Sunflowers (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Revelation

From what I am told, I am obviously looking better; inwardly my heart is rather full of so many feelings and divergent hopes, for I am amazed to be getting better
.

—Vincent to Theo, Arles, late January 1889

O

nce I’d been one of the
filles
most in demand at No. 1, Rue du Bout d’Arles, but not any more. Saturday night, the stream of customers was steady, and I sat alone at the bar, the only girl without a single
mec
or a single franc. Jacqui’d had three customers already, little Minette four—I’d been counting. So had Madame Virginie.

I’d started working again a few days after that night at the yellow house. I couldn’t keep taking Françoise’s money, and even with her help, weeks of not working had left a dent in my box of coins. I needed to make more and fast, for my future and Vincent’s. But the francs didn’t come as quickly as they used to. The first night, two of my former regulars had ignored my smiles, and I’d gotten the leftovers: a fat farmer who’d said to Madame Virginie in thick Provençal, “She the only one free?
Acord
, but I’m paying a franc.” In my room he’d tried to bargain down to fifty centimes.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked Françoise after I took a bath to get rid of his smell. “You’d think I had spots or a disease!”

“Things’ll pick up,” she said, but I knew
Le Forum Républicain
had done its work. Nobody wanted to screw the crazy painter’s whore.

Old Louis Farce stopped me on my way to the market the next morning and offered me a post in his
maison
. He pulled open the folds of my cape and said, “Nice
nénés
, not too small, not too big. We change your name, dress you up, you’ll be a rich girl in no time.” I tugged my cape shut and told him what he could do with that notion.

I didn’t worry Vincent with my money troubles. I put on my best face during my daily visits to the yellow house: watching him paint, helping with chores, looking after him without coddling. Every day he seemed stronger, and I stopped searching for signs of weakness or reminding him not to work too hard. Another fifty francs from Theo raised his spirits, for he was able to catch up on his debts. He returned to the portrait of Madame Roulin he’d begun before his illness, signing it, with a flourish,
La Berceuse
, “the woman rocking a cradle.” He was so pleased with it that he made a second version, then started a third. Pester him as I might, though, I couldn’t persuade him to paint outside.

The door to the
maison
swung open, and I looked to see who Madame Virginie would push off on me. “Vincent!” I ran to him and grabbed his hands. “What are you doing here?”

“Dr. Rey told me that I’m nearly recovered. That calls for a celebration,
non?
”

I took him to a corner table, then went to the kitchen for coffee. Memories were flickering in his face when I returned, and his eyes darted nervously around the room. Other customers were staring at him, probably wondering if he’d do something crazy. “We don’t have to stay here,” I said. “We can go upstairs, or back to the house—”

“I can’t hide forever,” he said, and I took his hand with a smile. In that moment, I thought him the bravest person I’d ever known.

We talked softly together and drank our coffee until the other customers grew weary of staring and turned their attention back to the girls. Vincent had just whispered that he wanted to go upstairs, and I’d just responded with a playful squeeze of his thigh under the table, when Madame Virginie appeared. “Monsieur Vincent!” Her voice was louder than usual. “So nice to see you’ve recovered from your illness.”

He blinked at her, as confused as I was. “Thank you, Madame, but I must apologize for my behavior during my last visit. I wasn’t myself. It won’t happen again.”

“
Pas de problème
,” she said, then added conspiratorially, “everyone here goes cracked sometime—the mistral, you know. Well, I shall leave you to Rachel’s company.
Bonne soirée
.”

Then something wonderful happened. One by one Madame Virginie’s
filles
came to speak to Vincent, smiling and expressing delight on seeing him, wishing him well. Françoise even kissed him on the cheek. Vincent seemed overwhelmed by the attention, and I was filled with love for the girls, treating him with such compassion. We knew what it felt like to be shunned and condemned as an outsider. He was one of us.

Jacqui was the last to approach, and she took a seat without asking. “I want to apologize for how I acted to both of you,” she said with a smile. “I’d like us to be friends.”

“Ce n’est rien,”
Vincent said, more generously than I would have. “Your apology is accepted.”

