The Souls' Painter

By Manuel Tristante and Patricia Gómez

A TERROR AND SUSPENSE STORY WITH WHICH YOU WILL BE AFRAID IN THE DARK AND IN SILENCE!

Excerpt from the book: "He had lived the same situation several times with many other people and, although it seemed to be the same, he did not get used to it. The first tear of the soul was already on the canvas. It was only a matter of days..."

Synopsis: 
Since ever, Jeremiah’s vocation had been to translate the reality helping himself of the painting and the drawing. However, his parents had never supported him in this facet.
Suddenly one day his life changed, when a man nicknamed as "The Mad Musician" appeared in a market to make him see his talent as an artist that he had inside. With his gifts, Jeremiah presented himself to be the painter of the King's Court in a multitudinous contest.
Despite the greatness of the prize, the young painter realized that his talent was not enough for the monarch to be satisfied. This led him to invoke someone older than the world, a dark entity with whom he had never wanted to dream, putting in danger, not only his own existence, but also that of his loved ones.
His wailings would be useless, since evil was capable of using anyone in order to achieve its goal.

What will you find inside?
1 Address the life of two artists.
2 Pure terror, suspense and mystery.
3 Two periods of time in time jumps.
4 Demons and conspiracies.
5 A different narrative.

What readers say:

"'The souls' painter' can be approached from different perspectives. From the simple pleasure of reading a horror story to understanding the moral behaviors of those who transgress human norms. From the psychological and individual profile, to the social and group. From love to art, hate and fatigue in the search for perfection", Cuatro Bastardos magazine.
"Simple language, precise descriptions and a plot that hooks and leaves you glued to the pages of the book without you knowing very well how everything will end", Weaving in Klingon blog.
"An argument written with time jumps that gives a masterful and differentiating touch», Carlos Gran, author.
"A story that catches you, that reads almost without realizing it. Original, agile, well connected the two worlds in which the plot unfolds", Angelica Martínez, reader.
"An entertaining and addictive reading. The story gets to keep the intrigue from beginning to end. Scenarios very well described. Suitable for young people and adults", José María, reader.
"Of agile reading, where the past and the present are magically intertwined, the historical and the fictitious, the real and the invented", Belén Martín, reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuel Tristante
• Release date: Jun 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781547541065

Book preview

The Souls' Painter

Manuel Tristante & Patricia Gómez

––––––––

Translated by Denia McGrew 

The Souls' Painter

Written By Manuel Tristante & Patricia Gómez

Copyright © 2020 Manuel Tristante & Patricia Gómez

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Denia McGrew

Cover Design © 2023 María Tabar Burgos

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

The Souls’ Painter

Patricia Gómez

For you, so that you are always by my side

––––––––

Manuel Tristante

For my readers, those who accompany me

from the beginning and those who join now to read my stories.

Contents:

Prologue.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

Epilogue.

Prelude.

Acknowledgement.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth.

Revelations 20:7

Prologue

––––––––

The painting has a life of its own. I try to make it come out.

Jackson Pollock

––––––––

The house was in the poorest area of ​​the kingdom. A humble dwelling, with black walls due to the weather, the rain and the mold that crunched with the wind. Animal feaces populated the nearby streets. The trash was piled up next to the flies at the door of the house. The stench was unbearable and the rats camped at their ease, sometimes fierce.

When they knocked down the door, they found the painter sitting on the floor, writhing under an archaic star, surrounded by paintbrushes, paint and candles. His eyes were white. Her long black hair tousled. Her beard, long and unkempt. He made strange sounds while frothing sprouted from his mouth.

By order of his Majesty King Dominique III you are under arrest for the disappearance of Prince Adrien ― the captain of the royal guard indicated with a head gesture to capture him.

The soldiers pounced on him. When their hands captured the man, his neck bent backwards and he cried out with a heartbreaking and inhuman sound. His artworks, realistic paintings of children, men, women and old people, looked at them with sadness and panic in their faces, and whispers of supplication wrapped around the room without knowing where they came from.

