Leaving Van Gogh

Eighteen





IT WAS HOT AGAIN the next day. The sun beat down on us like a hammer on an anvil. To my surprise, I had been able to sleep for a few hours, but I felt slow and gritty-eyed all day.

The messenger I had been awaiting and fearing came in the evening, just as the sun finally set. When I heard the bell sound, I knew what had happened, but I waited until Madame Chevalier called me to the door. It was a boy from the inn, who told me that Vincent had shot himself. He had walked back to the inn from the fields and managed to stumble to his room, but Ravoux was worried when he did not come down to supper. He went upstairs and found Vincent lying on his bed. Vincent told the innkeeper what he had done, and asked for me.

I picked up my emergency bag and called for Paul. I sent him sprinting ahead to tell Ravoux that we were on our way, while I hurried at the much slower pace of a sixty-two-year-old man, accompanied by the boy from the inn, who warned me that there was a lot of blood. Vincent could still speak, he said, and Dr. Mazery would meet us there.

I took the stairs as fast as I could and was breathless when I stood in the doorway of Vincent’s garret. The room reeked of blood. It is an unmistakable odor, sharp and metallic. The chamber had already been transformed into a sickroom. Vincent’s cot had been pulled away from the wall to permit access to both sides. Lamps had been brought up and placed on every surface, a basin of water and reddened towels lay beneath the bed, and a carafe stood on Vincent’s table. His paintings and a pair of Japanese prints still hung on the walls but seemed to recede into the gloom, as if abashed at their own beauty and vivacity.

I liked Mazery—he was a burly, bearded man with a simple outlook. He stood up and shook my hand. He did not say anything beyond a few words of greeting, but his frown and the slight shake of his head made his opinion clear: The patient was in a critical state.

Vincent was watching me. He lay almost flat, covered by a tattered blanket. The left half of it was sodden, heavy with his blood. I put down my case and lowered myself into the chair that Mazery had vacated. “I shot myself,” he said, in a low voice.

“May I see?” I asked. He nodded, a tiny movement. I pulled back the blanket.

Mazery had already cleaned and bandaged the injury. It was a surprisingly tidy bullet wound: a small, dark circle at the edge of the ribs, surrounded by a larger halo of dark bruising. Blood was still welling from it, but not with the arterial pulses that would have made this a crisis. I reached for my case, but Mazery forestalled me by passing over his stethoscope. Vincent’s pulse was regular, and his heartbeat revealed no anomalies. If he had tried to destroy his heart with a bullet, he had failed. I could not get a clear sound from his lungs. Perhaps there was fluid in the thoracic cavity. His breath was slightly shallow, but calm. If the bleeding could be stopped, if no infection set in, if the digestive organs had not been harmed … The doctor in me wanted the patient to live: the friend wanted to let him go.

“Are you in any pain?” I asked Vincent, bending over his chest. Listening carefully, I tapped here and there, palpating his organs as I had done the first time I examined him.

“No. A little. Just there, where the bullet went in.” His left hand came up slightly, as if to point to it.

“Could you drink some water?” I asked, straightening up. I began to replace the dressing, using fresh lint.

“Why?”

“You might be more comfortable.”

“Oh.” He seemed to dismiss the thought, and closed his eyes. “Might I smoke?” he asked, without opening them.

“I see no reason why not,” I answered, looking at Mazery for confirmation. “Your lungs do not seem to be affected. Let me finish this bandage and I will give you your pipe.” It was hard to secure the wrapping: I had to slip my hand beneath Vincent’s back to wind it around. I did not want to raise him, lest the bullet should move.

“The bleeding seems to have slowed,” I said to Mazery. “Shall we see if there is a clean cover for our patient?” Together we lifted the sodden blanket from him and rolled the bloody section into the middle.

“Paul!” I called down the stairs. “Ask Monsieur Ravoux for a clean blanket, and come up here to sit with Vincent for a moment.” His light step sounded on the stair. He looked anxious. Well, it was natural enough. I had not been thinking clearly when I brought him with me; the boy had no experience of such scenes. He held a coarse cotton quilt in his hands, and I took it from him. “Wait just a moment,” I told him. “Let me put this over Vincent and make him more comfortable before you go to sit with him.”

