Public Garden with Weeping Tree: Poet's Garden I, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 La Maison de Tolérance (Brothel No. 1) 23 December 1888 o, I couldn't repeat it. Here, after I left Rachel, I heard it, then the voices. They've nagged me for weeks now, persistent as this rain, hammering at windows, the unending torrent on the roof, you'd think God reneged on his covenant, and nowhere to go. Those first weeks, like a new life beginning, he did the cooking, Burgundy stews and poultry as fine as I've tasted; I did the shopping. Mornings we'd rise, after coffee, our time devoted to painting. Soon how we fought--small things at first, like a marriage-- not that I've got much to go on--wearing a little at the nerves. And the drinking--more even than I did through the summer, and every night whoring. We took turns, one after the other, often with Rachel. The first night I saw her, how like a Delacroix--primitive, the glow of her cheeks, the soft curve of her body in dim light. A pity-- she never consented to sit. Not for him either, thank God. And no sleep. We'd drag in at two, maybe three-- I'd pass out once my head hit the pillow, almost like death, so deeply. What was it woke me? Two hours or three, then as though a gnat worried deep in my ear and wouldn't leave, swat though I tried. Tossing under the quilt, the sun a raw wound through the curtain. His voice, always nagging--Not from nature, not that color. You've got it all wrong, all wrong --how long can you take it? Bastard, let him sail tomorrow--Martinique take him, he wants heat--let his damn blood boil. God, it feels it--do my temples show how hard the blood throbs? I should have suspected. They drummed that hard the other night--he maddens me more than I ought to admit. My ears fill with voices, my eyes--I swear they lose focus, time goes dead. Before I knew it, the glass of absinthe hurled at his head--yes, I missed him, thank God--or maybe not so. He walked out and I sought him-- why? I thought I'd convinced him. Stay. Stay. All will be fine--all that we wanted. This spring, the studio-- Bernard and Guillaumin, Boch, and the rest, they'd join us. This heavenly light! We'd hold it in common. A chalice of light. Paint all the day--as I painted waiting for him, sunflowers, yellows to brighten his room after the damp of Port-Aven--and that corner of the garden, the poet's garden I called it in honor of him--oleander and cypresses. How could you not think of Petrarch? The loss. Then he came, his unnatural palette, the way he tosses odd pieces together-- sketches for that self-portrait, that thin viper coiled in his hand, apples dangling behind him. So much for my garden. Damn it all--where is Rachel? Have you sent someone to fetch her? No, don't worry at the stain. It's nothing--a cut, a small nick from the razor. When I found him, that look in his eye stopped me. Cold. How he hardened. Once sparks leapt between us like overcharged batteries. That day we argued--was it only last week?-- at the gallery in Montpellier, how anyone else made sense of the paintings, the way our voices rang. Tomorrow he's gone. The damned sun, then this rain. My God, for a moment of balance! I followed his glance to my hand. A razor? I'd not thought to take it. I wanted to talk. There, by the oleanders, rain pouring off me, what could I say? He'd said so much in his portrait. To flatter me? Yes, I told him, that's me, the way I grasp the brush, my bright sunflowers blooming in oil. But the look--you've seen Delacroix's "Tasso in the Madhouse"?--it's me gone totally mad. Rain dripping off the hair into my eyes, who could tell if they stung from the long nights of drinking and smoke or from tears. I painted our chairs, his with a book and a candle, mine, a twist of tobacco and this pipe. Both of them empty. Damn it, man, I'll go up to get her myself--I've got to get home, that buzzing--can't you hear it?--it won't go away, but I've something to leave her for how much she's cared, how she listens. Pulls off my boots while I talk. The appropriate nod, an occasional word where it's called for. Even those nights when the absinthe's run me too thoroughly through, and I lie there limp despite her attentions, she croons to me, drowning the voices, she calls me her bull and playfully tugs at my ear, before she calls for the corrida crew to come and drag this one away.