“What is it you want?” he asked, as though he did not know.
“I’ve brought a few water-colours. I thought you might be able to spare a little time.”
Mauve was cleaning a bunch of brushes with nervous, preoccupied movements. He had not been into his bedroom for three days. The broken snatches of sleep he had managed on the studio couch had not refreshed him.
“I’m not always in a mood to show you things, Vincent. Sometimes I am too tired and then you must for goodness’ sake await a better moment.”
“I’m sorry, Cousin Mauve,” said Vincent, going to the door. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Perhaps I may drop in tomorrow evening?”
Mauve had taken the cloth off his easel and did not even hear him.
When Vincent returned the following evening, he found Weissenbruch there. Mauve was verging on hysterical exhaustion. He seized upon Vincent’s entrance to amuse himself and his friend.
“Weissenbruch,” he cried, “this is how he looks.”
He went off into one of his clever impersonations, screwing up his face in rough lines and sticking his chin forward eagerly to look like Vincent. It was a good caricature. He walked over to Weissenbruch, peered up at him through half shut eyes and said, “This is the way he speaks.” He went off into a nervous sputtering of words in the rough voice that often came out of Vincent. Weissenbruch howled.
“Oh, perfect, perfect,” he cried. “This is how others see you, Van Gogh. Did you know you were such a beautiful animal? Mauve, stick your chin out that way again and scratch your beard. It’s really killing.”
Vincent was stunned. He shrank into a corner. A voice came out of him that he did not recognize as his own. “If you had spent rainy nights on the streets of London, or cold nights in the open of the Borinage, hungry, homeless, feverish, you would also have ugly lines in your face, and a husky voice!”
After a few moments, Weissenbruch left. As soon as he was gone from the room, Mauve stumbled to a chair. The reaction from his little debauch made him quite weak. Vincent stood perfectly still in the corner; at last Mauve noticed him.
“Oh, are you still here?” he said.
“Cousin Mauve,” said Vincent impetuously, screwing up his face in the manner that Mauve had just caricatured, “what has happened between us? Only tell me what I have done. Why do you treat me this way?”
Mauve got up wearily and pushed the swash of hair straight upward.
“I do not approve of you, Vincent. You ought to be earning your own living. And you ought not go about disgracing the Van Gogh name by begging money from everyone.”
Vincent thought a moment and then said, “Has Tersteeg been to see you?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t care to teach me any more?”
“No.”
“Very well, let us shake hands and not feel any bitterness or animosity toward each other. Nothing could ever alter my feeling of gratitude and obligation to you.”
Mauve did not answer for a long time. Then he said, “Do not take it to heart, Vincent. I am tired and ill. I will help you all I can. Have you some sketches with you?”
“Yes. But this is hardly the time . . .”
“Show them to me.”
He studied them with red eyes and remarked, “Your drawing is wrong. Dead wrong. I wonder that I never saw it before.”
“You once told me that when I drew, I was a painter.”
“I mistook crudity for strength. If you really want to learn, you will have to begin all over again at the beginning. There are some plaster casts over in the corner by the coal bin. You can work on them now if you like.”
Vincent walked to the corner in a daze. He sat down before a white plaster foot. For a long time he was unable to think or move. He drew some sketching paper from his pocket. He could not draw a single line. He turned about and looked at Mauve standing before his easel.
“How is it coming, Cousin Mauve?”
Mauve flung himself on the little divan, his bloodshot eyes closing instantly. “Tersteeg said today that it’s the best thing I’ve done.”
After a few moments, Vincent remarked aloud, “Then it was Tersteeg!”
Mauve was snoring lightly and did not hear him.
After a time the pain numbed a little. He began sketching the plaster foot. When his cousin awoke a few hours later, Vincent had seven complete drawings. Mauve jumped up like a cat, just as though he had never been asleep, and darted to Vincent’s side.
“Let me see,” he said. “Let me see.”
He looked at the seven sketches and kept repeating, “No! No! No!”
He tore them all up and flung the pieces on the floor. “The same crudity the same amateurishness! Can’t you draw that cast the way it looks? Are you unable to make a positive statement about a line? Can’t you make an exact duplicate for once in your life?”
“You sound like a teacher at a drawing academy, Cousin Mauve.”
“If you had gone to more academies, you might know how to draw by now. Do that foot over again. And see if you can make it a foot!”
He went through the garden into the kitchen to get something to eat, and returned to work on his canvas by lamplight. The hours of the night went by. Vincent drew foot after foot. The more he drew, the more he detested the poisonous piece of plaster sitting before him. When dawn sneaked gloomily in the north window, he had a great number of copies before him. He rose, cramped and sick at heart. Once again Mauve looked at his sketches and crumpled them in his hand.
“They’re no good,” he said, “no good at all. You violate every elemental rule of drawing. Here, go home and take this foot with you. Draw it over and over and over again. And don’t come back until you get it right!”
“I’ll be damned if I will!” shouted Vincent.
He flung the foot into the coal bin, shattering it to a thousand pieces. “Do not speak to me again about plaster, for I cannot stand it. I will draw from casts only when there are no more hands and feet of living people to draw from.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it,” said Mauve icily.
“Cousin Mauve, I will not allow myself to be governed by a cold system, yours or anyone else’s. I’ve got to express things according to my own temperament and character. I must draw things the way I see them, not the way you see them!”
“I care to have nothing more to do with you,” said Mauve in the tone of a doctor speaking to a corpse.
When Vincent awoke at noon, he found Christine in the studio with her eldest son, Herman. He was a pale faced child of ten with fish-green, frightened eyes and a negligible chin. Christine had given him a piece of paper and pencil to keep him quiet. He had not been taught to read or write. He came to Vincent shyly, for he was wary of strangers. Vincent showed him how to hold the pencil and draw a cow. He was delighted and soon became friendly. Christine put out a little bread and cheese, and the three of them lunched at the table.
Vincent thought of Kay and beautiful little Jan. A lump arose in his throat.
“I ain’t feeling so good today, so you can draw Herman instead.”
“What’s the matter, Sien?”
“I dunno. My insides is all twisted.”
“Have you felt like this with all the other children?”
“I been sick, but not like this. This is worse.”
“You must see a doctor.”
“It ain’t no use seeing the doctor at the free ward. He only gives me medicine. Medicine don’t do no good.”
“You ought to go to the state hospital at Leyden.”
“. . . I guess I ought.”
“It’s only a short ride on the train. I’ll take you there tomorrow morning. People go from all over Holland to that hospital.”