The Rowers by John Sokol

The Rowers
by John Sokol

The year is 1890. It is a warm September night on the Place Lamartine in Arles, France. In a remote corner of a dingy cafe, a troubled painter sits at a small wooden table. He is dressed poorly and dark circles weight his eyes. He stares pensively at the space around him and sips his wine in the careful manner of one who must savor each swallow. Soon, he begins sketching the scene before him, scratching out a representation of the tables and chairs. His drawing focuses on a pool table that casts an immense shadow onto the floor in the middle of the room. Glowing lamps are thinly tethered from the cracked and crumbling ceiling. Occasionally, the painter makes notes at the margin of his paper. Floor of gray bitumen. Green blinds. Big green curtain in front of door. Walls painted red. Warm, peculiar light.

In an hour, he finishes his drawing. He gets up from his chair and walks to the pool table, rolls a few balls over the green felt and listens to them thump softly against the banks. He then examines a cue that lies on the edge of the table. "Hello there," comes a voice from behind him. "How 'bout a game of 8-ball?" A handsome, well dressed man, short and ruddy-faced, steps forward. "All right," the painter says. "I'm not very good though." "Ah, it's only a game. Here, you break," the handsome man says. The painter chalks a cue, takes a few practice strokes and then hits the cue ball low, causing it to bounce over the racked balls and off the table. It rolls across the floor and stops at the feet of three burly men. The man in black leans on his cue, raises his eyebrows and smiles through closed lips. The painter blushes and goes to retrieve the ball. On his hands and knees, and among three pairs of feet, he gropes for the ball. The men stare at the artist, but say nothing. The painter returns to the pool table and gives the ball to the handsome man. "I guess that's a scratch," the painter says. "Ah, take another turn." On his second attempt, the painter hits the cue ball well and spreads the balls evenly across the table. "Good break," says the man in black. "Except, if you didn't intend to sink one on the break, you shouldn't have spread the balls around so much. You gave me a lot of easy shots." So the handsome man now runs all the striped balls, one after another, into various pockets around the table. For his last shot, he banks the 8-ball off three sides of the table and sinks it neatly. "Good game," the painter says. "Quick, too." "Ah, well. I was lucky. If you'll come to my table, I'll buy you a drink." The painter fetches his drawing from his own table and joins his new friend; a waiter brings two glasses of absinthe. "By the way," the hand-some man says, "my name is de Maupassant. Guy de Maupassant." The painter's eyes light up as he lifts his head; he holds his glass in midair. "De Maupassant? The writer? Monsieur de Maupassant, I like your books very much. You write marvelous stories. I'm honored." "Thank you!" "Vincent is my name. Vincent Van Gogh. I'm a painter." "Van Gogh? Van Gogh? Hmm," the writer says softly, staring blankly through space. "I've heard the name thrown around Paris a few times, but I can't associate it with a specific look. I don't keep up on painting like I should. So you could be a famous painter and I wouldn't even know it. I spend a lot of time rowing and writing. Oh, I like Millet, of course. But he's easy, isn't he?" "Well, yes. Millet is . . . . a great painter. But about not knowing my work -- no matter. A lot of people who do know it, don't like it anyway. What are you doing in Arles?" "I took a little holiday in Italy, and on the way to Paris I wanted to stop at Aix-le-Bains to find relief for these terrible headaches I've been having." "You too, huh," Vincent says. "Yeah. But that's neither here nor there. Say, if you've tried everything else, try inhaling ether some time. Great stuff." "But aren't there side effects with ether?" "You see double, sometimes. Mild hallucinations. But I should think that would be good for a painter; makes everything more intense -- know what I mean?" "Thanks, but no thanks. I've got enough problems," Vincent says. "Say, if you're just passing through, you probably need a place to stay for the night. Why don't you come over to my place. You can have the bed. I'll take the floor." "No. Vince, listen. I don't want to inconvenience you." "Oh, but, Monsieur de Maupassant . . . . " "Hey, Vince. Cut the "Monsieur de Maupassant" stuff! Just call me Guy. My friends all call me Guy." "All right . . . . Guy. I've got a better idea. I'll take the top mattress off my bed and put it on the floor. You can sleep on the mattress and I'll sleep on the box springs." "That's a deal!" de