know … long way off … too old … what does it matter?” was all I could catch. The long and the short of it is, he turned me out, and I heard him give a mighty turn to his key as he barricaded himself and his pets against all attempted admiration from passers-by. Imagine a man of his calibre ending his days like a retired grocer, deliberately reducing himself to a cipher, in his own lifetime! What price glory, then, the thing we’d die for?’

  His voice had grown quieter and quieter as he spoke, and tailed off in a long-drawn-out sigh. Night had begun to fill the room like a rising tide, welling up first in the corners, then rising slowly, inexorably upwards, submerging the legs of the chairs and the table and all the untidy litter on the studio floor. Now the lower half of the picture was covered, and Claude peered despairingly at it through the mounting gloom, passing a last judgment upon it in the fading light of day. Meanwhile the deep silence was broken only by the heavy breathing of the sick child, at whose side Christine still sat like a motionless black shadow.

  At last Sandoz spoke. Like Claude, he was lying back on a cushion, his hands clasped behind his head.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether it might not be better to live, and die, unknown? What a cheat for us all if this glory we talk about existed no more than the paradise promised in the Catechism and which even children don’t believe in nowadays! We’ve stopped believing in God, but not in our own immortality! We’re a sad lot, really!’

  Then, giving way to the sadness of the falling twilight, he made his own confession and lay bare all the torments aroused in him by his sensitiveness to human suffering.

  ‘Take my own case,’ he said. ‘Maybe you envy me because I’m beginning to do good business, as the bourgeois say, publishing my books, making some money. Well, between you and me, it’s getting me down. I’ve told you that already more than once, but you never believe me because for you, who find production so difficult and can make no headway with the public, happiness naturally means abundant production and being in the public eye, favourably or otherwise even. … Get yourself accepted at the next Salon, go into the fray, paint more and more pictures, and then tell me whether you’re as happy as you hoped to be! … The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it’s robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It’s like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I’ve even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I’m chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It’s so completely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it’s impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I’m asleep. … Outside that, nothing, nobody exists. I go up to see my mother, but I’m so absorbed that ten minutes afterwards I’m asking myself whether I’ve been up to her or not. As for my wife, she has no husband, poor thing; we’re never really together any more, even when we’re hand-in-hand! Sometimes I feel so acutely aware that I’m making them both unhappy that I’m overcome with remorse, for happiness in a home depends so much on kindness and frankness and gaiety. But do what I will, I can’t escape entirely from the monster’s clutches, and I’m soon back in the semiconscious state that goes with creation and just as sullen and indifferent as I always am when I’m working. If the morning’s writing’s gone smoothly, all well and good; if it hasn’t, all’s not so good; and so the whole household laughs or cries to the whim of almighty Work! … That’s the situation. I’ve nothing now I can call my own. In the bad old days I used to dream about foreign travel or restful holidays in the country. Now that I could have both, here I am hemmed in by work, with no hope of so much as a brisk walk in the morning, a free moment to visit an old friend, or a moment’s self-indulgence! I haven’t even a will of my own; it’s become a habit now to lock my door on the world outside and throw my key out of the window. … So there we are, cribbed and confined together, my work and me. And in the end it’ll devour me, and that will be the end of that!’

  There was a moment’s silence in the deepening shadow before he took up his complaint again.

