The Last Van Gogh

by Alyson Richman

  I appeared celestial. Like a Madonna in a medieval painting, my head before a saucer of gold. He held the painting so the fresh pigment was turned outward. A few droplets of pigment landed on the cold stone floor, as Vincent motioned for us to leave.

  I rushed behind him. Had you blindfolded me, I would have still known how to get where he intended to take me. We left the empty church and started down the main road. For over thirty minutes we walked. Vincent carried the wet canvas on his hip, some thin paint dribbling down the side. Now the organ pipes looked as though they were bleeding. Thin fingers of amber slid along the right edge.

  We arrived at the limestone cave behind the Château Léry.

  “Follow me,” he instructed. Vincent no longer had a free hand but was busy adjusting his rucksack and the still wet painting of me. I nodded my head and followed him inside.

  He put the painting down at the lip of the cave and reached into his smock to retrieve a candle. “Come,” Vincent said as he lit the match.

  I wondered if he wanted to make love to me again. The damp, musky smell of the cave brought a flood of memories to me and I closed my eyes for a moment, so overwhelmed was I by the sight of the powdery white walls and the intimacy of the candlelight.

  But Vincent walked ahead of me, determined to do something I had not expected.

  “It will be safe in here,” he announced. “No matter what happens, it will always be here.”

  He propped the canvas up on one of the ledges that lined the walls of the cave.

  “Marguerite, it will always be here for you.”

  The painting stood there like an altarpiece on a podium of cold, gray stone. My face, my body, illuminated by swirls of gold and amber paint.

  “This way, you’ll always remember how I’ve envisioned you.”

  I went to kiss him. My hands trembled as I reached out to touch him. My fingers touched the fabric of his shirt, and felt the bony ribs down his center. He pressed against me so that his breath was hot on my neck. I was crying as I lifted my face up to his. I no longer cared what was right and wrong, I wanted to be with him.

  “Marguerite,” he whispered. His lips hovered over mine and I could feel my mouth quivering in anticipation.

  “Tonight you are Saint Cecilia, so things between us must remain pure.” He took hold of my wrists and turned them so my palms now faced upward. He bent down and pressed several kisses into them before bringing them close against his cheeks. And I wept as I looked up at him. For I knew the painting and the kisses were his way of saying good-bye.

  FIFTY

  An Approaching Frost

  DAWN was approaching as Vincent took my hand to lead me out. The pavement now felt like sandpaper. My toes were covered in dry earth; the soles of my feet were now cracked and raw.

  With the darkness beginning to soften, I was more certain of my bearings. I told Vincent it would be safer if I returned home alone.

  He stood there watching me, a lone figure as the dark sky lifted behind. I remember taking one last look into his eyes. They were staring at me intently, the radiant stars slicing white light against his cheek. Somehow something told me to savor that look of his, store it deep inside. It was as if I could sense the summer ending, a frost lurking behind the shadows and the sun. I knew, when winter arrived, I would need something to keep me aflame.

  I NEED not tell you what happened several days later. Up in the fields, not far from the cave, Vincent placed his easel by a haystack, went behind the château, and shot himself in the chest.

  Monsieur Ravoux alerted Dr. Mazery, the local practitioner, who in turn alerted Papa.

  “The bullet passed below the fleshy tissue.” I heard Papa reading the message, which was delivered to him by a local boy.

  It was nine o’clock in the evening and Papa was in his robe. Paul and Madame Chevalier were in the parlor and Louise-Josephine and I were upstairs in my room.

  “He’s still alive…,” Father reported as he finished reading the note. “He’s at Ravoux’s. He was able to drag himself back to his room.” Papa’s voice was rough with concern. “Paul, go get me my surgical bag, I must go at once.”

  I was sick with worry when I overheard the news. Louise-Josephine had to hold me back with both arms, for I was insistent that I had to be at Vincent’s side.

  “You cannot go,” she said. “There is nothing you can do now.” She held me tight in her arms. I must have writhed there for nearly a half hour before I finally collapsed onto the floor.

