The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  “Your lawyer got you out?”

  Sue shook her head. “If I had stolen something or stabbed somebody, that would put me in criminal court. Then I would have a right to an attorney. You don’t get an attorney in immigration court. That’s not your right. They give you a translator. But I didn’t need one of those. I understood English fine. Even the translator could see I was just having trouble with my thoughts. But she would just hold my hand and tell me how sorry she felt about it. Sometimes she cried.

  “But in the courtroom, whenever I tried to answer the judge for myself, like if he asked my name or something, he would yell at me to wait for the translator. I said, ‘I don’t need the translator. I need my lithium.’ But that only made the judge mad. When I tried to speak again, to explain, he finished with the case. I remember the words exactly: ‘The respondent, after proper notice, has failed to appear.’ I was right there when he said it but they put it in the record. And if I don’t ‘appear,’ then they don’t have to have a trial. The judge can just make his verdict. He ordered them to deport me back to China. That’s it. The end. I will die now. That’s what I thought when he gave the sentence. I will die.”

  Pepper tried to imagine Sue inside that courtroom. Standing alone before that judge, who refused to see her.

  “I spent another six months being held in Glades County,” Sue said. “Waiting for them to throw me across the water. All this time, and my sister never knew what happened. For her, it’s like I just stepped into a hole and disappeared. I’m scared for me, but I feel so bad for her. Every day she must be crying.”

  Pepper climbed over Sue, out of the bed, and went to the bathroom. He had a plastic cup in there and he filled it with cold water. He came back to the bed, sat on the edge and gave it to Sue. “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “I thought you could use a drink.”

  Sue sat up, the covers bunching right over her waist. She took the cup gratefully and smiled.

  She sniffed it. She grimaced.

  “This is water.”

  “Well, what did you think?”

  “The way you said it, I thought you had some beer or something.”

  “Sorry,” Pepper whispered. She shrugged. She sipped.

  “So that’s Florida. How’d you get to New York? How’d you get in here?”

  “The police took us to church one day. Maybe for Easter. I didn’t even ask to go, but they made everyone attend. It was a big church. So many people. Like thousands. We sat in the back. They only left two guards near us. Two men. I asked to use the bathroom. One guard came with me, but he couldn’t go inside. Not at a nice church. So I went in, washed my face, and climbed out the window. Easy. I even went back to the same Greyhound station after I borrowed money from my old boss at the restaurant.

  “I took a bus to New York because I thought there was enough Chinese here for me to hide. And maybe it was true. But when I came to the Port Authority, the immigration police were waiting for me! I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes the world is broken and sometimes it works too well. I slipped right out of a church bathroom, no problem. I come to one of the most crowded cities on earth, and they pick me out five minutes after I get off the bus. But by then it had been a long time since I had my medication. I wasn’t doing good. Laughing out loud for no reason. Shouting. Maybe the bus driver turned me in just because he was tired of me. They stuck me here until they can send me back to Florida. I’m a fugitive, Pepper. You just had sex with a fugitive.”

  Pepper took the plastic cup from Sue. “You’re not a fugitive once you get caught. Then you’re just a prisoner again.”

  Now, he wanted to go get her another cup of water, or maybe one for himself. Or to offer her the Cocoa Puffs, but that hardly seemed like enough. He wanted to do something. But what? Honestly. Dawn light hadn’t crept into the room yet, but soon enough it would. The next day was arriving and their night together felt so brief.

  I’ll be gone in less than a week. That’s what she’d said.

  Pepper touched Sue’s knee, the sheet so thin it hardly seemed to come between them. His throat felt warm and the back of his neck burned. “I don’t want you to … You shouldn’t have to …”

  He couldn’t finish.

  Sue put her hand on top of his.

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  But what was she going to do? Was she supposed to comfort him about how he couldn’t protect her? When she was the one actually facing extradition?

  Fuck that.

  Sue couldn’t dredge up the patience. She also hadn’t told him the straight truth. She’d told him she had less than a week before she’d be deported, but really it was happening later today. (Less than a week could mean six days, after all, or two.)

