The Last Van Gogh (12 page)

Father’s boasting unnerved me. I stood up and began to clear the dishes. I had only made my first steps into the kitchen when I heard Louise-Josephine’s footsteps behind me.

“You should be careful,” she said. “Your father’s possessive of Vincent. He suspects he’s attracted to you.” She was standing unusually close to me and her eyes seemed to reveal wisdom of someone far beyond her years.

I looked at her incredulously. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s human nature.” She tidied up the cutting board, brushing up the crumbs.

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but she answered me before I could.

“Your papa will make it difficult for any man to love you. He doesn’t want you to ever leave this house. He relies on you more and more, and it will only get worse.”

A few months ago, I would have been furious that she had the audacity to speak to me that way. But now I knew better. While our conversations were still infrequent, I now listened to her carefully. I was beginning to realize that when Louise-Josephine spoke, what she said usually ended up being right.

FIFTEEN

Stealing into the Night

M
Y
heart nearly stopped beating the evening I caught Louise-Josephine crawling out her window.

I had been in my room reading when I heard the sound of a window opening, then the crack of footsteps teetering on the ledge. I put my novel down and listened again. There was a rustle in the trees, yet it wasn’t the sound the wind makes as it passes through branches, nor the sound laundry makes as it flutters on the line. If anything, it sounded like a small animal scampering to the ground.

I stood up and looked out the glass. There in the dark, I saw Louise-Josephine, clad in nothing but a housedress, crawling down the trellis of our front garden.

The white linen of her gown was whipping at her heels as she undid the latch of the gate. Her chestnut hair was undone and thewind blew it upward, exposing the nape of her neck, the cleft between shoulder blades. She was slighter than I and not as tall either, which made her appear much younger than her twenty-three years.

I remember she cast her eyes up toward the window of her bedroom before she slipped away. She did not turn around after that. She ran down the rue Vessenots, the white of her dress flashing like lightning against the sky.

I stood there gazing at her from my window, my breath forming clouds of steam over the pane. For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had Louise-Josephine really just escaped from her bedroom window and stolen off in the middle of the night?

I knew that she was not running away. She would not have left for good in such informal dress. She would have thrown on an overcoat and packed a bag if she were truly leaving us.

Suddenly, I was seized by the possibility that she had found someone in the village. I imagined her falling into his arms, his hands running down the back of her linen gown, her hair let loose like the sinewy fingers of seaweed. I wondered who he could be and where she could have met him. Hadn’t her movements, her interactions with the villagers, been limited as mine and Paul’s had? I was incredulous that she could have even had the opportunity to meet someone. Did she, a girl only two years older than me, already have a lover, when I had not even had my first kiss?

I found myself in her room that evening searching for clues. I had been inside her bedroom on very few occasions, never looking at anything too closely or staying for more than a moment. But as I now stood in her quarters, I noticed how, in contrast to my sparse room, she had littered hers with several collections she had accumulated over the years and had managed to decorate it in a unique style that was all her own.

I walked over to the simple pine chest where her toilette accessories lay. There was a small tortoise comb, a wooden brush, and a needle cushion. All of these objects were rather unremarkable, but next to them rested a small, beautiful box that Louise-Josephine had made in découpage. She had cut out small pictures of butterflies from old magazines, and applied them to the little case, varnishing them over with shellac.

On closer inspection, her room was full of curious things. There was an old rabbit with only one glass eye; a small ceramic turtle with a moonstone on its back. Then there was a small photograph of her mother on her nightstand. Its frame had originally been a simple wooden one, but Louise had glued several small glass marbles around its perimeter so that it now looked like it was bejeweled in aquamarine and amethyst stones.

I was overwhelmed by her obvious creativity. Despite her lack of schooling, she had managed to be far more inventive than either Paul or me.

I sat down on her bed and stretched my limbs. I felt the stitched pattern of the coverlet beneath my nightdress and the moonlight on my naked toes. I could hear Madame Chevalier’s breathing coming from the adjacent room and marveled at either Louise’s good fortune or her cleverness in choosing a night in which her mother wasn’t shuttling off to Father’s room.

I walked over to the window and noticed that Louise-Josephine had kept the pane slightly ajar. There was no rope, no ladder. Nothing except for the trellising that flanked the stucco façade of our house. How would she manage to return? Would she climb up the trellis or would she walk in through the front door?

Up until this evening, I had thought I was the only young girl in our household with a secret love. But now, I realized I was far from alone. Father, Madame Chevalier, and now Louise-Josephine all had theirs.

The irony was not lost on me. Our household, which took great lengths to maintain an appearance of bourgeois correctness, was in actuality teeming with clandestine love affairs and scandal. I cast my eyes around Louise-Josephine’s room, pondered her empty bed, and felt as though I had just watched a party boat depart on the water while I had been left to remain alone on the dock.

It was at that moment I came to a decision. If I wanted Vincent to think of me as more than an acquaintance, I’d have to take my cue from the other women in my household. I had no choice, I would have to learn how to be more bold.

SIXTEEN

A Handful of Fireflies

L
OUISE
-J
OSEPHINE
returned at half past five, walking up the flight of stairs with velvetlike steps. I was barely awake when I heard her turn the doorknob to her room, and I had to rush to make it look like I hadn’t been sleeping in her bed.

When she walked in and found me sitting on her bedspread, she nearly cried out from the surprise.

“Marguerite!” She forced her voice into a hushed tone. “You frightened me!”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered back.

She remained at the threshold of the room. She had removed her housecoat and her nightdress fell over her body like a Grecian robe. Her chestnut hair was long and full over her shoulders, and her cheeks were flushed from the night air.

“What are you doing here?” Her right brow arched quizzically as she shut the door. “It’s almost dawn.”