“Thank you, Monsieur. But where’s your friend?” Vincent told her that Gauguin had gone back to Paris, and she said, “That’s too bad, he sure does show a girl a good time. Well,
salut
, I’ve got a fellow waiting for me.” Jacqui rose and strolled away, then came back, as if she’d forgotten something important. “Oh, and Monsieur, I meant to say—”

Triumph gleamed in her eyes as she glanced at me. Suddenly I knew what was coming, and nothing I could do or say would stop it.

“—I’m sorry about the baby.”

Vincent stared at her. “What baby?”

Jacqui put her hand to her bosom in feigned innocence. “Rachel hasn’t told you? I wouldn’t have said anything, but I was sure she…oh dear, I’m so sorry…” She backed away with an apologetic look on her face.

“Told me what?” Vincent asked me, fear in his eyes. “What baby, Rachel, what is she talking about?”

“Let’s not talk about this here,
mon cher
,” I said hurriedly. “Let’s go to the house.”

How long Jacqui must have waited, silent and motionless like a cat watches its prey, waiting for the chance to strike. Vincent said nothing as we walked across the Place Lamartine, but I could imagine the suspicion racing through his head: that I’d gotten pregnant but had had an abortion rather than give birth to his child. The crazy painter’s child.

He contained himself no longer once we entered the studio and I lit the gaslamps. He seized me and gave me a shake. “Tell me, Rachel—you must tell me!”

I glanced at the many faces of Marcelle Roulin, of her mother.
Maybe if I whisper the words, they won’t hurt as much
. “Vincent, that night in December…I had a miscarriage.”

He dropped his hands from my shoulders. “What?”

“I was pregnant. I lost the child.”

“Was it mine?” I couldn’t answer, I could only nod to the floor. “Oh Christ, oh dear God. Why,
why
didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know I was pregnant. If I’d known, I would have told you, I promise.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

I shook my head.

He paced in a tight circle, running his hands through his hair, looking at the paintings, the floor, anywhere but at me. He rushed to the easel and grabbed his palette, squeezed paint from the tubes, worked on the third
répetition
of Madame Roulin’s portrait as if I hadn’t been there. It was so quiet I could hear nothing but the tapping of his brush against the canvas and the ticking of the clock in the hall. I held my breath, watching him, waiting for the explosion.

“All those paintings I did of the baby,” he finally said. “It’s almost like I sensed it.”

Tap, tap. Tick, tick.

“I painted Roulin for the first time after Marcelle was born. I asked him to pose because once I knew what it felt like, to be so proud and so happy. When Sien came home from the hospital with her baby, I watched him sleeping in his cradle for the longest time, and I drew him too. When he got bigger and could crawl, he’d tug at my coat or climb against my leg until I pulled him onto my lap, and he’d sit there for hours if I let him, watching me work. I thought I’d never feel anything like that again. If only I’d known—”

He hurled the palette against the wall, colors splattering in a rainbow against the stark white. Flinging his brushes after it, he fell to the floor to sob into his hands, and I knelt on the tiles to take him in my arms. He was muttering to himself, and at first I couldn’t understand. Then when I could, his words cut like a razor to the heart. “It’s my fault. I killed our baby.”

“No, Vincent, you mustn’t think that, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It”—I stumbled over my own words—“it wasn’t meant to be.”

“I frightened you when I…If I had even suspected…I’m so sorry…”

I stroked his hair and tried to soothe him. “Dr. Dupin says I can have other children. There can be another baby one day.”

“Not with me. It’s too late.”

“I don’t believe that. There’s plenty of time.”

He looked past me to the paintings of little Marcelle. “You could have died, Rachel. If you had died…”

“I was sick for a while, but I’m well now. Françoise and Dr. Dupin took good care of me. I’m well now.”

I held him until his weeping subsided. I could barely hear his next question, so softly did he ask it. “Why weren’t you going to tell me?”

“I was afraid it’d hurt you too much,” I whispered.

“But you’ve had to bear it all alone. All this time you’ve been grieving, and I—”

“It was more important that you get well,” I started to say, but my strength left me. It was my turn to dissolve into sobs, his turn to comfort me and try to take the hurt away. We didn’t speak any more but just held each other, with the ticking of the clock to break the silence.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Relapse

A wife you cannot give me, a child you cannot give me, work you cannot give me. Money, yes. But what good is it to me if I must do without the rest?