The king will never recover his son. Never! Now he does not belong to him anymore. Not anymore. Not anymore. NOT ANYMORE!

The painter raised his head, staring at the captain.

Get him out of here! To the castle! NOW!

Four soldiers dragged the painter out of the house and took him to King Dominique III under the gaze of the crowd that thronged the street, whispering. The sky was shelled and the rain accompanied by lightning was seen.

My lord, l-let’s get out of here. This place does not seem right at all, commented a young soldier to his captain, avoiding looking around again.

Leave, I’ll go in a bit.

The soldier sighed under his breath of pure relief.

Are you sure?

Leave.

As you command, Captain.

The captain of the guard remained alone in the house. After looking around, he approached one of the paintings, the one of a woman who was sitting plucking a chicken. Her gaze was fixed on the viewer instead of on her task, creating a close relationship between the portrait and the viewer. She cried. The vividness of the painter’s brushstrokes overwhelmed him. The tears glowed, so real. A fine line and without hesitation. There was no doubt that this man knew how to endow his artworks with soul. They were of extreme realism. He raised his hand and brought his fingers to the canvas. Just at that moment, the woman opened her mouth and spoke with a voice from beyond the grave.

The officer fell backwards on the ground, scared. What was that? Voices of laments rose again. He turned his head from side to side. The artworks seemed alive. The portrayed characters asked for help between crying and screaming. Others pounded the canvas as if it were a window, from which they could not escape.

Fear seized the man. What kind of dark magic was that? Never in his fifty years had he seen anything like that. All of a sudden, he felt a vivid heat under his hands. He looked at the ground and saw that he was lying on the symbol formed by an inverted star circumscribed in a circle, and burned under a strange reddish and yellowish glow.

Pale as the purest milk, the captain left the house listening to a funereal laugh and did not mention anything seen to anyone.

***

The prisoner raised his head in the darkness of the cell, wielding a grim smile, motivated by the echo emitted by the walls of the dungeons with the footprints of the soldiers. The dungeons seemed to doze under a hollow silence. The man moved his hands covered with grime and the shackles to which he was tied tinkled. He smiled. A spotlight of several torches, followed by the echo of footsteps, illuminated the room until they stopped in front of the painter’s cell.

Come on, up, dirty rat! demanded the captain of the royal guard as he opened the lock. He stepped aside and two men entered to get him out. The painter did not resist, but he did not stop smiling either. It seems that now you’re not so brave, right? Have you preferred to surrender? It was time for you to understand that you have no way out.

The painter looked at the guard through the tangled black hair that crossed part of his face. His eyes were red as blood and his gaze full of hate.

You will be next, and he spat him in the face.

The officer punched him, splitting his lip. The painter laughed.

I will see you in Hell.

Take him out! Take him to the Arms Courtyard! He ordered, removing the spittle, disgusted.

The painter’s laughter was lost upstairs. The soldier snatched the torch from his companion, closed the cell with anger and, when he started to leave, noticed a strange symbol on the ground, under where the painter had been sitting. An archaic symbol drawn with blood, the same one they had found in the painter’s house when, under the order of the king, they went to arrest him: the inverted star.

***

The painter was thrown into the center of the Arms Courtyard, surrounded by more than fifty sentinels. The king, a man with a bulging abdomen, a black heart like the darkest night and a gray-tinted beard, made his way through one of the doors that led to the arena, carrying rage in his body.

Tie him to the post, he ordered in his deep voice without taking his eyes off the battered prisoner.

His body was bruised. The dried blood covered all his clothes. He had cuts here and there. All the prisoners in their dungeons had been bound, beaten until they fell; some had burns on their arms and legs to the point of limiting their limbs and all had spoken because of the pain. However, that miserable painter did not give up; nothing loosed his tongue. As fragile as he seemed, he endured the pain as if the devil himself protected him. However, there were still methods of torture to make him talk. He would not stop his act until he revealed where his son, the future heir, was. He had been missing for several months. Fields, houses, caves and the rivers surrounding the kingdom had been registered. Even a party of soldiers had been sent to the mountains. Yet no trace. The king did not clear from his mind that the disappearance of his son had to do with that strange painter, who claimed to reflect the soul with his brushes and had not convinced the sovereign with his portraits.

