Leaving Van Gogh

Six





ANYONE WHO BECAME a friend of Vincent’s learned very quickly what an important part Theo played in his life. Vincent referred to his brother constantly, quoting him with admiration and respect. He also made it clear that he did not consider himself the only artist in the family. “I may be the one who holds the paintbrush,” he told me, “but Theo is in every way a partner in this enterprise. You have met him, so you know his ideas about painting.”

“I have to confess that we have spent most of our time together discussing you.”

Vincent laughed. “Well, now that I am so pleasantly settled, you can discuss art instead.” He was intent that Theo and his family should spend a day with him in Auvers, and on the second Sunday in June, they finally did.

It was one of Vincent’s chief desires that everything in his life be connected. He felt that the people he liked must know and like each other. We should all have read the books he admired, and agree with him about them. Likewise with painters. He even told me several times that he felt at ease with me because I was just like him and his brother: a redhead of a nervous temperament. When I told him that I had grown up in Lille, on the Belgian border, I became for him a Man of the North, yet another bond I shared with him and Theo.

Theo had promised to come on Sunday regardless of the weather. Johanna and the baby would join him if the day was fine. It rained on Saturday night, and when I woke on Sunday there were puddles in the garden, but the sky had begun to clear. The street bell rang while I was behind the house sweeping water off the red table. It was Vincent, come to see that all was prepared.

He was more garrulous than I had seen him, talking rapidly and gesturing. In his right hand he held a bird’s nest that he had found, which he intended to give to the baby. He was terribly early; the train would not arrive at the nearby station of Chaponval (closer to my house than the bigger station of Auvers-sur-Oise) for another hour. I handed him my broom.

“I hope that we will be able to have our meal outdoors,” I said. “I think that if we brush the water off the table and disperse the puddles, they will be dry by the time Theo gets here.” I took the bird’s nest, which Vincent was in danger of breaking with his nervous fidgeting. “I will put this on the table by the front door,” I said. “We’ll make sure you remember it when you leave for the station.”

Madame Chevalier was unhappy at having “that nasty thing” in her house, but I found a box for it. Then I raided her scullery for some rags to wipe the red chairs. When I went back outside, Vincent had cleared off the table and was thrashing with my broom at an especially deep puddle, watching the drops fly in arcs through the sky. Each time he hit the water, the dog Nero barked and tried to catch the drops in his mouth. It was hard to say which was more agitated, the man or the beast.

“I do believe the sky is brighter now, Doctor,” Vincent said, dropping the broom to the brick terrace. “Will there be cushions for the ladies to sit on?”

“We can bring cushions from the house if you think we should,” I said. “In the meantime, let us dry the chairs.”

“I hope Johanna and Mademoiselle Gachet will be friends,” he said, tipping a chair so that the water ran all over his feet. “I think they have a great deal in common. Music, for instance.”

“I know Marguerite is looking forward to meeting Madame van Gogh,” I said, though there was no telling what Marguerite might think about anything.

“I am sure Theo will love Auvers,” he went on. “I have hung some of my paintings around my room at Ravoux’s so that he can see what I have been doing. I painted the church this week, Doctor. And the replica of your portrait. I’ll bring that up as soon as it’s dry.”

“Have you ever done your brother’s portrait?” I asked. I would have loved to see what Vincent made of Theo in a painting.

“No. Even though I paint quickly, I have never been able to persuade him to take time to sit for me. He works such long hours, as you know. And now, with the baby, his responsibilities are even greater. Still, I would like very much to paint him and Johanna and little Vincent. Perhaps if he does come here for his vacation, we might find time for that.”

“Is he thinking of coming to Auvers? How pleasant that would be. I am sure Madame Chevalier would love to help Madame van Gogh with the baby.”

“I hope to be able to convince him,” Vincent answered. “Do you think I should go to the station now?”

I did not. He was as impatient as a child awaiting a treat. He would have had to wait on the platform for nearly an hour for his brother to arrive. I cast my eyes around the garden, trying to find a task he could do that would be time-consuming but require no skill. Brilliant as he was with a brush in his hand, Vincent was careless and distractible at almost any other manual activity. I told him to continue dispersing the puddles; he could do no harm that way—beyond further soaking his trousers. When I finally sent him to retrieve Theo from Chaponval, the sky was blue and the garden looked as if every leaf had been individually washed. The ducks and chickens had come out to begin their incessant pecking for grubs and insects, and even I felt a little bit of Vincent’s excitement.

