Sunflowers (21 page)
20 June 1889
M. Vincent van Gogh
Maison de Santé de Saint-Rémy
de Provence
(Bouches-du-Rhône)
Mon cher
Vincent,
I’ve tried to be patient and brave, but it gets harder every day. I don’t know up from down any more without you. Is there any chance I can visit you, any chance at all? Ask Dr. Peyron, I beg you. Tell him I’m your French cousin, the sister of a good friend, your fiancée, anything that might persuade him.
Oh, dearest, I think every day of the things we can plan and do when you’re free—when we’re both free. Everything that’s happened, anything we’ve done won’t matter anymore. Nothing will matter but you and me.
I wait anxiously for the words that will send me running to Saint-Rémy.
Ever yours,
Rachel
The ink on the page was smeared with tears. I crumpled the letter and threw it away.
Only for the Day
You get very fond of people who have seen you ill, and it has done me a world of good to see again some people who were kind and gentle with me then
.
—Vincent to Theo, Saint-Rémy, July 1889
V
incent was coming back to Arles.
Only for a day, only for a visit to collect the paintings he left to dry at the Café de la Gare, but that was all I needed: only to see him, only to hear his voice again. A letter arrived Saturday morning to tell me he would take the train Sunday, and that we should meet at the café around eleven.
“You’re in particularly high spirits,” Félix observed that night over drinks. When I told him the news, unable to contain my excitement, his tight-lipped reply was “I see.” I scolded myself—I should have let him think
his
visit made me cheerful.
Félix had been visiting for three weeks now, thrice weekly, as regular as the post, early in the evening before the
salon
got crowded and my sheets got rumpled. Never on Sundays. His fine manners and presents would turn any girl’s head, and they made me the talk of the house. “You spoil me,” I’d reproach him as I unwrapped a bracelet or tasseled bottle of
eau de cologne
. “It’s my privilege to spoil you,” he’d reply.
But even as I enjoyed his company, our arrangement filled me with guilt. Guilt that I was betraying Vincent, guilt that I was leading this nice doctor down a flowery path. I saw how Félix’s black eyes glowed when he looked at me; I knew the difference between a man screwing a woman and a man making love to her. I worried that Vincent would find out, and I thanked the saints that Joseph Roulin made his trips to the
maison
later at night, after his children went to bed. So many times I practiced a speech to deliver on Félix’s next visit, telling him I couldn’t see him anymore. Then he appeared with five francs, a gift, and a smile, and my resolve melted away.
I won’t think about Félix
, I told myself Sunday morning.
Today belongs to Vincent
.
The train was late, so I sat alone in front of the café, glancing toward the Avenue de la Gare at every sound. I dreaded seeing Monsieur Ginoux, but he wasn’t there; instead Madame Ginoux brought me a coffee with no greeting and no expression. A trio of old men at another of the outside tables glanced my way. “
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle,” one of them said as his companions grinned. “You free?” I politely told him I was waiting for someone—polite only because I was happy for Vincent’s visit, and because the man was old enough to be my
grand-père
.
When Vincent at last rounded the corner, he wasn’t alone. A shy young man accompanied him, looking like he’d rather be anyplace else. “
Bonjour
, Rachel,” Vincent said with a kiss to each cheek. “This is Monsieur Jean-François Poulet from the hospital. Dr. Peyron thought he should join me today and make sure I returned safely. Monsieur Poulet, this is Mademoiselle Rachel Courteau.”
Poulet. His sister and I had gone to school together in Saint-Rémy. I barely remembered him, but from the way he stuttered a reply to my greeting, it was clear he remembered me all too well. I held my head high. “Shall we have a coffee?” I asked them.
Monsieur Poulet muttered that he’d sit inside out of the way and disappeared. “That wasn’t my idea,” Vincent said when he’d gone. “Maybe we can get rid of him later.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed as Vincent took a seat and Madame Ginoux brought him a coffee, smiling at him in a way she hadn’t me. “I don’t care, anyway. I’m so glad to see you, you could have brought a priest with you and I wouldn’t mind.” I studied him, his face and arms ruddy from painting outdoors, the gaunt look from before mostly gone. “You look well,
mon cher
. They must really be helping you.”
“Painting outside again has done more good than anything. I wish I could show you the new studies. The landscape around the hospital has inspired me.” He reached for my hand. “And you—you’ve been well?”
“As well as I can be,” I replied, hoping he couldn’t read Félix in my face. “It’s been two months. Will you be leaving soon?”
