After he left, I picked up Dr. Peyron’s letters from the floor, smoothed them open, and read them again. And cried.
Two days later, I received a note from Vincent, telling me that he would be arriving in Arles for an overnight visit the evening of the twenty-second. That evening.
“I have asked Dr. Peyron for special permission to visit, for there is something I must tell you. It’s too important to discuss in a letter.”
I read and reread Dr. Peyron’s letters to Félix until I knew them by heart. I read Vincent’s old letters too, wondering if I’d missed some sign. “
I am sorry for the delay in writing over the holiday
,” he’d said just after the new year, “
but working outdoors resulted in a cold…I have been laid up in bed unable to do much except sleep and read until today
.” He’d lied to me, just as I’d lied to him by keeping Félix my secret. Could a marriage be built on secrets, on lies?
The clock on the landing struck eight. The train from Tarascon would be pulling into the station, Vincent would be climbing down the third-class compartment steps. Outside in the Rue du Bout d’Arles a band of Zouaves was singing some army song, on their way to find
filles
as jolly as they were. I’d begged off the night’s work with a headache and whispered to Minette to send Vincent upstairs when he arrived.
I heard his quick footsteps down the hall before his sharp raps on my door, and I stood to smooth my yellow dress. “I thought I’d find you in the
salon
,” he said when I let him in.
“I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of everyone,” I said with a weak smile and walked into his waiting arms. He was thin again. He’d been more filled out when I’d last seen him, but now he was thin again.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, peering into my eyes. “You look different.”
“I’ve missed you, that’s all. What’s that?” I nodded at a wrapped painting he’d leaned against the bureau.
“A present for Madame Ginoux. I’ll give it to her tomorrow morning, then I thought we’d take a walk out the road to Tarascon before I catch the train. We have to start looking for a house.” I stared and he said triumphantly, “I sold a painting in Brussels, the one with the red vineyard. Four hundred francs.”
I leaped back into his arms with a gleeful squeal. “Oh, Vincent! Oh, dearest!”
“It’s not enough to do everything I wanted,” he cautioned. “I can’t support myself on only that. But it’s a start.”
“Yes, and you have the exhibition next month, too!”
He took my hands in his and squeezed them tight. “
Écoute
, even if nothing sells at the Indépendants, I’ll tell Theo everything. Ask for his help so we can marry in the spring as we planned. I’m well and healthy, I’ll leave the hospital and we can—” My face must have betrayed me. “What is it?”
“Vincent, I know about the two
crises
.” His smile faded, and his eyes turned to ice. “Why did you hide it,
mon cher?
Before we go any further planning marriage—”
“What do you mean, ‘before we go any further’?”
“I mean, we need to talk about this. Why didn’t you—”
“
He
told you, didn’t he?”
Without meaning to, I glanced at the letters sitting on the bureau, where I’d forgotten to hide them. Vincent snatched them up and read them before ripping them into tiny pieces. “Are you still seeing him?” he asked, and I said nothing. “Answer me, damn it. Are you—”
“No. I broke it off.”
“When?”
I stared at the bits of fallen paper. “Two days ago.”
“You’ve been screwing the goddamn doctor all this time? After I—after we—” I groped for his arm, but he shook me off to pace the room. “You must have gotten a good price,” he sneered. “How much?”
“Vincent, please listen—”
“How much?” he shouted. At my whispered answer, he reached into his pocket and tossed coins on the bed. “You raised your fee. I only brought two francs.”
“It meant nothing, I swear! I took his money, that’s all, money I’ve been saving for us, Vincent—us!”
“So you can play Madame van Gogh the way you’ve played the little bourgeoise?” He grabbed the striped hatbox and waved the satin hat at me. “Is this what you sell yourself for? A fucking hat?”
“What did you expect me to do, starve while I wait for you?” Françoise’s words flew from my mouth. “I don’t have a brother in Paris sending me money!”
Vincent flung the hat to the floor and gripped my wrist until I gasped in pain. “Take that back!”
“Stop, you’re hurting me—”
“I said, take it back!”
“I didn’t mean it, I didn’t, please stop!”
