The Last Van Gogh (16 page)

I was once again shivering from the cold air snaking across my skin. “There is no need to apologize,” I said. “It’s only I have so little experience in these sorts of things.” I paused. “Well, none, actually.”

I had been raised not only to be chaste but to be completely unavailable to the opposite sex. Now I had betrayed not only Father’s wishes but also what I thought was expected of girls of my social background. Yet, if I were to be honest, I was secretly thrilled that I had the capacity for such adventure.

“It was wrong of me. You’re so much younger than I, and I should know better than to jeopardize things with your father, when he’s been so kind to me.”

I nodded my head.

I could feel my embarrassment creeping up my neck in long, red strokes. My face, too, reddened from the uncertainty I felt in my actions.

“I see,” I said, smoothing out my skirt. “Perhaps it was a mistake then.”

“No. I wouldn’t call it a mistake, Marguerite.”

Again I looked at him for clarity.

“It’s just there is truth to what you said. We should take this more slowly. In light of my…past…I will need to gain your father’s confidence if there’s to be a more permanent relationship between us.”

I smiled again in understanding.

“Look here,” he said, suddenly taking out his sketchbook from his rucksack. He shuffled through the pages until he found a sketch of me, one where he imagined me sitting at my piano.

“I want to paint you seated at your piano. Then perhaps a third portrait of you…maybe illuminated as Saint Cecilia, at the organ with stephanotis in your hair. You are so much like her—so musical, so pure.” He brushed his finger again against my cheek. “Maybe I will do a whole series, like I did of my friend the postman back in Arles.”

My heart was thumping hard in my chest. He had sketched me from memory. Surely that meant he had been thinking of me when he was alone in his rented room in the Ravoux Inn.

“Of course you’re much prettier than he is, and I don’t recall ever kissing him like that.” Vincent smiled playfully. “He was a married man, after all.”

I giggled.

“I only need your father’s permission,” he continued. “Let’s not risk getting him cross.” He stroked my cheek with his hand. “Hurry home,” he whispered. “It’s far too late for you to be out.”

And so I did. I rushed through the streets with my heart nearly bursting through my chest. My clothes felt weightless, my feet hardly felt the bulk of the cobblestones.

Only when I had managed to creep up the stairs and enter my room did I notice a smudge of yellow paint streaked like fireworks across my cheek. How I wished I could keep it there and never wash it off! But that would be foolhardy. Rather than risk being discovered, I dipped my washcloth in the water basin. And slowly, mournfully, I erased the evidence of our kiss.

TWENTY-THREE

The Yellow Finger print

M
Y
encounter with Vincent had left me breathless, and I was thankful that Father did not catch me stealthily tiptoeing back to my room. Had he seen me there in the stairwell, in my bare feet and smiling from ear to ear, Papa would have known I had just returned from something scandalous.

The first person I wanted to see was Louise-Josephine. Though I did not find her asleep in my bed as I had anticipated, there was a note on my pillowcase.

We’ll speak tomorrow. I don’t want Mother to awaken to our whispering…

Always,

L-Josephine

I folded her letter and placed it in my desk drawer. I stood by my mirror and looked at myself. The streak of yellow was still wet on my cheek, a faint fingerprint swirled into the pigment. When I cupped my hands to my face, I could still detect the scent of turpentine on my skin. It had permeated the places where Vincent’s palms had pressed against me, and I greedily inhaled these last traces of our encounter.

I
WAS
late to the kitchen that next morning, but fortunately, Louise-Josephine had risen early. When I came down the stairway, I noticed she had already set the breakfast table.

I walked into the kitchen and greeted her. She held a blue glass pitcher in her hand and a lock of her chestnut hair fell over the left side of her face. She reminded me of a kitten, incapable of hiding the mischief in her eyes.

“So…,” she said, smiling, “what happened? I’ve been counting the minutes until I saw you!”

I closed the curtain and ran up to her. “He kissed me!” I blurted out. I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle my giggle. Still, it was difficult to contain myself.