Maupassant says. The two men leave the cafe and walk up the street to a yellow house where Vincent has a second-floor room. "Nice place, Vince," de Maupassant says, once the two men are inside Vincent's room. "Small, but cheery. Very colorful. Is that one of yours?" he asks, pointing to an unframed painting over Vincent's bed. "Yes. Just finished it the other day. Ahhhg, ahhg . . . . Don't touch it! It's still wet." "Ahg! Sorry," Guy says, retracting his hand and wiping bright cadmium red from his finger. "I like that painting -- daring colors; bold strokes." "Thanks," Vincent says, pulling the top mattress off his bed and onto the floor. De Maupassant sits on a cane chair, pulls off his black boots and sighs with exhaustion. As soon as Vincent puts a sheet and some blankets on the mattress, de Maupassant strips down to his underwear, shapes up his pillow with a few slaps and settles in. Vincent too strips down to his underwear, climbs onto the hard box springs, plumps his pillow and turns out the light. The moon shines in through the window and casts a light onto the writer's face beside and slightly below Vincent. How about that, Vince thinks. Guy de Maupassant, sleeping on my floor! Wait until I tell Theo. After a few minutes of silence, Vincent says, "Hey, Guy? What do you think of Zola?" For an awkward moment, there is no reply. "Agh . . . . Zola? Zola? Oh, I don't know, Vince. I think the name, as much as anything, sells his books," de Maupassant says, his tongue slurring, his voice trailing into sleep. "Well, yes. But in one of his works, he says . . . ." "Uh . . . . listen, Vince. I hate to be a bore, but how 'bout if we just nod off for the night, huh? I'm really beat." "Uh, sure, Guy," Vincent says. "Sorry. . . . . in the morning, then. Good night." No response comes from the floor. Already asleep, de Maupassant is snoring gently in the shadows. Vincent cannot sleep, even though his pillow is heavily doused with camphor. He lies in his bed for hours and stares at the ceiling. His mind whirls. * In the morning, Vincent awakes when the sun shines through the window and onto his face. "Hey, Guy," Vincent says. "Wake up if you want to get on the road at a decent hour this morning." "Ugh. What? Oh. 'Get up.' All right. I didn't sleep well last night. I don't think I sleep well when I sleep alone. How 'bout you, Vince?" "Well, I have a hard time sleeping most of the time. Yes, living alone is hard. I don't know that I'd be better off living with someone. I think the mere presence of another soul would be comforting though. Fortunately, a friend of mine -- Paul Gauguin -- is coming to stay with me soon." De Maupassant gets up slowly from the mattress, stretches and begins to put on his clothes. "Vince," Guy says after dressing, "you'll have to come to Paris one of these days and stay with me. I have a place on the banks of the Seine, just outside of Paris. We could have some good times. Do you like to row?" "Row?" Vincent says, looking at de Maupassant curiously. "Yes. Row! I row a boat down the Seine early in the mornings. Lovely sport. There's just you and the boat, an always-changing river, scenery and people along the banks that are never the same. Great exercise, too." "I've never tried it," Vincent says. "I can't find enough hours in the day for my work, let alone for a vacation. Besides, I'm afraid I couldn't afford the trip." "Agh! Afford, afford. Don't worry about money," Guy says. "You'd be my guest and you wouldn't need a single franc. You'd have a place to stay, food to eat -- wine, women and song. What do you say? Hell, if you're going to feel guilty about taking a vacation, you could bring your paints and brushes along." "Well, how 'bout in a month? Would your offer still be open in a month?" "Sure! Anytime! Remember, the longer you wait, the colder the weather gets. A month from now will be the middle of October." "All right. I'll see if I can make it; depending how my work comes along in the next month. I do need the rest." "That's for sure, Vince. I can tell you work too hard. You're going to put yourself in an early grave. Art's not that important. Take a break." The two men lift the mattress from the floor, toss it back onto the bed and arrange the sheets and blankets into a semblance of neatness. After finishing a quick breakfast at the cafe they had visited the night before, Vincent shows Guy to the train station near the Trinquetaille Bridge.

"Remember Vince, I'm expecting you some time in October. No need to write first. Just come. Please! Here's my address." Guy hands Vincenta finely engraved card. "Thanks again for putting me up." "Oh, my pleasure," Vincent says. As soon as Vincent returns to his small room, he sits down to his desk and writes a letter to his brother.

