Sunflowers (28 page)
I didn’t want to ask questions, not when Vincent was sick and easily upset. I skipped the passage about Dr. Gachet and continued with the rest of the letter. “I have not yet gone back to the Indépendants, but Pissarro, who went there every day, tells me that have achieved real success with the artists. There were also art lovers who discussed your pictures with me without my drawing attention to them.’ That’s good news,” I said, trying to perk myself up.
“No sales?”
“It seems not.” Vincent frowned and asked me to keep reading.
Theo said more about the exhibition, gave a description of springtime in Paris, some news of Johanna and the baby, and closed the letter: “‘My dear brother, I am anxious to know whether you are feeling better, and to receive particulars about your health. Be of good heart and cling to the hope that things will soon take a turn for the better. I am sending you some reproductions of etchings by Rembrandt; they are so lovely. A cordial handshake, and believe me to be your loving brother. Theo.’”
“He truly does sound nice,” I said. All this time I’d pictured a prudish sort of man, cold and unfeeling, but Theo didn’t sound that way at all.
“He’d have to be nice to put up with me,” Vincent replied.
I set aside the letter and package to pick up
L’Oeuvre
. On that particular day, the story of obsessed painter Claude and his long-suffering mistress/wife Christine was the last thing I needed, and my voice started to shake as I read aloud. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “It’s such a sad story.”
Vincent’s eyes were probing me. “Maybe we should stop reading today.”
I lay the book on the floor. “Which paintings are in the Paris exhibition? You never told me which ones Theo chose.”
“I wanted a mixture of work from Arles and Saint-Rémy…” I pretended to listen while my mind teemed. Who was Dr. Gachet, and why had Theo contacted him? What did Theo mean, “when you come here”—had Vincent made plans to go to Paris without telling me?
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Vincent had stopped talking and was looking at me. I answered that I was just tired, and he said unhappily, “You’ve worn yourself out on my account. I told you that you didn’t need to come so often—”
“That’s not it. I like visiting you, I love spending time with you.” My voice started shaking again.
“Come here,
ma petite
.” He sat up in bed to hold me, the first time we had embraced each other since his collapse. I normally kept my distance for Monsieur Trabuc’s sake. “Now, what’s this fretting? I’m better today than I’ve been in a long time. I’ll be up and about soon, I know it.”
Up and about in Paris
, the thought sneaked into my head. “Monsieur Trabuc said you’ve exhausted yourself with working. I’m worried about you getting worse again.”
“Is that all? I’ll slow down if that’ll make you feel better. No more painting for a while, and very little drawing. Not until I’m well enough to get out of bed.
D’accord?
”
I smiled into his shoulder. For today, it’d have to be enough.
It was another three weeks before Vincent’s
crise
fully passed. A bad day here, a few good days there, his mood and strength wavered and wobbled without pattern. Then, one afternoon near the end of April, I returned to Saint-Rémy after a few days’ absence to learn that Vincent had left his bedroom and was working in his studio. Had been working there three afternoons in a row. My arms filled with pink spring roses I’d picked along the road, I opened the door to find Vincent standing in front of his easel.
“Come in, I’m just finishing,” he said. He’d painted a bouquet of irises: blues, purples, and greens against a background as yellow as his sunflowers. Yellow like I hadn’t seen him use since he’d left Arles. “You brought me roses! How delightful, thank you. These irises are nearly wilted, let’s put them in here.” He set down his brushes and palette to toss the irises to the floor, then tucked my roses into the jug, tenderly arranging the stems. “I’ll paint these next.”
“Does this mean you’re well?” I asked in confusion.
He picked up brushes and palette again to dab blue on his irises. “Winter has passed, leaving only the spring. Not only have I felt like working but I’ve been writing letters again, and yesterday I packed a shipment of paintings for Theo that dried during my
crise
.”
There was something else. I could feel it behind his breezy reply, I could see it in the nervous lines of his body and the way he looked at the canvas instead of me. Just like that day a year ago when he told me about Saint-Rémy. When he spoke again, his voice was grave. “You already know about Dr. Gachet, don’t you,
chérie?
”
I nodded to the floor.
“When I felt well enough the other day to read my letters, I saw the paragraph you didn’t read aloud. That’s why you were shaken that afternoon, wasn’t it?” I nodded again. “And that’s why you’ve seemed…not yourself lately.”
