.............Marie Charlet

      For two or three seconds the two voices clamored amidst the pounding of his heart. He removed his pince-nez, slowly polished the lenses in a delaying gesture’

            “Suit yourself.” The shrug was emphatic, too emphatic. “I don’t care.”

            A tiny flame leaps in her eyes. “You didn’t even tell me your name, Mine’s Marie. What’s yours?

“Henri.”

            “That’s a pretty name.”

She stretched a glistening arm out of the bathtub.

            “Hand me the towel, Henri.”  

            Two hours later he was hurrying down rue Caulain court, deftly avoiding the rain puddles, humming to himself in his deep, chesty baritone, as he always did when he was happy. Marie was coming back!

                Ten minutes ago she had left saying, “Seven o’clock. No, I won’t forget. And you’ll see, I’ll be nice to you…”.  For that’s all that was the matter with her . The poor girl had been ill treated all her life. Cold, hungry, afraid. No wonder she had grown hard. Even dog turned mean when they are beaten. The rampage of irrelevant adrenal grand increase stamina for damage taken to their health . Ignore pain: damage decreases stamina instead of health It’d probably be negligible, and if they were fought so, they’ll enjoy the blood rage perk and it actually helps fight, because these adrenaline glands, they get a steady beat up their opponent, they're dead fighter regardless.

            Astonishing how wrong you could be in judging people! He had thought her selfish, callous, stupid, when as a matter of fact, she was none of these things. Of course she had grown a protective shell. Who wouldn’t with the kind of life she had been forced into? Beneath it all she had a nimble mind and a good heart. It was shortly after he had handed her a towel that he had changed his opinion of her.  With exquisite swiftness, all her motions were graceful, she had sprung out of the tub, dried herself, combing her hair while still nude.

            He was calling her Marie thrilling at the proximity of her fresh, at her tranquil immodesty as she roughed her lips, penciled her eyebrows with a burnt match. Wearing nothing but her culotte.

            On Boulevard Clichy he held her like his fiancée as they drove to Drouant’s, where he gave his order for the dinner to be sent in at the same time with Chandon.

            “Look!” She was standing in the doorway, dressed in a blue velveteen, a feather boa slung lorette style over her shoulder.

“Don’t talk about it. Just forget it, it’s all right now.”

            “But I want to talk about it,” Vincent insist gently, “Perhaps, if I do I ‘ll stop thinking about it. It wasn’t the exclusion that was hard, it was the proximity of mad men. Some of them awoke at night with terrible cries. At time I felt I was crazy…”

            Something inside him seem to have unlocked the floodgates of speech. In a torrent of words he told Henri about his life in Arles, the hours spent in the fields under the broiling sun, painting with a frenzy that grew into a sort of madness and the staggering walk back to town at sunset over dusty country roads, his easel strapped on his back, the still wet canvas on his hand. Then Gaugan’s long-awaited had arrived with the trip together at Avignon and then back at Arles the first quarrels,

   In December, Gauguin painted a portrait of van Gogh painting a sunflower bouquet, reflecting his sympathy with van Gogh’s endeavors, but whenever he raised the topic of departure, van Gogh would become agitated.

According to Gauguin's account, on the evening of December 23, 1888, van Gogh confronted him with a razor, demanding to know if he intended to leave Arles. Gauguin's confirmation further upset van Gogh,, the argument degenerating into bawls. Gauguin who turned and fled. Disturbed by his companion's irrational behavior, spent the night in a hotel. So they went together at the Café de’ la Gare to reconcile in absinth’s glasses, and the evening at the brothel. Never any word nobody has ever told who ever cares for less than their friendship had flung out a glass of au burgundy onto Gaugan’s face. Van Gogh only drank absinth liquor no burgundy and the awkward pity of the whores. Finally the crack up. No one but him hears cymbals crashing up over his skull that had swirled, he shook his eyes didn’t believe on what had happen, the circumstance so come se come ca and rampaged over the glass au burgundy. He has been bitten in the left ear and it dangling over the pool of blood. His own blood drew the temporary madness. Rachel to whom he thought of and he kept the dangling conversation off and on during wrap and unwrap…. "Last Sunday night at half past eleven a painter named Vincent Vangogh, appeared at the maison de tolérance, asked for a girl called Rachel, and handed her ... his ear with these words: 'Keep this object like a treasure.' Then he disappeared. then again covered the thing with the newspaper May 5, 2009 - According to a new book, the painter Vincent van Gogh did not slice off his left ear in a fit of madness and drunkenness in Arles in December 1888. His ear was severed by a bitten row of teeth wielded by his friend, the painter, Paul Gauguin, in a drunken row over a woman called Rachel and the true nature of art. dated the twenty-third of December 1988. Then on the occasion of rampage, he ran to her with the designated gift in his hand. She collapsed their right on the couch while they played Chopin’s nocturne…the last nocturne. The following morning when Gauguin returned to the Yellow House, he was shocked to find it spattered with blood. Taken into custody by the police for interrogation, he discovered that van Gogh had returned home after their confrontation and mutilated his left ear. Bleeding profusely, he went to a brothel and was then taken to a hospital. Upon release from the authorities, Gauguin telegraphed Theo, who arrived on the next morning's train. 

                 That morning it was the twenty seventh of May

Henri was sitting on the edge of his couchgazing at the small carpet of sunshine on the floor.

..He told Henri about his life in Arles.. While he spoke his eyes flashed their messages to his brain. Yes, it was Vincent but a different Vincent....

        Quiet, cowed, with dull, haunted eyes...No portfolio, no gourd of rum, no gesticulation, a well behaved Vincent Van Gogh, self-conscious in a new ready-made suit that was too tight for him and a felt hat that was too big.

     "I feel fine," Vincent said in a toneless voice. He sat down "it's good to see you again. Henri, I arrived yesterday and spent the day with Johanna. Did you know they named the baby after me?

    For the first time he smiled, an incredulous, ecstatic