“I know, I know,” I responded sheepishly. “I saw you go out, and I waited up for you to return.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Marguerite.”

I could tell by the inflection of her voice that she was annoyed at me. She must have thought I had been spying on her.

“I only noticed you leaving by accident. I heard you climbing down the trellis, and when I approached my window, I saw you running down the street.”

She was facing her nightstand now and quickly braiding her hair to put into her sleeping cap.

“I have less than two hours left to sleep, Marguerite,” she said, turning now to face me. “I really don’t need to explain myself…unless you’re going to sit here and tell me you’re planning on tattling to my mother.”

“No, no,” I hastily told her. “I would never dream of telling anyone.”

She sat down on the bed and motioned for me to slide over.

“Then tell me,” she whispered as she nestled into the covers, “why are you here?”

I was nervous in her company. I felt intimidated, though I knew that I should be the one who commanded respect. It struck me as ironic that I would feel more confident around Vincent than I would around Madame Chevalier’s daughter.

I smoothed out my nightdress over my knees and slowly met her eyes. “I have come to you for advice,” I started. “I have no one else to confide in.”

Louise-Josephine’s eyebrow arched quizzically. “Yes?” she asked. “What is it? You’ve succeeded in piquing my curiosity.”

“I…I want you to tell me what it’s like.”

“What
what’s
like?” She shook her head.

I placed my arm underneath my cheek. “Tell me what it’s like to have someone to love.”

I
DID
not allow Louise-Josephine to get much sleep that night, so exhausting was my bombardment of questions.

At first, she started out cautiously, revealing few details. But as the night progressed and she saw how little exposure I had had to such affairs, she began to relish telling me the details. She whispered as she told me about her love’s stolen kisses and secret meetings, and the lustful feelings that overwhelmed her when she was by his side.

“Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe,” she whispered. Her fingers traced her collarbone as she turned to face me.

“It was like that the first time I saw him. Your father was in Paris that afternoon and Mother had told me that I could wander in the fields behind our house.” A mischievous smile crossed Louise-Josephine’s lips. “But I had no desire to wander in the fields! I took the opportunity to go into town!”

I smiled. I was glad to hear that she had broken both my father’s and Madame Chevalier’s orders.

“I decided to buy a bar of lavender soap at the pharmacy. I had only a few centimes and that was all I thought I could afford.” She took a deep breath and then exhaled as if she were relishing reliving the memory of their first meeting. “He was standing next to me at the counter. I turned and our eyes locked. His felt like a hot iron searing past the cotton of my dress, tiny needles tingling on my skin.”

Her description sounded familiar to me. I didn’t want to reveal that I, too, had felt the same way when Vincent first gazed at me, but I was desperate to confirm what I had experienced.

“I paid for the soap and tried to avert my gaze from him while I left the store,” she continued.

“He followed me. Through the Place de Marie, even past the
boulangerie
. When I approached the hill near the Château Léry, I turned around and faced him.

“‘Why are you following me?’ I asked him. I was nervous someone might suspect I was living with your father and I knew how angry he’d be that I had betrayed his orders, so I looked him squarely in the eye and tried to sound intimidating. Inside, however, I was trembling. I clutched the package of soap to my chest in order to calm my nerves.

“‘Because you’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,’ he said. ‘Imagine I’m a honeybee, following my chosen flower…. Théophile Bigny,’ he said as he took my hand and slowly pressed it to his lips. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you.’”

A small smile crossed over Louise-Josephine’s face as she recalled their first meeting. Her dark eyes reminded me of silky chestnuts, slick after the rain. And though most of her hair was pinned behind her nightcap, several soft brown ringlets now peeked through the sides. She looked beautiful.

“Have you seen him many times since?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her pink mouth turning up slightly at the edges. “But you must swear on your honor that you’ll never discuss what I’ve told you with anyone. Not Paul, not anyone!”

“No, no, never,” I promised, pressing two of my fingers to my chest.

She curled deeper into the bed, and I could feel her breath close to mine. “Sometimes, one can’t wait for love to find you. Sometimes one has to pursue it.”

I smiled, implicitly thanking her for the advice and encouragement.

Her eyes were beginning to close now. “I need to get some sleep now, Marguerite,” she said. My mind continued to race as I lay next to her. I suddenly felt guilty that I had never accepted Louise-Josephine as a sisterly presence—even a friend—all these years. I wanted to wake her up and apologize to her. Tell her how grateful I felt that she lived in our home.

I listened to the rhythmic undulations of her breathing and could not help but feel less lonely than I had when I tossed and turned in my own room. Still unable to sleep, I found myself observing her as she slumbered. I looked at her delicate profile. Her small upturned nose, her brown hair piled into her nightcap. She was so beautiful. Quite different from her mother, whose features were so severe.

Fearing that Madame Chevalier might grow suspicious if she saw me departing her daughter’s room in the morning, I decided I should return to my bedroom. I carefully unrolled myself from the covers and tiptoed across her room.

From the window where Louise-Josephine had escaped a few hours before, I could now see the sun rising over the beet fields. The light in the sky was the color of ripe apricots and the thatched cottages looked aflame against the dawn. It would make a beautiful picture, I thought to myself as I turned back before leaving. I hoped that Vincent had also risen early that morning, so he too would see the beauty. I imagined him capturing it with his brushes and paint, like a child seizing a handful of fireflies.

SEVENTEEN

Like a Sister

V
INCENT
wasted no time in beginning his portrait of Father. He arrived the following morning full of energy and excitement.

“Good morning, mademoiselle,” he said when I opened the door. “Your father is expecting me.”

He was smiling in a way that I had not seen before and his pupils were widely dilated. I wondered if it was a result of the digitalis.

“Please, come in.” I motioned. I took his hat from him and hung it on one of the pegs on our wall.