The Season of Migration

by Nellie Hermann

  “It’s my wife,” Pieterszen said from behind Vincent, answering the question he had not asked.

  Vincent smiled. “I was just about to ask.”

  “I can’t get it quite right. I’m beginning to think it’s because I’m too close to her; perhaps I will never be satisfied with her portrait. I paint her, and the image is accurate, but there is something missing.”

  Vincent stood back from the wall and looked at the studies of Pieterszen’s wife. There were three of them, and they were very much the same. In each of them she wore an expression so blank that it was as if her face erased itself; you would be looking at her and already forgetting that you were doing so. It was as if she were a representation of the human race rather than a member of it.

  Technically, however, the paintings were nearly expert, just as his landscapes were. If Vincent had not just sat at table with his wife, he would not have found anything to be missing in the painting, but would only have wondered at the represented woman’s vapidity. He wondered of Pieterszen’s work just what he wondered of his hero, Schelfhout: Could perfection be a flaw?

  Pieterszen was clearly a serious artist. Vincent knew he was in the presence of someone who understood the world of pictures. This was why he had come.

  “Reverend,” he said, “would you take a look at the drawings I brought with me?”

  Pieterszen looked surprised. “I’d be honored,” he said.

  Vincent brought them to him. That little package that he had lugged all that way, so meager in his hands as he laid it in Pieterszen’s. Why had he brought it? What strange impulse had made him tuck it under his arm and come here? He needed to show them to someone, to show someone what he had seen, what he had been through.

  Pieterszen opened the little package and looked through the drawings very slowly, taking time to examine each one. Vincent stood over him and watched the drawings pass through his hands, reliving them in his eyes: the men leaving the mine; the wives bending under their sacks of coal; the landscape in winter, with its black trees over white snow and the gray slag heap looming; the studies of Angeline’s father, of Madame Denis, of Angeline herself. Angeline! Hair pulled back, cross-legged beside the lantern, little smile, frenzied outline, head just a bit too big; looking at it, he felt his whole body tremble, hearing the sacred silence of that night in his hut, and seeing her body now crushed somewhere underground.

  Pieterszen didn’t speak until he had looked through them all. Then he lifted his head, to find Vincent anxiously hovering. “Well, Vincent,” he said, “I can see that these drawings have been born out of deep love. I can see that you have a keen eye, and a respect for representing what you see with absolute honesty.”

  Vincent sat in the chair opposite him. “Thank you,” he said, barely able to get the words out.

  “I wonder if you’ve had any training?”

  For a moment, Vincent thought he meant in evangelism, and he felt a flash of rage. But this was not what Pieterszen meant. “In drawing?” Vincent shook his head. “No.”

  He nodded. “I thought not. Your perspective is amateur, and there’s a rawness to your figures that needs work.”

  Vincent nodded. There was no question about this. They were crude, shoddy studies, barely anything more than scribbles.

  “But I do see something in these drawings, Vincent,” Pieterszen said. He rose from his chair, leaving all the drawings on the seat but one, which he brought with him to prop against the wall, near the studies of his wife. It was the drawing of Angeline.

  “I don’t really understand it,” he said, standing back from the drawing. “Somehow you’ve captured something in this drawing that I haven’t been able to capture in so many attempts at painting my wife! Your technique is crude, and you’ve drawn this woman, I’m sure, nothing like what she actually looks like. Yet there is something here, something I can’t quite identify. I feel like I understand something about this woman.” He was talking at the wall, as if he were addressing the drawing itself. He paused. “I can’t figure it out,” he said.

  Vincent remained silent. The idea that he might have succeeded in capturing anything at all of Angeline before she left the earth stole his speech.

  “Well,” Pieterszen said, still addressing the wall, “it’s character, I suppose. Your drawing lacks precision, but it has personality. My painting presents a perfect picture, but I’ve removed all the individuality.”

  He took the drawing off the wall and came back to his chair. He was smiling. “I daresay I could learn a thing or two from you, Vincent my boy.”