When the street bell clanged upon his return, Vincent led a merry little procession up the steps to the house, carrying the infant in his arms. (Theo had taken possession of the bird’s nest, which Vincent had carried to the station, and which went back to Paris with them, secure in its box.) There was the usual confusion of introductions, the tour of the house, admiration of my paintings, all very congenial. Madame van Gogh—whom I think of as Jo, since Vincent referred to her that way—was older than I had expected, not a young girl but a settled matron. I liked her right away. She was quiet but cheerful, and she did not need to be the center of attention. I saw her talking to Paul and Marguerite, looking around the house and the garden, smiling at everything. Only when Vincent took the baby to introduce him to the animals in the courtyard did she look faintly anxious and whisper something to Marguerite, who was by her side.

Vincent had showed no previous interest in our beasts. I don’t expect everyone to share my pleasure in them, but I would not have thought that Vincent was even aware of my domestic menagerie until that morning. (At that time we had, in addition to the goat, six cats, three dogs, a dozen hens, one rooster, and four ducks.) He began a little game. Carrying the baby, Vincent would rush at two or three ducks pecking in the grass. They bustled away from him squawking, ruffling their feathers, and the baby laughed.

There is no success in life as sweet as making a baby laugh, and one is instantly compelled to try to do it again. Vincent dashed at a group of chickens this time. They were even more gratifying, for several of them lifted off the ground momentarily with a great flapping of wings. Even Paul, who had little patience for children, found this entertaining. I glanced at Theo, who was watching this performance. He, like the rest of us, was laughing, primarily at the deep chuckle that emerged from the child. But I observed that he put a hand out for a chair and sank into it as if he could not have stood upright for much longer. I noticed also that he was squinting in the sunlight and shading his eyes with his hands. It occurred to me that I had previously met him in the evening and in my office, which was rather gloomy. Now that we were in my sunny garden, I thought I detected something wrong with the way his eyes reacted to light. I felt a jolt of alarm. Sometimes we doctors reach an intuitive diagnosis. I knew nothing about Theo’s physical state, yet these two symptoms combined—weakness and a visual disturbance—often had a dreadful significance.

Just as my thoughts strayed in this unwelcome direction, Vincent met his match in the animal kingdom. Among the flock of chickens pecking at seeds near the coop was our rooster, a vain and proud creature. Vincent ran toward the flock, holding the baby, and they scattered with the flapping and squawking that entertained the child. But the rooster stood firm. More, he flew up to the roof of the coop and crowed.

The adults all laughed at this tiny drama, but the poor infant was startled, and in an instant he was making as much noise as the rooster. Johanna, laughing, scooped the poor child from his uncle’s arms and cradled him closely to her.

“Well! The cock went ‘cock-a-doodle-do!’ ” Vincent said, and we all laughed again. Despite the baby’s wailing, the episode had created a sense of camaraderie, and when Madame Chevalier brought out the tablecloth and silver, we all did our bit to set the table.

It was a jolly meal. Theo and Johanna asked all kinds of questions about Auvers, its history, and the painters who had worked there. There was a little bit of friction over Cézanne, whom Theo admired but Vincent did not. Johanna, however, quickly intervened to ask about the train service to Paris, and Cézanne was forgotten before anyone could get upset.

We lingered outside after the meal. Johanna put the baby onto a blanket, and Marguerite sat down next to him to shoo away the cats or chickens who came too close. He fell asleep quickly. Theo pushed his chair into the shade, and I placed another one near him, suggesting he put his feet up. “We are in the country, after all, and practically family. No need to stand on formalities.” He smiled and thanked me. Though he was in the shadows, his pupils had not expanded, and he had to lift his legs onto the chair using his hands. Theo was younger than Vincent, and no man of less than thirty-five should be so weak. My concern for him grew.

Vincent did not require a special invitation to sprawl on the grass, and Paul introduced him to a new game. They would lie still, faceup, eyes closed. Sooner or later a cat would slink over to investigate. As soon as the cat’s whiskers touched his face, Paul would open his eyes and blow a puff of air at the cat. Paul always enjoyed insulting the cats’ dignity, and of course it was entertaining to see them skitter away, then energetically begin washing as if they had never, ever made a hasty move.

It was this inconsequential amusement that caused the one uncomfortable moment in the whole day. I confess my hasty temper was the cause.

We had a cat named Chopin, an elegant black creature with bold white markings. He was normally fastidious, preferring to have nothing to do with humans unless it would result in being fed, and he was very quick with his claws. After watching Vincent and Paul for some time, Chopin sauntered over to them, and, with no provocation at all, scratched Paul’s face.

Paul sat up with a yelp, clutching his eye. The cat streaked away, invisible in a moment. The baby awoke with a start and began to roar.

