Leaving Van Gogh (10 page)

I have explained that Theo made Vincent an allowance, but their arrangement was a little bit more complicated than that, at least in Vincent’s view. He saw his brother’s subsidy as an investment, and Theo as part owner of every painting or drawing that he made. More, he saw Theo as part creator. Thus his brother’s opinion was of the utmost importance to Vincent. Theo was fundamentally his partner in the creative enterprise, so it was essential that he be kept abreast of Vincent’s progress.

It is not a long walk from my house to the Place de la Mairie, opposite which lies Ravoux’s café and inn. The route passes several rows of cottages, whose mossy, thatched roofs Vincent found fascinating, and runs beneath the giant chestnuts that Vincent had painted when he first arrived. We were ambling slowly, passing the baby among us, pointing out this or that sight—a geranium blazing in a window or the twisted angle of a branch. Theo, however, was falling behind. I paused beside the largest chestnut tree in the village, an old giant that has since been cut down.

“Is this the tree,” I called out to Vincent, “whose blossoms you painted in that big canvas?” I own the painting now, a strikingly beautiful picture almost a meter wide. It portrays nothing but branches of chestnut blooms and leaves, with no horizon, no spatial orientation at all, almost like wallpaper. The brushwork is especially remarkable. The background is mostly blue, with darker pigment stroked over a lighter tone in a series of nervous-looking dashes that echoed the way Vincent rendered the leaves, with their strong diagonal veining. He must have used six or seven different shades of green for those leaves. But it is the blossoms themselves, an explosive mass of pink and white, that took my breath away when I first saw them. Twists of cream and ivory paint, they cluster along the branches in loose cones. Some are dotted with pink, the kind of precise detail that seems incompatible with Vincent’s swift production but that he never overlooked. Toward the left is one branch from a tree with pink flowers, more loosely brushed, lending the entire composition just the variety it requires. It is a magnificent canvas. But at that moment, on our walk to Ravoux’s, I did not care which tree inspired the painting. I wanted to give Theo time to catch up to us without drawing attention to him. When he did so, I stayed with him, asking about business at the gallery. I also observed him. It is something we doctors are good at. When a practitioner looks at you, he is not merely exhibiting good manners. He cannot help noticing your puffy face, your brittle hair, the strange way you hold your left arm.

Theo dragged his left foot. The medical term for this symptom is “locomotor ataxia.” The medical term for what seemed to be his eye condition is “Argyll Robertson pupils,” a syndrome defined by a Scottish doctor some years earlier. The name refers to pupils that contract to facilitate examination of something near at hand but that do not respond to light. The syndrome had not been named when I was an intern, but it had been observed informally. At the Salpêtrière and the men’s asylum of Bicêtre, experienced physicians had linked these unusual visual symptoms with muscular degeneration similar to what Theo displayed. The patients thus affected suffered an illness we saw all too often—syphilis.

I knew that Theo’s health was delicate: Vincent had alluded to episodes of coughing or fever. I would not have been surprised to learn that Theo had consumption. In fact, as we strolled, I realized that I had unwittingly been assessing him for the familiar symptoms that had marked Blanche: the flushed cheeks, the distinctive wet-sounding cough. I never encounter them in a patient without a dreadful sense of recognition. But this time I was certain, as we sauntered along on our Sunday outing behind his brother and his wife and his baby, that Theo van Gogh had what was crudely known as the pox. The symptoms were still subtle, and I doubted that anyone had noticed them, but to me the diagnosis was conclusive. Furthermore, his illness was advanced. If he had been my patient, I would have begun looking around for a private
maison de santé
where he could end his days. It is a frightening and degrading death, for the patient may become paralyzed or mad. Was it possible that this lovely little family, so fond of each other, so happy with their baby, would soon be wrenched apart, as my family had been when Blanche died?

I wondered if Theo knew of his own condition. So much shame attaches to this ailment that patients and their families are often desperate to avoid acknowledging it. It was possible that Theo could have overlooked his symptoms, or told himself that his legs were weak because of rheumatism. Johanna, preoccupied with the baby, might not have noticed anything. And Vincent? Could he have an inkling that his brother was ill?