  WHAT happened next has now become the stuff of history books. Vincent lasted nearly thirty hours in his bed until his brother Theo came to his side.

  He lay there as placid as a monk. His white face ashen, his once high cheeks sunken like dried prunes.

  “This is as it should be,” he told Theo. The brothers’ hands remained entwined as Vincent slipped into unconsciousness.

  That evening, Papa told us Theo had turned to him and asked him to sketch Vincent as he lay on his deathbed. Papa took a pad and a piece of charcoal and drew Vincent with his head propped up on the small white pillow, his eyes closed as if caught in the middle of a dream.

  It was an image I could not erase from my mind—Papa sketching Vincent in his final hours. He must have relished the honor, holding that twig of charcoal in his hand and sketching the man he knew had such genius.

  “There was something exquisitely poignant,” I heard him tell Paul years later as the two of them copied one of Vincent’s paintings in the garden. “He painted me in a pose of great pensiveness, and later on, I was the last one to sketch him in a moment of rare calm.”

  THE night he died, I was sitting in the parlor with Louise-Josephine when Papa and Paul returned home. It was nearly two in the morning, and Madame Chevalier had already retired to her bedroom.

  “How is he, Papa?” I asked. My face was streaked with red from crying, and I could not help but think about how the paint had dribbled down the canvas of the last portrait Vincent had painted of me. Even at the time, it had reminded me of tears.

  “He’s passed on, Marguerite.” Papa’s voice cracked. “It was a bullet to the chest and there was nothing I could do.”

  My voice cracked, too. “How can that be, Papa? You’re his doctor!” I was weeping now. “What good were all your tinctures then if they couldn’t prevent this?” My words flew out angrily in between my sobs.

  “They were a few herbs, Marguerite. Not miracles.” He sat down in his chair, exhausted.

  “Monsieur Lavert, the town carpenter, has offered to make the coffin,” Father said, his face half covered by his palms. “It is a kind gesture. Vincent painted his two-year-old son only two weeks ago.”

  After a few minutes, Father stood up. There were tears in his eyes. “The funeral will be tomorrow afternoon. There was nothing I could do, Marguerite. I am telling you the truth.”

  THE funeral invitations were printed that morning in Pontoise and announced the service for 2 P.M. Because Vincent had committed suicide, the village priest denied the use of the local hearse and forbade the service from taking place in our church. When I heard this news, I thought of the symbolism of Vincent’s painting of the church at midnight and it haunted me like an apparition.

  In the end, a hearse was borrowed from the next township but still no church service was provided. As was the custom for women, I remained at home, unable to attend the funeral.

  I wore black anyway that afternoon. Louise-Josephine tried to comfort me as I cried for hours in my room.

  “You could not have known,” she said over and over again. But I continued to replay our last moments in my mind. She was wrong. In some way, I had known. But I was too cowardly to admit it.

  PAPA dressed in his black suit and matching top hat. Paul looked even more like his identical twin as the two of them set out in the carriage for Vincent’s burial.

  “I want to stop and fetch some sunflowers,” I heard Papa say on his way out.

  I remember looking out the window
as the two of them descended the garden stairs. Behind the neighboring rooftops, I could see the stretch of meadows, the fields of poppies and sweet peas that Vincent had painted over the past two months.

  It was a warm, radiant day, the sun the color of crushed marigolds. But now the chestnut blossoms were on the ground and the lime trees provided little shade. I thought about how the earth was so dry from the summer heat. Only a day before, I had been on my knees in my garden, and my hands had felt like parchment when I dusted off the pebbly soil. Now when I closed my eyes, I saw the ground cracking into myriad tiny fissures as the shovels parted the earth for Vincent’s coffin.

  ACCORDING to Paul, Papa’s gesture of bringing sunflowers inspired everyone else to go out and return with yellow flowers.

