by Ian McDonald
“No, Vincent—”
“Yes! Madness! I am a madman locked in an asylum because I cannot feel pain. You have taken away the thing that makes me human and so humanity will not have me and calls me mad and locks me away in a madhouse.”
“No, Vincent—”
“Yes! If I cannot feel pain, I cannot feel joy; I cannot feel at all! I am only a palette of colors without weight or substance; painting what I see and what I see are colors and I can no longer paint what I feel, because I can no longer feel! Pain is a terrible, grinding thing, but no-pain is dreadful beyond imagining. If what you have given me is what you are to give to all humanity, then it is far from the paradise you have imagined. It is a hell, but you remain only a man, Jean-Michel Rey. You are not … a devil.”
There is a look of horror on Jean-Michel Rey’s face. He had expected Vincent to say “God.”
Then the landscape about Vincent blurs and wavers, as if receding through deep water to even greater depths. The future runs like smeared paint, and Vincent finds himself on the cold stone shore beneath the cherry tree at the heart of madness.
“Give me back my pain,” he says humbly. “It was never yours to take. Give it back to me, let me be human again.”
The King of Pain sheds a single, shining tear. He reaches up into the branches of his tree which bears both blossom and ripe fruit, both green leaves and brown, and from it plucks a single cherry.
“Here it is, Vincent, everything I took from you. For by the laws of the High and Shining Ones, nothing is ever created or lost, merely put away for a while and rediscovered. Here, in this fruit, is all the heartache and despair, yes, even the madness, I took from you. Take it. It’s yours.” The King of Pain steps towards Vincent, the single cherry offered on his palm. “Don’t be afraid, it’s not bitter as you might expect. Rather, it is so sweet that no other sweetness or delight can ever again compare with it. In that sweetness lies the suffering, the heartache, and the madness. Go ahead, Vincent. You are braver than I. You could accept a universe with both beauty and pain. I could not accept that, and in destroying the one, I have destroyed the other. Take it, Vincent. It is yours by right.”
“It is mine by right,” says Vincent. He places the cherry on his tongue. He bites into the flesh. And a gale of ecstasy blows through him like a great wind rushing out into the void, like a birthing child squeezing out into a world of light and love, flying with the speed of a rainbow over a never-ending canvas.
And he is taken up. Taken up to a place higher than himself, a preview from which he overlooks all the ages of humanity and its vain King of Pain. For a few blazing instants he walks beneath the pavilions of the High and Shining Ones upon the Infinite Exalted Plane. He cannot understand it. It defies human comprehension, and in trying to encompass the place of the Mighty Ones he teeters on the brink of madness. He tips with a shriek towards the edge.
Then the airwaves swirl about him and he is kneeling on a cold hillside overlooking a red-roofed village. He understands everything. The grass is wet beneath his knees; there has been recent rain though Vincent is quite dry. He looks up to see the clean, spare beauty of the wind behind the rain. He sees the shafts of sunlight break through gray clouds to touch and transform the brown hills. Vincent looks upon it all and knows pain. Tears of joy course down his face.
* * * *
It is in the spring of 1890 that Vincent comes to Auvers-sur-Oise with a pocket full of papers, a strange look on his face made up of equal measures of grief and joy, and a heart full of heavy, brooding inevitability, like storm clouds piling up over cornfields. He looks haggard, weary to the bones. His eyes hold a glint of pained betrayal. He looks like a man who has learned what it is to be human. He looks like a man about to be destroyed.
“Get away from this place for a while,” said Dr. Guilefoy at Saint-Rémy.
“Go north, somewhere like Auvers-sur-Oise, you’ll like it there,” said his good friend Emile.
“Come and spend some time with me,” said Brother Theo. “Visit some old friends; relax!”
So Vincent went north to Paris and Theo greeted him with great news.
