Almighty painter

Chapter 862: Miss Elena and Mr. Gu discuss "The Old Church on a Thunderstorm"

The female host on the stage clapped her hands three times gently.

A staff member of the magazine brought up a suitcase from the backstage. It was fifty centimeters long, seventy centimeters wide, and about the thickness of a bony man's hand standing up.

It is made entirely of walnut, covered with dark brown leather, and has three buckles with a patina.

It stood heavily in the eyes of the crowd, looking very old. It was placed between the IKEA-style warm-toned sofas and coffee tables on the stage, a bit like the new headquarters of LV in the center of Manhattan, New York - that strange building built among the surrounding warm yellow buildings, imitating the appearance of a travel trunk launched by the company in the second half of the 19th century that was popular in Europe. The shape is almost the same as this box, but the one in Anna's hand does not have so many bling, bling star-shaped carved decorations.

"Gentlemen, could you please help me put it up?"

Anna took hold of the trunk's handle.

Rosings and Dr. Gustav, who were sitting closest to her, immediately stretched out a hand each and helped the host to stand up the box.

"Is this the suitcase that Ms. Kara used when she went on her long journey?"

The doctor looked at the suitcase which was clearly not a product of this era.

"Pretty big."

"Yes, so this kind of box is usually carried by a companion." Anna nodded. "Kara's companions on that grand tour also included her two personal maids and a servant."

In front of several guests, Anna peeled off the copper buckle on the box with her fingertips.

"When I first saw the paper in Asian Art, I almost couldn't help but think of the name Carla in my mind, and recalled her journey that was a rite of passage a century and a half ago. In the 25th century, young aristocratic women would attend a teenage ball and formally enter the social circle to mark their adulthood. When the trip began, Carla was about years old. In my mind... this was her real rite of passage."

"During that trip, she jumped out of her past social environment and lost her previous identity. From Paris to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Lake Van, from Lake Van to Mashhad via Tehran, and then turned to India..."

“That was the classic travel route across Central Asia of that era, and perhaps the only one.”

"A great adventure in the style of Around the World in Eighty Days," the doctor praised.

"It shouldn't be so thrilling, nor so many dramatic conflicts. I would call it a road movie-style story. A young girl suddenly jumped on a train. Carla's trip did not get the full consent of her family. Until her train left Paris, her father thought her destination was Geneva. However, she did not get off there, but left a letter for her family..."

"I have always been imagining what kind of imagination Kara had when she started that trip. What was she thinking when she planned this trip? When she boarded the Eurostar train, she was a wealthy countess. When she got off the train, she walked on the street... in a completely strange country, no one knew her. She could be anyone of any identity, the wife or daughter of a local businessman, an exile——"

"Twenty years after Kara's trip, Baroness Karen Blixen boarded a ship to a plantation in Kenya, where she wrote Out of Africa. More than forty years later, Agatha Christie boarded the Orient Express to the Middle East and wrote Murder on the Orient Express in the famous Baron Hotel in Aleppo. Please allow me to take the liberty of putting these three names together."

"Kara."

"Karen."

"And Agatha."

"Do you think there is a creative flow here?" Gu Weijing asked.

"Yes, I think there is a hidden thread here." Anna nodded, "Impressionist oil paintings, literary detective novels, and literary writing...these three seem to be three completely different carriers, but they are all about travel."

"As I said - a road movie plot. In the journey, past identities lose their meaning. It's only about the starting point and the destination, about what you want to see in the journey, and what you actually see."

"I would say...THE GREAT GAME."

Anna used a historical term as a clever pun.

"In political science, this term is called the Great Game. India, the Middle East, the Caucasus. Kara's journey has a long route, all in the areas controlled by Britain or Tsarist Russia. The two old empires occupied one sixth of the earth's land at the time, and the other occupied one quarter. They competed with each other in the vast territory of Central Asia, engaging in a long and complex political game."

"Kara witnessed it all. These wars and undercurrents happened right under her nose and beside her. At the same time, this trip itself was also a game between her and Elena's family."

"In fact, in that era, works created from this perspective were often full of Western society's imagination of Eastern society. Some were intentional, and some were unintentional. Let's not talk about the works of Kipling and Conrad. Even the detective novels of Agatha Christie, or Around the World in Eighty Days mentioned by Dr. Gustav, are of course extremely important works in literary history, and even the pioneering works of science fiction."

"But on the other hand...do you think this is a kind of Eurocentric thinking? An exotic other culture?"

Anna smiled and answered her own question.

"Of course, of course, yes."

"We can say that these famous creators could not escape the limitations of the times. We can say that they did not do it intentionally, but more like an unconscious dream talk. But people like them who have lived in the most elite class of the European continent for a long time must have been more or less influenced by the background of the empire."

"The European gentlemen who serve as the protagonists are all gentle, rational, civilized and very refined and decent, whether it is the great detective Poirot or the adventurous Mr. Fogg. On the contrary, the places where the stories take place, Egypt or India, the big cities in South Asia or the banks of the Nile, are extremely barbaric, backward, or at least have a strong mysterious color. The most classic model in Verne's novels is a decent gentleman who, through civilized and scientific means, flies over in a hot air balloon and relies on the latest scientific achievements to save a sailor, an adventurer in the New World, and a missionary who was captured and tortured by a barbarian tribe."

