“Hang them! Hang them!”
Vincent took advantage of the excitement to slip into the Maison de Tolérance, Numero I, in the Rue des Ricolettes. Louis, the proprietor, welcomed him and led him into a little room on the left of the hall, where a few couples sat drinking.
“I have a young girl by the name of Rachel who is very nice,” said Louis. “Would Monsieur care to try her? If you do not like the looks of her, you can choose from all the others.”
“May I see her?”
Vincent sat down at a table and lit his pipe. There was laughter from the outside hall, and a girl danced in. She slid into the chair opposite Vincent and smiled at him.
“I’m Rachel,” she said.
“Why,” exclaimed Vincent, “you’re nothing but a baby!”
“I’m sixteen,” said Rachel proudly.
“How long have you been here?”
“At Louis’s? A year.”
“Let me look at you.”
The yellow gas lamp was at her back; her face had been in the shadows. She put her head against the wall and tilted her chin up towards the light so that Vincent could see her.
He saw a round, plump face, wide, vacant blue eyes, a fleshy chin and neck. Her black hair was coiled on top of her head, giving the face an even more ball-like appearance. She had on only a light printed dress and a pair of sandals. The nipples of her round breasts pointed straight out at him like accusing fingers.
“You’re pretty, Rachel,” he said.
A bright, childlike smile came into her empty eyes. She whirled about and took his hand in hers.
“I’m glad you like me,” she said. “I like the men to like me. That makes it nicer, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Do you like me?”
“I think you’re a funny man, fou-rou.”
“Fou-rou! Then you know me?”
“I’ve seen you in the Place Lamartine. Why are you always rushing places with that big bundle on your back? And why don’t you wear a hat? Doesn’t the sun burn you? Your eyes are all red. Don’t they hurt?”
Vincent laughed at the naïveté of the child.
“You’re very sweet, Rachel. Will you call me by my real name if I tell it to you?”
“What is it?”
“Vincent.”
“No, I like fou-rou better. Do you mind if I call you fou-rou? And can I have something to drink? Old Louis is watching me from the hall.”
She ran her fingers across her throat; Vincent watched them sink into the soft flesh. She smiled with her empty blue eyes, and he saw that she was smiling to be happy, so that he might be happy, too. Her teeth were regular but dark; her large underlip drooped down almost to meet the sharp horizontal crevice just above her thick chin.
“Order a bottle of wine,” said Vincent, “but not an expensive one, for I haven’t much money.”
When the wine came, Rachel said, “Would you like to drink it in my room? It’s more homey there.”
“I would like that very much.”
They walked up a flight of stone steps and entered Rachel’s cell. There was a narrow cot, a bureau, a chair, and several coloured Julien medallions on the white walls. Two torn and battered dolls sat on top of the bureau.
“I brought these from home with me,” she said. “Here, fou-rou, take them. This is Jacques and this is Catherine. I used to play house with them. Oh, fou-rou, don’t you look droll!”
Vincent stood there grinning foolishly with a doll in each arm until Rachel finished laughing. She took Catherine and Jacques from him, tossed them on the bureau, kicked her sandals into a corner and slipped out of her dress.
“Sit down, fou-rou,” she said, “and we’ll play house. You’ll be papa and I’ll be mama. Do you like to play house?”
She was a short, thickset girl with swelling, convex thighs, a deep declivity under the pointed breasts, and a plump, round belly which rolled down into the pelvic triangle.
“Rachel,” said Vincent, “if you are going to call me fou-rou, I have a name for you, too.”
Rachel clapped her hands and flung herself on to his lap.
“Oh, tell me, what is it? I like to be called new names!”
“I’m going to call you Le Pigeon.”
Rachel’s blue eyes went hurt and perplexed.
“Why am I a pigeon, papa?”
Vincent ran his hand lightly over her rotund, cupid’s belly.
“Because you look like a pigeon, with your gentle eyes and fat little tummy.”
“Is it nice to be a pigeon?”
“Oh, yes. Pigeons are very pretty and lovable . . . and so are you.”
Rachel leaned over, kissed him on the ear, sprang up from the cot and brought two water tumblers for their wine.
“What funny little ears you have, fou-rou,” she said, between sips of the red wine. She drank it as a baby drinks, with her nose in the glass.
“Do you like them?” asked Vincent.
“Yes. They’re so soft and round, just like a puppy’s.”
“Then you can have them.”
Rachel laughed loudly. She raised her glass to her lips. The joke struck her as funny again and she giggled. A trickle of red wine spilled down her left breast, wound its way over the pigeon belly and disappeared in the black triangle.
“You’re nice, fou-rou,” she said. “Everyone speaks as though you were crazy. But you’re not, are you?”
Vincent grimaced.
“Only a little,” he said.
“And will you be my sweetheart?” Rachel demanded. “I haven’t had one for over a month. Will you come to see me every night?”
“I’m afraid I can’t come every night, Pigeon.”
Rachel pouted. “Why not?”
“Well, among other things, I haven’t the money.”
Rachel tweaked his right ear, playfully.
“If you haven’t five francs, fou-rou, will you cut off your ear and give it to me? I’d like to have it. I’d put it on my bureau and play with it every night.”
“Will you let me redeem it if I get the five francs later?”
“Oh, fou-rou, you’re so funny and nice. I wish more of the men who came here were like you.”
“Don’t you enjoy it here?”
“Oh, yes, I have a very nice time, and I like it all . . . except the Zouaves, that is.”
Rachel put down her wine glass and threw her arms prettily about Vincent’s neck. He felt her soft paunch against his waistcoat, and the points of her bud-like breasts burning into him. She buried her mouth on his. He found himself kissing the soft, velvety inner lining of her lower lip.
“You will come back to see me again, fou-rou? You won’t forget me and go to see some other girl?”
“I’ll come back, Pigeon.”
“And shall we do it now? Shall we play house?”
When he left the place a half hour later, he was consumed by a thirst which could be quenched only by innumerable glasses of clear cold water.
4
VINCENT CAME TO the conclusion that the more finely a colour was pounded, the more it became saturated with oil. Oil was only the carrying medium for colour; he did not care much for it, particularly since he did not object to his canvases having a rough look. Instead of buying colour that had been pounded on the stone for God knows how many hours in Paris, he decided to become his own colour man. Theo asked Pére Tanguy to send Vincent the three chromes, the malachite, the vermilion, the orange lead, the cobalt, and the ultramarine. Vincent crushed them in his little hotel room. After that his colours not only cost less, but they were fresher and more lasting.