The Season of Migration (29 page)

But Theo, Vincent thinks, would never have gotten to where he is. Theo is too composed, too sure of himself, too much of the world in a way he will never be. Vincent travels toward him, not exactly sure why, drawn toward his brother as if toward a sun.

*   *   *

From down the street, though he has never been there before, Vincent knows which door is his brother's. At the far end of the block of row houses there is one with a blue door. His heart beating fast, a lump in his throat, his face flushed red, he approaches slowly, and sure enough, under the third doorbell is a brass plate that reads
T. VAN GOGH
.

Theo, at the Rijswijk mill, milk dripping down his chin. Theo, standing before the train in his top hat. Theo, at the family table on Christmas Eve, his hand over his face as he laughs at something forbidden that Vincent has said, his eyes twinkling with mirth. Theo, in their bed in Zundert, their knobby knees lined up, their feet one after the other, Theo's smaller and more dainty, Vincent's like ugly flesh-colored frogs. At night, when Vincent woke up frightened, some ungraspable nightmare at the edges of his mind, the darkness in their room complete and total, the sound of Theo sleeping would calm him and return him to the earth. His body was there to grasp onto if he needed it.

He stands on the doorstep, his hand poised in front of the bell. He pictures Theo opening the door, his hair slicked back, a cigarette holder in his teeth, his top hat, shining and polished, obscuring his face. A man in a suit with his brother's face, the face of the boy on the pillow next to his.

Baby Vincent, hovering nearby, says,
Don't worry. No matter what, I'll be your brother forever.

He presses the bell.

He waits.

*   *   *

There is no answer.

He stands at the door for what seems like an age, presses the bell again, looks out over the street. Theo does not arrive. The brass plate screams,
T. VAN GOGH
, but his brother is not there.

His heart slowing, he trudges across the street and sits on the stoop of a different building, watching Theo's door. Of course this was a possibility, but he never considered it. Where is Theo? Here Vincent is at his door and still he is not here. A sinking feeling begins in his bones; he really has lost his brother forever. The gap between them is too great; there is no amount of walking, no number of letters that can bridge the distance. He has come here in vain, a fruitless search, just like all the rest. His brother does not need him, so he must not need his brother.

But then, what of the money that Theo has given him? He puts his hand into his jacket pocket and fingers the envelope with the money in it. A strange gesture, to be sure, giving Vincent money just after that terrible visit, and through his parents' hands. Theo had never given him money before. If it were truly a gesture of support, he thinks, Theo would have enclosed some word, some acknowledgment, some direction as to how the gift was meant. Without that, he cannot see it as apology, or even necessarily as support. Probably he just didn't want their parents to have to dish out any more of their own funds, that's all. Perhaps he instructed their parents not to tell Vincent whom it was from, and they disobeyed.

Still, the money is here. He touches it; it is real. And if Theo wanted no more connection with his brother, he would not have given him something he can touch.

A man in a dark suit and a top hat hurries by, and for a moment Vincent's heart leaps, but it is not Theo. Just a man hurrying back to his office, Vincent imagines, after a comfortable lunch at home. With this thought, he realizes—of course! Theo isn't at home because he is at Goupil's. How could he not have thought of this?

For a long time he sits there, thinking of what to do. If he waits here, eventually Theo will come back, and he can save himself having to walk the mile or so to Goupil's. He doesn't want to see the people who work with Theo, Vincent's old boss and his old colleagues, who will no doubt look him over with contempt and think him mad, think him strange, think he has failed at one more thing, and think they were right to dismiss him those years ago. They will give him those looks. He can see their faces now, their eyes roaming over him, their smiles set and made of bitter glass.

The thought of this makes him restless; he gets up and strolls quickly to the end of the street. On the corner there is a café, a line of outdoor tables nestled under an awning. A few well-dressed people sit with coffees and newspapers. Crossed legs, creased trousers, brown leather shoe dangling, hand tapping tablecloth: He takes in the details as his glance sweeps over the street. Across from the café is a cigar store. He can see a few men inside with dark hats; a stream of smoke trickles out the door. He crosses the street and looks in. He is often able to think better with a pipe; it helps him with his spirits, helps him to concentrate. He peers in the store window, trying to make out the dark shapes moving inside. Two men come out of the store, wearing bowler hats and smoking cigars, and glance at him with contempt: another street person with his dirty hands against the window, hungry for a smoke but unable to pay.

