There they are the next day, face-to-face in the yellow house studio that no one can describe; the walls themselves can tell us nothing, having been razed to the ground by American bombs falling from the pure cobalt in 1944. From the paintings, however, we know that the walls were white limestone, which is to say that van Gogh painted them whatever color suited him, and that the tiles underfoot were red, because he always painted them red. So it’s there that Roulin became a painting, matter less mortal than flesh, all in this shack that today is as invisible and well known as the Manhattan skyline; or perhaps it was in his house, the postman’s, today unknown, tucked away, and withdrawn within the only ineffable memory that the walls could hold, but that we know lay between the two railroad bridges, and so there it would be, had the American meteors not destroyed it too; in this house that lies between the two railroad bridges, vibrating, proletarian, smoky, or in the yellow house that looks out upon oleander bushes and plane trees, the house where he once again hoped as he hadn’t since Zundert, the house he privately referred to as the artists’ co-op, like a new Salon des Indépendants; he swept and bleached it clean, bustling about all summer, transforming crates into furniture, hanging paintings of sunflowers and Chinese ornaments to make it look nice, a small washbowl on the night table and a hand towel on the wall for washing up; there, once, raising his head to look at the studio, he stood weeping for joy, a sandwich in his hand; there, with his arms raised skyward, he welcomed Gauguin, worked with Gauguin, argued with Gauguin, and there, to finish things off, he came home drunk and alone on a night bereft of cicadas or a Messiah, December 24, cut off his ear as we know, and did with it what we know, finally falling into the remains of the washbowl and, oblivious, slept as outside slept the rosebays without roses, the black plane trees. In one of these two houses, one by one, he painted each of the members of this holy, proletariat family just like the Other, generous and long suffering; this holy family that offered him jams, wine, and the simple joys of family Sundays that chase death away, welcoming him with open arms, perhaps to piss off the neighbors, but more probably just because they loved him; in return, all of them appear on the little canvases now scattered throughout capitals of the globe far from Aries, given as examples to the living, not because of the preserves they offered long ago, but because of the painting. He painted Armand at seventeen, fighting with his father, wanting to join the army — he would rather have died than work for the post office like his father — preferring to do nothing with his life, wanting to embark gloriously down the great roads of the world that lead everywhere except Aries, wanting to leave; Armand Roulin, whose jaw was a bit effete, who had his father’s flat nose, and already in his eyes, at the temples, the same veil as his father, the one from absinthe and hopeless revolts; the young rebel also failed due to wind and circumstance, ending up much later in Tunisia as what van Gogh called an
officier de paix and while he was there realizing that the great roads go everywhere but Tunisia, living a bad dream, exploiting the Arabs and playing Russian roulette with the wind, dying there, and it wasn’t a dream, his portrait hanging in Rotterdam not marking the blow in any way, not a hair is out of place, and of course it didn’t fall off the wall on November 24, 1945; Armand-Joseph-Désiré, proud with no reason to be, but whom the redhead made look quite dignified and justifiably proud, as if smitten with etiquette and points of honor, with a white tie and a mimosa yellow jacket, sullen and ephebe like a general of the Empire, chic as a Manet, a baron from the Cafe d’Athènes, a son of Spain; van Gogh made him look quite dignified, but in van Gogh’s own way, which is to say both muddy and gleaming, rastacouere. He also painted the youngest child, poor Camille, who was but unsound dust in a schoolboy’s cap, enveloped in royal blue, bathing in the crimson of a wall; and in the crimson, muddy; and Augustine with little Marcelle in her arms, the bundle of dirty linen born in July, sprung from Roulin’s seed, whom he baptized without a priest, in his own way, as republicans do; and Augustine again, alone, a Roulin née Pellicot, whom van Gogh called cell qui berce, the one who cradles, massive, sentimental, as old as the roads, as if singing to herself in her isba on the outskirts of Aries for distant topmen, her clayey hands clasped in prayer, but her face neat and glowing against the Veronese dahlias, thousandfold blooms, the same celestial pasture as Abbacyr, her holy husband. And to the fanatic who painted them, Armand would talk about the great big world in which he would leave his mark when he left this jumping-off point, Augustine spoke of Armand and her worries about his future, Camille said nothing, and little Marcelle stood awkwardly braced against the future, clenching her little fists, crying. But it was the father he painted most often, in the ways I’ve described, with his attributes, the hat and the beard, the blue sleeves, his temple lightly brushed by drunkenness and the wing of the Republican angel, as if absent, but looming. And the father, who couldn’t keep still during the sessions, would come peer over Vincent’s shoulder, bursting into laughter or scowling, busy as a muzhik, but tiring, the father, very surprised, watching himself being painted by this red son fallen from the sky.