3

the desperation of the poor

In Paris, the poor are desperate.

Vincent was born on March 30, 1853, at Zundert, a village of 3,000 inhabitants near the Belgian frontier in Brabant, Holland. His father, Theodore, the pastor of the village, was himself the son of a pastor who had had twelve children. Three of Vincent’s uncles’re picture-dealers; one of them, also called Vincent, carries on his business at The Hague.

Theodore and his wife, Anna Carbentus, have six children: three sons, Vincent, and Theo who’s four years the younger, Cornelis, and three daughters, Anna, Elisabeth, and Wilhelmina. The family’s a most united one, like many others in a country where the domestic virtues and adherence to Christian doctrine are the foundations of society. Like so many others too, in Holland, the Van Goghs are middle-class citizens living narrow and monotonous lives, still further restricted by Calvinist austerity. Such families often dread the emergence in their midst of some rebellious member likely at any moment to shatter the rigid framework of the home and destroy its unity, an adventurer destined to carve an empire from the ends of the earth, a scientist who may later revolutionize the laws of physics, a thinker who breaks new ground, or an artist whose turbulent genius will scandalize his native land before it comes to idolize him.

The Calvinism of Holland produced a capitalistic spirit. It’s doubtful whether anyone, the preacher Theodore . . . Anna . . . appreciated the child Vincent’s virtues and needs. Most poets and artists revenge themselves upon society for their early humiliations. But Vincent always blamed himself alone for his sufferings. A frustrated and misunderstood child, not given its due need of affection, ends as a man without roots, in rebellion or bewilderment, almost always embittered. Such are myself, Gauguin, and Van Gogh: sufferers who make others suffer. “One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul,” I remember Vincent wrote, “and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby only see a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.”

At sixteen Vincent was given a post as salesman in the art gallery formerly managed by his Uncle Vincent at The Hague. He was then transferred by the latter to the Parisian firm of Goupil. The boy stayed in this gallery for four years and left it in May 1873 for the London branch. There he fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, Ursula. She rejected him. He returned home. Four months later, he was back in the London Goupil Gallery. Ursula. Ursula. He tried to see her; she told him to get lost. He arrived at the Paris Goupil Gallery on May 15, 1875, in a state of desperation.

“Toulouse,” Poirot says to me one day, “we’re going to have to visit Marie’s family. They live in the poorest section of Montmartre. I hope you won’t be disgusted by what you’re going to see.”

“An artist has to see everything,” I loftily reply.

“Are you an artist, mon ami? I thought you were a whore. Grab your crutches if you don’t want to trip over the drunken bums.”

The streets of Montmartre are filthy. Garbage cans and dogshit lie strewn over the sidewalks. Bums lie under the garbage for warmth. Cats run through the collapsing railings; the buildings landlords have burned down to collect insurance, their tenants can no longer pay rent so why not burn down everything, this’s the beginning of socialism; the churchyard graves.

There’s only one law: don’t stop walking as fast as possible. Not for any reason. Thefts, pushing, kidnappings, tricks, murders: all these crimes take place in the open.

The street.

People die in front of other people on the street. There’s very little room. Poirot and I have to rush down the Rue Cailancourt. We don’t want to see any murders. If we see any murders, we might have to solve them.

We see a woman vomiting in the street.

“Mrs. Freilicher,” Poirot bows, “we’ve been looking for you.”

Her bleary eyes stare at us.

“We’re investigating your daughter’s murder. We thought you might be able to help us.”

The woman vomits again. The vomit’s red and green and blue and brown. It adds some color to the street.

“Lady, your daughter Marie died the other day.

“If we can find out who murdered her, we might be able to prevent future murders.

“Did your daughter have any enemies?”

The woman blinks at us. She understands nothing. Obviously poverty’s destroyed her mind. “Mrrlrrp,” her mouth gurgles.

“Marie said she had seen a murder. What’d she mean by this?”

“Marie’s a liar.” The old woman looks as dazed as ever.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy.”

“Go away, Missia. I’m talking to someone. Goddamn children.”

A thin girl wearing black shirt and black pants runs in front of my eyes. She slaps her mother hard across the face. “Mommy. Pull yourself together. Something’s happened to Melvyn!”

“Who gives a shit?”

