She was smoking now in the kitchen and staring into the distance, strict, strong, odd. She seemed like a stranger. Somehow, the boy felt she understood everything but forgave him. She had satisfied her curiosity and, perhaps, jealousy, because she had decided that this man she had heard so much about and who seemed to have abducted her son, could not love more strongly than she, nor induce love in others, since in the course of the evening he had not attracted her at all. He was not even an artist, just some jumped-up schoolteacher. Only then he told her, “Mum, I’ve got into art college. I am going to be an artist.” She showed no surprise, as if this was no news. “I always knew that, son.”
Paintbrush disappeared from his life. Or perhaps it was he who disappeared, no longer around because
