Sunflowers (18 page)

“I’m sorry, Monsieur, those are my orders.”

“Your orders be damned! Come, Mademoiselle Rachel, I’ll walk you home.”

The sunflowers under lock and key. I felt sick and didn’t speak until we’d crossed Place Lamartine and passed through the Porte de la Cavalerie. A few of the lingering townspeople gave me nasty looks, but no one dared say anything with burly Roulin beside me. “What’s going to happen to Vincent, Monsieur Roulin?” I asked.

Roulin explained the procedure. First, the
gendarmes
would interview Vincent and the doctors at the hospital. The townspeople who’d signed the petition must file a formal complaint at the
gendarmerie
for it to be legally binding, then some of the same petitioners must give personal testimony to the police for a
procès-verbal
. The mayor would decide what to do after all the evidence was gathered and reviewed. I felt sicker and sicker. “Will Vincent have to stay at the hospital all that time?”

“It seems so,” Roulin sighed. “I wanted to telegraph his brother, but he insisted I not.”

“Who would say such dreadful things about him?” I hugged myself, chilly without my shawl. “It’s not true, not a word of it.”

Marguerite Favier and Bernard Soulé, definitely. That woman I’d heard saying things about Vincent and probably her husband too—how they knew him I had no idea. But who else? The widow Vénissat, owner of the restaurant where Vincent used to eat? I’d thought she liked him: she’d been sympathetic when he hadn’t been able to pay his bill, and she’d made him special dishes to tempt his appetite. His former landlords at the Hôtel-Restaurant Carrel, almost certainly. Vincent had told me about the dispute he’d had with them over his room charges, how he’d won the case with the magistrate before moving to the Café de la Gare. I couldn’t guess who else would sign that petition. Vincent had never hurt anyone. Only himself.

“I was just coming to find you,” Françoise said when Roulin and I walked into the
maison
. News traveled as fast in the
quartier reservé
as it did in the Place Lamartine.

The other girls gathered around too. “Rachel, you poor thing!” “How could they?” “Did the police really arrest him?”

“Shush, all of you,” Françoise ordered. “Give her room to breathe.”

“Mademoiselle Rachel, if you need anything or if there’s any trouble, come to my house, you’d be safe there,” Roulin said. “Vincent’s friend is our friend.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Roulin,” I said with a grateful smile.

“Come have some tea,” Françoise urged, taking me by the elbow to lead me to Madame Virginie’s parlor. Minette plumped up the pillows on the sofa so I’d be comfortable, Claudette threw another log on the fire. I let them fuss over me, but I thought only one thing: how much more could Vincent endure?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Persuasion

Unfortunately, the crazy act which necessitated his first hospitalization has resulted in a most unfavorable interpretation of anything out of the ordinary which this unfortunate young man may do
.

—Reverend Mr. Salles to Theo,
Arles, 2 March 1889

I

t’s an abomination!”

I lost count of how many times Joseph Roulin said that in the first weeks after Vincent’s arrest. Each time accompanied by a fierce bang on the table, usually followed by grumbling about policemen and bourgeois doctors.

What Vincent thought a simple misunderstanding was nothing of the sort. Instead of being interviewed at the Hôtel-Dieu, he was put into an isolation room and kept there. Dr. Rey had gone to Paris to complete his degree, and the other doctors denied Vincent any distractions, whether books or pen and paper to write letters, or any visitors save Reverend Salles. Nor would the doctors accept letters for him, so I and his other friends couldn’t send even the briefest note.

The inevitable happened. He relapsed again, and his hallucinations returned. Roulin didn’t want to tell me, but I made him: Vincent had tried to wash himself in a coal bucket and smeared soot over his face, babbling in Dutch all the while, then he’d chased a nurse when she brought his dinner. Reverend Salles told the doctors it resulted from how Vincent was being treated, but they’d hear none of it.

The investigation triggered by the townspeople’s complaints continued. Roulin learned from a friend at the
gendarmerie
that Superintendent d’Ornano completed the required interviews with some of the petitioners, although Roulin couldn’t find out who any of them were. The superintendent, the mayor, and the doctors of the Hôtel-Dieu concluded that Vincent belonged in an asylum, and it only remained to decide where to send him.

I kept waiting for Roulin to deliver the news that Theo had come to Arles to settle the matter, but no such news came. Theo and Johanna’s wedding was rapidly approaching, but why wouldn’t Vincent’s own brother come to help? Perhaps Vincent himself insisted Theo stay away. Perhaps Theo didn’t even know.

“Dr. Rey has come back,” Roulin told me one day after his usual tirade. Vincent had been in the hospital nearly a month. “I spoke to him when I met with Reverend Salles at the Hôtel-Dieu.”

“What did he say?”

