“That night when I asked you about your past, you asked me something too. You asked why I wasn’t married. The truth is, I almost was.” He saw me glance at his left hand, resting on the table where I couldn’t see the scar. “Not her. Someone I met later in The Hague, a prostitute named Sien.”
“A prostitute?” I said numbly. “From a brothel?”
“From the streets.”
His story didn’t spill from him the way mine had from me. It came slowly, phrase after careful phrase, and he kept his eyes lowered to his plate. He met Sien one lonely night in a darkened alley, where she looked for men and money to add to the pittance she earned from doing laundry. She was pregnant, he said, discarded like an old rag by some man who’d promised her a better life, and she already had a little daughter. Vincent wanted to help her, so he paid her to model for his drawings, and soon he invited them to live with him and share his bread. He kept her a secret as long as he could, because he knew what his family would say: that she wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t refined, that she was using him. She could barely read and write; she smoked cigars, drank gin, and cursed like a sailor. A hard life had marked her figure and bearing, smallpox scars her face. She was many steps down the social ladder as far as his family was concerned, no worthy match for a van Gogh.
“Did you love her?” I dared to ask.
“Very much, and I wanted to marry her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He wouldn’t have let me,” Vincent replied, and I knew he meant his father. “Eventually I told Theo about Sien because I needed his help. He didn’t approve any more than my parents would, but he helped me anyway because he’s a good man and a good brother. Sien gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and although we couldn’t marry, we lived as man and wife—as a family—for well over a year.” He looked up, not at me but into the past, a wistful smile on his face.
Over a year. She’d taken care of him, he’d taken care of her. She cleaned his house and cooked his meals, and they lived together in a real home. She slept beside him in his bed the way I had, like me she fussed at him about breakfast. “What happened?”
He drew on the table with his fork again, and his voice changed. “It didn’t last. When I finally told my parents, my father thought I’d gone mad. Sien and I never had enough money, and she complained that I spent too much on my paintings and drawings. We started fighting more and more. Theo came to visit, and he helped me see that the situation was hopeless, that for the sake of my work and my health I needed to leave. I went to Drenthe to live on the heath, then to Nuenen to live with my parents. I saw Sien and the children once more, when I returned to The Hague to collect some things I left behind.”
“You left her?” I gasped. “Just like that?”
“She didn’t love me anymore, and if Theo had cut me off…” His eyes were liquid. “For months I wondered if I did right, and sometimes I still do. It broke my heart to leave the children. If they’d been mine, no force on earth could have taken me from them, but…”
Of course for a man of his age there had to have been other women—I wasn’t so naïve to believe otherwise—but I hadn’t expected this. He’d created a home with Sien then left her because Theo had said he should. What would Theo say if he knew about me? I wondered. Was I any better a match than Sien Hoornik?
Vincent reached across the table to take my hand in his. “Rachel, what happened between me and Sien was a long time ago. I made a lot of mistakes that I wouldn’t make again, mistakes that shame me now, but I felt you had to know. Especially after yesterday. I hope this won’t change things between us, although I’d understand if…” He let the thought fade away.
I could leave without looking back. I could forget him, the sunflowers, the feeling of his arms around me, pretend it never happened. Or I could believe, as I wanted to believe, that I was more to him than just another whore from the brothels, that I wouldn’t end up like Françoise when her man had left her, or like Sien. I stood at a crossroads, two paths winding before me to a distant, misty horizon. In my mind, I knew I had a choice. But in my heart, I knew I didn’t.
We said good-bye at the public garden, Vincent continuing toward the beech tree and cedar bush in his yellow straw hat, me in yesterday’s dress heading to the Rue du Bout d’Arles. “Do you want to see me again?” he asked in a low voice before I walked away, and I assured him that nothing had changed. He looked relieved and kissed me on the forehead.
I figured I’d get a scolding back at the maison, but I didn’t expect Françoise to be the one waiting for me. “Where have you been? Madame Virginie’s furious, as well she should be. Staying out all night without a word to anyone.”
