The Season of Migration (12 page)

After that, Pierre volunteered that he was afraid of fire, for once he had touched the stove without knowing it was hot and had burned his hand so terribly, he still had scars (he held out his hand for the other boys to see). Alard said he was afraid of dogs; he had seen one rip the head off a chicken by shaking it in its jaws. A usually quiet boy named Hugo said that he was afraid of losing his father in the mine; at this, a few of the boys lowered their heads and nodded. Hugo was the boy whom I had once caught with his foot raised over a caterpillar in the dew-laden grass. “Why do you want to kill that little creature?” I had asked him, taking his arm. “God created it, and it lives!” There are many caterpillars in the Borinage, and whenever I see one slinking along I pick it up and place it on a tree so as to preserve its strange beauty.

Carel, then, raised his hand and said, “Monsieur Vincent? My father says I am to be afraid of God.”

The stove was warm from the coal I had picked from the heap, but the boys had their coats on nonetheless. The lamp was burning in the corner, and the boys' little legs were swinging from the benches they sat on, their feet not yet touching the floor. I was still on fire from the slag heap, my skin tingling with a strange sensation, and I tried to calm myself, knowing that I could scare the children in my present state. I knew Carel's father, Mark, was a believer, but one who seemed twisted in his faith, so that his relationship with Christ was more similar to that of a slave and a master. He had been to quite a few of my religious meetings and I had often spoken to him down by the mine as he came out of the gate after a shift—a hard man, with dark eyebrows thick as grubs. When Carel was near him, Mark almost always had a hand on his son, a thick paw on his shoulder both protective and threatening.

The boys were confused, but I knew I could not help them. I have had too many of my own troubles on this very topic, as you know; I tried to warn myself to tread lightly. But I could not, Theo, not as I was in that moment, my hands still bleeding and black. “Well,” I began, “we see there are many different types of fear. Carel, your father is not wrong. Certainly fearing God is an important part of listening to Him and obeying His commandments. We obey and fear our own fathers, so all the more should we obey and fear our Father in Heaven.” I held out my hands in front of them. “Look at my hands!” I said. “Do they not scare you? God made them, and God turned them black and bloody. God brought me up on that heap today so that I could be closer to Him, so that I could be closer to all of you. Now here I am, and the darkness has marked me, and perhaps we should all be afraid.” I was looking at my hands as I said this, and then remembered to raise my eyes, and I saw that the boys' eyes were wide and frightened—not by my hands, of course, yes, Theo, I understand this, but by my outburst.

Reaching for my Bible, trying to recover, feeling a confused urge to calm myself and at the same time to rage further, to blow off the front of that furnace fed by the coal I had retrieved and to show them all the visions I had seen, I read to them from Hebrews 12:9, “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” I couldn't help myself, Theo, I continued: “Live, boys! That is what God wants us to do! But we cannot do that without getting our hands dirty, without becoming covered with black. We cannot continue through our lives pure and white and untouched; we must dive into the earth and, through its dust, find the way to reach one another.”

Looking up from the book, I saw a cluster of boys in woolen pants looking back at me with fear and awe and confusion. In each one of them I saw myself. I was one of those boys, just as I was standing in front of them. I saw you, too, Theo, sitting in the front row, looking at me with that confused expression you sometimes wear.

Later that evening the miners poured into the salon. Else and Hubert Aert; Carel's father, Mark; Decrucq and his next-door neighbors the Adelgondes. As they came through the door I greeted them, feeling pleased that I recognized so many faces. Even Paul Fontaine was there—he stoked the fire so well that with all the bodies, it was warm enough in the room for shirtsleeves. I spoke about the parable of the mustard seed, where the tiniest kernel of faith was enough to grow a whole tree, a whole universe, a whole kingdom. I felt confident, as if the Spirit were really speaking through me, perhaps for the first time, and all the souls in the room were lifted up and were as one.

When I got home to the Denises' and looked in the mirror above the washbasin, I was staggered by what I saw: A miner's face looked back at me. For a moment I did not remember the slag heap, but thought that by some miracle I had been transformed; I had come so close to the flock that evening that even my appearance had changed, and belonging had been granted to me. Then I remembered, but was no less pleased, for in the image of myself with my face turned black I saw a vision of myself as being of the place, and it was a vision of acceptance.