  Just before Vincent left the house the next morning, Pieterszen handed back his drawings, but he kept the one of Angeline in his hands. “Might I keep this one, Vincent?” he asked. “I’d like to study it.”

  He thinks of this now, remembers the elation he felt when he left Pieterszen’s house, wearing the boots that the reverend had given him, the ones still on his feet now, worn-out and torn; that feeling of hope, crushed so soon after by Theo’s visit and the awful visit to their parents’ house. Now he feels a sudden burst of clarity: the scene in front of him is a palette of browns and a swath of golden yellow; it is Rembrandt’s The Holy Family in the Evening, the golden light illuminating the travelers, the lonely men at their meals just as holy as the painted family beneath the window lit by the sun. It strikes him with force, the scene in front of him taking on a sudden and definite holiness; he looks around him with pleasure and awe. The room begins to sparkle, to tingle and glow. He sits there on his stool with his coffee and feels a surge of love: for the men before him, for the quiet bartender behind the bar, for the room itself, the supreme pleasure of being there. This is God, he thinks, right here. This is life; this is my life. I am witness.

  He takes out his paper and sketches each of the men, sitting at their tables, clutching their forks and spoons, the cat on the pool table, and then a still life, the items in front of him on the wooden bar: mug, beer tap, bartender’s rag. The drawings are composed simply, the subject at the center of the page, each one a simple rendering of what he sees, and he is pleased with them. When his mug is empty, he allows the bartender to refill it, nodding at him as he does so. There are no words in this pub, he thinks. This is a sacred, wordless place.

  * * *

  He has the address written on a torn piece of paper that is folded into four squares and resides in his pocket. This address, just a few words and a couple of numbers, represents where his brother has been all this time. Vincent has it memorized by now, having stared at it for many long hours in his room in the Borinage, trying to imagine the place it represented, trying to imagine his brother’s life without him.

  Before he leaves the pub, he asks the bartender how to get to his brother’s house. The bartender tells him; it is still an hour or so from where he is now, but he is grateful to have a little more time to himself.

  He steps out of the pub into the afternoon sunshine. He feels a far more coherent man than he had when he arrived just an hour or two before; it is as if his outlines have been restored, his body once again visible and in human form. The coffee has given him some energy, and he feels a renewed vigor in his legs, which still ache but are no longer crying out in pain. In his excitement inside the bar he forgot to tend to his feet; they will carry him nonetheless.

  He walks. He walks past vegetable stands and boys with newspapers and little girls selling flowers out of large baskets, past crowds of people at outdoor cafés, past parks and along the river, where thin boats float gracefully and women with white gloves and hats tied under their chins with ribbons laugh with their heads thrown back. It has turned into a beautiful day, and all of Paris is outside to enjoy it.

  He passes by a gallery: in the window, unknown landscapes, seascapes, women in bathing dresses by rolling waves, a dog playing in the surf. Pieterszen would like these paintings, he thinks. Would Theo?

  He thinks of the letters in his knapsack: Will they make a difference to Theo? Will they explain anything to h
im? He remembers Theo’s visit so vividly; he remembers how his mouth clamped shut over his words, how he could not answer Theo through his cloud of fury. You are not the same any longer. He hears the phrase again and he feels his face flush.

  What will Theo say when he arrives at his door? What will he see, about everything, that Vincent cannot see? He tries to think as Theo might: If their places were reversed, would he feel a failure?

  But Theo, Vincent thinks, would never have gotten to where he is. Theo is too composed, too sure of himself, too much of the world in a way he will never be. Vincent travels toward him, not exactly sure why, drawn toward his brother as if toward a sun.

  * * *

  From down the street, though he has never been there before, Vincent knows which door is his brother’s. At the far end of the block of row houses there is one with a blue door. His heart beating fast, a lump in his throat, his face flushed red, he approaches slowly, and sure enough, under the third doorbell is a brass plate that reads T. VAN GOGH.