Roulin sighed into his beer mug. “He insists the other doctors are his superiors, and he can’t change their orders. Vincent has to stay in the isolation room until he’s moved to another institution.” At my cry of dismay, Roulin added, “Vincent carried on a fairly long conversation with Reverend Salles yesterday, and he’s feeling much better. He’s pissed about being stuck there, though, and even more pissed about this petition business. Another month in that room, and he really will be mad.” He glowered from under bushy eyebrows. “I’ve learned something else. The name of one person who signed that petition.”

“Who, that fellow Soulé?” I said absently.

Roulin spat the name like a curse. “Ginoux.”

“Monsieur Ginoux from the Café de la Gare? But Vincent is friends with them, he painted Madame Ginoux back in the fall!”

Roulin shrugged. “Well, he must want Vincent gone now, because he sure as hell signed that petition.” Roulin had run into Monsieur Ginoux at the
gendarmerie
while making a delivery. Roulin had said
bonjour
and given the latest news of Vincent, but Ginoux had seemed anxious to get away. “Gave me a bad feeling,” Roulin said, “so I went to my friend and asked right out if Ginoux signed the petition. My friend’s no liar. Ginoux did, and he gave personal testimony to the police for the
procès-verbal
.” Roulin clenched his fists. “All the times Vincent and I sat drinking in his lousy café, all the money we spent! Wait until Vincent hears about this.”

“Monsieur Roulin, you mustn’t tell him,” I said. “He considers the Ginoux his good friends, it would hurt him terribly to think he’d been betrayed.”

“Don’t you think Vincent should know the truth about these so-called friends?”

“I think it’d do more harm than good. If the complainants’ identities will be kept confidential, then Vincent would have no reason to find out. We should keep it that way, for his sake.” Roulin reluctantly agreed.

After he went upstairs with Françoise, and for the rest of the night, I thought hard about what could be done. Defy Vincent’s wishes and write Theo? Go to the
gendarmerie
, speak to Superintendent d’Ornano myself? There must be something, there must be…

Then I knew what I could do. I alone, and nobody else.

The next morning, I drew from my armoire the brightest red dress I had, the one that showed ample
décolletage
and blazed like fire. I slipped a clean chemise over my head, hooked my corset, and studied myself in the mirror. This would never do. I needed more cleavage.

Quietly, so as not to wake the girls still sleeping, I tiptoed across the hall to Francoise’s room and asked her to lace me tighter. “What are you up to?” she asked suspiciously, and when I told her my plan, she arched an eyebrow. “I see. Turn around.” She tugged at the corset laces, and I winced as the steel frame nipped in closer around my waist. “How’s that?”

“Any more and I won’t be able to breathe.”

Her fingers knotted the ribbons at the small of my back. “Men think they control everybody, but a girl can wrap any of them around her finger with a bit of bosom. Why don’t you borrow a pair of my earrings? They tinkle a lot. He’ll like that.”

I took the earrings with a mumbled
merci
and crossed back to my room, where I pulled on my petticoat, then the dress. My breasts swelled nicely at the neckline now.

“What will you do when he comes here some night looking for you?” Françoise asked. She had followed me and was looking at me with concern.

I frowned at the dark circles under my eyes and reached for the rice-powder box. “I don’t think he will. He seems too honorable, too much of a gentleman.”

“But what if he does?”

“Then I’ll spread my legs for him like the rest of them, won’t I?” I snapped.

“Oh, Rachel, don’t go, don’t do this to yourself. Maybe I should—”

“Vincent needs me,” I said firmly. “That’s the end of it.”

She left with a sigh and shake of her head, and I finished my preparations. A bit of rouge so I wouldn’t look so pale, lips painted into a ruby-red Cupid’s bow. A touch of rosewater behind my ears and between my breasts, Françoise’s tinkly earrings. I stared at my reflection and remembered how Vincent once wanted me to pose for a brothel picture. That’s exactly where the girl in the mirror belonged—she wasn’t me at all, she was a stranger with a painted mask. And I hated her.

I couldn’t let a policeman see me like this. I peeked down the stairs, then darted outside, pulling my cape shut to hide my dress and the hood up to hide my face. At that hour of the morning the streets of the
quartier reservé
were empty, so that was easy, and in the
centre de ville
I took a roundabout way to avoid snooping eyes. A
gendarme
walking the Rue Neuve gave me a fright; I pretended to examine a dressmaker’s window display, praying all he’d see was my plain black cape. He passed without comment, and I ducked down the next street before he could look back. As I walked I tried not to think about what Vincent would say. I hoped he’d understand that anything I did was for him.

A smile and tinkle of the earrings persuaded the Hôtel-Dieu’s gate porter to escort me personally to Dr. Rey. The nun on duty in the men’s ward frowned but said nothing, probably thinking I was just another whore with the clap. Dr. Rey rose from his chair when I walked into his office, and he looked puzzled until I pushed back my hood.

