Once the canvas was delivered, he collapsed in a heap. He was weak, ill, delirious. It took Jet many days to nurse him back to health and sanity. His exhaustion was so complete that the very sight or smell of paint made him nauseated. Slowly, very slowly, his strength would return. In its wake would come his interest. He would begin to potter about the studio cleaning up things. He would walk in the fields, at first seeing nothing. In the end some scene would strike his eye. And so the cycle began all over again.
When Vincent had first come to The Hague, Mauve was just beginning the Scheveningen canvas. But now his pulse was rising day by day, and soon the mad, magnificent, most devastating of all deliriums would set in, that of artistic creation.
4
CHRISTINE KNOCKED AT Vincent’s door a few nights later. She was dressed in a black petticoat and dark blue camisole, with a black cap over her hair. She had been standing at the washtub all day. Her mouth usually hung a little open when she was extremely fatigued; the pock-marks seemed to be wider and deeper than he had remembered them.
“Hello, Vincent,” she said. “Thought I’d come see where you lived.”
“You’re the first woman to call on me, Christine. I bid you welcome. May I take your shawl?”
She sat down by the fire and warmed herself. After a moment she looked about the room.
“This ain’t bad,” she said. “ ’Cept that it’s empty.”
“I know. I haven’t any money for furniture.”
“Well, I guess it’s all you need.”
“I was just going to fix supper, Christine. Will you join me?”
“Why don’t you call me Sien? Everyone does.”
“All right, Sien.”
“What was you having for supper?”
“Potatoes and tea.”
“I made two francs today. I’ll go buy a little beef.”
“Here, I have money. My brother sent me some. How much do you want?”
“I guess fifty centimes is all we can eat.”
She returned in a few moments with a paper of meat. Vincent took it from her and attempted to prepare dinner.
“Here, you sit down. You don’t know nothing about cooking. I’m a woman.”
As she leaned over the stove, the heat sent a warm glow to her cheek. She looked rather pretty. It was so natural and homelike to see her cutting potatoes into a pot, putting the meat in with them to stew and simmer. Vincent leaned a chair against the wall and watched her, a feeling of warmth in his heart. It was his home, and here was a woman preparing dinner for him with loving hands. How often he had dreamed of this picture with Kay as his companion. Sien glanced about at him. She saw the chair leaning against the wall at a perilous angle.
“Here, you damn fool,” she said, “you sit up straight. Was you wanting to break your neck?”
Vincent grinned. Every woman with whom he had ever lived in the same house—his mother, sisters, aunts and cousins—every last one of them had said, “Vincent, sit up straight on that chair. You’ll break your neck.”
“All right, Sien,” he said. “I’ll be good.”
As soon as her back was turned, he leaned the chair against the wall again and smoked his pipe contentedly. Sien put the dinner on the table. She had bought two rolls while she was out; when they finished eating the beef and potatoes, they mopped up the gravy with their bread.
“There,” said Sien, “I bet you can’t cook like that.”
“No, Sien, when I cook, I can’t tell whether I’m eating fish, fowl, or the devil.”
Over their tea Sien smoked one of her black cigars. They chatted animatedly. Vincent felt more at home with her than he did with Mauve or De Bock. There was a certain fraternity between them that he did not pretend to understand. They spoke of simple things, without pretence or competition. When Vincent spoke, she listened; she was not eager for him to get through so that she could talk about herself. She had no ego that she wished to assert. Neither of them wished to impress the other. When Sien spoke of her own life, its hardships and miseries, Vincent had only to substitute a few words to make her stories describe perfectly his own. There was no challenge in their words, no affectation in their silences. It was the meeting of two souls unmasked, stripped of all class barrier artifice and distinction.
Vincent got up. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“The dishes.”
“Sit down. You don’t know how to do dishes. I’m a woman.”
He tipped his chair against the stove, filled his pipe, and puffed contentedly while she leaned over the basin. Her hands were good with the soap suds on them, the veins standing out, the intricate network of wrinkles speaking of the labour they had done. Vincent got pencil and paper and sketched them.
“It’s nice here,” she said when she finished the dishes. “If only we had some gin and bitters . . .”
They spent the evening sipping the bitters, while Vincent sketched Sien. She seemed content to rest quietly in a chair by the warm stove, hands in her lap. The glow of the heat and the pleasure of talking to someone who understood gave her vivacity and alertness.
“When do you finish with your washing?” he asked.
“Tomorrow. And a good thing. I couldn’t stand much more.”
“Have you been feeling badly?”
“No, but it’s coming, it’s coming. The goddam kid wiggles in me now and again.”
“Then you’ll begin posing for me next week?”
“Is this all I got to do, just sit?”
“That’s all. Sometimes you’ll have to stand or pose naked.”
“That ain’t so bad. You do all the work and I get paid.”
She looked out the window. It was snowing.
“Wish I was home,” she said. “It’s cold and I ain’t got nothing but my shawl. It’s a long walk.”
“Do you have to come back to this neighbourhood again tomorrow morning?”
“Six o’clock. It’s still dark then.”
“You can stay here if you like, Sien. I’d be glad to have company.”
“Won’t I be in your way?”
“Not a bit. It’s a wide bed.”
“Can two sleep there?”
“Easily.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
“Good.”
“It’s nice of you to ask me, Vincent.”
“It’s nice of you to stay.”
In the morning she fixed him coffee, made the bed, and swept out the studio. Then she left him to go to her tubs. The place seemed suddenly empty when she was gone.
5
TERSTEEG LOOKED IN again that afternoon. His eyes were bright and his cheeks red from the walk in the glowing cold.
“How does it go, Vincent?”
“Very well, Mijnheer Tersteeg. It is good of you to come again.”
“Perhaps you have something interesting to show me? That is what I came for.”
“Yes, I have some new things. Won’t you sit down?”
Tersteeg looked at the chair, reached for his kerchief to dust it off, and then decided it might not be good manners. He sat down. Vincent brought him three or four small water-colours. Tersteeg glanced at them all hurriedly, as though he were skimming a long letter, then went back to the first and studied it.
“You’re coming along,” he said after a time. “These aren’t right yet, they’re a bit crude, but you show progress. You should have something for me to buy very soon, Vincent.”
“Yes, Mijnheer.”
“You must think about earning your living, my boy. It is not right to live on another man’s money.”