  ‘If only one felt some satisfaction,’ he said. ‘If only one got some semblance of pleasure out of leading such a dog’s life! … I don’t know how they do it, the people who smoke cigarettes and sit blissfully stroking their beards while they work. There are people, apparently, to whom production comes easily and even pleasantly, and who can work or not work as the spirit moves them, without any more ado. And they think it’s wonderful, that everything they write is perfect, distinguished, and of unmatchable beauty! … But when I bring forth I need forceps, and even then the child always looks to me like a monster. Is it possible for anyone to be so devoid of doubt as to have absolute faith in himself? It amazes me to see these fellows who can’t find a good word to say for anybody else cast all criticism and common sense to the winds when it comes to admiring their own bastard offspring! There’s always something repulsive, in my opinion, about a book. I don’t see how you can possibly like it once you’ve gone through the messy business of producing it. … Then there are all the brickbats you get hurled at you. Fortunately, I find them stimulating rather than discouraging, but I know some people they upset terribly, the sort of people who don’t mind admitting that they need to feel the public sympathetic. Some women, I know, would die rather than fail to please. Perhaps it’s only natural. Still, there’s something healthy in a bit of honest invective, and unpopularity’s a very sound training-school; there’s nothing better for keeping you in trim than the insults of the common herd. So long as you can say to yourself that you’ve put your whole life into your work, that you expect neither immediate justice nor even serious appreciation, that you’re working without hope of any kind, simply because the urge to work beats in your body like your heart, because you can’t help it, you can let yourself die happy and console yourself with the illusion that you’ll be appreciated one day. … People would be surprised if they knew how lightly I take their fury. But there’s still myself to reckon with, and I am so completely
merciless that I never allow myself a moment’s happiness. From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there’s still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. I begin to say the book’s no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I’ve wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it’s finished, when it’s finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that’s nearly broken his back. … Then it starts all over again, and it’ll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I’ve done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing with my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!’

  Choking with emotion, he had to struggle a moment for breath before he could give voice to the passionate outburst of all his impenitent lyricism:

  ‘Oh, for another life! Who’ll give me a second life, a life for work to steal! A chance to die a second death in harness!’

  It was quite dark now, and the stiff black shadow of Christine was no longer visible, while the child’s painful breathing seemed to come from the darkness itself, like some mighty, remote sorrow rising from the city streets. In the prevailing gloom of the studio the only object over which a faint pale light still hovered was the big canvas on which the naked figure of the woman was still discernible, though vague, like a fading vision, incomplete, the legs lost in shadow already, one arm gone and only the curve of the loins still clear, the colour of moonlight.

  After a long silence, Sandoz asked:

  ‘Would you like me to go with you when you take in your picture?’

  Claude made no answer, and Sandoz thought he heard him weeping.—Was it the same infinite, despairing sorrow he had just experienced himself?—He waited a moment, then repeated his question; this time, swallowing back his tears, Claude managed to answer:

  ‘No, old fellow. Thanks all the same. The picture’s not going in.’

  ‘Not going in? But I thought you’d decided it was!’

  ‘So I had. … But I hadn’t really seen it then. I’ve seen it now, though, in the fading daylight. … And it’s another failure! Oh yes, it is! It struck me clean between the eyes, like a blow from a fist, a staggering blow.’

  Hidden in the darkness, he let his hot tears stream slowly down his cheeks. He had held them back as long as he could, shattered by the silent drama being played out in his heart, but now he could restrain them no longer.

  ‘My poor Claude,’ said Sandoz gently, himself very upset. ‘It’s a hard thing to have to admit to oneself, but perhaps after all you’re right to keep it back and go over parts of it again. … What’s making me angry now is the thought that I’ve discouraged you by my everlasting dissatisfaction with everything.’

  ‘You discourage me?’ said Claude simply. ‘Of all the ideas! Why, I wasn’t even listening. … I was too busy watching everything going to pieces on that damned canvas. As the light was fading it reached one particular point, a very fine, grey half-light, at which I suddenly realized what was wrong. I saw how inconsistent it all was, apart from the background, which is bearable. But the nude figure in the centre clashes violently with all the rest and isn’t even properly balanced; the legs aren’t right somehow. … It was enough to strike a man dead on the spot; I could actually feel the life beginning to break away from my body. … Then, as darkness went on pouring into the room, I felt my head in a whirl again, as if everything was being swallowed up, the earth dropping into the void, the whole world coming to an end. Soon the only thing I could see was the curve of her belly, shrinking away like a waning moon. And look at her now, look! Nothing left at all now, not even a glimmer. She’s dead now, and black, nothing but black!’

  The picture had, indeed, completely disappeared. Claude got up from the divan, and Sandoz heard him mumbling in the darkness.

  ‘Dead, black … but what the hell does that matter? … I’m going to start afresh! … I’m going to …’

  He was interrupted by Christine, who had also left her chair and with whom he collided in the darkness.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said, ‘I’m lighting the lamp.’