“Mademoiselle Rachel! I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. Here, allow me.” I untied my cape, and he hung it on a hat rack by the door. His eyes lingered on my bosom before he remembered his manners and gestured to a chair. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve come to talk to you about Vincent,” I began, folding my hands together in my lap. “I’m worried about him.”

“I’ll be frank with you, Mademoiselle, so am I. As you know, there was nothing wrong when he was admitted, but now—”

“Monsieur Roulin told me he is in the isolation room, allowed neither visitors nor occupations. That alone would drive a man mad, Doctor.” At Dr. Rey’s nod of agreement, I opened my eyes wide and leaned forward. “Isn’t there something you could do?”

He cleared his throat, obviously struggling to keep his gaze on my face. “I lack authority in this matter, Mademoiselle. Superintendent D’Ornano ordered that Vincent be isolated, with the support of Mayor Tardieu.”

“You’re Vincent’s doctor.”

“I am not in charge. Dr. Delon, my supervisor, is the one who admitted Vincent. He and the others listen to Superintendent d’Ornano before they listen to me. I’m sorry.”

I fumbled in my reticule for a handkerchief, my act forgotten as I started to cry. A helpless look appeared on Dr. Rey’s face. “I wish there
was
something I could do. I do not like seeing him in such misery.” He paused, then added, “Or those who care about him.”

Now was my chance. I swallowed my tears and dabbed at my eyes. “I’d be grateful, Doctor, if you could speak again to your superiors,” I said and took as deep a breath as I could muster, to make my breasts heave under the red dress. “I would owe you a great deal.”

He flushed at my careful words and moved some papers on the desk. “I know you would be grateful, Mademoiselle, I know all of Vincent’s friends would be. Monsieur and Madame Roulin have been most persistent about helping him, as has Reverend Salles.”

“Have you spoken to Vincent’s brother?”

“Reverend Salles has been exchanging letters with him, and I myself will write him soon. Monsieur van Gogh is concerned that Vincent not be kept here without just cause.”

I twisted my handkerchief in my hands. “Then will you help?
S’il vous plaît?
”

He looked at me then, and I forced myself to lock eyes.
For Vincent. For Vincent
. “I will try. And if you come back in two days, I will arrange for you to see Vincent, regardless.”

I wanted to spring up and embrace him, but I only smiled. “Thank you.”

Dr. Rey retrieved my cape from the hat rack, but instead of giving it to me, he placed it around my shoulders himself. His hands stayed there as I tied the ribbon around my neck—the first time he’d ever touched me—and I knew what it meant. I was wrong. Sooner or later, I’d be seeing him at Madame Virginie’s.

When I arrived at the Hôtel-Dieu two days later, I half-expected Dr. Rey to have changed his mind. But the porter let me pass, and the nun in the men’s building led me to the main ward as if she’d known I was coming. If she recognized me as the hussy who’d come the other day, she kept her thoughts to herself, explaining instead that Dr. Delon had given orders for Vincent to be taken from the isolation room. I sighed with relief. Dr. Rey had kept his promise.

Vincent was reading by the potbellied stove again, and he jumped from his chair to crush me in an embrace. “I can’t believe you’re here. However did you manage it?” I told him I’d talked to Dr. Rey, carefully omitting any details of the visit. Vincent studied me with raised, then furrowed, eyebrows, and I held my breath: had something in my voice given me away? “That was kind of him,” he said slowly. “To allow you to come.”

I tried not to fidget. “So you were moved from the isolation room this morning.”

He took me by the hand and sat me beside him. “They leave me there for weeks, then take me out again without any explanation. Dr. Delon said I could have visitors, books, pen and paper…I can go to the house with an orderly, pick up some painting supplies, and work if I want.” He shook his head. “The strangest thing.”

“Perhaps it has something to do with the police investigation,” I said.

He gave me another searching look. “Dr. Rey wants me to stay at least another fortnight. I don’t know if he told you, but I had another attack. A short one, only a few days.”

“Actually, Monsieur Roulin told me.” I squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry. Are you feeling better now?”

“I get very tired, and sometimes I feel quite muddled. Once I’m working again, that will help. Dr. Rey says in a week or so maybe I can go painting outside the hospital, as long as an orderly goes with me. He thinks being out of the isolation room will soon put things right.” Vincent traced a pattern on the back of my hand. “I’ve worried about you, Rachel. Has anyone given you any trouble, the police, anybody?”

“No, everything’s fine,” I said brightly. “I want you well and out of here, that’s all.”

“So do I.” He gazed into my face. “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t everyone just leave us alone?”

My bright tone melted away. “I don’t know,
mon cher
. I don’t know.”