Yellow and Blue and Also Red
Erin DiLorenzo
The door to the yellow house slammed with a deafening crash that rattled in Vincent’s ears for some time after. Paul had hitched on his winter clothes in a hurry, coat over button up shirt and feet crammed into heavy leather boots. He hadn’t even bothered to wrap his scarf around his neck. No, he’d just draped it over his shoulder and left with the ribbon of wool streaming behind him.
Vincent sat for a moment at the edge of his chair, that cold pit in his chest growing yet again. Large canvases were propped against the barren white walls. Drop cloths splattered in blue and yellow paint stretched out underneath Vincent’s feet and wrinkled and twisted when he moved in his chair. A half-finished painting with thick swirls of paint sat on the easel before him. Marigold and periwinkle strokes of that pungent oil paint.
He took in the cluttered studio, recalling the early days of painting side by side with Paul. Vincent had painted bunches of sunflowers while Paul had painted him painting sunflowers. He’d always been too untidy for Paul’s liking, even with his artistry. Globs of paint smeared rather than carefully placed. Tubes and glass jars of oil paints shoved into a wooden box with reckless abandon. If only Paul knew how Vincent’s mind had been arranged just the same: with a shattered jar of blue paint seeping all over everything. He always grew aware of the sensation in moments like this, when it felt as though his world and dreams were fraught. An icy cavern eating away at his internal organs and creeping its frosty tendrils up the back of his neck. It was a familiar feeling. That sense of emptiness which spread itself thin over his entire being.
He felt the loneliness thicken and choke him as he recalled the conversation with Paul. Thick eyebrows lowered over his eyes as he told Vincent everything.
“I’ll be leaving for Paris soon.”
Vincent was hardly speechless. “What about the vision, Paul? Artists living together. Working together for the betterment of all.” The growing anger was hard to shake.
“That was only ever your vision, Vincent, and I’ve grown bored with this idealism of yours. Theo could not pay me a decade’s advance on my paintings for me to live with you a moment longer. You’re a mess and you spew meaningless drivel about death and life, constantly speaking yet saying nothing at all. I can no longer stand it.”
At that Vincent had kept his lips pursed, watching as Paul gathered up his coat from the rack near the entrance and let the green door with its peeling paint and varnished knob slam behind him. Dust swirled in its wake, shimmering like fairy dust in the lamp light.
A word floated into Vincent’s mind. He pictured it as the dust, a wisp of smoke dancing through the door and seeping under the crack. It followed Paul down the streets of Arles, right along the cracking sidewalks of Place Lamartine and twisting around his feet even as his footsteps quickened.
Traitor.
Vincent was barely conscious of his knees straightening. His feet pushed him towards the bathroom. A hand that was hardly his, opened the mirrored medicine cabinet above the sink and grabbed a single blade razor.
He didn’t close the cabinet. He didn’t put on any winter clothes either, just followed that misty word out the door and down the road. After Paul Gauguin. The friend. The traitor.
Vincent clasped the cold metal in his hand as the December air engulfed him. His determination would not let him feel the chill even as it numbed the tips of his fingers and jaw.
Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
The nearly full moon and the sparsely placed street lamps illuminated the walk. A stray cat scurried across his path and the smell of rotting vegetables from the neighbor’s trash can singed his nose. Only the silhouette of a man a few blocks down the road could catch Vincent’s interest.
He quickened his pace, shoes scraping against cement. Brick and plaster storefronts all cast in shadow flashed by him. The figure grew larger. He could make out Paul’s red scarf, now wrapped around his neck, tightly, shielding him from the cold. There was snow frozen to the cuffs of Paul’s pants now. That was how Vincent remembered Paul best: in the snow. It brought to mind images of the first winter they spent together. Drinking absinthe by the fireplace and exchanging ideas for new works. Cooking together. Painting together. They had been friends.
Vincent knew what he had to do. He would talk to his friend. Place one reassuring hand on his shoulder or call out to him and they would talk. They’d work this out, and it could be just as it had been before. The new resolve quickened his step.
He was nearly running, feet slapping the cold pavement, Paul’s silhouette bobbing
closer.
“Paul!” Vincent called out, frigid air stinging the back of his throat. His arms pumped at his sides and he nearly forgot the razor in his hand until he noticed the wide eyed stare of his friend. Paul’s mouth stood agape as he twisted his neck to look at the metal instrument in Vincent’s fist. Startled, he fell back a step, away from his old roommate.
Vincent stopped. He looked at the object in his grip, unsure of where it had come from. A razor? To talk to his friend? He could barely recall the mind which compelled him to such an action. He stood immobile. Long enough for Paul to gather his thoughts. At a comfortable distance, that is.
“Vincent what are you-”
But Vincent had turned on his heel, ears burning red with heat and cold alike. He’d nearly turned his blade upon a friend! How could he? Paul called after him in a muffled voice but Vincent paid it no mind. It grew fainter the further he walked and his friend did not follow. He trudged back, eyes fixated on the yellow house on the corner. How could he?
That look of fear painted on Paul’s face as he approached… He couldn’t erase it. To be looked at like that, by a friend. A mentor. It was unthinkable. And to do something to warrant it. Vincent knew who was to blame.
As he shuffled back to his apartment, the right wing of the yellow house, a few snowflakes began to fall, twirling in the night air like little ballerinas in delicate white tulle. When he tilted his head back, it felt like traveling through the stars. The snowflakes falling, now in greater numbers, were all the jewels of the heavens falling around him. Swirling and reflecting the lemony glow of the lamplight. The beauty was a cruel joke in the face of Vincent’s shame.
Suddenly the wisps of snow were nothing but icy needles biting at the flesh around his eyes and mouth. Nothing but a reminder of that word that had placed the blade in his wretched hand. Traitor.
He couldn’t get home fast enough. He must hurry. Be away from the scene of his treachery. The storefronts, the bricks, the green and white awnings, the stray cats and waning moon and running in reverse as the yellow plaster bobbed nearer. He could just make out the green shutters as he mounted the cement staircase to his portion of the living quarters.
The door was unlocked and the fireplace hadn’t been lit, but he paid the cold no mind. Without so much as a glance about the studio or kitchen, Vincent followed the dark hallway towards the stairs on the far wall.
They creaked with each wearied step. He ascended with one hand on the railing and one still closed around the razor blade’s handle.
At the landing, a door stood on either side of him. The one to the left led to Paul’s room. The other to Vincent’s.
Inside, blankets, pillows and crumpled sketches were strewn across the floor. Dried paint tubes littered the bottom of the wastepaper bin. Vincent didn’t even clear a path to the bed. The bottoms of his shoes crunched over the debris with little care.
He threw himself on the bed and held the blade tenderly in his lap. The reflective metal threw his wretched reflection back at himself. Reddish facial hair and tired eyes. Ears that stuck out a bit too far. It startled him that no visible piece of himself was missing. It certainly felt like it.
Vincent was barely conscious of his hand raising the blade, drawing it across his numb ear lobe. His heavy-headed shame somehow felt a bit lighter.
Erin DiLorenzo hails from rural Schuylkill County, a backwoods part of Central Pennsylvania. She is currently a third year student in the School of Arts and Sciences, pursuing an undergraduate degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. She expects to graduate in 2025. In addition to writing, she enjoys painting, hiking and reading in her free time.
This piece was written in a course taught by Professor Paul Blaney. Blaney selected the work for inclusion in WHR.