Lust for Life

Some little feeling returned to flood out the numbness, and Vincent reached forlornly for his pipe. He applied a match to the tobacco but it tasted strangely bitter. He sat down on a log in the field. The old white horse came over and rubbed his nose against Vincent’s back. He turned and stroked the emaciated neck of the animal.

After a time there rose in his mind the thought of God, and he was comforted. “Jesus was calm in the storm,” he said to himself. “I am not alone, for God has not forsaken me. Someday, somehow, I will find a way to serve Him.”

When he returned to his room he found the Reverend Pietersen waiting for him. “I came to ask you to have dinner at my home, Vincent,” he said.

They walked along streets thronged with working people on their way to the evening meal. Pietersen chatted of casual things as though nothing had happened. Vincent heard every word he said with a terrible clarity. Pietersen led him into the front room, which had been turned into a studio. There were a few water-colours on the walls and an easel in one corner.

“Oh,” said Vincent, “you paint. I didn’t know.”

Pietersen was embarrassed. “I’m just an amateur,” he replied. “I draw a bit in my spare time for relaxation. But I shouldn’t mention it to my confrères if I were you.”

They sat down to dinner. Pietersen had a daughter, a shy, reserved girl of fifteen who never once lifted her eyes from the plate. Pietersen went on speaking of inconsequential things while Vincent forced himself, for politeness sake, to eat a little. Suddenly his mind became riveted to what Pietersen was saying; he had no idea how the Reverend had worked into the subject.

“The Borinage,” his host said, “is a coal mining region. Practically every man in the district goes down into the charbonnages. They work in the midst of thousands of ever-recurring dangers, and their wage is hardly enough to keep body and soul together. Their homes are tumble-down shacks where their wives and children spend most of the year shivering with cold, fever, and hunger.”

Vincent wondered why he was being told all this. “Where is the Borinage?” he asked.

“In the south of Belgium, near Mons. I recently spent some time there, and Vincent, if ever a people needed a man to preach to them and comfort them, it’s the Borains.”

A gulp came into Vincent’s throat, barring the passage of food. He laid down his fork. Why was Pietersen torturing him?

“Vincent,” said the Reverend, “why don’t you go to the Borinage? With your strength and enthusiasm you could do a great deal of fine work.”

“But how can I? The Committee . . .”

“Yes, I know. I wrote to your father the other day explaining the situation. I had an answer from him this afternoon. He says he will support you in the Borinage until I can secure you a regular appointment.”

Vincent jumped to his feet. “Then you will get me an appointment!”

“Yes, but you must give me a little time. When the Committee sees what splendid work you are doing it will surely relent. And even if it doesn’t . . . de Jong and van den Brink will come to me for a favour one of these fine days, and in return for that favour . . . The poor people of this country need men like you, Vincent, and as God is my judge, any means is justified in getting you to them!”

8

AS THE TRAIN neared the South a group of mountains appeared on the horizon. Vincent gazed at them with pleasure and relief after the monotonous flat country of Flanders. He had been studying them only a few minutes when he discovered that they were curious mountains. Each one stood utterly by itself, rising out of the flat land with a precipitate abruptness.

“Black Egypt,” he murmured to himself as he peered out of the window at the long line of fantastic pyramids. He turned to the man sitting next to him and asked, “Can you tell me how those mountains get there?”

“Yes,” replied his neighbour, “they are composed of terril, the waste material that is brought up from the earth with the coal. Do you see that little car just about to reach the point of the hill? Watch it for a moment.”

Just as he said this, the little car turned over on its side and sent a black cloud flying down the slope. “There,” said the man, “that’s how they grow. I’ve been watching them go up into the air a fraction of an inch every day for the past fifty years.”

The train stopped at Wasmes and Vincent jumped off. The town was located in the hollow of a bleak valley; although an anaemic sun shone at an oblique angle, a substantial layer of coal smoke lay between Vincent and the heavens. Wasmes struggled up the side of the hill in two winding rows of dirty, red brick buildings, but before it reached the top, the bricks ran out and Petit Wasmes appeared.

As Vincent walked up the long hill he wondered why the village was so deserted. Not a man was to be seen anywhere; an occasional woman stood in a doorway with a dull and stolid expression on her face.