Leaving Van Gogh (3 page)

Once I had taken in his shabbiness and his general air of poor health—he looked ten years older than Theo—I was struck by Vincent’s alertness. And indeed, over the next months, each time we met I marveled again at how I could see him
looking
. It was as if his eyes had a special sensitivity. You could almost feel him scanning everything around him and accepting or rejecting objects as interesting, or not. Sometimes this created a strange tension as people became aware that, sooner or later, he would look at
them
. One would want to be worth looking at.

He didn’t care for my furniture, that was clear. The salon was furnished with a few antique pieces I had bought years before—a big Renaissance buffet, a Louis XIII armchair—and Vincent’s eyes passed over them without hesitation. The stained glass I had installed in the north window might as well have been invisible. But I could sense his curiosity when he spotted the portfolios of prints next to the large table I used as a desk.

I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “Would you care for milk? I would recommend it,” I said. “In fact, I suggest you drink milk every day. Preferably goat’s milk. We have a goat here who keeps us well supplied, and there would be plenty for you.”

“No, thank you, Doctor,” he said, politely enough.

“Take a roll, then,” I urged him, “for you must have made a very early start. I will read the letter from your brother.” As I bent my head to Theo’s clear handwriting, I noticed that Vincent seemed to chew with some discomfort. False teeth, I thought. That might explain his thinness, if it hurt him to eat.

“Can you tell me,” I asked him, “about your stay in Paris? Monsieur Theo said you found it tiring?”

He gulped the last of his coffee and set the cup neatly in the saucer. “The noise.” He shook his head. “I had forgotten … Or I was so unused to it …” He looked up at me, and again I saw his brother’s gaze, but with greater concentration. “Do you know the South, Doctor?” I nodded. “Then you know how the nights are. The enormous stars, the crickets, that warm air like a current of water, the sense of all the tiny creatures of the night moving around you. Or the days, the afternoons when nothing moves that isn’t tossed by the wind? When the train pulled into the station in Paris, I felt like a little moth, or a tamarisk leaf. Buffeted. So much movement, so much noise, and all of it human! I was completely overwhelmed.”

I poured more coffee into his cup, but he was so caught up in his description that he didn’t notice. “And then at Theo’s—Well, Doctor, you know what an asylum is like. You do, don’t you?”

“I do. All those separate people, in their own worlds. It can be terrible, because you cannot make a connection.”

“True, but at the same time, you owe them nothing. If you feel like howling, you howl. Now imagine going from that to a lovely little bourgeois apartment with a wife who was meeting me for the first time. What kind of impression could I make on her? And then there is the new baby. Everything must be so soft, so controlled!” He shook his head. “I cannot do that, Doctor. At least, not now. I have forgotten how. Theo and Jo live in such a way that, if one draws a breath, the other notices. I am not …” He paused, picking at a bit of rough skin on his thumb. “I am not sufficiently master of myself for that.”

“Yes,” I answered, careful to sound as if his concerns were ordinary. “I have often noticed what a large task that is. Those of us who manage it completely tend to underestimate the effort involved. Tell me about how you felt in St.-Rémy. Monsieur Theo mentioned that the other patients were a problem?”

“Not at first,” he answered, picking up a roll. He tore into it, looked at it, and put it down on the tray. “I was very poorly myself, you understand. Did Theo explain?”

I nodded. “Yes, but it would be helpful to hear how it felt to you at the time.”

“It’s difficult to explain,” he answered. “There were periods that I don’t remember at all. When I did terrible things.” He gestured to his ear. “This, for instance. I have no memory of that. But more generally, I would say …” His voice trailed off. “Unhappy, of course. I was unhappy. And afraid.” He brightened a bit. “Perhaps you will be able to see from the pictures. The last paintings I did at St.-Rémy were not dry when I left. I am having them sent here. Theo has others, some of the paintings from Arles, and the early ones from St.-Rémy. They may help you to understand.” He paused again, then went on. “There is one that, I think, captures the mental effect of life there. It is a view down the central hall—it is long in real life, but I made it look interminable. Arches and arches receding, and a tiny figure scurrying into a doorway.”

