While Paul went to no trouble to please his elders, Marguerite never ceased doing so. She was a sober, earnest girl, quick to understand what we expected. She learned to keep house at Madame Chevalier’s side, wearing her own miniature apron, pushing around a tiny broom with grave self-importance. Paul’s fluent chatter may have heightened Marguerite’s tendency to reticence. But she was a musician, as Blanche had been. I often thought that Marguerite did not need words because she had the piano. Sometimes when I heard her playing, I would think for a heart-catching instant that she was her mother, though Blanche had seldom played the piano in this house. She was generally too ill, too weak to do very much at all. Still, Marguerite found a folder of her sheet music some years ago—well before that summer Vincent was with us. She learned to play those Chopin pieces as quickly as she could. Blanche had marked the music with fingerings and dynamic notations, which Marguerite found difficult to read. Seeing my wife’s handwriting gave me a little shock when Marguerite brought it to me to decipher.
Yet for me, these memories of Blanche gave a special sweetness to our comfortable, peaceful way of life. I hoped it would bring solace to Theo van Gogh’s brother, if he came to Auvers. I thought about him from time to time as April passed. I had expected to meet the two brothers in Paris, once Vincent had made the voyage north, but that was not what happened.
On a sunny morning late in May, I was in the scullery at home in Auvers, sorting some herbs to dry. This was a matter of some contention in my house. As a homeopath, I sometimes brewed remedies from ingredients grown in my own garden. But Madame Chevalier (who, I might add, benefited substantially from my tonics and tinctures) had more than once voiced her displeasure at the preparations taking place in what she called, quite incorrectly, her kitchen. We reached a truce when I conceded to use only the scullery for my practices, and only at certain very limited hours. That afternoon I had just begun to hear Madame Chevalier muttering in my vicinity (I discerned the words sorrel and luncheon and possibly soup) when the bell for the street door rang. Her muttering crescendoed into a complaint about visitors who had so little sense that they arrived while she was supposed to be preparing the midday meal. As the house is above the road, it is reached by a long flight of stone steps that descend through our terraced garden to a gate. Visitors ring the bell there, and Madame Chevalier must trot down, grumbling, to let them in. The grumbling is something of a performance; she begrudges nothing she does for us.
I listened very carefully to the footsteps when Madame Chevalier returned—I heard a man’s heavier tread as well as the housekeeper’s own pattering. Our house is not large, so I could hear her somewhat shrill voice insisting that the visitor stay where he was while she got the doctor. She spoke to him as if he might be hard of hearing.
“A man to see you, Doctor,” she told me, coming back to the scullery. “Says he has a letter for you. He brought a whole load of …” She shook her head. “Sticks. And things. A bundle. Very untidy.” It certainly did not occur to me that this could be Vincent. I had expected to hear from Theo before he appeared.
I took off my smock and heard our pug, Pekin, begin to howl. He was the only animal allowed in the house, and he took his responsibilities as a watchdog very seriously. I was imagining a woodcutter of some sort—though why would he have come to the front rather than the back door?—being assaulted by the small, determined dog as I opened the door to the little room where Madame Chevalier had put my visitor. But of course, it was no woodcutter.
Theo’s warning had not prepared me for the physical state of his brother. The two looked alike, enough so that I recognized Vincent right away from his blue eyes, fair skin, and reddish hair. But Theo’s features were smooth, refined into conventionality. Vincent’s cheekbones, in contrast, were more pronounced, and he had a heavy ridge of bone above his very blue eyes. His skin was rough and uneven, as though it had been ruined by sun or by poor nutrition, and he had not shaved in recent days. More than that, he wore workman’s clothes: sturdy boots and heavy canvas trousers and a blue shirt with an open collar. And he smelled. A strong tang of turpentine, tobacco, oil paint, and unwashed man filled the room.
