FOLLOWING VINCENT
Part III
by
Christopher
Stasheff
Copyright © 2011
And, after an instant of dizzy nausea, there they were—on a narrow street in the pale light before dawn, but a pale light that seemed to reflect off everything around them, even to make the air itself luminous.
Ada took a deep breath. "Yes. An artist could do wondrous work in a place like this, couldn't he?"
"Fifteen months and two hundred paintings," Yorick said. "How many did he send back to his brother in Paris to try to sell?"
"All the ones he thought good enough."
Yorick heaved a sigh. "Only a dozen out of two hundred!" He set off down the street. "Where did he live?"
"In the yellow house." Ada paced beside him. "He became very fond of yellow during his time here—sunflowers, and yellow that sometimes seemed to imbue every object in his paintings with its color."
"Yes, and he started having fainting spells and seizures here, too, didn't he?"
"Sadly, yes." Ada said, eyes constantly moving, watching for… what? "His bipolar disorder had become obvious in Paris, and here, epilepsy began to manifest, too."
"Some epileptics know they're going to have a seizure when the whole world seems to turn yellow," Yorick offered.
Ada turned, amazed. "You mean he only painted what he saw?"
"You tell me." Yorick pointed.
Ada turned toward a corner house, and gasped. "The Yellow House!"
"I expect he only thought of it as A yellow house," Yorick said. "Or maybe home."
"No, that was where Theo lived." Ada's steps quickened. "Hurry! We must see if he left any paintings."
"Easy, easy." Yorick caught up with her, but his voice pulled her back. "We can't go knocking on his landlady's door until sunrise at least."
"No, of course not." Ada slowed. "Bother! We would have to arrive at first light."
"We usually try to arrange it at night," Yorick said. "Don't want the locals noticing that we just appeared out of nowhere."
"I could use a bite of breakfast." Ada looked around. "Do you suppose there's a cafe anywhere nearby?"
"Maybe a bakery—and they might have some coffee on."
Two hours later, fortified by cappuccino and croissants, they approached The Yellow House to find a card tacked to the panel notifying them to inquire next door.
"How shall we gain entrance?" Ada asked. "Pretend to be potential customers again? Or tenants, in this case."
"Worked in Montmartre." Yorick nodded. "Tell the landlord we're interested in renting."
"What if someone else has already rented it?" Ada started toward the next house.
"Not likely." Yorick kept pace with her. "It's the first place after Paris that Van Gogh might have left any paintings, right? So Doc sent us to the day after Vincent left."
"Yes, a good choice, I suppose," Ada said, but her tone lacked conviction. She turned to the door of the next house and knocked. She was about to knock again when the door opened, and a woman stood there blinking at them. Her gray hair was arranged in a bun, and she wore a long black dress with a white apron. "Bonjours, monsieur et madame." Cordial words, but she gave them a rather suspicious look, in spite of the fact that they were well-dressed—or maybe because of it. Or maybe neither; maybe it was part of her job to look that way.
"Bonjour," Ada said. "Nous sommes intéressés à la maison voisine. Est-elle vôtre?" We're interested in the house next door. Is it yours?
The woman nodded, but she didn't do a very good job of smothering her amused grin at the foreigner's accent. "Attendez, Je vais vous le montrer." Wait, I'll show it to you. She turned away.
Ada sighed and resolved to let Yorick do their talking. Still, the woman had been so amused by Ada's attempt at French that she looked much less suspicious.
Or perhaps that had not been the reason, after all—she heard a rustling sound and turned to find Yorick counting the fat wad of francs in his money clip. "Would you put that away! Here I thought I'd succeeded with sweet reason."
"International language." Yorick held up the money-clip, then put it back in his pocket.
The landlady reappeared and led them to the Yellow House. She unlocked the door and let them in.
Ada looked around, feeling goose-flesh rise on her back and neck. Although she was far from a worshipper of Van Gogh, she had to admit that he had somehow created glorious art. She found herself more impressed than she'd expected to be in the modest house Vincent had inhabited.