“Did you sleep in wards?” I asked, thinking about the long rows of beds at the Salpêtrière. It is necessary in an asylum to be able to watch the patients lest they harm themselves or someone else. Yet for a man with Vincent’s sensibility, this enforced togetherness must have been a constant irritant.

“No, there were private chambers,” he answered. “They were quite large, and since many rooms were empty, they gave me one as a studio.”

“And can you describe it further for me?” I wondered if he would be able to talk about this period of his life with calm and detachment.

“Oh, gladly,” he replied. “It was once, I believe, a monastery, St. Paulde-Mausole. Some of the buildings are very, very old, and it is not in good repair. The asylum is in a long, low building, yellow, with green shutters. There are beautiful gardens, full of flowers and trees, with benches and fountains. I suppose this is where the monks used to walk and pray. I painted the gardens a good deal.”

“I look forward to seeing your paintings,” I said. I agreed with his premise; surely they would permit me some insight into his mental state at the time. “And the treatment?”

“Oh, no, Doctor, there was very little treatment in this place. Dr. Peyron had no expertise in mental maladies. There were baths, of course. They often calmed us down.”

“And how often did the doctor see you?”

“He lived there, so he saw us all the time.”

“But examinations?”

“When we arrived.”

“Then how did you spend your days?”

“That was the difficulty, you see. Aside from painting, I read a great deal when I felt well enough. I see that we share some of the same tastes,” he added, looking at the bookshelf. There were several novels on the corner of my desk, and he turned his head to read the titles on their spines. “Ah!
Bel-Ami!
I did a still life in Paris—a little figure of Venus, a vase of roses, and this novel. Do you like Maupassant? Have you read
A Life
? Theo loaned it to me just before I came here. I would be happy to bring it to you when I am finished with it.”

“I would like that very much,” I answered, pleased. I was not accustomed to discussing literature with my patients, but of course Vincent was not, strictly speaking, a patient. Perhaps he might even become something of a companion. I found his enthusiasm appealing. “So your days in the asylum—there was no structure, no schedule?”

“No, Doctor. For the most part, the patients just sat.”

I was startled, but I should not have been. The doctrines of moral treatment—kindliness, tolerance, distraction, and a firm effort to make the patient aware of his delusions—that I had absorbed in Paris thirty-some years earlier had not been accepted everywhere. And of course they required a great deal of effort from the medical staff, not to mention training. The asylum at St.-Rémy was probably one of the more benign institutions, even if the patients received little care.

“But you were able to work?”

“Yes,” Vincent answered. “Dr. Peyron felt it would not harm me. He was right about that. It would have been a great deal worse for me if I had not been able to paint. As it was, I was able to turn out some things I am not ashamed of.”

The coffeepot was empty, and so was the basket of rolls.

“Monsieur van Gogh, this has been very helpful. I told your brother that I could not officially be your medical practitioner; I work in Paris, and the doctor here is Dr. Mazery. If you were to become ill here, he would care for you, but he will certainly consult with me. I would be able to suggest treatments if they were required; a sleeping draft, for instance, or a homeopathic cordial to reduce agitation. As you may know, I have considerable experience with maladies of the nerves and the mind. I have often been able to help patients regain their mental equilibrium.”

“I am glad to hear you say so, Doctor, for it is a terrible thing to misplace,” Vincent said with a wry little smile.

I smiled back at him. “If I am to be of any help in your mental troubles, I must examine you physically. It is somewhat awkward to do this here, where I do not have a proper examination room. But we could go up to the studio, where the light is good. It won’t take long. Would you mind?”

“No, Doctor,” he answered, getting up. “If it must be done, let us not delay.”

I preceded Vincent up the stairs, feeling somewhat self-conscious. I was usually delighted to show off my collection of paintings. But I found myself especially eager to please this man. It was peculiar. I was older than he by a generation. I was the expert, the doctor, about to examine him. Yet I was almost apprehensive. I wanted him to like my pictures. I had found myself disappointed that he did not compliment the atmosphere of the salon; visitors usually admired my antiques and decorative objects. I considered myself a man of taste, yet apparently Vincent van Gogh did not.

I saw my familiar studio as if with new eyes when I stepped through the door that day. I noticed how small and stuffy the room was, how low the ceiling, how much space was taken up by the dusty printing press. The plaster walls were stained in many places, something I had ignored until now. Still, I thought, the paintings were beautiful, and I hoped Vincent would agree.

