Chapter 6 Chapter Six

one Gauguin found a job on a ship and returned to France in the first month, still haggard from the high fever left by the jungle.Besides his paintings, he had only ten francs jingling in his pocket.He works for the fare, so he doesn't get paid.This little money was kindly given to him by the captain. Sifnik, good old friend Sifnik started to take care of him again.Comfortable accommodation and delicious food quickly restored Gauguin's strength.His skin was golden and he looked like a foreigner. He showed Sifennick all the works he had painted in Martinique.In the gray light of a Parisian winter day, his paintings blazed like flames.Sifnik just stared at those paintings, without saying a word for a long time, letting his shock pour out naturally.Finally, he said as if awakened from a dream: I think you are already a painter, the important thing is that you are different from the previous ones.

Gauguin stood up and walked across the room, looking at one of the paintings.The person in the painting is Konati, standing in the bare field, her golden-red flesh overflowing with life and vitality, and the bushes behind her are damp and emitting heat. She is my woman.He said: In Paris, it seems unbelievable, but over there, it is absolutely true.He sat down and gazed passionately at the fire. Over there, sometimes, I can even forget about Maddie.He said: Here, I can't do anything, I don't know why I want to miss her, she doesn't miss me at all.She writes me three letters a year that read like a bank statement.

You should go see her.Sifnik said: These things are not something that can be resolved by correspondence. Of course I want to go, Gauguin said: but I will not be so stupid as to let my mother-in-law see me poor and sick.Theo.Van Gogh agreed to give me a solo exhibition at the Bossa Gallery.If I can sell a painting or two, I go to Denmark. Have you seen Theo?Sifnik said: Then you must know about Vincent. I know he's gone to Bulwrens, Ayrshire.Gauguin nodded: I'm sorry I didn't see him. Suddenly, he disappeared from Paris.Sifnik said: Today he is still there, but tomorrow there will be no trace of him, nor a single piece of paper or words.

Gauguin smiled softly, thinking of the Dutchman. He is a wonderful bird, Vincent.Van Gogh, but he could paint, he could paint. two In his first solo exhibition, Gauguin sold three paintings. He bought a black suit and arrived in Copenhagen in Schiffenik's camphor-smelling leather jacket. The people in Maddie's family received him as if he were a convict who had just been released from prison.Maddie was not at home, and a servant showed him to a guest room.By the time he finished grooming and went downstairs to the living room, the children were already lined up for him.They were all dressed in Sunday school clothes, standing neatly as if attending a funeral.The boy was wearing a stiff white-collar shirt, and Anlinie was wearing a black velvet skirt.

The boys greeted him in Danish with a military bow.Anlinie kissed him and said: Good day, Daddy, nice to see you. Gauguin looks at his sons standing at attention. Take it easy, he said in French: There are no guards here. The children didn't move, and it took a while for Gauguin to realize that they didn't understand him at all. Sit down, children.In Danish, he tried to make his voice as soft as possible: don't stand all the time.They're a bunch of little Danes who forget their origins, he thought. If you are not surprised, sir, we still have a lot of homework to do.Yami said stiffly.

please.Gauguin said.Try to control your emotions. The boys exited the living room one by one, leaving him and Anli Ni alone.They all hate me and they will never come back.He thought, only An Li Ni still loves me!There should be no preference for children, but nothing can be undone. Come and sit next to me.He said: Tell me how you are. She sat on a small chair beside him, looking at him eagerly, and he could feel how she adored him.He started talking to her, holding her little hand, telling her about the Panama Canal, the virgin forests of Martinique.When he finished telling how Lava was on the verge of death, Anli Ni burst into tears.Big silent tears flowed sadly down her cheeks.He took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears.

sorry baby.He said: I didn't mean to make you cry. Dad, I love you.she said, holding his hand tightly.I miss you, I miss you so much. I miss you too.He said. There was a sound behind them, they turned their heads and saw Mei Di standing at the door of the room.She wore a large, stylish hat and carried a stack of manuscripts under her arm.He and An Lini stood up. Hurry up and do your homework.Mei Di said sharply to An Li Ni. yes mom.Anlinie said. She curtseys and leaves, and Gauguin can see that she is terrified of her mother. You terrified the kid.He said. She's a dreamer, said Maddie: We can only afford one dreamer in our family.

