Almighty painter

Chapter 801 Gu Weijing's Code (Part )
"Did Mr. Gu do these things?"

The woman was staring blankly at the newspaper in her hand.

"Pipes, wires, and a considerable amount of donations?" Anna's face was hidden in the newspaper cutouts. She held the photo very close to her body, and only her pale jawline could be vaguely seen.

"Correct."

"Did he donate it together with Katsuko Sakai?"

“Miss Shengzi would come to help later, but at the beginning it was just him. Mr. Gu has a long-term donation plan. You don’t know that in order to modernize this place, it took a lot of effort. He is really nice…” The aunt in old clothes opened her mouth and counted them one by one, like Wang Po selling melons.

Gu Weijing’s family conditions aren’t very good, right?
The average annual income per capita here is only over a thousand dollars. Gu Weijing's family seems to run a very small community gallery by the Yangon River. The store is less than 100 square meters. Compared with the fashionable name "gallery", family shop may be a more appropriate description.

Gu Weijing also could not be categorized as belonging to a family that was so poor that they could not afford to eat.

In Anna's impression, Gu Weijing is a bit like Turner - his family background is very ordinary, but he is extremely talented. Thanks to the appreciation of noble people, he got the best opportunities at a young age. He is a rare lucky person in the industry.

This was exactly the reason why the woman sneered at the end of the meeting yesterday.

Gu Weijing's conditions are neither good nor bad. From a marketing perspective, this kind of "mediocrity" is perhaps worse than being extremely poor or extremely rich.

He was not poor enough to attract attention, to make people sad when they heard about it, or to make people cry when they saw it; let alone rich enough to bring any career help to himself - at least not before his grandfather signed a contract with a big gallery.

Neither up nor down.

Anna ridiculed the other party, saying that once Gu Weijing's grandfather signed a contract with a big gallery, the family's financial situation improved a little, but he no longer knew who he was.

On the one hand, he pretends to be poor by wearing an old, ill-fitting suit, and on the other hand, he pretends to be rich by imitating others and wearing an oversized, shiny gold watch that is the shape of a dumbbell... It is obvious that he is not sure what career path he wants to take.

Not being clear about one's own positioning is neither shabby nor decent.

It looks like nothing at all, and in the end the only word that stands out is "earthy".

Instead of spending the money on a Rolex, you might as well change your clothes into something more decent.

The sneer that the female manager Anna showed to Gu Weijing was the same as the sneer that Lousteau, the editor of a major newspaper in Balzac's works, gave to the poet Lucien who came to submit his works: "Poet? Your clothes look like they were stolen from a flea market!"

The sarcasm that Countess Irene showed towards Gu Weijing is also the sarcasm that the Count in Balzac showed towards those down-and-out young men from the countryside who came from the provinces, went hungry for nine meals out of three days, but still tried to save up for themselves a very expensive and beautiful coat or pocket watch, and rushed to the church by the Seine in Paris to "encounter" the daughters of nobles who were out for an outing.

Anna thought she had deceived the other person yesterday, and she successfully pierced his heart with a sword like a skewer.

She deliberately didn't turn around to look at his embarrassed expression, and wanted to hum smugly in her heart.

Time passes.

The image of the young man in the old shirt reappeared in the woman's eyes.

What rang in her ears was no longer the humorous words of the great writer, but the words that Katsuko Sakai said to her when they parted at the Esplanade yesterday -

"Ms. Elena, you still don't understand. When you evaluate others, please think more about it. There is almost no one in the world who has what you have."

"It's like a person with only 100 yuan, who is willing to spend 90 yuan on charity. It's not necessarily easier than a person like you who has a fortune that can't be spent in ten centuries, taking out billion US dollars and donating it to build a museum."

"In terms of social influence, there is absolutely no comparison between the two. But in terms of the power of courage, there is not necessarily a significant difference between the two."

……

The female dean was still listing off everything Gu Weijing had done, one by one, and she sounded a bit nagging.

