Vincent Van Gogh's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Vincent worked through the morning on the new sky. By noon his hand was steady and the first layer was down. He set the brush in the jar and stepped outside to eat. The yellow walls of his house threw heat back at him. Green shutters hung open. A patch of purple irises by the step bent under a small wind. He needed bread and a glass of something cold before the light shifted again. He walked to the square under the lamp post that carried the old street sign in curled black letters. The cafe there had tables outside. He sat at the edge, ordered wine and bread, and listened. A voice at the next table was already loud. A thin man in a gray coat held court, glass in hand. He was a critic passing through, in town two more days. On the wall behind him hung a gold-framed painting of harvesters in a wheat field, hung there to sell the region to travelers. The critic pointed at it and laughed. He said the local dauber up the road painted worse than that, and worse every week. He said the brush strokes looked chewed. He said the man in the yellow hat should go back to selling coal. Two men at his table laughed. The waiter laughed once, then looked away. Vincent kept his hat low and his hands flat on the table. He felt the heat climb his neck. Eleven days. If this man talked through every tavern in the square, no dealer here would frame him, no boy would carry his canvas to the coach. He would arrive at the museum already ruined. Vincent stood. He walked to the critic's table and set his straw hat on the empty chair. He said his name. The laughter stopped. He said he had heard the verdict and wanted to answer it in the open. He asked the critic to come to the yellow house at six, look at the work on the easel, and print whatever he liked after. If the man refused, Vincent said, then the whole square would know the critic judged pictures he had never seen. The critic's mouth worked. The two men at his table watched him. He said fine, six o'clock, and picked up his glass to hide his face. At six the critic came. He stood in the studio ten minutes. He looked at the wet sky on the easel, then at the stacked failures against the wall. He said the work was still rough. He said it was not nothing. He said he would write that much, and no more. He left. Vincent shut the door and leaned against it. The mockery was killed. But the critic's small, cold verdict, rough but not nothing, now sat in his chest louder than the laughter had. Ten days remained. The sky on the easel was still wrong.