It's totally natural.Gauguin said. He looked at Mei Di, still beautiful, still as cold as ice. The maid put me in the guest room.He said: Did she think we were divorced? You are back from vacation in America.Meddy said: You don't want me to welcome you with open arms. Vacation, Gauguin said.His voice couldn't help but be full of sarcasm: Meddy, Meddy, you'd better see how I go on vacation. She stared at him calmly, without any special expression on her face, her head was raised high, holy like a saint worshiped by the Puritans. It seems to me that your return is exactly the same as when you left.she says.

I admit that I did not make a fortune.He said: But I had a very successful solo exhibition in Boza.I finally got off to a good start. He walked up to her.Stopped halfway. Please give me one more chance, Maddie.He said: Please go back to Paris with your children and I can find a cheap and comfortable place, and you can still work as a translator in Paris. I can translate.She said: But you, Paul, what do you do? draw.He said: Others started to buy my paintings, and the situation will gradually improve. Then I will raise you like an extra child.She said: Thanks, Paul. God!How can you be so patient!He said: You are corrupted by all virtues, Maddie, I love you, I adore you, is there nothing for you?

love me!She said: When a man loves a woman, he should do his due responsibilities.You don't love me, you just can't bear that I can't be enslaved, can't command me. Gauguin turned around. Well, I admit defeat, he said quietly.Eyes on the steady flame of the copper furnace: You are right, I think, and since all agree with you, how can you be wrong? three He went back to Paris the next day.In the carriage across the Netherlands, he stared at the flat and dull scenery outside the window, feeling a sense of loss and fear of death. That's all for now.He told Sifnik: We discuss it all our lives, and we will not reach a conclusion until we die.The worst part was that neither of us could make it up.

