Dwarg in the Seventh Dimension : The Aggie Kellor Experience Read online

CHAPTER ONE – VINCENT

  23rd December 1888

  “You’ve shit in your pants again you filthy animal!” Paul shouted. “Why I let you talk me into coming to this festering dump of yours, I’ll never know. Just look at you, you’re an insignificant squashed flea that a dog has gnawed and spat out.”

  “So what?” shouted Vincent, “God didn’t say I had to go the pot every time I had to shit? Do you see birds and rats and insects pissing and shitting through a hole in a box? – they do it when they feel like it, don’t they?”

  “Goddamn you to hell, you’re more than a leech, a bludger and a dreamer – you’re a stinking, vile and obnoxious creature – you should be put off the world – you are not a man, you’re not even of nature’s spawn. You should go and die!”

  Van Gogh laughed out loud, “I’ve been dead for a long time, and living in hell. And you, you prissy housepainter, have been sent to me by Satan to impale me on the horns of your acrimony. You should get yourself far away from me and take that stack of rubbish as well – I’ve seen children painting with their fingers dipped in shit, do better works. – Go on, get the goddamn out!”

  Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin had come to a point in this turbulent and convoluted relationship, where he could take no more. He would willingly suffer for his art, but that crazy Dutchman made his existence more miserable every waking hour. To argue that van Gogh was eccentric or had idiosyncrasies was far too generous, he was just one plain mad, crazy and imbecilic lunatic. Paul threw the tin cup of cold tea at the wall and stormed towards the door, picked up his overcoat and left, all the while offering Vincent an upward extended finger.

  “Go back to the devil, you little French maggot!” shouted Vincent with tears in his eyes. He did not want Paul to go; he would be alone, alone with that thing inside his head. It was the thing – the black fallen angel – that was responsible for all his ills, pains and vexation. No matter how hard he prayed to Our Lord for relief, the presence of that spirit would overwhelm and imprison him. Even the Holy Priest at Saint Trophime could not help. “My son, if you hear a voice within you, saying you are not a child of the Saviour; then pray to Our Lord and the voice will be silenced. If you hear a voice within you saying you are not a painter, then paint, and you will have silence.”

  The war within Vincent continued. His art and his visualisation and his colours, were the weapons against the black and white, analytical and unadorned entity that would continually try to overpower him. Vincent sat on his bed for a while, he looked up to the ceiling and shouted out loud, “I will roll around in my own filth, I will degrade and abase myself, I will wallow in self loathing so you will share my misery, you unholy and scabbed pus from Hades. I will smash my head against stone, I will imagine bright colours of yellows and blues and I will go and cleanse myself in Father Roudini’s blessed water.”

  He staggered to the window and called out, “Eugene, do not go away – you have also been infused with the breath of Beelzebub – we must lay a siege and rid our temples of him.” Paul did not hear him. Vincent was terrified, he needed to get Paul back, he needed his inspiration and guidance and companionship – he loved him seven weeks ago – and had they not untied the purse strings of their meagre allowances to share Rachel’s caresses? This intrusive demon, this black embedded heathen crow, now wanted Paul to go away, to divide and conquer – this must not happen, Paul and I are the dramatis personae in this engrafted play. We are a union of pilgrim, of pioneer, of seer and visionary, cultivating the bland earth from sterile order.

  Throwing off his long worn, soiled and rancid rags, he quickly changed his clothes, gathered up his satchel and went to look for his estranged friend. There would only be one place that Paul would be – Rachel’s house. He banged on her door but Rachel’s old housekeeper refused to admit Vincent, saying Rachel was out. He called out over her shoulder into the house “Eugene, be a man, come and face me, come and forgive me. Eugene, why do you hide beneath the underskirts of the madam? – do you seek the safety of a mother’s thighs – Eugene, do you fear me?”

  “You must go now monsieur, I will tell madam you called.” Vincent shuffled back to his Yellow House. He would paint some bright and happy sunflowers on Paul’s bedroom wall while waiting for his friend to come back.

  Paul did return later that evening and saw, amid a circle of burning candles, Vincent, still painting his sunflowers. “Beau! - inspirant, mon ami Hollandais – your yellows pull the eyes from my sockets. You should rest ; here, I have some bread and absinthe to sooth our corrupted souls.” Paul pulled out a long sandwich, then an earthenware flask from the pocket of his overcoat.

  “I looked for you today. You were not with Rachel?”

  “Yes, we spent the hours at Terrace Cafe drinking their pissy warm cha. Vincent, I stole these pages from the Cafe. I thought you may find this interesting for your search to capture the night. Here are a few drawings of things called nebula. They’re from an old pamphlet written by this English stargazer, Rosse - he looked at the night sky through a telescope and saw these nebula things. See how some are different, this one he calls a crab nebula, this one a spiral and this one he called the question mark spiral nebula. – What do you think?”

  “Flat, black and white - I see no sparkle, no light – no life - they are dead. He draws exactly what he sees and exactly what it is, it does not arouse my senses...yet, here is some beauty in his model. He is no artist and I would not invite him to my studio...yet the shapes of his drawing linger. How fares Rachel?”

  “She has a chill and a slight fever. I believe she is with the pox, and for her medicine, she drinks tea and mercury. From this world, I fear she will leave, and not see the new year complete.”

  “She also says she cannot be bound to her bed. It’s the Eve before Christmas Eve and her family from Brive will arrive tonight.”

  “Noel so close? - shall we decorate a tree and sing songs of joy? – what present should I offer you?”

  “Peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind would be good presents.”

  “I have neither to give. May I keep these pages? – I need them to collect my faeces.”

  “Yes, go and wrap up your shit - is this to be your Christmas offering?”

  Vincent laughed, “non, no mon ami – that would be a gift far too personal.”