Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

“Language labs, yes, that’s good. Language labs. Work at their own pace,” Miller said, making a note, and checking the spelling with him of Rangerer’s last name.

“I don’t know,” said Barbara Neil-Cheshi from the Wharton School, “aren’t they open all hours? Don’t they make a fetish of utilizing their plant around the clock all year long?”

Miller thanked her and made a note.

“You know what this sounds like?” Ms. Neil-Cheshi said. “Market research.”

“No no,” said Miller, “this is more open-ended than market research. In market research they always ask specific questions. I’m here in Arles looking for impressions. I particularly stipulated that when I filed my grant application. No no. Nothing like this has ever been done.” He folded the scrap of paper on which he had recorded their remarks and stuffed it into his pants pocket. He gave back her pencil. “It’s almost time for lunch,” he said, and left the music room.

Entering the night café a little before the others he sat down at one of the small, vacant, green baize-covered tables along a red wall. He finished his drink and held up. his empty glass until one of the waiters took it from him and returned with a full one. He spotted Paul Hartshine but looked away quickly. He came over anyway.

“May I?” Hartshine said.

“Sure,” Miller said. “Long time no see.”

“Now, Miller,” Hartshine said, “you know that’s not true. We’ve seen one another in the music room practically every day. You’ve cut me quite dead. I take no offense because you treat everyone in this manner.”

Hartshine, dapper as ever, was wearing a huge bow tie. His silk suit pants were almost like tights and his jacket flared up in back as if he were mooning the room. Miller had an urge to beat him up, at least to pick a fight. (He was drinking too much. Two or three of these apéritifs put him away these days. On top of on top of on top of on top of.) He considered what he might tell Hartshine. It was a toss- up between a remark about the way he dressed and the way he spoke. He was about to go with the clothes thing when suddenly he changed his mind and pulled out all the stops.

“Hartshine,” he said as if it were some problematic wine he rolled about in his mouth experimentally. “Hartshine, Hartshine. What is that, Jewish?”

Hartshine was shocked, stunned. He looked as if Miller had pulled a knife on him. He seemed terrified. This passed and a murderous anger moved across his face like weather. As Miller watched, Hartshine slowly lifted his right hand away from his lap, brought it level with the table and, raising it further, reached out and brought it to rest on the lapel of Miller’s jacket.

Miller leaned far back in his chair. “Hey,” he said. “What? What?”

Then Hartshine did an amazing thing. Removing his hand from the lapel he jerked it back toward his own throat and, rooting with his fingers under his big bow tie seized one end of the tie and tugged at it until the big floppy affair came undone. He pulled it through the collar of his shirt like a magic trick and set it down on his empty plate. Hartshine got up from the table wordlessly and crossed the night café to another table. Before anyone saw, Miller tried to cover the tie with his hand. Then, almost as if he were scratching the plate, he proceeded to palm Hartshine’s bow tie. He watched its elaborate print disappear into his fist, then, first looking about nonchalantly, stuffed it deep into the pocket of his pants.

After his lunch (which he ate even less of than usual) Miller had no desire to return to the music room and he went back to Number 2 Lamartine. Dr. Félix Rey was standing to the side of the stairs in the tiny ground-floor hallway addressing a small, rough-looking fellow in rapid French, one of the painters perhaps, who, his back to Miller, stooped down over the stairs, tying his shoe. Rey seemed angry, even quarrelsome, but spotting Miller abruptly broke off. “Ah,” said the doctor, “the Mister Monsieur. My friend plus myself have been waiting on you. Show him, Maurice!” Almost militarily the man removed his foot from the step and snapped to a kind of attention. “Eh?” said the doctor. “Eh, eh?” He was talking to Miller. “Eh?” he said again. “Hmn?” It was as if he were offering the Hoosier a piece of merchandise he’d been at some lengths to procure and now sought, as though Miller were a connoisseur or (he suddenly recalled the phrase of an unlikely Indianapolis pal, a broker) “made a market” in the commodity, corroboration of its worth or of the doctor’s judgment.

Miller neutrally shrugged.

“Well,” Dr. Rey said, “let’s have a look at you, will we?” and abruptly came toward him. Miller, momentarily flashing on Paul Hartshine’s strange, bold movement in the night café and conscious of the bow tie, undone in his pocket, instinctively backed away. The doctor reached out for his wrist, which, at a loss, Miller reluctantly surrendered. “Pulse normal,” he said, turning it over, examining his hands. “Tch tch tch. Monsieur tastes his nails. Color superb,” he said and touched the edge of his hand to Miller’s face. “Skin quite dry.” Miller looked at him. “Non non non non non. Skin quite dry is an excellent circumstance. I should say you are out of the woods,” Rey said. Then he turned to the mean-looking guy and seemed to relate in French (his tone calmer than when Miller had entered the house) everything he had just been telling his patient. (Miller caught “Tch tch tch.” He caught “Non non non non non.”)

“Please,” Félix Rey said. He indicated the stairs with a gesture, at once proprietary and deferential. “I promised the Zouave he could see the room,” he whispered.

Of course, Miller thought. Maurice. The fierce Zouave. I didn’t recognize him out of uniform. And wondered, and not for first time, Why me? What am I doing here? Are you really out of the woods if the doctor has to examine you in a hallway? What is the meaning of life?

Leading the way, followed by the good doctor and with the fierce Zouave bringing up the rear, Miller climbed the steps to Van Gogh’s room at Arles and muscled open its stuck, Provençal-warped door. (Where he saw that the maids — they came in pairs now — had put the furniture back in its original position.)

Félix Rey looked at the ex-legionnaire and waited with the same air of deferent appraisal (and muttering some of the same sounds) with which he’d appealed to Miller some few minutes earlier. Both looked toward the scowling young tough, Miller surprised to find himself as expectant as the doctor, as anxious to have the room’s authenticity acknowledged as Rey (apparently) had been eager to have Miller vouch for the kid’s uncanny resemblance to Van Gogh’s untamed original.

The Zouave nodded and went to the rush-bottom chair closest to the bed, unceremoniously tore it from its place, set it down against a wall, and planted himself in it, his legs spread wide, one hand resting in his lap and the other along a thigh as unselfconsciously as if he were sitting on a toilet.

“Hey!” Miller said. “Hey you!”

Without moving his face, the Zouave’s eyes seemed to follow Miller, to find and fix him, exactly as they would in a portrait, so that, in a way, it was almost as if Miller were the sitter, the subject, and the Zouave the one free and loose in the gallery. Maurice, in place, stolid, narrowed his eyes, oddly red, almost phosphorent, like something dangerous and defiant and shining in a jungle.

Miller wanted the intruders out of there. What the hell? The way the wiseguy had just marched in and taken over the place? Who the hell? Félix Rey had promised him? Promised him? Examines me in the fucking hall and promised him? Who the hell, what the hell? He wanted these Scrooge’s ghosts the hell out of there.