She went over to the bed and put her cool hand on his cheek; the red beard was on fire. “Don’t be proud no more,” she said. “And don’t tell no more lies. If we’re poor, it ain’t our fault. We got to help each other. Didn’t you help me the first night we met down the wine cellar?”
“Sien,” he said.
“Now you lay there. I went home and got some potatoes and string beans. They’re all ready.”
She mashed the potatoes on the plate, put some green beans alongside, sat on his bed and fed him. “Why did you give me your money every day if you didn’t have enough? It ain’t no good if you go hungry.”
He could have stood the privation until Theo’s money arrived, even if it had been weeks. It was always the unexpected piece of kindness that broke his back. He decided to see Tersteeg. Christine washed his shirt, but there was no iron to smooth it with. The next morning she gave him a little breakfast of bread and coffee. He set out to walk to the Plaats. One heel was off his muddy boots, his trousers were patched and dirty. Theo’s coat was many sizes too small. He had an old necktie askew at the left side of his neck. On his head was one of the outlandish caps that he had a perfect genius for picking up, no one knew where.
He walked along the Ryn railroad tracks, skirted the edge of the woods and the station where the steam cars left for Scheveningen, and made for town. The feeble sun made him sensitive to his own anaemia. At the Plein he caught sight of himself in the window glass of a shop. In one of his rare moments of clarity he saw himself as the people of The Hague saw him: a dirty, unkempt tramp, belonging nowhere, wanted by no one, ill, weak, uncouth and
The Plaats opened on a broad triangle to meet the Hofvijver alongside of the castle. Only the richest shops could afford to keep establishments there. Vincent was afraid to venture into the sacred triangle. He had never before realized how many millions of miles of caste he had put between himself and the Plaats.
The clerks in Goupils were dusting. They stared at him with unabashed curiosity. This man’s family controlled the art world of Europe. Why did he go about so foully?
Tersteeg was at his desk in the upstairs office. He was opening mail with a jade handled paper knife. He noticed Vincent’s small, circular ears that came below the line of his eyebrows, the oval of his face that tapered down through the jaws and then flattened out at the square chin, the head that was going smooth of hair above the left eye, the green-blue eyes that stared through him so probingly and yet without comment, the full, red mouth made redder by the beard and moustache in which it was set. He could never make up his mind whether he thought Vincent’s face and head ugly or beautiful.
“You’re the first customer in the shop this morning, Vincent,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Vincent explained his predicament.
“What have you done with your allowance?”
“I’ve spent it.”
“If you have been improvident, you can’t expect me to encourage you. There are thirty days to each month: you should not spend more than the proper share each day.”
“I have not been improvident. Most of the money has gone for models.”
“Then you should not hire them. You can work more cheaply by yourself.”
“To work without models is the ruin of a painter of the figure.”
“Don’t paint figures. Do cows and sheep. You don’t have to pay them.”
“I can’t draw cows and sheep, Mijnheer, if I don’t feel cows and sheep.”
“You ought not to be drawing people, anyway; you can’t sell those sketches. You ought to be doing water-colours and nothing else.”
“Water-colour is not my medium.”
“I think your drawing is a kind of narcotic which you take in order not to feel the pain it costs you not to be able to make water-colours.”
There was a silence. Vincent could think of no possible answer to this.
“De Bock doesn’t use models, and he’s wealthy. Yet I think you will agree with me that his canvases are splendid; the prices are going up steadily. I have been waiting for you to get some of his charm into your work. But somehow it doesn’t come. I am really disappointed, Vincent; your work remains uncouth and amateurish. Of one thing I am sure, you are no artist.”
Vincent’s cutting hunger of the past five days suddenly severed the sinews in his knees, he sat down weakly on one of the hand carved Italian chairs. His voice was lost somewhere in his empty bowels, and he could not find it.
“Why do you say that to me, Mijnheer?” he asked, after a pause.
Tersteeg took out a spotless handkerchief, wiped his nose, the corners of his mouth, and his chin beard. “Because I owe it to both you and your family. You ought to know the truth. There is still time for you to save yourself, Vincent, if you act quickly. You are not cut out to be an artist; you ought to find your right niche in life. I never make a mistake about painters.”
“I know,” said Vincent.
