The Last Van Gogh

by Alyson Richman

  I knew Papa would be waiting for me shortly to come out with his breakfast tray, so I quickly arranged everything—placing the soft yellow madeleine shells on a scalloped plate and pouring his hot cocoa into a ceramic bowl. For a finishing touch, I broke off one of the stems of roses from the arrangement in the hallway and placed it in a small vase on the side.

  I walked down the hallway and opened the door to the garden. Papa was reclining on his lawn chair and I could tell from the way his eyelids fluttered, he was just as tired as I was.

  “Good morning, Papa,” I said as I placed the tray down beside him.

  He didn’t answer me but continued to stare at the animals pecking at the ground.

  “I made you something different for breakfast today.”

  He peered down at the three madeleines and hot chocolate and nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  I stood there for several seconds waiting for him to speak, but he uttered nothing. The broad, flat leaves of the lime tree had cast a large shadow across his face so that half his features seemed to be in darkness. He had not shaven and there were tiny strawberry and white whiskers where his cheeks were usually soft and clean.

  “I don’t know what to say about last night,” he finally said to me.

  I lowered my eyes.

  “I cannot tell you how much you’ve disappointed me, Marguerite.”

  I looked up at him and saw that his gaze was still focused on something other than me. He couldn’t bear to look at me when he spoke.

  “Your behavior has left me speechless.”

  He reached over and took a small bite of one of the madeleines.

  I felt a small noise come from my lips—a feeble protest—but he silenced me before I could articulate the right words.

  “Vincent is a sick man, Marguerite. He may very well be a genius, but he will not be a potential suitor for you. Is that clear, Marguerite?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Furthermore,” Papa added, “you are far too young to be considering marriage.”

  “I am twenty-one!” I cried. “I am not too young—I am actually close to being too old!” The words were now flying from my lips.

  “Stop this!” He had no patience to listen to my protest. “You belong here taking care of me and Paul. We are alone here. Your mother died and left me with you and your brother…. I don’t understand why you think a life helping out your family is shameful. Especially with all the good work we do here for my patients. I need you here with me if I’m to keep on helping them. We can’t only be thinking of ourselves and our own needs!” He placed his head on the table as if in despair. “These are very important people, Marguerite…artists! And if I cure Vincent, more artists will come….”

  “Father, but you would not be alone here. Madame Chevalier could assist you. She’s devoted—”

  “Madame Chevalier has nothing to do with this conversation, Marguerite. Your responsibilities and hers are wholly different.”

  I could not respond to him as I wished. What I wanted to say would have resulted in another slap across my face. I didn’t even risk raising an eyebrow in response.

  “Yes, Papa,” I said, instead.

  It was just as Louise-Josephine had forecast. It wouldn’t be Vincent or anyone else if Papa had his way. I belonged to him and this house, like a piece of furniture. I was to remain.

  FORTY-THREE

  A Suitable Punishment

  THE next day when I asked permission to go to church, Papa shook his head no. Then Monday, when I needed to go into town to do my shopping, he told me he had already sent Madame Chevalier out to do the errands.

  When Papa informed me that my brother would be keeping an eye on me when he was away on business, I was mad with fury. To be watched by my younger brother was the worst insult I could imagine. But Father would not tolerate my protests.

  It was clear Papa was now limiting my movements, to prevent any future contact with Vincent.

  “You have brought this upon yourself, Marguerite,” he told me. “You have proven you cannot be trusted.”

  His words were chosen to inflict the maximum amount of cruelty.

  “You will no longer be allowed to see Vincent at all. When he comes here to receive his tinctures or to paint in our garden, you will remain upstairs in your bedroom.”

  “Papa.” I felt his name fall from my lips as if I were uttering a lamentation. “Please don’t do this….”

  “Marguerite, there will be no further discussion.” He cut me off before I could say anything more.

  Henrietta was now nuzzling at the ankle of Father’s boot. I watched as he dug his wrinkled white fingers into her fur. She looked up at him with those big, wet eyes of hers, the whiskers of her chin rubbing against his knee. He was so pleased to be in the company of his pets, and I wondered why he felt the only company worthy of his attention were animals and artists. There was obviously little room in his heart for me.

  OUR tall, cluttered house now felt more like a prison than ever before. Even my garden gave me little comfort. I began to imagine escaping by climbing the vines in the backyard—the ones that led to the cemetery on the land above—and never returning to the place that I now despised so much.

  I thought of my late mother with increasing frequency. That she, too, felt trapped within these very walls was not lost on me. I saw us as one and the same. Both of us held here against our will, oppressed and unloved by the same man. The only difference was that I had silently rebelled against Father. And although I desperately wished I could escape from my confinement, I played over the secret meetings I had had with Vincent like a hungry schoolgirl sucking on a honeycomb.

  But I could not sustain the sweetness of the memories for very long. In the end, my mind returned to worrying about him. Had he been serious about contemplating suicide? When I asked Louise-Josephine she seemed skeptical.

