The Season of Migration

by Nellie Hermann

  Baby Vincent has gone silent.

  How long will it still be before Theo returns? He imagines his brother coming down the street, his long strides, his confident gait. He imagines standing up before his brother, Theo seeing him in his dirty clothes, knowing he must have walked there from the Borinage, knowing exactly how far he has come. He watches the door, imagining his brother opening it and inviting him in, imagining following his brother into the house, his brother’s back in his suit jacket, the back of his brother’s head. And what will he find inside? Theo’s rooms, Theo’s life, the life he has made without Vincent.

  In his mind, his brother approaches. “Vincent!” he says as Vincent stands to face him. He hurries toward Vincent and takes him in his arms. He smells of cedar and pine. “I worried that you were dead,” Theo says into his ear. “Me, too,” says Vincent in return.

  He imagines the two of them in Theo’s living room, the furniture pushed neatly back against the walls, a vase of purple flowers on the table by the window, a book turned facedown on the table next to the red armchair. Theo sits on the sofa, reading the letters that Vincent has brought him, and tears run down his face. “I’m sorry, Vincent,” he says, “I didn’t understand! I never understood. I’ve been a terrible brother. I know now all you needed was for me to listen to you, for me to believe in you, and I do.” The two brothers embrace before the sofa, they are both forgiven, they part the best of friends.

  Then they are by the door, in a dark hallway that leads from Theo’s living room, by a table on which Theo has laid his keys and a tray with two cuff links. They are arguing, the vein on Theo’s neck pronounced as a snake. “I don’t know you!” screams Theo. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” He puts his hands on Vincent’s shoulders, turns him around, and pushes him hard through the door. Vincent stumbles and falls to his knees on the step, but Theo does not stoop to help him, only throws the stack of letters after him, the pages fluttering out into the street, and slams the door.

  He looks up at the women again. The woman with the rug is pulling it inside, beating the end of it a few last times before the task is done. The window washer has moved on to the next window, working as furiously as ever. He imagines himself standing and approaching her, and then he sees himself in her place: He is washing the window, he is pressing on the glass with his rag, moving it in quick circular motions, watching the streaks of water evaporate after the rag passes over. He can feel the sweat under his arms and dripping off of his nose; by his foot is a bucket filled with dirty water, a different rag floating at the top. He looks up and wipes the sweat from his eyes with his already wet hands; Theo is approaching from down the street, but he stops when he sees Vincent at his work, and just stands there, unmoving, taking it in. He has spent all day at the gallery looking at works of art, and now he watches his brother clean a window as if he is creating one. Vincent, after a beat, goes back to his labor, wishing to complete the task more than to greet his brother.

  He blinks, returning to himself on the stoop. Everything on the street—the women, the windows, the roofs, the people rushing by—is softened suddenly, the angles gentle and warm, and each piece of it feels close and tangible, easy to grasp. He thinks of how he would describe what he is seeing to Angeline; how he could show it to her, make it a postcard that she could receive. Blinding blue of the sky with wispy circling clouds above the dark roofs, sharp white of the women’s bonnets like blooming flowers against the weathered wood of the buildings, window washer with bent back over her bucket and rag, the tools of her labor. What would it take to be able to reproduce this holy image, to share the gift of being here to see it? It would take work to do it right, punishing work, the work of his life.

  His body feels suddenly refreshed, as if he has just bathed in his filthy clothes. He must leave, now, before Theo comes home. He will not see him; he will not leave the letters. He will put to use the money that Theo gave him to pay for the train back to the Borinage, and when he gets back to Belgium, he will work on something to show to Theo, something that can explain what has happened to him better than his words ever could. The story he has told to Theo is actually only for him, Vincent, to understand, and now he does at last. Theo was right after all: Vincent is not the same any longer.

  He will earn his brother’s money, somehow, or he will die trying.

  He picks up his knapsack, rises, and moves off the stoop into the street, away from Theo’s door, the sun falling warm onto his shoulders.

  Epilogue

  Cuesmes, June 22, 1880

  Dear Theo,

  It’s with some reluctance that I write to you, not having done so for so long, and that for many a reason. Up to a certain point you’ve become a stranger to me, and I too am one to you, perhaps more than you think; perhaps it would be better for us not to go on this way.

  Without wishing to, I’ve more or less become some sort of impossible and suspect character in the family, in any event, somebody who isn’t trusted, so how, then, could I be useful to anybody in any way? That’s why, first of all, so I’m inclined to believe, it is beneficial and the best and most reasonable position to take, for me to go away and to remain at a proper distance, as if I didn’t exist.

  As molting time—when they change their feathers—is for birds, so adversity or misfortune is the difficult time for us human beings. One can stay in it—in that time of molting—and one can also emerge renewed; but anyhow it must not be done in public and it is not at all amusing, therefore the only thing to do is to hide oneself.