—Vincent to Theo, Nuenen, February 1884

W

hen I arrived at the yellow house the next morning, Vincent didn’t answer my knock, and the door opened easily under my hand. I hadn’t wanted to go back to the
maison
. I’d told him I’d stay with him, sleep in his bed or the other room—whatever he pleased—but he’d kept saying he wanted to be alone. As I’d walked away across the Place Lamartine, I’d glanced back to see him through the studio window, picking his brushes and palette from the floor.

He often forgot to lock the door when he went out. Perhaps he’d gone to the hospital to see Dr. Rey, I told myself, to the public bathing-house for a wash, or to the garden for a walk. Just to be certain, I called his name as I went into the studio. No answer.

During the night he’d finished the third portrait of Madame Roulin. It stood on the floor, propped against the table where it would slowly dry, and already a new canvas waited on the easel. Sketchy charcoal lines and the beginnings of painting showed me what he’d be doing next: a fourth
répetition
. Four copies of the same picture. The same woman rocking a cradle.

His palette and brushes were heaped on the worktable where he’d left them. Dried paint encrusted the bristles, green from Madame Roulin’s skirt and the wallpaper background, red from the floor, orange from her hair. Those brushes were fine sable, sent by Theo all the way from Paris. Vincent always cleaned them after working. Always.

“Vincent!” I ran into the hall and up the stairs. “Vincent, are you here?”

Soft singing stopped me on the landing. His singing, on the other side of the closed bedroom door—in Dutch, so I couldn’t understand the words, but the lilting tune said the song was a lullaby. What had he done? I wiggled the knob, but it was stuck, and I pushed against the door with my shoulder to force it free.

The green shutters stood open to the winter, and Vincent sat before the window, rocking back and forth, humming that tune with his arms wrapped around himself. He wore no jacket, only a shirt and trousers, and his feet were bare. Red stained his fingers. Paint. This time it was only paint.

“I have to leave,” he said before I could speak. He didn’t turn around. “I have to go to Nuenen.”

“Leave—why? Has something happened to your mother or sister?”

He kept rocking in the chair. “Theo says I belong with the family. Theo says I have to leave you.”

I felt faint and grabbed the bedpost. How had Theo learned about me? Dr. Rey? Surely not Joseph Roulin, surely not Reverend Salles. Surely not Vincent himself, he’d been so determined…

Gauguin.

I could see him sitting across from Theo in the Paris gallery, his expression so concerned, his voice so earnest. “A whore down in Arles has your brother under some kind of spell. He wants to marry her, you best stop it before he ruins himself.” Gauguin would say he was being a friend, that he only wanted to help. And Theo would believe him. He must have sent Vincent a letter, which had come in the early morning post, or a telegram, if he was angry enough.

“If I don’t leave,” Vincent said, “Theo will stop sending me money. I won’t be able to paint.”

I’d been wrong about everything. Wrong to think Theo would be sympathetic, wrong to think Vincent wouldn’t leave me. “Your painting, always your damn painting!” I cried. “How could you do this, when you know how much I love you? How can you throw me away like another one of your whores?”

He turned to face me, eyes red, traces of tears marking his cheeks. “You mustn’t worry. I’ll send you something from time to time—”

“Send me something? What do you take me for?”

“—if I can do it without Father finding out. He’s more cross than Theo about all this.”

Oh, God
.

“Vincent,” I said slowly, “your father is dead.”

He tilted his head to stare at me. “Nonsense. He came to visit us, don’t you remember? I thought once he saw how happy we were, he’d understand, but he doesn’t. None of them do.” He walked to me and enfolded me in his arms. “Maybe after I’ve been there a while I can convince my family and come back to be with you. We can work out our problems, try again.” He sighed against my ear. “I never meant to hurt you, Sien.”

There was no letter from Theo, no journey to Nuenen. Gauguin hadn’t said anything.

He doesn’t know who I am
.

Vincent held me tighter when he felt me tremble. “Please don’t cry, Sien, my Sien. I promise I’ll do everything I can, for you and the children too. I’m so sorry.”

