Almighty painter

Chapter 865 Tenderness
(Ah! I was typing halfway, took a sip of water, and looked up—11:58:07 seconds. Oh my god.)
For a long time afterwards, whenever Gu Weijing thought of the artist interview at the art center that day, he would always think of the white velvet glove.

A lot of things happened that day, some exciting, some passionate, some touching, some infuriating, and some tear-jerking... a lot of things.

Some of them were like the flames of candles, flickering briefly and then quickly disappearing on the stage, while others continued to illuminate Gu Weijing's life many years after he ended the interview.

but.

What impressed Gu Weijing the most... was always the velvet glove with silk flowers on the cuffs of the female host's wrist.

That smooth, delicate and elastic light.

And later, when Miss Elena was reading a letter with one hand and picking up another letter with the other, she subconsciously bit the fingertips of her glove with her teeth and took it off.

They kept playing in his mind over and over again, at a slower speed than normal.

A tune that has changed its tune.

With all due respect.

It was the most youthful and girlish action that the powerful female host inadvertently made during the entire ups and downs of the interview. It was also the most graceful and gentle action that appeared on the entire stage.

Bite your fingertips.

With gentle force, inch by inch of skin appeared from the wrist.

Light and agile.

For many years afterwards, Gu Weijing had the habit of seeing a psychologist regularly. His later agent stubbornly believed that seeing a psychologist was like seeing a dentist, and there was no harm in paying attention to him regularly. For artists who seemed to have a high incidence of mental problems, this behavior itself was like a "gentle warning" to themselves.

Anyone who walks to the edge of a cliff and wants to gaze at the shadows with a paintbrush should always be more careful.

The doctor asked Gu Weijing if he felt that there was something ambiguous in this memory.

Gu Weijing smiled and said no.

He roughly understood what the doctor meant, and this description would indeed be misleading. Later, he read a lot of books and felt that if the French writers who emphasized body writing were to write about this action, it would have a strong sensual temperament, and under the detection of such sensitive emotional detectors, it would often be full of intricate desires. If it were to be replaced by Japanese writers like Mr. Murakami, it would generally be more straightforward and concise, but with a more strange sense of melancholy.

This beautiful leg moves him, and that beautiful leg moves him.

Apply it.

The simple words "this delicate hand" touched Gu Weijing, and that was probably enough to settle the matter.

But his memories were neither French nor Japanese.

It also does not carry any decadent temperament of indulgence. It is neither a capture of the texture of the flesh nor an indulgence in the pleasure of female beauty.

It's much drier.

Anna's movements were light and agile, but her expression was majestic and heavy, as if she was not wearing gloves but ancient armor that emitted mysterious echoes when struck. In this simple movement, she combined both the feminine and the masculine.

"Take off your gloves."

This word seems to have the general meaning of issuing a challenge or engaging in a duel in European historical tradition.

They win something or defend something through such duels.

Miss Elena was just like that. From the moment she uttered the name "Kara", she dominated the entire interview, took off her gloves expressionlessly, and crushed all those who questioned her or him, one by one.

Simultaneously.

It is also a symbol of tenderness.

Gloves tend to make people feel distant... just like Kara.

When he first heard the name from Anna in the cafe, Gu Weijing had no subjective insight into it.

Absolutely not.

Except that her name happened to be the same as the name of the protagonist of her thesis, she was no different from thousands of other names in the world. And this similarity itself was quite questionable.

The surname "Irina" is glorious and noble in the art world.

Gu Weijing, however, was just indulging in a state of anxious laziness.

The feeling brought by the name is like the smooth texture of a glove, which is ultimately just a false feeling and not real skin.

Fortunately.

The velvet gloves were extremely thin, and the surname "Irina" was just a capsule wrapped in the outer layer. After pulling them for a long time, the real temperature of the fingers slowly came over.

In those letters.

The real temperature of Carol slowly began to rise.

The temperature will dissolve the capsule's casing.

Eventually the gloves will be taken off.

Anna's action is a symbol of majesty to others, and to Gu Weijing, it represents an intimate relationship.

This kind of intimacy is indescribable and incomparable.

The skin beneath the gloves was a riot of colour.

Later, Gu Weijing shared this story with Anna, who found it very novel.

After hearing this, Anna was silent for a moment and then said, "Maybe it's hopeless."

She thought about it again -

"Well, the glove-throwing is regarded as a sign of duel, mainly due to the influence of the novels of Alexandre Dumas and others. It is actually a custom in a specific era and a specific region. It is not a universal custom. You just said it wrong."

Miss Anna Elena added this sharp comment.

Gu Weijing actually said one thing wrong.

This matter was actually not that new to him.

After thinking about it carefully, he realized that he had been so easily immersed in Miss Elena's words on the stage that day.

On the one hand, it’s because of the warmth in the letter.

On the other hand, the first time is new, the second time is familiar.

Regarding this matter, Gu Weijing can actually be regarded as a technical worker with rich technical experience and skilled job skills.

A completely unfamiliar character, without any explanation or remarks, just slowly entered Gu Weijing's mind through repeated readings.

That's how Mr. Sloth treated him.
-
During the entire trip, Kara probably sent fifty or sixty letters or faxes, almost every time she arrived in a new city or place of stop along the way.

She would pass on some news to her family. However, due to the limitations of the communication situation more than a century ago, the first international telegraph network that the British had just laid in the Middle East did not always work.

Only more than half of the letters were successfully delivered to members of Elena's family.

One of the letters was sent in September 1875. It was not until Christmas of the following year that it was successfully delivered home. Carla had even ended her journey long ago.

Some of the letters are very long, less than ten pages, forming a thick stack.