Mazery had cut off Vincent’s shirt but left his trousers. The blood that had soaked into them had dried already to a hard crust, fusing them to his legs. Perhaps we would remove them later. I settled the quilt over him, checking the bandage quickly. It was not yet saturated. “Paul will sit with you for a moment while I confer with Dr. Mazery,” I said.

Vincent looked me in the eye. Summoning his energy, he said, “Doctor, if I have failed, I will just have to do it all over again.” I stood still for a moment looking down at him. The day before, he had seemed desperate. It had not been hard to believe that he was on the verge of madness. Now he spoke as calmly as if he referred to a mundane project that must be completed to his satisfaction. There was no way to answer him. I went to the door and beckoned Paul to come in.

Mazery and I moved down the narrow hall into an empty bedroom to discuss our patient. We paused for a moment, faces lit by the candle Mazery was holding. There was very little to say. “The heart does not seem to be affected,” I offered.

“Nor the lungs, I think. He has not coughed.”

“Should he be moved?” I asked.

“To a larger room, with better light, possibly,” Mazery said. “Though I don’t believe there is one, short of Ravoux’s own bedroom.”

“No, I suppose not.” I looked around at the cracked plaster on the walls nearby.

We were silent. Mazery knew as well as I how powerless we were. I have read since then of remarkable images from inside the body, produced by a kind of camera. Such a camera might have helped us to locate the bullet. I know, too, that most hospitals now perform surgery under circumstances of the most scrupulous hygiene, and that incidence of infection in wounds has been drastically reduced. So perhaps today a patient might survive an invasion of the thoracic cavity. But we were just a pair of provincial doctors in the attic of a village inn. These methods were not available to us. It would have taken a miracle to keep Vincent alive.

I was grateful for that. We could, in good conscience, let the man die, as he so plainly wanted to do. “So we will keep him quiet,” I suggested, “and hope to control the bleeding?” Mazery nodded. “What do you think about feeding him?” I asked. “A little broth, perhaps?”

“At most. Best not to strain his digestion for a day or two. Is there anything you want to give him, Doctor? A remedy for pain? He seems calm enough.”

I shook my head. “I do not believe there is a remedy for this kind of situation,” I said.

When we returned to the room, it was silent. Paul was sitting by the bed, looking pinched and pale. Vincent lay gazing at the ceiling. Only the slight movement of his chest gave away that he was still alive. His voice came, though, thready but commanding: “My pipe, Doctor?”

“Of course,” I answered. “Wait for me outside,” I whispered to Paul, who slipped out of the room like a shadow. “Dr. Mazery, would you like to go home? I will stay with Monsieur van Gogh. Or I may have my son keep watch, if you have no objection. He can alert you quickly if there is any need.”

“Certainly, colleague,” he said, with a bow of the head. It seemed uncharacteristically courtly, yet appropriate. The presence of death somehow calls for formality.

Vincent and I were now alone. Dark had fallen, and the skylight above his bed reflected the light from the room. “May I put out one of these lamps?” I asked. “They give off so much heat.” He lifted a few fingers as if to say, “As you like.” His stained jacket, made of the blue cotton twill worn by plumbers, hung on a hook by the table. I had often seen him take his pipe from the breast pocket, so I reached into it. My fingers curled around the pipe’s familiar shape. I felt the left-hand pocket, then the right, and retrieved his pouch of tobacco. He smoked a much rougher blend than I did, and as I lit it, the harsh smoke seared my eyes. Squinting, I crossed the room and put the pipe into his mouth. He drew on it, then exhaled. He seemed satisfied.

I snuffed two of the lamps, leaving us with only one source of light aside from the candle next to the bed. I considered opening the skylight but decided that Paul, both younger and taller than I, could accomplish that task. I slid the basin and bloody towels toward the door so they could be taken downstairs. All of these domestic tasks that have busied nurses in sickrooms the world over came easily to me. They were simpler than talking.

