The Season of Migration (27 page)

I fear that you will read them and it will not matter. I fear that you will judge me no matter what, that I have lost your fellowship forever. I fear that I deserve this, though at the same time I am sure I do not.

March 9

Dear Theo,

For Christmas this year I shared supper at the Decrucq house; it was the first time I had been in their home since before my dismissal in July. I saw Hannah Decrucq one morning a ways back after visiting with Alard in the old salon; she must have thought me a fright, for I can think of no other reason for her kind invitation. I had to force my legs to carry me there; I felt sure I was no longer welcome in the miners' village, and did not wish to face my shame on that day of all days.

On my way through the village to the Decrucq house, I kept my head low and prayed that I would not be recognized. A few children I passed knew me for sure; they stared, as children are wont to do, betraying to me the reality of their parents' whispers of my name. What has my reputation become, in the months since my dismissal? As the months pass, I feel more inquiring eyes, more and more people wondering why I'm still here—or, if they don't know me, who I am and what I am doing in this place.

Who knows what is being said about me now. A rock landed near me after I passed some children in the village, and I dared not turn back. Children can be the cruelest of all, but everything they know they learn from adults.

Decrucq himself came to the door and boomed his greeting as warmly as ever. “Vincent!” he practically shouted, and I winced at his volume, though I was grateful for his extended hand as he pulled me into the hut and shut the door behind us. “Great to see you, lad!” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in.” He ushered me into the middle of the room, where the table was set. His limp was more pronounced than ever—it seems both legs are deficient now. I hadn't seen him since those dark days after his rescue from the collapsed mine, and I was happy, though by no means surprised, to see him recovered so fully. “Oh, my friend,” he said, his hand on my arm, “you are too thin, too thin. Hannah, we must fatten up this man!”

Just being in their home was a trial, a battle against the ghosts of my hopes and expectations and, in the very presence of Decrucq, the absence of Angeline. The room was dim, as ever, the shadows from the lantern and candles trembling into the darkness. Though it smelled wonderful—they had somehow managed to find a goose to cook—and the whole family was there, the parents and their four children, two of whom had spouses and children of their own, I was still, despite all, reminded of death, and that these lovely people were not my family.

“It was a terrible business,” Decrucq was saying. “I thought for sure I was going to die down there that time.”

“Father,” said his eldest daughter, Marie, holding her youngest child on her lap, feeding it spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, “let's not go over this again.”

“They don't like it when I speak of it,” Decrucq said to me with a familiar wink. “I don't blame them, but also I think it's important not to forget.”

“Why not?” exclaimed Hannah, coming toward the table with the goose, steam rising off of it. She slid it onto the table and everyone looked at it. “It's in the past. And you will not be in such danger again. I think forgetting is exactly what you need to do.” She handed him the knife to cut the bird.

He stood and began to carve. His right hand was twisted awkwardly, so he held the knife with his left and a fork in his right. Yes, I have been reading much Shakespeare lately, but Decrucq made me think of Falstaff, somehow both a joker and a wise man. “That's right!” he said. “Vincent, I have news. I have been appointed foreman of the Cuesmes mine. We are moving at the end of the month.”

He kept cutting but looked at me for my reaction. I was silent, as I had been for nearly all of my visit. Decrucq, a foreman! Perhaps some of us are rewarded for our trials after all.

My eyes must have given away my surprise, for he laughed. “I never thought I'd see the day, either,” he said. He shook his head. “They must have figured I would cause less trouble at this point from aboveground than below.”

“Or maybe,” said his eldest son, Jan, a miner himself, “they are simply rewarding you for all of your hard work and sacrifice.”

“That doesn't sound like them.” Decrucq laughed, and everyone joined in, even me.

It was a delicious meal, and there were moments when I forgot my circumstances and felt true comfort with the Decrucqs, so different from our family, so informal and warm and with concerns so different from ours. I felt privileged with them, and envious, too, a familiar combination of feelings. They did not ask me about what I had planned, about what path I would take, because these were not questions they ever asked themselves. Decrucq, I could tell, wanted to ask me about what I had been doing, but he did not. I was here, at his Christmas supper, and I did not preach to him of God: I am sure this told him enough.

Neither did I ask him about Angeline. At the end of the evening, I said good night and thank you to Hannah and the rest of the family, and Decrucq walked me out of the house and down the road a ways, just past the end of the houses. He claimed he needed the exercise, and I was grateful, for being with him would protect me from any unwelcome encounters with children and their rocks. We walked along in silence—both of us, I am sure, thinking of the explosion, though neither of us mentioned it. What was there to say? I wanted to ask him if he knew how Angeline had died, though of course that was as silly a question as any of them. The chances that they were near each other when the explosion happened were next to none. What was it that I was really looking to know? Nothing that he could tell me, surely.

“It's truly great news, about your promotion,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes, Hannah is very happy. We will have a proper house, and I will have to go down into the mine only every once in a while.”

“Did Fontaine help, you think?”

He laughed. “Oh, I'm sure of it. He insists that he didn't, but I have no doubt that he did.”

“We will be neighbors again,” I said.

“Indeed!”

I thanked him again for having me to his home, and we parted ways at the end of the lane.

Does what goes on inside ever show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way. So now what are we to do, keep this fire alive inside, have salt in ourselves, wait patiently, but with how much impatience, await the hour, I say, when whoever wants to will come and sit down there, will stay there, for all I know?

March 25

Dear Theo,

I have been to France and back, a walk of a few days. I went to see Jules Breton, the painter; he lives in Courrières, just over the French border.

