Neither was in his element in Arles. They were about the same age. Both were bachelors. Both had been repudiated by the Establishment. Van Gogh never sold a painting while he lived and, what, you think Booth Tarkington Community College was the first place Miller applied or sent his curriculum vitae? He’d asked for a hundred jobs. It wasn’t even the first place in Indiana. It wasn’t even the first place in Indianapolis! Also, Vincent was a little nutsy too.
The day hadn’t gone well for him, he’d been through a lot, he was tired, wrung out, tomorrow was another day. He made out the light. Though his fury had subsided he was still on edge. He got into their bed. He said his prayers. He pulled the drawstring of his pajamas. The secret of a long- lasting relationship, he told God, was never to go to bed angry. Rita was younger, and more beautiful, but her words had stung him. He was still too hurt. So he fixed on the older woman, on Kaska and, slowly bringing her into focus, the hair on her unshaved legs, beneath her arms, on the black, full bush that hung on the pantieless body under her skirt, and conjuring the stirring gale-force smells that rose off her flesh like all the molten perfumes of earth, Miller, coming, groaning, sighing, forgave the world and slept.
And woke next morning refreshed but somehow with no more urge to get up and take on the prospect of a new day than when he had first lain down.
“I’m not a malingerer,” he told Hartshine, who had missed him at breakfast and had brought coffee, a brioche, a croissant, butter, some pony pots of jam, and a glass of juice over to Miller’s room from the night café.
Today Hartshine had chosen a nautical costume— white flared trousers and a wide-necked top of thick, alternating bands of black and white stripes. He looked vaguely like a gondolier.
“No, of course not,” Paul Hartshine said. “We just haven’t gotten our sea legs yet.”
“What’s this juice?”
“It’s orange juice.”
“Why’s it red?”
“It’s made from blood oranges.”
“Figures,” Miller said. Then, “I’m not, I’m not a malingerer.”
“Are you really so very ill then? Kaska Celli is quite concerned.”
“No,” Miller said, “I’m not so very ill. I’m not ill at all.”
“She’s concerned.”
“Now that makes me sore. It really does. She’s the one that said I looked tired, that I ought to lie down. She diagnosed jet lag, the new country, the strange food. This isn’t bad,” he said, “though I prefer my orange juice yellow.” He set down his glass. “She told me nobody gets much done the first day. I mean that really pisses me off. Ain’t she the housemother here? I mean, my God, Hartshine, she must see malaise like mine two dozen times a year. Did she say I’m malingering?”
“No. This is a big opportunity. She thinks you should make the most of your time.”
“I’ve got five weeks to make the most of my time. Nobody gets much done the first few days. Everyone goes at their own pace here. Like I suppose I’m the only one who didn’t make it down to breakfast this morning. I suppose she takes attendance. I suppose she calls roll.”
“Of course not.”
“There you go then,” Miller said.
“You were the only one who didn’t make it down to breakfast. Well, Stanley Gassett wasn’t there. Nan Hoffmann wasn’t. Lesley Getler.”
“Did I meet them?”
“You met Stanley. I believe you met Getler. Nan Hoffmann came in after we were already seated, I think.”
“Well there you go then,” Miller said again. “They don’t sound any more reliable than I do.”
“They didn’t come down because they’re making the most of their time. I heard Gassett banging away at his typewriter practically all night. Getler, too. Gassett’s next door to me. Getler’s working with him on the same project. They were still going at it when I went down to breakfast.”
“They kept you up all night? That’s terrible. Why didn’t you say something? Or bang on the wall? No one should be allowed to interfere with another man’s sleep.”
“They didn’t bother me. I was working myself.”
“It was your first day,” Miller said. “No one gets much done his first day.”
“Oh,” Hartshine said, “I didn’t get much done. I knocked off after a few hours.”
“Now what does that mean? That people will steal a march on me if I don’t watch out? Are you assigned to me or something? Are you breaking me in? Is this the buddy system?”
“No,” said Hartshine. “Nothing like that.”
“Well,” Miller said, “you can go back and tell her I’m settling in, getting the feel of things, getting the feel of Van Gogh’s room. Because she’s right. It is a big opportunity. Maybe, for me, even an historic one. God knows I’ll probably never have anything like such an opportunity again. Hell, I don’t know if I should even be flattered. Probably not. Maybe it’s luck of the draw. Or maybe they pick the son of a bitch least likely to make it out of Indianapolis. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe the Foundation matches up a Fellow’s character and personality and prospects with where it decides to put him to bed. Maybe they debrief you when your five weeks are up, see if smothering you in the ambience of genius has any effect on the quality of your work. I’m in Van Gogh’s room, man! I’m in Van Gogh’s room in Van Gogh’s house in Arles! You know the obligation that puts me under, the responsibility? You don’t have to be an art historian. It’s one of the world’s best-known paintings.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Miller said. “When I first saw this place it really didn’t mean all that much to me. Well, I was tired. I didn’t take it all in. As a matter of fact, I was a little steamed they hadn’t put me up in the main building. That I was so far from the action. Not only that I didn’t even have a toilet but that there wasn’t even a toilet on my floor. That I had to go downstairs I wanted to use the facilities. You know what the place looked like to me? A bed- and-breakfast. I saw but didn’t really take in the bottles on. the nightstand, the cane-bottom chairs, the basin and pitcher. I mean I’ve known the painting it was based on for years, but when I saw the actual room there wasn’t even this like shock of recognition.
“Only slowly, only gradually did it come over me. I’m using his things. I shave in his mirror, I drink from his jug. The miracle of that unpainted fourth wall that you pointed out? I sat on his piano bench against the fourth wall and contemplated his floor and bed and washstand and chairs and bottles and mirror and drinking glass and brown woodden pegs on the brown wooden strip on his blue walls. Who knew it was all so beautiful? I whacked off in his sheets.”
“This is what you want me to go back and tell her?” Paul Hartshine said.
Miller, feeling heat (who couldn’t detect a blush, who was effectively color-blind to the broad palette of the psychological hues in others), looked down in confusion. Was it possible Hartshine had guessed it was Kaska of whom he’d been thinking? Could he know that Miller (who wouldn’t have vouched for the sailorman’s romantic biases) had once considered him, and perhaps still did, a rival for the earth babe’s attentions?
“No,” Miller said. “Tell her, tell her I’ll be coming down to the night café for supper.”
And was as good as his word. (As was Rita as hers. Within moments of being seated — the night café reconfigured for the evening meal, the green baize-covered tables removed from along the walls and pushed together to make one grand table in the center of the room where the pool table stands in the painting, with what could have been the full company of all the Foundation’s Fellowship surrounding him on the vaguely ice-cream-parlorish chairs — Georges presented Miller with a whopping gorgeous great omelette, cunningly folded in and over itself like a man’s yellow pocket handkerchief. It was delicious.)