Surprise jumped into his eyes at the blunt question, followed by that look he got when there was something he didn’t want to tell me. “I had a long talk with Dr. Peyron yesterday. He thinks it will be at least a year before I can call myself cured.”
“A year!” I set down my coffee cup with a clatter. “You have to stay there a year?”
“We’ll have to see how things go over the next few months.” Vincent released my hand and calmly stirred his coffee, looking into it instead of at me. “I realized myself it would take longer to recover than I hoped. A month ago when I first went to the village, the sight of people and the noise of the town made me feel ill, like I was going to faint. It’s better now—you see I am fine here—but I need to be cautious.”
“You didn’t say anything in your letters about having to stay longer.” I heard the shrillness in my voice. “You didn’t tell me about feeling ill.”
“I didn’t want you to worry. Dr. Peyron says if the visit today goes well, I can come back another time, perhaps stay overnight. That will help the time pass.”
I had many more questions, but I knew he would not answer them. He’d keep things from me and say again he didn’t want me to worry. Or else he’d become cross and obstinate. Didn’t he understand that his silence worried me more than any truth could? Why did he always have to do this, why did he always have to hide?
“I thought we’d go for walks today,” he was saying, oblivious to my distress. “Maybe out to La Crau if it’s not too hot. I’d like to visit the Roulins too, Reverend Salles, Dr. Rey…”
The last name startled me from my thoughts: I couldn’t visit Félix with Vincent! “I’d hate to be in the way while you are visiting your friends,” I said hesitantly.
“What do you mean? Wouldn’t you like to see Madame Roulin?”
“Yes, but…she’s probably taken the children to church. You know Monsieur Roulin doesn’t go.” I hurried on, “I could pick up some things for lunch and meet you later for a walk and picnic.” Vincent considered this, then agreed.
The three of us—we weren’t rid of Monsieur Poulet yet—left the café and crossed the Place Lamartine. “Someone’s already moved into my house?” Vincent asked when he saw lace curtains fluttering at the windows.
I’d been shocked myself back in May to see a young couple unloading things from a wagon, a little girl skipping around with her doll. Too shocked, too saddened to mention it in my letters. I looped my arm through Vincent’s. “You can have a new house when you come back. A better one, maybe out in the country, with room for a flower garden.”
“There are nice cottages along the road to Tarascon,” he said and looked cheered at the thought.
Vincent and Monsieur Poulet headed toward the Roulins’ house, while I went in search of an open
boulangerie
and
charcuterie
. The problem of Félix occupied me the entire way. As Vincent’s doctor, he’d be sorry to hear that Vincent was staying longer in Saint-Rémy, but as the man who regularly visited me at the
maison
, he wouldn’t be sorry at all.
By the time I finished my errands, Vincent and Monsieur Poulet were waiting at the Place de la République fountain. “I saw Roulin and Reverend Salles,” Vincent said, “but Dr. Rey was with a patient. Did you know Roulin was being transferred to Marseille?”
“He told us at the house a couple of weeks ago,” I replied. “He asked me not to say anything. He wanted to tell you himself.”
Vincent frowned. “It’s a damn shame, although it does mean a promotion and small increase in salary. I shall miss them.”
“So will I.” So would Françoise. She’d burst into tears and run out of the room at Roulin’s announcement, a display of emotion that had surprised us all. “Perhaps we can visit them in Marseille after you come back. By express train it’s not too far. Now, how about luncheon? Where should we go?”
“South to the orchards,” Vincent said at once. “It’s too late for the trees to be blooming, but it’ll be shady and quiet.” Vincent glanced at Monsieur Poulet, and I read his thoughts:
I wish we could be alone
.
We crossed the Boulevard des Lices, then the Canal de Craponne to the gathering of orchards: plum trees, apricot trees, all manner of fruit trees. I’d come here with Vincent in the springtime when they’d erupted with flowers and I’d sat with him while he’d painted. Today the trees were green with spreading leaves, and early plums dangled in the branches. Monsieur Poulet took the food I offered him and vanished out of earshot, while between us Vincent and I made short work of fresh bread, garlic sausages, cheese, and wine. As the
pièce de résistance
I’d brought a jar of Vincent’s favorite olives, soaked in brine and herbs, and he exclaimed in delight when I produced it from my basket with a flourish.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring your painting things,” I said as I collected the remains of our picnic, then laughed as he pulled a sketchbook from his rucksack. “I should have known.”