Some short telegrams consisted of barely a few words.

There were 31 letters, which Miss Elena slightly shortened, and it took about half an hour to read them all.

throughout the process.

Except for the host, no one interrupted.

The opera house was quiet as people listened to the soft singing of ghosts from one hundred and fifty years ago possessed by later generations.

Gu Weijing listened to Kara's subtle changes.

In the first one-third or so of the letters, Kara's tone was sharp and novel, always reminding Gu Weijing of fresh wasabi.

She has a unique language style.

Kara called the various shopping streets in the Ottoman Turkish cities "Bazaar". According to Gu Weijing's understanding, they are places similar to small commodity distribution and trading markets, selling everything from fruits and vegetables to precious spices and precious brocade carpets.

She said there was always a desperate noise there.

It was like an old woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs, making her want to jump on tiptoe like a cat!
She mocked the French conductor on the train who pretended not to understand the local guide's words and just shook his head with the ticket, trying to make them buy another ticket each in order to enrich himself? Maybe, but when Kara couldn't help it and switched to French to communicate with him, he stared at the sky with a "confused and fragile" look, and suddenly became "deaf".

In the telegram, she said that she was prepared to change her itinerary and, if she was lucky, she would consider visiting the Khanates in Central Asia. According to what the butler had learned in the hotel, the British had been frustrated there, while the Russians had been "trying their luck" in recent years.

Kara wanted to see the majestic appearance of the "Mongol Khan" who was said to have led an expedition to Baghdad and whose cavalry fought all the way to the Danube River.

"The trip was not possible due to safety reasons, and she never made clear the differences between the khanates in her letters..."

Between reading letters.

Anna commented.

There were many more, such as the food that didn’t suit her appetite, the strange cooking soup that made her sick, the strange weather in the mountains, and the weird accents of the locals that sounded like they were screaming…

All kinds of things.

Listening to these letters is like mixing all the strange fantasies, curiosity, and complaints about things not going your way with a spoon, adding plenty of mustard to make a strange soybean paste soup that you can drink down in one gulp.

Complaints after fantasies, and fantasies after complaints, cycle over and over again in Kara's letters.

of course.

To be honest, Kara didn't just complain about travel, traffic, train conditions, and local customs. More than two-thirds of her complaints were directed at her father, the old count.

The so-called runaway girl.

Her words were full of sharp criticism, which could be seen from the changing suffixes at the end of each letter or telegram. According to etiquette, Kara always had suffixes in her letters to relatives, such as "Love your sister" and so on. She also had suffixes in her letters to her father, but there was always something more.

"I will always be your daughter (even though I don't want it to be that way)"

"May you live a long and healthy life (Isn't that what I should be thinking)"

"I want to write to your daughter who loves me. My tutor taught me to write such a blessing at the end of the letter, but I can only agree with half of the words "love you" and "daughter" at most."

Gu Weijing could fully imagine her father, the respected old count she mentioned, how his face was full of anger and eagerness as he read these letters in the gorgeous study in Elena's manor.

Gu Weijing could also fully imagine how Kara herself, the impressionist female painter mentioned by Anna, was rubbing her hands in anticipation and even getting furious when she was writing these letters in a hostel, a hotel, or even in the compartment of a slowly moving train.

The scene of the father and daughter, holding a letter at the same time and threatening someone far away, is very vivid and shatters the traditional impression of the opera audience that the members of the Irena family are noble, dignified and expressionless.

Gu Weijing even realized that at the beginning of the journey, what made Kara insist on traveling was not the grand goal, but perhaps just the pleasure of making her father unhappy.

This is a game of hide and seek.

Kara kept running and the old count kept trying to catch her.

She had hidden in Paris before, and now she was hiding directly in Istanbul! The Count couldn't rush here to catch her.

She could tease the other person in the letter without having to receive a reply.

By the time Count Elena of Austria found the British and sent his angry rebuke to them via an expedited telegram, Kara had already left.

It was this feeling of anger that made Kara feel bored several times in the early days, but she still did not turn back.

……

Change happens subtly.

There is no lightning-fast moment when, after reading a certain letter, a woman becomes a different person after reading the next letter, as if she has been enlightened, and starts talking about profound life philosophy or profound artistic insights.

No.

Seriously speaking, in all the letters, Miss Irena, not Miss Anna Irena who read the letters but Miss Carla Irena who wrote the letters, hardly mentioned anything about Impressionism.

There was no Monet, no Degas, no Salon des Refusés.

Even painting is rarely mentioned.

Gu Weijing pricked up his ears and listened very carefully. In just one of the letters, Kara mentioned a little bit of relevant things. She said that she and her personal maid tried to wrap the box with oilcloth to prevent the paint from drying out during the journey. "Fortunately, there is no need to find cow and sheep bladders to moisturize like the artists of the Renaissance." She said she didn't know if she could find a painting supplies dealer when she arrived in Mumbai, otherwise she would have to be very frugal to paint one or two paintings during the entire journey.

That's all.

In all 31 letters, this is the only place where Kara mentioned anything directly related to painting.

It really didn't match Gu Weijing's previous imagination of Kara, nor did it match his praise for the artistic spirit of the female Impressionist pioneer.

The woman Anna mentioned sounded even less like a great pioneer who loved painting.

But as Anna spoke.

The woman in Gu Weijing's mind is becoming more and more integrated with the person who signed the letters "Carol" behind "The Old Church in a Thunderstorm".

Kara didn’t become more artistic.

Kara was only becoming more gentle.

Yes.

Hearing what Anna said before, when Kara first stepped on the train, she was probably just a runaway woman who was looking for something visually strange that would interest her. The real change happened during the journey.

(End of this chapter)