Some of the pictures were too fragile to hang on the walls; Cézanne had left a few studies on cardboard that I didn’t care to expose to sunlight. I could not afford to frame all of them, either, so many were simply stacked against each other on the floor, stretcher resting on stretcher. But I remember clearly that I had Pissarro’s painting of the red house in wintertime on one wall, for Vincent made his way instantly to stand before it. While I cleared various paint boxes and rolls of paper from the little divan and pulled it into the light, he stood before the picture.

“May I take this down?” he asked, his hands poised to lift the canvas from its hook.

“Of course,” I replied. “Take it to the window.”

He did so, turning the canvas this way and that to examine the paint in the raking light. It is a small picture, a simple scene of chestnut trees in front of the house, with a woman and child standing on the snow and a winter sky behind. When Pissarro painted it, I was astounded at its freshness, the way it captured the instant with the blue shadows on the snow, the lively, interlocking branches of the trees, and the peaceful charm of the house right in the center. I heard Vincent sigh a little bit, and turned around as he gently placed it back on its hook.

“It is very fine,” he said. He glanced around at the other paintings: a Sisley of the Canal St.-Martin in Paris, my tiny Renoir portrait of a woman in profile, a Guillaumin of some smokestacks outlined between a setting sun and the blue-gold surface of the Seine. “I can see that you have some beautiful things here.”

“They give me great pleasure,” I told him, grateful that he approved of my taste. “And you are welcome to come and look at them whenever you like. I normally spend four days a week in Paris, but Madame Chevalier will be glad to let you in. For that matter, I hope you will visit often when I am here, from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning. Now, if you could take off your shirt and sit down here. I will be back in a moment.”

I went downstairs to get my stethoscope, and when I returned, slightly breathless, Vincent was on his knees in front of a row of paintings, flicking through them. “I hope you don’t mind, Doctor,” he addressed me without turning around. “I was overcome by curiosity.”

“Not at all,” I answered. “But now, if you could sit down here.” I patted the faded wine-colored plush of the divan, and a tiny cloud of dust billowed into the shaft of light coming through the window. Vincent had simply dropped his shirt on the floor, and as he crossed the room I picked it up. There was no hook or hanger for it, so I draped it on the back of my easel, which I moved toward the wall. I was grateful that there was no unfinished canvas on it. I would not have liked to watch Vincent’s blue eyes pass over my work and move on without comment.

The little couch was so low that Vincent’s head was not much higher than my waist when I stood over him. I looked down on the top of his head, the tops of his ears, his shoulders.

There was a little stool in the corner, spattered with paint. I stepped forward to seize it and brought it back to the divan. Vincent sat, waiting, his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands dangling. Compliant, enduring. He had undergone, I supposed, many examinations. I sat on the stool. Now my eyes were level with my patient’s. I set my hands beside his neck, turning his head back and forth, pressing down on his skin. I was sitting on his left side, nearest the ear he had slashed. Gently, I folded it forward, feeling the scar tissue along the cartilage where he had cut the lobe. A disturbing idea came to me.

“Did you hear voices? Do you think that is why you cut your ear? To stop them?” If that was the case, he was more troubled than he seemed. Now that I thought of it, I had asked Theo this question, and he had not answered it directly.

“I don’t know if I did,” he answered. “My memory is so addled …” He said no more.

For all my experience as a man and as a doctor, I knew I could not quite imagine his predicament. I am a sympathetic man. I have known melancholy and a kind of panic-stricken grief when it seemed that to exist for a moment longer was beyond what a man could endure. One of the reasons I was so drawn to Blanche was that she seemed able to push back those dark tides of feeling. She had a temperament of sunny certitude that I grew to rely on. When she died, I was left in a terrible state, nearly paralyzed by my emotions. But I have always managed to retain control of myself. What must it be like, to know yourself untrustworthy, to have something take over your free will? Was it like being possessed? It is difficult enough to live, knowing one’s strengths and limitations. But most of us stumbling through life do not bear the burden of knowing that we may turn into monsters. Vincent seemed to have put this particular threat behind him, but the memory of it must, I thought, influence his nervous state.