"For example, in 'Around the World in Eighty Days', Mr. Fogg rescued Mrs. Auda in India, who was asked to be burned to death with her husband, and finally married her," said Gu Weijing.

Anna shook her head.

"There are two points to consider. First, in this particular case, burning a woman alive and forcing her to be buried alive with her husband is of course an extremely cruel, extremely unacceptable, and intolerable custom that deserves criticism. Saving her was, of course, an extremely brave and noble act."

"On the other hand, outside of the plot, this story is essentially a traditional narrative. The adventurer wanders around and the local women fall in love with him. The inherent downplaying of colonial violence implied in this perspective is worth noting."

Anna ran her fingers over the texture of the leather on the box.

"If I remember correctly, when Mr. Verne introduced Mrs. Awoda, he repeatedly emphasized that although she was an oriental woman and an Indian, she had received a complete British education since childhood. No matter her speech, manners, or etiquette and culture, anyone who saw her would regard her as a real European."

"If we are a little more caustic, we can draw an inference and imagination - did Mr. Fogg encounter this kind of thing only once during his journey? Did he save Avuda because he truly felt her pain, or because he felt that she was a 'civilized' person like himself, so she was worth saving?"

Miss Elena launched her exclusive sharp review. If Mr. Verne in the Paris cemetery heard such harsh comments, he would probably be stabbed to the point of crawling out of the coffin seven feet below.

"All right."

Anna chuckled.

“Don’t be too harsh on Jules Verne. I believe he didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just that it’s always difficult for people to transcend the times. I personally like his works very much. The magnificent imagination like a fairy tale.”

Miss Elena calmed the rattling skeleton back into the ground and buried it before continuing.

"I bring this up not to revisit the creators of the time with a modern perspective."

"What I want to say is-"

"In contrast, Kara's paintings and travels provide a completely different narrative perspective. Dr. Gustav called Kara's travels a great adventure like Around the World in Eighty Years. However, in my opinion, this is not a journey where a female Fogg saves Mr. Awoda from the fire and then gets married."

“She’s the complete opposite.”

The woman unbuttoned the box, pressed her fingertips on the surface of the box, and looked at Gu Weijing who was sitting on the sofa on the other side opposite her.

"I had a brief conversation with Mr. Gu before, in the cafe of the Raffles Hotel a week ago, and I will not deny that we parted on bad terms over the issue of The Old Church on a Thunderstorm."

"Mr. Gu said a lot about his views on the painting, his interpretation and understanding of the work."

"It's not that it's bad, it's that it's really good. Kara's life is like a movie."

"Road movie?" Gu Weijing asked.

"Yes, Kara is always in a smooth set of shots. She starts from Paris and finally arrives in Paris by boat, making a big circle. The tape of the whole set of movies is connected from beginning to end, and the duration is many months." Anna said softly: "You know, I think there is no truly lonely person in the movie."

"Even in the loneliest, quietest, most secret moments, there is always someone, staring at her from far away. You drive along the road, there is no one on the road, no car, no music, not even the roar of the accelerator, and heavy snow. You drive on the road, as if you are driving a spaceship in an alien world, but in the movie, you are still not alone."

“There’s always someone watching you.”

Miss Elena looked at Gu Weijing.

"Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Gu Weijing thought for a moment, thinking about that scene, watching a lonely person traveling all the way to the end of the world on the big screen.

"Camera?"

He said.

"Yes." Anna nodded. "There is always a perspective watching her, knowing all her secret stories and past. That's the camera."

"When we were having a private conversation in the cafe, I felt like you were just this lens, silently watching Kara's life."

"At that time, I was wondering why you were so stubborn in pinning Carol's identity on Kara? Why could you say it so well? You probably knew something in advance." Miss Elena said, "So I asked you, do you know more about Kara's inside story?"

"I said I don't know."

Gu Weijing said.

"Yes."

"Does this answer anger you?" Gu Weijing continued.

"Yes."

Miss Elena nodded again. "I never hate greedy people. Heinrich dug out historical relics from the ground. It doesn't matter whether he finally got the ultimate reward after ten years of hard work, or he was simply very lucky that day."

"It doesn't matter. Since he dug it out, he deserves the reward."

"Similarly, I don't care how you got this painting. Did you collect some stories about Elena's family and slowly follow the clues, or was it just luck? It doesn't matter. I don't hate it. But I hate dishonest people. I also hate people who don't even have the courage to admit their greed."

"So, I think... since you are playing dumb here, I will buy this painting at the market price of Impressionism. If you don't have any associations with Kara's identity, there is no reason for you to refuse."

"At first I offered 50 euros, which you rejected, then 100 million euros, which you rejected again, and finally the price was raised to 300 million euros."

“I still refused.”

Gu Weijing said calmly: "I feel that you have no respect for me at all, and your tone is like you are condescending to me. I have always said that the painting means a lot to me, but you never listen."

"I didn't believe it before, but now I do," Anna said. "So I didn't bring a check today. I brought something else."

She opened the suitcase in her hand.

The secret that the Elena family had treasured for one hundred and fifty years was revealed.

(End of this chapter)