What would I have said, anyway? Vincent was already far away. He had his face set on a final horizon. Now that I am old, I sometimes glimpse that horizon myself, and I am not sorry. There is a restfulness to it. What happens here on earth has little significance beside the fact that one will go on alone, to whatever awaits. If, indeed, anything awaits. Jo—or Madame van Gogh Gosschalk, as I should call her—likes to think that Vincent and Theo are together in Heaven. I fear that Jo’s Heaven would be somewhat tame for Vincent, but perhaps it is a place of infinite landscapes and endless sunlight.

I sat in the chair by the bed and looked up at the ceiling to see what might be visible from Vincent’s pillow. There was nothing there but the graying plaster and the skylight, now lightly veiled in smoke.

“You should have hung a painting up on the ceiling to look at as you fell asleep,” I said. He did not respond, but the corners of his lips curled around the stem of the pipe. I felt strangely relaxed. After the tension of the day, it was restful to sit next to Vincent doing nothing at all. I remembered that Paul was downstairs, waiting to be summoned. I would also need to alert Theo. But I did not move. I just sat there remembering. I thought about the first time I saw him paint, and the time we made the etching. I remembered his antics with the baby and his enthusiasm for the beauty of Auvers. I remembered the ink drawing of the death’s-head moth that I had seen on the letter at Jo and Theo’s apartment. Nothing escaped Vincent’s eye, I thought; he captured beauty wherever he found it. He had reanimated my life with his passion for art.

His genius came at too high a price, it seemed. Why should we expect a man who painted as he did to negotiate life calmly and reasonably? Maybe there was actually no medical diagnosis for a case like Vincent’s. Melancholia, epilepsy, hysteria might all be irrelevant. He saw the beauty in the world and he felt the heartbreak. Maybe they were just too much for him in the end.

At any rate, Vincent had finally had his way. He was not in terrible pain. He was weak, certainly. But nothing would be required of him now except patience. I reached over to touch the bandage, slipping my hand beneath the quilt. It was soaked. I glanced back at Vincent, whose eyes were now closed. I could change the bandage, but I did not want to wake him. He would bleed to death over the next day or so. If an internal blood clot formed, it would slow the process. Such a clot might form and then dissolve, or movement might dislodge it. So could the shifting of the bullet. We had little control over the outcome. The best thing a doctor could do for Vincent van Gogh now was to make his final hours as comfortable and as pleasant as possible. This was a task I could accomplish. More, I could put my heart into it.

I stood up, and Vincent’s eyes opened. “I must write to Theo,” I told him. “Will a letter to Cité Pigalle reach him, or do I need the number of his apartment there?”

Vincent shook his head and closed his eyes. It didn’t matter. I would send someone to Paris tomorrow to find him at the gallery. Poor Theo: It would be a terrible shock. In the meantime, I had one more duty to carry out. I summoned Paul from downstairs again, and he helped me change Vincent’s bandage. We got a towel from Ravoux and draped it over Vincent’s side, beneath the quilt. The innkeeper was terribly anxious and eager to do whatever he could to save his guest. I tried to soothe him, but all that I could find to say was that Vincent was resting.

I looked back from the door, on my way out. Vincent lay still. Paul sat gazing at him. He turned and met my gaze. “Is there anything I should do?” he whispered.

I shook my head. “I’m quite sure he will have a quiet night. Tomorrow will be more difficult, so I must go home and sleep. If there should be any change, if Vincent feels pain, if he starts to bleed more, or to cough, get Monsieur Ravoux to sit here and run like the wind to fetch me. You are here because you have the swiftest feet among us—and because you have been a friend to Vincent,” I told Paul. I saw him sit a little bit taller and wished that I could remember, more often, to praise him.

There was none of the customary song in the bar downstairs. Vincent had kept a distance from most of the inhabitants of Auvers, aside from painting a few children and young women. He had probably known none of the men who sat uneasily at the café tables, muttering quietly to each other. But when I stepped into the room to tell Ravoux that I was leaving, everyone fell silent.

“I am going home,” I said, making my voice loud enough to carry across the room. “My son, Paul, is upstairs with Monsieur van Gogh. I think Monsieur van Gogh will be comfortable enough tonight, but in the morning his brother must be sent for.”

