You looked at him and thought he could not fit in his own body. He suffocated.
His mind, his soul, his heart, the heroic manliness of his grandparents, the ache for the loss of the old motherland, they all cried for revenge. And so he painted.
And piece by piece he reclaimed his freedom. And he spread it generously on paper and canvas. The good and the bad, the excess and the lack, the masterpiece and the daub, and the Giant cinema poster at the entrance of the cinema, all of this was his.
But life’s little devils became jealous. For he, a devil himself, painted. And they could not paint. And so they killed him
Fare thee well, painter, we shall not let you die.
Because no one knows what you took with you to the paradise of the good ones. Because all you left behind are the papers and canvases and sketches, and all the other different kinds of drawings you stacked against the four walls of your ascetic atelier.
And it was these very paintings that you forgot to take with you when you left. Or is it that you did not forget? That, perhaps, you left them behind, here on earth, driven by an ulterior motive: that we do not forget.
You and us, that is.
