Almighty painter

Chapter 776 The Devil Asks

"Miss Anna, let me ask you, I have always wondered, is there a possibility... that damn Ms. K., the pioneer of the art of bullshit, is actually a person who knows nothing at all?"

Chen Shenglin said with a smile.

The distinctive tone of his voice remained the same, but the gentleness and elegance in his tone gradually faded away, becoming obscene and vulgar.

It's like a carefully polished bronze mirror that reflects everything.

It was placed by the pool, and as time passed and it was corroded by the fog, it was slowly covered with moss-like rust marks, giving people an unclean impression as if the traces of careful processing had been wiped off.

Elliot's face was annoyed.

No one had ever dared to speak to his mistress like that.

there has never been.

This offense made her want to walk away, not wanting Anna to continue to accept such insults and offenses.

She knew how much Miss Elena respected and admired the ancestor of the family, Ms. K - the former Miss Elena.

The secretary looked at Anna.

All the young woman in the wheelchair needed was a hint, a gesture, or even a look.

She would intervene in the conversation in the next second.

Elliot waited for a long time, second after second, she still stood there, motionless. Because Anna still sat there, motionless, second after second.

Her expression could not be described as happy, nor angry.

The young woman with her calves crossed kept all her emotions hidden deep in her heart, and no one could guess whether she was happy or angry, resentful or disdainful.

Brother Hao is a rusty bronze mirror beside the pool.

Anna was a smooth marble statue of a goddess in the fountain, allowing the bronze mirror to smear green stains on her body, and the abuse hit her body like rain from the fountain.

She was as quiet as ever.

"continue."

Miss Elena's tone was straightforward, like a professor in class commenting on a student's assignment. She instructed, "Please continue. I'm listening carefully."

"The Irina family claimed to be the protector of painters, but when their young lady wanted to be a painter, they were so angry that they sent people to capture her. Similarly, Miss Irina, who claimed to be an artist, actually had no idea what art is. Think about it?"

Hao Ge narrated: "There was a person who held balls for 18 years, took walks in the manor accompanied by maids, held art salons, and when she was tired, she would have afternoon tea with European princes from some place in the magnificent cafe of the Ritz Hotel."

"How can she understand what true art is? She has lived in a bubble made of money all her life. How can she know what true beauty is? Has she ever breathed the real air of the world?"

"Earl Elena was boasted about by his subordinates and friends. In the end, he began to believe it and really regarded himself as a good friend and protector of artists."

"Miss Irina opened a salon and dabbled in art. She was treated like a star by the poets, authors, and painters who surrounded her and fawned on her. She even believed in the praise and ended up thinking of herself as a serious painter."

"It is the name Elena that makes it easy for you to get everything. You really think you are a protector, a painter, a noble person, and you can't even recognize who you are. This is a real-life story with real irony and educational significance."

"What a pity! I really hope Mr. G can hear these words. Maybe then he will have a completely new understanding of the Elena Family."

Chen Shenglin's tone was thin, and as the layer of "flesh" covering his voice was peeled off, deep malice was revealed.

"It's like a famous Eastern proverb: A person keeps claiming that he likes dragons and loves them to bits, but in the end he doesn't even know what a real dragon looks like."

"Mrs. K is a great painter?"

"No, even if she doesn't know how to hold a paintbrush and just paints a few strokes on the canvas, as long as she is the daughter of the most distinguished and wealthy count in Austria, the servants will respectfully admire that it is a great abstract art work."

Anna continued to listen silently.

"Then let's imagine another version of this story. I don't know what the result of Ms. K's playing with painting is, but maybe her result as a painter is quite good."

"Isn't life like this in aristocratic families? Young men from European aristocratic families play with their personal maids, the pretty clerks in the hat shop, the German socialites at the ball, the Slavic dancers in the Vienna troupe rehearsing The Nutcracker, and the French models in the studio. When they get pregnant, they call their own lawyers and ask them to sign a confidentiality agreement and receive an annual salary of 100 to 180 francs. In exchange, the other party must disappear from sight and the children born must not be given the family name... And the wives and daughters of aristocratic families open salons and play with poets, novelists, painters and sculptors."

"But they are more troublesome. You have to be careful not to get yourself pregnant. Especially for young ladies. This is a real scandal, one of the most shameful scandals."

"I guess Ms. K might have gotten involved with that painter, and that's why she made an excuse to claim that she wanted to be a painter or something. Her father knew about this, so he caught his daughter before the incident got out of hand."

"It would be hard for a daughter of a family to find a respectable family to marry after such a scandal. In the late 19th century, the great nobles had to demonstrate their moral superiority over the common people through loyalty to their families and devout service to God, to prove that they were born noble."

Brother Hao guessed with certainty, "For a strict head of a family, if their daughter gets involved in such a scandal, they will usually be sent to a monastery to become a secluded nun, or locked up in their own cellar and not allowed to see anyone."

"It's unfortunate."

"Our Ms. K met a cruel father, and so this is the story."

"The Irina family has such magic power. You can use your endless money and power to dress up a story that is both so mediocre and so vulgar, and say that a beautiful soul cannot be bound by fate and will find freedom on its own, and say that she is a symbol of the artistic spirit."

"May I ask you, Miss Elena?"

"Does Ms. K have any works left in this world? Has anyone ever seen them? Did they all burn in a fire? Maybe she never painted a single picture in her life. You can say whatever you want."