  Theo, at the Rijswijk mill, milk dripping down his chin. Theo, standing before the train in his top hat. Theo, at the family table on Christmas Eve, his hand over his face as he laughs at something forbidden that Vincent has said, his eyes twinkling with mirth. Theo, in their bed in Zundert, their knobby knees lined up, their feet one after the other, Theo’s smaller and more dainty, Vincent’s like ugly flesh-colored frogs. At night, when Vincent woke up frightened, some ungraspable nightmare at the edges of his mind, the darkness in their room complete and total, the sound of Theo sleeping would calm him and return him to the earth. His body was there to grasp onto if he needed it.

  He stands on the doorstep, his hand poised in front of the bell. He pictures Theo opening the door, his hair slicked back, a cigarette holder in his teeth, his top hat, shining and polished, obscuring his face. A man in a suit with his brother’s face, the face of the boy on the pillow next to his.

  Baby Vincent, hovering nearby, says, Don’t worry. No matter what, I’ll be your brother forever.

  He presses the bell.

  He waits.

  * * *

  There is no answer.

  He stands at the door for what seems like an age, presses the bell again, looks out over the street. Theo does not arrive. The brass plate screams, T. VAN GOGH, but his brother is not there.

  His heart slowing, he trudges across the street and sits on the stoop of a different building, watching Theo’s door. Of course this was a possibility, but he never considered it. Where is Theo? Here Vincent is at his door and still he is not here. A sinking feeling begins in his bones; he really has lost his brother forever. The gap between them is too great; there is no amount of walking, no number of letters that can bridge the distance. He has come here in vain, a fruitless search, just like all the rest. His brother does not need him, so he must not need his brother.

  But then, what of the money that Theo has given him? He puts his hand into his jacket pocket and fingers the envelope with the money in it. A strange gesture, to be sure, giving Vincent money just after that terrible visit, and through his parents’ hands. Theo had never given him money before. If it were truly a gesture of support, he thinks, Theo would have enclosed some word, some acknowledgment, some direction as to how the gift was meant. Without that, he cannot see it as apology, or even necessarily as support. Probably he just didn’t want their parents to have to dish out any more of their own funds, that’s all. Perhaps he instructed their parents not to tell Vincent whom it was from, and they disobeyed.

  Still, the money is here. He touches it; it is real. And if Theo wanted no more connection with his brother, he would not have given him something he can touch.

  A man in a dark suit and a top hat hurries by, and for a moment Vincent’s heart leaps, but it is not Theo. Just a man hurrying back to his office, Vincent imagines, after a comfortable lunch at home. With this thought, he realizes—of course! Theo isn’t at home because he is at Goupil’s. How could he not have thought of this?

  For a long time he sits there, thinking of what to do. If he waits here, eventually Theo will come back, and he can save himself having to walk the mile or so to Goupil’s. He doesn’t want to see the people who work with Theo, Vincent’s old boss and his old colleagues, who will no doubt look him over with contempt and think him mad, think him strange, think he has failed at one more thing, and think they were right to dismiss him those years ago. They will give him those looks. He can see their faces now, their eyes roaming over him, their smiles set and made of bitter glass.

  The thought of this makes him restless; he gets up and strolls quickly to the end of the street. On the corner there is a café, a line of outdoor tables nestled under an awning. A few well-dressed people sit with coffees and newspapers. Crossed legs, creased trousers, brown leather shoe dangling, hand tapping tablecloth: He takes in the details as his glance sweeps over the street. Across from the café is a cigar store. He can see a few men inside with dark hats; a stream of smoke trickles out the door. He crosses the street and looks in. He is often able to think better with a pipe; it helps him with his spirits, helps him to concentrate. He peers in the store window, trying to make out the dark shapes moving inside. Two men come out of the store, wearing bowler hats and smoking cigars, and glance at him with contempt: another street person with his dirty hands against the window, hungry for a smoke but unable to pay.

