The Versatile Master Artist

The fascinating souls and the technique of writing that touches the heart are as precious as gold.

How could an ordinary artist easily reproduce them?

”Let’s schedule a time for an online call, there’s a task I need to talk to you about,” Anna sent Detective Cat a message.

Then she sat in front of the computer, starting to draft a reply to Jean Arnou’s email.

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The steam turbine operates, the chimney emits fluffy smoke, melding with the rain clouds in the sky.

New Zealand,

A farm in the lakeside town of Queenstown by Lake Wakatipu.

A white-bearded farmer faces the water that resembles emerald jade embedded in the earth, playing a viola alone in the rain.

An assistant stands in the light rain holding an umbrella, listening to the lively pieces of Mozart leap from the strings.

”I learned music as a child, once dreamed of becoming a violinist playing in a symphony hall, until I was 12 years old, my family couldn’t afford private tutoring fees, thus ending my musical dream, and I had to switch to picking up a paintbrush...”

The farmer sighed.

”Is this artistic talent? Perhaps back then you had great potential going to music school, now you might have been a true violin master!”

The assistant licked his lips.

These words, of course, were just flattery.

However, being a close assistant to a great artist is like being a personal therapist to a top athlete.

In addition to regular work duties, keeping the employer in prolonged good spirits and positively directed emotions is also part of their job.

With the old man’s status, wanting to play as a musician is not difficult.

Music halls in New Zealand’s capital are available for hire.

Inviting a local professional symphony orchestra to accompany and play a concerto is no problem, as long as you have enough money, or enough status.

This old man had both enough money and enough status.

”No, no, no, a true violin master would never play in the rain.”

”The violin is their second life, how could they bear to let the precious Italian spruce soundboard get damp in the rain? Just like I would never hold an outdoor art exhibit in the sun, letting the intense ultraviolet rays damage the luster of the paint. Your level of devotion to art is the second most important factor determining the height of your artistry.”

The old man turned his head and said calmly, ”Transferring schools at 12 was the luckiest moment of my life, without exception.”

”I now only play the violin to occasionally play for Tony.”

His gaze swept over the child-like figure under the assistant’s umbrella.

Tony was large, standing over 1.8 meters tall.

He wore casual T-shirts and bell-bottom pants, his hair meticulously groomed, not a whisker on his firm square chin, looking from his attire like one of those business elites who come to vacation by the Jade Lake.

However,

when anyone meets this burly man’s gaze, they’ll find within his gray eyes a child that never grew up.

It’s not what people often call a childlike look.

A childlike look should be clear and lively, but the man on the lounge chair only had a few years old child’s naive and bewildered expression in his eyes.

His body age was forty-one, roughly what the Dongxia People call the age of confusion. His intellectual development level wasn’t much stronger than that of a normal four-year-old child, with some emotional deficits.

And such a person was, however, the only child and now the only relative of illustration master Jean Arnou.

”Tony, have I taught you how to tie your shoelaces? Remember?”

Jean Arnou lowered his head to look at the sneakers with mud-stained laces, patted his son’s head, and spoke as if coaxing a small dog.

”Shoe... shoes...”

Tony’s gray eyes blinked like a bewildered puppy, muttering and stammering words that seemed related to shoes.

The 41-year-old big child holding a plush cat toy hesitated as he stared at his size 41 feet.

With trepidation and curiosity, he looked at the shoelace as if a scientist were staring at a complex, exquisite, and dangerous experimental instrument.

He stretched out his hand three times, yet three times withdrew it as if electrocuted.

Finally, tears shimmered in those bewildered gray eyes as he timidly looked towards his father.

”Want... cat, want... Ai... mi.”

”We will find the cat once the shoelaces are tied. Remember how to tie shoelaces? Cross the two ends and tie tight, then make a bow. Ah, forget it...”

Jean Arnou shook his head and sighed.

He said the same words when Tony was 4, 14, 24, and 34 years old, year after year, tens of thousands of times.

Forty years ago, Jean Arnou spoke these words filled with the delight of new fatherhood.

Thirty years ago, anxious and irritable, he at times wanted to smother the foolish guy with a pillow in the bedroom.

Twenty years ago, Jean Arnou would point to the heavens and swear, offering two million US dollars to anyone who could teach his son to manage daily life.

To this day.

Love had been given, hatred felt.

Affection, compassion, pain, anxiety, loathing... after all seven emotions and six desires had swept through the old man’s heart, what remained was the familial bond that had accumulated over forty years of companionship.