Lust for Life

It was a long distance from the Gare de Lyon to Theo’s house. To Johanna it seemed an endless time of waiting. She began to fear that something had happened to Vincent on the train. But at length an open fiacre turned in from the Rue Pigalle, two merry faces nodded to her, and two hands waved. She strained to catch a glimpse of Vincent.

The Cité Pigalle was a rue impasse, blocked off at the end by a garden court and the jutting corner of a stone house. There were only two long buildings on either side of the prosperous and respectable looking street. Theo lived at number 8, the house nearest the impasse; it was set back from a little garden and had a private trottoir all its own. It took the fiacre but a few seconds to draw up before the big black tree and the entrance.

Vincent bounded up the stairs with Theo at his heels. Johanna had expected to see an invalid, but the man who flung his arms about her had healthy colour, a smile on his face, and an expression of great resoluteness.

“He seems perfectly well. He looks much stronger than Theo,” was her first thought.

But she could not bring herself to look at his ear.

“Well, Theo,” exclaimed Vincent, holding Johanna’s hand and looking at her approvingly, “you certainly picked yourself a fine wife.

“Thanks, Vincent,” laughed Theo.

Theo had chosen in the tradition of his mother. Johanna had the same soft brown eyes as Anna Cornelia, the same tender reaching out in full sympathy and compassion. Already, with her child but a few months old, there was the faint touch of the coming matriarch about her. She had plain, good features, an almost stolid oval face, and a mass of light brown hair combed back simply from a high Dutch brow. Her love for Theo included Vincent.

Theo drew Vincent into the bedroom, where the baby was sleeping in his cradle. The two men looked at the child in silence, tears in their eyes. Johanna sensed that they would like to be alone for a moment; she tiptoed to the door. Just as she put her hand on the knob, Vincent turned smilingly to her and said, pointing to the crocheted cover over the cradle.

“Do not cover him too much with lace, little sister.”

Johanna closed the door quietly behind her. Vincent, looking down at the child once more, felt the awful pang of barren men whose flesh leaves no flesh behind, whose death is death eternal.

Theo read his thoughts.

“There is still time for you, Vincent. Some day you will find a wife who will love you and share the hardships of your life.”

“Ah no, Theo, it’s too late.”

“I found a woman only the other day who would be perfect for you.”

“Not really! Who was she?”

“She was the girl in ‘Terre Vierge,’ by Turgenev. Remember her?”

“You mean the one who works with the nihilists, and brings the compromising papers across the frontier?”

“Yes. Your wife would have to be somebody like that, Vincent; somebody who had gone through life’s misery to the very bottom . . .”

“. . . And what would she want with me? A one-eared man?”

Little Vincent awakened, looked up at them and smiled. Theo lifted the child out of the cradle and placed him in Vincent’s arms.

“So soft and warm, like a little puppy,” said Vincent, feeling the baby against his heart.

“Here, clumsy, you don’t hold a baby like that.”

“I’m afraid I’m more at home holding a paint brush.”

Theo took the child and held him against his shoulder, his head touching the baby’s brown curls. To Vincent they looked as though they had been carved out of the same stone.

“Well, Theo boy,” he said resignedly, “each man to his own medium. You create in the living flesh . . . and I’ll create in paint.”

“Just so, Vincent, just so.”

A number of Vincent’s friends came to Theo’s that night to welcome him back. The first arrival was Aurier, a handsome young man with flowing locks and a beard which sprouted out of each side of his chin, but conjured up no hair in the middle. Vincent led him to the bedroom, where Theo had hung a Monticelli bouquet.

“You said in your article, Monsieur Aurier, that I was the sole painter to perceive the chromatism of things with a metallic, gem-like quality. Look at this Monticelli. ‘Fada’ achieved it years before I even came to Paris.”

At the end of an hour Vincent gave up trying to persuade Aurier, and presented him instead with one of the St. Remy cypress canvasses in appreciation for his article.

Toulouse-Lautrec blew in, winded from six flights of stairs, but still as hilarious and ribald as ever.

“Vincent,” he exclaimed, while shaking hands, “I passed an undertaker on the stairs. Was he looking for you or me?”

“For you, Lautrec! He couldn’t get any business out of me.”

“I’ll make you a little wager, Vincent. I’ll bet your name comes ahead of mine in his little book.”

“You’re on. What’s the stake?”

“Dinner at the Café Athens, and an evening at the Opéra.”

“I wish you fellows would make your jokes a trifle less macabre,” said Theo, smiling faintly.