Читаем Lust for Life полностью

The Catholic priest had never favoured renting room in the caretaker’s house to the man who was both heathen and artist, but since Vincent was quiet and courteous, he could find no reason to put him out. One day Adriana Schafrath came into the studio, all excited. “Father Pauwels wishes to see you immediately!”

Father Andreas Pauwels was a large man, red of face. He took a hurried look about the studio and decided he had never seen such mad confusion.

“What can I do for you, Father?” Vincent asked politely.

“You can’t do anything for me! But I can do something for you! I shall see you through this affair, providing you do as you are told.”

“What affair do you refer to, Father?”

“She is a Catholic and you are a Protestant, but I shall get a special dispensation from the Bishop. Be prepared to marry within a few days!”

Vincent came forward to look at Father Pauwels in the full light of the window. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Father,” he said.

“Oh, yes you do. And all this pretence is of no use. Stien de Groot is with child! The honour of that family must be upheld.”

“The devil she is!”

“You may well call on the devil. This is indeed the devil’s work.”

“Are you certain of this, Father? You’re not mistaken?”

“I don’t go about accusing people until I have positive proof.”

“And did Stien tell you . . . did she say . . . I was the man?”

“No. She refused to tell us his name.”

“Then why do you confer this honour on me?”

“You’ve been seen together many times. Doesn’t she come often to this studio?”

“Yes.”

“Haven’t you gone walking with her in the fields on Sunday?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, what further proof do I need?”

Vincent was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, “I’m sorry to hear about this, Father, particularly if it is going to mean trouble for my friend Stien. But I assure you that my relations with her have been above reproach.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No,” replied Vincent, “I don’t.”

That evening, when Stien returned from the fields, he was waiting for her on the step of their hut. The rest of the family went in to eat supper. Stien sank down beside him.

“I’ll soon have somebody else for you to draw,” she said.

“Then it’s true, Stien?”

“Sure. Want to feel?”

She took his hand and put it on her abdomen. He was conscious of the growing protuberance.

“Father Pauwels just informed me that I was the father.”

Stien laughed. “I wish it had been you. But you never wanted to, did you?”

He looked at the sweat of the fields caked in her dark skin, the heavy, crooked, coarse features, the thick nose and lips. She smiled at him.

“I wish it had been too, Stien.”

“So Father Pauwels said it was you. That’s funny.”

“What’s funny about it?”

“Will you keep my secret?”

“I promise.”

“It was the kerkmeester of his church!”

Vincent whistled. “Does your family know?”

“Of course not. And I’ll never tell them. But they know it wasn’t you.”

Vincent went inside the hut. There was no change in the atmosphere. The De Groots accepted Stien’s pregnancy in the same spirit that they would have the cow’s in the field. They treated him as they had before, and he knew they believed in his innocence.

Not so the village. Adriana Schafrath had been listening at the door. She quickly communicated the news to her neighbours. Within the hour, twenty-six hundred inhabitants of Nuenen knew that Stien de Groot was to be brought to bed with Vincent’s child, and that Father Pauwels was going to force them to marry.

November and winter had come. It was time to be moving. There was no use in his remaining in Nuenen any longer. He had painted everything there was to paint, learned everything there was to learn about peasant life. He did not think he could go on living in the recrudescence of village hatred. Clearly the time had come for him to leave. But where was he to go?

“Mijnheer Van Gogh,” said Adriana sadly, after knocking on the door, “Father Pauwels says you must leave this house at once and take lodging elsewhere.”

“Very well; as he wishes.”

He walked about his studio, looking at his work. Two solid years of slaving. Hundreds of studies of weavers and their wives, of looms, and peasants in the field, of the pollards at the bottom of the vicarage garden, and the old church tower, the heath and hedges in the heat of the sun and the cool of a winter dusk.

A great heaviness fell upon him. His work was all so fragmentary. There were bits of every phase of peasant life in the Brabant, but no one piece of work that summed up the peasant, that caught the spirit of his hut and his steaming potatoes. Where was his Angelus of the Brabantine peasant? And how could he leave before he had painted it?

He glanced at the calendar. There were still twelve days until the first of the month. He called Adriana.

“Tell Father Pauwels that I have paid until the first and will not leave before then.”