Leaving Van Gogh

by Carol Wallace

  “But you are a doctor,” Marguerite cried. My eyes flew to the door, to check that it was closed. Waking the entire household would be disastrous.

  “I am,” I agreed. “But illnesses of the mind are stubborn. We do not yet know how to cure many of them. And Vincent’s life has been hard. He has used up his resilience, I think.”

  Marguerite was watching me, still sniffling a bit. I understood so little about her. Did my words mean anything to her? I didn’t know. But I went on, hoping to make her understand. “Vincent’s brother Theo is very ill. Vincent knows this. Theo pays for Vincent’s room and board with Ravoux, and buys his canvases and paints. Nobody buys Vincent’s paintings, so he has no way to earn money. If Theo dies, Vincent will be alone. He will have no brother, and no money.”

  Once again Marguerite’s eyes welled. “But Madame van Gogh! And the poor little baby! No father!”

  I let her weep for the baby. The baby’s case was sad. Vincent’s, I thought, was tragic.

  Minutes passed. I stood up and patted Marguerite’s back. I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, then added a few drops of valerian cordial. I brought it back and held it out to her. She took a sip, and then a deep breath.

  “But the gun? What about the gun, Papa?”

  There it was. The gun. I felt as if Marguerite and I had begun a voyage. Somehow, before morning, I had to help my daughter traverse a terrible landscape, one that Vincent could have painted in his bleakest moments, I thought. But he hadn’t—his landscapes were full of sunlight and shadow, or stars or rain or a glowing, haloed moon. And they were always brilliant with color. Not his early paintings of Holland, but his later ones of France were intense and vivid and bright. What I saw ahead of Marguerite and me that night was a prospect of umber and black and stony, bleak emptiness. Vincent’s cypress trees would whirl in shades of chalk and charcoal, his rocky hillocks squat frowning in murky, charred brown and gray. There would be no light.

  When you are twenty-one, your life is hope. That is what it consists of: hope for the future. Everything in you looks ahead to successes and pleasures still to come. To make my daughter forgive my action I had to force her to relinquish hope, at least for that night. She must be made to comprehend the misery and futility Vincent felt. To retain Marguerite’s love, I had to introduce her to despair. It was Vincent’s art that made this possible—a last gift to me.

  “You know Vincent’s paintings as well as anyone now,” I said. “You have the great good fortune to own one. What does that painting make you feel?”

  It was the right question to ask. Marguerite took a breath and looked away from me. Her eyes were fixed, unseeing, and I could tell that she was summoning her portrait to her mind. “I feel that I am pretty,” she said. “Elegant, accomplished. That the familiar things around me are beautiful. The walls, the floor—they are ordinary really. But I have spent so much time studying the way Vincent painted them. I run my fingers over the heavy paint of the skirt—gently, very gently. And I feel that I am part of something. None of your other artist friends ever wanted to paint me. And even though I don’t understand all of your conversations with Vincent, I know that his painting is something new. And that you believe in it.”

  “And the landscapes he has painted here: do they make you feel happy?”

  “Oh, yes. He sees the beauty all around. And that makes me see it.”

  “Yes, that is what I think, too,” I said. I was sitting at my desk, but that was too far away from my daughter. I moved over to the settee and sat against the tall arm, almost facing her. “So perhaps you can imagine this.” She seemed to be following me intently. “Imagine Vincent without that ability. He has not been able to paint for days. He feels …” I paused for a moment, searching for words. “Despair, I suppose. Fear. One might even say terror. His spells, my dear Marguerite, are truly horrifying. He fears they will come again. And I think, if our friend Vincent were to paint again, he would have to paint something like this: a bleak, barren landscape, rocky, blighted. Can you see it?”

  It was a risk. I did not know if Marguerite could do this. I could see this vision so clearly; while the words came to me, the image appeared as on a canvas in my head.

  “Yes, Papa, I think I can. Vincent’s colors are always so bright, but perhaps the color would be drained away?”

  “Drained. Yes. And the forms … You have seen some of his cypress trees?”

  “Yes,” Marguerite went on. She raised her hands and made a twisting gesture. “Like flames. But also like knots.”

  “And the branches of the low, stunted shrubs, and the roots climbing out of the ground, all clotted and warped together—”

  “And no sky?”

  “No. No sky,” I agreed. “No—in fact, I think that what Vincent sees is a high horizon, a hill before him without a path, and above him only the clouds of a storm, a heavy, menacing gray.”

  “Lightning?”

  “Perhaps. I have never seen him paint lightning, but his attacks may feel like that …”

  “Walking toward lightning, then,” Marguerite concluded, in a flat voice. She looked at me.

  “Through a drab and hostile landscape,” I added. “Alone. Vincent feels very much alone.” She was quiet. She looked down at her hands in her lap. This, I could see, was a difficult notion to accept. Perhaps, in Marguerite’s dreams, she had been part of Vincent’s life.

  She sighed, then said, “But you have been his friend.”

  “That is not enough, it seems.”

  We were both silent for a few minutes.

  “And the gun?”

  I was suddenly overcome by the magnitude of what I had done. What could I have been thinking? In a flash I could envision the outcome: more tears, grief, regret. Yet it was done. I felt a sudden hollowness.

  “I left it in the shed,” I told her. My eyes did not meet hers.

  “So that he might use it on himself,” she stated.

  I nodded. “If he chooses. I did not want him to try something else, and fail.” I watched her as I said this. I could not explain further.

  “Did he ask you? For help?”

  “No. He is a brave man. Or perhaps I should say proud. I have not known him to ask for help in anything.”

  “He did not ask you to do this?”

  “No.”

  She was quiet then. I did not know what she thought. We never spoke about this again. Marguerite has remained the quiet, efficient housekeeper, speaking little, revealing nothing. From time to time, when I pass the open door of her bedroom, I see that a small nosegay of wildflowers has been placed on a table beneath Vincent’s portrait of her. A shrine, in effect. She has not married. She remains affectionate toward me, but sometimes I believe I discern a flavor of disapproval. I will not deny that this pains me.

  But that night, she did not move away from my arm. We sat side by side in the quiet room as the candle sputtered and went out. Eventually the darkness outside the window grew thinner, and we went up to bed.

  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.