Oh, God. No. No.

I broke from his embrace. As calmly as I could manage, I said, “Vincent, dear, you look tired. Why don’t you rest a while?” I pulled the window shutters closed, then helped him into bed.

He gazed up at me from the pillow. “In the middle of the night I watched the little one in his cradle for the longest time. The longest time. Will you stay with me, Sien?”

I winced at the name but tried to smile as I gave the blanket a last tuck. “Only if you rest.” He closed his eyes, and I felt his forehead. No fever that I could tell. This was all my fault. If only—

I shut his door as quietly as I could and tiptoed down the stairs. Even if I hired a carriage, it could be thirty, forty minutes by the time I found Dr. Rey and brought him back with me. I couldn’t leave Vincent alone for too long—

“Where’s the fire,
bello chatouno?
” called an old man sitting in front of the Café de la Gare, as I ran through the Place Lamartine. I found Joseph Roulin in the postal headquarters near the station, sorting the latest mail delivery, and when I told him what was happening, he gave the work to someone else and sprinted into the street. “I’ll fetch Dr. Rey,” he said over his shoulder. “You go back to the house.”

Vincent was asleep in his bed, tossing and moaning, but asleep. I stood at the window and watched for the doctor’s carriage. Finally it came racing through the square, and I hurried down to meet him. “We’ll take Vincent to the hospital, Mademoiselle,” Dr. Rey said, striding into the house with his black bag in hand. He’d brought two orderlies, who carried a stretcher, and Roulin was with them too. The doctor stopped me before I could follow them upstairs. “You should stay here. Vincent’s not likely to react well.”

When the men entered Vincent’s room, first there was quiet, then the furious cry, “I will not go back there! I will not be caged!” A loud crash and Vincent’s voice again, spewing hateful curses I’d never heard him use.

I dashed up the stairs, calling his name, but Joseph Roulin hustled out and grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“They’re hurting him!”

“The doctor is trying to give him a sedative. Go downstairs and stay out of the way.”

Another crash, now Dr. Rey’s voice: “Vincent, we’re your friends, we’re trying to help you. Hold him steady!”

I squirmed to break free from Roulin’s grasp. “I won’t leave him! Let me in!”

“They’ll be bringing him out, and they’ll need to get down the stairs. Now get out of the way as I tell you, or I’ll carry you myself!” Reluctantly I returned to my post downstairs in the hallway, and Roulin hustled back inside.

Finally it was quiet again, then Dr. Rey emerged, cautioning the two orderlies who followed him to be careful on the stairs. Roulin brought up the rear. Vincent lay motionless on the stretcher, wrapped in thick white fabric so he couldn’t move his arms or legs, face frozen into an angry snarl. I blocked the path to the door. “Why did you tie him up? He’s not an animal!”

“It’s to protect himself as well as those around him,” Dr. Rey said. “We’ll take it off when we get to the hospital.” He raised his hand before I could object. “I wish to help Vincent as much as you do, Mademoiselle. Please trust me to do what is best.”

I looked from Dr. Rey to Vincent’s chalky-gray face and moved aside. Roulin followed the orderlies to help lift the stretcher into the carriage, while the doctor stayed behind long enough to say, “I feared he might relapse—he tried to do too much, too soon. I will do everything I can, Mademoiselle.” I wondered if I should tell him about the news that had caused Vincent’s collapse, then decided I would not. Our baby was our sadness, Vincent’s and mine. I didn’t want anyone else to know.

Roulin patted me on the shoulder as the doctor joined the orderlies in the carriage and they drove away. “Vincent pulled through this once, Mademoiselle Rachel, he’ll pull through it again. The lad’s got gumption.” He cleared his throat and added gruffly, “I’m sorry I had to be rough with you inside. Shall I walk you home?”

“No, thank you, Monsieur, I’ll stay here a while.”

“I’ll send word if I hear any news. Let me know if you need anything,
d’accord?
” I thanked him for his help before he tipped his cap and left for the postal headquarters.

