Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

It was a lot to take in. Harder than the details and dimensions she’d been feeding him about Arles’s historic buildings and monuments and parks, the grand tour as it might have been told to a blind man— gently and patiently and with just enough consideration to make it appear as if she were rehearsing all this to him personally, even intimately. Now that it had become intimate — even personal — Miller was furious. He might have lashed out at any point in her lecture— at her assumptions about what she called his malaise, about his social life, at any of her cheeky aspersions about his personality, even about her betrayal of his appetite. What he chose, however ludicrously (he was that furious), was what was nearest to hand.

“I am not alone in this house. There are three other rooms!”

“They are to be painted. No Fellows have been assigned to them. You are quite by yourself here.” She turned to go.

“How many spectators did you say that amphitheater held?” he called after her as she went down the stairs “Thirty thousand? Twenty? Hah! The Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis accommodates more than three times that many!”

He thought he could hear his voice reverberating through what he supposed must have been the vacated, partially emptied-out, painter-prepared rooms. It sounded as hollow to him as his uncarpeted, unfurnished rage. But God, he was mad! Reason not the need and vice versa.

And was still going strong — to wit: why, the very idea! the nerve of that bitch! just who in hell — nobody talks to— if she thinks— two can play at that game! if she thinks, if she thinks — factotum, shmacktotum, abada figaro, abada figaro, figaro la, figoro la! because nobody can talk to me like that and still expect a good tip! — when suddenly the sound of his reproach just fell silent, just quit, fell dead away, every last damn reverberation collapsed in on itself like light down the toilet of a black hole, and he realized how far he was from back home again in Indiana and the glossy municipal comforts of Booth Tarkington Community College, where he not only had colleagues with whom he broke bread and ate lunch in the school cafeteria (to which not one of them had ever had to adjust), but his very own assigned space in the orderly, patrolled, tow- away-zoned faculty parking lot. His mood easing, eased through anger, melancholy, memory, and nostalgia, sloping away, declining downward like a grammatical form, and resolved at last to poor pure awareness.

Now am I alone, Miller thought, and sighed, and realized, appreciated, and for the first time since he’d been there recognized, not just where he’d come from, but where he had arrived. Miller in Van Gogh’s room at Arles. Miller in Miller’s room in Arles. And thought that whoever made the room assignments (Kaska Celli undoubtedly, Madame Low Down and Dirty) must certainly know her man. He not only meant himself, he meant Van Gogh, too.

Neither was in his element in Arles. They were about the same age. Both were bachelors. Both had been repudiated by the Establishment. Van Gogh never sold a painting while he lived and, what, you think Booth Tarkington Community College was the first place Miller applied or sent his curriculum vitae? He’d asked for a hundred jobs. It wasn’t even the first place in Indiana. It wasn’t even the first place in Indianapolis! Also, Vincent was a little nutsy too.

The day hadn’t gone well for him, he’d been through a lot, he was tired, wrung out, tomorrow was another day. He made out the light. Though his fury had subsided he was still on edge. He got into their bed. He said his prayers. He pulled the drawstring of his pajamas. The secret of a long- lasting relationship, he told God, was never to go to bed angry. Rita was younger, and more beautiful, but her words had stung him. He was still too hurt. So he fixed on the older woman, on Kaska and, slowly bringing her into focus, the hair on her unshaved legs, beneath her arms, on the black, full bush that hung on the pantieless body under her skirt, and conjuring the stirring gale-force smells that rose off her flesh like all the molten perfumes of earth, Miller, coming, groaning, sighing, forgave the world and slept.

And woke next morning refreshed but somehow with no more urge to get up and take on the prospect of a new day than when he had first lain down.

“I’m not a malingerer,” he told Hartshine, who had missed him at breakfast and had brought coffee, a brioche, a croissant, butter, some pony pots of jam, and a glass of juice over to Miller’s room from the night café.

Today Hartshine had chosen a nautical costume— white flared trousers and a wide-necked top of thick, alternating bands of black and white stripes. He looked vaguely like a gondolier.

“No, of course not,” Paul Hartshine said. “We just haven’t gotten our sea legs yet.”

“What’s this juice?”

“It’s orange juice.”

“Why’s it red?”

“It’s made from blood oranges.”

“Figures,” Miller said. Then, “I’m not, I’m not a malingerer.”

“Are you really so very ill then? Kaska Celli is quite concerned.”

“No,” Miller said, “I’m not so very ill. I’m not ill at all.”

“She’s concerned.”

“Now that makes me sore. It really does. She’s the one that said I looked tired, that I ought to lie down. She diagnosed jet lag, the new country, the strange food. This isn’t bad,” he said, “though I prefer my orange juice yellow.” He set down his glass. “She told me nobody gets much done the first day. I mean that really pisses me off. Ain’t she the housemother here? I mean, my God, Hartshine, she must see malaise like mine two dozen times a year. Did she say I’m malingering?”

“No. This is a big opportunity. She thinks you should make the most of your time.”

“I’ve got five weeks to make the most of my time. Nobody gets much done the first few days. Everyone goes at their own pace here. Like I suppose I’m the only one who didn’t make it down to breakfast this morning. I suppose she takes attendance. I suppose she calls roll.”

“Of course not.”

“There you go then,” Miller said.

“You were the only one who didn’t make it down to breakfast. Well, Stanley Gassett wasn’t there. Nan Hoffmann wasn’t. Lesley Getler.”

“Did I meet them?”

“You met Stanley. I believe you met Getler. Nan Hoffmann came in after we were already seated, I think.”

“Well there you go then,” Miller said again. “They don’t sound any more reliable than I do.”

“They didn’t come down because they’re making the most of their time. I heard Gassett banging away at his typewriter practically all night. Getler, too. Gassett’s next door to me. Getler’s working with him on the same project. They were still going at it when I went down to breakfast.”

“They kept you up all night? That’s terrible. Why didn’t you say something? Or bang on the wall? No one should be allowed to interfere with another man’s sleep.”

“They didn’t bother me. I was working myself.”

“It was your first day,” Miller said. “No one gets much done his first day.”

“Oh,” Hartshine said, “I didn’t get much done. I knocked off after a few hours.”

“Now what does that mean? That people will steal a march on me if I don’t watch out? Are you assigned to me or something? Are you breaking me in? Is this the buddy system?”

“No,” said Hartshine. “Nothing like that.”

“Well,” Miller said, “you can go back and tell her I’m settling in, getting the feel of things, getting the feel of Van Gogh’s room. Because she’s right. It is a big opportunity. Maybe, for me, even an historic one. God knows I’ll probably never have anything like such an opportunity again. Hell, I don’t know if I should even be flattered. Probably not. Maybe it’s luck of the draw. Or maybe they pick the son of a bitch least likely to make it out of Indianapolis. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe the Foundation matches up a Fellow’s character and personality and prospects with where it decides to put him to bed. Maybe they debrief you when your five weeks are up, see if smothering you in the ambience of genius has any effect on the quality of your work. I’m in Van Gogh’s room, man! I’m in Van Gogh’s room in Van Gogh’s house in Arles! You know the obligation that puts me under, the responsibility? You don’t have to be an art historian. It’s one of the world’s best-known paintings.