The thunder in "Old Church in a Thunderstorm" breaks through the barriers of the real world with a violent and majestic attitude.

The sky is clear.

Anna stood there, pierced by the invisible lightning.

The woman's body was trembling slightly.

She stared at the photos in the newspaper, at the young people dancing and the little girls with smiles of the same tone on their faces.

"Brother Gu Weijing is very kind to me. He gave me many gifts."

"He told me that I should cultivate my artistic accomplishments, not just to become a painter, but to learn painting to develop a perspective to observe the world."

"He said that it's a good starting point for inexperienced children to practice Impressionist works..."

"He asked me about my dream, and he also told me his own dream, that he wanted to be a great painter..."

……

"Him? He just stood here while he was painting, looking up, and he looked very focused."

Jasmine is a very smart girl.

Sometimes children are very difficult to communicate with, and sometimes they are surprisingly thoughtful.

Anna always thought that the other party couldn't understand her profound questions.

She was wrong.

Jasmine always knew what she wanted to ask, and she always tried her best to answer her seriously.

It was her instead.

I neither understood nor was I listening at all.

Every word the little girl in the blue skirt said about Gu Weijing expressed only one meaning: her love for Gu Weijing and Gu Weijing's love for her.

Gu Weijing's love for Jasmine, his love for children, and his love for this place.

The so-called ritual of discovering beauty, the code that Gu Weijing used to unlock the treasure of "beauty", has always been just such a simple sentence -

Hold love in your heart, then raise your head and look slowly and attentively.

It is the heart that makes all the difference.

It is love that makes all the difference.

Love elevates the ordinary and mediocre life and the ordinary and mediocre scenes into a transcendent and otherworldly beauty.

It is easy to give people gifts, and it is also easy to hold the hands of orphans, but the same action may have completely different meanings if you have different emotions in your heart.

The senior student who participated in the campus charity project many years ago treated the African children like a group of free-range chickens.

So all she showed was a smile like feeding a chicken.

The children also responded by being out of place.

And Anna?
"I only thought about myself." The woman judged herself in a cold and sharp tone.

Anna didn't like the orphanage.

She felt that this place was mediocre and boring, like a piece of rusty copper, so the orphanage was also like a piece of rusty copper, responding with mediocrity and boredom.

She only cares about what she can get from here and her own emotional experience.

The first moment she saw the modern renovations to the old church, her first thought was anger. She wanted to ask the children to move out and restore the place to its original state, even though her wealth could allow all to be happy.

But Miss Elena knew.

that moment.

What he really cared about was the place where Kara painted, not these children.

She even thought that doing so was a gift to Gu Weijing and would make the young man happy. When the child asked if he could play with her dog, Anna also knew that she didn't like it.

She said August was her family and she couldn't tell August who to play with.

This sentence is very polite and no one can find any fault with it.

Anna herself knew very well that when she said this subconsciously, in her subconscious mind, she was actually making the judgment for her August - "It doesn't want to play with you either."

Or to put it more harshly.

At that moment, did Miss Elena still feel that the child with dirty fingers was not worthy of playing with her August?

She thought she had covered it up perfectly.

In fact, she couldn't even fool such a young child - that moment of embarrassment, the smile and handshake that were the courtesy of old court diplomacy, did not escape the other party's eyes.

Some people would hold Jasmine's hand because AIDS cannot be transmitted through shaking hands.

Some people will hold her, hug her, put their hands on her shoulders, and dance with her because they care about her, want to make her happy, empathize with her, want to change her situation, and want to share her joys and sorrows.

He would ask her if she had enough to eat, if she had enough clothes to wear, what her dreams were, would hand gifts to her, hold her hand and draw together, and would care about whether she had any difficulties in life.

He will love her.

Will love everyone here.

So... Jasmine would politely refuse her promise.

She, Anna Elena, arrogantly thought that children knew nothing and that she could bribe them with the gold coins that fell from between her fingers in exchange for their true love that could warm her heart.