I turned back to the room I shared with Alard, who was already asleep, and saw it as if for the first time: the bed with its warm quilt of feathers, the vase of flowers on the bedside table, the white chest of drawers decorated with a delicate rendering of an apple orchard. It was lovely and simple, but nonetheless it was not a miner's cottage; it was removed, its construction and its decoration and its placement and even its smell, always so pleasant and sweet, removed.

I could not stay at the Denises' any longer; I knew it suddenly and with certainty. I climbed into bed without washing my face. I did not plan to ever wash it again.

The next morning, I left the Denis house and moved to a hut I had noticed near the salon, abandoned some time ago but not yet falling into the earth. Mrs. Denis was worried when I left; when she saw me with my suitcase, she was surprised, her eyebrows turned in. She questioned me. Where was I going? Where would I sleep? Was there a bed in the hut, was there food? Was I unhappy at their home? Had they not done everything to provide for me? I answered that her home was beautiful, her home was a sanctuary, but from time to time one should do as the good God and go and live among one's own. The words coming out of my mouth sounded feeble and forced. I could hear the way they must sound to her and knew they were not as I meant them. She looked at me as if to say, You, like them? Like us? Her face was confused, her mouth tight. She was concerned; she did not understand. She pleaded with me to have a bath and wipe the soot off of my face, at least, before I left. I refused her.

November 10

Petit Wasmes, the Borinage

Dear Theo,

When did you get to be older than I? When we were boys, you would do everything that I did—I stepped first in the snow and you followed. But somewhere along the way you must have grown older, or grown past, for there you were telling me in front of the Sorcière mine that you are worried for me. Isn't it my job to worry for
you
?

It has been three months since your visit, and here I am in an empty room, writing to you. But which version of you am I writing to? Is it the boy whom I shared a bed with, or the man in his top hat and dapper suit? I remember you, sick in that bed in Zundert, the curtains drawn and Ma insisting that I tiptoe quietly into the room so I would not disturb you. Am I disturbing you now, Theo, am I disturbing you?

I remember wandering over the heath with you one morning when we were boys. We came across the skeleton of a bird. Do you remember this? It lay in the tall grass by the edge of the lane, as if it had been moved off the path in order to decompose undisturbed. Most of the flesh was gone, save for a piece of the belly, the part of any creature that always looks the most revealing, as if it is the seat of an animal's personality, as a man's plump stomach can tell you much about what his life is like.

The bird's wings lay beneath it, long bones tucked in close, and we could still see the rounded crown of the head, though the flesh was gone and there was no longer a face. The skeleton was perfectly intact: tiny ribs like bridges emerging from the remaining cover at its belly; an incredible immaculate spine, bleached all white from the sun, knobs fitting together like perfect minuscule fists linked in a chain. Little pieces of white fluff clung to where the face had once been.

We crouched by the skeleton for quite a time, taking in its details and contours, windows into the processes of death. For a while we were both silenced by it, the story that it told, one of creation and destruction, one of artistry, of perfection, of time and decay, and of what lay beneath the surfaces that we saw. Then I said I wanted to take it home with us. You erupted at this idea; you were horrified and frightened. How could I want to do such a thing? You grew tearful at the prospect that I would remove the bird; your eyes grew large and wet and you wailed at me, your neck and face flushing red.

I was taken aback by your protest. I had assumed that we were both seeing the same thing, while we crouched there peering at the skeleton, but your cries made me realize otherwise. What I had seen was an object—one that contained mysteries of the universe, certainly, but an object nonetheless. What you had seen was a bird. A creature once alive, now dead, that deserved to return to the earth in peace.