I had no time just then to reflect on how Theo’s possible illness might affect Vincent; we were drawing near Ravoux’s inn. It is a pleasant place, with a café facing the Place de la Mairie and very modest bedrooms above. Vincent insisted we climb the two flights to his spartan chamber. There was no window other than the skylight, and the room was hot and stuffy, smelling of oil paint and tobacco and unwashed clothes. But he was proud of how tidy it was, with his spare boots tucked under the cot and his battered straw hat hung on a nail in the mottled plaster wall. I found it cheerless, despite the three landscapes mounted on the wall. Their brilliant colors only exaggerated the shabby discomfort of the room. But Theo praised it: “You’ve made it very homelike,” he said, touching the comb on what served as a dressing table. Vincent had placed a bright blue linen cloth beneath the pottery basin, the kind of cloth Madame Chevalier uses to dry glassware. I was surprised that the man whose paint box was always such a jumble had made an effort to create domestic order.

“It’s not as pleasant as the house in Arles,” Vincent said, “but it is much better than at St.-Rémy. At least my neighbors here are only other painters, not madmen. This is one of the fields where they grow peas.” He showed Theo one of the smaller canvases. “And here are the chestnut trees we just walked beneath. I was so struck by that green! But come down and see what else I’ve done,” he went on, seizing his brother by the elbow. “Ravoux lets me use the shed in the back.”

We trooped back down the steep stairs and went out to the shed. I had seen most of Vincent’s pictures, of course, so I hung back and listened as he showed them to Theo. Johanna, weighed down by the baby, sat on a low stool, her eyes traveling around the walls from one canvas to another. Marguerite stood next to them, smiling at the baby.

Here the contrast between the space and the pictures was even more dramatic than it had been in Vincent’s bedchamber. It was barely a room, more a lean-to that had been closed off with flimsy walls. Fortunately for Vincent, there were several windows, which meant that the light would permit him to work indoors in case of rain. It also meant that, on that sunny Sunday, his pictures blazed from the walls like windows punched into another world.

I had not seen the painting of the church that he had mentioned and was curious to know how he had portrayed it. The Auversois worship in a sturdy Gothic building with a square tower, perched halfway up the hill on the way to the cemetery. Its chief characteristic is its air of permanence. As ever, Vincent had seen something new in his subject. Rather than portraying the severe front with its heavy door, he had set up his easel facing the apse, perhaps finding the repeating pattern of the arched windows more interesting. The sky he painted in several shades of blue, the darkest of which almost matched the color of the stained glass. The result was that the building seemed to be a mere façade, as if we were looking through the apse to empty blue air beyond. And this was not all: the stonework of the church, so rigid in life, became flexible under Vincent’s brush. The rooflines wavered, the tower tilted. The space of the apse seemed swollen. Gray stone was touched with dashes of blue and green, as if the surrounding grass were beginning to swallow the dissolving structure. A small female figure in a white hat scurried along a path that Vincent had depicted in a rushing river of brown and yellow dashes. The two most durable-looking elements on the canvas were the sky and the shadow cast by the building.

“This is the church I was telling you about,” Vincent said to Theo. “Perhaps we’ll have time to walk there before the train, if you like.”

“Magnificent,” Theo said, peering closely at the canvas. He stepped to one side, letting the light rake over the brushwork. “Cobalt for the sky?”

“Yes,” Vincent said. “And ultramarine in the windows.” He looked at it for a moment more. “You don’t suppose—”

“No,” Theo cut him off. “It could not be improved upon.”

“No, but listen,” Vincent insisted. “There is no yellow, I wonder—”

“But for what?” Theo asked. “This is right. This is so—monumental.”

“Maybe more orange in the roof,” Vincent went on, as if he were not listening at all. “On the other side. But then, too symmetrical, blotchy even …” He was by now talking to himself. Theo had moved on and was admiring the painting Vincent had made of Marguerite in our garden.

“This is just lovely,” he said to all of us. “It might have been today. So fresh. Mademoiselle Marguerite looks like a flower herself.” We all turned toward Marguerite, who blushed.

“No, but Theo,” Vincent said, still absorbed by the church painting. “Do you think perhaps a touch more yellow in the path? The color balance doesn’t seem right.”

I happened to be watching Theo at that moment, for I was fascinated by the way the brothers behaved together. There was a rapport between them that you rarely see between men. It was as if, rather than living apart for the previous years, they had been in the same room. They spoke as if they knew the same things, had had the same experiences.

Theo’s face revealed only a flash of impatience or anger, quickly mastered, and his voice was calm. “No, my friend, it is wonderful. You always doubt what you have done, but I assure you that it is splendid. Now come and tell me about this lovely painting.”

Vincent proceeded to do so, only casting an uncertain glance back at the canvas of the church. “Well, of course, it is Dr. Gachet’s garden. And I would like to give the doctor this painting, Theo, if you approve.”

“But of course,” Theo said, with a genuine smile. “You know you should do what you like with your canvases.”