Something cracked inside him at my pleas. I could see it bubble to the surface as his face crumpled and he relaxed his clutch on my arm. He slumped to the floor, rocking back and forth like he had that terrible day in the yellow house. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me—”
Françoise burst through the door, dress unbuttoned, a half-naked customer behind her in the hall. “What the hell is going on? Get out of this house, you—”
“No, Françoise, he’s sick!” I dropped to the floor beside Vincent and wrapped him in my arms. “Shh, it’s over, my love, it’s over.”
“What the hell did he do?” Françoise demanded. “If he’s hurt you, I’ll—”
“Forgive me, please forgive me…,” Vincent said, then started babbling in Dutch. Although I couldn’t understand but a few words, I realized he was reciting from the Bible.
“Send for Félix,” I ordered Françoise. “He’ll be at the Hôtel-Dieu.”
She’d stopped yelling and was looking at Vincent as if he’d been a beast in a menagerie. Her customer had fled. “Are you sure that’s a good—”
“Go!” I screamed, and she ran down the corridor calling for Raoul. I held Vincent as he kept jabbering, then as his speech faded away. His eyes went glassy and unfocused, and his breathing was labored. “Stay with me,
mon cher
,” I murmured. “I’ll take care of you, you’re going to be fine…” I couldn’t tell if he heard me.
Félix appeared in the doorway about twenty minutes later, doctor’s bag in hand. “You didn’t tell me it was Vincent,” he said to Françoise before striding into the room and kneeling to feel Vincent’s pulse. “What happened, Rachel?”
“I told him I knew about the
crises
, he asked how I knew, we started arguing…”
About you
. The words hung unspoken in the air. “It came on him all of a sudden.”
“Has he had any absinthe, any alcohol at all?” I shook my head, and Félix said curtly, “He must have been on the verge of an attack before he came here. I told Dr. Peyron not to let him travel—Vincent, can you hear me?” He caught sight of my wrist, still red where Vincent had taken hold of me, and although he frowned, he didn’t comment. “Mademoiselle Françoise, I need Raoul to help me get Vincent down the stairs. We’ll take him to the Hôtel-Dieu.” I suggested we take him to Saint-Rémy, and Félix said in the same brusque tone, “There’s no time. Mademoiselle Françoise?”
“
Oui, Docteur
,” Françoise said and vanished.
“Félix,” I asked, “would you have come if you’d known?”
“Yes. It’s my duty as a physician. And I made you a promise.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Fetch some water, let’s see if he will drink something.”
I climbed to my feet to pour a glass of water from the pitcher on my washstand. Vincent stared into nothingness when I asked if he wanted a drink, but when I dipped my fingers in the water and patted his face, he shook himself from his stupor to glare at Félix. “What’s he doing here?”
“I’m here to help,” Félix said. “I’m taking you to the Hôtel-Dieu.”
“Like hell you are.” Vincent struggled to stand, and I cried out as he faltered on his feet. “You’d gladly lock me up, wouldn’t you, Doctor?” I tried to take his hand, but he yanked it away. “I don’t want anybody’s fucking help!” He stumbled into the hallway and down the stairs, seizing the painting for Madame Ginoux on his way out.
I started after him, but Félix stopped me. “We can’t let him go like that,” I said.
“He won’t get far. I’ll take the carriage and fetch two orderlies from the Hôtel-Dieu. He could turn violent again, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Françoise stuck her head in the door. “Vincent went off toward Place Lamartine. Should Raoul go after him?”
“No—Mademoiselle Françoise, please stay with Rachel,” Félix said as he gathered up his bag and rose to his feet. “Bring her a brandy.” He handed her a franc, then glanced back at me from the doorway and smiled, a wistful smile that pitied me. “Don’t worry. I’ll send word once I’ve gotten Vincent safely to the hospital.”
When the clock struck one and I’d heard nothing from Félix, I crept past the dozing Françoise, down the stairs and into the street. I held my shawl close around me as I ran between the towers of the Porte de la Cavalerie into the Place Lamartine, where there was no sign of the hospital carriage and no sign of Vincent. “
Salut, ma belle
, I was just looking for me a pretty girl,” a drunken Zouave slurred as he lurched toward me. I ducked between the hedges of the public garden, where I prayed I’d find Vincent by the beech tree or the cedar bush, or that he’d find me. I didn’t, and he didn’t, although I waited until dawn.