Sifnik said nothing. how?Bastard, are you talking or not?Gauguin said angrily: Are you also on the side of Mei Di like everyone else? I didn't say that.Sifenik said gently: I think she does have her position.Remember, I won't curse Maddie for you. Schiffen, you just lack imagination.Gauguin said crudely. He rushed out and came back drunk in the middle of the night.Sifnik was waiting for him, offering him freshly brewed espresso and many words of comfort.Sometimes, Gauguin thought, he was like a tame puppy, a purebred spaniel. In the morning, he went to the gallery to meet Theo.Van Gogh.He stopped in front of a painting with an order on it. Tigas bought this when you left.Theo told him. Digas, Gauguin said: He would never waste money on a painting he had no confidence in.Including his, I have already sold four copies! There is another village where the willows are dark and the flowers are bright, Gauguin.Vincent's brother said: It is only a matter of time. Gauguin went to his office with Theo, and Theo gave him the money for the painting from Digas. How is Vincent doing recently?asked Gauguin. I got a letter.Theo said: He mentioned you, and he would be delighted if you could come and see him in Ayrshire. Gauguin shook his head. not now.He said: "I have an appointment with the yellow Christ, and the weather is warmer, in Bethany, I must go."Maybe I'll go south in the fall, if Vincent still needs me then. Paul, could you write to Vincent?Theo said sadly: He often thinks of you, you can write to him, it will be of great help to him. What's wrong with Vincent?Gauguin asked: Why is your tone of voice so strange. No, there's nothing wrong, Theo said awkwardly: it's just that he's alone there, and he must feel lonely. I must write to him.Gauguin agreed. A few days later, Gauguin found a studio in St. Cossack Lane.It was the same as the one he had rented before, small and dirty. It doesn't matter, he told Sifnik: I'll go to Anwen Bridge as soon as the weather warms up. Four In mid-March, the climate in Paris began to make Gauguin nervous.He left Paris a month early.Returned to Anwen Bridge on a frosty evening.Mary.Jane prepared him with brittany butter and thick brown bread. I thought you'd be the last here.She added an extra egg to his plate, she said. In another month you'll be hoping so.Gauguin said: As usual, I am poor. You pay the bill with the painting.Mary.Jane smiled and said: You won't take advantage. five A few weeks later, the weather began to warm up, and painters began to invade the land.This year, Gauguin appeared in full conquest, as he became the head of the Pont-Anven school of Finistere traitors.Compared with the traditional conservatives, the pestilents (as they called Gauguin and other modern painters) were still a minority.The battlefield of these two groups is in the restaurant.Early summer, Mary.Jane invited the batch of plague students to another small living room for dinner. If you want to quarrel, it is best to go to the wild to quarrel, she said: Be quiet when eating, otherwise it will hinder digestion. The Plagues were glad to have their own place; the others called that house the Madhouse. six That summer, Gauguin's faction took in several deserters who escaped from the restaurant.The recruit who should be honored is Xi Rusha. He is a tutor at the Julian College of Art and leads a group of students to sketch at Anwen Bridge. Gauguin liked Sirosha very much, and he knew that Sirosha's influence on the younger generation in Paris, such as Bonaparte, Matisse, and Villard, could not be ignored.If Sirosha can change, he can change other people too.One day, Gauguin and Sirusha were painting in the Love Tree Garden (a park near the border of the Anwen Bridge, which is favored by modern painters).Gauguin talks and draws. What do you see these trees look like?He asked: yellow color?Don't you just paint it yellow.Is the shade blue?Just use pure blue color to paint, those are red leaves?Just use vermilion and forget all the hinting that Julian taught you.How can painting suggest?Painting is one hundred percent statement. Xilusha looked at his painting, it was pitch black, he didn't like it at all.He kept the paints in a cigar case.With a gesture of extreme impatience, he tore off the lid of the cigarette case.The wood of the lid is painted to reveal a smooth and beautiful surface.He squeezed a bunch of colors around the edge of the palette, a bunch of vermilion, a bunch of blue, a bunch of bright yellow.He began to quickly draw on the lid of the cigarette case.I feel that the subject of his paintings is not the scenery he sees but the colorful effects of his sensory contact.He squeezed the color directly from the paint tube and landed on the painting like musical notes. After the painting was completed, the sound of music appeared on the small screen.It was a landscape painting, in which a bridge, a house, some trees and running water could be vaguely distinguished.It is a landscape, a painting; a painting in which colors are arranged in a certain order on a flat surface. Do you know, Sirusha, that I think you are finishing the first truly modern landscape ever painted.Gauguin said: How vast is this little thing.How amazing the power is. I just draw as you taught me.Silusha said: I paint what I feel rather than what I see. He looked at the small painting and felt extremely confused. What he drew had absolutely nothing to do with the palette and brush in his hand. It needs a name.Gauguin said: There is a better name than the words Baitany Landscape. I call it an amulet.Sirusha said: Maybe it will bring us good luck. When they got back to Mary.Jane's residence, immediately hung the painting high on the wall of the living room.That wall is dedicated to those painters.Most of the works on the walls are conservative works.Small amulets leaped from among them like a column of flame. They will be startled, Gauguin said with certainty: Wait until dinner time, my friend, you can hear them screaming. That night, the pestilents heard an earth-shattering scream coming from the living room.In front of Xilusha's painting, stood an old painter trembling all over. Boss lady, boss lady.He yelled: Those lunatics are too disgraceful, if this imbecile waste is not removed, I will move immediately. He is the oldest.Maupassant, he is fully dressed like a draper's boy.He had a neat beard and was only a hundred pounds thin.Gauguin lifted him up, put his face in front of Sirosha's painting and said: You see, poor No.Maupassant, he said: look at the vision of future freedom, usually we have to charge, five francs for one person, seven francs for two people, for your brother, we give you special treatment, let you visit for free, because it is good for your soul great help.Take a good look, my friend, and then go out and tell others, today, you saw a real painting. He put the first.Maupassant put it down, and the little dwarf trembled with rage.Simply lawless!He yelled, "Ma'am, this painting by Ye Zhong must not be hung