King Dominique III had commissioned an individual portrait of each member of his family and none had been to his satisfaction. The painter’s stroke, although it was fine, without hesitation, soft and velvety with exquisite tones for the time, could not capture the essence of the portrayed. They were simple paintings, nothing more. However, the king wished that when in the future his artworks would be admired, they would see in them the shine of his eyes that so characterized him and showed his mettle, his skin and in his bearing of gallantry, the tenderness and beauty of his wife, and the sweet childhood and innocence of his little one.

The painter had discarded artworks worth months of work trying to comply with the king’s order. People said that the artworks were the reflection of their monarchs, but the king did not see it that way. He had come to lash out at the painter, trying that with pain the gift he had finally managed to capture on the canvas what he wanted so much, but even that did not seem to make the painter manage to reflect the monarch’s wishes with the painting.

The king approached the painter with both fists clenched.

I’ll ask you once more, son of a bitch: where is my son?

The painter looked up, still wielding that disguised smile that had a bizarre hue painting the corners of his lips.

He is wherever you want, he whispered, savoring each word. He held his gaze.

Where-is-my-son? The king roared, beginning to lose patience. He slapped the prisoner. SPEAK AT ONCE! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM? WE KNOW YOU ARE THE TO BALME FOR HIS DISAPPEARANCE!

The portraitist raised his head with a perceptive look.

Now he shows what your majesty wanted.

The monarch’s impatience turned into anger. He went to the fire and took out a hot iron from it. He brought it closer to the painter’s right thigh, who felt the scorching heat and iron breaking through the muscles of his leg. His eyes widened and fear surfaced on his face. Water was heard to fall and in the crotch and a puddle at his feet, soaked the painter’s pants.

SPEAK! He brought the iron back to his thigh and the smell of burned flesh rose with the air.

The painter’s eyes widened and became white. He did not scream, again, and laughed, as sweat trickled down his face.

SPEAK, SPEAK, SPEAK! With each word that Dominique III pronounced, he introduced the iron into another part of the painter’s body. Blood gushed and the painter laughed.

M-my lord... Look at him! He is possessed! This is the work of the Devil himself! Nobody endures such torment! The captain of the guard burst into the arena, frightened.

The king took a step back, noticing how the painter’s body writhed between frothing and laughing. Between panic and anger, the monarch extended his arms behind him with fury, sending a cry of pain, ready to nail the iron in the man’s heart, but it was dismissed.

The painter straightened his head to the left and muttered:

I warned you.

The captain of the guard put his hands in his stomach where the iron had stuck. He wanted to say something, but his legs trembled, he bent, fell to his knees and from his mouth only emanated blood before collapsing to the side, lifeless.

The king stood still, watching the body of the captain of his guard, lifeless. He backed away, trembling.

W-what kind of monster are you? He demanded to the painter, while he was writhing on the mast, still laughing.

I’m what you’ve turned me into, he whispered, remembering where his hatred was coming from.

***

The portraitist left the castle in the middle of the night. He dragged his feet, regretful and moody. From his mouth came only blasphemies addressed to the king|.

It had been, once again, a long journey, in which he had not been able to satisfy the king with his work. He began to get tired of wasting his time for a misery of gold and not seeing his work valued.

Jeremiah, Jeremiah! The young man stopped and saw his friend Matthew leave the tavern of Jean le boiteux. "W-where are you going w-with so much... hip! Hurry?"

He reeked of alcohol and could barely stand up.

Have you gone back to drinking?

I have argued again... with... w-with my... wiiiiiiiiife. Jeremiah prevented him from falling to the ground.

When will you learn that you will never be happy like that?

When I u-understand why they forced me to marry w-without being in love. Hip!

Jeremiah rolled his eyes and took his friend to his house. He also did not understand how Matthew’s parents forced his son months ago to marry the butcher’s daughter, a marriage that had only brought discussions since the day the event was officiated.

