Gauguin gazed at the pictures for a long while. Several times he raised his hand, opened his mouth, and made as if to speak. He did not seem able to formulate his thoughts.
“Forgive me for asking, Vincent,” he said, finally, “but are you by any chance an epileptic?”
Vincent was just slipping into a sheepskin coat which, to Theo’s dismay, he had found in a second-hand store and insisted upon wearing. He turned about and stared at Gauguin.
“Am I a what?” he demanded.
“An epileptic. One of those fellows who has nervous fits?”
“Not that I know of, Gauguin. Why do you ask?”
“Well . . . these pictures of yours . . . they look as though they were going to burst right out of the canvas. When I look at your work . . . and this isn’t the first time it’s happened to me . . . I begin feeling a nervous excitement that I can hardly contain. I feel that if the picture doesn’t explode, I most certainly will! Do you know where your paintings affect me most?”
“No. Where?”
“In the bowels. My whole insides begin to tremble. I get feeling so excited and perturbed, I can hardly restrain myself.”
“Perhaps I could sell them as laxatives. You know, hang one in the lavatory and look at it at a certain hour every day?”
“Seriously speaking, Vincent, I don’t think I could live with your pictures. They’d drive me mad inside of a week.”
“Shall we go?”
They walked up the Rue Montmartre to the Boulevard Clichy.
“Have you had dinner?” asked Gauguin.
“No. Have you?”
“No. Shall we go up to Bataille’s?”
“Good idea. Got any money?”
“Not a centime. How about you?”
“I’m flat, as usual. I was waiting for Theo to take me out.”
“Zut! I guess we don’t eat.”
“Let’s go up and see what the plat du jour is, anyway.”
They took the Rue Lepic up the hill, then turned right on the Rue des Abbesses. Madame Bataille had an ink-scrawled menu tacked to one of her imitation potted trees in front.
“Uummm,” said Vincent, “côté de veau aux petits pois. My favourite dish.”
“I hate veal,” said Gauguin. “I’m glad we don’t have to eat.”
“Quelle blague!”
They wandered down the street and into the little triangular park at the foot of the Butte.
“Hello,” said Gauguin, “there’s Paul Cezanne, asleep on a bench. Why that idiot uses his shoes for a pillow is beyond me. Let’s wake him up.”
He pulled the belt out of his trousers, doubled it up, and gave the sleeping man a whack across the stockinged feet. Cezanne sprang off the bench with a yowl of pain.
“Gauguin, you infernal sadist! Is that your idea of a joke? I shall be forced to crack your skull one of these days.”
“Serves you right for leaving your feet exposed. Why do you put those filthy Provence boots under your head? I should think they’d be worse than no pillow at all.”
Cezanne rubbed the bottom of each foot in turn, then slipped on his boots, grumbling.
“I don’t use them for a pillow. I put them under my head so no one will steal them while I’m asleep.”
Gauguin turned to Vincent. “You’d think he was a starving artist the way he talks. His father owns a bank, and half of Aix-en-Provence. Paul, this is Vincent Van Gogh, Theo’s brother.”
Cezanne and Vincent shook hands.
“It’s too bad we didn’t find you a half hour ago, Cezanne,” said Gauguin. “You could have joined us for dinner. Bataille has the best côtê de veau aux petits pois I’ve ever tasted.”
“It was really good, was it?” asked Cezanne.
“Good? It was delicious! Wasn’t it, Vincent?”
“Certainly was.”
“Then I think I’ll go have some. Come and keep me company, will you?”
“I don’t know whether I could eat another portion. Could you, Vincent?”
“I hardly think so. Still, if Monsieur Cezanne insists . . .”
“Be a good fellow, Gauguin. You know I hate to eat alone. Take something else if you’ve had enough veal.”
“Well, just to oblige you. Come along, Vincent.”
They went back up the Rue des Abbesses to Bataille’s.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the waiter. “Have you chosen?”
“Yes,” replied Gauguin, “bring us three plats du jour.”
“Bien. And what wine?”
“You choose the wine, Cezanne. You know more about those things than I do.”
“Let’s see, there’s Sainte-Estephe, Bordeaux, Sauterne, Beaune . . .”
“Have you ever tried the Pommard?” interrupted Gauguin, guilelessly. “I often think it’s the best wine they have.”
“Bring us a bottle of Pommard,” said Cezanne to the waiter.
Gauguin bolted his veal and green peas in no time, then turned to Cezanne while the latter was still in the middle of his dinner.
“By the way, Paul,” he remarked. “I hear that Zola’s ‘L’Oeuvre’ is selling by the thousands.”
Cezanne shot him a black, bitter look, and shoved his dinner away with distaste. He turned to Vincent.
“Have you read that book, Monsieur?”
“Not yet. I just finished ‘Germinal.’”
“‘L’Oeuvre’ is a bad book,” said Cezanne, “and a false one. Besides, it is the worst piece of treachery that has ever been committed in the name of friendship. The book is about a painter, Monsieur Van Gogh. About me! Emile Zola is my oldest friend. We were raised together in Aix. We went to school together. I came to Paris only because he was here. We were closer than brothers, Emile and I. All during our youth we planned how, side by side, we would become great artists. And now he does this to me.”
“What has he done to you?” asked Vincent.
“Ridiculed me. Mocked me. Made me a laughing stock to all Paris. Day after day I told him about my theories of light, my theories of representing solids under surface appearances, my ideas of a revolutionary palette. He listened to me, he encouraged me, he drew me out. And all the time he was only gathering material for his book, to show what a fool I was.”
He drained his wine glass, turned back to Vincent and continued, his small, sour eyes smouldering with passionate hatred.
“Zola has combined three of us in that book, Monsieur Van Gogh; myself, Bazille, and a poor, wretched lad who used to sweep out Manet’s studio. The boy had artistic ambitions, but finally hanged himself in despair. Zola paints me as a visionary, another misguided wretch who thinks he is revolutionizing art, but who doesn’t paint in the conventional manner simply because he hasn’t enough talent to paint at all. He makes me hang myself from the scaffolding of my masterpiece, because in the end I realize that what I mistook for genius was only insane daubing. Up against me he puts another artist from Aix, a sentimental sculptor who turns out the most hackneyed, academic trash, and makes him a great artist.”
“That’s really amusing,” said Gauguin, “when you remember that Zola was the first to champion Edouard Manet’s revolution in painting. Emile has done more for Impressionist painting than any man alive.”
“Yes, he worshipped Manet because Edouard overthrew the academicians. But when I try to go beyond the Impressionists, he calls me a fool and an idiot. As for Emile, he is a mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend. I had to stop going to his house long ago. He lives like a damned bourgeois. Rich rugs on the floor, vases on the mantelpiece, servants, a desk of carved and sculptured wood for him to write his masterpieces. Phew! He’s more middle class than Manet ever dared to be. They were brother bourgeois under the skin, those two; that’s why they got along so well together. Just because I come from the same town as Emile, and he knew me as a child, he thinks I can’t possibly do any important work.”