  She couldn’t dream of a better way to spend her last night. Sharing these feelings, those touches, with him. All that might’ve been ruined if he knew how close to the end they really were.

  “Why are you so quiet now?” Sue asked.

  Pepper lay with his right arm out and her head on his bicep. He closed his arm around her chest.

  “I guess I was just imagining …”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was just picturing us out in the woods somewhere. And it’s the middle of winter and no one else is anywhere around.”

  “That’s nice,” she whispered.

  “And a tree snaps,” Pepper said. “A big one. Maybe under the weight of too much snow. And the tree comes down right on top of you. And you’re pinned underneath it. You can’t get out. I have to find a way to lift it so you’ll be okay.”

  Sue wriggled free from his forearm. “You’re daydreaming about me getting killed?”

  Pepper rolled over, confused. “I’m dreaming about saving you.”

  The first morning’s light seeped into the room. Pepper saw Sue’s face. She was watching him. Studying him.

  “You actually think what you just told me is romantic,” she said.

  “It is romantic. If you think about it.”

  “If you think about it, your romantic dream includes the possibility that I will be paralyzed from the neck down.”

  “That’s not how I meant it,” he said.

  Sue grabbed Pepper’s arm, a mix of aggravation and affection. Her fingernails pressed into his skin.

  “Your dream is about what you want to do, not what I need.”

  Pepper threw his hands up. “Well, what do you need? You want me to break you out of here? I’ll do it. We can go on the run. I don’t care.”

  Sue turned her back to Pepper and lay down. She reached back with one arm and pulled at him. He moved beside her, put his left arm around her chest, and pulled her closer. He squeezed Sue’s ribs tight, just like she wanted. They faced the room’s door. Eventually it would open but not yet. Behind them the sky had become a lighter gray. Sue said, “Did you ever finish the book about the painter?”

  “Van Gogh,” Pepper said. “Yes, I did.”

  “Okay, then, let me hear about that. We’ll lie still and I’ll listen to your voice. That’s what I need. Tell me.”

  30

  VINCENT VAN GOGH (pronounced “Van-GOCK” by the Dutch, and sundry pretentious American twits) was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland, in 1853 to Theodorus and Anna Van Gogh. The pair had three boys and three girls, and Vincent was the oldest. Their father, Theodoras, was a well liked, respected, but not terribly gifted preacher. Anna cared for the family and was also greatly loved.

  In 1869, at sixteen, Vincent went to work at an art dealership, Goupil & Cie., which had ties to his uncle, and namesake, Vincent. Young Vincent was being groomed to join the trade. He worked with them in the Hague. In 1873 he moved to their offices in London. There, he roomed with a mother and daughter. He fell hard for the daughter, Ursula.

  Ursula bumped him back, though. She was already engaged to another man. But Vincent was a sensitive dude and he took the news hard. Went into a depression and found solace in a deeper sense of religious faith. He also stop
ped rooming with Ursula and her mother. Considering the general trajectory of Vincent’s adult life, this is about the most sensible thing he ever did.

  He left Ursula’s home but she hadn’t left his heart. The man was depressed! So much so that his family worried and had him transferred to the Paris branch of the art dealership. But this only compounded his pain and Vincent worked less and less well. Instead, he spent all his free time holed up reading the Bible with a friend. And in 1876, twenty-three-year-old Vincent was fired from the art dealer’s. His family had suggestions for what he should do next (they were a close bunch)—he could open his own shop, become a painter (his closest sibling and greatest friend, Theo, suggested this)—but Vincent decided to return to London to become a teacher.

  Vincent got work at two different schools as a kind of curate, assisting the head of each institution. But he didn’t last long there. Pretty quickly his uncle lined up a job at a bookshop. Vincent was a terrific reader his entire life, but wasn’t enthusiastic about the bookstore. At twenty-four, Vincent switched gears again and decided to study theology. Some family members supported him in this plan, but others, like Uncle Vincent, were sick of his shit. The theology degree demanded seven years of study. There was some question as to whether Vincent had the seriousness, the fortitude, to concentrate on the subject for so long. Did he?

