“No.”
“I was a fool.”
“Sometimes one has to be a fool in the beginning, to become wise in the end.”
“But if you loved me when we were in the Brabant, why didn’t you come to me?”
“You were not ready for me, Vincent.”
“And now . . . I am ready?”
“Yes.”
“You still love me? Even now . . . today . . . this moment?”
“Now . . . today . . . this moment . . . and for eternity.”
“How can you love me? Look, my gums are diseased. Every tooth in my mouth is false. All the hair has been burnt off my head. My eyes are as red as a syphilitic’s. My face is nothing but jagged bone. I am ugly. The ugliest of men! My nerves are shattered, my body gone sterile, my insides poisoned from tip to toe. How can you love such a wreck of a man?”
“Will you sit down, Vincent?”
Vincent sat on his stool. The woman sank to her knees in the soft loam of the field.
“Don’t,” cried Vincent. “You’ll get your white gown all dirty. Let me put my coat under you.”
The woman restrained him with the faintest touch of her hand. “Many times I have soiled my gown in following you, Vincent, but always it has come clean again.”
She cupped his chin in the palm of her strong white hand, and with her fingertips smoothed back the few charred hairs behind his ear.
“You are not ugly, Vincent. You are beautiful. You have tormented and tortured this poor body in which your soul is wrapped, but you cannot injure your soul. It is that I love. And when you have destroyed yourself by your passionate labours, that soul will go on . . . endlessly. And with it, my love for you.”
The sun had risen another hour in the sky. It beat down in fierce heat upon Vincent and the woman.
“Let me take you where it is cool,” said Vincent. “There are some cypress trees just below on the road. You will be more comfortable in the shade.”
“I am happy here with you. I do not mind the sun. I have grown used to it.”
“You have been in Arles long?”
“I came with you from Paris.”
Vincent jumped up in anger and kicked over his stool.
“You are a fraud! You’ve been sent here on purpose to ridicule me. Someone told you of my past, and is paying you to make a fool of me. Go away. I’ll not talk to you any more!”
The woman held his anger with the smile of her eyes.
“I am no fraud, my dear. I am the most real thing in your life. You can never kill my love for you.”
“That’s a lie! You don’t love me. You’re mocking me. I’ll show your game up.”
He seized her roughly in his arms. She swayed inward to him.
“I’m going to hurt you if you don’t go away and stop torturing me!”
“Hurt me, Vincent. You’ve hurt me before. It’s part of love to be hurt.”
“Very well then, take your medicine!”
He pressed her body to him. He brought his mouth down on hers, hurting her with his teeth, crushing his kiss upon her.
She opened soft, warm lips to him and let him drink deeply of the sweetness of her mouth. Her whole body yearned upward to him, muscle to muscle, bone to bone, flesh to flesh, in complete and final surrender.
Vincent thrust her away from him and stumbled to his stool. The woman sank down on the ground beside him, put one arm on his leg, and rested her head against it. He stroked the long, rich mass of lemon-yellow hair.
“Are you convinced now?” she asked.
After many moments Vincent said. “You have been in Arles since I came. Did you know about Le Pigeon?”
“Rachel is a sweet child.”
“And you don’t object?”
“You are a man, Vincent, and need women. Since it was not yet time to come to you and give myself, you had to go where you could. But now . . .”
“Now?”
“You need to no longer. Ever again.”
“You mean that you . . .?”
“Of course, Vincent dear. I love you.”
“Why should you love me? Women have always despised me.”
“You were not meant for love. You had other work to do.”
“Work? Bah! I’ve been a fool. Of what good are all these hundreds of paintings? Who wants to own them? Who will buy them? Who will give me one grudging word of praise, say that I have understood nature or portrayed its beauty?”
“The whole world will say it one day, Vincent.”
“One day. What a dream. Like the dream of thinking that I will one day be a healthy man, with a home and a family and enough money from my painting to live on. I have been painting for eight long years. Not once in all that time has anyone wanted to buy a picture I’ve painted. I’ve been a fool.”
“I know, but what a glorious fool. After you are gone, Vincent, the world will understand what you have tried to say. The canvases that today you cannot sell for a hundred francs will one day sell for a million. Ah, you smile, but I tell you it is true. Your pictures will hang in the museums of Amsterdam and The Hague, in Paris and Dresden, Munich and Berlin, Moscow and New York. Your pictures will be priceless, because there will be none for sale. Books will be written about your art, Vincent, novels and plays built around your life. Wherever two men come together who love painting, there the name of Vincent Van Gogh will be sacred.”
“If I could not still taste your mouth on mine, I would say I was dreaming or going mad.”
“Come sit beside me, Vincent. Put your hand in mine.”
The sun was directly overhead. The hillside and valley were bathed in a mist of sulphur-yellow. Vincent lay in the furrow of the field beside the woman. For six long months he had had no one to talk to but Rachel and Roulin. Within him there was a great flood of words. The woman looked deep into his eyes, and he began to speak. He told her of Ursula and the days when he had been a Goupil clerk. He told her of his struggles and disappointments, of his love for Kay, and the life he had tried to build with Christine. He told her of his hopes in painting, of the names he had been called, and the blows he had received, of why he wanted his drawing to be crude, his work unfinished, his colour explosive; of all the things he wanted to accomplish for painting and painters, and how his body was wracked with exhaustion and disease.
The longer he talked, the more excited he became. Words flew out of his mouth like pigments from his tubes. His whole body sprang into action. He talked with his hands, gesticulated with his arms and shoulders, walked up and down before her with violent body contortions. His pulse was rising, his blood was rising, the burning sun sent him into a passion of feverish energy.
The woman listened quietly, never missing a word. From her eyes, he knew she understood. She drank in all he had to say, and still was there, eager and ready to hear more, to understand him, to be the recipient of everything he had to give and could not contain within himself.
He stopped abruptly. He trembled all over with excitement. His eyes and face were red, his limbs quivering. The woman pulled him down beside her.
“Kiss me, Vincent,” she said.
He kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were no longer cool. They lay side by side in the rich, crumbly loam. The woman kissed his eyes, his ears, the nostrils of his nose, the declivity of his upper lip, bathed the inside of his mouth with her sweet, soft tongue, ran her fingers down the beard of his neck, down his shoulders and along the sensitive nerve-ends of his arm pit.
Her kisses aroused in him the most excruciating passion he had ever known. Every inch of him ached with the dull ache of the flesh that cannot be satisfied by flesh alone. Never before had a woman given herself to him with the kiss of love. He strained her body to him, feeling, beneath the soft white gown, the heat of her life flow.