The girl turns to Poirot. “Do ya understand? Melvyn my brother’s out there. A brick hit him; we were walking. He fell to the ground. He’s dead.”

“Where’d he die?” Poirot asks.

“Rue Cailancourt. A few blocks from here.”

Right near the brothel.

“Missia, your sister died a few days ago in a house near where your bother just died. We’re trying to find out who killed her. Your mother isn’t able to help us. Right before your sister died, she said she had just seen a murder. Do you know if she had witnessed a murder?”

The thin girl looks at us as if she’s testing us. What can she get out of us? What’re we good for? She’s got to survive. Her mother’s a vomiting nuisance. She wiggles her hips. One of her eyes is lower than her other. “Marie was a liar.”

“Then she didn’t see a murder?”

“She was stupid.” The girl’s lower eye winks. Her straggly hair looks like it’s wet.

“If Marie had seen a murder, would she have told your brother Melvyn?”

“She never saw any murder. Forget about it.”

“Did she talk to Melvyn a lot?”

“Melvyn was like her. Greedy. That’s why he died.”

In December 1877, without waiting for an appointment—of which he was to be apprised a month later—Vincent went off to the Borinage district of Belgium, intent on revealing the light of the gospel to those who most needed it: miners living in extreme poverty and engaged in the hardest possible work. He flattered himself, with the touching presumption of a novice, that he was capable of bringing consolation and the Christian faith to these outcasts.

Then he began his apostolic career whose distressing episodes are so well known. He spent himself with selfless generosity: teaching the children, tending the sick, distributing his scanty possessions, money, clothing, and furniture. He overflowed with love, less for God if the truth must be told, than for humanity. In spite of his efforts to prove his compassion and devotion to the miners, he didn’t succeed in convincing them. Moreover, since he’s an indifferent speaker, his preaching had no effect on these unfortunate people whom he had thought the most likely of all to listen to him. Whatever advance and sacrifices he made, the Borain proletariat misunderstood him as had his own family. The repeated rebuffs which met his anxious longing to communicate with and be received by and among the workers threw him back, time after time, into his irremediable solitude. It was even questionable whether these hapless creatures would have agreed to an improvement of their lot. Bernardin St. Pierre used to say he never met any human being who didn’t revel in his own misery. Vincent stripped himself of everything he had and made himself the poorest of the poor. He even blackened his face so as to look just like the rest of them. Whatever he did, he remained a stranger among the miners.

On April 12, 1881, Vincent took refuge with his parents at Etten. A cousin named Kee came to spend a holiday at Etten. Vincent fell deeply in love with her and proposed. It was a perfectly natural proceeding. He was 28 and wanted to found a family, to put an end to the loneliness that tormented him. Kee refused him. She said she had promised to remain faithful to the memory of her husband. And her parents were utterly opposed to the idea of a penniless son-in-law, with no settled work, and, of all things, an artist. Vincent persisted. She fled to her father in Amsterdam.

He wrote her again and again. She didn’t reply. Desperate, he set off to see her. When he called at her house, she declined to appear. He insisted, with an obstinacy described by his uncle as “disgusting,” on seeing her. He held his hand over a lighted lamp on the table and said he would keep it there till she arrived. Her horrified parents saw the flame begin to burn the motionless flesh. At last Vincent fainted.

He reached Antwerp on November 28, 1885, and at once rented a room at 194 Beeldekensstraat. In the daytime, he did his own work and attended courses at the Municipal Academy. From 8 till 10 evenings, he practiced drawing from life at a class in the Grand Marche. From 10 until midnight, he went to another life class. For all this art he needed expensive materials which he bought with the necessarily limited funds provided by Theo. When having to choose between working and satisfying his hunger, he was condemned to exhausting undernourishment. He lived exclusively on bread, a little cheese, and coffee. Consequently, he was in a state of perpetual weakness. He suffered from internal pains, lost about ten of his teeth, and coughed incessantly. One day, when he was feeling ill, he could no longer hide the truth from Theo: “I must tell you that Im literally starving.”

He left Antwerp suddenly, for Paris, where he arrived February 28, 1886. Poirot again interrupts my thoughts.

“Toulouse,” he growls. “You have to wake up. If you keep dreaming all the time, you’re going to get killed. I want you to accompany me to T.T.’s house.”

“Who’s T.T.?”