“Oh, I usually do,” Vincent answered. “But I needed to be sure you didn’t want to keep this one.”

“Lovely as it is, I think it should stay with the doctor, if he will accept it. Your paintings will be in fine company in his collection.”

I stammered my pleasure and mumbled something about generosity, which Theo dismissed. For a man so much younger than I, he had a remarkable way of assuming authority. This seemed to be how he kept Vincent on an even keel, and I admired it, even as he turned it on me. “Doctor, we are all so grateful to you. To see Vincent so well settled—” He gestured around at the pictures. “Ah!” he said, glancing at the portrait of me. “You see! You have even been coerced into sitting for him! The least he can do is give you a canvas or two!”

We all laughed and moved over to the portrait. It is a strange situation, examining a portrait of yourself in the presence of the artist and a third person. So much is on display: the artist’s skill, the sitter’s face, the artist’s idea of the sitter, the sitter’s idea of himself all jostle, as it were, for acknowledgment. None of us would have expected a conventional likeness from Vincent, but it was still my face there on the canvas. He had not yet delivered the second version I had asked him to make, so I had not had the chance to get used to this haggard man clothed in my features. There was a strange moment when I hovered between recognition and surprise, when I could see the picture as an image of a stranger who gazed at me wearily.

Theo did not speak for a moment. He gazed at the painting with his hands clasped behind his back. Vincent stood next to him, frowning slightly. He reached out to touch, very lightly, the edge of the canvas, to check that it was drying as he wanted. Theo put his arm on his brother’s shoulder and said, “This is magnificent. You have become a portrait painter like no other.”

Vincent turned his head to smile at Theo. I never saw that expression again on his face. It was pure happiness and affection. I wish that some of the many, many portraits Vincent had made of himself had showed that side of him to the world, but the mood was fleeting. It was as if, from the shell of the stoical man I was getting to know, peered for an instant the tenderest creature, full of hope and delight. I supposed only Theo saw that side of him with any frequency. I must admit, I envied him.

S
even

W
E ALL FELT LET DOWN
after the excitement of the Van Goghs’ visit. Paul was especially sulky. That evening I tried to put some antiseptic lotion on his scratches, but he kept flinching and I finally left Marguerite to minister to him. It was at times like this that I missed Blanche the most. Seeing the accord between Theo and Johanna reminded me of what marriage had been like. Vincent had described the bond between Theo and Jo vividly: “If one draws a breath, the other notices.” I remembered those days, but sadly. There were so few of them.

Blanche found me dashing, brilliant, gifted. She came from a somewhat modest family of Gascon origin, and though she had lived her entire life in Paris, it had been a sheltered existence. She was dazzled by the breadth and depth of my interests. Naturally I flourished in the atmosphere of womanly warmth and admiration that she created. I never doubted myself in Blanche’s presence—until the last days of her illness, when I doubted everything. Man of medicine that I was, I could not even relieve her pain. Worse still, I refused her the one thing she asked of me.

I had thought, when I was drawing the madwomen at the Salpêtrière, that I was entering their madness in a way. After Blanche’s death, though, I truly knew their despair. In my bones, to my core, I knew what it was to fall into melancholy. I knew the bleakness, the withdrawal, the lassitude. I would sit for hours at a time, watching slices of dust-filled sunlight creep across a room. My dark mood frightened the children, which made me ashamed. Madame Chevalier grew impatient, then angry, and lectured me. She said that, for the children’s sake, I must at least feign an interest in life.

There is a saying I have always loathed:
“L’appétit vient en mangeant.”
My father used it often when I objected to working in his fabric mills. “You say you are not interested, Paul, but you will be! You will see how the business works, and soon you will be hungry to know more:
L’appétit vient en mangeant.”
As much as I hate the old proverb, I must ruefully confess that I did find this to be true when it came to my mourning for Blanche. Bit by bit, I forced myself to take up the threads of my former life. I discovered that Marguerite was learning to read. I visited Pissarro, whom I had neglected in the last months of my wife’s illness. Blanche had written a pretty piece of piano music that I had privately printed, giving it the title “Espérance.” I did not exactly feel hope, but I began to think that hope might exist, somewhere, if only for other people.

Still, the sadness remains. In some ways I am a solitary man, even though I am surrounded by my family. There is no one who shares all of my concerns, my doubts, my fears. Paul is the closest I have to a confidant these days, but in that summer Vincent was with us, Paul was only seventeen. I could not tell him—I could not tell anyone—that Johanna van Gogh’s affection for her husband made me feel lonely. I could not tell him that I feared for Theo’s health.

