Hi Everyone,

This prompt tangentially fits with the already written story.   Therefore I will post it.

<center><h1>Unknown Cezanne</h1></center>

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Sometimes, an incident can stir up the order of everyday life so that, presented at an unusual angle, you're forced to notice things you didn't suspect about yourself.

That day, I was held up at work and my evening jog had to be postponed until an hour later than usual. It was the time of the evening when the heat, accumulated in the soil, retreated and the park, where I jogged, was covered with a dense milky fog, reminiscent of a Monet painting.

Limited visibility didn't bother me - I knew all bends of the path well. The fog even spiced my perception with an expectation that seemed to be nested in a fresh smell of the grasses and trees.

As I approached the three-quarter-loop mark I noticed the vague contours of a man sitting on the grass about twenty feet away from the path. I stopped jogging and took a couple of steps toward him.

"Is everything ok?"

"I'm ok", the voice was old and crackled, "but my foot isn't. I think I twisted it. Damn fog."

Coming closer I recognized him. The old man usually proudly walked with his cane in the park.

"Why did you go off the path?" I inquired, trying to lift him off the ground.

The face of the old man grimaced with pain and frustration "No, no, not like that! From the other side."

&lsquo;Aren't we grouchy today?' In my mind, I showed him a tongue.

"I go where I goddamn, please… There we go, there we go", he commented as I was able to mount him on my back and lift him up.

I realized why he left the path when I smelled urine while bending down to help him.

"Where are you taking me?"

"I'll carry you to that bench and then call the ambulance."

"No, no! Just take me to my car."

There is no point in the telling, I wasn't pleased. If anything, he could have been a little politer.

"Where is your car?"

"It's over there," he pointed to the parking lot up the hill. Lucky for me he was skin and bones.

He couldn't drive because of the injury to his right foot. I sat him to the right side of his yellow Cadillac Seville and asked: "Where to?"

He didn't live far from the park. At the door, I messed around with his key as Ion, this was his name, had let me know he lived alone. In the car, I had a chance to take a closer look at him. His face was an oval wrapped with parchment paper and cut with wrinkles in places. Red lines of varicose veins protruded, which wasn't a thing of beauty. Perhaps his eyes, once blue like the Gulf of Mexico, now, looked like water spilled on a yellow marble countertop. But the eyes themselves looked haughty and proud as if saying: "Yes, I am not pretty. What about you?"

Having opened the door, I came back for Ion, picked him up again and carried him into the house.

"Where to?" I was looking for a sofa or a couch to land him. "Take me to the bedroom, straight down the corridor and then to the left. I have a wheelchair there."

The house was filled with all kinds of junk, hanging on walls and standing all over the place obstructing my way.

"Good," he commented after I landed him on his bed. "Now roll out the chair. It's in this closet," he pointed.

Having situated himself in the chair Ion navigated it to the kitchen to get some ice and made me a sign to follow him. This time I was able to pay attention to the surrounding. It wasn't unusual to discover that the old person would have old things surrounding him, but I was surprised at their sheer number.

The house was really stuffed: sets of dishware from old high probe silver, coffee, tea, and sugar pots, heavy saucers, and trays from silver and bronze, handmade blown glass jars, colored Turkish glass, Chinese paintings of the rice paper, statue of Buddha authentically done, ceramic English or German figurine mugs, worn Turkish, Persian and Arabic rugs for midday prayer, African statuettes carved from ebony or some other black stone with the ivory incrustations, and the dust. And layers and layers of it sitting on top of this all.

They smelled musty and the entire house gave an impression of a frozen in time snapshot.

Noticing me looking around, he opened up and stretched his hand: "My collection. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Very."

"Can you pull the ice-bag from the freezer?"

After this was done and I attempted to take him back to his bedroom Ion lifted his hand in a stopping gesture:

"Enough is enough. I'll pick it up from there…Listen I am thankful for your help. Leave me your phone number and here is mine." He passed me his business card. I put the card in the pocket of my sweat pants and ran home through the deserted streets.

<center>***</center>

Ion called me two weeks later and invited me to come over. "Come with your wife," he said.

"Your husband is a good man," he turned to my wife, slapping me on the shoulder when the topic of "speed of recovery from a pulled ligament" had exhausted itself.

"Oh, thank you!" my wife offered him her most charming smile, "but you know what he said about you?"

"What? That I was rude?"

"Quite the contrary," she projected the intonation of, the required by moment, righteous indignation. "He said that you were a very special person and my husband doesn't make comments like this often."