He settled with his back against a tree trunk and started to draw, plucking olives from the jar to nibble then tossing the pits into the grass. I pointed to the spot beside him on the ground, and he spread out his jacket so I could pillow my cheek on his thigh. “I love working here,” he said. “Last spring after I first arrived in Arles, I couldn’t get enough of the trees in bloom.”
I lay and listened as he chattered on—chattered like he hadn’t had anybody to talk to for weeks. He told me what he’d been painting and drawing at Saint-Rémy: things he’d already told me in his letters, but his voice saying the words made them new. He described the garden of the asylum, where at first he’d spent all his time—wilder, more neglected than the Place Lamartine garden, with rosebushes that no one ever pruned and ivy that no one ever cut. “At the farthest corner,” he said softly, pausing to erase something in his drawing, “a stone bench stands alone among thick pine trunks. Twisting, gnarled tree roots, all that green spotted with pink and violet…it’s an eternal green nest for lovers, hidden in the midst of madness.” He paused again, this time to touch my hair. “I’ve missed you, my love.”
It was the first time he’d said it that day, and I felt the tears well up. “Now, now,” he said, brushing at my cheek with his thumb. “No sadness. Not today.”
He’d left a smudge on my face, but I didn’t wipe it off. “What else have you painted?”
“After Dr. Peyron let me go outside the walls, I explored the landscape around the hospital and decided to paint some studies of olive trees…” He conjured up not only visions of his paintings but also remembrances of Saint-Rémy—the mountains, the farms with their patches of wheat, the old quarries dug in the foothills where Maman said I must never go with a boy by myself. I closed my eyes to picture lazy summer days when I’d take a book to an olive orchard and lay under a tree like this, serenaded by cicadas, rose beetles hopping on my skirt. Fishing at the canal with Philippe and the other village boys, jealous that when it got too hot they could jump in for a swim while I had to sit sweating on the bank.
“Am I putting you to sleep?” Vincent asked with a chuckle.
“Never,” I replied, then turned onto my back and gazed up at him. “Do you realize it’s been a year since we met? Almost exactly.”
“Why do you think I wanted to see you today?” His fingers moved to my face, then my throat. “This necklace is pretty, I don’t remember this.”
He didn’t remember it because Félix had given it to me. I gabbled that I’d gotten it at the market, making up some story about a Marseillais merchant and Françoise talking me into it. Vincent stroked the colorful beads and said, “
Millefiori
glass from Venice, if I’m not mistaken. You must have gotten a good price.”
I sat up and brushed grass from my skirt. “Will Theo visit you at Saint-Rémy?”
“I doubt it. He has many other things to occupy him right now. Johanna’s pregnant.”
A knifelike pain stabbed through me. “So soon? They only married in—”
“April. The baby will come in January, and if it’s a boy, they want to name him Vincent.” He sighed. “It’s not that I’m not happy for them, Rachel—I am. But…”
Our own child would have been born around this time. Sometimes I still thought about what it would have been like, watching my belly swell, getting ready for the birth, preparing the house…then, when the baby was born, we would have celebrated the way all Provençal births were celebrated. The women I knew would bring gifts of bread, salt, eggs, and matches—to ensure the baby would grow up to be good, wise, and straight as a match—and our friends would join us for a birth feast. Maybe right now we’d be together in the little yellow house: him painting, me rocking the cradle with my foot as I sewed little yellow clothes.
“Maybe we should head back to town,” I said, standing and not looking at him.
Vincent didn’t answer, only placed his sketchbook back in his rucksack, the empty olive jar back in my basket. Monsieur Poulet returned and complimented me on the luncheon in a quiet voice, then led the way toward Arles. “I wish Dr. Peyron had let me visit earlier,” Vincent mused as we walked, “so I could have done at least one painting of the harvest.”
“Next June you’ll be here.” I reached for his hand and turned it over in mine. I knew every line, every callus, every paint stain that seemed never to go away with any amount of scrubbing. “You can paint the wheatfields to your heart’s content, then dance with me around the bonfire at the feast of Saint-Jean.”
“Only if you teach me like you promised, so we won’t fall
into
the bonfire.” I laughed as he slipped an arm around my waist, then glanced into his eyes to find a look I recognized. He jerked his head toward a nearby thicket, and at my look of astonishment, he mouthed, “We have time.” He called to Monsieur Poulet, who hurried back as if he thought something was wrong. “Monsieur, would you mind meeting us later at the café?”