I had practiced how I was going to tell Louise-Josephine what had happened. How Vincent and I had started talking about his paintings and his ideas, and how he had mentioned that he wished to paint me again. But now as I stood there within the cloistered walls of my kitchen, I could not be bothered with those details. The only thing I could concentrate on was that one fantastic moment when his lips touched mine.

Louise-Josephine beamed. “I knew he would! I just knew it!” she said as she clapped her hands together. “And how was it?” She cocked her head a little and raised an eyebrow.

I giggled again.

“Tell me!” she pressed.

“It was wonderful…. I met him just as he was finishing his painting. It was beautiful, a haunting one of the village church—”

Louise-Josephine cut me short. “I don’t care about the painting! What did he say when he first saw you there?”

“He was surprised, of course,” I said, tripping slightly over my words. “But very pleasantly so, it would seem.”

“And did you arrange for a next meeting?”

She was already quite ahead of me, as I hadn’t even thought that far in advance. I was still relishing my triumph of sneaking successfully out of the house and meeting Vincent in the middle of the night.

“No, I haven’t.”

She shook her head. “Did he give any clue when he intended to see you next?”

“He only said he doesn’t want to upset Papa,” I said, reaching for a few of the pears that needed to be peeled. I set one in front of me and held the other with my hand.

“Eventually your father will find out and he will become upset.” She took the pear from me. “You realize that, don’t you?”

Louise-Josephine’s voice was confident, as if she recognized what a naïf I was.

“If Vincent’s intentions are serious and he shows Papa the respect and attention he requires, I don’t see how Papa could object,” I insisted.

Louise-Josephine shook her head again. “You remember what I said about my grandmother? How I stopped fearing her when I realized that even if she did punish me, my life couldn’t change for the worse. You need to realize that your father will never be your ally in finding you a husband.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“I don’t think your father wants to see you married.”

I looked up at her, and my eyes must have revealed my disbelief.

“Why do you keep telling me that?” I said, annoyed. “Papa’s had so much on his mind, he just hasn’t been able to give it much thought.”

“You’re going to be twenty-one in a few days. How could he not have given it any thought? Most girls in your situation have fathers eager to make marital introductions for them.” She took a deep breath and reached for another pear. “Your father has done nothing except instruct you on what he wants for dinner each night.”

“I don’t see why he wouldn’t want me married,” I protested. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, it does,” she said. “It makes perfect sense. Don’t you see how he treats my mother? From what my grandmother told me, when Mother was younger, she used to wait on him hand and foot. She cooked for him when he would come home late from the salons of his artist friends. She swept his floors. She did his laundry. Now that she’s older, he doesn’t want my mother to have to lift a finger. And I’m sure you’ve noticed, he feels awkward asking anything of me. You, Marguerite, are a far cheaper servant than anyone else he might employ.”

“Servant?” I furrowed my brow. “He doesn’t think of me like that….”

Then, from a few meters beyond the kitchen, I heard Papa calling.

“Marguerite, where’s my coffee?” he hollered. His timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Louise-Josephine lowered her eyes. We both realized there was no need to state the obvious. Once again, she was exactly right.

TWENTY-FOUR

Plume of Gray

T
HE
following morning, I awoke full of energy. I had slept well, and in my slumber, I had forgotten Louise-Josephine’s cautionary words, and dreamed only of Vincent. It was a wonderful feeling to be a young woman, my entire being filled with the heady sensation of falling in love. I felt like a crocus bursting through the cold winter soil, my leaves thirsty for some sun.

I walked over to my window and opened the shutters. A few meters beyond, the meadows were alight with rows of poppies. All I could see was crimson, miles of red flowers intensified by threads of tall, green grass.

It was Sunday, and the church bells were beginning to sound. I quickly splashed some cold water on my face and rebraided my hair in a tight chignon.

I couldn’t expect Louise-Josephine to make another breakfast in my absence, so I quickly put on a simple gray dress and ran down the stairwell to prepare Papa’s meal.

“Y
OU’RE
going to church this morning?” Papa asked, as I brought him a tray of croissants and coffee in the garden.

