Lust for Life

There were pine woods and clumps of oaks on the heath near Zundert. Vincent spent his days walking alone in the fields, gazing down into the numerous ponds with which the heath was dotted. The only diversion he enjoyed was drawing; he made a number of sketches of the garden, the Saturday afternoon market seen from the window of the parsonage, the front door of the house. It kept his mind off Ursula for moments at a time.

Theodorus had always been disappointed that his oldest son had not chosen to follow in his footsteps. They went to visit a sick peasant and when they drove back that evening across the heath the two men got out of the carriage and walked awhile. The sun was setting red behind the pine trees, the evening sky was reflected in the pools, and the heath and yellow sand were full of harmony.

“My father was a parson, Vincent, and I had always hoped you would continue the line.”

“What makes you think I want to change?”

“I was only saying, in case you wanted to . . . You could live with Uncle Jan in Amsterdam while you attend the University. And the Reverend Stricker has offered to direct your education.”

“Are you advising me to leave Goupils?”

“Oh no, certainly not. But if you are unhappy there . . . sometimes people change. . . .”

“I know. But I have no intention of leaving Goupils.”

His mother and father drove him to Breda the day he was to leave for London. “Are we to write to the same address, Vincent?” Anna Cornelia asked.

“No. I’m moving.”

“I’m glad you’re leaving the Loyers,” said his father. “I never liked that family. They had too many secrets.”

Vincent stiffened. His mother laid a warm hand over his and said gently, so that Theodorus might not hear, “Don’t be unhappy, my dear. You will be better off with a nice Dutch girl, later, later, when you are more established. She would not be good for you, that Ursula girl. She is not your kind.”

He wondered how his mother knew.

6

BACK IN LONDON he took furnished rooms in Kensington New Road. His landlady was a little old woman who retired every evening at eight. There was never the faintest sound in the house. Each night he had a fierce battle on his hands; he yearned to run directly to the Loyers’. He would lock the door on himself and swear resolutely that he was going to sleep. In a quarter of an hour he would find himself mysteriously on the street, hurrying to Ursula’s.

When he got within a block of her house he felt himself enter her aura. It was torture to have this feel of her and yet have her so inaccessible; it was a thousand times worse torture to stay in Ivy Cottage and not get within that penumbra of haunting personality.

Pain did curious things to him. It made him sensitive to the pain of others. It made him intolerant of everything that was cheap and blatantly successful in the world about him. He was no longer of any value at the gallery. When customers asked him what he thought about a particular print he told them in no uncertain terms how horrible it was, and they did not buy. The only pictures in which he could find reality and emotional depth were the ones in which the artists had expressed pain.

In October a stout matron with a high lace collar, a high bosom, a sable coat, and a round velvet hat with a blue plume, came in and asked to be shown some pictures for her new town house. She fell to Vincent.

“I want the very best things you have in stock,” she said. “You needn’t concern yourself over the expense. Here are the dimensions; in the drawing room there are two uninterrupted walls of fifty feet, one wall broken by two windows with a space between . . .”

He spent the better part of the afternoon trying to sell her some etchings after Rembrandt, an excellent reproduction of a Venetian water scene after Turner, some lithographs after Thys Maris, and museum photographs after Corot and Daubigny. The woman had a sure instinct for picking out the very worst expression of the painter’s art to be found in any group that Vincent showed her. She had an equal talent for being able to reject at first sight, and quite peremptorily, everything he knew to be authentic. As the hours passed, the woman, with her pudgy features and condescending puerilities, became for him a perfect symbol of middle-class fatuity and the commercial life.

“There,” she exclaimed with a self-satisfied air, “I think I’ve chosen rather well.”

“If you had closed your eyes and picked,” said Vincent, “you couldn’t have done any worse.”

The woman rose to her feet heavily and swept the wide velvet skirt to one side. Vincent could see the turgid flow of blood creep from her propped-up bosom to her neck under the lace collar.

“Why!” she exclaimed, “why, you’re nothing but a . . . a . . . country boor!”

She stormed out, the tall feather in her velvet hat waving back and forth.

Mr. Obach was outraged. “My dear Vincent,” he exclaimed, “whatever is the matter with you? You’ve muffed the biggest sale of the week, and insulted that woman!”

“Mr. Obach, would you answer me one question?”