Vincent laughed, closed the razor, and put it back on the washstand. “Don’t be afraid, my friend. That’s all over now.”
At the end of the second week Doctor Rey gave Vincent permission to paint. An attendant was sent down to the yellow house to get the easel and canvas. Doctor Rey posed for Vincent just to humour him. Vincent worked slowly, a tiny bit each day. When the portrait was finished he presented it to the Doctor.
“I want you to keep this as a souvenir of me, Doctor. It is the only way I have of showing my gratitude for your kindness.”
“That is very nice of you, Vincent. I am honoured.”
The doctor took the portrait home and used it to cover a crack in the wall.
Vincent stayed at the hospital two weeks longer. He painted the patio, baking in the sun. He wore a wide straw hat while he worked. The flower garden took him the full two weeks to paint.
“You must drop in to see me every day,” said Doctor Rey, shaking hands with Vincent at the front gate of the hospital. “And remember, no absinthe, no excitement, and no working in the sun without that hat.”
“I promise, Doctor. And thank you for everything.”
“I shall write your brother that you are completely well.”
Vincent found that the landlord had made a contract to turn him out and give the yellow house to a tobacconist. Vincent was deeply attached to the yellow house. It was his sole root in the soil of Provence. He had painted every inch of it, inside and out. He had made it habitable. In spite of the accident, he still considered it his permanent home, and he was determined to fight the landlord to the bitter end.
At first he was afraid to sleep alone in the house because of his insomnia, which not even the camphor could overcome. Doctor Rey had given him bromide of potassium to rout the unbearable hallucinations that had been frightening him. At length the voices that had been whispering queer tales in his ears went away, to come back only in nightmares.
He was still far too weak to go out and work. The serenity returned but slowly to his brain. His blood revived from day to day and his appetite increased. He had a gay dinner with Roulin at the restaurant, quite cheerful and with no dread of renewed suffering. He began working gingerly on a portrait of Roulin’s wife, which had been unfinished at the time of the accident. He liked the way he had ranged the reds from rose to orange, rising through the yellows to lemon, with light and sombre greens.
His health and his work picked up slowly. He had known before that one could fracture one’s legs and arms, and after that recover, but he was rather astonished that one could fracture the brain in one’s head and recover after that, too.
One afternoon he went to ask after Rachel’s health.
“Pigeon,” he said, “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”
“It’s all right,
His friends came in and assured him that in Provence everyone suffered either from fever, hallucinations, or madness.
“It’s nothing unusual, Vincent,” said Roulin. “Down here in Tartarin’s country we are all a trifle cracked.”
“Well, well,” said Vincent, “we understand each other like members of the same family.”
A few more weeks passed. Vincent was now able to work all day in the studio. Thoughts of madness and death left his mind. He began to feel almost normal.
Finally he ventured out of doors to paint. The sun was burning up the magnificent yellow of the cornfields. But Vincent could not capture it. He had been eating regularly, sleeping regularly, avoiding excitement and intense enthusiasm.
He was feeling so normal he could not paint.
“You are a
Vincent knew that to attain the high yellow note which dominated his Arlesian canvases he had to be on edge, strung up, throbbingly excited, passionately sensitive, his nerves rasped raw. If he allowed himself to get into that state, he could paint again as brilliantly as he had before. But the road led to destruction.
“An artist is a man with his work to do,” he murmured to himself. “How stupid for me to remain alive if I can’t paint the way I want to paint.”