Dear Theo, You'll never believe who I met last night. I was in that little cafe where I usually take my meals, and I was drinking some wine and doing a drawing of the place. Then, I played a game of pool with a man and embarrassed myself terribly. He bought me a drink and then he told me his name was Guy de Maupassant. He said I should just call him Guy. How about that? He's invited me to his place in Paris. I do need the rest. Besides, I get irritated these days when I set up my canvas and the damn mistrals start to blow. The other day, down by the Langlois Bridge, a whole group of washerwomen watched me chasing my canvas all over the field where I had been painting. They just thought that was so funny. I hate to ask, Theo, considering all the money I have already borrowed from you for paints, brushes, canvas and living expenses, but if you could send me enough money to cover the train trip from Arles to Paris, I would be very thankful. I could visit with you while I'm there, too. We haven't seen one another in a long time. Enclosed are six studies for paintings. Say hi to Bernard for me.

Love, Vincent

In the following days, Vincent begins to have some real problems. A black cloud follows wherever he goes. The weather is bad and he cannot paint. Before long, he runs out of money, lives on coffee and alcohol and begins to have nightmares that are only slightly relieved by his home-brewed potions of bromide of potassium. In October, Theo sends money. Vincent puts his life together enough to get to Paris to visit de Maupassant. He never particularly enjoys Paris; the hectic pace, the cockroaches in his soup and the big-city streets teeming with cold-faced people, but Vincent knows that he must get away, and seeing de Maupassant might cheer him up, maybe even inspire him. In Paris, Vincent has no problem finding de Maupassant. He has only to ask a few Parisians for directions to the famous man's house. De Maupassant greets Vincent with the kind of fervor one would normally reserve for a lifelong friend. "Vince. Good to see you again. Ah, you've brought your paints and brushes. Come in! Come in! How about a glass of absinthe?" "Sure," Vincent says, as he settles into de Maupassant's sprawling leather couch. Removing his wooden clogs, Vincent runs his toes obsessively through the lambs-wool rug. Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander is playing on the gramophone and a wall of books holds VincentÕs attention for a long time. Behind the couch, bay windows give Vincent a view of the Seine. "Vince, you can have the room with the north light. You'll have plenty of space in there for painting." "Thanks, Guy." "In the morning, we can get up early, have some wine and do some rowing." "Rowing?" Vince says. "But I have to paint in the morning. I always paint in the morning." "Paint?! Come on, Vince. You're as white as a ghost. Rowing will put some color into your cheeks, get some fresh air into your lungs and stimulate some of those tired muscles that you haven't used for years. You're here for a vacation, man -- not to paint." De Maupassant pauses for a moment, leaning forward and to one side, looking at Vincent with narrowed eyes. "Hey, Vince? What the hell happened to your ear?" "Oh, that's a long story, Guy. I don't feel like going into it right now. Let's just say I made a mistake. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. Anyway, I ended up giving my ear to a woman in a brothel as a gift. Unfortunately, my gift wasn't appreciated. Without my friend, Roulin, I might have bled to death." De Maupassant leans back in his chair and lets out a jolly belly laugh. "Ah, Vince. Tha's great. What a sense of humor. That's so-o-o-o funny! Hah! . . . . Gave your ear to a woman as a gift." De Maupassant is now laughing hysterically. Vincent is not laughing. Seeing this, de Maupassant abruptly stops laughing and changes the subject. "Vince, how's your friend . . . . Gauguin, was it? Is he taking care of your place while you're away?" "No. Unfortunately, Paul and I had some disagreements. He's not at our place in Arles anymore. Paul's here in Paris, as a matter of fact. We're not on speaking terms." "Ah that's too bad. What happened?" "Oh, I don't know. I can't cook for beans, and Gauguin is an excellent cook, so poor Paul got stuck with all the cooking. We agreed that I would do the dishes." "Well, that seems fair," de Maupassant says. "Yes. But Paul is always so damned insistent about my responsibilities. He'd want to talk about art after dinner all the time. Our discussions turned into such exhausting arguments that I'd go to sleep with my clothes on, and without having done the dishes. When I'd wake up, Gauguin would say -- real nasty-like, "Hey, Vince. Do you think you could break down and do the dishes?" I wouldn't answer, and of course, that would make him even madder. I just wasn't going to take that kind of sarcasm from him." "Well, Vince," de Maupassant says consolingly, "those things don't sound like the world's most insurmountable problems between two friends." "Well, then he accused me of stealing the money in the cookie jar that we put there for groceries. I was so mad I refused to eat for days. Then the