The downstairs was one large room with a kitchen along one wall, and a table and chairs in the center. Ada stepped forward and touched one of the chairs, thinking that Van Gogh might have sat there, eating his meager meal—he insisted on spending the allowance Theo sent him on paints and canvases, not on food. Perhaps, though, it had been Gauguin who had sat in that chair during the few months they had been roommates, in which case the meal would have been far more substantial, even though Theo had been paying for both of them.
Van Gogh might have been a great painter, but he wasn't much of a housekeeper.
Then she saw the stack of canvases against the wall. "My heavens!"
The landlady poured out a stream of invective, to judge by her tone, and hurried over to the paintings. Ada looked up at Yorick, at a loss.
"She says the crazy Dutchman left his garbage," Yorick translated, "but not to worry, she'll throw them out."
"Non!" Ada cried.
The landlady stopped, staring at Ada in surprise, and Ada realized her tone might have been a bit harsh. How to explain?
Inspiration struck. "Tell her not to bother. Canvases cost money, after all, and these are already on their stretchers. We can scrape the paint off and use them for our own pictures."
"Brilliant!" Yorick turned to the landlady, grinning as he rattled off the French words, and handed her a wad of bills. The landlady stared at them, eyes round. Then a crafty look came into her eyes and she said, "C'nest pas suffisant." That's not enough.
Yorick laughed and shook his head. "Certainement pas—c'est trop!" Certainly not—it's too much! He took the money back and offered Ada his arm. "Venez, nous allons trouver une autre chambre." Come, we'll find another room.
"Are you mad?" Ada hissed. "They're priceless!"
"She'll be suspicious if we don't haggle a little," Yorick said. "Come on, out the door."
Reluctantly, Ada forced her feet toward the door.
"Non, non!" cried the landlady, and rushed after Yorick, her words formed by anxiety.
Yorick slowed, stopped, scowled in thought, then nodded and handed the money back with a sigh.
The landlady bowed. "Merci, merci!" then went on like a brook over pebbles.
"Look attentive," Yorick advised. "She's telling us the terms of the lease. No pets... no parties... no immoral uses of the premises..."
Ada frowned, not understanding—then did understand, and felt her cheeks burning. "Tell her we shall not inhabit this chamber together."
"When she's done." Yorick waited for a pause, then inserted a quick statement. The landlady looked somewhat reassured and retired, nodding. Yorick closed the door behind her. "I told her I'm your lawyer."
Ada tried to choke back the laughter, and couldn't. Yorick dived for a rickety chair, the only furniture in the room, and shoved it behind her knees. Ada sat, unable to quell her hilarity.
"Release of tension," Yorick explained.
"It must be." Ada wiped her eyes. "Certainly it was not so humorous as all that. But it was ingenious—the client claiming to be the solicitor!"
"Hey, she knows we're English," Yorick said. "She expects us to be crazy."
"But you're not English!"
"If it talks like an Englishman, and it dresses like an Englishman, and it speaks French like an Englishman, it's an Englishman," Yorick said. "At least to her—and don't get technical, or I'll have to explain that I was born in Czechoslovakia—Bohemia, in your day. Of course, they didn't call it that back in the Neolithic…"
"Truly?" Ada asked. "Then you must be the only genuine Bohemian in France! And speaking of bohemians..." Her gaze strayed to the pile of paintings. "I don't think the cab will be enough."
"Oh, we'll make them fit somehow." Yorick pulled a coil of light rope from one voluminous pocket of his cape and knelt to start lashing the paintings together into a bundle. "Long enough to get them onto a train, at least," he said. "The Gare d'Arles station it's too far away."
"A train? Aren't we to take them directly back to headquarters?"
"Of course!" Yorick started on the second stack. "But the nearest time station is still in Paris at the Yellow Kitty. Ready to see Claude again?"