So, I am sorry to say, did I. “Paul, control yourself!” I shouted. I was ashamed of him, embarrassed that a nearly full-grown man should be making such a fuss over a little scratch. “Look what you’ve done, you’ve wakened the baby! You’re not hurt at all, let me see.” I got out of my chair and tried to pull his hand away from his face, but he was too strong for me. He turned away, facing the shrubbery, and I heard him sniff. “Ridiculous,” I hissed at him. “Go into the house and have Madame Chevalier look at it.”

Without turning toward me, Paul sidled away and climbed the steps to the back door.

“Is he all right?” Vincent asked, looking up from the grass where he still sat.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Just making a childish fuss.”

“He was probably just startled, like poor little Vincent here,” suggested Johanna.

“But unlike little Vincent, he is old enough to control himself,” I muttered.

“Well, in any event, we must all go down to the inn, to see what I’ve done since I’ve been here,” announced the elder Vincent, scrambling to his feet. I was grateful for the distraction. I had not put myself in a favorable light by being so harsh to my son.

It was a perfectly beautiful afternoon, with a touch of freshness in the shade, which provided respite from the glitter of the summer sun. Vincent chose our route, and it was touching to see how considerate he was of Jo’s strength. She seemed robust, but I think he had the bachelor’s romantic sense of woman’s fragility, combined with an almost mystical respect for her maternity. He would say, for example, “I have painted a scene of the fields down in that direction, but that would be too long a walk for Johanna.” I thought privately that, given this disturbing weakness of Theo’s, it was as well that Johanna was with us to limit the itinerary. Theo could never have managed to walk down to the fields. Vincent was so excited, though, that he did not notice his brother’s apparent infirmity. Nor, to be fair, did Johanna—I did not see her watching him, as a worried wife surely would.

Vincent was so accustomed to the heat and dryness of the South that the cool freshness of our village was a revelation. He kept talking about the greens and blues that he saw everywhere, and his paintings were full of this wonder. In fact, one of the profound effects Vincent van Gogh had on my life was that he changed the way I saw the world. To this day, I look at the shadow beneath a bank of willows and see the brown, the green, the purple tones together, contrasting with the yellow, green, and even orange of the leaves. I notice patterns in the windows of city buildings or the ties of a railroad track, and I am always aware of the relations between colors, like the way a brick wall heightens the intensity of a green vine. I have seen much more beauty in my surroundings since that summer Vincent spent with us. And though I cannot capture it myself, I sometimes think I know how Vincent would have done so. He loved to talk about painting, and that day with Theo, he was especially eloquent. As we strolled through the village, he kept up a commentary, explaining what he had already painted, how he had handled it, whether he was pleased with the results.

I have explained that Theo made Vincent an allowance, but their arrangement was a little bit more complicated than that, at least in Vincent’s view. He saw his brother’s subsidy as an investment, and Theo as part owner of every painting or drawing that he made. More, he saw Theo as part creator. Thus his brother’s opinion was of the utmost importance to Vincent. Theo was fundamentally his partner in the creative enterprise, so it was essential that he be kept abreast of Vincent’s progress.

It is not a long walk from my house to the Place de la Mairie, opposite which lies Ravoux’s café and inn. The route passes several rows of cottages, whose mossy, thatched roofs Vincent found fascinating, and runs beneath the giant chestnuts that Vincent had painted when he first arrived. We were ambling slowly, passing the baby among us, pointing out this or that sight—a geranium blazing in a window or the twisted angle of a branch. Theo, however, was falling behind. I paused beside the largest chestnut tree in the village, an old giant that has since been cut down.

“Is this the tree,” I called out to Vincent, “whose blossoms you painted in that big canvas?” I own the painting now, a strikingly beautiful picture almost a meter wide. It portrays nothing but branches of chestnut blooms and leaves, with no horizon, no spatial orientation at all, almost like wallpaper. The brushwork is especially remarkable. The background is mostly blue, with darker pigment stroked over a lighter tone in a series of nervous-looking dashes that echoed the way Vincent rendered the leaves, with their strong diagonal veining. He must have used six or seven different shades of green for those leaves. But it is the blossoms themselves, an explosive mass of pink and white, that took my breath away when I first saw them. Twists of cream and ivory paint, they cluster along the branches in loose cones. Some are dotted with pink, the kind of precise detail that seems incompatible with Vincent’s swift production but that he never overlooked. Toward the left is one branch from a tree with pink flowers, more loosely brushed, lending the entire composition just the variety it requires. It is a magnificent canvas. But at that moment, on our walk to Ravoux’s, I did not care which tree inspired the painting. I wanted to give Theo time to catch up to us without drawing attention to him. When he did so, I stayed with him, asking about business at the gallery. I also observed him. It is something we doctors are good at. When a practitioner looks at you, he is not merely exhibiting good manners. He cannot help noticing your puffy face, your brittle hair, the strange way you hold your left arm.

