Lust for Life полностью

The sun rose and a bit of light peered into the storeroom window. Vincent got up from his stool. He felt perfectly calm and peaceful. The twelve days’ excitement was gone. He looked at his work. It reeked of bacon, smoke, and potato steam. He smiled. He had painted his Angelus. He had captured that which does not pass in that which passes. The Brabant peasant would never die.

He washed the picture with the white of an egg. He carried his box of drawings and paintings to the vicarage, left them with his mother, and bade her good-bye. He returned to his studio, wrote The Potato Eaters on his canvas, put a few of his best studies with it, and set out for Paris.

“THEN YOU DIDN’T get my last letter?” asked Theo the next morning, as they sat over their rolls and coffee.

“I don’t think so,” replied Vincent. “What was in it?”

“The news of my promotion at Goupils.”

“Why, Theo, and you didn’t tell me a word about it yesterday!”

“You were too excited to listen. I have charge of the gallery on the Boulevard Montmartre.”

“Theo, that’s splendid! An art gallery of your own!”

“It really isn’t my own, Vincent. I have to follow the Goupil policy pretty closely. But they let me hang the Impressionists on the entresol, so . . .”

“Who are you exhibiting?”

“Monet, Degas, Pissarro and Manet.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Then you’d better come along to the gallery and have a good, long look!”

“What does that sly grin on your face mean, Theo?”

“Oh, nothing. Will you have more coffee? We must go in a few minutes. I walk to the shop every morning.”

“Thanks. No, no, only half a cup. Deuce take it, Theo, boy, but it’s good to eat breakfast across the table from you once again!”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come to Paris for a long time. You had to come eventually, of course. But I do think it would have been better if you had waited until June, when I move to the Rue Lepic. We’ll have three large rooms there. You can’t do much work here, you see.”

Vincent turned in his chair and glanced about him. Theo’s apartment consisted of one room, a tiny kitchen, and a cabinet. The room was cheerfully furnished with authentic Louis Philippes, but there was hardly space enough to move around.

“If I set up an easel,” said Vincent, “we’d have to move some of your lovely furniture out into the courtyard.”

“I know the place is crowded, but I had a chance to pick these pieces up at a bargain and they’re exactly what I want for the new apartment. Come along, Vincent, I’ll take you down the hill on my favourite walk to the Boulevard. You don’t know Paris until you smell it in the early morning.”

Theo put on the heavy black coat that crossed up high under his immaculate, white bow tie, gave a final pat of the brush to the little curl that stood up on each side of the parting in his hair, and then smoothed down his moustache and soft chin beard. He put on his black bowler hat, took his gloves and walking stick, and went to the front door.

“Well, Vincent, are you ready? Good Lord, but you are a sight! If you wore that outfit anywhere but in Paris, you’d be arrested!”

“What’s the matter with it?” Vincent looked down at himself. “I’ve been wearing it for almost two years and nobody’s said anything.”

Theo laughed. “Never mind, Parisians are used to people like you. I’ll get you some clothes tonight when the gallery closes.”

They walked down a flight of winding stairs, passed the concierge’s apartment and stepped through the door to the Rue Laval. It was a fairly broad street, prosperous and respectable looking, with large stores Selling drugs, picture frames and antiques.

“Notice the three beautiful ladies on the third floor of our building,” said Theo.

Vincent looked up and saw three plaster of Paris heads and busts. Under the first was written, Sculpture, under the middle one, Architecture, and under the last, Painting.

“What makes them think Painting is such an ugly wench?”

“I don’t know,” replied Theo, “but anyway, you got into the right house.”

The two men passed Le Vieux Rouen, Antiquities, where Theo had bought his Louis Philippe furniture. In a moment they were in the Rue Montmartre, which wound gracefully up the hill to the Avenue Clichy and the Butte Montmartre, and down the hill to the heart of the city. The street was full of morning sunlight, of the smell of Paris arising, of people eating croissants and coffee in the cafés, of the vegetable, meat, and cheese shops opening to the day’s trade.

It was a teeming bourgeois section, crowded with small stores. Workingmen walked out in the middle of the street. Housewives fingered the merchandise in the bins in front of the shops and bargained querulously with the merchants.

Vincent breathed deeply. “It’s Paris,” he said. “After all these years.”

“Yes, Paris. The capital of Europe. Particularly for an artist.”