She was wrong.

Children never know nothing.

She treated Jasmine with a distant and polite attitude, and so the clever little girl also treated the noble Countess Elena with a distant and polite attitude.

It's really fair.

What is the fundamental difference between my attitude towards Jasmine and the attitude her great-great-grandfather, the old Count, had towards black musicians at the lunch club in Vienna?

Count Elena once treated the black singer as a breathing jukebox, exchanging her singing voice for a silver coin worth a quarter of an imperial crown.

Today, Miss Elena no longer treats the little girl around her as a clucking chicken, but as a breathing key. She wants to use some gifts to exchange for her warmth and to open the treasure of beauty for her.

Love is never an exchange.

Love is resonance.

Power and money only exchange for flattery and vanity.

Only warm love can exchange warm warmth.

People will hold the key and paint it with gild, but they will not hug the key, care for the key, look the key into the eyes and smile from the heart, and dance with the key.

The same reason.

Even a key cannot warm a person's heart.

From the beginning to the end, Miss Anna knew the truth very well.

Saying one thing and doing another, and being double-standard towards herself, is exactly Countess Elena's style.

She and Gu Weijing both came to this old church and stood in the same position gazing at the old church.

There was love in Gu Weijing's eyes. He was moved and in love.

There was only aloofness and a goddess-like arrogance in Anna's eyes.

This is why Gu Weijing saw more things and more beauty than her.

Some people saw the burning fire, while others only saw the billowing smoke.

An old golden brocade blanket, wearing luxurious dancing shoes and dancing court dance steps on it, the feeling you get is no different from dancing on any other blanket.

Nothing to be gained but the irritating smoke, and there are ten thousand more beautiful and more delicately woven rugs in the world.

Only when she took off her shoes and socks and walked slowly barefoot could she feel the soft temperature and heat inside.

Anna was mortally ashamed.

Anna smiled silently again.

The woman doesn't know.

It was also many, many years ago.

In the streets and alleys of the slums in the old society, when an elderly painting master subconsciously pushed away a White Russian prostitute who rushed towards him to solicit customers, the child on the rickshaw next to him hugged her and asked her if it hurt.

The old man was as stunned as she was.

At first he was ashamed, then he smiled silently, and finally he was ecstatic.

Anna put down the newspaper and looked up.

She stretched out her fingers and pressed the man's face in the newspaper. Her slender white fingers covered the young man's face that was frozen in the camera, as if covering a fingertip-sized hand warmer.

Such a brilliant and warm smile cannot be concealed by skin that is so thin and transparent.

A smile rippled from her fingertips, and merged into her body like ripples of water.

Anna did as Jasmine said, she slowly raised her head and looked carefully at the mirror in front of her.

Think of nothing, ask for nothing.

Just look carefully.

For the first time in history, Anna Elena tried to integrate herself into the huge sensory body of the old church and face life here with embrace rather than alienation.

A completely different picture unfolded before her.

Anna sensed a mixture of emotions.

She is neither pure joy nor pure sadness.

It is not the kind of pedantic self-admiration that imposes the imagination of "beauty" on the mediocre and pale scenes in a wishful manner, but the tremor and resonance caused by the passion of life that touches the hearts of bystanders, with thousands of emotions mixed in it.

The sun is the hammer that molten gold.

It forged thousands of shimmering colors onto the scene at the moment. The buildings were covered with fine gold powder, and a rainbow-like halo hung between heaven and earth.

Just a few minutes ago.

The same scene fell into Anna's eyes, and she saw only dense dust and a hole in the stained glass window. At this moment, the pipes wrapped around the old church like a cage were flowing with the heat of life. She could hear the pain and happiness, roars and laughter that had happened here in the past countless years.

If all of this is really summed up, this is what she saw in Gu Weijing's "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sun" -

There is heroism in life.

Anna suddenly burst into tears.

(End of this chapter)