Ravoux was wiping down the tin counter, and his arm halted in its sweep. “What a terrible thing, Doctor. He was a quiet man, never difficult. Will he recover?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Dr. Mazery and I will do our best, but he is bleeding terribly.”

“We’ll say a prayer for him,” came a voice from the back of the room, followed by murmurs of agreement.

“Yes, do,” I said. “I’m sure that will help him.”

Ravoux came out from behind the counter and stepped through the door with me into the warm, moonlit night. “But what I want to know, Doctor, is where did he get the gun?”

I tried to look puzzled. “I can’t imagine, Ravoux. He barely knows a soul here, besides you and me. It could not have come from us. Perhaps he brought it with him from the South.”

“I suppose that must be it,” Ravoux said, nodding at my apparent wisdom. “I have heard they’re hot-blooded down there. So you really think he’ll die?”

“I do,” I said, relieved to be honest. “Mazery and I can’t do much to save him. And you know how it is, Ravoux, when a man really wants to die.”

“Of course. We see it all the time in the old ones, don’t we? Just get tired and stop. Not a bad thing, really. But he was so young.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s what makes it hard for the rest of us. I’ll be back early in the morning, unless Paul comes for me in the night.”

I walked away. The moon was full, and it gave off so much light that my shadow glided before me, a sharp outline with a hole of light in one side, where I held my lantern. I lifted my left hand so that the lantern’s light obliterated most of my shadow’s torso. That was where Vincent had shot himself, with the gun I had given him.

I dropped my hand to my side, and my shadow resumed a more manlike form. As I walked beneath trees, the shadow merged with the general blackness, leaving my lantern to shine in a golden circle. I was too old to be spending these midnight hours roaming about, but I had to go find the gun. I was certain I knew where it was.

Until I saw Vincent wounded, I hadn’t considered the harm that a bullet does to a living body. Torn flesh, broken blood vessels, damaged organs, bruising, scorching, pain. Infection. The possibility of failure, of permanent incapacitation had not crossed my mind as I weighed my responsibility to my friend and patient. I could not help wondering, as I walked, what it meant that he had tried to shoot himself in the heart. Had he held the pistol at his temple and shied away from the destruction that would cause? I found myself attempting to replicate his gesture as he pressed the gun to his chest.

Then I wondered about the preceding moments. Did he walk up and down trying to steady his nerve? Had he strode up the hill this morning with the intention of killing himself? Or did he sit there, trying to paint, willing his hands to pick up the brush, to squeeze paint onto the palette? Did he seize the weapon when the tools of his trade failed him? No, it was not the tools that failed. It was something in himself. Yet I did not believe that his gesture had been a kind of punishment. His suicide was a strange form of kindness to himself. It was as if he had relented, in a way, and no longer held himself to an impossible standard. He allowed himself to be human, and mortal.

My errand this evening was to find the gun, for I feared it could be traced to me. I trusted Marguerite’s discretion absolutely, yet I felt this step was urgent. Hence the spectacle of an old man pacing up a hill of wheat in the moonlight. The glossy stalks caught on my clothes as I passed, gleaming silver and black in a braided pattern, dipping and springing back as I passed. I could have been walking chest-high through an ocean.

Sometimes in dreams you cannot do what you know is necessary; your feet will not move, the door will not open. But at other times, everything is easy, and I felt that odd magical power that night. I knew just where to go: I unerringly located Vincent’s camp stool and the paint box next to it. I expected to find the gun lying on the wheat nearby, and there it was. I even picked up Vincent’s easel. I wanted to erase his presence from the field. This had been an unhappy spot for him. Let him be forgotten by it.

I strode down the hill with my clumsy burden, cresting the waves of grain as if under sail. A breeze had picked up, stroking huge, invisible hands across the field and stirring the topmost branches of the trees. I felt weirdly powerful. I deposited Vincent’s painting equipment by the church, where it would be found and brought back to the inn. The gun I intended for the river. I followed the railroad track and threw the gun into the center of a pool where the water was deep and exceedingly murky. It has never come to light.