Besides, it was Vincent who was my primary concern, and, as the days went by, he did seem to be benefiting from the calm, wholesome atmosphere I had established in our home on the rue Rémy. He had gained some weight, I thought, and claimed to be sleeping better than he had slept in years. I guessed from Theo’s stories that Vincent had spent a great deal of time among people who did not have his best interests at heart. For all his stoicism, Vincent was desperate for honest friendship and concern, which I was happy to extend to him. And though he did not fit comfortably into a domestic setting, I sensed that he relished it deeply while he was with us.

However, in the summer of 1890 I was beginning to recognize a certain disruption of our tranquillity. Perhaps Vincent’s presence among us cast a brighter light on the issue, but the fact was, Marguerite was growing up. Paul reminded me of this when we were feeding the chickens one afternoon. He and Marguerite shared a birthday. He was turning seventeen, she twenty-one, and Paul was eager to know how the day would be celebrated. Could we, he wanted to know, invite Vincent for a birthday luncheon?

Nothing could have been easier, and so it came about. Yet I realized, that day when we were sitting around the red table in the garden, that it was a very quiet way to mark Marguerite’s birthday. At twenty-one, she might reasonably have expected something more exciting. I thought of her as a girl of good sense, practical, honest, and modest. But even sensible girls think about young men—and there were none in her life. At lunch, Marguerite looked pretty, in a pale pink dress with a few roses in her hair. She was quiet—she is always quiet—but I did catch her glancing at Vincent more than once with a somewhat speculative look in her eye.

The thought was laughable. I dismissed it. Vincent could be nothing to Marguerite Gachet, a gently reared girl of twenty-one. Vincent, with his false teeth, his constant odor of tobacco, and his impatient, single-minded temperament. Nor could Marguerite be anything to him. Theo had told me of his younger brother’s unfortunate relations with respectable women. Vincent and Marguerite were as ill-matched as a bear and a lapdog.

I wondered whether Marguerite thought about marriage. Many girls were wed by her age, yet I knew almost nothing about how
jeunes filles à marier
were courted. Blanche was not young when we married, and I had met her, strangely enough, in the park in front of the Church of the Trinity. I had always thought it was remarkable good luck, for a sudden gust of wind blew her umbrella inside out just as I was passing. Of course a well-bred girl would not ordinarily speak to a passing man, but Blanche’s struggle with the broken umbrella in the storm compelled her to accept my help. I walked her home, and received her father’s permission to call on her. Until that time I had had very little contact with young ladies in Paris. I was never one of the youths with gloves at evening parties, assessing the relative charms of Mademoiselle this or that.

Who would assess Marguerite’s charms? There were no gentlemen in Auvers. There were farmers, of course. The man who punched my ticket to Paris every Tuesday was pleasant, and just a few years older than Marguerite, but he probably had a wife and three babies already. Who would give Marguerite babies? And how could she meet him? I had overlooked one of the principal responsibilities of a parent: to find his daughter a husband. Just like that, I had overlooked it.

My daughter did not seem aware of my concern. She sat in the dappled shade, smiling at her brother’s teasing and Madame Chevalier’s affectionate praise. She was presentable. She played the piano. She could run a house. I had made sure she had a dowry. But what could be her future? Not the red-haired man across from her, lighting his pipe, thinking of something else entirely. She glanced at him again. No, there was nothing but curiosity in her gaze. But I resolved to talk to some of my friends in Paris about her. Some of them had wives, and mentioned first communions and daughters who went to dances. Perhaps Marguerite could go to Paris to stay with one of them and see the wider world.

“Marguerite, would you play for us?” I asked, as she stood up to help Madame Chevalier clear the table. I knew that she took her music quite seriously, but she normally did her practicing on the days when I was in Paris, so as not to disturb me.

“Oh, how dull!” Paul cried. “It’s my birthday, too!”

“Yes, and do you have an accomplishment you would like to share with us?” I asked. “Have you been working at something special? Perhaps you would like to recite? Some lines of Racine? Plutarch?” Paul blushed; he was not a brilliant scholar.

“Possibly you and I may rent a skiff to fish later this afternoon,” I told him. This was a treat, since I preferred to fish on the quieter weekdays. I did not care for the loudness and roughhousing of the day-trippers from Paris. They shrieked and splashed each other and scared away the fish—but Paul adored the bustle, especially on a summer Sunday.

He turned scarlet and said, “Thank you, Papa.” Then he murmured to his sister, “I will clear away the coffee cups while you decide what to play.”