  “Do you think he was seriously considering ending his life?”

  “I didn’t get that impression,” I said as I pondered it more. “It was in the context of Japanese culture. He spoke of it abstractly, as if it were a curious thing….”

  “I would not worry too much about it then,” she said comfortingly. “He probably had just read something about it and was intrigued by their different attitude toward death.”

  “Yes,” I said, shaking my head. “It is like the Japanese prints. He loves the style of their artwork but he doesn’t adapt his own work to it completely. He just absorbs a little. I’m sure he was just intrigued by something he read. After all, he’s anxious to have his brother and his wife not have any ill will toward him. That’s where this is all coming from, really.”

  “Yes, of course,” Louise-Josephine agreed. “That makes perfect sense.”

  I felt a little better having shared my concern. But at night, my worry for Vincent was hard to suppress.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Three under the Lime Tree

  SEQUESTERED away in the house, I silently raged at my predicament. Both Papa and Vincent seemed to be placing their various artistic passions over my happiness. But still I could not help but worry about Vincent. I had no idea how Father would continue to minister to Vincent’s health needs after what had transpired between us. He had stopped speaking about Vincent at the dinner table and did not mention when and if he would be having him over to our home.

  Three days after my punishment began, however, I heard Vincent’s heavy footsteps bounding up the stairs to our house.

  I was upstairs in my bedroom trying to finish a piece of needlepoint. I cannot express how much I wanted to rush downstairs, open the door, and greet him. But now I was like Madame Chevalier and Louise-Josephine, kept hidden by Father on the topmost floor of his house.

  I cracked open my window and stuck out my head to see him. He was wearing the same blue smock he had draped around my shoulders that night outside the church. His hat was clutched in his fingers and he had two paintings resting against his knees.

  I wanted
to whistle and get his attention, but within seconds he had already knocked at our door and was ushered inside by Paul.

  “So very good to see you, Monsieur Van Gogh!” Paul’s enthusiastic greeting echoed through the house. “I believe he’s been expecting you…he’s in the garden.”

  I was seething hearing this from my younger brother. It was clear that Father had decided to confide in Paul about his meetings with Vincent and had purposefully chosen to keep me in the dark, hidden away under lock and key.

  Just as I felt my blood might boil over, I heard Paul answering a question Vincent had apparently put to him.

  “Marguerite? No she’s not here at the moment….” Then the garden door shut behind them.

  I was at a loss as to how I could follow them. If I were to run to the other side of the house and peer through one of the windows that looked out over the garden, I would no doubt run into Madame Chevalier. So instead, I quickly dropped my needlepoint and headed to Father’s attic studio.

  Up the winding staircase, I entered through the coarse wooden door. The place was cluttered but still filled with light. From the skylight high above, I looked around past the stacks of oil paintings and the etchings he had pinned to the walls. Papa’s printing machine stood in the corner. Behind it I saw a ladder, which I quickly moved so I could stand at eye level to one of the high windows. My breathing was heavy and my veins were filled with adrenaline. All I wanted to do was see the two of them in the garden—to see if Papa was actually speaking with Vincent or just lending him our backyard as a backdrop to another painting.

  As I cranked open the window and peered down below, I saw something that infuriated me beyond words. There, the three of them—Papa, Paul, and Vincent—were sitting under the shade of the lime tree enjoying themselves while I remained trapped inside.

  Had I been as resourceful as Louise-Josephine, I would surely have found a way to get Vincent’s attention. There were tin cans brimming with brushes and glass bottles filled with gold and clear liquids that I could have tossed down below to cause a dramatic scene. But I lacked the courage.

  So instead I continued to watch. Vincent stood up and propped his two paintings against the trunk of the tree. He was standing with his large straw hat over his eyes, his hands gesturing in gentle circles. I could see how both Paul and Papa sat there transfixed by him. Even from several meters above, I could see the bright colors of his paintings. The malachite green of the cypress trees, the deep azure of his cloudless sky. It appeared, from my vantage point, that he had fully recovered!

  After staring at the three of them for several minutes, I lowered myself down from the ladder and sat on the filthy wooden floor. The planks were unfinished pine boards, now spotted with pigment and sawdust. There was a metal pail filled with rags that smelled of turpentine. I sat there for several minutes wiping away my tears.

  Eventually footsteps could be heard coming up the stairwell.

  “Marguerite?” I heard my name called in the faintest whisper.

  “Yes?”

  It was Louise-Josephine. She was wearing the skirt she had been hemming that day we sewed together in the parlor. It was very becoming on her, a print of small flowers on a pale background. It made her look very young.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she said sweetly. “I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “They’re all out there without me!” I cried and I found myself rushing into her arms. I was sobbing now and Louise-Josephine could do nothing but hold me.

  “I know, I know,” she said, gently cradling the back of my head.

  It was cruel for me to complain about being excluded this way, when I knew that Louise-Josephine had been kept hidden for as long as I could remember.

  “It doesn’t even matter,” I said, my voice choking. “Papa will never let me see him.”