And you... Why so angry? He asked Jeremiah after vomiting at the foot of the door of the house.

The usual, Matthew, as always. That damn fat man denies my work. I put all of myself in my artworks and he says that he still does not see himself or his family in my canvases! That he does not see his soul! That they are dead paintings! Can you believe it?

"You do it with your gift, but he never, out of pride... will see it. Hip! You know? Get revenge on him, where it hurts the most... Maybe s-so he will appreciate your... artworks. Hip!"

The door of the house opened and Matthews’ wife, enraged, grabbed her husband from the neck and put him inside without even deigning to look at Jeremiah, who headed back home thinking about what his friend, although joking, had said.

***

My patience is running out. Talk at once or I’ll stop playing and I’ll cut your throat.

Jeremiah’s head did not remain still. It spun around, his eyes rolling, blaspheming. The guards murmured, overwhelmed. Jeremiah laughed, his rotation stopped and he fixed his milky eyes on the king.

"And if you kill me, what will you gain? Will that give you back your son? Ha, ha, ha! Now it shows what his majesty always said that I did not achieve."

The king shouted, prisoner of a burden, anger and discomfort inordinate.

Bring the wheel to tear and the canvases of my family that this bastard has done!

The guards obeyed the orders of their king and proceeded to strip the painter, leaving his shames and his thin body with more wounds, cardinals, dried blood and, beneath this all, a single star older than humanity in his chest, barely visible among so many wounds. The guards knocked him flat on his back, limbs outstretched and tied to iron stakes. Under his hips, knees, elbows and wrists they placed pieces of wood. The executioner entered the gallows with his head covered, holding a heavy mallet in his hand. The painter did not stop laughing and cursing.

He’s insane! exclaimed the queen, coming on the scene with both hands to her mouth, horrified.

Aina, leave, please! Her husband ordered, losing the color of his skin when he saw her there.

Do you not want her to see what the man of God does to his people? Tart, rat!

Smash his bones! The king decreed immediately.

The executioner took violent blows with the wheel and it was heard how his bones began to crack, forming rivers of blood, flesh and splinters. And, for the first time, the young painter cried out in pain.

Don’t stop! Let him die of pain until he speaks! And burn his canvases!

Jeremiah laughed again, hurling expletives against the queen and the king. A flock of crows positioned themselves on the surrounding crenellations and squawked, waiting to launch and feast. The bonfire increased its flame as the canvases of the king and queen burned.

SPEAK NOW! WHERE IS MY SON?

The painter turned his neck so that the bones creaked as they split. He looked at the king with a horrifying expression on his face and said:

Too late. Didn’t you want my artworks to have a soul? Didn’t you want them to reflect the soul of the person portrayed?

The queen’s agonized shriek caused the king to turn around and watch his wife run towards the fire, where in the flames the painting of her son burned and with it, his own son, locked in his jail of paint and linen for eternity. The child asked for help, but nothing could be done. When the fire devastated the painting, the wheel stopped spinning and the painter’s body was destroyed. In the distance a bell rang, the crows squawked once more and began their feast while the king and queen mourned the loss of their son.

Angered, the king ordered to burn all the artworks of the painter, but nobody dared. The king himself was the one who entered the house of the painter, torch in hand; he tore all the artworks and threw the torch. Just as he was about to leave, he heard a familiar laugh. He turned, prey to madness. He pulled at his hair, thinking he was going crazy, and his gaze stopped on a white sheet that covered a canvas and that the fire did not devour.

What was his surprise when removing the sheet, he found a full-length portrait of the painter, next to a beautiful black dog with red eyes. The king recoiled at the chilling smile that formed at the corners of the painter’s lips. He stumbled and fell to the ground. He rolled just in time so that the voracious flames would not burn him.

My portrait will reflect what in your painting you never thought you would find: my soul, it was heard emanate from the mouth of the painter.

The roof collapsed.

1

I consciously chose the dog’s path through life. I am going to be poor. I’m going to be a painter

Vincent Van Gogh

––––––––

The woman looked for her mobile phone in her bag and consulted the time once more. It was 3:15 on the morrow. No call. Everything seemed fine.