All that, of course, was the fruits of my wife's imagination - I never said such things, but in a way, I was glad she did. Despite the unpleasant appearance and exposed, almost deliberate rudeness, Ion had something attractive about him. Maybe it was a realization of the nonaccidental nature of his existence.

I am always amazed at my wife's ability to butter people up. She did it just in case, like that gypsy who beats his children up in advance when going to the city fair for a weekend, accounting for their future transgressions.

Whenever I point it out to her she usually retorts "That's what you think. I am just being positive and open-minded. Give people a chance; look on their good side."

"He is so ugly," she whispered in my ear, continuing the small talk - the craft in which she was so proficient that an unsuspected listener might have an impression that she was sincere. Ion laughed contentedly showing me with his eyes that he appreciated this skill in women.

The conversation flowed in the direction of Ion's collection. We got up from the table and followed him still in his wheelchair on a tour around the house. My wife expressed admiration in every item of his collection with ease and I attempted to strike the right note when Ion's eyes were turned toward me.

"What do you think of this picture?"

The painting displayed a country house somewhere in Southern Europe France or Italy judging by the architecture. The house was buried in verdure. The painting was done in the impressionist style.

"Good work," I squinted my eyes, "true impressionism. Who made it?"

"Cezanne"

"Cezanne?! Do you mean the famous Paul Cezanne, the impressionist? This is original?"

"Yes…," Ion proudly curled his lower lip, "I don't keep fakes. This is one of his earlier paintings from the time when he still lived with his father in Aix."

"But how did you…get it, if it's not a secret?"

"That's a long story. I got it in Germany in 1945. Some day I might tell you if you'll still be alive by then", he laughed in his weird hyena way, "So you want it or not?" he insisted, cutting off his laugh just as abruptly as he started it.

"You want to give it to us as a present?" my wife intervened.

"Yes."

Hm…That was an unexpected turn of events and a tricky question. I liked Monet, Renoir, Degas…I was somewhat indifferent to Sisley, Morisot, and Mane. Guess who I didn't like: Pissarro and especially Cezanne. Why? I don't know. I don't understand much in art beyond "I like it" or "I don't like it" and certainly don't understand why I like or dislike things.

And why do I necessarily have to like Cezanne? Before he became famous there were millions of people who didn't care at all about him. He couldn't even sell his paintings. And now he is everybody's, darling. "You don't like Cezanne? Oh, my God… That's terrible!"

To hang this thing on the wall was out of the question. That's how I am. I either like it or it drives me crazy. And Cezanne would definitely have the latter effect. At the same time, to decline an original Cezanne? ... Crazy. Oh boy…a million dollar painting in an eight-hundred-dollar apartment. What a gyp! I helplessly looked around searching for something else, perhaps Monet or Renoir.

Ion's stare required an immediate resolution. The stream of photons kept on beaming from his eyes: "you want it or not, you want it or not…"

"Sure Ion, thank you, … thank you. But …"

"But what? Do you worry about my children? Well don't worry about them", Ion pondered. "My son…" he tilted his head down, "I am not going to leave him a penny."

"How come?" I was happy for the opportunity to postpone the arrangement while my wife pulled my sleeve under the table: "It's not your business!"

"He divorced his first wife. He said he didn't love her anymore", Ion lifted his finger and highlighted the importance of what was said. "But I did!"

Silently and as if angrily he rolled his chair tilting his head down even more as if looking at his feet. We followed him to the table and sat down. "I'll leave everything to my daughter," he was as if making a rhetorical remark. "She is a good gal, she'll get all of this", he rotated his head and eyes, "and much more, but she understands in paintings like pig in oranges", he scoffed, "At least, you know who I am talking about", he waved his head at the painting.

"Oh, I'll be happy to have that", I finally responded, "only I don't think my house would have a good place to put it." I tried to lull his vigilance. This way it also explained my hesitation.

"Well, let me be the judge of that," Ion's smile seemed somewhat devilish to the indescribable joy of my wife who was pinching me under the table, explaining me in every known in the science of pedagogy way that I was an idiot.

"I'll come over and find a spot on your wall," concluded Ion responding to my bewildered look.

Thus, I fell into my own trap and with horror thought of my poor defenseless guest room wall.

<center>***</center>

As soon as Ion came in, his eyes glued to that place on the guestroom wall where the painting could hang. He turned his head to me. A mirror reflection made his faded ominous eyes look almost cheerful.

"Why did you say you didn't have a place for the picture? It's perfect!"

"Oh, you are absolutely right!" My wife gave Ion a movie star smile. "I was, actually, saving this place for a good picture and voila! Darling, why don't you put the nail on the wall, so we can hang it? Ion, you don't have to worry about it anymore. My husband will do everything himself and you and me," she placed her hand on his, pulling him to the dining room, "will go to the table. What would you like to drink? Wine, vodka, cognac, tequila, whiskey?"