Your vision in that moment inspired me. I had been so focused on the object before us that the rest of the world had gone fuzzy and fallen away; it is a focus of vision that I still have, and that is dangerous, for when I come back to myself after looking so closely my brain is so tired that if that sort of work is repeated often I become totally distracted and incapable of a whole lot of ordinary things. You, with your forceful cries, brought me back to the earth, the two of us kneeling in the mud by the side of a lane, that little skeleton but a tiny detail in an otherwise enormous world. My little brother was so much wiser and more sensitive than I, I saw then, with such an eye that even at your age you could already recognize that some mysteries were meant to remain so.

I have not yet mailed any of the letters I have written you since your visit. I begin to wonder if I will ever send them, if there will ever be any further contact between us again.

Dear Theo,

I remember a night in Amsterdam, toward the end of my time there, when my failure at study was near. I let myself out of the house after everyone was asleep and I walked all night, across the city and back, meandering through lanes and lots and parks and over bridges, resting on the steps of houses that held sleeping families, boys and girls tucked in tightly, mothers and fathers with their arms around each other in sleep. How does a man know if he has chosen the right path?

I was yearning to see things; my mind was crammed with the images that I encountered every day but had to ignore for the words in books. I walked and gathered images to my mind as if they were salves for wounds. There are moments when the common everyday things make an extraordinary impression and have a deep significance and a different aspect. As I walked that night, I passed a big dark wine cellar and warehouse, with the doors standing open; for a moment I had an awful vision—men with lights were running back and forth in the dark vault, and I felt suddenly sure that those men were not men at all, but creatures inside my own brain. I was looking not into a warehouse but at a window into my own mind, and the men were the workmen in the yard outside Uncle Jan's, that long line of black figures. It was a sight that often comforted me, although in that moment it filled me with dread: Those men were a symbol of what I could not change. They were arriving for work in my body and mind; I could not turn them away. Then one of them brushed past me, and his shoe touched my ankle. “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, and I could tell from the way he looked back at me that he was wondering if I were mad.

I pushed on to the canal. There was nearly a full moon, and the light threw a glow on the gray evening clouds, against which the masts of the ships and the row of old houses and trees stood out; everything was reflected in the water, and the sky cast a strange light on the black earth, on the green grass with daisies and buttercups, and on the bushes of white and purple lilacs, and on the elderberry bushes of gardens in the yards.

What I am trying to say is that I will go on. If we are tired, isn't it because we have already walked a long way? And if it is true that man has his battle to fight on earth, aren't the feeling of weariness and the burning of the head signs of our struggle?

Lift up your eyes, cast yourself like a net into the sea of the world. Lift up the hands that hang down and put them to work, use them to render what you see.

My head is sometimes heavy, and often it burns and my thoughts are confused.

 

 

PART II

 

1880

May 13, 5:00 a.m.

He wakes at first light. He seems not to have moved all night: His arms are still crossed where they were when he fell asleep, stiff like branches. When he moves, his bones creak; they have fallen into one another, entangled.

How far along is he? He imagines he is nearly halfway to Paris. His body groans; it is complaining, despite the night's sleep, it does not want to embark on another long journey. His feet in particular are unhappy. The soles of his boots are beginning to wear thin, and with a few more hours of walking he feels sure his feet will be touching ground.

He walks on and on, past farm after farm; shepherds look at him with curiosity. He stops frequently to give his feet a rest; he sketches elements of the countryside, all brown farmland or the almost coffee-colored marly soil, with whitish spots where the marl appears. He thinks of Theo, his top hat, his mustache, and feels a strange twinge of fear.
You are not the same any longer.
It is not true. Angeline appears before him in her miner's uniform, her eyes twinkling, but when he reaches out his arm her face contorts into an expression of desperate fear. Where is he going? What will it solve to see his brother, to give him his story, when Theo has never asked for it?
Monsieur Vincent, is that you?
He tries to quiet his mind with sketching, to focus on the lines of the drawing rather than on the questions about where he is going, and what he will say when he gets there, but always at a certain point he hears his father's voice:
What is this for, Vincent? What is this idling?
—and then he looks at what he is drawing and sees it, makeshift and amateurish, expressing nothing. Often then he tears the drawing into strips and tosses them into his knapsack; if there is wind, he lets the pieces be carried off of his palms. Every time he tears up a drawing he feels a twinge of pain, which he tells himself he deserves.