Not until the next afternoon did I learn what happened. Once Félix summoned two orderlies, he looked everywhere he could think to look—the Café de la Gare, the embankment by the river, the train station—but found no trace of Vincent. After two hours’ search, he gave up, stopping first at the telegraph office to send an urgent message to Dr. Peyron.
Monsieur Trabuc and Monsieur Poulet were on their way to Arles in the morning when they spotted Vincent, collapsed and unconscious under a cypress tree, near a thatched cottage along the road to Tarascon. They gathered him up in their carriage and hustled him back to the asylum. The painting for Madame Ginoux was never found.
The Road Back
I am so pleased that Vincent’s work is being more appreciated. If he were fit I believe that there would be nothing for me to desire, but it appears that this is not to be
.
—Theo to his mother Anna and sister Willemien,
15 April 1890
N
o carriages stood outside the train station of Saint-Rémy. I trudged alone through the village along the ring road, past the olive groves and Les Antiques to the walls of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. There’d been a dusting of snow that morning, a last breath of winter, enough to soak my shoes and stain the hem of my dress. The wind migrating from the Alps cut through my cape like a dagger, and the respectable gray muslin dress, ideal for September weather, offered no further protection. The sight of Mont Gaussier and its steadfast companions should have lifted my spirits, but they only made me sadder, for the mountains looked gray and lifeless under the leaden sky.
A fortnight had passed since Vincent’s collapse. Félix had sent me messages at the
maison
with the latest news from Dr. Peyron, although he’d never come himself, and the news had changed little. Vincent would barely speak, barely eat, and seemed lost in a fog where no one could find him. Unable to bear it any longer, I’d asked Félix for a letter that would persuade Dr. Peyron to let me see Vincent, and without argument, without rebuke, Félix had sent one back to me.
The porter at the hospital gates escorted me as far as the entrance to the men’s wing before hurrying back to his post. I rang the bell and stood at the bottom of the steps, rubbing my hands through my thin black gloves. Dr. Peyron appeared, and when I asked to see Vincent, he said, “No visitors are allowed for Monsieur van Gogh save his pastor. Good day.”
“I was here in September, perhaps you remember me? I have a letter from Dr. Rey—”
Dr. Peyron ignored the paper in my outstretched hand. “I remember you perfectly, Mademoiselle. The last time you came here, Monsieur van Gogh left the building without permission and without supervision. With you.”
“Only as far as the garden,” I said in surprise. “What does that have to do with—”
He peered at me over his spectacles. “And I’m told that on a previous visit to Arles, the two of you, again without supervision, engaged in most inappropriate behavior.”
Why, that tattling Monsieur Poulet. “But—”
“Did or did not Monsieur van Gogh visit you on his most recent journey, prior to his collapse?” I didn’t answer, and he said, “Each of Monsieur van Gogh’s attacks has had some connection with Arles, either while he was living there or in relation to a visit.”
“He came to Arles in November and didn’t have an attack.”
He ignored me again. “Therefore, I am forced to conclude that something or someone connected with Arles is the source of Monsieur van Gogh’s troubles.”
“You can’t be suggesting his illness is my fault!”
Dr. Peyron stared from the top step like Christ in judgment on the portal of Saint-Trophime. “Young woman, I’m not suggesting. I’m declaring unequivocally that your presence is detrimental to his recovery. Remove yourself from this institution at once, or I shall summon the gate porter.”
“Doctor, you don’t understand, Vincent and I wish to be married. I beg you—”
“My understanding, Mademoiselle, is that you are employed at an Arlesian brothel. Such a woman makes a suitable wife for no man. Perhaps you have deceived the impressionable Dr. Rey, but you cannot deceive me. Good day.”
“Wait, please—” It was too late. The door had closed.
I would not crawl back to Arles like a criminal, tossed out of Saint-Rémy by that self-righteous prig of a doctor. I’d stay there until someone let me in, and anything that happened could be on Dr. Peyron’s head. I brushed the snow off a nearby bench, then sat and wrapped my arms around myself under my cape. If I were already Vincent’s wife, I thought, I’d be by his bedside. If our engagement had been published in
Le Forum Républicain
and proclaimed aloud in church, I’d be there. But a mistress, a lover, a whore—she belongs in the snow.