"A person who you praised as a spiritual symbol of painting art, she actually never painted a single picture."

“Very interesting idea.”

Anna answered with the calmness of a third party who had nothing to do with the story.

The woman nodded slightly, as if agreeing with Hao Ge's guess, but when Anna's fair jaw reached the same level as her delicate collarbone, she slid to the right again, changing her body posture from nodding to shaking her head with an elegant arc.

"A person who claims to like dragons. But he has lived in his imagination all his life and has never really seen what a dragon looks like." "I like your rhetoric, and I also like your imagination - but..."

Anna's eyes moved from the notebook in her hand to the telephone receiver beside her, and her voice was deep and powerful.

"I don't agree with you."

"If you disagree, will it be useful?"

On the other end of the line, the middle-aged man seemed to be sneering with disdain.

"I am telling the truth, and you, the honorable Miss Elena, are just unwilling to face the history of your family."

"I understand. You feel that you have lived a pure and flawless life. You feel that the name Elena is elegant and noble, so naturally, what you do should also be elegant and noble, unique and different."

"Ms. Elena, you said I was just a low-class scoundrel, and you asked me what qualifications I had to talk about nobility in front of you."

"I've always wanted to ask you the same thing."

Chen Shenglin took a deep breath.

He retold the past history of Irena's family in a prophetic tone, just as Shakespeare had used prophetic tone to describe the predetermined fate of the heroine in his plays centuries ago.

"The glorious history of the Elena family's rise to wealth...isn't it just like my rise to wealth, made up of blood-stained money?"

"Yes, I am a gangster, a scoundrel. Mr. G said that I am evil and have no conscience. Well, I still believe that it is just a young man's childish and idealistic imagination of the rules of the adult world. He has not experienced real temptation, nor has he experienced the real irresistible desire in this world. I even feel that this game is not over yet. One day, one day in the future, he will also be changed and assimilated by the rules of this world."

"It's easy for young people to be enthusiastic, but how long can they maintain it?"

"So I asked him - can people really defy fate and become Prometheus' fire? He will watch me, and I will watch him. Decades later, when he is the same age as me, or even older than me, at the end of his life, when the same huge amount of money and the same huge temptation are placed before him, although I will no longer be in the world by then, that will be the time when the roulette wheel of good and evil will come to an end."

young people?
Anna blinked.

She didn't think she had heard it wrong, but Brother Hao did say a word that really surprised her.

Before the woman could dwell on this word too much, the prisoner in the receiver had already continued speaking.

"But Mr. G told me with a firm, even smiling look. If I wanted to kill him, I could kill him at any time, even with a pill of poison in his pocket. However, if I wanted to die peacefully and without fear while saying 'Life is so beautiful', just like Riveto Corleone in The Godfather."

"So."

"No matter how much I want to, please wait until next life."

Chen Shenglin sighed.

"At that moment, I knew I had lost this round. At least there was a moment when someone told me so frankly that no matter what the cost, people can overcome fate. People can stop being puppets of fate. All the words I used to justify my evil deeds became excuses for cowardice in front of the work he gave me."

"I know that the last period of my life will be the result of the sins I committed. I was pierced with holes in front of his work."

"I have to admit defeat. There are indeed some people in this world who cannot be bribed. I had nothing to refute in front of him. I was speechless. So, I was defeated by him."

Everyone in the office listened quietly as the godfather of underground art counterfeiting spoke out his deepest secrets in front of the interview team of Oil Painting magazine.

Someone set his eyes on Officer Dan Minming.

The middle-aged man looked nonchalant, but he secretly pushed the teacup in front of Anna twice.

"But in front of you... please, we are the same people, so why should I pretend to be elegant and noble."

"I should also speak to you in the tone of a wicked and unscrupulous rogue, Your Excellency the Countess."

"I spent $360 million on a moth that never even saw you. A low-class counterfeiter of art is talking to you. The honorable Miss Elena can be disdainful, contemptuous, and indifferent. You can brush me off as easily as dust on your boots. But if the people who are talking to you now are the ancestors of the Elena family, your glorious ancestors, how can you not listen with respect?"

"If it is the great Earls of Elena who are speaking to you, Miss Anna Elena on the other end of the line, how can you pretend not to hear them?"

Anna stared at the receiver.

She could imagine that in some unknown place far away, the middle-aged man being interviewed was also staring at the receiver of the phone.

There must be a faint flame dancing in his eyes.

That was the dying ghost's desire for fresh flesh and blood, a desire to drag others down to the bottom of the river with him.

Like an evil spirit.

This is the question from the evil ghost from afar.

"We are all bad guys, why pretend to be decent people?"

Brother Hao said in a vulgar and unsightly tone like an old gangster: "Ms. Elena, if the money in your account was earned by opening your legs and being fucked a million times by a million people, it would be cleaner than it is now."

"Who are you to talk to me about nobility? Who are you to talk to me about loving art?"

"The Elena family loves art like this, can I also love it?"

"Anna Elena."

Brother Hao paused.

Then, he asked in a very, very soft voice.

"The surname Elena and I are the same. We are both people who keep burning incense and praying to Buddha, seeking forgiveness. What is the difference between your praises for art and the incense I burn in front of the shrine?"

"Whether it's me, you, or Ms. K, we're all bitches. Why are we pretending to be the Virgin Mary?"

(End of this chapter)