He turns from the window and a woman is there, holding an open box with a display of golden apples neatly nestled in rows. A thick strap attached to the sides of the box is around her neck, and she wears a long dress with a lace trim in a worn and faded purple. Vincent looks from the apples—so burnished and still!—to the woman's face. She has large, dark eyebrows and a mouth painted red, but when she smiles, her teeth are brown and crooked. “Apple?” she says to him.

He stammers, embarrassed. “I don't have any money,” he says. She nods and begins to turn away. “But I could pay you with a drawing, if you might accept that,” he finds himself saying. “I could do your portrait?”

She turns back to him, smiling again. “I don't think my boss would appreciate that,” she says.

He nods. “Of course. It was a silly idea.”

Still she stands in front of him. “You are an artist, then,” she says, “are you?”

He lowers his eyes, suddenly embarrassed. “I…” he stammers. “No, I just … I don't know…” He wishes to flee, but his feet are rooted. “Never mind,” he says. “Thank you.”

He turns and hustles away from her, turning the corner back toward Theo's door, feeling her eyes on him. When he is out of her sight, he stops and stands on the sidewalk, breathing quickly, his heart suddenly pounding.

He does not move, simply stands there. The world moves around him: men in hats, women in dresses, a boy in short pants chasing a tiny dog with huge ears. Clouds, above him, roll across the sky; he looks up, and it is as if the buildings are swirling, as if even the buildings are moving around him as he stands still. He closes his eyes, and the sounds come at him: the clip-clop of a horse's hooves, the click-click of a woman's shoes, a snip of conversation—“Yes, she told me she was going to do it right away”—a birdcall, a bell, the sound of a distant train. When he opens his eyes, the blue of the sky, the reddish brick of the buildings, the yellow of a woman's skirt are painfully bright; it seems as if all the colors on the street have sharpened and are converging before him. Everything is piercing and prickly, everything burnished as if it has been polished; there are too many colors, too much movement, too much to take in. It is all too much, suddenly, and he cowers, shielding his eyes.

He moves with effort back to the stoop opposite Theo's door, keeping his eyes cast down. He sinks down as if into a cave. The space feels safe, the stairs and the doorway protecting him from the street; he sits with his eyes closed, breathing, and tells himself he can sit there as long as he likes. With his eyes closed, he still sees the street, its colors bright and burning, and he sees himself standing in it, a figure in dark, colorless clothes, a ragged shape cut from reality and inserted into a painting. In the shaded cool of the doorway, his heart slowing, he examines the image he sees behind his eyes, and it changes slowly, so the figure that is himself takes on form, and color, and slowly blends, the street becoming the background of the portrait of the man.

He opens his eyes. Across the street, next door to Theo's house, a woman washes a window, her hair covered in a white bonnet; above her, in a building next door, a different woman holds a rug out the window and beats it with a rolling pin. Puffs of dust rise from the rug; the woman keeps right on, the dust rising right into her face and hair. Vincent watches these women, his eyes shifting from one to the other. The window washer uses her whole arm as she swipes the glass with her rag. Her face is set in deep concentration and the sweat on her face catches the sunlight so that it sparkles. There are circles of perspiration under her arms; she wipes her forehead with her forearm and keeps right on. The woman with the rug beats the pin against it again and again.

The street, the women at their labor, the buildings framing the scene, the sky: All of it is still shimmering somehow, infected with a keen sharpness, a fineness of line and angle.

