“Anton isn’t at home,” she said. “He’s frightfully angry at you. He said he doesn’t ever want to see you again. Oh, Vincent, I’m so unhappy that this has happened!”
Vincent put the plaster foot in her hand. “Please give this to Anton,” he said, “and tell him that I am deeply sorry.”
He turned away and was about to go down the steps when Jet put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
“The Scheveningen canvas is finished. Would you care to see it?”
He stood in silence before Mauve’s painting, a large picture of a fishing smack being drawn up on the beach by horses. He knew that he was looking at a masterpiece. The horses were nags, poor, ill-treated old nags, black, white and brown; they were standing there, patient and submissive, willing, resigned and quiet. They still had to draw the heavy boat up the last bit of the way; the job was almost finished. They were panting, covered with sweat, but they did not complain. They had got over that long ago, years and years ago. They were resigned to live and work somewhat longer, but if tomorrow they had to go to the skinner, well, be it so, they were ready.
Vincent found a deep, practical philosophy in the picture. It said to him, “Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre, ça c’est la seule chose partique, c’est la grande science, la leçon à apprendre, la solution du problème de la vie.”
He walked away from the house, refreshed and ironically amused that the man who struck him the very worst of all blows should be the one to teach him how to bear it with resignation.
8
CHRISTINE’S OPERATION WAS successful, but it had to be paid for. Vincent sent off the twelve water-colours to his Uncle Cor and waited for the thirty francs payment. He waited many, many days; Uncle Cor sent the money at his leisure. Since the doctor at Leyden was the same one who was going to deliver Christine, they wished to keep in his good graces. Vincent sent off his last twenty francs many days before the first. The same old story began all over again. First coffee and black bread, then just black bread, then plain water, then fever, exhaustion, and delirium. Christine was eating at home, but there was nothing left over to bring to Vincent. When he reached the end of his rope, he crawled out of bed and floated somehow or other through a burning fog to Weissenbruch’s studio.
Weissenbruch had plenty of money but he believed in living austerely. His atelier was four flights up, with a huge skylight on the north. There was nothing in the workshop to distract the man; no books, no magazines, no sofa or comfortable chair, no sketches on the walls, no window to look out of, nothing but the bare implements of his trade. There was not even an extra stool for a guest to sit down; that kept people away.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he growled, without putting down his brush. He did not mind interrupting people in their own studios, but he was about as hospitable as a trapped lion when anyone bothered him.
Vincent explained what he had come for.
“Oh, no, my boy!” exclaimed Weissenbruch. “You’ve come to the wrong person, the very last man in the world. I wouldn’t lend you a ten centime piece.”
“Can’t you spare the money?”
“Certainly I can spare it! Do you think I’m a goddam amateur like you and can’t sell anything? I’ve got more money in the bank right now than I can spend in three lifetimes.”
“Then why won’t you lend me twenty-five francs? I’m desperate! I haven’t even a crumb of stale bread in the house.”
Weissenbruch rubbed his hands in glee. “Fine! Fine! That’s exactly what you need! That’s wonderful for you. You may be a painter yet.”
Vincent leaned against the bare wall; he did not have the strength to stand up without support. “What is there so wonderful about going hungry?”
“It’s the best thing in the world for you, Van Gogh. It will make you suffer.”
“Why are you so interested in seeing me suffer?”
Weissenbruch sat on the lone stool, crossed his legs, and pointed a red-tipped brush at Vincent’s jaw.
“Because it will make a real artist of you. The more you suffer, the more grateful you ought to be. That’s the stuff out of which first-rate painters are made. An empty stomach is better than a full one, Van Gogh, and a broken heart is better than happiness, never forget that!”
“That’s a lot of rot, Weissenbruch, and you know it.”
Weissenbruch made little stabs in Vincent’s direction with his brush. “The man who has never been miserable has nothing to paint about, Van Gogh. Happiness is bovine; it’s only good for cows and tradesmen. Artists thrive on pain; if you’re hungry, discouraged and wretched, be grateful. God is being good to you!”
“Poverty destroys.”
“Yes, it destroys the weak. But not the strong! If poverty can destroy you, then you’re a weakling and ought to go down.”
“And you wouldn’t raise a finger to help me?”
“Not even if I thought you the greatest painter of all time. If hunger and pain can kill a man, then he’s not worth saving. The only artists who belong on this earth are the men whom neither God nor the devil can kill until they’ve said everything they want to say.”
“But I’ve gone hungry for years, Weissenbruch. I’ve gone without a roof over my head, walking in the rain and snow with hardly anything on, ill and feverish and abandoned. I have nothing more to learn from that sort of thing.”
“You haven’t scratched the surface of suffering yet. You’re just a beginner. I tell you, pain is the only infinite thing in this world. Now run on home and pick up your pencil. The hungrier and more miserable you get, the better you will work.”
“And the quicker I’ll have my drawings rejected.”
Weissenbruch laughed heartily. “Of course they’ll be rejected! They ought to be. That’s good for you, too. It will make you even more miserable. Then your next canvas will be better than the one before. If you starve and suffer and have your work abused and neglected for a sufficient number of years, you may eventually—notice I say you may, not you will—you may eventually turn out one painting that will be fit to hang alongside of Jan Steen or . . .”
“. . . or Weissenbruch!”
“Just so. Or Weissenbruch. If I gave you any money now I would be robbing you of your chances for immortality.”
“To hell with immortality! I want to draw here and now. And I can’t do that on an empty stomach.”
“Nonsense, my boy. Everything of value that has been painted has been done on an empty stomach. When your intestines are full, you create at the wrong end.”
“It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve heard you suffering so much.”
“I have creative imagination. I can understand pain without going through it.”
“You old fraud!”
“Not at all. If I had seen that my work was insipid, like De Bock’s, I would have thrown my money away and lived like a tramp. It just so happens that I can create the perfect illusion of pain without a perfect memory of it. That’s why I’m a great artist.”
“That’s why you’re a great humbug. Come along, Weissenbruch, be a good fellow and lend me twenty-five francs.”
“Not even twenty-five centimes! I tell you, I’m sincere. I think too highly of you to weaken your fabric by lending you money. You will do brilliant work some day, Vincent, providing you carve out your own destiny; the plaster foot in Mauve’s dustbin convinced me of that. Now run along, and stop at the soup kitchen for a bowl of free broth.”
Vincent stared at Weissenbruch for a moment, turned and opened the door.