  “It was his favorite color,” Paul said, and I nodded, knowing full well. “The coffin lay in his room in the inn, his last canvases nailed to the walls. Papa’s sunflowers were placed beside his coffin, and then hours later, bouquets of yellow dahlias, jonquils, and other yellow field flowers were everywhere. Near his coffin, Theo arranged Vincent’s folding stool, his brushes, and easel to rest next to him.”

  I was still in a state of shock as Paul described how he, Papa, Theo, and many of Vincent’s friends from Paris walked behind the coffin as it was taken to the new cemetery in Auvers. He said Papa tried to say a few words but was so overcome with grief, he could only utter a single sentence.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Something to the effect that he was a great artist and an honest man. ‘Vincent had only two aims: humanity and art.’ He then planted a tree on the grave.”

  “A tree?” I questioned. “What sort of tree?”

  Paul shrugged. “Papa told us it was an ornamental one…one that would flower and thrive in the soil…. I thought it a touching gesture. So did Theo. He wept when Papa knelt down and planted the tiny sapling in the fresh mound of soil.”

  I held my hand over my mouth, but my sobs escaped me.

  My brother continued, “After the funeral, Papa told me that it would be my responsibility to ensure the grave is always properly maintained. He thought it proper that I have the task, as he is getting on in years.”

  “Shouldn’t Vincent’s family be responsible for that?” I asked, looking up at him through my tears.

  “Of course, but as they are quite a distance away, Father assured Theo that he will hold himself personally responsible for Vincent’s memory here in Auvers. ‘When I go, my son, Paul, will take over,’ he told Theo. ‘Vincent will always have sunflowers on his grave.’”

  I took my handkerchief and blotted my eyes.

  “Yes, and in appreciation, Theo told me that I could take a few paintings of Vincent’s…after all, there were so many in his room!”

  Paul straightened his back and a small smile slid across his face.

  “So even though he never painted one of me, I will have several of his paintings. I hope to study his technique and learn from them.” Again, Paul smiled. “There’s a certain satisfaction in that!”

  “Is there?” I asked quietly.

  But Paul did not hear me. Papa was calling his name.

  “We need to collect the canvases now,” I heard Papa holler.

  It took Paul only a few seconds before he was scurrying down the stairs.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The Collection

  THEY collected over twenty-six paintings and eighteen drawings of Vincent’s that afternoon, returning home after several trips to the inn with their arms loaded with canvases and a portfolio brimming with sketches. Years later, I met Adeline Ravoux in the bakery and she told me how shameless Papa was after the funeral. “He took so many,” she said. “He went into the closet and underneath Vincent’s bed, and ordered Paul to collect all the paintings from the walls. Your father and brother behaved like vultures.”

  “I was told Theo offered them,” I said, trying to defend them.

  She shook her head. “They didn’t need to take so many.”

  Her words were hurtful, but I knew they were true.

  I remember how Papa returned home after the burial and although he seemed visibly upset, there was unmistakably a glimmer of triumph in his eyes. He carried those canvases into his office like a pirate unloading his plunder.

  THE next few weeks were a blur to me. I could not believe that Vincent was no longer in our village. That I would no longer see him in the fields, that his heavy footsteps would never again barrel up our front stairs.

  Over and over again, I replayed our last moments. I fingered my palm and recalled the sensation of his skin against mine. I imagined his face in front of me, the urge I had to melt into his arms, the way he refused to kiss me, knowing all too well that in a few days he would be gone. Had Papa’s herbs clouded his judgment? Had I been cowardly in not warning him that I had suspicion about Papa’s abilities? Should I have told him that Papa had come into his study of herbs late in life and that they had only seemed to worsen his own condition? Or, even more troubling, had our romance pushed him toward self-destruction when he realized he could never have a marriage and home of his own?

  I read over and over the text in the book of Japanese prints that Jo gave me and perused Papa’s office for more literature on the East. “Suicide is not frowned upon,” one of the books said. “It is exalted as a means of familial redemption,” another explained.

  And I wondered if that was what it all came down to in the end. Vincent feeling he had to satisfy a debt he believed he owed.