  Nope!

  Vincent stayed for only a year. He hated studying grammar and doing writing exercises. He didn’t want to be an academic. He wanted to bring good cheer through the Gospels. That’s it. Pretty soon his tutor agreed that Vincent was not cut out for theology school.

  Instead, Vincent decided to become an evangelist in Belgium. This only required a certificate of study, no Latin or Greek, only three months of work at the School of Evangelization in Brussels. Around this time Vincent’s parents wrote, in a letter, “that he deliberately chooses the most difficult path.”

  (We know so much about Vincent, about his family, because they were all wonderful letter writers, and many of those letters have survived. Vincent becomes famous for the letters he shared with his dear brother Theo but he wrote to many others, too.)

  Back at the evangelical school it turned out that Vincent was a lousy student. He dressed strangely (meaning, he didn’t pay much attention to his clothes and their care). He couldn’t speak off the cuff, so he had to prepare all his remarks and read from the pages. And he didn’t even do that very well. And worst of all, for the school’s purposes, he wasn’t “submissive.” He argued with the school’s leaders, didn’t do exactly as told. When his three months of training were up, they refused to give him a position anywhere.

  Much as he dealt with the aftermath of Ursula, Vincent took his failure at school pretty hard. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, got thin and weak. He was in a constant nervous state. This is around the first time that people close to him began to notice his “humour” and “constitution.” To put it bluntly: They thought the boy was a little off. (Of course, they never came right out and stated this.)

  Vincent’s father came to Brussels to see him and used his influence to get Vincent a trial appointment in Wasmes, a small coal-mining town, for six months. He would get a very small salary, but he didn’t get to give Bible lectures, teach children, and visit the sick—the things he actually wanted to do. He worked with the people of the mining town, but after six months his job wasn’t renewed and Vincent left town. On foot, which would become a pretty standard method for him, since he never had money to spare for trains.

  Time passed after the loss of the job, and Vincent lost his religious zeal. He fell into a funk and isolated himself. Theo and his parents started sending Vincent money just so he could eat, have a place to stay, that kind of stuff, but it wasn’t much and wasn’t regular.

  Around this time, Vincent made pilgrimages to the studio of an artist he greatly admired named Jules Breton. He walked all the way to Breton’s place in another town and was so intimidated and so ashamed of himself, that he just turned right back around and walked all the way home. Along the way, Vincent slept in haylofts or outdoors. He’d begun doing some art of his own, and he traded drawings for bread when he could, but his health deteriorated.

  Finally, around 1880, Vincent declared himself a painter. He rented a room in a miner’s home. (Vincent shared the room with the miner’s children.) This was his first studio! He drew the miners, going to and from work. Sometimes he worked out in the garden. But in October of 1880 he moved to Brussels again to work in a small hotel. He needed the money, but he also wanted to meet other artists and Brussels offered more chances than the mining town. He wanted some camaraderie.

  In 1881 Vincent moved back in with his parents. He had a good run with them but over the summer he met an older cousin, Kee. Kee was grieving over the loss of her husband and raising a four-year-old boy on her own. Vincent fell for her but she rejected him. Guess how Vincent reacted.

  Yup.

  This time he flipped out even harder. He didn’t just go into a depression; he became irritable and unstable and pushed at this cousin, trying to win her over. It got so bad that the whole family was just embarrassed. Vincent had a really bad fight with his father over the matter and finally moved out. He returned to the Hague, and lived there for two years.