I poked at one of the discarded irises with my foot. “Are you leaving? Are you going to Paris to live with Theo?”
“To Paris to visit Theo, then to a village called Auvers-sur-Oise, about an hour outside the city. Old Camille Pissarro told Theo about Dr. Gachet, a doctor living there who specializes in melancholia and collects paintings.”
Outside in the garden those irises enchanted him. He plucked them, brought them to his studio, smiled at them while he painted—for that time they were the only things in his world. Until the next painting came along, then he didn’t need them anymore. I gathered them up and lay them on a chair. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Theo first mentioned it back in the autumn.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He put down his painting things to hold my hands. Blue and yellow stained my fingers. “I thought I’d have no need of another doctor. But you saw what Dr. Gachet told Theo, he believes he can help me. Isn’t that what we both want?”
“Yes, but…I don’t want you to go.”
Vincent stared at me, then burst into a hearty laugh. “No wonder you looked so sad! I want you to come with me, my girl, to marry me like we planned!”
“But what about Theo? You didn’t sell any paintings at the Indépendants. We can’t afford to thumb our noses at him.”
“I have the four hundred francs from Brussels. Anyway, he’s bound to approve once he meets you.”
“What if he doesn’t? I have money too, but it’s not enough to begin a life together.”
Vincent dropped my hands to sweep the wilted irises to the floor and sink into the chair. “I thought you’d be eager to go. I thought you’d want to jump on the first train.”
“I do want to jump on the first train, dearest,” I replied and sat on his lap. “But you were always right when you urged patience. Maybe I shouldn’t go to Auvers right away. Maybe you should speak to Theo first.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, then proposed a plan. He’d go alone and visit Theo and Johanna for a few days before continuing to Auvers-sur-Oise. In Auvers he’d stay in a cheap auberge to save money and write the Ginoux to send his furniture, so he could begin looking for a cottage. At first he wouldn’t say anything about me to Theo, not until he was settled in Auvers and had paved the way. When the time was right…
“Do you think you’ll get sick again?” I asked quietly.
“I might. We can’t pretend otherwise. But I believe I’ll regain my balance in the north, and with Dr. Gachet to help me, I believe I’ll be fine.”
“When we’re married”—I smiled and tweaked his nose—“we’ll be so happy you’ll have no reason to fall sick. You won’t need any silly Dr. Gachet.”
He smiled in return at the thought. “By the end of the summer at the latest, I’ll send for you. Then, finally—”
“Monsieur and Madame van Gogh,” I murmured and kissed him soundly, before pushing away his wandering hands and sliding off his lap.
He put the finishing touches on his irises while I looked at the few paintings remaining after his latest shipment to Theo. “I’ll have Trabuc send those after I get to Auvers,” Vincent said. “They won’t be dry by the time I leave, and I want to do a few more studies.”
A small canvas caught my eye. “
The Raising of Lazarus
,” I said.
“I liked the print Theo sent me so much, I decided to try a painting from it.”
Vincent had painted only part of the scene. Saved by an unseen Christ’s healing powers, the weakened Lazarus was struggling to open his eyes after being brought back from the dead. His two sisters were reacting in shock at the sight, one drawing the cloth away from his face and throwing out her arms, the other at his feet with raised hands. A bright sun—a round, yellow sun not in the print, Vincent’s own sun—watched the three figures with the hopeful dawn of resurrection.
Lazarus had red hair and a red beard. In the guise of the saved man, the healed man, Vincent had painted himself.
The Trains of Tarascon
12 May 1890
Mlle. Rachel Courteau
c/o Mme. Virginie Chabaud
Rue du Bout d’Arles, no. 1
Arles-sur-Rhône
Ma chère
Rachel,
Dr. Peyron had no objections about my leaving and agreed that a change of climate can do me good. Theo sent 150 francs for the journey, and I’ve begun packing. Theo at first insisted that I be accompanied the entire way, for he worries the strains of travel will bring a
crise
on the train. I told him each of my attacks has been followed by a period of quiet, and that I feel the utmost calm at present. Is it fair to have me accompanied like a dangerous beast?
I would like it if you met me at Tarascon station on the 16th—I shall take the early afternoon train from Saint-Rémy—so we can spend some time together. Will you?
