' 'You are an artist?' he said to my father, without any ceremony.
' 'An artist,' my father said in perplexity, waiting for what would follow.
' 'Very well. Paint my portrait. I may die soon. I have no children, but I do not want to die altogether, I want to live on. Can you paint my portrait as if it were perfectly alive?'
'My father thought, 'What could be better? He's inviting himself to be the devil in my painting.' He gave his word. They arranged the time and the price, and the next day my father seized his palette and brushes and went to him. The high courtyard, the dogs, the iron doors and bars, the arched windows, the coffers covered with strange carpets, and, finally, the extraordinary host himself, who sat motionless before him-all this made a strange impression on him. The windows, as if by design, were blocked up and encumbered below, so that light came only from above. 'Devil take it, how well his face is lighted now!' he said to himself, and he began to paint greedily, as if fearing that the fortunate lighting might somehow disappear. 'What force!' he repeated to himself. 'If I depict him even half the way he is now, he'll kill all my saints and angels; they'll pale beside him. What diabolical force! He'll simply leap out of my canvas if I'm the least bit faithful to nature. What extraordinary features!' he constantly repeated, his zeal increasing, and he could already see certain features beginning to come over on canvas. But the closer he came to them, the more he felt some heavy, anxious feeling, incomprehensible to himself. However, despite that, he resolved to pursue every inconspicuous trait and expression with literal precision. First of all he set to work on the eyes. There was so much power in those eyes that it seemed impossible even to think of conveying them exactly as they were in nature. However, he determined at all costs to search out the least detail and nuance in them, to grasp their mystery… But as soon as he began to penetrate and delve into them with his brush, there arose such a strange revulsion in his soul, such inexplicable distress, that he had to lay his brush aside for a time and then begin again. In the end he could no longer endure it, he felt that these eyes had pierced his soul and produced an inconceivable anxiety in it. The next day, and the third, it became still stronger. He felt frightened. He threw down his brush and declared flatly that he was no longer able to paint him. You should have seen the change these words produced in the strange moneylender. He fell at his feet and beseeched him to finish the portrait, saying that his fate and his existence in the world depended on it, that he had already touched his living features with his brush, and that if he conveyed them faithfully, his life by some supernatural force would be retained in the portrait, that through it he would not die entirely, and that he had to be present in the world. My father felt horrified by these words: they seemed so strange and frightening to him that he threw down both brushes and palette and rushed headlong from the room.
'The thought of it troubled him all day and all night, and in the morning he received the portrait from the moneylender, brought by some woman, the only being in his service, who announced straight away that her master did not want the portrait, would pay nothing for it, and was sending it back. In the evening of the same day, he learned that the moneylender had died and was to be buried by the rites of his own religion. All this seemed inexplicably strange to him. And after that a perceptible change occurred in his character: he felt himself in an uneasy state of anxiety, the cause of which he could not understand, and soon he did something no one would have expected of him. For some time, the works of one of his pupils had begun to attract the attention of a small circle of experts and amateurs. My father had always seen talent in him and was particularly well-disposed toward him for that. Suddenly he became jealous of him. General concern and talk about the young man became unbearable to him. Finally, to crown his vexation, he found out that his pupil had been invited to do the pictures for a rich, newly constructed church. This made him explode. 'No, I won't let that greenhorn triumph!' he said. 'It's too early, brother, for you to be shoving old men into the ditch! I'm still strong, thank God. We'll see who shoves whom.' And this straightforward, honorable man turned to intrigue and scheming, something he had previously always scorned; he succeeded, finally, in having a competition for the pictures announced, and other painters could also enter their works in it. After that he shut himself in his room and ardently took up his brush. It seemed he wanted to put his whole strength, his whole self into it. And, indeed, it turned out to be one of his best works. No one doubted that he would take first place. The paintings were exhibited, and beside it all the others were as night to day. Then suddenly one of the members present, a clergyman if I'm not mistaken, made an observation that struck everyone. 'There is, indeed, much talent in the artist's picture,' he said, 'but there is no holiness in the faces; there is, on the contrary, something demonic in the eyes, as if the painter's hand was guided by an unclean feeling.' Everyone looked and could not but be convinced of the truth of these words. My father rushed up to his picture, as if to verify this offensive observation, and saw with horror that he had given almost all the figures the moneylender's eyes. Their gaze was so demonically destructive that he involuntarily shuddered. The picture was rejected, and he had to hear, to his indescribable vexation, the first place awarded to his pupil. It is impossible to describe the rage in which he returned home. He almost gave my mother a beating, chased the children away, broke all his brushes and his easel, snatched the portrait of the moneylender from the wall, asked for a knife, and ordered a fire made in the fireplace, intending to cut it to pieces and burn it. At that point he was found by a friend who came into the room, himself also a painter, a happy fellow, always pleased with himself, not carried away by any far-reaching desires, who worked happily at whatever came along and was even happier to get down to dining and carousing.
' 'What are you doing? What are you going to burn?' he said, and went up to the portrait. 'Good heavens, it's one of your best works. It's that moneylender who died recently; but it's a most perfect thing. You simply got him, not between the eyes but right in them. No eyes have ever stared the way you've made them stare.'
''And now I'll see how they stare in the fire,' said my father, making a move to hurl it into the fireplace.
''Stop, for God's sake!' said the friend, holding him back. 'Better give it to me, if you find it such an eyesore.'
'My father resisted at first, but finally consented, and the happy fellow, extremely pleased with his acquisition, took the portrait home.
'After he left, my father suddenly felt himself more at ease. Just as if, along with the portrait, a burden had fallen from his soul. He was amazed himself at his wicked feeling, his envy, and the obvious change in his character. Having considered his behavior, he was saddened at heart and said, not without inner grief:
' 'No, it is God punishing me. My painting deserved to suffer disgrace. It was intended to destroy my brother. The demonic feel- ing of envy guided my brush, and demonic feeling was bound to be reflected in it.'
'He immediately went to look for his former pupil, embraced him warmly, asked his forgiveness, and tried his best to smooth over his guilt before him. His work again went on as serenely as before; but pensiveness now showed more often on his face. He prayed more, was more often taciturn, and did not speak so sharply about people; the external roughness of his character somehow softened. Soon one circumstance shook him still more. He had not seen the friend who had begged the portrait from him for a long time. He was just about to go and see him when the man suddenly walked into his room unexpectedly. After a few words and questions on both sides, he said:
''Well, brother, you weren't wrong to want to burn the portrait. Devil take it, there's something strange in it… I don't believe in witches, but like it or not, there's some unclean power sitting in it…'
' 'Meaning what?' said my father.
' 'Meaning that once I hung it in my room, I felt such anguish as if I wanted to put a knife in somebody. Never in my whole life have I known what insomnia is, and now I had not only insomnia but such dreams… I myself can't tell whether they were dreams or something else-as if some evil spirit was strangling me-and the accursed old man