Well, Ada wasn't sure at all how she felt about that, so she chose to be diplomatic and say nothing. Yorick stood up, handing her a bundle of paintings bound into a neat rectangle. Ada was surprised at their weight. Then the Neanderthal linked his arm through hers, took up his own package, and said, "Okay, let's go find a cab!"
Yorick was right, the two bundles of canvases did fit into the hansome cab—and Ada was right that it was a tight squeeze, combined with herself and Yorick's not-inconsiderable bulk. She was quite relieved when they arrived at the Gare d'Arles and boarded a train headed for Paris, where they had much more room for themselves and their artistic luggage. As they boarded, Ada noticed the Neanderthal looking around him with interest.
"What is so fascinating?" Ada asked.
"Never been on a European train before." Yorick set his hat up on the rack, hung up his cloak, and sat down on one of the long bench seats that faced one another. "Kinda nice, having a compartment like this. Just for us, or will we have company?"
"We probably will." Ada sat beside him. "I saw no sense in the expense of a private compartment. Anyone who wishes to share this with us, shall." And, sure enough, and elderly couple joined them before train left the station.
Ada found the awkward silence uncomfortable, so attempted to make small talk. "Uh... bonjour."
"Bonjour," the grandmotherly woman replied; then, "Parlons pas le francais." We don't speak French. As it turned out, they didn't speak English either, but beamed at the youngsters across from them, chatted with one another in Dutch, then took out Bibles and began reading. Relieved from the social burden of having to make awkward conversation with foreigners in broken English, Ada joined Yorick in his silent pastime of gazing out the window.
Eventually, after an hour or so, the big man lost interest in watching the landscape—as beautiful and charming as the French countryside was, there was a lot of it, and it was mostly the same. Instead, Yorick took out a small leather-bound volume. Ada sat back and glanced at the book—then glanced again and had to stifle a laugh. It was a leather cover, true, but just a slip-cover—inside its front and back, Yorick had slipped the covers of a notebook. She glanced closer and saw lists of dates, locations, and notes.
"What are you reading?" she inquired.
Yorick sighed. "It's a list of all of GRIPE's time stations—where, when, and some background information on the area. I work on memorizing it in my downtime. Neanderthals have good memories—but there's a lot to remember!"
Ada stated at Yorick, aghast, then cast a nervous glance at their elderly companions in the train compartment.
"Relax!" Yorick chuckled. "The don't speak English—remember?"
"Oh. Yes, of course. Still," Ada hissed, "you mustn't leave that behind!"
"Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much," Yorick said. "Any ninetieth-century Frenchmen reading this would never think it's real. At best, they'd think it's just a trashy science fiction novel—and a poor Jules Verne knock-off at that!"
Ada looked over Yorick's shoulder at his notebook. "Wolmar? I don't believe I'm familiar with that city. What country is it in?"
"Well… that's a bit complicated," Yorick said. "Wolmar's not a city or country—it's a planet."
"A planet?" Ada's eyes widened.
"Sure." Yorick smiled. "Human civilization spans thousands of years in both directions, you know. Did you think we'd stay on this little rock forever?"
Ada stared at him, stunned. "Well… my college roommate Margot did mention a 'moon landing' in 1969…"
"Ah, that was just the first little step," Yorick said. "In five hundred years, humans will have colonized lots of different planets. Heck, in a thousand years, some of those colonies were lost and had to be rediscovered." He looked back down at his notebook. "That's why I need the background information. Some of those lost colonies developed different cultures—very different!"
Ada and Yorick passed the hours in deep conversation. Ada listened in rapt fascination as Yorick flipped through the book and describing the bizarre cultures that had developed in places almost too far away to imagine. She heard of Midgard, where humans bred into two different races of giants and dwarves, and of Durvie, where an entire race lived in hidden underground cities. Yorick recounted amusing tales of his misadventures on Wolmar, and Ada struggled to wrap her mind around the time manipulation that made it all possible.