“Vincent, you have sold a painting! Your first! In Brussels, your ‘Red Vineyard at Montmajeur,’ for four hundred francs! Vincent, this is the beginning! The first of many!” But Theo’s backslapping exuberance could not penetrate Vincent’s halo of isolation. He knew that this was not the beginning, but the subtle commencement of an ending. He had seen the true shape of the world and it was terrible. He tired quickly of the Montmartre set: what had they done in the two years since he had last seen them? They sat in the same chairs by the same tables in the same bars and frisked and flirted with the same powdered whores. Their talk bored him. They knew nothing. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Vincent was glad to take his leave of Toulouse-Lautrec and Aurier, Signac and Bernard, even old Camille Pissarro. He was glad to put the city behind him.
Now the stern northern landscape invigorates him. The hills are as wide as the sea, the fields vast and charged with seminal potency, the sky huge, close, present. It is a healthy, strong landscape, in which a man may learn his true proportions. For the first time in over a year Vincent dares to believe that he is free from the madness. It is as if green healing currents are flowing across the hills and fields into him, making him whole and sane.
Theo has recommended him to the care of Dr. Gachet; an amiable eccentric, Vincent soon learns, finding in him a foil for his own little madnesses. Dr. Gachet inducts Vincent into his passion for etching. Vincent in turn paints portraits of the doctor and all his family. Dr. Gachet studies his portrait. He looks long at the melancholy, weary figure propped upon a table, the figure with the tired, tired look in its eyes.
“Vincent,” he says, “it’s beautiful, magnificent, but, for all my little crazinesses, it is not me. It’s you.”
It is then that Vincent becomes aware of the birds, the black birds of madness, that have searched the whole of France for him, circling high high high, too high to be seen, but never so high for him not to know they are there.
In July Theo visits his dear brother. They boat on the river, they walk, they talk, they drink and dine, but Vincent knows his brother is fearful.
“Vincent, I don’t know how much longer I can support you. I do not have inexhaustible amounts of money, and I am not well off. You know how tight my salary is, yet I begrudge you none of it. You know I have always loved and supported you, and I will always love you. I had hoped that the first sale might lead to others, that maybe you might be able to become financially independent, but, Vincent! Not a thing! Not one sale. If only it weren’t money.”
“Theo, I understand.” Vincent reaches out to touch his brother’s hand. He shivers. Theo notices. He is surprised. Vincent apologizes: the wind he says, but it is not the wind from the distant ocean that has chilled him, but the wind that blows off the Sea of Forever. Above him the pain-black birds drop closer, circling, scenting.
An evening with Dr. Gachet in the cafe where Vincent lives is certain to generate many a rare topic of conversation. The theory and purpose of art, potential pantheons of new gods for a new century, the inescapability of pain and suffering as a man’s lot, the inevitability of death: such talk and much absinthe draws Vincent into recounting his hallucinatory audiences with the King of Pain. Dr. Gachet listens, amazed, skeptical, horrified, wondering. When Vincent is done he says,
“A puissant thought, what one might do if given the power and responsibility for all the pains of mankind. One thing I am certain: this man you describe, he is not fit to be God. Because he cannot suffer. Because he has never suffered, because he knows nothing of the pain he controls. No God may presume to judge humanity who has not suffered as much as they, but this Jean-Michel Rey, he would be Conscience, Judge, Executioner, and God? He is not fit. You tell him that when next you see him. Tell him I can think of a hundred better qualified Kings of Pain.”
“Yourself, perhaps? The good D
r. Gachet?”
“God forfend. I wouldn’t dare. The power would be too tempting for me to use for my own eccentric ends. No, the King of Pain must be a man who knows both joy and pain, tears and laughter, success and failure, sanity and madness, who knows what it truly is to be human, what a terrible and wondrous thing that can be. A man like you, Vincent.”
Walking Dr. Gachet back to his house early that morning, it seems to Vincent as if the streets of Auvers are filled with a rushing, beating sound of flapping wings close above his head, but unseen and unseeable. There has been an image lodged in his head for days now, an unresolved, indefinite image, that of a great darkness bearing down upon a flat plane of yellow. Solar metaphors tumble through his mind but the image will not be pinned down. Like a butterfly, it flaps through his dreams. Every day he goes out in pursuit of the image. His inability to tie it down, to ground it in the healthy, vital landscape of Auvers, drives him first to irritation, then to distraction. The image demands a divided yellow surface and a great darkness breaking into pieces to snow down upon the flat field.