With a kiss in thought,
Vincent
I prowled the station at Tarascon, the waiting room, the platform, the waiting room again, jumping at every steam whistle. At last Vincent’s train arrived, and I hurried to help as he descended from the third-class compartments. As usual he was laden with any number of things: easel and stretchers on his back, artist’s box in one hand, valise in the other. “Always a porcupine,” I teased as I reached for his valise. He wore his black velvet suit and nicest hat, ready for the streets of Paris, but his shoes, in need of a polish, carried Provençal dust.
He chuckled and pressed his lips to mine, oblivious to anyone watching. “
Bonjour, chérie
. Come, let’s check the train schedule before we do anything else.”
Inside the waiting room Vincent consulted the chalkboard listing the afternoon departures, then walked to the ticket window, where the clerk leafed through a thick ledger. Vincent nodded at what the clerk told him, then produced money to buy tickets. He was smiling when he came back to me. “The train to Lyon is at six, and there I change for Paris.”
I glanced at the waiting room clock. It was nearly one.
“We could have luncheon and go for a stroll around Tarascon,” he said, “or we could make a concentrated study of one of the local hotels. Which do you think?”
“I’m not hungry. Are you?”
“We’ll eat later.”
A trio of cheap hotels stood in a row outside the station, and Vincent led us to the one that looked the least run-down. I wondered how many lovers came here for a last tryst. “How many nights?” asked the woman behind the desk, and when Vincent said it was only for the afternoon, she plunked a key on the counter. “Two francs. Room three, top of the stairs.”
“Can you please send someone to knock at four-thirty?” Vincent asked as he paid the money and signed the register. I peeped over his shoulder and smiled at the scrawled
M. et Mme. V. van Gogh
. My future, in black and white for everyone to see.
The room wasn’t much to speak of—the sort of room that smelled of stale smoke, with mousetraps in the corners—but at least it was clean. I helped Vincent take everything off his back and prop it neatly against a timeworn chair. He lay his hat on a table by the window, drew the curtains, then we stood and stared at each other. “We need to do this more often than every six months,” he said, and we both laughed.
“Just wait until I come to Auvers.”
We made love with a tenderness that honored our nearly two years together. I knew he was painting my portrait in his mind, lips and fingers brushing every line like sable bristles against canvas. He whispered colors into my skin to make me giggle, shades of this, tints of that he’d use for each shoulder, each breast, each leg, and made me swear that someday he’d have his chance. “When we’re married,” I told him, and he declared I always did drive a hard bargain. I sketched him in my head as best as I could as well, the red-gold of his eyelashes, the tawny freckles sprinkling his nose, his smell, his taste. His wounded ear, long since healed, long since accepted.
We fell asleep in each other’s arms, curled together like kittens. In the haze of waking, I thought about how the next time would be in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Auvers. Auvers
. The very name a lazy river flowing across the tongue, a place where at last we’d find peace. I reached up to touch Vincent’s face, and his cheeks were wet. “What’s wrong?” I asked in alarm.
“Rachel, I want to tell you—” He swept my hair from my face and let the strands trickle through his fingers. “These past two years have been the most difficult of my life, but they’ve also been the happiest. You’ve given me so much of yourself, a gift I’ve hardly deserved. I shall miss you,
ma petite
.”
“It won’t be long until we’re together,” I reassured him with a kiss. “A few months.”
“I know, but…” He looked toward the window, and his sentence trailed away. Then he sat up. “Let me draw you.”
“Like this? Let me comb my hair and wash my face.”
“No. As you are right now.”
I pulled the blanket up to my shoulders. “Not naked. Not until—”
“We’re married. I know.
Zut
, you weren’t always so bashful.” He smiled and slipped from the bed to find his trousers, find his sketchbook, and open the curtains.
“How many women posed naked for you before we met?” I asked as he sat cross-legged on the bed and started to draw.
He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you’ve never asked me that before.”
“I know of one, that Italian in Paris…”
“Very few beyond her. I’ve not been as successful as I’d like in persuading young ladies to part from their clothes in the name of art.” He chuckled as he erased something in his picture.
“What’s funny?”
