Roulin’s prediction had been right. The sun rose, a yellow ball of heat. The rabbit-fur bonnet had no peak, and the sun pried into his eyes. The autumn garden was a two hour walk from Arles, on the road to Tarascon. It nestled askew on the side of a hill. Vincent olanted his easel in a furrowed cornfield, behind and to the side of the garden. He threw his bonnet to the ground, took off his good coat, and set the canvas to the easel. Although it was still early morning, the sun scorched the top of his head and threw before his eyes the veil of dancing fire to which he had become accustomed.
He studied the scene before him carefully, analysed the component colours, and etched the design on his mind. When he was confident that he understood the scene, he softened his brushes, took the caps off his tubes of pigments, and cleaned the knife with which he spread on his thick colour. He glanced once more at the garden, burnt the image on the blank canvas before him, mixed some colour on the palette, and raised his brush.
“Must you begin so soon, Vincent?” asked a voice behind him.
Vincent whirled about.
“It is early yet, my dear. And you have the whole long day to work.”
Vincent gaped at the woman in utter bewilderment. She was young, but not a child. Her eyes were as blue as the cobalt sky of an Arlesian night, and her hair, which she wore in a great flowing mass down her back, was as lemon-yellow as the sun. Her features were even more delicate than those of Kay Vos, but they had about them the mellow maturity of the Southland. Her colouring was burnt gold, her teeth, between the smiling lips, as white as an oleander seen through a blood-red vine. She wore a long white gown which clung to the lines of her body and was fastened only by a square silver buckle at the side. She had a simple pair of sandals on her feet. Her figure was sturdy, robust, yet flowing downward with the eye in pure, voluptuous curves.
“I’ve stayed away so very long, Vincent,” she said.
She placed herself between Vincent and the easel, leaning against the blank canvas and shutting out his view of the garden. The sun caught up the lemon-yellow hair and sent waves of flame down her back. She smiled at him so wholeheartedly, so fondly, that he ran a hand over his eyes to see if he had suddenly gone ill, or fallen asleep.
“You do not understand, my dear, dear boy,” the woman said. “How could you, when I’ve stayed away so long?”
“Who are you?”
“I am your friend, Vincent. The best friend you have in the world.”
“How do you know my name? I have never seen you before.”
“Ah, no, but I have seen you, many, many times.”
“What is your name?”
“Maya.”
“Is that all? Just Maya?”
“For you, Vincent, that is all.”
“Why have you followed me here to the fields?”
“For the same reason that I have followed you all over Europe . . . so that I might be near you.”
“You mistake me for someone else. I can’t possibly be the man you mean.”
The woman put a cool white hand on the burnt red hair of his head and smoothed it back lightly. The coolness of her hand and the coolness of her soft, low voice was like the refreshing water from a deep green well.
“There is only one Vincent Van Gogh. I could never mistake him.”
“How long do you think you have known me?”
“Eight years, Vincent.”
“Why, eight years ago I was in . . .”
“. . . Yes, dear, in the Borinage.”
“You knew me then?”
“I saw you for the first time one late fall afternoon, when you were sitting on a rusty iron wheel in front of Marcasse . . .”
“. . . Watching the miners go home!”
“Yes. When I first looked at you, you were sitting there, idly. I was about to pass by. Then you took an old envelope and a pencil from your pocket and began sketching. I looked over your shoulder to see what you had done. And when I saw . . . I fell in love.”
“You fell in love? You fell in love with me?”
“Yes, Vincent, my dear, good Vincent, in love with you.”
“Perhaps I was not so bad to look at then.”
“Not half so good as you are to look at now.”
“Your voice . . . Maya . . . it sounds so queer. Only once before has a woman spoken to me in that voice . . .”
“. . . Margot’s voice. She loved you, Vincent, as well as I do.”
“You knew Margot?”
“I stayed in the Brabant for two years. I followed you to the fields each day. I watched you work in the wrangle room behind the kitchen. And I was happy because Margot loved you.”
“Then you did not love me any more?”
She caressed his eyes with the cool tips of her fingers.
“Ah, yes. I loved you. I have never ceased to love you since that very first day.”
“And you weren’t jealous of Margot?”
The woman smiled. Across her face went a flash of infinite sadness and compassion. Vincent thought of Mendes da Costa.
“No, I was not jealous of Margot. Her love was good for you. But your love for Kay I did not like. It injured you.”
“Did you know me when I was in love with Ursula?”
“That was before my time.”
“You would not have liked me then.”
“No.”
“I was a fool.”
“Sometimes one has to be a fool in the beginning, to become wise in the end.”