The birds, they are like pieces of darkness. They fill the sky with their raucous cries: big, black birds, black ravens. They are beginning to terrify Vincent. He buys a gun, to shoot them when they begin to terrify him. He does not tell Dr. Gachet about the gun. Frustration sends him chasing mile after mile along country roads. Then, one summer-thundery July afternoon, he rounds a corner and man and image meet. Before him is a field of ripe yellow com, golden-yellow, sun-yellow, bisected by a red earth track. Looming over the field are boiling black thunderheads, threateningly close, yet curiously suspended.
“This is the place,” declares Vincent. He sets up his stool and his easel. He prepares his canvas and his palette. All the while the ravens come flocking in from beyond the edge of the world. Vincent paints. He paints the blue-black sky. He paints the yellow corn and the red road. But he cannot keep the birds out of his painting. They flutter in like dead leaves, like Bible-black priests.
“Get away from me, get away from me, pickers of carrion!” he cries, waving his arms, scattering the raucous birds. But he cannot keep them away from him. They have perched on his hands and his hands have become black ravens so that he cannot but paint them into his picture: cornfields and ravens.
“Help me!” he cries, seeing the madness come out from beneath its guise and take its true name. “Help me!” But he is alone in the flat field.
Then he sees a figure walking across the flat field towards him, a tiny speck of a man who draws all the circling birds to him so that they form a colossal whirlpool of dark flecks spiraling up into the stormy sky. Before he draws close enough for his features to be distinguishable Vincent knows it is the King of Pain. This is the bird for which he has the gun. Vincent cocks it and slips it into a place of concealment. The King of Pain draws nearer.
“Refining your powers further?” asks Vincent, dreadfully calm. “The birds … convincing but melodramatic. What is your business here, with me?”
“Anyone’s time of dying is the business of the King of Pain.” The King squats on the ground, crushing the corn beneath his feet.
“Time of dying?”
“Yours, Vincent. I’ve seen your life from beginning to end in the memories of the machines, and this is the place where I see it ending. My being here cannot change it; what is written is written, so I have come to bid you my fondest farewells.”
“But what of the fame? Eh? The fame, the fortunes, the paintings that will live as long as there is beauty in the world? The promises?”
“Posthumous, Vincent. Posthumous.”
There is a silence in the cornfield beneath the edge of the storm. Then Vincent says, very slowly, very deliberately, very humbly,
“Have you any idea of how much I despise you? Your conceit, your arrogance, your callousness, your utter self-righteousness: I cannot begin to describe the revulsion I feel for what you would do to your people, let alone my outrage at the games you played with me, only to tell me that I must die here, now, because you have seen it so. I suppose such things as dying mean little to beings such as yourself; I suppose to you this is some kind of cosmic joke.”
“Vincent, I have never lied to you. I care, Vincent, I do care.”
“No no no you don’t. You are not fit to be a god. If I could wrest the crown from you, I would, because you have power without responsibility, you have knowledge without wisdom, and you have charity without compassion. You are not fit to be judge, jury, and executioner; you know nothing, nothing, of the pain you regulate. You are a coward, Jean-Michel Rey; you are not prepared for your people to hate you because you would do what wisdom demands, so you force them to love you. You are an arrogant, venal fool.”
“Have you finished?” says the King of Pain, defensive, proud, and petulant. “Have you quite finished? Even if you haven’t, I don’t care, say what you like, I won’t care, the world won’t care, for this is your time of dying, here in this field, and what is written is written. I am King of Pain, who is there to depose me?”
“Me,” says Vincent the obstinate Dutchman. “I, a man who knows the truth of pain and beauty, neither weak nor proud, a man who has touched the wisdom of the High and Shining Ones and is humble enough to accept it, a compassionate, passionate, living, breathing, hurting man. Me. You say this is a time of dying, you say there must be a King of Pain: one must die, one must be King. What is written is written, you say, but not in whose hand it is written.”