  “You will see him again,” she said gently. “This cannot last.”

  I shook my head skeptically. “No,” I protested. “I know Papa will make good on his word. He will never let me see Vincent again!”

  “Vincent will continue to ask for you,” she said confidently. “Your father will have to give in at some point. He’ll eventually let you see him.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, wiping my tears with my handkerchief.

  She thought for a moment. “What about the third painting Vincent wanted to do of you?” she asked as she looked around the room and saw Paul’s mediocre paintings. “Maybe Vincent will ask your father if you can sit for him again, claiming it’s therapeutic for him. Maybe he can explain to your father that you have only shown him compassion and nothing more.”

  “I don’t think Papa would believe that.” I shook my head. “There will be no more portraits.”

  “You can’t give up hope, Marguerite,” she said as she gently took me by the arm. “Let’s go back to your room. We wouldn’t want my mother to catch us upstairs like this.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  A Second Letter

  HE called me “Saint Cecilia” that night I stood with him outside the church and again the night outside the inn. Since then, I’d heard his voice whispering it to me time and time again.

  “I will paint you at the church’s organ with stephanotis in your hair.”

  I imagined myself sitting upright near the altar of our church, the gleaming brass organ pipes before me, my foot pumping the pedals into song.

  I could do little but daydream during those first few days of my forced seclusion. Papa and Paul continued to enjoy their summer, while I remained inside doing needlepoint or baking. When my father or brother was upstairs in the studio or in town, I gardened or played my piano.

  When I was alone in the garden, I thought of him. I saw him taking out his easel, arranging his palette of paints, and squinting at the tile rooftops or the pink hydrangeas, whose edges were only beginning to turn blue. I thought of how we kissed that first night in front of the church, how weeks later I met him in the cave. I wanted nothing more than to feel that alive again. That initial rush of pain, that intoxicating sensation of another’s skin over mine. The memory of our union made our separation feel even more intolerable and my body ached to see him again.

  At my piano, my fingers stretched out to reach him. As if the ivory keys were ladders to his heart. I struck each note with the precision of a harpist, plucking out a melody that I imagined could reach only him.

  I could barely sleep. My bedroom window beckoned me with the possibility of more adventures. How I wanted to cross over the sill and climb out! I took the combs out of my hair and let the evening wind whip through my bedroom and run through my nightdress.

  I walked barefoot over the wooden floorboards and imagined the sensation of the trellis under my toes, and the damp garden stones between the house and the gate.

  There was music in my head even though our house was perpetually silent. I heard the lonely music of Schubert, the mournful sonatas of Beethoven, and the hopeful, yearning notes of Chopin.

  I wondered at every moment what Vincent was doing. Was he painting or was he brooding by himself? Had he mended things with his brother, and was his nephew’s health restored? Had he made up his mind to stay in Auvers and paint, or was he headed down another path of darkness, with another attack imminent?

  I thought I would go mad with all these questions in my head. I could not risk going to him, though I desperately wanted to. And even worse, I was unable to see him when he visited our home. They would all eat the cakes I baked in the mornings and drag their forks and knives across the plates I would later wash, but I would be pushed away like one of my mother’s porcelain dishes, banished to a room upstairs.

  IT was Louise-Josephine’s idea to write him a letter. “If you can’t come to him, perhaps he can make an effort to visit you.”

  It was a masterful plan. I would draft a short note and she would have Théophile deliver it to Vincent at the inn. That way, no one would suspect it was from me.

  I took a piece of stationer
y from my desk and wrote his name at the top. Vincent—I wrote the first letter with a large, generous hand—What about that third portrait? Perhaps Papa will give in for art’s sake.

  I signed it with only my first initial.

  It was delivered on Tuesday, and on Thursday I heard him at our front door.

  “He’s here!” Louise-Josephine rushed into my bedroom and closed the door.

  “I know,” I said, hushing her with my finger to my lips. My head was halfway out the window, and I strained to hear what he was saying to Father.

  “Might I paint in your garden this afternoon?”

  I could hear Papa greeting him in enthusiastic tones and ushering him inside.

  “He will suggest another painting of you, I know it!” she gushed. “Just you wait!”

  “But what will Papa say?” I sat down on my bed. “What if Papa refuses him? After all, he was reluctant to have Vincent paint me the first two times.”

  “Vincent will persist.”

  I secretly hoped Louise-Josephine was right, but I remained skeptical.

  “He’s kept you and your mother a prisoner all these years,” I said with my face in my hands. “If he wants to, he will do the same with me.”

  “I have learned to work around him, and so will you.”

  She took my hands away from me and held on to them. “I will make certain that you see Vincent. I promise you.”

  “You needn’t stay here,” I said as I embraced her. “You know that certificate exists now and you are free to marry Théophile.”

  “I have yet to discuss it with my mother,” she said as she fingered the cloth of her skirt. “I have to have more details before I tell Théophile. It would be wrong to give him any false hope until I know more.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Behind Closed Doors