Jacqui couldn’t resist joining in. “She’s been with that crazy painter.” At my shocked expression, she added, “Yesterday wasn’t market day, idiote. I followed you to the Place Lamartine. His house is just as ugly as he is.”
“Rachel, what were you thinking?” Françoise cried. “Don’t you remember what I—”
“He needed help moving,” I broke in. “I cooked him supper and mended his clothes. To be nice.” Françoise crossed her arms without comment, and I glared at Jacqui. “He’s not crazy.”
“Playing house, were you?” Jacqui jeered. “All night long? I can’t imagine why anybody’d want to sleep with that. Unless he has a really big—paintbrush!”
“You’ll never know,” I snapped before turning back to Françoise. “He paid me four francs, and I’m giving half to Madame Virginie like I’m supposed to.”
Jacqui jumped in again. “Four francs! That’s a laugh, I earned ten francs last night. Oh, I bet he told you that you were the prettiest girl in Arles and that he was so lonely and sad.” She tried to imitate Vincent’s accent. “Rachel, you inspire me sooo much—”
My face grew hot. “It’s not like that.”
“—and you fell for it. Cooking him supper, for God’s sake!”
“You’re just mad because he didn’t want you!” I exploded. “You think you’re so special, but he wouldn’t give you the time of day!”
Her mouth twisted with anger, and she drew close to loom over me. “Petite salope, why would I give a damn what that redheaded loon thinks?”
“Don’t call him that!”
Our shouting summoned the other girls to the landing or down the stairs, and Françoise stepped between us. “Stop it! Madame Virginie is going to catch you both out, and Rachel, you’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“What do I care anyway,” Jacqui said with a shrug and slinked away. “She’ll catch fleas or the clap, then who’ll want her?”
Françoise caught my arm before I could scurry upstairs. “You’re wasting your time. One day he’ll go back where he came from and forget all about you. He’s no different from the rest of them.”
“You’re wrong. He’s kind and gentle and caring.” I tried not to think about Sien as I spoke. That was different. She was different.
“He’s still a man.”
Madame Virginie’s voice thundered across the room, shouting my name, and she hurried toward us. “What do you have to say for yourself, missy? Where have you been?”
“With that painter,” Jacqui said smugly from the bar. “All night.”
I bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood, but I kept my temper and reached into my basket. “He paid me, Madame.”
Madame Virginie stared at the coins in her hand. “You were gone the whole night, and all you have to show for it is two francs? It was busy here, you could have made a lot more than that. You work for me, young lady, not him!”
I shoved the other two francs at her. “Then take my share too, and leave me alone!”
No one spoke to Madame Virginie that way. Her face turned purple, and her eerily calm tone made me take a step back. “If I threw you out, where would you go? Your name is on the police register, and until you have enough money to get it taken off, it’s a brothel or the streets for you. And you know what that means.”
I did know. At Leon Batailler’s the girls slept on hard cots in a damp attic, and they didn’t get half their fees, either. Half a franc each time, more like, and they did things for men that Madame Virginie wouldn’t let happen at her house. The other maisons weren’t much better. To work the streets like those filles soumises drunk on absinthe and wearing too much rouge, whining to passing sailors for a few centimes…it’d be weeks, maybe months, before I wound up in hospital with the clap or the madhouse with syphilis. Or in the cemetery.
“Rachel’s a good girl, Madame,” Françoise said, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “She made a mistake, that’s all. She won’t do it again.” She squeezed me to get me to talk, but I couldn’t speak.
Madame Virginie looked from her to me, and her face went back to its normal color. “Then you best not dally with that foreigner any more, unless he pays a fair price. You have to earn your keep. Do you hear me?”
I wanted to walk out the door, go someplace, anyplace, maybe to the yellow house and beg Vincent to take me in. He couldn’t support me, though, Françoise was right about that, and going to Pauline in Saint-Rémy or Tante Ludovine in Avignon was out of the question. No, I had to stay at Madame Virginie’s until I saved enough money to get my name off the police register and make an honest living. What choice did I have?