Do you think I should call my mother? I’m worried, she said, running a hand over her head. Since she had left home, restlessness had been present in her body. The maternal instinct told her that it was better not to leave, better to stay at home and take care of her offspring. My mother is already aged to take care of a baby.

Her husband placed a hand on her left leg. He patted her and smiled at her to reassure her.

Carol, sweetheart, relax. We’ve talked about this for weeks before the party. You know your mother will take good care of the little one. He turned on the fog lights and the windshield wipers at the maximum. Besides, you also need to have a little time for yourself. And that you have done.

Outside it was raining and the fog began to cover the road and the surroundings. The forest they crossed did not help. The trees propitiated dense fogs. Who had thought to build a mountain road in that area? Without rain, it was already difficult to travel, with it you had to drive with twenty eyes on the asphalt. If they were not wild animals, they were rockslides, or fog or the terrible curves that meandered at the end of the mountainous port.

The brown-haired woman looked out the window.

Don’t listen to me; I guess they are things of a first-time mother.

Every mother cares about her little one. You know that the child is fine. Your mother raised you and now look at you, a whole woman. Have I ever told you that I took the best trophy your mother had at home?

Carol smiled. Her husband knew how to make her smile and make her forget her worries, or at least she tried.

I remind you that I am the only child my parents had.

Because they strived in you.

He approached to kiss her and just at that moment, lost control of the car. Carol screamed, feeling the heart in her throat while her husband, pale and horrified, tried to control the vehicle.

He braked once stabilized, panting and with his forehead bathed in cold sweat.

Are you alright? He asked, taking his wife’s face between his hands.

Carol brushed her hair away from her face, anguished.

Y-yes, I’m fine. I should have driven. You have drunk too much at the party.

Her husband shook his head.

I’ve been two hours without drinking before taking the car. You know I’m responsible, Carol.

The woman looked away and broke down crying, overwhelmed.

Take me home, please, Robert; I do not feel well.

Do you need to get air?

Please, let’s go home.

At what time had she agreed to go to the school reunion party? At the beginning of the year, they had been informed that the party would take place on the first days of December. Robert had been very excited to be reunited with his childhood friends; Carol too. However, when giving birth in early summer the situation had changed. The delivery had been complicated and, thanks to the fact that the doctors had done a great job, she and her son were alive. From that moment the obsession to be next to his little one had been present day by day and it had been very difficult to leave him with her mother to attend the party, the same one that had been a horror and in which neither she nor her husband had enjoyed. She had not been comfortable. She had spent most of her time checking her cell phone. Robert had been more aware of her than to make up for lost time and tell stories with old friends.

I’m sorry, honey, she whined.

Hey, hey! Nothing of that. Why do you ask for forgiveness?

Because I’m stupid and... And... I think I should go to...! She stopped, looking at the forest, appreciating something in the fog.

Go where?

Carol looked back, confused.

To... To a psycho... Be careful, Robert, be careful! She yelled hitting the dashboard just as a huge black dog crossed the road in front of the vehicle.

Overwhelmed, not knowing what was happening, Robert braked sharply, accompanied by a rough steering wheel. The vehicle skidded on the soaked asphalt and the car lost control. Robert tried to regain control, but it did not work. The vehicle overturned and rolled down the road, stumbling as the couple hit and bruised inside the metal assembly until it was embedded in the gutter, face down.

Carol, confused, put a hand to her head and felt the wound from which burst blood to gushes. She looked at her husband, motionless at her side. She started to shake it, when a shadow moved in front of the vehicle, between the rain and the fog. It was an animal. The huge dog took several steps forward, became a man of terrifying appearance and smiled grimly, overwhelming her.

The vehicle burst into flames just as the clock read 3:33 and a tear rolled down Carol’s face with the last thought to her son.

2

"When you start a painting it is something that is outside of you.

When finished, it seems that you had installed yourself inside her"

Fernando Botero

––––––––

The boy contemplated the embers of the fire, lying on the cold ground, while his mother finished tanning the skins she had to deliver and smiled when she saw her offspring enjoy.

