“Yes, but now that we’re ready to move out there, I realize that I don’t want to go. I couldn’t possibly live there and do any work. Theo, I wonder if I can make you understand . . . But of course I can. When I was alone in the Brabant and The Hague, I thought of myself as an important person. I was one lone man, battling the whole world. I was an artist, the only artist living. Everything I painted was valuable. I knew that I had great ability, and that eventually the world would say, ‘He is a splendid painter.’”
“And now?”
“Alas, now I am just one of many. There are hundreds of painters all about me. I see myself caricatured on every side. Think of all the wretched canvases in our apartment, sent by painters who want to join the colony. They, too, think they are going to be great painters. Well, maybe I’m just like them. How do I know? What have I to bolster up my courage now? Before I came to Paris I didn’t know there were hopeless fools who deluded themselves all their lives. Now I know. That hurts.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“Perhaps not. But I’ll never be able to stamp out that little germ of doubt. When I am alone, in the country, I forget that there are thousands of canvases being painted every day. I imagine that mine is the only one, and that it is a beautiful gift to the world. I would still go on painting even if I knew my work to be atrocious, but this . . . this artist’s illusion . . . helps. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Besides, I am not a city painter. I don’t belong here. I am a peasant painter. I want to go back to my fields. I want to find a sun so hot that it will burn everything out of me but the desire to paint!”
“So . . . you want to . . . leave . . . Paris?”
“Yes. I must.”
“And what about the colony?”
“I am going to withdraw. But you must carry on.”
Theo shook his head. “No, not without you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I was only doing it for you . . . because you wanted it.”
They were silent for some moments.
“You haven’t given notice yet, Theo?”
“No. I was going to on the first.”
“I suppose we can return the money to the people it belongs to?”
“Yes . . . When do you think you’ll be going?”
“Not until my palette is clear.”
“I see.”
“Then I’ll go away. To the South, probably. I don’t know where. So that I can be alone. And paint and paint and paint. By myself.”
He threw his arm about Theo’s shoulder with rough affection.
“Theo, tell me you don’t despise me. To throw everything up this way when I’ve put you through so much.”
“Despise you?”
Theo smiled with infinite sadness. He reached up and patted the hand that lay on his shoulder.
“. . . No . . . no, of course not. I understand. I think you are right. Well . . . old boy . . . you’d better finish your drink. I must be getting back to Goupils.”
VINCENT LABOURED ON for another month, but although his palette was now almost as clear and light as that of his friends, he could not seem to reach a form of expression that satisfied him. At first he thought it was the crudity of his drawing, so he tried working slowly, and in cold blood. The meticulous process of putting on the paint was torture to him, but looking at the canvas afterwards was even worse. He tried hiding his brush work in flat surfaces; he tried working with thin colour instead of rich spurts of pigment. Nothing seemed to help. Again and again he felt that he was fumbling toward a medium that would not only be unique, but which would enable him to say everything he wanted to say. And yet he could not quite grasp it.
“I almost got it that time,” he murmured one evening in the apartment. “Almost, but not quite. If I could only find out what was standing in my way.”
“I think I can tell you that,” said Theo, taking the canvas from his brother.
“You can? What is it?”
“It’s Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. Paris has been your training ground. As long as you remain here, you’ll be nothing but a schoolboy. Remember our school in Holland, Vincent? We learned how other people did things, and how they should be done, but we never actually did anything for ourselves.”
“You mean I don’t find the subjects here sympathetic?”
“No, I mean that you’re unable to make a clean break from your teachers. I’ll be awfully lonely without you, Vincent, but I know that you have to go. Somewhere in this world there must be a spot that you can make all your own. I don’t know where it is; it’s up to you to find it. But you must cut away from your schoolhouse before you can reach maturity.”
“Do you know, old boy, what country I’ve been thinking a lot about of late?”
“No.”
“Africa.”
“Africa! Not really?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking of the blistering sun all during this damnably long and cold winter. That’s where Delacroix found his colour, and maybe I could find myself there.”
“Africa is a long ways off, Vincent,” said Theo, meditatively.