“Rhys’ brother. He knows everyone in Montmartre. He can tell us which of Norvin’s guests at the party knew Marie. If any of them wanted Marie out of the way. Oh, also, if there’ve been any unsolved murders lately.”

“You mean maybe Marie wasn’t lying? Everyone says she was a lousy little liar.”

“T.T. lives on the Rue des Martyrs. The other side of Montmartre. The only thing I know about T.T.’s that he’s supposed to be a hermit . . .”

“I’m miserable. I’m totally miserable. I can’t see anyone because everyone hates me. I don’t want to see you here!”

“T.T.,” Poirot says, “we’re not going to hurt you. We have to talk to you about Norvin’s brothel. There’s been a murder.”

“I feel so much, sometimes I think I’m going crazy. You won’t hurt me? Where the fuck’s my bottle? Come on in.” I see a heavy-set man. Small face. Small eyes. Six feet three inches. Businessman’s clothes.

“I’m an outsider. I can’t talk to anyone. My emotions’re so strong, they take me over. They drive me. They totally rule me.”

“Listen T.T. Three days ago, someone murdered this twerp at one of Norvins’ parties. Today a brick hit the twerp’s brother’s head and killed him.”

“I know all about it,” T.T. says. “I was at the party.” He picks up a newspaper and starts shredding it. Hands me a bottle of rum.

I started drinking as much rum as possible.

“I’ve known Norvins for years. She was the last person I used to visit. Now I visit no one. She’s a good woman: hard as nails. Every woman who succeeds in the business has to be that tough. It’s the only way women survive. No wonder I’m refusing to leave this house, get involved in the violent hustling and desires of my friends.”

I silently nod my head.

“I’ve got just enough money to remain in this prison, erect my own fantasies.” He grabs for the bottle. Takes a few swigs. I’m sitting so the massive left side of his body leans against my right shoulder, arm, and thigh. “I sent Rhys to Norvins’. Rhys’s young and needs guidance. No place for guidance like a brothel. The money he earns’ll help me maintain this hermitage.”

“Prostitution’s supporting everyone these days,” I murmur. I start drinking again.

“As I was saying, I was at Norvins’ party. I hadn’t seen Norvins for a while. The day after the party, I started being a hermit. I don’t think anyone who was at the party really knew the murdered girl. She was just a nuisance. That’s all Rousseau and Seurat really knew of her.”

“She said she had witnessed a murder?”

“Yes. You know all these young girls’ll do anything to get attention. That’s all she wanted. She’d do anything. A desperate little girl. Anyway, no one noticed her once the party began. She must have been hiding somewhere. I remembered her when I saw her hanging over the side of the bobbing tub, dead.”

“What I really want to know is whether there’ve been any unsolved murders in Montmartre lately.”

“You think that brat was telling the truth . . . No one who’s poor cares much about the truth . . .”

Suddenly I realize I want to fuck with this strange heavy man. I don’t understand why. I shouldn’t be attracted to him cause he obviously thinks I’m ugly. I must be getting desperate. I drink more rum.

“Every day thousands of murders occur in Montmartre. How else can a poor person eat? But what murders would Marie have possibly witnessed? There’s the Ganneron shootout. In fact, it took place right outside Marie’s building: 11 Rue Ganneron. The landlord of 11 Rue Ganneron tried to burn down the building. He realized he couldn’t keep collecting rent from people who had no more money and were going through garbage cans, looking for food. He decided to burn down the building to collect city fire insurance. One of the neighborhood leather boys who lives in the building caught the landlord starting the fire. He rushed at the landlord, shiv in hand. This started the largest gang war that’s occurred in years. The landlord’s mongoloid son, who lives across the street, sees the leather kid making the death rush. He throws a knife into the kid’s right arm. This son and the kid belong to separate, and very important, Montmartre gangs. So before ya’ know it, it’s an all-out gang war. BOOM BOOM BOOM. I saw one kid step out of 14 Rue Ganneron with a cardboard box containing 14 Molotov cocktails. Stuffed with rags. Ready to go.

“The cops never interfere in Montmartre politics. They’re too scared they’ll get burned. They don’t even clean up the dead bodies: the rates can do that.”

“I think I’m looking for another type of murder,” Poirot says thoughtfully.

