Dear Vincent,
You will not remember me, for in truth we never met. The first time you came to my attention was on my bedroom floor. I was seven years old, kicking my feet in lazy trails in the air, reading a grubby comic-book. I soon grew bored and started flicking between the nearby bookshelves in search of something to gnaw away the sluggish evening hours. There our paths crossed. A glossy picture-book tumbled, without pomp or circumstance, at my feet, your name looping on the cover in a gilded scrawl.
What a curious sight. Your scarecrow frame, flaring with rust-red hair, a hat of battered straw perched on a head framed by hills of rolling gold. On every page, sunflowers, through which strolled that gangly stranger, brushes tucked under an arm. A cotton-candy tale of an eccentric, impish fellow tottering around rustic towns and gas-lit bistros to draw his pretty pictures. A dabbler of strange arts capable of transforming a rigid canvas into an explosion of sensation. Hey presto: the master illusionist guiding streams of colour to dance like puppets to the beat of human hearts.
The second time you stumbled into my life was on a door at my grandmother’s house; a ramshackle little cottage tucked away in a Spanish town so insignificant it’s a wonder it managed to earn its way onto any map. There, within the room where my brothers and I would spend our nights, hung a poster of a single wicker chair, a gnarled pipe discarded atop it.
It stuns me to think how an image so simple could speak in a voice that bellowed. What warmth, what brilliance in a common piece of furniture, that nevertheless begged a thousand questions to a thousand unfinished stories. Was it your favourite chair? How many days did you sit atop it, wicker frame buckling under your weight, as you puffed tobacco, teeth gnawing away at the root? Maybe nursing thoughts of returning to your studio, to do whatever artists do in secret. The mind of a child saw you concocting bright potions in whorls of oil and water. Something out of The Sword in The Stone, all moons, stars and jets of rainbow smoke, scratching at your beard pensively as the alchemy of painting turned a potted plant into a burning sun.
As night fell, the gap beneath my bed vomited up hosts of scarlet-eyed fiends itching to grasp the chicken-bone ankles of a frightened child. I would stare at that little chair, etched now in the silver of midnight, and turn my thoughts away from nightmares. Away, towards that lanky stranger, his ghost imprinted on a makeshift throne. How hard not to think of that image from the picture-book. The trees, sable towers rising to dip into a sky churning with azure waves, dotted with crackling orbs. A vision that stripped the gloom from the world to varnish it with a fresh coat of the sublime. Was that how you gazed at our Earth? How boring my surroundings were in comparison. Stiff and stilted, devoid of the light fantastic that coursed through your fingers and spun a sunrise into a kaleidoscope.
Oh, Vincent, if I had only known then, I would have cursed myself as I daydreamed of your placid life! I learned of your suffering with a heavy heart. They became impossible to ignore: the screaming evenings of a year’s exile in the bleached halls of a mental ward, the bitter smoke of gunfire ravaging your stomach. We take death to reach a star, you said. When I look back, it makes no sense. I do not think you could have meant such a thing. An exile to the wintry shards of a distant star is nothing compared to the rough, hot arms of a brother who gave enough love to serve both of you. I should know. I am lucky enough to have two brothers, where you only had one.
Who hasn’t seen your portrait? A head swaddled in greasy bandages, hollow cheeks carved up with bones like a razor’s edges. Those eyes, Vincent. I could not believe those bullet holes once coated their bristles in sunlight. I heard the story of how you wrenched your ear from your head so many times that it seemed more like an old fairy-tale, than the mark of a man tore his soul from the bone in bloodied strips.
I won’t dare to claim to have suffered as you suffered, but trust me Vincent, that I know what it is like to sit and weep as eternity’s gates stretch out into the distance. I have felt fear’s knife make mincemeat of my guts, the terror of standing on a weathered rock amid a raging sea, thinking yourself alone and unloved. Clinging only to the hope that hurling yourself into the brine might finally silence the crashing waves. Yet Vincent, I have envied you, for what could a novice hope to understand of a man who said more with one colour, than I ever could with all my streams of purple prose?The scribbles of a boy still puzzling out what it means to be a man might mean little to you. But nevertheless Vincent, know you are not alone. Never were alone. I have carried you with me ever since that first evening your image caught my eye.
You live on, as I listen to an ocean lullaby, sitting on the beach thinking of the sapphire tongues of starry nights.
I glimpsed you when I glanced out the car window, barley flashing by in fiery sheets. You strolled behind me over bridges arched above the Seine as boats floated underneath to the lazy song of a wheezing accordion.
I saw you, as I leaned against a stone with my dog panting at my feet, watching birds dance their swooping courtships over Spanish plains. And, you will not remember, but you joined me on the railings in Bilbao, to look into a river studded with gemstone lights and realize that we would find a way, somehow.
You were there Vincent, in the Toledo sky as the day bled in the pink and orange pangs of unrequited love. You were there, sitting by the road as a bus trundled past La Mancha, straw hat pulled down low as you slept. Standard-bearer for the impossible dream, tilting at windmills with a lance carved from the wood of a paintbrush. And you were there, legs crossed, watching me sleep, all those nights ago.
I am, by nature, a dreamer and an idiot-it is funny how often the two go hand in hand. So, as my eyelids shut again, permit me one last fantasy, Vincent. It is the least that I can do. I have weathered the storms that battered me, kept afloat by the spark that died with men like you. So, let me use it, If I can, to build you a final resting place in remembrance. A eulogy to innocence of a kid who hoped for magic, where there had only been a man. A child’s dream, perfect and preserved in a clear glass marble.
Before I sleep, I imagine a plot of land in France. Corn sways in the wind, yellow stalks arranged in blonde cascades. Swallows chirp to themselves, thatched beneath green firs. A cottage sits in the middle of the cornfield. On the porch, cradled in a creaking rocking-chair, sleeps an old man. His hair is cotton-white instead of russet, his beard soft and downy. Oil-stained fingers are weathered and lined now, folded over a stomach which bears no bloodstained mark of a pistol shot. Just a few flecks of paint, maybe the smudges of a midday meal. A pipe sends blue wisps of smoke to mingle with the tawny sky. No gory bandage marks the old man’s cheeks. His face, ripened with age, is tanned by the suns of Tahiti, from a visit to a dear friend.
There is a small table on the porch. On it, a glass of wine and an open bottle, half-finished. Theo stopped by for drink this morning and came with a surprise. A small gift, a silly thing really. Beside the wine sits a Dutch vase, freshly filled with water. Its contents stand to attention as they follow the dusk. Sunflowers, of course.
The old man twitches in his sleep, snores. On his lips, a smile.
Thank you, Vincent. I hope you are at peace.
The End
Pablo Lacalle Writing 