They went on discussing the menu and I had to hang this "house with the greenery" in the middle of my own wall. What a blessing!

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Ion left and I looked at the painting, trying to narrow down what exactly I didn't like about Cezanne? Closing my eyes, I tried to recreate an image of Cezanne's painting. Instead, a mental picture of a Monet' painting came to mind, one of his Rouen Cathedrals. Monet didn't ask anything from me. "I paint as birds sing" I remembered his words, quoted in some art book. He as if opened a different window for me - a new way to look at the visible world. Tangible objects that I knew as part of my experience disintegrated, giving away to experiencing them as flickering vibration, as merely the embodiment of light.

Yet Cezanne gave me the impression of a truth searcher and in his intended faithfulness to both to Nature and Art, it was as if he imposed demands on me, made me scrutinize my own life and compare his search to mine or to actually the absence of it. If Monet's touch was light, Cezanne's was gripping, choking like a rope.

At this moment, my mind registered my wife's presence. She came over and, assuming an akimbo position also looked at the picture.

"Because of this," I nodded at the painting, "I can't even look at my wall anymore! We better remove it."

"Only you can be so inflexible. I have no problem looking at it. I even like it. Why remove it from the wall? Ion might not like it."

"He will like it, he won't like it," I mocked her. "I could care less about what he likes or dislikes."

"Don't act so irrational. If you don't like it so much we'll drape it. It's not so bad even from a security standpoint. And, by the way, we need to ensure it."

"Why don't you call your brother? He already insured us for everything we've got, why, not the painting?"

"Who are you taking me for? I already did. He said that the picture needs to be shown to the professional estimator first."

"So did you arrange it?"

"Don't you know your wife?"

<center>***</center>

"So what did he say?" I was very curious all the way driving back from work.

"Who?"

"The estimator, who else?"

"It was her by the way."

"Who cares he or she. What did she say?"

"She said that this picture is not in any of the Cezanne's catalogs."

"I know that. Ion said that it was an unknown painting."

"Wait, let me finish. It's not in any of the Cezanne's catalogs, but it seems to be carried out in his style. The big question is whether this is his genuine work or a very successful copy?"

"And the bottom line is?"

"Well, the bottom line is up to us."

"What do you mean?" I started getting irritated with all these details.

"The real test is kind of expensive and I didn't want to decide on that without talking to you."

"And if we aren't gonna do it?"

"Than the insurance company would tentatively consider it as a copy and would insure it for only a hundred thousand "max" and that only because my brother is pushing all the buttons."

This was something to think about. I had no doubts that Ion's story about Germany was true. He didn't seem like a man who would lie about that. However, he wasn't a specialist, only a collector. He could very well be wrong. Some items in his collection were indeed worth a lot and yet much of it, if you ask me, was junk.

My wife continued the conversation about the insurance company, the estimator, and our current family budget, a topic that suddenly lost my interest because another unexpected thought took hold of my consciousness. If this painting wasn't Cezanne's, then what did my apparent dislike of it mean? Did I really hate the picture or was my position toward it was predetermined, because I knew that I couldn't like anything by Cezanne?

Maybe in my inveterate dislike for Cezanne, there was no fault of his? Maybe my opinion, perhaps even internal and unexpressed, but the one that I followed, the opinion opposing the public view, was simply a pose? Something I acquired in the days of my youth so I could more acutely feel my individuality. All these years I was lead by this opinion like by a restaurant guide and never again contesting neither my relation to Cezanne not to art in general?

<center>***</center>

To make a long story short, "the house with the greenery" is still hanging in the middle of my guest room wall. What is my attitude toward it? I don't even know. We insured it to a fifty grand, all that our budget allowed, and hoped that if it will be stolen before we could sell it, it would turn out to be a replica.

Ion is still alive and well. His mind is sharp even though right now he is close to ninety. Sometimes, he comes over and proudly stands in front of the painting leaning on his cane and curling his lower lip, nodding his head like a connoisseur who just tasted a superb coffee.

I wish very much to form my opinion about Cezanne anew. The sad thing there are very few Cezanne paintings in LACMA. Well, I guess I'd have to wait until the next exhibition.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoy the painting. It's as if it became her pride and joy. Whenever we have a gathering she shows the painting to the guests pontificating:

"Don't you think this is painted in Cezanne's style?" And lowering her voice to intimate notes she adds with the mysterious smile, "It might even be an original who knows. Isn't it darling?"