  He turns from the window and a woman is there, holding an open box with a display of golden apples neatly nestled in rows. A thick strap attached to the sides of the box is around her neck, and she wears a long dress with a lace trim in a worn and faded purple. Vincent looks from the apples—so burnished and still!—to the woman’s face. She has large, dark eyebrows and a mouth painted red, but when she smiles, her teeth are brown and crooked. “Apple?” she says to him.

  He stammers, embarrassed. “I don’t have any money,” he says. She nods and begins to turn away. “But I could pay you with a drawing, if you might accept that,” he finds himself saying. “I could do your portrait?”

  She turns back to him, smiling again. “I don’t think my boss would appreciate that,” she says.

  He nods. “Of course. It was a silly idea.”

  Still she stands in front of him. “You are an artist, then,” she says, “are you?”

  He lowers his eyes, suddenly embarrassed. “I…” he stammers. “No, I just … I don’t know…” He wishes to flee, but his feet are rooted. “Never mind,” he says. “Thank you.”

  He turns and hustles away from her, turning the corner back toward Theo’s door, feeling her eyes on him. When he is out of her sight, he stops and stands on the sidewalk, breathing quickly, his heart suddenly pounding.

  He does not move, simply stands there. The world moves around him: men in hats, women in dresses, a boy in short pants chasing a tiny dog with huge ears. Clouds, above him, roll across the sky; he looks up, and it is as if the buildings are swirling, as if even the buildings are moving around him as he stands still. He closes his eyes, and the sounds come at him: the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves, the click-click of a woman’s shoes, a snip of conversation—“Yes, she told me she was going to do it right away”—a birdcall, a bell, the sound of a distant train. When he opens his eyes, the blue of the sky, the reddish brick of the buildings, the yellow of a woman’s skirt are painfully bright; it seems as if all the colors on the street have sharpened and are converging before him. Everything is piercing and prickly, everything burnished as if it has been polished; there are too many colors, too much movement, too much to take in. It is all too much, suddenly, and he cowers, shielding his eyes.

  He moves with effort back to the stoop opposite Theo’s door, keeping his eyes cast down. He sinks down as if into a cave. The space feels safe, the stairs and the doorway protecting him from the street; he sits with his eyes closed, breathing, and tells himself he can sit there as long as he likes. With his eyes closed, he still sees the street, its colors bright and burning, and he s
ees himself standing in it, a figure in dark, colorless clothes, a ragged shape cut from reality and inserted into a painting. In the shaded cool of the doorway, his heart slowing, he examines the image he sees behind his eyes, and it changes slowly, so the figure that is himself takes on form, and color, and slowly blends, the street becoming the background of the portrait of the man.

  He opens his eyes. Across the street, next door to Theo’s house, a woman washes a window, her hair covered in a white bonnet; above her, in a building next door, a different woman holds a rug out the window and beats it with a rolling pin. Puffs of dust rise from the rug; the woman keeps right on, the dust rising right into her face and hair. Vincent watches these women, his eyes shifting from one to the other. The window washer uses her whole arm as she swipes the glass with her rag. Her face is set in deep concentration and the sweat on her face catches the sunlight so that it sparkles. There are circles of perspiration under her arms; she wipes her forehead with her forearm and keeps right on. The woman with the rug beats the pin against it again and again.

  The street, the women at their labor, the buildings framing the scene, the sky: All of it is still shimmering somehow, infected with a keen sharpness, a fineness of line and angle.

  For many long minutes he watches. He sees the women framed by the houses on either side, one in the top left corner, leaning out of her window, the other in the bottom right with her rag swept far away from her. It is a living, moving masterpiece that he is watching; it is holy, like the men in the bar, as holy as any sight he has ever seen. A perfect image, reality unveiled, souls revealed in their natural purity. Neither of the women so much as glances at him; they care only about their work. He thinks of Madame Denis in her kitchen, mixing ingredients in her big wooden bowl; men in a mining cell, sweat dripping from their noses as they peer at the rock for coal. He wants to bow before them; he wants to capture their image and show it to them, so they can see their sacredness with their own eyes.