  While he was there he met a new woman. She was poor, “rough,” a heavy drinker, a fighter, and smallpox survivor. Also, possibly, a prostitute. In other words, Vincent hooked up with a hoodrat. And all the “fine” friends and family members got pissy about this. They told him this woman wasn’t proper for him. And, in truth, Vincent and this woman don’t sound like they were actually in love. Vincent had always wanted to do good, to help, and had failed at it again and again. This woman (admittedly only from Vincent’s account) was having a hard time supporting herself and her son. If Vincent wanted to offer companionship and (nominal) financial support, why would she ever say no? So they stayed together, but it didn’t last. Vincent still spent most of his money on art supplies, and not on the new family. Also, Vincent was a bit judgmental himself. He kept trying to change her ways. Eventually they parted.

  In 1883 Vincent, despondent, returned to his parents’ home. He lived with them for two more years. He argued with them a lot. (Folks give credit to Vincent’s brother Theo, but Anna and Theodorus were wonderful to him, considering what a dick he could be.) In 1884 Vincent’s mom suffered a fall and broke her leg, and Vincent, to everyone’s great happiness, turned out to be a loving and attentive caretaker for her while she healed up. Good feeling returned to his relationship with his parents. And that’s Vincent all over. Utterly selfish and magnificently selfless, all one or all the other, depending on the day.

  While he was still with his parents, Vincent got one more chance at romance. This time with a neighbor’s daughter. Maybe they weren’t in love, but they seemed to enjoy each other’s company, which is a hell of a lot of happiness sometimes. But the neighbor’s family refused to accept the union. The daughter, in her despair, tried to commit suicide. (She lived.) Their relationship was over and Vincent seemed to lose hope entirely for that kind of pleasure in his life. (Pleasure meaning love, because he visited prostitutes plenty over the years.)

  So, no love, but during this time, Vincent had been working constantly. He sketched and painted with fervor. The early stuff, like most early stuff, wasn’t great but the man hoped that he could produce worthwhile art eventually. (From letter 106: “O Theo, Theo old boy, if only it might happen to me and that deluge of downcastness about everything which I undertook and failed at, that torrent of reproaches I’ve heard and felt, if it might be taken away from me and if I might be given the opportunity and the strength and the love required to develop and to persevere and to stand firm in that for which my Father and I would offer the Lord such heartfelt thanks.”)

  In 1885 Vincent’s father died, after a long walk, right at the threshold of his home. Vincent moved out of his mother’s home and went off painting people and scenes from the
world around him. (During this time, he hoped to make a splash, do something great, be noticed, with a painting called The Potato Eaters. It’s a dark, sludgy work, aping the style generally respected in the day. It didn’t make him famous. It didn’t sell. And for good reason. It stinks.)

  In 1886 Vincent moved to Paris and lived with his brother Theo. Theo had joined the family business and worked as an art dealer. This time was good for Vincent. His health improved, and he even had an operation to replace almost all his teeth. (Because Vincent had lived on a diet of mostly beer and black bread—literally, bread so old it was going black, which was cheaper to buy than fresh bread—the majority of Vincent’s teeth had fallen out. You know the reason he’s not smiling in those self-portraits? It’s not just because of his melancholy soul. It’s because that poor bastard was practically toothless!) It was a good time for Vincent, but less so for Theo. As Vincent’s parents learned, as nearly anyone who ever lived with Vincent learned, Vincent Van Gogh was an asshole. Often. Even his beloved Theo came to fight and dislike the brother he believed to be an artistic genius. (It’s also worth noting that, all these years, Theo had been sending money to Vincent, wherever he was living, so he could spend as much time as possible painting and not holding a job. Despite this, Vincent treated Theo much the same as everyone. He was messy, argumentative, and bossy. During all the years they wrote to each other, there was one request Vincent made more than any other: Send more money! And Theo did.)

  In 1888 Vincent left Theo. He now hit the creative high point of his life. It would last only two years. During that time he produced thousands of paintings and sketches. Theo worked his butt off to try to sell the stuff. He failed. Vincent produced, Theo believed, the world was blind.

  This period, from 1888 on, was the time when Vincent did the stuff he became famous for. The romantic round. This was when he roomed with Paul Gauguin. (That didn’t last.) Cut off a part of his ear in an absolute frenzy and presented it as a gift to a local prostitute. (She fainted.)