I look at T.T.’s red face. As I see his eyes swerve toward mine, I quickly turn away my face. I’m scared he’ll notice me. I’m scared that I feel so strongly. Does he want me?

“There was the Haitian voodoo killing: That happened three days before the twerp got bumped off. This guy and his wife weren’t getting along too well. Well, they were getting along like most couples these days. He’d go to some whorehouse, not an uppity one like Norvins’, for a quickie. She’d screw the garbageman or the delivery boy every now and then. All clean and sane. Like everyone else, this couple gets poorer and poorer. The poorer they get, the more they take it out on each other. How’re poor people supposed to live? The guy starts saving his shit: he smears it on the street outside his house. He probably thinks he’s cleaning up the neighborhood. The wife starts screwing every man who’ll go down on her. If she can’t eat, she might as well screw. White-blonde hair. Luscious breasts. The kind of woman who gets every man hard who sees her and who won’t give anything away. Her eyes’re cold. She’s too hungry. The husband wants to go to Haiti, Mexico City, Acapulco. He disappears. When he returns, he’s very quiet. He complains he’s got a radio in his head and the radio’s getting the wrong channel. The U.S.A. government stuck the radio in his head in Mexico City. He’s programmed not to say any more. One day he’s going to kill some important political figure. Everyone in Montmartre thinks he’s crazy. There’s no politics in this slum. He’s known as “Baron Murder.” One day, on the Champs de Mars, the wife, who’s called Connie, is found dead. Her white hair flows on to the sidewalk. A white satin sheath cloaks her huge tits. The huge slit in her throat contains no more blood. She was out walking with some boyfriend: one of the neighborhood brats saw her. But he couldn’t tell who was with her. And the husband’s gone.

“Connie’s friend, Arthur, also got bumped off. Connie and Arthur, when they desperately needed money, would work for this solicitor. Name’s Zidler, or something like that. Actually . . . as I remember . . . Arthur was the one working for Zidler. There was a dope war going on at the time. It may still be going on. Zidler’s located on the Avenue St. Charles right off the Place de Clichy. Near Rue de Ganneron, ya’ know? The Avenue St. Charles people, all Africans, want to clean up their street. The street doesn’t want to get cleaned up. The pushers bump off a few residents. So the residents form a vigilante committee: any pusher who comes near the block’s gonna get it. Then the cops rush in, full blast! Bang, bang, bang! They’ve got to help their friends the pushers. Arthur’s somehow in the middle of all this. He’s using Zidler’s office as a pusher-station. On the side, he’s doing some forging. That’s the theory. He’s also screwing this hot number, Clay Fear, who’s got a jealous boyfriend. Who knows? One night, Arthur’s found stabbed in the back. Right in Zidler’s office. What a thing to happen in a respectable solicitor’s office! Three days before Connie’s slaughter. No one knows why he’s been murdered.

“Then there’s Mrs. Alexander’s death. She’s an old rich woman who lives off the Rue de Clignancourt. Anyone could have bumped her off, she’s so mean. She lives in Montmartre and she thinks poor people don’t exist. One night she dies. Death happens to everyone. Who cares if she died naturally or not? Her will says she leaves everything to some whore who was living in her house and making it with every bit of trash off the street. This whore used to do all Mrs. Alexander’s correspondence. Zidler, Mrs. Alexander’s lawyer, says the whore forged the will. No money for you, honey. So the whore leaves. She was only trying to survive.”

“I’ve got to get back to the brothel so I can requestion Norvins about these murders. TT., could you get Toulouse home? She’s quite drunk.”

“I’m madly in love with you, T.T.,” I whisper. “My cunt and womb are flaming so much I think I’m becoming a nymphomaniac. If I want you this much, you must want me.”

“I think I want you very much, Tooloose. I’ve never had a cripple before.” I feel my face muscles twitch. I can’t move. I see his face muscles twitch.

Suddenly we’re kissing. We’re kissing like both of us have never kissed before.

It seems to be Vincent’s longing for the wholesome and his loathing of shams which makes it hard for him to endure Paris. In this late fall of 1886, he begins to despair. In his fur cap and goatish cloak he tramps the snow-covered streets in deep depression. He has no idea where to go, where to find a trace of warm human feeling. He has no friends to call upon. Anyhow, their paltry rivalries disgust him.

As I fuck T.T., all I think about is my brother Vincent.