“Do you hear me?” Madame repeated.
Françoise gave me another nudge, and I forced myself to look submissively at the floor and apologize. That evening, as I entertained yet another soldier, yet another farmer to “earn my keep,” I closed my eyes and saw Vincent’s face.
CHAPTER SIX
A Starry Night by the Rhône
I often think that the night is more alive and richly colored than the day.
—Vincent to Theo, Arles, September 1888
F
irst it was little things. At luncheon, Madame Virginie called Minette to sit next to her, the place that used to be mine, while I was banished to the other end of the table. I stayed behind and helped the cook clean the kitchen while everyone else left for the market and monthly trip to the apothecary. Then it became clear: I was on Madame’s list. “Where do you think you’re going?” she’d demand if I went anywhere near the front door, so there was no chance of slipping out to see Vincent. “How many customers did you have last night?” she’d ask each morning, even though she made sure the other girls had more than I did. Jacqui tried her best to make things worse, taunting me under her breath, sneaking into my room to steal my hair ribbons or use my perfume without asking. Oh, I would have liked to talk back to Madame, give a piece of my mind to Jacqui, but I didn’t. Françoise understood. She quietly made sure I got new hair ribbons and gave me encouraging smiles whenever she passed me. “Madame’ll get over it,” she whispered. “Keep being a good girl.”
One night, when Madame Virginie was safely in her parlor and everybody but me was upstairs with a customer, Raoul brought me a message at the bar. “Monsieur le peintre is outside and asks for you.”
Vincent stood on the sidewalk under the lantern, wearing his work clothes—even his straw hat. He had a pipe in his mouth, artist’s box in his hand, canvas and easel strapped to his back. “It’s time to try a night picture by the river,” he said. “Would you like to come with me?”
I glanced back inside. “I can’t. Madame Virginie threatened to throw me out after I got back last time.”
An angry spark leaped into Vincent’s eyes. “What did she say?”
“That I couldn’t go off with you anymore and lose a night’s business.”
“I can give you some money—”
“I don’t want to take your money.” I thought about the little box in my bureau. If I got caught, I could give her a few of my own francs. “Wait a minute,” I told him and pulled Raoul aside. “If Madame Virginie asks, I’m with a customer. There’s a franc in it for you.” He agreed with a grin and a “Oui, Mademoiselle.”
“Let’s go,” I said to Vincent, “but let’s hurry before someone sees me.” We rounded the corner toward the city gate and the Place Lamartine, but instead of crossing the garden in the direction of the yellow house, he steered us toward the river. The burden on his back was making him hunch over, and I asked, “Would you like me to carry something?”
“No, thank you.” He smiled at me as we passed under a streetlight. “I look like a porcupine, but I’m used to it.”
The Place Lamartine ended at the edge of the Rhône in a high sloping wall, built some years before to protect the city from floods. Vincent unfolded his easel and secured a canvas so the breeze wouldn’t blow it off. “You don’t want to go to the riverbank?” I asked, peering down a stairway to the stony shore below. I could take off my shoes and stockings and dip my toes in the water.
“Too dark down there,” he said. “Better vantage point from up here.”
From where we stood at the bend of the river, you could see all the lights of Arles and the bridge linking the city to the suburb of Trinquetaille. A full moon flooded the southern sky with light and drowned out the stars, but you found them if you turned to the north, a carpet of them twinkling like diamonds. Most nights, pimps and whores wandered the embankment, or fishermen wanting a late-night catch, but not tonight. We were alone with the stars.
Vincent pulled a palette from the box he’d brought, then rummaged among his tubes of paint. “I’m sorry you got in trouble with your patronne because of me.”
“It’s not your fault,” I sighed. “I’m the one who stayed out without permission.”
“I wish”—he paused with a paint tube in each hand and a frown on his face—“I wish I could help you in some way.”
“Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be fine.” I tipped back my head and tried to count the stars in their silvery-gold brilliance. I didn’t want to think about Madame Virginie or the maison de tolérance, I wanted to think of nothing but being right there, right then. The wind off the water made me shiver; in my haste to leave I’d forgotten my shawl. Vincent saw me tremble and came to drape his jacket over my shoulders. A gentle scent of paint and pipe smoke drifted around me. His scent.
After squeezing blues, greens, and yellows onto his palette and using a small knife to blend the colors, Vincent picked up his brushes and started to paint. It was dim, but the moon cast enough light so he could work. I sat on the wall and dangled my feet, peering again down to the riverbank. I could make out a coal barge, anchored and waiting to be unloaded the next morning, somebody probably sleeping on deck to keep away thieves. The river paid no attention as it made its dogged and determined way south.
“Have you ever seen the sea?” I asked Vincent.
He had a paintbrush in his mouth and spoke around the handle. “Many times in Holland. There’s a fishing village called Scheveningen near where I lived in The Hague. I did some seascape studies there a few times, and we used to take the children to the beach.”
We. He and Sien. Had he carried Sien’s little girl on his shoulders across the sand, kissed Sien as they walked barefoot through the waves? I kicked my heel against the stone wall. “Have you been to the sea here?”
“Once, for several days at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Back in the spring.”
“What’s it like?”
“Beautiful. The Mediterranean changes color every second, from green to violet to blue, then the next moment it’s taken on a tinge of pink or gray. Very fine effects. I’ve wanted to go back but”—he cleared his throat—“that takes money.”
We fell silent then, Vincent busy with his painting, me chasing images of the little family at Scheveningen from my mind. I turned from the river to watch him as he worked. Sometimes he stopped to look up and around, tilting his head and muttering under his breath. Once or twice he laid down his things altogether and held up his hands in a kind of frame, screening off what he wanted to see before smiling and taking up his brush again. His hand was graceful as it swept from palette to canvas, here with small dashes of paint, there with long swoopin
g strokes. Once he took a tube of yellow color and squirted little blobs right on the picture.
“There, you see, Rachel,” he said, “it’s not enough to put white dots on the canvas. Some stars are citron-yellow, others pink, while others have a blue forget-me-not glow. They aren’t all the same.” He sighed and gazed at the sky. “The stars make me dream, like when I look at a map and dream about the places I’ve never been to. Just as we take the train to Tarascon or Paris, we take death to reach the stars, and there we’ll live forever. Ah, to feel the infinite high and clear above you, then life is almost enchanted after all.”
It was easy to believe in dreams, there by the Rhône on such a night. The stars seemed to hold ancient secrets as they hovered and winked above our heads, secrets only they knew and that we could but guess. Was someone up there watching, looking after us, as I’d always been taught and almost always believed? Had that someone brought Vincent to me? My eyes returned to him—brush held aloft, contemplating the picture with furrowed brow—and I thanked the stars that exactly that had come to pass.
He happened to glance over at me in the same second. “What is it? You have the most extraordinary look on your face right now.”
“I was thinking about how much I love you.”
Astonishment flickered across his face. He stared at me for a moment, then turned back to his canvas and tapped his brush on the palette with a soft “Oh.”
The water lapped. The wind blew. I waited, but Vincent said nothing, only painted. I pulled up my knees and hugged them without another word, tears pooling in my eyes. I couldn’t look at him anymore and turned to the river instead.
“Come and see,” he said gently after a while. That was all: Come and see. Wiping my eyes on the sleeve of his jacket, I slid off the wall to stand beside him, not touching him, not speaking, trying vainly to pretend I hadn’t spoken in the first place.
The painting pulsed with energy and movement, the gaslights of Arles golden beacons under the midnight sky. Restless reflections shimmered and shone in the restless waters, stars blooming above like flowers, constellations unfurling across the horizon. Empty boats rocked against the shore, and on the riverbank he’d painted a pair of lovers strolling arm in arm where in real life no one stood. The woman had a blue dress like mine, and the man wore blue too. With a yellow straw hat.
Sunflowers Page 6