here." Mary.Jane laughed before realizing the seriousness of the situation.Maupassant was annoying, but he was able to sell paintings at high prices to tourists who mistook them for the work of a novelist.Maupassant paid the bill on the first day of each month, but Gauguin had already owed the rent for three months.She prefers the eccentric Gauguin in her heart, but she needs money to buy food, pay taxes, and discuss with the police station when the tenants are too noisy.Maupassant must stay and pay the bill. Finally, an agreement was reached; the amulets could still be hung, but only in the little living room where they ate their own meals.The war between the two sides was very fierce. When eating, the bread and the plate were often flying together. Their war took the style popular among schoolchildren. Crazies!Conservatives yelled: Put everyone in a madhouse! Gauguin raised his chair and yelled: "Son of a bitch!" seven Gauguin was their leader, while young Barnet was a theoretician.That summer he worked out a comprehensive theory of his own.Gauguin and the rest of the painters recognized this as the new artistic creed. Long live the synthesis!Gauguin yelled in their own dining room: Homage to our new Master of Rhythm. In private, he often joked about Baina. In a word, everything is art, and in a word, art is genius.He said to Sirusha. Beware, says Sirosha: Baina will think you a traitor to the Synthetic Theory. Synthesis theory, said Gauguin: how superfluous for us, my friends. But Banner was very stubborn. One day, he dragged Gauguin to the Love Tree Garden to explain his theory to him. You see, Gauguin, it's about straightness.He said, drawing a picture, the subject of which seemed to be a model cut out of cardboard. Gauguin patiently waited for Baina to finish painting, and carefully looked at the masterpiece. In the picture, he could feel what Baina wanted to explain, but Baina could only express it in words, and he was useless when it came to color. Give me your palette.He said, turning to his unfinished canvas. He looked at Banner's palette, then at the scene before him; a small clearing in the middle of the forest, with a leaning tree in the center.The muddy ground was reddish in hot summer, and nearby were two girls, whose gestures seemed to be praying, dressed in black and with small starched white caps on their heads.The scenery is medieval, full of religious silence. First of all, Gao Geng roughly drew the village girls, and added a few people beside the original two, so their white caps formed an arc and swept across the lower half of the picture.He painted the ground a hazy, quivering red.On the ground there is an angel with golden wings struggling desperately with a farmer from Baitany.Job and the Angels, painted in the spirit of Bertany (the painting is now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). Gauguin concentrated on painting, forgetting the young Baina.The picture develops in an orderly manner, as neat and pious as the mosaic glass of a church window.The effect is astounding and indisputable. Banner's lips trembled slightly. He had been defeated. Gauguin had seized his ideas and stole all his hearts with genius. Yes, Gauguin, he said: that's what I'm going to say. He picked up the oil painting knife and scraped off the original painting.He has surrendered to Gauguin.Gauguin stared at the painting just now painted with Baina's palette.He had always been a clear and impartial judge of his own work; he knew now that for the first time he had seen a great and immortal Gauguin.He didn't feel any victory at all, he only felt the peace and satisfaction of being in love. The painting hangs in the small dining room, and this time, the conservatives did not hurl unreasonable abuse.They look at it and turn away, confused and shocked.To the uninitiated, this painting has a very different effect, Mary.One of Jane's little maids passed it, holding a large stack of dinner plates, and crossing herself with her right hand.This painting should hang in the church.Sirusha told Gauguin. Perhaps it should be hung in the Rotterdam Church in Paris?Gauguin said: Or Notre Dame. I'm telling the truth, don't be kidding me.Xilusha said: It belongs to the Baintenne Church, and it belongs to the people here. Simple people, such as the lowly woman just now, have Gauguin's paintings hanging in the church, which is of great benefit to the modernists. Paris The news will be heard soon. To me, that makes no difference.Gauguin said: You know that I am a free-thinking person. To me, it is just a painting, the same painting as other paintings. Maybe so for you.Sirusha said gently: For me or for that maid, it is Job and the angel struggling, if I don't consider myself an intellectual from Paris, I will also cross myself .He rested for a while and continued: There is a small church in Nissen, which is very suitable for your Job. Neeson or Nice, Gauguin said: it is the same to me. eight When the painting was dry, Gauguin and other painting friends sent it to Nissen Township, a few miles away from Anwen Bridge. The deacon of the church was an old farmer, wearing a ragged gown with soup stains on the front.He looked at Gauguin's paintings, as if he had bumped into a ghost, and retreated while watching. What is that?he asked fearfully. That's Job and the angel, sir.Xi Rusha said respectfully. Blasphemy!The deacon said: It is my duty to warn you, my child, that you will always be cast into hell for entertaining the Holy Spirit. The young Baina was about to reply with a few words, when Gauguin took the painting and walked out: Don't waste your words, he said: let the deacon go to eat, I hope his excretory organs are more useful than his brain. The deacon raised his hand angrily, as if he wanted to curse Gauguin. Gauguin felt a chill, cursed and strode out.They walked back to Anwen Bridge along a rough gravel road. Let's try another church.Xilusha said: That stupid deacon is so old and confused that he doesn't know anything.Gauguin shook his head. I should have known earlier that if this painting was indeed religious, the last place it should have been was a church.He said: Because every church has Godphobia. Gauguin, you are too outrageous, Xilusha took the opportunity to say: I don't care about the ignorance of a little priest, but you should not stray too far from the topic. fuck your ass.Gauguin said crudely: Is this painting yours or mine? In the next few days, he was so depressed that he drew a self-portrait with a face that looked terribly distressed.After finishing the painting, he framed it, bound it and sent it to Vincent in Ayrshire.Van Gogh.He missed Vincent and the Southern style. A few days later, he happened to receive a letter from Vincent's brother, promising to provide Gauguin with all necessary expenses if he would go to the south to accompany Vincent.He wrote to Theo and accepted his funding.The South was just where he needed to be.The summer of Bethany was over, and the gray, damp autumn had arrived.