When they finally arrived in Paris, Yorick slipped the book back into the back pocket of his trousers, grabbed the two stacks of bound paintings, and headed out the door—where he promptly collided hard with a new passenger entering the compartment. As the two men fell to the floor, the newcomer's briefcase crashed open, spilling its contents…and sent Yorick's paintings flying. Ada cried out as she saw the priceless Van Goghs crashed to the ground.
"Pardon, pardon!" the little Englishman with the huge moustache cried—at least, Ada guessed he was an Englishman, judging by his accent and horrible French. He helped her collect her painting and inspect them for damage, apologizing constantly—but, luckily, they seemed none the worse for wear. Relieved, Yorick dusted himself off, hoisted the bundles on canvases into his arms, and once again and made his way off the train—more cautiously this time. The pair of time travelers disappeared into the crowd, hunting for a handsome cab to take them to the Yellow Kitty.
Aboard the train, the Englishmen finished collecting the spilled contents of his briefcase—and found a small leather-bound volume that was not his. He stepped outside the compartment, looking in each direction down the train car for the big man who must have dropped it… but he was nowhere to be seen. The Englishman shrugged, turned back into his passenger compartment, sat down, and flipped through the book before tossing it into his briefcase—then paused, studying the words with increasing fascination. He was still reading it hours later when the conductor came to the door.
"Monsieur Wells? Monsieur Wells!" The mustachioed Englishman looked up. "I believe Calais is your stop?"
They finally arrived in Paris as night was falling, hired another hansom cab, and made their way to the Yellow Kitty. Claude greeted them warmly once again…and Ada realized with a shock that although she has seen Minh only yesterday from her perspective, it had been over a year from his perspective—his braided hair and fu-manchu moustache were considerably longer. Ada thoroughly enjoyed sitting through Minh the Magnificent's magic act a second time. Claude was constantly refining his performance, working in new tricks and jokes, and after a year of tinkering it was a different show in many ways.
Once again, Ada and Yorick volunteered for Minh's rarely-performed vanishing act in the oriental puzzle box. If anyone in the audience or staff remembered these same two volunteers (with another load of paintings) from over a year ago, they probably assumed they were just plants in the audience and in on the trick the whole time.
"Well-hauled!" Angus said by
way of greeting, and hobbled away with the two stacks of paintings.
Ada looked around. "But Dr. McAran… where are the paintings
we brought through yesterday?"
"Oh, I stopped by Coults & Company and dropped them off in one of our vaults," Angus answered.
"The British bank?" Ada said. "But… whatever for? Certainly the paintings are just as safe in our headquarters."
"Yes," Angus agreed, "but we need to age them. We just shaved almost seventy years off their lifespan, after all."
"I don't understand." Ada shook her head, confused. "Why would their age matter?"
"Well, If a previously unknown Van Gogh appears on the market," Yorick explained, "every art dealer's first instinct will be that it's a fake."
"And the quickest and easiest way to prove a fraud is a scientific analysis of the age of the paint and canvas. If they dated these paintings today, they'd find they were painted almost sixty years after Van Gogh died," Angus continued.
Ada blinked. "Scientists can determine how old a painting is? Really?"
"Well… radiocarbon dating isn't quite that precise in the 1950s, I'll admit," Angus replied, "but they've got other methods that are—and there'll just be more and more of them in the future."
Angus might as well have been speaking Greek for all the sense he made to Ada—but she trusted that he knew what he was talking about. He was a scientist, after all. She decided to change the subject instead. "Well, Yorick," she said, turning to the Neanderthal, "are you ready for our final stop on Vincent's trail?"
"Sure." Yorick shrugged. "Might as well finish now while we're on a roll."
"So where to next?" Angus asked, crossing to the control console for the time booth.
"The twelfth of May in 1890," Ada said with a sigh. "The Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Remy."