Little things around the house—the barely begun painting on Vincent’s easel, his pipe sitting on the chair together with the book he’d been reading—made me feel more helpless and empty. I had to do something, anything, so I carried the broom and dustpan up to his bedroom. In the scuffle he’d broken his porcelain pitcher and basin, and thrown things everywhere. His dressing table was empty, the bedding crumpled on the floor. All the pictures were gone from the walls, even his Japanese prints, their glass frames shattered into tiny pieces. Only the mirror hung untouched where it belonged.

Careful not to cut my hands, I swept up the fragments of porcelain and glass and stacked the prints on the chair. The paintings I hung back on the wall, then I brought a pitcher and basin from the other room and made the bed, straightening the covers and fluffing the pillows as I’d done many a time before. I retrieved Vincent’s other things, his yellow straw hat almost making me cry as I hung it on a peg with his blue smock. That silly yellow hat, even more battered now than when I’d first seen it.

His razor lay in the corner. As I walked to the table to set it with everything else, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, holding it, and my hand shook. Had he looked in the mirror like this, that December night? Had it been a slow, deliberate cut or a sharp one, done in a flash? Had he cried out or borne the pain without a sound?

I flung open the window shutters and threw the razor into the street with all the force I had in my arm. A passing delivery boy looked hastily around before tucking the razor into his pockets and continuing on his way. I pulled the shutters closed, then pulled back the blankets on the bed I’d just made and crawled into them. Vincent’s pillow smelled of paint and pipe smoke.

“Rachel, dear, wake up.”

I opened my eyes to find Madame Roulin, hair caught up in a plaited bun, apron over her green dress, as if the portraits in the studio had come to life. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

I sat up and held Vincent’s blanket to my chest. “Since they took him away.”

For three days I’d been wandering the lonely rooms, sitting in the studio among his paintings or in the kitchen with cold cups of tea. Staring out the bedroom window into the Place Lamartine, staring at the sunflowers or the splashed paint on the studio wall. I’d jumped at every sound and run to look when the post had been shoved into the letterbox. Nothing from Joseph Roulin, nothing from Dr. Rey. Only a letter from Theo, which I’d left on the kitchen table for Vincent to find.

“Making yourself ill will not help him, dear,” Madame Roulin said with a frown.

I shrugged and pulled my feet under me. “Forgive me, Madame, why did you come?”

“My husband told me what happened. I was away with the children visiting my mother in Lambesc. I came to clean things up, but it seems you already have.” She glanced around the room, up at Vincent’s paintings on the wall, then back at me. “Now we need to get you cleaned up, that’ll make you feel better. Stay here and I’ll fetch some water.”

She returned with a full pitcher and poured fresh water into the basin. “Come wash your face,” she said in a motherly way, as if I’d been young Camille. It felt good to scrub away three days’ worth of dried tears. “Now sit.” She dragged Vincent’s comb through my tangled hair and clucked her tongue over the knots. “Where’s the bath?”

“He doesn’t have one. He goes to the hotel next door, or to the public bathing-house.”

She clucked her tongue again. “Only a man could live without a proper washtub. They wouldn’t wash at all if we didn’t make them. Gracious, what pretty hair you have.”

That’s what Maman used to say. She combed my hair like that too, slow and careful from the crown of my head down the length of my back. She’d keep combing my hair even when there were no more tangles, to make it shiny, she said. Any worries I had, any bad things that happened that day, vanished while Maman combed my hair.

“Madame Roulin,” I said quietly, “there’s something you must know. Vincent and I—”

The comb made another sweep down my back. “I already do know, dear. Vincent told me everything the day I visited him in the hospital, after his first
crise
.”

She’d been so kind to me in the Café de la Gare, was being so kind to me now. Kind to Vincent, coming to pose for him and cooking him dinner at her family’s house. Did she know other things, did she know her husband had been with Françoise that night and many other nights besides? “Oh, goodness, don’t cry,” she said when she saw my hand go to my eyes. “Vincent needs you to be strong.”

“No one has told me anything,” I said. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“There’s nothing new to tell. My husband learned this morning that Vincent still…sees things and hears things. But the doctor thinks he’ll come out of it, take comfort from that.” She patted me on the shoulders. “There, you look better already. Why don’t you come home with me? You can have a warm bath, a good supper…”