“Dr. Gachet, I apologize for coming to you with no warning,” he said, holding out a letter. “Here is a note from my brother Theo. It explains everything. I am Vincent van Gogh.” His voice had a cracked, rusty quality, like a hinge that was rarely used and never oiled.
“Of course,” I answered, nodding at him and shaking his hand. His grip was firm and the skin of his palm as hard as a laborer’s. “Won’t you come sit in my salon? This is not a terribly comfortable room.”
The dog was now frantic, in the manner of pugs. He jumped repeatedly on the legs of the painter, howling a challenge. I picked Pekin up and showed Vincent into the salon across the hall. “Please sit down, make yourself comfortable. I must dispose of this animal. Can I offer you some coffee?”
“No, thank you,” he answered, looking around the room. His eyes went immediately to the prints and paintings on the walls, an eclectic group. There were, among others, several eighteenth-century portraits, a copy of Titian’s Salome, two strange figures created from fruits by an Italian artist called Arcimboldo, and a group of Dutch flower paintings from the seventeenth century. I wondered what Vincent would make of them. I left him in order to toss the dog outside and ask Madame Chevalier to bring us coffee and some rolls. Vincent was desperately thin, all hollows and sinews beneath his loose shirt.
When I returned to the salon, Vincent turned and said, “My brother said you are very much interested in painting.”
“I am,” I answered. “I try to keep up with the way art has changed, I go to the galleries and the exhibitions. And I’m lucky enough to possess some paintings that I think very highly of. I don’t hang them down here.” I gestured around the room. “These are more …”
“Conventional,” he finished the sentence for me.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Some of the others are somewhat … demanding, perhaps. They are all upstairs. Perhaps you’d like to see them later?”
“Very much,” he answered.
Madame Chevalier came in with the tray and set it with some emphasis on the table between us, making it clear that she had better things to do than treat peddlers as honored guests.
I sat on the small sofa and gestured to the armchair. Vincent sat down. He might have looked like a laborer, but I could tell from the way he moved in my salon that he had once been used to surroundings like these. Some of my patients in Paris—the ones I treated without charge—were overwhelmed by my parquet floors and very ordinary brocade upholstery. They would sit rigidly on a chair, unconscious of their fingers tracing the patterns in the fabric. But these things were not new to Vincent van Gogh. More, they did not matter to him. They were simply not worth noticing.
Once I had taken in his shabbiness and his general air of poor health—he looked ten years older than Theo—I was struck by Vincent’s alertness. And indeed, over the next months, each time we met I marveled again at how I could see him looking. It was as if his eyes had a special sensitivity. You could almost feel him scanning everything around him and accepting or rejecting objects as interesting, or not. Sometimes this created a strange tension as people became aware that, sooner or later, he would look at them. One would want to be worth looking at.
He didn’t care for my furniture, that was clear. The salon was furnished with a few antique pieces I had bought years before—a big Renaissance buffet, a Louis XIII armchair—and Vincent’s eyes passed over them without hesitation. The stained glass I had installed in the north window might as well have been invisible. But I could sense his curiosity when he spotted the portfolios of prints next to the large table I used as a desk.
I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “Would you care for milk? I would recommend it,” I said. “In fact, I suggest you drink milk every day. Preferably goat’s milk. We have a goat here who keeps us well supplied, and there would be plenty f
or you.”
“No, thank you, Doctor,” he said, politely enough.
“Take a roll, then,” I urged him, “for you must have made a very early start. I will read the letter from your brother.” As I bent my head to Theo’s clear handwriting, I noticed that Vincent seemed to chew with some discomfort. False teeth, I thought. That might explain his thinness, if it hurt him to eat.
“Can you tell me,” I asked him, “about your stay in Paris? Monsieur Theo said you found it tiring?”