We moved the little piano to the window facing the garden so we could enjoy an alfresco recital. Vincent and I puffed away on our pipes while my daughter made a reasonable job of playing a pair of Chopin waltzes. Paul lay in the grass at our feet, messing about with a sketch pad and some charcoal.

Marguerite made an appealing picture with her hands moving over the keyboard, unaware of her audience. She was a self-contained young lady, but her concentration on the notes seemed to dissolve a layer of her personal decorum. She did not sway and pant over the music, of course, but a little smile lit up her face, and her feet worked the pedals with a kind of emphasis.

We all applauded when she finished, which appeared to please and disconcert her. Vincent, gripping his pipe between his teeth, said, “Doctor, with your permission, I would like very much to paint Mademoiselle Gachet at her piano. I think she would be a splendid subject.” He had barely glanced at her during her little recital: I had thought he was dozing. But of course nothing ever really escaped Vincent’s eye. I was delighted, and we agreed that the following weekend, when I returned from Paris, he would begin the portrait. He thanked us for the party and walked with Paul and me down to the landing stage, where we were able to secure a gaudily painted rowboat for a few hours, but he refused to come fishing with us, despite Paul’s urging. As Paul carefully maneuvered us through the confusion of craft on the river (many being rowed with notable lack of skill), I caught sight of Vincent, walking slowly past the cheerful café tables set out along the riverbank. He trudged along, hands in pockets, puffing his pipe, his eyes devouring it all. He had said he planned to head up to a nearby vineyard and paint it in the afternoon light. He seemed to feel obligated to do so. “I must …” was how he had put it. But I thought that, as he walked past all the merrymakers, couples, and families on a Sunday outing, he seemed forlorn.

At dinner that evening I asked Marguerite if she looked forward to being painted by Vincent. She glanced at me with a furrowed brow, and lowered her gaze to her empty plate. “Will it be difficult?” she asked. “I don’t know if I can do it right.”

Paul crowed with laughter. “You’ll just sit there, silly,” he said. “And pretend to play the piano. Anybody could do it.”

“Not at all,” I corrected him. “It is precisely your sister that he wants to paint. Not ‘anybody.’ ”

“But he’s already painted you,” Paul retorted. A sister less gentle than Marguerite might have pointed out that Vincent had not asked to paint her brother—who was, to be fair, a lively, handsome youth who would have made a wonderful model.

“Yes, and now he thinks that Marguerite will make a beautiful painting, and I have no doubt she will.” I turned to her. “Vincent will not ask anything of you that you cannot do,” I told her. “I am sure of that.”

Though I rarely feel bound by society’s conventions of propriety, I was relieved that Vincent had asked to paint Marguerite’s portrait when I would be in Auvers. I felt it would have been inappropriate for the sittings to take place in my absence. Vincent understood that both my permission and my presence were necessary for him to paint my daughter. As he set up his easel on the following Sunday morning, he gleefully recounted what he had painted that week: young women. “The daughter of Monsieur Ravoux, all in blue with a blue background, in profile. You will see the way her hair and her skin stand out. And then a peasant woman, sitting in the corn, wearing a beautiful straw hat with a big blue bow. The clothes of these women are such a delight.” He turned around to look at me. “You see, Doctor, we men wear dark things on the whole. Look at poor Theo, buttoned into a black frock coat every day. But the women in their pinks and greens and reds are like bouquets of flowers.” He straightened up, assessing the distance to the piano. Marguerite was still upstairs, no doubt readying herself for the sitting. “Could we perhaps pull the piano this way? I would like to have Mademoiselle Marguerite in full figure, you see, against that wall,” he pointed.

I called for Paul to come and help. He appeared instantly; apparently he had been just outside the window, drawing in the garden. The three of us pushed the piano on its tiny wheels while Vincent continued his monologue. “I could not find anyone to pose at St.-Rémy. Well, you can’t blame them, they were all crazy. Aside from one or two, I could never get anyone to sit still for more than a few minutes. But even in Arles, it wasn’t easy with the women. I suppose I didn’t know any, except prostitutes.” I glanced at Paul, who turned bright red but pretended not to have heard.

“But here in Auvers, I have been so fortunate,” Vincent continued. “It is a great thing for me to be able to paint a young lady like Mademoiselle Marguerite.” He turned to me and asked, “Is she wearing the pink dress?”

“Oh, yes,” Paul said, with the weary tones of a man among men, discussing women’s vanity. “She knows you’re here, Monsieur Vincent. But she had to do her hair. She said she would be down in a moment.”