Painting all day, fighting all night, sleeping not at all, eating very little, glutting themselves with sun and colour, excitement, tobacco and absinthe, lacerated by the elements and their own drive of creation, lacerating each other with their rages and violence, their gorges mounting higher and higher.
The sun beat them. The mistral whipped them. The colour stabbed their eyes out. The absinthe swelled their empty bowels with turgescent fever. The yellow house rocked and throbbed with the tempest in the tropical, plethoric nights.
Gauguin did a portrait of Vincent while the latter was painting a still life of some ploughs. Vincent stared at the portrait. For the first time he understood clearly just what Gauguin thought of him.
“It is certainly I,” he said. “But it is I gone mad!”
That evening they went to the café. Vincent ordered a light absinthe. Suddenly he flung the glass and the contents at Gauguin’s head. Gauguin dodged. He picked Vincent up bodily in his arms. He carried him across the Place Lamartine. Vincent found himself in bed. He fell asleep instantly.
“My dear Gauguin,” he said very calmly the next morning, “I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening.”
“I forgive you gladly and with all my heart,” said Gauguin, “but yesterday’s scene might occur again. If I were struck I might lose control of myself and give you a choking. So permit me to write to your brother and tell him that I am coming back.”
“No! No! Paul, you can’t do that. Leave the yellow house? Everything in it I made for you.”
During all the hours of the day the storm raged. Vincent fought desperately to keep Gauguin by his side. Gauguin resisted every plea. Vincent begged, cajoled, cursed, threatened, even wept. In this battle he proved to be the stronger. He felt that his whole life depended upon keeping his friend in the yellow house. By nightfall Gauguin was exhausted. He gave in just to get a little rest.
Every room in the yellow house was charged and vibrating with electrical tension. Gauguin could not sleep. Toward dawn he dozed off.
A queer sensation awakened him. He saw Vincent standing over his bed, glaring at him in the dark.
“What’s the matter with you, Vincent?” he asked sternly.
Vincent walked out of the room, returned to his bed, and fell into a heavy sleep.
The following night Gauguin was jerked out of his sleep by the same strange sensation. Vincent was standing over his bed, staring at him in the dark.
“Vincent! Go to bed!”
Vincent turned away.
At supper the next day they fell into a fierce quarrel over the soup.
“You poured some paint into it, Vincent, while I wasn’t looking!” shouted Gauguin.
Vincent laughed. He walked to the wall and wrote in chalk,
He was very quiet for several days. He looked moody and depressed. He hardly spoke a word to Gauguin. He did not even pick up a paint brush. He did not read. He sat in a chair and gazed ahead of him into space.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, when there was a vicious mistral, he asked Gauguin to take a walk with him.
“Let’s go up to the park,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”
“Can’t you tell me here, where we’re comfortable?”
“No, I can’t talk sitting down. I must walk.”
“Very well, if you must.”
They took the wagon road which wound up the left side of the town. To make progress they had to plunge through the mistral as though it were a thick, leathery substance. The cypresses in the park were being swayed almost to the ground.
“What is it you want to tell me?” demanded Gauguin.
He had to shout into Vincent’s ear. The wind snatched away his words almost before Vincent could catch them.
“Paul, I’ve been thinking for the past few days. I’ve hit upon a wonderful idea.”
“Forgive me if I’m a little leery of your wonderful ideas.”
“We’ve all failed as painters. Do you know why?”
“What? I can’t hear a word. Shout it in my ear.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHY WE’VE ALL FAILED AS PAINTERS?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we paint alone!”
“What the devil?”
“Some things we paint well, some things we paint badly. We throw them all together in a single canvas.”
“Brigadier, I’m hanging on your words.”
“Do you remember the Both brothers? Dutch painters. One was good at landscape. The other was good at figures. They painted a picture together. One put in the landscape. The other put in the figures. They were successful.”
“Well, to bring an interminable story to its obscure point?”
“What? I can’t hear you. Come closer.”
“I SAID, GO ON!”
“Paul. That’s what we must do. You and I. Seurat. Cezanne. Lautrec. Rousseau. We must all work together on the same canvas. That would be a true painter’s communism. We would each put in what we did best. Seurat the air. You the landscape. Cezanne the surfaces. Lautrec the figures. I the sun and moon and stars. Together we could be one great artist. What do you say?”
