“Well, you are a scoundrel and a flatterer, but you can have a little colour this time. Only see that you pay your bill.”
“For this kindness, my lovely Xantippe, I shall paint your portrait. One day it will hang in the Louvre and immortalize us both.”
The little bell on the front door jingled. A stranger walked in. “That picture you have in the window,” he said. “That still life. Who is it by?”
“Paul Cezanne.”
“Cezanne? Never heard of him. Is it for sale?”
“Ah, no, alas, it is already . . .”
Madame Tanguy threw off her apron, pushed Tanguy out of the way, and ran up to the man eagerly.
“But of course it is for sale. It is a beautiful still life, is it not, Monsieur? Have you ever seen such apples before? We will sell it to you cheap, Monsieur, since you admire it.”
“How much?”
“How much, Tanguy?” demanded Madame, with a threat in her voice.
Tanguy swallowed hard. “Three hun . . .”
“Tanguy!”
“Two hun. . .”
“TANGUY!”
“Well, one hundred francs.”
“A hundred francs?” said the stranger. “For an unknown painter? I’m afraid that’s too much. I was only prepared to spend about twenty-five.”
Madame Tanguy took the canvas out of the window.
“See, Monsieur, it is a big picture. There are four apples. Four apples are a hundred francs. You only want to spend twenty-five. Then why not take one apple?”
The man studied the canvas for a moment and said, “Yes, I could do that. Just cut this apple the full length of the canvas and I’ll take it.”
Madame ran back to her apartment, got a pair of scissors, and cut off the end apple. She wrapped it in a piece of paper, handed it to the man, and took the twenty-five francs. He walked out with the bundle under his arm.
“My favourite Cezanne,” moaned Tanguy. “I put it in the window so people could see it for a moment and go away happy.”
Madame put the mutilated canvas on the counter.
“Next time someone wants a Cezanne, and hasn’t much money, sell him an apple. Take anything you can get for it. They’re worthless anyway, he paints so many of them. And you needn’t laugh, Paul Gauguin, the same goes for you. I’m going to take those canvases of yours off the wall and sell every one of your naked heathen females for five francs apiece.”
“My darling Xantippe,” said Gauguin, “we met too late in life. If only you had been my partner on the Stock Exchange, we would have owned the Bank of France by now.”
When Madame retired to her quarters at the rear Pére Tanguy said to Vincent, “You are a painter, Monsieur? I hope you will buy your colours here. And perhaps you will let me see some of your pictures?”
“I shall be happy to. These are lovely Japanese prints. Are they for sale?”
“Yes. They have become very fashionable in Paris since the Goncourt brothers have taken to collecting them. They are influencing our young painters a great deal.”
“I like these two. I want to study them. How much are they?”
“Three francs apiece.”
“I’ll take them. Oh, Lord, I forgot. I spent my last franc this morning. Gauguin, have you six francs?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Vincent laid the Japanese prints down on the counter with regret.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave them, Pére Tanguy.”
Pére pressed the prints into Vincent’s hand and looked up at him with a shy, wistful smile on his homely face.
“You need this for your work. Please take them. You will pay me another time.”
THEO DECIDED TO give a party for Vincent’s friends. They made four dozen hard-boiled eggs, brought in a keg of beer, and filled innumerable trays with brioches and pastries. The tobacco smoke was so thick in the living room that when Gauguin moved his huge bulk from one end to the other, he looked like an ocean liner coming through the fog. Lautrec perched himself in one corner, cracked eggs on the arm of Theo’s favourite armchair, and scattered the shells over the rug. Rousseau was all excited about a perfumed note he had received that day from a lady admirer who wanted to meet him. He told the story with wide eyed amazement over and over again. Seurat was working out a new theory, and had Cezanne pinned against the window, explaining to him. Vincent poured beer from the keg, laughed at Gauguin’s obscene stories, wondered with Rousseau who his lady friend could be, argued with Lautrec whether lines or points of colour were most effective in capturing an impression, and finally rescued Cezanne from the clutches of Seurat.
The room fairly burst with excitement. The men in it were all powerful personalities, fierce egoists, and vibrant iconoclasts. Theo called them monomaniacs. They loved to argue, fight, curse, defend their own theories and damn everything else. Their voices were strong and rough; the number of things they loathed in the world was legion. A hall twenty times the size of Theo’s living room would have been too small to contain the dynamic force of the fighting, strident painters.