For many long minutes he watches. He sees the women framed by the houses on either side, one in the top left corner, leaning out of her window, the other in the bottom right with her rag swept far away from her. It is a living, moving masterpiece that he is watching; it is holy, like the men in the bar, as holy as any sight he has ever seen. A perfect image, reality unveiled, souls revealed in their natural purity. Neither of the women so much as glances at him; they care only about their work. He thinks of Madame Denis in her kitchen, mixing ingredients in her big wooden bowl; men in a mining cell, sweat dripping from their noses as they peer at the rock for coal. He wants to bow before them; he wants to capture their image and show it to them, so they can see their sacredness with their own eyes.

Baby Vincent has gone silent.

How long will it still be before Theo returns? He imagines his brother coming down the street, his long strides, his confident gait. He imagines standing up before his brother, Theo seeing him in his dirty clothes, knowing he must have walked there from the Borinage, knowing exactly how far he has come. He watches the door, imagining his brother opening it and inviting him in, imagining following his brother into the house, his brother's back in his suit jacket, the back of his brother's head. And what will he find inside? Theo's rooms, Theo's life, the life he has made without Vincent.

In his mind, his brother approaches. “Vincent!” he says as Vincent stands to face him. He hurries toward Vincent and takes him in his arms. He smells of cedar and pine. “I worried that you were dead,” Theo says into his ear. “Me, too,” says Vincent in return.

He imagines the two of them in Theo's living room, the furniture pushed neatly back against the walls, a vase of purple flowers on the table by the window, a book turned facedown on the table next to the red armchair. Theo sits on the sofa, reading the letters that Vincent has brought him, and tears run down his face. “I'm sorry, Vincent,” he says, “I didn't understand! I never understood. I've been a terrible brother. I know now all you needed was for me to listen to you, for me to believe in you, and I do.” The two brothers embrace before the sofa, they are both forgiven, they part the best of friends.

Then they are by the door, in a dark hallway that leads from Theo's living room, by a table on which Theo has laid his keys and a tray with two cuff links. They are arguing, the vein on Theo's neck pronounced as a snake. “I don't know you!” screams Theo. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” He puts his hands on Vincent's shoulders, turns him around, and pushes him hard through the door. Vincent stumbles and falls to his knees on the step, but Theo does not stoop to help him, only throws the stack of letters after him, the pages fluttering out into the street, and slams the door.

He looks up at the women again. The woman with the rug is pulling it inside, beating the end of it a few last times before the task is done. The window washer has moved on to the next window, working as furiously as ever. He imagines himself standing and approaching her, and then he sees himself in her place: He is washing the window, he is pressing on the glass with his rag, moving it in quick circular motions, watching the streaks of water evaporate after the rag passes over. He can feel the sweat under his arms and dripping off of his nose; by his foot is a bucket filled with dirty water, a different rag floating at the top. He looks up and wipes the sweat from his eyes with his already wet hands; Theo is approaching from down the street, but he stops when he sees Vincent at his work, and just stands there, unmoving, taking it in. He has spent all day at the gallery looking at works of art, and now he watches his brother clean a window as if he is creating one. Vincent, after a beat, goes back to his labor, wishing to complete the task more than to greet his brother.

He blinks, returning to himself on the stoop. Everything on the street—the women, the windows, the roofs, the people rushing by—is softened suddenly, the angles gentle and warm, and each piece of it feels close and tangible, easy to grasp. He thinks of how he would describe what he is seeing to Angeline; how he could show it to her, make it a postcard that she could receive. Blinding blue of the sky with wispy circling clouds above the dark roofs, sharp white of the women's bonnets like blooming flowers against the weathered wood of the buildings, window washer with bent back over her bucket and rag, the tools of her labor. What would it take to be able to reproduce this holy image, to share the gift of being here to see it? It would take work to do it right, punishing work, the work of his life.

His body feels suddenly refreshed, as if he has just bathed in his filthy clothes. He must leave, now, before Theo comes home. He will not see him; he will not leave the letters. He will put to use the money that Theo gave him to pay for the train back to the Borinage, and when he gets back to Belgium, he will work on something to show to Theo, something that can explain what has happened to him better than his words ever could. The story he has told to Theo is actually only for him, Vincent, to understand, and now he does at last. Theo was right after all: Vincent is not the same any longer.