Theo dragged his left foot. The medical term for this symptom is “locomotor ataxia.” The medical term for what seemed to be his eye condition is “Argyll Robertson pupils,” a syndrome defined by a Scottish doctor some years earlier. The name refers to pupils that contract to facilitate examination of something near at hand but that do not respond to light. The syndrome had not been named when I was an intern, but it had been observed informally. At the Salpêtrière and the men’s asylum of Bicêtre, experienced physicians had linked these unusual visual symptoms with muscular degeneration similar to what Theo displayed. The patients thus affected suffered an illness we saw all too often—syphilis.

I knew that Theo’s health was delicate: Vincent had alluded to episodes of coughing or fever. I would not have been surprised to learn that Theo had consumption. In fact, as we strolled, I realized that I had unwittingly been assessing him for the familiar symptoms that had marked Blanche: the flushed cheeks, the distinctive wet-sounding cough. I never encounter them in a patient without a dreadful sense of recognition. But this time I was certain, as we sauntered along on our Sunday outing behind his brother and his wife and his baby, that Theo van Gogh had what was crudely known as the pox. The symptoms were still subtle, and I doubted that anyone had noticed them, but to me the diagnosis was conclusive. Furthermore, his illness was advanced. If he had been my patient, I would have begun looking around for a private maison de santé where he could end his days. It is a frightening and degrading death, for the patient may become paralyzed or mad. Was it possible that this lovely little family, so fond of each other, so happy with their baby, would soon be wrenched apart, as my family had been when Blanche died?

I wondered if Theo knew of his own condition. So much shame attaches to this ailment that patients and their families are often desperate to avoid acknowledging it. It was possible that Theo could have overlooked his symptoms, or told himself that his legs were weak because of rheumatism. Johanna, preoccupied with the baby, might not have noticed anything. And Vincent? Could he have an inkling that his brother was ill?

I had no time just then to reflect on how Theo’s possible illness might affect Vincent; we were drawing near Ravoux’s inn. It is a pleasant place, with a café facing the Place de la Mairie and very modest bedrooms above. Vincent insisted we climb the two flights to his spartan chamber. There was no window other than the skylight, and the room was hot and stuffy, smelling of oil paint and tobacco and unwashed clothes. But he was proud of how tidy it was, with his spare boots tucked under the cot and his battered straw hat hung on a nail in the mottled plaster wall. I found it cheerless, despite the three landscapes mounted on the wall. Their brilliant colors only exaggerated the shabby discomfort of the room. But Theo praised it: “You’ve made it very homelike,” he said, touching the comb on what served as a dressing table. Vincent had placed a bright blue linen cloth beneath the pottery basin, the kind of cloth Madame Chevalier uses to dry glassware. I was surprised that the man whose paint box was always such a jumble had made an effort to create domestic order.

“It’s not as pleasant as the house in Arles,” Vincent said, “but it is much better than at St.-Rémy. At least my neighbors here are only other painters, not madmen. This is one of the fields where they grow peas.” He showed Theo one of the smaller canvases. “And here are the chestnut trees we just walked beneath. I was so struck by that green! But come down and see what else I’ve done,” he went on, seizing his brother by the elbow. “Ravoux lets me use the shed in the back.”

We trooped back down the steep stairs and went out to the shed. I had seen most of Vincent’s pictures, of course, so I hung back and listened as he showed them to Theo. Johanna, weighed down by the baby, sat on a low stool, her eyes traveling around the walls from one canvas to another. Marguerite stood next to them, smiling at the baby.

Here the contrast between the space and the pictures was even more dramatic than it had been in Vincent’s bedchamber. It was barely a room, more a lean-to that had been closed off with flimsy walls. Fortunately for Vincent, there were several windows, which meant that the light would permit him to work indoors in case of rain. It also meant that, on that sunny Sunday, his pictures blazed from the walls like windows punched into another world.