Such a woman makes a suitable wife for no man
.
What if Dr. Peyron was right? I’d always blamed the first attack on Gauguin, but that last fight between Gauguin and Vincent had been about me. The news of my miscarriage had brought on the second attack. The third in the hospital at Arles had had nothing to do with me, but the fourth had happened just after his visit in July. All this time I’d blamed Gauguin, Theo, Johanna for getting pregnant, the townspeople of Arles for their petition. Vincent himself for working too hard. Everyone but myself.
Your presence is detrimental to his recovery
.
“Mademoiselle Courteau? Why did you not ring to be admitted?”
I was so absorbed in my worries that I hadn’t noticed Monsieur Trabuc emerge from the hospital. “Dr. Peyron wouldn’t let me in,” I replied, my teeth tapping against each other.
“Come with me,” Monsieur Trabuc said and took hold of my arm. “If I escort you to the wing where Monsieur Vincent is housed, Dr. Peyron will not find you.”
I followed Monsieur Trabuc inside the men’s wing, down the corridors, up the stairs. Today it was even more quiet than it had been on my first visit, and I kept looking over my shoulder, afraid that Dr. Peyron—or someone else—might be watching. Monsieur Trabuc unlocked a door next to Vincent’s room. “You can recover yourself in here. There’s a warm blanket on the bed, and I’ll return presently with tea and hot water.”
I discarded my cape and damp gloves to wrap the woolen blanket around my shoulders. Where Monsieur Trabuc went so quickly I had no idea, but he was back, it seemed, right after he left. He poured hot water into a basin as I gulped at the tea, letting it steam through me.
“Will you permit me?” Monsieur Trabuc asked, gesturing at my feet. I nodded, and he knelt to remove my shoes and stockings, gently placing my feet in the water. “You could have been frostbitten or caught pneumonia, Mademoiselle. Making yourself ill won’t help—”
“How’s Vincent?”
He rubbed at my calves to warm my skin. “We thought he’d be up and about in a few days, but he’s taking longer to recover this time.”
“Has he asked for me?”
Monsieur Trabuc busied himself with wiping up a bit of water that had splashed on the floor. “No, Mademoiselle. When I asked if he’d like me to send for you, he said you wouldn’t come, and I shouldn’t bother.” At the look on my face, he sighed and said, “It’s not my place to pry, so I’m not asking what happened, but whatever it was, Monsieur Vincent is most sorry for it now.” He took the empty teacup from my hand. “I told him not to go to Arles, but he said Dr. Peyron gave him permission and that was the end of it.”
“Why did you tell him that?”
“Monsieur Vincent was high-strung for a good week before he took that trip. He was painting every day and seemed all right, but there was something…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t put my finger on it then, and I still can’t.”
“
My head feels quite muddled…I wish to lie down for a few minutes…It may only be the change of weather since a manner of springtime has come this week, but I rather think I am overwhelmed too.”
It was all there, in the last letter he’d sent. The exhibitions, the article, Theo’s child, the sale of his painting…then Félix. It had all been too much.
I pulled my feet from the basin and wiped them dry with the towel Monsieur Trabuc handed me. “Dr. Peyron believes Vincent’s illness is my fault.”
“Mademoiselle, if I’ve learned anything in all the years I’ve worked with the sick, it’s that you cannot explain things so easily.”
“Do you think it’s my fault?” I pressed him.
“If I thought you shouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have let you in,” he replied sensibly. “If you’ll put on your shoes and stockings, I’ll take you to see Monsieur Vincent.”
At Vincent’s door, Monsieur Trabuc tugged open the little window to peek in. “Still sleeping, as I expected,” he said in a low voice, then produced his ring of keys and unlocked the door to lead me inside. “He was overexcited this morning, so I gave him a sedative.”
“Why does it smell of camphor?” I asked in panic. “Is there cholera about?”
“Not so loud, Mademoiselle. It’s to help Monsieur Vincent sleep. A little camphor on the pillow soothes the mind.”
Vincent was curled into a ball under a heavy blanket, and I knelt to peer into his face and stroke his cheek. He seemed to have aged years in the weeks since I’d seen him, new lines on his forehead, gray hair at his temples I hadn’t noticed before.