Jeremiah, don’t you exhaust yourself of spending your time observing the crackle of the flames? His mother asked, wiping her hands on her frayed apron.

The boy turned, staying face up, and laughed.

No mother. I love it! If you listen carefully, you can appreciate how each time they make a different sound. It seems music.

The mother smiled, shaking her head. It had always been clear to her that her son’s imagination had no limits.

Why not better entertain you with something else? Look, father left some parchments last night that have no function, why don’t you use them? The other day you watched the old troubadour make birds with paper. Try it.

The boy shrugged and accepted. He remembered having enjoyed watching making birds with unused parchments, art learned from distant Japan as they had said, and thinking about trying to do it later, but he did not seem capable, but he did for other tasks.

His cheeks were pink, more than they used to be. Freckles dotted his dark-skinned face. For his age, he was not a very tall child and he was not that crazy either. Calmness predominated in his body. While the rest of the children of his age spent the afternoons, after helping their parents, playing, Jeremiah preferred to watch the crackle of the flames, see his mother work or simply sit and watch the hours go by. Many people had called him a freak because of this, but he was happy that way.

Jeremiah reached for the parchments that his mother spoke to him and held them in his hands without really knowing how to begin. His mother had given him an idea, but it was something that did not call attention to entertain. The origami seemed easy, but when another did it, much less, if it was not born from within. He preferred to draw. Unlike making figures, Jeremiah had been trying to draw for days, something that did catch his attention but, frustrated, he left the idea aside when he saw amorphous representations of reality on paper.

He returned with the papers in front of the fire. He caught a coal from the fire with the tongs and waited until it was cold. He spread the papers close together on the floor and continued to observe the embers with the charcoal in hand. He smiled. The image of an older man appeared in his mind, sitting among the market stalls in the neighboring village where he had gone with his father to sell his vegetables weeks ago. The old man held a board and it represented the image that his eyes saw with charcoal. Jeremiah sat down to contemplate the drawing, amazed: what he saw on the board was the same as reality.

After having the drawing fit, the man took out a bag of paint cans and brushes and, mixing colors on another smaller table, he began to color, enrapturing the child’s feelings. The little one did not believe what his eyes saw; it was magic. The painter worked color with subtlety and sublime affection. The painting seemed to be part of the environment. However, there were people who seemed to see the work with contempt.

Do you like what you see, child? The old man asked, taking a break.

Y-yes, sir, Jeremiah blushed. What do you do? I have never seen anything like it.

This? This is called painting.

P-painting?

Yes, painting. Represent reality with this. He showed him the paintings and the boy was amazed. However, it is not something that can be lived by, but neither could I live without being able to do what I like, and it is to take where I go the reflection of each place I visit. It’s like eating; you always need it. Today that luxury is not allowed, but I can paint. What life has taken from me on one hand but for another has given me.

Jeremiah did not blink, listening to the words of the man who seemed to have lived too many hardships and still smiled and thanked for being able to do what he wanted.

I like what you say.

The man smiled at him and ruffled his hair lovingly.

Have you ever painted or drawn? Jeremiah shook his head. You do not know what your body is losing.

I’ve never done it, but I assure you that from today on I will paint. I have always wanted to learn new things.

Would you like to try? Do you want me to teach you?

Jeremiah opened his eyes wide, surprised and amazed at the proposal. He looked both ways, looking around for his father; if he saw him without working, he would scream in heaven, because he would have to return to the post, but he could not lose the opportunity that the man offered him.

R-really, sir? Thank you.

Come here with me, let’s start. By the way, my name is Alain, better known as the Mad Musician.

The Mad Musician? Jeremiah repeated, lost. Aren’t you supposed to be a cartoonist?

The man start laughing.

Things of the people, but it does not matter now. It is a mere nickname. Tell me your name?

Jeremiah. My name is Jeremiah.

Well, young Jeremiah, the first thing... One second. He rummaged in his old bag and pulled out several crumpled brown parchments. He smoothed them. The first thing you need to have to draw is the mind clear, a place to draw and coal.