I had not seen the painting of the church that he had mentioned and was curious to know how he had portrayed it. The Auversois worship in a sturdy Gothic building with a square tower, perched halfway up the hill on the way to the cemetery. Its chief characteristic is its air of permanence. As ever, Vincent had seen something new in his subject. Rather than portraying the severe front with its heavy door, he had set up his easel facing the apse, perhaps finding the repeating pattern of the arched windows more interesting. The sky he painted in several shades of blue, the darkest of which almost matched the color of the stained glass. The result was that the building seemed to be a mere façade, as if we were looking through the apse to empty blue air beyond. And this was not all: the stonework of the church, so rigid in life, became flexible under Vincent’s brush. The rooflines wavered, the tower tilted. The space of the apse seemed swollen. Gray stone was touched with dashes of blue and green, as if the surrounding grass were beginning to swallow the dissolving structure. A small female figure in a white hat scurried along a path that Vincent had depicted in a rushing river of brown and yellow dashes. The two most durable-looking elements on the canvas were the sky and the shadow cast by the building.

“This is the church I was telling you about,” Vincent said to Theo. “Perhaps we’ll have time to walk there before the train, if you like.”

“Magnificent,” Theo said, peering closely at the canvas. He stepped to one side, letting the light rake over the brushwork. “Cobalt for the sky?”

“Yes,” Vincent said. “And ultramarine in the windows.” He looked at it for a moment more. “You don’t suppose—”

“No,” Theo cut him off. “It could not be improved upon.”

“No, but listen,” Vincent insisted. “There is no yellow, I wonder—”

“But for what?” Theo asked. “This is right. This is so—monumental.”

“Maybe more orange in the roof,” Vincent went on, as if he were not listening at all. “On the other side. But then, too symmetrical, blotchy even …” He was by now talking to himself. Theo had moved on and was admiring the painting Vincent had made of Marguerite in our garden.

“This is just lovely,” he said to all of us. “It might have been today. So fresh. Mademoiselle Marguerite looks like a flower herself.” We all turned toward Marguerite, who blushed.

“No, but Theo,” Vincent said, still absorbed by the church painting. “Do you think perhaps a touch more yellow in the path? The color balance doesn’t seem right.”

I happened to be watching Theo at that moment, for I was fascinated by the way the brothers behaved together. There was a rapport between them that you rarely see between men. It was as if, rather than living apart for the previous years, they had been in the same room. They spoke as if they knew the same things, had had the same experiences.

Theo’s face revealed only a flash of impatience or anger, quickly mastered, and his voice was calm. “No, my friend, it is wonderful. You always doubt what you have done, but I assure you that it is splendid. Now come and tell me about this lovely painting.”

Vincent proceeded to do so, only casting an uncertain glance back at the canvas of the church. “Well, of course, it is Dr. Gachet’s garden. And I would like to give the doctor this painting, Theo, if you approve.”

“But of course,” Theo said, with a genuine smile. “You know you should do what you like with your canvases.”

“Oh, I usually do,” Vincent answered. “But I needed to be sure you didn’t want to keep this one.”

“Lovely as it is, I think it should stay with the doctor, if he will accept it. Your paintings will be in fine company in his collection.”

I stammered my pleasure and mumbled something about generosity, which Theo dismissed. For a man so much younger than I, he had a remarkable way of assuming authority. This seemed to be how he kept Vincent on an even keel, and I admired it, even as he turned it on me. “Doctor, we are all so grateful to you. To see Vincent so well settled—” He gestured around at the pictures. “Ah!” he said, glancing at the portrait of me. “You see! You have even been coerced into sitting for him! The least he can do is give you a canvas or two!”

We all laughed and moved over to the portrait. It is a strange situation, examining a portrait of yourself in the presence of the artist and a third person. So much is on display: the artist’s skill, the sitter’s face, the artist’s idea of the sitter, the sitter’s idea of himself all jostle, as it were, for acknowledgment. None of us would have expected a conventional likeness from Vincent, but it was still my face there on the canvas. He had not yet delivered the second version I had asked him to make, so I had not had the chance to get used to this haggard man clothed in my features. There was a strange moment when I hovered between recognition and surprise, when I could see the picture as an image of a stranger who gazed at me wearily.

Theo did not speak for a moment. He gazed at the painting with his hands clasped behind his back. Vincent stood next to him, frowning slightly. He reached out to touch, very lightly, the edge of the canvas, to check that it was drying as he wanted. Theo put his arm on his brother’s shoulder and said, “This is magnificent. You have become a portrait painter like no other.”

Vincent turned his head to smile at Theo. I never saw that expression again on his face. It was pure happiness and affection. I wish that some of the many, many portraits Vincent had made of himself had showed that side of him to the world, but the mood was fleeting. It was as if, from the shell of the stoical man I was getting to know, peered for an instant the tenderest creature, full of hope and delight. I supposed only Theo saw that side of him with any frequency. I must admit, I envied him.