“Before I went to Paris to live with Theo, I spent a few months in Antwerp and joined an art academy where I could draw from live models. But the students hardly ever drew from real women, they drew from plaster casts of statues. One afternoon, the drawing teacher brought a cast of a nude Venus. I thought her too skinny, so I gave her more curve in the breasts and hips in my drawing—like I like my women.” The wicked smile returned. “When the teacher saw what I did, he tore my paper in two. Said I turned a classical Venus into a Flemish housewife.”
“No! What did you do?”
“Jumped up from my stool and roared, ‘You must know nothing of women, or you’d know a real one has hips and an ass!’” We laughed like we hadn’t laughed for a long time. “I stormed out of the damned place and never went back.” I giggled as his pencil played over the paper a while longer. “There—
j’ai fini
. Do you want to see it?”
I shook my head. “It’s yours.” He smiled at the page and closed his sketchbook, and I asked, “What time is it?”
“Must be close on four.”
I patted the bed beside me. “I believe we have another half hour.”
“I do believe you’re right.”
When the knock came at the door, a quiet voice saying,
“Seize heures et demie, Monsieur,”
Vincent was hooking my corset as I laughed and squirmed. “I can’t do this if you don’t stand still,” he scolded, which only made me laugh harder.
He tried pinning up my hair, but that didn’t work, so he settled for kissing my neck while I stood in front of the mirror. “I can’t do this if you don’t stop,” I said. His response was to slip his hand up my petticoat and stroke my thigh. I sighed and leaned against him. “We’ll never get you on the train at this rate.”
“Come with me,” he murmured, his beard tickling my collarbone.
“Don’t tempt me. We made a plan.”
The woman downstairs didn’t look up from her account book when we descended and Vincent returned the key. “There’s a café across the street,” he said as we walked outside. “Let’s have an early supper.”
The food smelled good, but I could only stare at my plate, my playful mood fading faster with the sound of every approaching train. Vincent prodded me to eat something, and to oblige him I took a few bites of my
omelette du jour
, but I couldn’t taste a thing.
At the station, he stepped into the telegraph office to wire Theo, while I paced the rows of benches in the waiting room. Travelers were gathering for the evening trains, trains to Lyon, trains to Marseille, trains all across Provence. My train to Arles, which, according to the chalkboard, would leave at six-thirty. A paunchy man got a panicked look on his face, then sighed with relief at finding his ticket in his trouser pocket. A young woman nestled against a uniformed soldier, head on his shoulder, hand on his arm—he must have been on his way to Marseille, likely North Africa beyond that. She probably wondered if she’d ever see him again.
I beckoned to a passing flower seller and bought a single yellow posy. When Vincent joined me, I tucked it into one of his buttonholes. “What time do you arrive?” I asked.
He smiled down at the flower. “Ten in the morning at the Gare de Lyon. Theo will meet me, and I bet he won’t sleep a wink all night.”
“Will you write or send a telegram when you get there?”
“I’ll try to send a telegram in Paris, then I’ll write a proper letter when I get to Auvers.”
Five minutes to six, read the clock overhead. “We should go to the platform,” I said, my heart wilting within me.
A crowd followed us, everyone craning their necks for the train. What would happen if I did climb aboard with him? I suddenly thought. What would happen if Theo saw me descending the compartment steps with his brother—would he confront Vincent then and there, or have the good manners to wait until we reached the apartment? Would Johanna regard me with scorn, would Theo order us from their home? If I went with Vincent to Paris right now instead of waiting for him to ease the way, what was the worst that could actually befall us?
Far more than I wanted to risk. I had to let him go.
The whistle sounded from up the track, and the waiting passengers started collecting their bags, telling their loved ones good-bye. Vincent set down his valise and artist’s box to take my face in his hands, his eyes blazing with a fierce determination. “I will see you again.”
“Say the word, dearest,” I whispered, “and I’ll come to you.”
He kissed me on the forehead. “At summer’s end. I’ll be waiting.”
He picked up his things just as the train pulled to a stop, slung his stretchers and easel over his back. The crowd was jostling us, the conductor was shouting, “
Direction Lyon! En voiture!
” and blowing his whistle, there was no time, no time, never enough time. We touched hands, then Vincent was gone, climbing into the third-class carriage with a glance out the window and a wave. I kissed my hand to him and waved back with a wobbly smile—kept waving until I couldn’t see his train anymore. Then I crossed the empty tracks to the empty platform opposite, to await the train to Arles.