Vincent took the wagon road to the Place Lamartine, grabbed up his easel, paints, and canvas and struck out along the Rhône. Almond trees were beginning to flower everywhere. The glistening white glare of the sun on the water sent stabs of pain into his eyes. He had left his hat in the hotel. The sun burned through the red of his hair, sucked out all the cold of Paris, all the fatigue, discouragement, and satiety with which city life had glutted his soul.
A kilometre down the river he found a drawbridge with a little cart going over it, outlined against a blue sky. The river was as blue as a well, the banks orange, coloured with green grass. A group of washerwomen in smocks and many-coloured caps were pounding dirty clothes in the shade of a lone tree.
Vincent set up his easel, drew a long breath, and shut his eyes. No man could catch such colourings with his eyes open. There fell away from him Seurat’s talk about scientific pointillism, Gauguin’s harangues about primitive decorativeness, Cezanne’s appearances beneath solid surfaces, Lautrec’s lines of colour and lines of splenetic hatred.
There remained only Vincent.
He returned to his hotel about dinner time. He sat down at a little table in the bar and ordered an absinthe. He was too excited, too utterly replete to think of food. A man sitting at a nearby table observed the paint splashed all over Vincent’s hands, face, and clothing, and fell into conversation with him.
“I’m a Parisian journalist,” he said. “I’ve been down here for three months gathering material for a book on the Provençal language.”
“I just arrived from Paris this morning,” said Vincent.
“So I noticed. Intend to stay long?”
“Yes. I imagine so.”
“Well, take my advice and don’t. Arles is the most violently insane spot on the globe.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it. I know it. I’ve been watching these people for three months, and I tell you, they’re all cracked. Just look at them. Watch their eyes. There’s not a normal, rational person in this whole Tarascon vicinity!”
“That’s a curious thing to say,” observed Vincent.
“Within a week you’ll be agreeing with me. The country around Arles is the most torn, desperately lashed section in Provence. You’ve been out in that sun. Can’t you imagine what it must do to these people who are subject to its blinding light day after day? I tell you, it burns the brains right out of their heads. And the mistral. You haven’t felt the mistral yet? Oh, dear, wait until you do. It whips this town into a frenzy two hundred days out of every year. If you try to walk the streets, it smashes you against the buildings. If you are out in the fields, it knocks you down and grinds you into the dirt. It twists your insides until you think you can’t bear it another minute. I’ve seen that infernal wind tear out windows, pull up trees, knock down fences, lash the men and animals in the fields until I thought they would surely fly in pieces. I’ve been here only three months, and I’m going a little fou myself. I’m getting out tomorrow morning!”
“Surely you must be exaggerating?” asked Vincent. “The Arlesians looked all right to me, what little I saw of them today.”
“What little you saw of them is right. Wait until you get to know them. Listen, do you know what my private opinion is?”
“No, what? Will you join me in an absinthe?”
“Thanks. In my private opinion, Arles is epileptic. It whips itself up to such an intense pitch of nervous excitement that you are positive it will burst into a violent fit and foam at the mouth.”
“And does it?”
“No. That’s the curious part. This country is forever reaching a climax, and never having one. I’ve been waiting for three months to see a revolution, or a volcano erupt from the Place de la Mairie. A dozen times I thought the inhabitants would all suddenly go mad and cut each other’s throats! But just when they get to a point where an explosion is imminent, the mistral dies down for a couple of days and the sun goes behind the clouds.”
“Well,” laughed Vincent, “if Arles never reached a climax, you can’t very well call it epileptic, now can you?”
“No,” replied the journalist, “but I can call it epileptoidal.”
“What the devil is that?”
“I’m doing an article on the subject for my paper in Paris. It was this German article that gave me the idea.”
He pulled a magazine out of his pocket and shoved it across the table to Vincent.
“These doctors have made a study of the cases of several hundred men who suffered from nervous maladies which looked like epilepsy, but which never resulted in fits. You’ll see by these charts how they have mapped the rising curve of nervousness and excitement; what the doctors call volatile tension. Well, in every last one of these cases the subjects have gone along with increasing fever until they reached the age of thirty-five to thirty-eight. At the average age of thirty-six they burst into a violent epileptic fit. After that it’s a case of a half dozen more spasms and, within a year or two, good-bye.”
“That’s much too young to die,” said Vincent. “A man is only beginning to get command of himself by that time.”
The journalist put the magazine back in his pocket.
“Are you going to stop at this hotel for some time?” he asked. “My article is almost finished; I’ll mail you a copy as soon as it’s published. My point is this: Arles is an epileptoidal city. It’s pulse has been mounting for centuries. It’s approaching its first crisis. It’s bound to happen. And soon. When it does, we’re going to witness a frightful catastrophe. Murder, arson, rape, wholesale destruction! This country can’t go on forever in a whipped, tortured state. Something must and will happen. I’m getting out before the people start foaming at the mouth! I advise you to come along!”
“Thanks,” said Vincent, “I like it here. I think I’ll turn in now. Will I see you in the morning? No? Then good luck to you. And don’t forget to send me a copy of the article.”
2
EVERY MORNING VINCENT arose before dawn, dressed, and tramped several kilometres down the river or into the country to find a spot that stirred him. Every night he returned with a finished canvas, finished because there was nothing more he could do with it. Directly after supper he went to sleep.
He became a blind painting machine, dashing off one sizzling canvas after another without even knowing what he did. The orchards of the country were in bloom. He developed a wild passion to paint them all. He no longer thought about his painting. He just painted. All his eight years of intense labour were at last expressing themselves in a great burst of triumphal energy. Sometimes, when he began working at the first crack of dawn, the canvas would be completed by noon. He would tramp back to town, drink a cup of coffee and trudge out again in another direction with a new canvas.
He did not know whether his painting was good or bad. He did not care. He was drunk with colour.
No one spoke to him. He spoke to no one. What little strength he had left from his painting, he spent in fighting the mistral. Three days out of every week he had to fasten his easel to pegs driven into the ground. The easel waved back and forth in the wind like a sheet on a clothes line. By night he felt as buffeted and bruised as though he had been given a severe beating.