  She lit it, and her pale face emerged once more from the darkness, as she shot a look of fear and hatred at the painting. What was this? It wasn’t leaving, then, the old torture was to start all over again?

  ‘I’m going to start afresh!’ Claude repeated. ‘It can kill me, it can kill my wife, it can kill my child, it can kill the lot of us, but this time it’ll be a masterpiece, by God it will!’

  Christine went back to her chair and the two men went over to look at Jacques, whose restless little hands had worked off the bedclothes again. Still breathing heavily, he lay quite inert, his head buried in the pillow, like a weight too heavy for the bed. As he took his leave Sandoz told them he was worried about the child, but Christine seemed utterly dazed, and Claude was already hovering in front of his canvas, his future masterpiece, torn between its passionate illusion and the painful reality of his suffering child, the flesh of his flesh.

  The following morning, as he was finishing dressing, he heard Christine’s terror-stricken voice call out to him:

  ‘Claude! Claude!’

  She had fallen into a deep sleep on the uncomfortable chair near the child’s bed, and woken with a start.

  ‘Look!’ she cried. ‘He’s dead!’

  Claude stumbled across to her in a moment, aghast, not quite understanding.

  ‘He’s dead?’ he repeated, as they both stood gazing down at the bed where the poor little creature lay on his back, his enormous head that marked him as the child of genius looking deformed and swollen like a cretin’s. He did not appear to have stirred all night; his mouth had dropped open and the colour gone from his lips; there were no signs of breathing, while his vacant eyes had not remained closed. His father touched him; he was icy cold.

  ‘It’s true,’ he murmured. ‘He is dead.’

  Their stupefaction was such that for a moment no tears came to their eyes; they were so struck by the brutality of the situation that they could hardly believe what had happened.

  Then suddenly Christine dropped to her knees at the bedside, shaking with sobs, her head on her folded arms on the edge of the mattress. In the first terrible moment her despair was deepened by a sharp pang of remorse for not having loved the child enough. As the past flashed before her eyes, every day gave her reason for regrets—sharp words, grudging caresses and sometimes even blows. Now it was too late, now she would never be able to make up for having deprived him of all her mother-love. He had so often been disobedient; this time he had obeyed only too well. She had told him so often to ‘be quiet and let father get on with his work’ that now he was going to be quiet for a long, long time. The thought was more than she could bear, and her every sob was a muffled cry of remorse.

  Claude had begun to walk to and fro across the studio out of the sheer nervous desire to keep moving. His face was convulsed with grief, but his tears came slowly and he wiped them away mechanically with the back of his hand. Every time he passed the child’s dead body he felt obliged to look at it, as if the glassy, staring eyes were exercising some kind of power over him. He tried to resist it at first, but the attraction grew stronger and stronger to the point of obsession, until at last he gave way, fetched out a small canvas and set to work on a study of the dead child. For the first few moments his vision was fogged by tears, but he kept on wiping them away and persisted in plying his wavering brush. Work soon dried his eyes and steadied his hand, and the dead body of his s
on became simply a model, a strange, absorbing subject for the artist. The exaggerated shape of the head, the waxlike texture of the skin, the eyes like holes wide open on the void, everything about it excited him, filled him with ardour and enthusiasm. He stood back to see the effect; he was pleased, and a vague smile appeared on his lips as he worked.

  When Christine looked up she found him completely absorbed and, as she burst into tears again, all she could find to say was:

  ‘Oh, you can paint him now. He’ll keep still enough this time!’

  For five whole hours Claude worked solidly away, and two days later, when Sandoz came back with him after the funeral, the little picture filled him with pity and admiration. It was a picture worthy of the past, a masterpiece of lighting, powerfully handled, with the addition of a certain overwhelming sadness, a feeling that everything was ended, that with the death of the child life itself had been extinguished for ever.

  Sandoz could not praise it too highly, but he was rather taken aback to hear Claude say:

  ‘You really like it? … Then that settles it. As the other thing isn’t ready, I’m sending this to the Salon!’

  Chapter 10

  The morning after Claude had taken his ‘Dead Child’ to the Palais de l’Industrie, he was out strolling near the Parc Monceau when he met Fagerolles, who greeted him most cordially.