Vincent draws his long-barreled fowling-gun from concealment and with one swift, elegant, artistic movement shoots the King of Pain through the chest.
The King of Pain gives a little cough, a little sigh. Then a look of terrible recognition comes over his face: the glazed, old, old look of pain. Vincent winces and drops the hot gun to the ground. About the two men a storm of wings beats as the birds swoop and mill and flock.
“What is written is written,” says Vincent. Then the strangest thing of all happens. The face of the mortally wounded King of Pain, his body, his hands, his clothing—all change, all melt, all run and flow into the contours Vincent feared he might see from the very first night the King of Pain walked in his dreams. His own. For nothing is lost but something is gained and things gone are only put away for a little while. This is the Law of the High and Shining Ones.
There is a balance, and an equilibrium, what is written may be written, but, like a sonnet, or a painting, anything may be created within the frame.
Up in time, the machines by which the King of Pain rules the world register the mortal wounding of the man with Vincent van Gogh’s face. Equilibrium is preserved. Everything has happened as it should. Three days from now the man with Vincent van Gogh’s face will die from a gunshot wound to the chest in his bedroom above the cafe. His last words, whispered to his devoted, doomed brother, will be “Misery will never end.” Then the flesh will be buried and the legends will begin.
Elsewhere, the King of Pain laughs. He is new to his task. The magnitude of it is daunting, but he is fresh and enthusiastic, an obstinate, obdurate Dutchman. There are some changes he wants to make. The world will be hearing from him soon, he thinks.
(the author wishes to thank Patricia Houston for her assistance with the historical research for this story)
THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD
PAPER-LANTERNED CORPSE-BOATS brought us across dark waters to Thanos. As we drew close to the shore I became aware of a waltz playing and figures clad in evening dress gliding beneath the olive trees. I strained to see if I could recognize any particular dancer but the light was fading fast and the people suddenly surged around me, pressing close for a view of the shore, herding me back against the bulkhead. Of course. How eager we were; we living.
Men dressed in smart matelot costumes caught ropes and made them fast. With a roar of engines our captain brought us in alongside the jetty. The sailors ran out a gangplank and the impatient passengers boiled onto the dusty stone pier. I could understand thei
r impatience on this most singular of nights. But I took my time, straightened my tie, aligned my cuffs with delicate tugs, and waited until the press of bodies had passed. Then I stepped down onto the pier, onto the Island of the Dead.
A sloe-eyed girl waited there, greeting me with a smile. “Fine evening,” I remarked and passed by.
“One moment, sir …” I turned back, puzzled. “Your card, sir, they insist.” To those in their employ, the dead are always “they.” I produced the invitation card from my dinner jacket and passed it to the girl, noting with distaste the designs from the Danse Macabre that embellished its border. She passed the card through her reader and nodded at the green alphanumerals. “You may come ashore. Enjoy your evening.”
How the dead love their little jokes! Such as the name they gave the strait of water between their island and the mainland: Styx. And the corpse-boat that ferried us here: Charon. And the Island of the Dead itself: Thanos. I suppose the dead have earned their little moments of self-mockery; have they not all of them passed through that final, grim mockery to self?
But the night was fine and gay and the dead waltzed with the living under the olive groves that grew by the side of Styx. And along the streets of the crumbled leper village stood bright booths and pavilions lit by delicate paper lanterns that rustled in the Mediterranean night air. I saw two people sitting hand in hand by a table under a cracked wall through which a mimosa grew. On the table, a thick candle and a bottle of wine. I saw a band playing from a podium set on the demolished upper floor of a shop. The faded wooden sign read “Fish” in Greek and the people Charlestoned in the street beneath it.
A girl pushed her way through a crowd of laughing party-goers and caught hold of my arm.
“Excuse me.” She giggled and looked into my eyes. She was dead. I could tell it from her gaze. But also something more: the glitter of illicit pleasure. “You looking?” she drawled.