“Yes. I don’t suppose you’d like to join me?” I said, knowing all too well what his response would be.

He let out a small laugh. “You can stop asking me that, Marguerite. I will go when I’m dead.”

I shook my head. Father hadn’t been to church for years. Once, over dinner, he blurted out: “Medical school taught me that the only God is science.” He was vehemently opposed to organized religion and favored the teachings of Darwin as his personal philosophy. His attitude had obviously worn off on Paul, who had stopped attending church several years before.

That morning, Paul sat a few meters away from Papa, with a sketch pad on his lap. Both of them were busy trying to copy one of Cézanne’s still lifes, a small painting with flowers and fruit.

“You’re not going either?” I asked playfully.

Paul nodded. “Father and I prefer to spend our Sundays painting,” he mumbled as he continued to sketch. His head was bent over the drawing, but I could see the scratches from his pencil and the faint smudges from where his hand dragged across the page. “But perhaps you should pray that I pass my last history exam this Wednesday!” He tapped at his textbook on the little stool and laughed.

“I’ll put in a good word for you,” I said in jest. Papa looked up and smiled.

I waved good-bye to them and hurried down the stairs, knocking over the garden shoes that I had slipped on the night before last.

I
RELISHED
going to mass not because I was a particularly spiritual person, but because it gave me the opportunity to spend a few hours away from our house and my chores. Underneath the weighty ribs of the vaulted ceiling of the church, it was easy to let my mind wander freely.

I had done this since I was a child. Dressed in ribbons and lace, sitting next to a mother who used Sunday services as an excuse to wear all her finery, I learned to pass the hours by creating stories with the multicolored figures of saints and bishops that were frozen in stained glass. We must have looked so out of place then, ridiculous in our dresses compared to the villagers in their simple cotton clothes. Now when I went to church I always dressed in muted colors so as to blend in with the others in the congregation, though still the community never embraced me as one of their own.

I was shy and my family was different. This combination would always keep me at a distance. Just as the villagers preferred the local Dr. Mazery to my father (he could be seen in the front pew with his lovely wife and angelic daughter sitting next to him), they left me to sit alone in the church with no one making any attempt to have simple conversation with me. No one except Edmund Clavel.

Short, with a round, pasty face that reminded me of a brioche, Edmund was the owner of a small trading store in town. He only exchanged pleasantries with me once, an awkward stumbling of words that I made out to be a comment about the weather. For the most part, he preferred to sneak glances in my direction. The first time I found him staring at me, I thought it was my imagination. This was several months before Vincent arrived. Edmund was sitting three pews ahead of me, the slope of his gray jacket facing the altar. Slowly, however, as the sermon progressed, I could see his chin turn over his shoulder.

It was not a face that anyone would find handsome. His skin was the color of custard and his eyes were a dull pewter. Even his smile—which he revealed to me like a winning hand of cards—was crooked.

Had he shown some sort of magnetism or originality, I’m sure I would not have found his physical flaws so bothersome. But he appeared expressionless, as if he were a marionette whose painter had forgotten to draw in his eyes.

And although his interest in me was obvious, I never once imagined myself as his wife, as I had already begun to do with Vincent. Vincent was infinitely more attractive to me. His eccentricities, his unlikely dress, his abandonment of social conventions for the pursuit of art and beauty were things that intrigued me. I closed my eyes and imagined him at his easel again—his smock unbuttoned, a smear of pigment on the edge of his sleeves—and could not help but feel enchanted by the vision. If I was considered an oddity, a curiosity for gossip in the village, then the two of us were destined to be kindred spirits.

I dreamed about my rendezvous with Vincent while the organ sounded high into the rafters and the stained-glass windows pulled long fingers of blue and red onto the stone floor.

I thought of Vincent’s painting with the midnight blue palette and the ribs of the church. He had painted it as dark and foreboding as an impenetrable fortress, gloomy and alone. Now I was sitting within the walls of what he had painted so opaquely. And I was seeing in my mind’s eye the church as he had seen it. The windows that had no reflection. A clock tower that had neither numbers nor hands.