He gulped the last of his coffee and set the cup neatly in the saucer. “The noise.” He shook his head. “I had forgotten … Or I was so unused to it …” He looked up at me, and again I saw his brother’s gaze, but with greater concentration. “Do you know the South, Doctor?” I nodded. “Then you know how the nights are. The enormous stars, the crickets, that warm air like a current of water, the sense of all the tiny creatures of the night moving around you. Or the days, the afternoons when nothing moves that isn’t tossed by the wind? When the train pulled into the station in Paris, I felt like a little moth, or a tamarisk leaf. Buffeted. So much movement, so much noise, and all of it human! I was completely overwhelmed.”
I poured more coffee into his cup, but he was so caught up in his description that he didn’t notice. “And then at Theo’s—Well, Doctor, you know what an asylum is like. You do, don’t you?”
“I do. All those separate people, in their own worlds. It can be terrible, because you cannot make a connection.”
“True, but at the same time, you owe them nothing. If you feel like howling, you howl. Now imagine going from that to a lovely little bourgeois apartment with a wife who was meeting me for the first time. What kind of impression could I make on her? And then there is the new baby. Everything must be so soft, so controlled!” He shook his head. “I cannot do that, Doctor. At least, not now. I have forgotten how. Theo and Jo live in such a way that, if one draws a breath, the other notices. I am not …” He paused, picking at a bit of rough skin on his thumb. “I am not sufficiently master of myself for that.”
“Yes,” I answered, careful to sound as if his concerns were ordinary. “I have often noticed what a large task that is. Those of us who manage it completely tend to underestimate the effort involved. Tell me about how you felt in St.-Rémy. Monsieur Theo mentioned that the other patients were a problem?”
“Not at first,” he answered, picking up a roll. He tore into it, looked at it, and put it down on the tray. “I was very poorly myself, you understand. Did Theo explain?”
I nodded. “Yes, but it would be helpful to hear how it felt to you at the time.”
“It’s difficult to explain,” he answered. “There were periods that I don’t remember at all. When I did terrible things.” He gestured to his ear. “This, for instance. I have no memory of that. But more generally, I would say …” His voice trailed off. “Unhappy, of course. I was unhappy. And afraid.” He brightened a bit. “Perhaps you will be able to see from the pictures. The last paintings I did at St.-Rémy were not dry when I left. I am having them sent here. Theo has others, some of the paintings from Arles, and the early ones from St.-Rémy. They may help you to understand.” He paused again, then went on. “There is one that, I think, captures the mental effect of life there. It is a view down the central hall—it is long in real life, but I made it look interminable. Arches and arches receding, and a tiny figure scurrying into a doorway.”
“Did you sleep in wards?” I asked, thinking about the long rows of beds at the Salpêtrière. It is necessary in an asylum to be able to watch the patients lest they harm themselves or someone else. Yet for a man with Vincent’s sensibility, this enforced togetherness must have been a constant irritant.
“No, there were private chambers,” he answered. “They were quite large, and since many rooms were empty, they gave me one as a studio.”
“And can you describe it further for me?” I wondered if he would be able to talk about this period of his life with calm and detachment.
“Oh, gladly,” he replied. “It was once, I believe, a monastery, St. Paulde-Mausole. Some of the buildings are very, very old, and it is not in good repair. The asylum is in a long, low building, yellow, with green shutters. There are beautiful gardens, full of flowers and trees, with benches and fountains. I suppose this is where the monks used to walk and pray. I painted the gardens a good deal.”
“I look forward to seeing your paintings,” I said. I agreed with his premise; surely they would permit me some insight into his mental state at the time. “And the treatment?”
“Oh, no, Doctor, there was very little treatment in this place. Dr. Peyron had no expertise in mental maladies. There were baths, of course. They often calmed us down.”
“And how often did the doctor see you?”
“He lived there, so he saw us all the time.”
“But examinations?”
“When we arrived.”
“Then how did you spend your days?”
“That was the difficulty, you see. Aside from painting, I read a great deal when I felt well enough. I see that we share some of the same tastes,” he added, looking at the bookshelf. There were several novels on the corner of my desk, and he turned his head to read the titles on their spines. “Ah! Bel-Ami! I did a still life in Paris—a little figure of Venus, a vase of roses, and this novel. Do you like Maupassant? Have you read A Life? Theo loaned it to me just before I came here. I would be happy to bring it to you when I am finished with it.”