Jeremiah prepared to clear his mind and observe. When the Mad Musician started to brush the charcoal against the parchment, an accelerated run of a man made them look away.

Jeremiah? JEREMIAH! Where are you, Jeremiah?

Uneasy, the boy walked away from the Mad Musician and looked for his father. Oh no! His father was angry and rightly so! He had sent him to deliver an order and had already entertained himself too much on the way back.

His father, an older man, tall and lean, with a beard of several weeks, approached his son and the painter. His breathing was uncontrolled.

Jeremiah! Where have you been? I asked you earnestly...!

Do not blame the child. The painter’s voice was heard behind the father, standing up. The Mad Musician was much taller than Jeremiah’s father was and imposed respect. I’ve been the one who entertained your son.

The father looked up from a repentant Jeremiah and observed the painter with suspicion.

Has he been bothering you? If so, take my sincere apologies. I have repeatedly warned him not to bother anyone, or stop talking to anyone, but...

Don’t be so hard on him. He’s a child. You would be the same at his age. We are curious by nature, more at this age.

Seen it that way, it’s more than understandable. Even so...

The child has been watching me paint; there is nothing wrong with contemplating the work of others and discovering their true vocation.

Jeremiah noticed how his father was frowning at those words. For his father, the vocation of his son was clear: to continue the family business as it had been done for generations. There was no other. Jeremiah was a child; he did not stop to think if he wanted to dedicate his life to the family business or other work, maybe at another time, yes, but not now.

The family business is waiting for him, the father said bluntly. If you excuse us, we have to leave. Have a nice day. Jeremiah, come on.

Jeremiah set out to follow his father’s footsteps, but remained in place with his eyes fixed on the painting of the Mad Musician.

Do not make your father angry. Here, this is for you. The man took out of his bag some cans with liquid of various shades and a brush that hardly had hair. Take it; it’s a gift for you. I see in you a great artist, and you can start working. And remember, always, always, first with charcoal.

Jeremiah opened his eyes wide, marveling at the gift that the painter was offering him. Nevertheless...

I cannot accept it, sir. My father...

Would he think you stole it? Then your father do not know you so well, if so. There is nobility in your eyes, child, that is what least should concern you. Come, accept this gift and run with your father, do not make him wait any longer.

T-thanks, sir. I promise that I will become a good painter someday!

I do not have the smaller doubt that you will be.

The boy ran to his father’s station. He turned a few seconds to look at the painter again; however, to his surprise, the painter was not there. There was no trace of him, but there were the paintings that Jeremiah held in his hands.

***

Years later, faithful to his promise of becoming a great painter, Jeremiah held his breath as the king walked through the Throne Room. He was observing each and every one of the artworks of painters who had submitted to the contest that the Court had proclaimed with a succulent prize that would not only allow him to live off his work, but would also give him fame beyond the realm. The artworks had been arranged on both sides of the wide room, interspersed among the hundreds of columns that held the tall, golden roof.

The king stopped after carefully observing the artworks, massaged his bulging stomach and looked for his counselor. The tension was maximum. The breaths seemed to have been cut off suddenly. The king exchanged a few words with his counselor who took note of everything, and grabbed the queen’s hand to take a seat.

I should not have come, Jeremiah muttered, turning around. The nerves were eating him alive. I will never win anything. Mother was right; I’m not good enough for this.

His old father’s hand grabbed him.

Son, your mother was very proud of you and your talent, although she did not show it to you. She did not want her son to suffer for a cruel world where painting does not give to live, but she trusted and believed in you, because you have talent, very much.

But not as much as the rest of those paintings that are among mine.

The young painter looked away, saddened. He was glad to hear the words of his father, but it hurt him that his mother had not told him all that in life and give him the extra confidence that he always lacked.

Tell me, son, what made you submit to the contest? Jeremiah looked at his father. He raised an eyebrow and nodded. Look for that in your interior, that in what you are thinking and hold on to it. That’s why you’re here. That’s why, and it’s your best asset, besides your talent.

***