damn indiangiver took back his little Martinique canvas and some studies that he had given me. So, naturally, I took back my paintings of sunflowers. I tell you, when I got out of the hospital, I wrote a letter to Theo right away, suggesting that Gauguin might do well to see a doctor; and you know what kind of doctor I mean. That man has some real problems. But I don't want to talk about Gauguin anymore." "All right," de Maupassant says. * The next morning, de Maupassant wakes Vincent at seven o'clock. After having coffee together, the two friends walk to the Seine where a ghostly, thin mist hovers over the river. When Guy and Vincent are in the long shallow boat, de Maupassant launches it from the dock with a strong shove. "Guy, when did you first get into rowing?" Vincent asks. "Oh, I started rowing when I was in the Navy. It's a very cleansing activity and it clears my head." Rowing down the river, Vincent slowly gets the hang of things. De Maupassant teaches him the J-stroke that keeps the boat traveling in a straight line. He teaches Vincent how to turn, and how to stop short, how to cut across the current and how to rotate on a single axis. After a while, Vincent almost seems to be having fun. As they pass under a bridge that crosses the river, Vincent notices an attractive woman wearing a short skirt, tight sweater and high heels. She leans over the railing and waves her hand. "Hey, Guy, is that woman on the bridge waving at us?" "Yes. That's Rosy. She's a friend of mine." De Maupassant waves slowly and gives the woman a big smile. "If you'd like to meet her, she'll probably be at the Rowing Club Dance tonight." "You mean Rosy as in Boule de Suif?" Vincent asks. "Yes. Rosy was quite an inspiration for that piece." "I think that story is one of your best. And I'm proud to say I've read everything you've written." All of a sudden, Vincent is waving his arms at the woman and shouting her name. "Vince! Careful!" But de Maupassant's warning is too late. Vincent tips the boat, loses his balance and falls into the murky river. De Maupassant leans in the opposite direction just enough to keep the boat from tipping over altogether. "Guy, HELP! I can't swim!" Vincent screams, gulping and spitting water, flailing his arms. De Maupassant is wearing his best rowing outfit, so he holds an oar out to Vincent. "Vince, grab the oar!" Eventually, Vincent gets hold of the oar. De Maupassant pulls Vincent to the boat and, after considerable effort, finally pulls him in. Vincent is coughing and gagging. "Vince! Buddy! You can't move like that in these boats." De Maupassant takes Vincent back to his flat on the Left Bank, wraps him in blankets and places his feet in a tub of very warm water. Vincent sits solemnly, teeth chattering, knees shaking. De Maupassant makes Vincent a hot toddy with bourbon and water, sugar and a stick of cinnamon. The two friends don't go to the dance. Vincent goes to bed early. He is kept awake throughout the night by his own coughing and sneezing. De Maupassant gets up a number of times in the middle of the night, gets Vincent more blankets, makes him a bowl of hot soup and helps him get to the bathroom. In the morning, Vincent is so sick that de Maupassant calls a doctor. "Pneumonia," the doctor says. That evening, de Maupassant takes Vincent to Theo's house, where he feels Vincent will be more comfortable and get better care. Vincent does not suffer well. In the days that follow, he falls deeper and deeper into depression. His physical ailments begin to produce psychological ailments, which in turn worsen the physical ailments. De Maupassant visits Vincent nearly every day. Sometimes, Vincent is short with him when he tries to divert Vincent's mind by talking about rowing. Vincent is sick and bedridden well into Spring. His spirit deadened, he continues to paint in his room; outdoors, whenever he is able. To his few friends, Vincent seems numb to the world. His eyes often seem lifeless. He loses weight, almost by the day, and he is always nervous and jumpy. One evening in April, de Maupassant goes to see Vincent with a present from Bernard, a drawing. The door is open, but Theo doesn't seem to be home. Guy walks into the house, climbs the stairs and follows a trail of pipe smoke to Vincent's room. Vincent is lying on the bed, staring at the stucco ceiling, staring through matter, seemingly staring beyond the starry night. His face is white, chalky. He holds his pipe over the edge of the bed. He seems at peace. The tension that usually strains his face is no longer evident. "Vince?" de Maupassant whispers. He then notices the sheets stained with the dark cadmium red of Vincent's blood. A gun lies on the floor beside the bed. "Ohhhhhhhhhh, Vincent! Vincent! Vincent!" De Maupassant gently closes Vincent's eyelids. He sits on the bed near his friend until he can no longer bear to stay. He leaves the house and walks into the night, along the rainy streets to the Seine. He gets into his boat, and for a very long time, rows down the river, cutting smoothly, steadily through the dark water.

(originally appeared in The Vincent Brothers Review, Issue # 15: Vol. VI, # 2)

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