  I am a man of passions, capable of and liable to do rather foolish things for which I sometimes feel rather sorry. I do often find myself speaking or acting somewhat too quickly when it would be better to wait more patiently. Now that being so, what’s to be done, must one consider oneself a dangerous man, incapable of anything at all? I don’t think so.

  About a month ago, I came to see you, a walk of about three days. You don’t know this because I arrived while you were at work, and left before you came home. Why? you ask. Well, I could see all the ways it would go, I could hear all the things you would say, and after playing out a hundred different endings I thought better of it, and returned to the Borinage with a new sense of direction.

  For as much as five years, perhaps, I don’t know exactly, I’ve been more or less without a position, wandering hither and thither. You would say, from such and such a time you’ve been going downhill, you’ve faded away, you’ve done nothing. Is that entirely true?

  It’s true that sometimes I’ve earned my crust of bread, sometimes some friend has given me it as a favor; I’ve lived as best I could, better or worse, as things went; it’s true that I’ve lost several people’s trust, it’s true that my financial affairs are in a sorry state, it’s true that the future’s not a little dark, it’s true that I could have done better, it’s true that just in terms of earning my living I’ve lost time, it’s true that my studies themselves are in a rather sorry and disheartening state, and that I lack more, infinitely more than I have. But is that called going downhill, and is that called doing nothing?

  You ask: what is my ultimate goal? That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea.

  You must know that it’s the same with evangelists as with artists. There’s an old, often detestable, tyrannical academic school, the abomination of desolation, in fact—men having, so to speak, a suit of armor, a steel breastplate of prejudices and conventions. Those men, when they’re in charge of things, have positions at their disposal, and by a system of circumlocution seek to support their protégés, and to exclude the natural man from among them. There’s little fear that their blindness will ever turn into clear-sightedness on the subject.

  This state of affairs has its bad side for someone who doesn’t agree with all that, and who protests against it with all his heart and with all his soul and wi
th all the indignation of which he is capable. Myself, I respect academicians who are not like those academicians, but the respectable ones are more thinly scattered than one would believe at first glance. Now one of the reasons why I’m now without a position, why I’ve been without a position for years, it’s quite simply because I have different ideas from these gentlemen who give positions to individuals who think like them.

  It’s not a simple matter of appearance, as people have hypocritically held it against me, it’s something more serious than that, I assure you.

  Why am I telling you all this?—not to grumble, not to apologize for things in which I may be more or less wrong, but quite simply to tell you this: on your last visit, last summer, when we walked together near the disused mine they call La Sorcière you reminded me that there was a time when we also walked together near the old canal and mill of Rijswijk, and then, you said, we were in agreement on many things, but, you added—you’ve really changed since then, you’re not the same any longer. Well, that’s not quite how it is; what has changed is that my life was less difficult then and my future less dark, but as far as my inner self, as far as my way of seeing and thinking are concerned, they haven’t changed. But if in fact there were a change, it’s that now I think and I believe and I love more seriously what then, too, I already thought, I believed and I loved.

  So you mustn’t think that I’m rejecting this or that; in my unbelief I’m a believer, in a way, and though having changed I am the same, and my torment is none other than this: what could I be good for, couldn’t I serve and be useful in some way, how could I come to know more thoroughly?

  One who has been rolling along for ages as if tossed on a stormy sea arrives at his destination at last; one who has seemed good for nothing and incapable of filling any position, any role, finds one in the end, and, active and capable of action, shows himself entirely different from what he had seemed at first sight.

  For I know this now: everything in men and in their works that is truly good, and beautiful with an inner moral, spiritual and sublime beauty, I think that that comes from God, and that everything that is bad and wicked in the works of men and in men, that’s not from God, and God doesn’t find it good, either. I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing God is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious, intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more. That leads to God, that leads to unshakeable faith. Someone, to give an example, will love Rembrandt, but seriously, that man will know there is a God, he’ll believe firmly in Him. Try to understand the last word of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces; there will be God in it. Someone has written or said it in a book, someone in a painting.

  In other words, I would be very happy if you could somehow see in me something other than some sort of idler.

  Because there are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast. There’s the one who’s an idler through laziness and weakness of character, through the baseness of his nature; you may, if you think fit, take me for such a one. Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a great desire for action, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a raison d’être! I know that I could be a quite different man! For what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There’s something within me, so what is it?

  That’s an entirely different idler; you may, if you think fit, take me for such a one.