“I would like that very much,” I answered, pleased. I was not accustomed to discussing literature with my patients, but of course Vincent was not, strictly speaking, a patient. Perhaps he might even become something of a companion. I found his enthusiasm appealing. “So your days in the asylum—there was no structure, no schedule?”
“No, Doctor. For the most part, the patients just sat.”
I was startled, but I should not have been. The doctrines of moral treatment—kindliness, tolerance, distraction, and a firm effort to make the patient aware of his delusions—that I had absorbed in Paris thirty-some years earlier had not been accepted everywhere. And of course they required a great deal of effort from the medical staff, not to mention training. The asylum at St.-Rémy was probably one of the more benign institutions, even if the patients received little care.
“But you were able to work?”
“Yes,” Vincent answered. “Dr. Peyron felt it would not harm me. He was right about that. It would have been a great deal worse for me if I had not been able to paint. As it was, I was able to turn out some things I am not ashamed of.”
The coffeepot was empty, and so was the basket of rolls.
“Monsieur van Gogh, this has been very helpful. I told your brother that I could not officially be your medical practitioner; I work in Paris, and the doctor here is Dr. Mazery. If you were to become ill here, he would care for you, but he will certainly consult with me. I would be able to suggest treatments if they were required; a sleeping draft, for instance, or a homeopathic cordial to reduce agitation. As you may know, I have considerable experience with maladies of the nerves and the mind. I have often been able to help patients regain their mental equilibrium.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, Doctor, for it is a terrible thing to misplace,” Vincent said with a wry little smile.
I smiled back at him. “If I am to be of any help in your mental troubles, I must examine you physically. It is somewhat awkward to do this here, where I do not have a proper examination room. But we could go up to the studio, where the light is good. It won’t take long. Would you mind?”
“No, Doctor,” he answered, getting up. “If it must be done, let us not delay.”
I preceded Vincent up the stairs, feeling somewhat self-conscious. I was usually delighted to show off my collection of paintings. But I found myself especially eager to please this man. It was peculiar. I was older than he by a generation. I was the expert, the doctor, about to examine him. Yet I was alm
ost apprehensive. I wanted him to like my pictures. I had found myself disappointed that he did not compliment the atmosphere of the salon; visitors usually admired my antiques and decorative objects. I considered myself a man of taste, yet apparently Vincent van Gogh did not.
I saw my familiar studio as if with new eyes when I stepped through the door that day. I noticed how small and stuffy the room was, how low the ceiling, how much space was taken up by the dusty printing press. The plaster walls were stained in many places, something I had ignored until now. Still, I thought, the paintings were beautiful, and I hoped Vincent would agree.
Some of the pictures were too fragile to hang on the walls; Cézanne had left a few studies on cardboard that I didn’t care to expose to sunlight. I could not afford to frame all of them, either, so many were simply stacked against each other on the floor, stretcher resting on stretcher. But I remember clearly that I had Pissarro’s painting of the red house in wintertime on one wall, for Vincent made his way instantly to stand before it. While I cleared various paint boxes and rolls of paper from the little divan and pulled it into the light, he stood before the picture.
“May I take this down?” he asked, his hands poised to lift the canvas from its hook.
“Of course,” I replied. “Take it to the window.”
He did so, turning the canvas this way and that to examine the paint in the raking light. It is a small picture, a simple scene of chestnut trees in front of the house, with a woman and child standing on the snow and a winter sky behind. When Pissarro painted it, I was astounded at its freshness, the way it captured the instant with the blue shadows on the snow, the lively, interlocking branches of the trees, and the peaceful charm of the house right in the center. I heard Vincent sigh a little bit, and turned around as he gently placed it back on its hook.
Leaving Van Gogh Page 3
