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Cosmic Tales, v. 2, issue 1, Summer 1939

Page 7

COSMIC TALES      7

me that she was dead. i went into his room and whispered the news into his ear. To my surprise, he closed his eyes, relaxed and went to sleep. He actually slept for over thirty hours and woke and asked for his clothes. Is this interesting to you?"
"Very. Please go on with the story."
"I gave him orders that no one was to disturb him, or interfere in any way with what he was doing as long as he did not try to kill himself. But I kept him under very close observation. The first thing he did was to put his bed over so that he could have free access to that wall, and then he took the picture out of the frame. We took the glass and empty frame from the room. he asked for a knife, but we did not trust him, so he used his thumb nail and cut away all of the picture, leaving only the mother in her chair. Then he wanted some paste, and when he had it, he pasted the picture, what was left of it, on the lower left hand corner of that blank wall. After that he started to paint picture twenty-one on the wall."
"And the picture is there now? Why did you say I could not see it? Could I not have it copied?"
"I will explain that later on. I watched him paint from day to day. Starting from the picture of the mother, he left an empty triangle with the base upward. On each side of this triangle he painted trees lightly covered with snow, mostly spruce and pine and hemlock, but here and there an oak with a few leaves hanging on thru the winter. At the top of the triangle he had a moon in the last quarter. What sky he painted was deep blue and there were a few stars. Even then the picture gave the impression of extreme cold. I chilled just to look at it. There is no doubt that James was an artist, and I think that this picture, painted on the wall of a hospital room, was the greatest thing he ever did.
"He left a bare space of about two feet at the point of the triangle and then he started to paint a procession of women. Two in the first row in evening dresses of the seventies; then four in hoop skirts; then eight of a previous generation and sixteen of the next. As he went backwards, the women were smaller and the arithmetical progression ceased. Finally there were women with bear skins, and then several female apes, and back of them, wolves, and near the moon female monstrosities of prehistoric times tinted with insane hallucinations.
"He painted snow on the ground. The woman trod on it in their shoes, sandals, pantofles, bare feet, and finally their paws. Here and there were flakes of blood where the ice had cut their feet. These women were all very lovely, but on their beautiful faces was a shadow of hate. Their cold callousness chilled the already intense cold of the landscape. The only one that was in any way loving and kind was the mother that Whistler had painted.
"It took days to paint the picture thus far. James did not talk any, but he ate well and slept normally. At times I wondered if he were not, after all, going to recover. did I tell you that he had placed his mother's chair out into the hall? I left it there and used to sit on it as I watched him paint.
"And now there was only a white space left on the wall at the lower end of the triangle where it ended at the Whistler mother. And now James started to fill in that white space. Just in front of the first two women he painted the body of a man, face down, arms out-stretched, on the snow. The skin of the man was torn in a hundred places, but there was no blood. You could tell that the man was dead.
"He finished it late on afternoon, refused to eat, undressed and went to bed. he was asleep when I visited him at five that evening and took his pulse and respiration. He seemed to be rather well as far as they were concerned.
"That night, in the office, I looked at the calendar and saw that moon was in the last quarter. Outside it was snowing and growing colder every minute. Something,

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COSMIC TALES 7 me that she was dead. i went into his room and whispered the news into his ear. To my surprise, he closed his eyes, relaxed and went to sleep. He actually slept for over thirty hours and woke and asked for his clothes. Is this interesting to you?" "Very. Please go on with the story." "I gave him orders that no one was to disturb him, or interfere in any way with what he was doing as long as he did not try to kill himself. But I kept him under very close observation. The first thing he did was to put his bed over so that he could have free access to that wall, and then he took the picture out of the frame. We took the glass and empty frame from the room. he asked for a knife, but we did not trust him, so he used his thumb nail and cut away all of the picture, leaving only the mother in her chair. Then he wanted some paste, and when he had it, he pasted the picture, what was left of it, on the lower left hand corner of that blank wall. After that he started to paint picture twenty-one on the wall." "And the picture is there now? Why did you say I could not see it? Could I not have it copied?" "I will explain that later on. I watched him paint from day to day. Starting from the picture of the mother, he left an empty triangle with the base upward. On each side of this triangle he painted trees lightly covered with snow, mostly spruce and pine and hemlock, but here and there an oak with a few leaves hanging on thru the winter. At the top of the triangle he had a moon in the last quarter. What sky he painted was deep blue and there were a few stars. Even then the picture gave the impression of extreme cold. I chilled just to look at it. There is no doubt that James was an artist, and I think that this picture, painted on the wall of a hospital room, was the greatest thing he ever did. "He left a bare space of about two feet at the point of the triangle and then he started to paint a procession of women. Two in the first row in evening dresses of the seventies; then four in hoop skirts; then eight of a previous generation and sixteen of the next. As he went backwards, the women were smaller and the arithmetical progression ceased. Finally there were women with bear skins, and then several female apes, and back of them, wolves, and near the moon female monstrosities of prehistoric times tinted with insane hallucinations. "He painted snow on the ground. The woman trod on it in their shoes, sandals, pantofles, bare feet, and finally their paws. Here and there were flakes of blood where the ice had cut their feet. These women were all very lovely, but on their beautiful faces was a shadow of hate. Their cold callousness chilled the already intense cold of the landscape. The only one that was in any way loving and kind was the mother that Whistler had painted. "It took days to paint the picture thus far. James did not talk any, but he ate well and slept normally. At times I wondered if he were not, after all, going to recover. did I tell you that he had placed his mother's chair out into the hall? I left it there and used to sit on it as I watched him paint. "And now there was only a white space left on the wall at the lower end of the triangle where it ended at the Whistler mother. And now James started to fill in that white space. Just in front of the first two women he painted the body of a man, face down, arms out-stretched, on the snow. The skin of the man was torn in a hundred places, but there was no blood. You could tell that the man was dead. "He finished it late on afternoon, refused to eat, undressed and went to bed. he was asleep when I visited him at five that evening and took his pulse and respiration. He seemed to be rather well as far as they were concerned. "That night, in the office, I looked at the calendar and saw that moon was in the last quarter. Outside it was snowing and growing colder every minute. Something,