Summer came. Vincent went out of doors to paint again. This meant new outlays for paints, brushes, canvas, frames, bigger easels. Theo reported improved condition on his “patient,” but serious problems in his relationship with her. What was he to do with the woman, now that she was better?
Vincent shut his eyes to everything in his personal life and continued to paint. He knew that his house was crashing about his ears, that he was being drawn into the abysmal sloth that had recaptured Christine. He tried to bury his despair in his work. Each morning when he set out on a new project, he hoped that this canvas would be so beautiful and perfect that it would sell immediately and establish him. Each night he returned home with the sad realization that he was still many years from the mastery he longed for.
His only relief was Antoon, the child. He was a miracle of vitality, and swallowed all kinds of eatables with much laughing and cooing. He often sat with Vincent in the studio, on the floor in a corner. He would crow at Vincent’s drawings and then sit quietly looking at the sketches on the walls. He was growing up to be a pretty and vivacious child. The less attention Christine paid to the baby, the more Vincent loved him. In Antoon he saw the real purpose and reward for his actions of last winter.
Weissenbruch looked in only once. Vincent showed him some of the sketches of the year before. He had become frightfully dissatisfied with them.
“Don’t feel that way,” said Weissenbruch. “After a good many years you will look back on these early pieces of work and realize that they were sincere and penetrating. Just plug on, my boy, and don’t let anything stop you.”
What finally did stop him was a smash in the face. During the spring he had taken a lamp to the crockery man to have it repaired. The merchant had insisted that Vincent take some new dishes with him.
“But I have no money to pay for them.”
“It doesn’t matter. There is no hurry. Take them and pay me when you get the money.”
Two months later he banged on the door of the studio. He was a burly chap with a neck as thick as his head.
“What do you mean by lying to me?” he demanded. “What do you take my goods for and not pay me when you got money all the time?”
“At the moment I am absolutely flat. I will pay you as soon as I receive money.”
“That’s a lie! You just gave money to my neighbour, the shoemaker.”
“I am at work,” said Vincent, “and I don’t care to be disturbed. I’ll pay you when I get the money. Please get out.”
“I’ll get out when you give me that money, and not before!”
Vincent indiscreetly pushed the man toward the door. “Get out of my house,” he commanded.
That was just what the tradesman was waiting for. As soon as he was touched, he smashed over his right fist into Vincent’s face and sent him crashing into the wall. He struck Vincent again, knocked him to the floor, and walked out without another word.
Christine was at her mother’s. Antoon crawled across the floor and patted Vincent’s face, crying. After a few minutes Vincent came back to consciousness, dragged himself up the stairs to the attic and lay over the bed.
The blows had not hurt his face. He felt no pain. He had not injured himself when he had fallen heavily to the floor. But those two blows had broken something within him and defeated him. He knew it.
Christine came back. She went upstairs to the attic. There was neither money nor dinner in the house. She often wondered how Vincent managed to keep alive. She saw him lying across the bed, head and arms dangling over one side, feet over the other.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
After a long time he found the strength to twist about and put his head on the pillow. “Sien, I’ve got to leave The Hague.”
“. . . yes . . . I know.”
“I must get away from here. Out to the country somewhere. To Drenthe, maybe. Where we can live cheaply.”
“You want me to come with you? It’s an awful hole, Drenthe. What will I do when you ain’t got no money and we don’t eat?”
“I don’t know, Sien. I guess you won’t eat.”
“Will you promise to use the hundred and fifty francs to live on? Not to spend it on models and paints?”
“I can’t, Slen. Those things come first.”
“Yes, to you!”
“But not to you. Why should they?”
“I got to live too, Vincent. I can’t live without eating.”
“And I can’t live without painting.”
“Well, it’s your money . . . you come first . . . I understand. Have you a few centimes? Let’s go over to the wine café across from the Ryn station.”
The place smelled of sour wine. It was late afternoon, but the lamps had not yet been lit. The two tables where they had first sat near each other were empty. Christine led the way to them. They each ordered a glass of sour wine. Christine toyed with the stem of her glass. Vincent remembered how he had admired her worker’s hands when she made that identical gesture at the table almost two years before.
“They told me you’d leave me,” she said in a low voice. “I knew it, too.”
“I don’t want to desert you, Sien.”