A flicker of blue drew my attention to a painting hanging at the foot of the bed. A
Pietà
—a large, colorful
Pietà
. The limp body of Christ slumped against a rocky outcropping, while his mother gazed at me with a pleading expression, dressed all in blue, eyes hollowed from weeping. “Did Vincent paint that?” I whispered, although I knew he had.
“Back in the autumn after the first attack he had here,” Monsieur Trabuc replied. “When he had the
crise
at Christmas, he asked that I hang it where he could see it from his bed.”
“It’s a Catholic picture. He’s not Catholic.”
Monsieur Trabuc went to Vincent’s desk and handed me a print of the same picture, faded, creased, torn in one corner. “Monsieur Vincent had this hanging in here until he tore it down in a fit and poured lamp oil over it. He was so sad about it when he recovered that he made his own painting.”
I gave Monsieur Trabuc the print and stared again at the
Pietà
. I knew the Virgin’s face, I understood it, that lost look of having done everything you could to save someone only to have them slip away. Christ’s face was in shadow, but hers gleamed in the light, the tilt of her head mimicking his and the lines of the rocks besides. Behind them a thunderstorm was subsiding, violet-blue clouds moving swiftly through the sky, the wind ruffling the Virgin’s robe. Beyond the storm shone the golden rays of the Easter sun.
Words from old prayers bubbled inside me, prayers I hadn’t said for a long time.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum
. Papa had given me Maman’s rosary when she’d died, but now it collected dust in a drawer at Madame Virginie’s.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus
. I remembered passing the beads through my fingers, feeling their smooth roundness, hearing the way they clicked against each other. I remembered Maman’s voice too, rising and falling with the Latin words, leading us in prayer by candlelight.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen
.
“How can a Protestant paint such a picture?” I mused aloud.
“Monsieur Vincent said that when he was a young man and very religious, he loved church so much he went to all the Sunday services where he was living, whether Protestant or Catholic. He said he believed God to be in all of them.”
I gazed at Vincent’s sleeping face. “He never told me such things.”
Monsieur Trabuc lay his hand on my shoulder. “Monsieur Vincent is a good man with a good heart. Only his illness fills him with darkness.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “I shall leave you with him for a time. Ring that bell sitting on the desk if you need help.”
When he’d gone, I pulled the armchair close to the bed and sat with Vincent, holding his hand. “There are so many things about you I still don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sorry I lied to you, I’m sorry for the hateful things I said.” I kissed his hand and held it to my heart. “Please forgive me. Please come back to me.”
My room in Saint-Rémy. I am saying the rosary with Maman’s beads and trying to reflect on the Sorrowful Mysteries, but I keep seeing my father’s face, twisted in pain
.
My sister Pauline’s footsteps, coming to my room. “It’s cholera,” she says briskly and snatches up my valise. “Help me pack, you’re living with me for a while. It’s a wonder you aren’t sick too.”
I rise from my knees. “I won’t leave Papa. I’ll stay and help take care of him.”
“You should have taken care of Papa to begin with. Letting him go to school when two of the children had the cholera—”
I am horrified. “I didn’t know that, how could I have known?”
“Not sending for the doctor when he first felt ill two days ago—”
“Papa said it was only a stomach ailment and not to worry!”
She glares at me as she yanks open my bureau drawers and tosses clothes into the open valise. “Maybe if you spent less time with that Philippe—”
My eyes fill with tears. “I haven’t seen Philippe in a week! I’m going to Papa.” I start for his room, but she grabs my arm and says the doctor forbids it. I pull myself free and say I don’t care
.
I run down the hall and throw open the door of Papa’s room. It reeks of camphor, it reeks of death. Papa’s face is white as he tosses on the pillow, the doctor’s face is grim. “Rachel, you shouldn’t be here,” the doctor says. “I told Pauline—”
“Rachel?” Papa opens his eyes to look at me. I take a step, but he shakes his head
.
I want to hold Papa. I want to stay and look after him. “No,” Papa says when I take another step. “Not you. Not you.”
“He doesn’t want you to catch the cholera,” the doctor explains, then hands me a bottle. “Tincture of camphor. Take three drops twice a day, well diluted with water, for a week. I’ve given your sister some for her family, too. Now you must go.”
“I want to tell Papa good-bye,” I whisper. I know it will be for the last time.