  In the springtime a bird in a cage knows very well that there’s something he’d be good for; he feels very clearly that there’s something to be done but he can’t do it; what it is he can’t clearly remember, and he has vague ideas and says to himself, ‘the others are building their nests and making their little ones and raising the brood,’ and he bangs his head against the bars of his cage. And then the cage stays there and the bird is mad with suffering. ‘Look, there’s an idler,’ says another passing bird—that fellow’s a sort of man of leisure. And yet the prisoner lives and doesn’t die; nothing of what’s going on within shows outside, he’s in good health, he’s rather cheerful in the sunshine. But then comes the season of migration. A bout of melancholy—but, say the children who look after him, he’s got everything that he needs in his cage, after all—but he looks at the sky outside, heavy with storm clouds, and within himself feels a rebellion against fate. I’m in a cage, I’m in a cage, and so I lack for nothing, you fools! Me, I have everything I need! Ah, for pity’s sake, freedom, to be a bird like other birds!

  An idle man like that resembles an idle bird like that.

  You may not always be able to say what it is that confines, that immures, that seems to bury, and yet you feel I know not what bars, I know not what gates—walls.

  You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. He who doesn’t have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.

  And the prison is sometimes called Prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of this or that, mistrust, false shame.

  But to speak of something else, if I’ve come down in the world, you, on the other hand, have gone up. And while I may have lost friendships, you have won them. That’s what I’m happy about, I say it in truth, and that will always make me glad. If you were not very serious and not very profound, I might fear that it won’t last, but since I think you are very serious and very profound, I’m inclined to believe that it will last.

  If it became possible for you to see in me something other than an idler of the bad kind, I would be very pleased about that. And if I could ever do something for you, be useful to you in some way, know that I am at your service. Since I’ve accepted what you gave me, you could equally ask me for something if I could be of service to you in some way or another; it would make me happy and I would consider it a sign of trust. We’re quite distant from each other, and in certain respects we may have different ways of seeing, but nevertheless, sometime or someday one of us might be able to be of use to the other. For today, I shake your hand, thanking you again for the kindness you’ve shown me.

  Now if you’d like to write to me one of these days, my address is care of C. Decrucq, rue du Pavillon 8, Cuesmes, near Mons, and know that by writing you’ll do me good.

  Yours truly,

  Vincent

  Author’s Note

  I am deeply indebted to a number of sources in the creation of this novel: most notably Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s excellent Van Gogh: The Life; David Sweetman’s Van Gogh: His Life and His Art; Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson’s Passionate Pilgrim: The Life of Vincent van Gogh; Philip Callow’s Vincent van Gogh: A Life; and the Van Gogh Museum’s Van Gogh’s Imaginary Museum: Exploring the Artist’s Imaginary World. Irving Stone’s 1934 novel, Lust for Life, was the inspiration for a few key scenes, as well as for the character of Decrucq as “the man the mines can’t kill,” and for the phrase “black Egypt,” which, when Vincent uttered it in Stone’s book, rang as true to me as if it were a detail from one of his letters. For knowledge of mines and mining life, I am indebted to Emile Zola’s Germinal most of all, and also to Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s Growing Up in Coal Country. Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ and C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity were helpful in my understanding of Christianity. I used John Thomson’s Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs for help imagining Van
Gogh’s life in London.

  I relied heavily on the use of Vincent van Gogh’s actual letters, and was lucky that the publication of the beautiful new translations, and the extensive website that accompanied them (www.vangoghletters.org)—the product of fifteen years of research at the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING—occurred while I was working on the novel. I used Vincent’s letters (those from the Borinage as well as those from before and after) as my guides and touchstones, and have quoted from them whenever possible throughout the novel (the quotations are mainly from the earlier, 1958 translations, as that was what I had when the bulk of the novel was being written). I am also indebted to the extra texts included with both translations of Van Gogh’s letters—the brief memoir and family history written by Theo’s wife, Jo, is very moving, and all the supplemental letters and essays included with both editions were crucial.

  The letters that serve as the prologue and the epilogue to the novel are both largely excerpted from Van Gogh’s actual letters, the former from his letter of around August 14, 1879, and the latter from his letter of June 22, 1880, though I altered them with some editorial cuts and authorial insertions. These are the letters that began and ended the ten-month period where there are no letters between the two brothers, a silence that never again occurred between them.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the fantastic Ucross Foundation, where I wrote large portions of the manuscript in inspiring countryside. Thank you to Simon Schama, in whose class this novel was born. Thank you, Maggie Pouncey, Karen Thompson Walker, Alena Graedon, Susanna Kohn, Tania James, Joel Pedlikin, Mary Beth Keane, Philip Pardi, Ephraim Rubenstein, and Mary Gordon, for careful early reads and suggestions that improved the book enormously. For believing in this book, understanding its vision, and working so hard on its behalf, thank you to my agent, Susan Golomb, and her team, Krista Ingebretson and Soumeya Bendimerad, and to my incredible editor, Eric Chinski, his assistants, Gabriella Doob and Peng Shepherd, and the whole fantastic team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It has been my great fortune to work with you all.