  I TOLD no one, not even Louise-Josephine, about my secret painting. And only on days when I finished my errands early would I sneak to the cave and look upon that clandestine canvas. That treasure of mine, the last thing that came from Vincent’s hand.

  THE following year, Théophile and Louise-Josephine were finally married. Papa surprised everyone by finding two witnesses to attend the ceremony. Although neither he, Paul, nor Madame Chevalier was in attendance, Papa asked the son of one of his oldest friends, Louis Cabrol, and another one of his friends from his bohemian days in Paris to attend in order to facilitate the union.

  That morning, I woke up early and collected a fistful of wildflowers for her. I snipped off long ladders of lupine, blue and white daisies, bunches of sweet pea, and lavender forget-me-nots. I had purposefully wanted to get her flowers that grew outside our garden, ones that had grown free.

  And as I had promised her, I helped Louise-Josephine get dressed on her wedding day. I combed and plaited her long brown hair. I buttoned the back of her dress and tied her sash in a large voluminous bow. We did not speak, but I saw her eyes in the reflection in the glass. It was a look I knew well: half sad, half brimming with excitement. It was bittersweet for her, I knew. She was marrying and she knew in her heart I would most probably never have the opportunity.

  “I am so happy for you,” I whispered as I kissed her cheek. They would be off to Paris on the evening train and I wasn’t sure when I would see her next.

  “Come live with us,” she said, reaching her hand out to take mine. “Théophile wouldn’t mind.”

  “Only if you move to Mauritius,” I said with a small laugh.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You could sneak out tonight. It will be as we always said it would be.”

  I shook my head. I could not go. Not because I didn’t want freedom, but because I knew I could never leave Auvers.

  I could never leave my painting.

  EPILOGUE

  I HAVE since learned that an improper dosage of foxglove can cause hallucinations. That it can excite one’s spirit, rather than soothe it. I don’t know if Papa contributed to Vincent’s suicide or if Vincent saw the halos of saffron and gold because the absinthe still lingered in his bones.

  Over the years, Papa became obsessed with his attachment to Vincent. He began copying the paintings he had in his collection in an attempt to learn from them. He took the same vases that Vincent had used in his still lifes, the same arrangement
of flowers, and tried to re-create what Vincent had painted while in his care.

  Paul, too, shared this obsession, even after his numerous applications for art school were turned down. Both Papa and he spent countless hours studying Vincent’s canvases, trying to paint identical versions that would deceive the untrained eye. They would sit in the studio upstairs with one of Vincent’s canvases on an easel between them, and scrutinize each brushstroke in an attempt to reproduce an identical version that more often than not came out as amateurish and awkward. A far cry from the masterpieces Vincent had created in Auvers.

  I would have gone mad living with them had Louise-Josephine not returned to Auvers. Théophile’s mother had become ill, and he had requested a job in Vosiers so he could be close to oversee her care.

  Every Wednesday she’d come to the house with her small daughter, Violette. The girl had her mother’s brown hair and amber skin, the same mischievous light in her eyes. She seemed delighted by our garden, the small animals that we kept near the shed. How it amused me when she jumped off Louise-Josephine’s lap and ran across the lawn, the wind rushing through her hair! For those brief moments, I could close my eyes and envision how Louise-Josephine and I must have looked, as we ran down the road in our youth, giddy with the anticipation of meeting our loves.

  Their weekly visits soothed me and I treasured the quiet moments between Louise-Josephine and me. I enjoyed the companionship; I relished the opportunity to have someone for whom I could bake. Especially little Violette, who ate up my cakes and cookies with a relish I had never seen. Papa allowed us privacy and, as her daughter played, we would sit in the garden and it would be as if nothing had really changed between us. She was still as candid as ever. She took a look around the house one afternoon and commented on how strange the house now seemed. Papa and Paul’s obsession had transformed it into a shrine to Vincent after his suicide. Now his presence was even stronger within the damp, plaster walls of our house than when he had been alive.