They offer him something to drink. There they are, all three of them seated around the table upon which rest a silk tophat and some muddy leeks, and in two out of three glasses there’s the oblational chrome yellow number three that loosens the tongue. They’re all talking, because this distinguished young man is quite chatty in his own way, like his hosts. He has just come from Aries, where he found their address, where he saw everyone, Marie Ginoux and Doctor Rey, but not the Zouave; he didn’t know that the Zouave and van Gogh had been friends, moreover he might be in Tonkin, the poor guy, or at the bottom of the Yangtze, in the dead gunboats; he had been to Saint-Rémy as well, and before that to Auvers; he has seen the final room in which he knows that a pipe was smoked right up until death; he tells them this; later, he’ll go to Zundert; and so here he is in Marseille: a sort of pilgrimage, in short. No, he’s not related to Vincent; it’s because Vincent, he tells them, is on his way to becoming a very great painter, now. Their faces light up, they talk about this for a long while. And Monsieur Paul? Monsieur Paul as well, but who knows where he is, somewhere in a Polynesia more distant than even Tonkin, he doesn’t know he’s becoming a great painter. He’s in the Colonies, like Armand. The kitchen is full of shadow, not that it’s night yet, it’s the season of light, but the last of the sun is stopped by the great mass of la Vieille Charité, the old general hospital now serving as a barracks, right across the way. The postman has said nothing for a few moments; the beaux arts are a complicated and unexpected business, he’s known this for quite some time; he is profoundly happy, he can keep quiet; a trumpet sounds from somewhere within la Vieille Charité; the talking bird rustles within his cage, uneasy, speaking a few halves of incomprehensible human words; in Aries, no doubt, Ginoux is lighting gas lamps in his café, Marie Ginoux descending into the main room, slowly, heavily made-up, and there below she reigns, older and more beautiful, her shawl as black as the cowboys who move off through the countryside, great fields the reaper has departed; within the diligence from Tarascón, moving too fast — and how late it is tonight, it will crush someone, it won’t even stop — behind its drawn curtains, undisturbed by all the bumps, not noticing the three-franc girls at the end of rue des Récollettes, not looking at the yellow house on place Lamartine, not looking at anything between the two railroad bridges, not looking at the olive trees, not the cypresses, not looking at the little rural passersby who scatter in shock, not the risen moon, nor the postal truck tearing across pont Langlois, making it tremble — looking straight into the blackness behind the drawn curtains, the dead boyar, the czar, passes. Just as chez Ginoux, Mother Roulin lights a gas lamp, an old lantern she sets up on the table. Joseph’s beard is broad and full, Assyrian, as before, but whiter, with a yellow still noticeable in the mustache from all the tobacco and hooch. He smiles softly; he says, “So, you too, it’s painting.” The other looks at him for a moment, with great sympathy and amusement; he hesitates a little; finally he says yes, him too. He puts on his hat, he has a ring, a rich stone that you notice more in lamplight than by day; he doesn’t want to stay for dinner. Yes, he’ll be back.
We let this young man move off. He takes big strides back down toward the dock where he has left car and driver, the country roads too narrow; the wind has picked up, so he holds his hat to his head; of course, he passes topmen and oyster girls who are now heading home; the smell of the sea is strong, all these things fill up his heart, his joy knows no bounds; he jumps into the carriage, break or trap, and just as quickly they leave: he couldn’t stay for dinner, in fact; his time is limited, he wants to get to Aix tonight, and why not? There’s another painter to see tomorrow, another rising myth, but this time someone very much alive, someone not devoted to the ascendant yellow note, or to the Browning; this one’s tougher, has played his cards right while waiting for his hour to come. He’ll have to play this hand tight. No matter. The carriage runs through the countryside, beneath the moon, and from behind the drawn curtains he looks out into the darkness before him where very clearly he imagines fabulous exhibitions for the fall, sales in New York, and a total upending in the prices of these painted things, something of which he has been one of the artisans, and not the least of them. He also sees the postman, the sultan and drunkard who recently appeared in some Parisian collections, and the other, the Saint Nepomucen or Chrysostom flanked by his talking bird, by his chromo of Blanqui. He will have this painting. He lifts a corner of the curtain, we’re near Gardanne, the moon turns: and as the blackness returns, he suddenly sees Joseph Roulin with his leeks, his white beard, his ardor. He thinks about this all the way to Aix.
Roulin can’t sleep either. The lantern is burning on the table. Augustine is sleeping, the myna bird too: you see only the little violent crest, yellow, an insubstantial mass balled up like a black fist. So this had been a great painter: someone whose paintings should be seen by everyone because, strangely enough, as opaque as they seem, they make things clearer, more easily understood; someone who could have been rich in the end, because these trifles command exorbitant prices. And, of course, Roulin asks himself who had decided that he was a great painter, because that didn’t seem to have been decided back in Aries, and how had this transformation occurred? He looks at his framed portrait; the lantern softens the colors slightly, but you clearly see the fat dahlias and the large face that was his own. He has both his arms before him on the table; his sleeves are striped as though one had to be disguised as a marshal to lug around the mail. He looks without moving. You hear nothing outside. Vincent is sitting next to him, and he would see him were he just to glance over, but for what? He’s wearing a panama and white gloves, is chic as a Manet; he is extremely calm, rejuvenated, his beard well trimmed; he’s finally found the means to replace his missing teeth; and his ear — has it grown back? — or more likely it’s one of those bits of flesh more real than even the flesh made in America, cardboard or painted leather; he no longer has that haughty look, the tyrannical mouth; the rage has fallen away, he’s relaxed and peaceful; a few certainties make him happy, and he still paints along this certain path, and better, more slowly, more magnificently, in a great airy studio, in Paris, in a good neighborhood; and if you went to see him, there would be a lovely woman who would have you come in and sit down, more beautiful than Marie Ginoux and younger, but regal as well, and she would tell you amiably that Vincent is working, best to wait a little; she offers you newspapers, a drink. You wait; you’re happy that things have turned out so well, that the catastrophic labor that had been ravaging who-knows-what on the outskirts of Aries had been forgotten, the labor thrown to the wind, wicked as lightning, that had left Vincent standing dazed before a painting where nothing appeared but a field painted in Greek. It would appear that it’s no longer Greek to everyone. Roulin has taken off his hat, there’s nobody there to see that he is bald, and anyway, for the moment he doesn’t care: for once, the prince isn’t frolicking on the outskirts, he is wholly within him; he doesn’t rebel against this, he doesn’t pretend to be Roulin; he is happy to be this Joseph Roulin who has seen a miracle, the transformation of Vincent into a great painter; and without a doubt he’ll see the Grand Soir as well, that’s a piece of cake, all kidding aside. Will he turn toward Vincent? No, they have nothing to say. Calmly, they look at this portrait painted long ago; and Roulin finds it almost beautiful, after all. The dahlias are blooming. From the enormous mass of la Vieille Charité, a peremptory note from a little trumpet is blown; it’s already the reveille, perhaps. Without looking at the chair next to him, Roulin extinguishes the lantern. The flustered myna bird stirs as though speaking a name from within a dream. The old man is going to bed.