I find that I do not want to write to you about it. I don't know why I went, what I was hoping to find, but suffice it to say I did not find it. I turned back without seeing him, feeling a fool, and am now back in Cuesmes just the same. Another useless, fruitless journey, nothing gained except a stuffed-up nose, a rumbling cough, and some blisters on my feet.

April 11

Dear Theo,

There is a cat here, I have named him Smoke. He is nothing but fur and bones; when I touch him, I can feel his skeleton. He is missing a toe, and his left eye is sunken and blind, a bleached-out blue, the color of a robin's egg scrubbed with steel wool. One of his ears is ragged and bloody, a jagged mountain range of crusty skin. He is so old, he seems to have lost most of the ability to clean himself; he tries, sometimes, but it never lasts long. But he still arches his back at the touch of my fingers.

When he walks, he is halting and slow, as if he is made of metal and needs oil, as if his parts don't quite fit together. When he is outside, he moves a few steps and then he rests, licking his sore paws, shutting his eyes to the sun. Then he is on his feet again. I watch him on his slow journeys until he is gone from view.

Alard said he is the cat version of me. We sat together yesterday, the three of us, in front of a fire that Alard made. Smoke has taken to Alard, too; he prefers to sit in his lap more than in mine. I told Alard it is because he has more warmth in him; he is a like a warm patch of grass in the sunshine, while I am like a thin and barely standing tree. Alard gave me a look that showed he was pleased with what I said at the same time that he thought it strange.

We lay on the floor and drew pictures together, while Smoke lay curled in a ball nearby. It is such a joy to draw with Alard, for though he had not done it much before he met me, he has that insatiable child's imagination that only needs to be set loose before it runs and jumps. I can't help but think of you while we draw, remembering all those sessions at home in Zundert on the rug before the fire. Alard and I drew animals that we are afraid of. Alard combined a tiger and a wolf, and I admitted it was a terror to behold.

“Who do you think would win in a fight?” Alard asked me, sitting up with his legs crossed. He pointed to one of his drawings and then to the other. “The tiger-wolf, or the lion-shark?”

“Does the lion-shark live on land or in the sea?”

“It can live on both!” He pushed my shoulder with his little hand. Smoke lifted his head and looked at us, annoyed that we were making so much noise. “Of course!”

“Well, in that case it's the lion-shark for sure,” I said, and smiled at him.

I am not drawing much right now; I only do so with Alard. When I try on my own, a feeling of uselessness and fatigue descends. Alard encourages me, and when I am with him, I feel the old need tug at me.

April 19

Dear Theo,

The other day Alard asked me to tell him about you. I didn't know whether to tell him about the version of you that was my friend, the only one who has understood me, or about the you who has disappeared. He has a brother who is exactly as close in age as we are, and I don't want him to know that brothers can ever disappear. No boy should know that. I wish I didn't have to know it, either. I changed the subject, if you want to know, because it hurt me too much to talk about you.

April 25

Dear Theo,

Smoke the cat has gone. He left one day and hasn't come back. Another thing I loved that has disappeared.

April 29

Dear Theo,

I have decided that I will come to see you. There are too many of these letters, now, to send them through the mail. Perhaps it is time that we see each other again, that we talk again as brothers. It has been a long time since we wrote to each other as we used to, but I am not ready to give up hope that we can be close to each other again. I will deliver this story to you, I will return the money that you gave me, and though we may not forgive each other, I will at least once again shake your hand.

 

1880

May 15, 6:00 a.m.

At dawn, the sunlight a stripe of possibility on the horizon, he rises and continues on. He is delirious with hunger, his body creaking and aching with every step. His boot, the one bolstered with cardboard back in Burigny, has given way again, so his bloody sock is visible through the toe. He limps on, determined. His mind is a sieve; images, memories, snippets of language rise up and float away; he cannot hold on to a thought; he is merely two legs, a torso, and a vessel through which words and colors can pass. Next to him, the baby Vincent continues to float, but he has been reduced to a few words.
Step
, he says,
step, step, step
.

After a few hours, he has reached the outskirts of Paris; the road begins to form into a lane more traveled, and in the distance he can see the tall buildings and the plumes of smoke that mark the city. He is getting close. His nerves, accordingly, are dancing and clamping, little spikes of electricity shooting through his limbs. He clenches and unclenches his fists and shakes his wrists; his hands flop and shake and still they tingle as if they are falling asleep. He slaps his face to keep himself alert and in the present. His knapsack over his shoulder has grown heavy, though there is very little inside it, only words, really.

He carries the money that his brother gave to him in August, untouched, still in the envelope in which his parents passed it to him. What had they become to each other, that he heard nothing from him for nearly a year and was passed fifty francs through their parents as intermediaries? He will give it back. From now on, he wants to earn all the money he is given, be it from his brother or anyone else.

Delirious, he walks on. The streets are busier now, dark carriages rolling past him and women clipping by on dark high heels. He stumbles and trudges and shuffles, feeling as if he is seeing everything through a glass of water or a thick mist; he is walking through a dream. When was the last time he was in Paris? In 1876, before he left Goupil's for good, and when Harry Gladwell was still in his life.

He is not sure if the dream is now or the dream was then. What he sees before him now—the cobbler on the corner, polishing a man's shoes as the man reads a newspaper, his feet up on a wooden box—is it any easier to believe than the images that flood him? Baby Vincent floats alongside him, rests on his back. Baby Vincent shouts for him to look at a baby in a carriage, pushed by a woman in what looks like an identical bonnet tied under her chin.

A woman and her child sharing an outside table at a café are as familiar to him as if they are his kin; he smiles at them, but they look up at him in horror, and he realizes that he must have the look of a monster, a man returning from a war. He walks on, thinking that he must stop somewhere to clean himself; he must gather himself together somehow before he arrives at his brother's door.

*   *   *