Vincent turned to me, and on his face was, as he put it, the most extraordinary look. “How do you call the stars in Provençal?”
“L’estelan,” I murmured.
“L’estelan,” he repeated, then took my chin in his fingers and kissed me. It was the slightest brush of the lips—as soft as the breeze on my face—but the sweetest kiss, more loving in its tenderness than any words he could have spoken. Words were not necessary. His eyes told me, his kiss told me what I wanted to know. So did his painting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Studio of the South
If I set up a studio and refuge right at the gates of the south, it’s not such a crazy scheme.
—Vincent to Theo, Arles, September 1888
V
incent showered me with little attentions after that night by the river. Flowers he picked on his walks, novels with tattered yellow covers—one visit he surprised me with a bird’s nest he found lying in an orchard. “I kept over a dozen nests in my studio at Nuenen,” he said shyly when he handed it to me. “Birds are artists in their own right, no?” Jacqui, sitting at the next table with a customer, erupted into giggles overhearing him, but I ignored her and kissed him thank-you in front of everybody. I didn’t care what she thought, I didn’t care what anyone thought. The flowers watched over me from the vase on my bureau, and the bird’s nest earned a place of honor on my windowsill.
The yellow house became my refuge, the nest where I flew when I was free. Vincent and I shared suppers I cooked on my evenings off. We chatted by the fire, satisfied each other in the blue-walled bedroom. Some nights I imagined what it would be like to stay forever, not leaving in the morning for the Rue du Bout d’Arles, giving myself to no one but him. Some nights I dared to think what it would mean to bear his child, have a family together like he’d had with Sien. Then dawn would come, he’d rise from the bed to go to the studio, and my fancies would fade with the moonlight.
Some days I joined him on his painting trips. I sat with him in the Place Lamartine when he painted a picture of the house; I walked with him to the vineyards outside town when he wanted to paint the grape harvesters. With my hair up and face hidden under a parasol, no one took any notice of me, although Vincent was ogled by the curious everywhere we went. He talked to me as he worked, telling me the names of the colors he used and why he arranged the picture a certain way. “There, you see, Rachel”—he’d always begin—“if I painted all the trees that stand in front of my house, you couldn’t see my house. Bless me, look at that sky! Pure cobalt. A fine effect.”
Madame Virginie had become too distracted to notice how much time I spent with Vincent. One of the girls, Claudette—who’d been at the maison for two years and ought to have known better—got herself arrested for soliciting outside the quartier reservé, down by the Place du Forum. The police came to the brothel to investigate, and Madame feared she’d lose her license. Then word came that old Louis Farce, Madame Virginie’s biggest rival, remodeled his place up the street with gilt mirrors and heavy red curtains, and was trying to steal our customers. Among all this, I was one of the good girls again, and as long as I brought money in, Madame couldn’t care less what I did or with whom.
The question of taking Vincent’s money troubled me as the weeks passed. One night at the maison, when I perched on his lap clad in my chemise and he reached into his pocket for three francs, I folded his fingers over the coins and shook my head. “I don’t want you buying me like the others.”
“I’m helping you,” he said, “so that one day you can leave this place. I’d help you more if I could. Please, I want you to have it.”
I thought about this. “Only when you visit me here, not when I visit your house. And two francs, not three. I’ll kiss you for nothing.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” he teased and tucked a coin back in his pocket.
Oh, those were happy days as summer drew to a close and autumn made its unhurried way to Provence. Then the mistral arrived.
A fierce north wind that swept through the Rhône valley on its way to the sea, the mistral appeared any time of year but was ruthless during the autumn and winter months. The locals called it le vent du fada, “the idiot wind,” because a mistral that howled through the streets and beat at the windows had the power to bring even the sanest soul close to lunacy. The wise stayed home and the weakest took to their beds, afflicted with headache brought by the wind’s force. Even Vincent, who always thought painting more important than weather, accepted defeat when the mistral blew its hardest and worked indoors.
The banging of the window shutters startled me from a deep sleep one night near the end of October, and the shutters didn’t stop banging for six days. The girls were bored silly with our business down to a trickle, and Madame Virginie stomped around the maison cursing the mistral instead of old Louis. I heard nothing from Vincent, so once the winds died, I crossed the Place Lamartine to find him.
A testy “Oui, oui, j’arrive” filtered from the hall before the door flew open. “Rachel!” The irritated frown on Vincent’s face became a weak smile, but even that couldn’t disguise his haggard appearance.
“Vincent, are you all right?” I asked in alarm. “Have you been ill?”
“I’ve had a queer turn, but I’m fine now. I’ve been working too hard, that’s all, and with that devil of a wind wailing all night, I couldn’t sleep.”
I bustled past him into the kitchen, tossing my shawl over the banister on the way. “Have you been eating like you should?” Stained cups surrounded the empty coffeepot on the table, the stewpot stood abandoned on the stove. I lifted the lid to find a congealed mass of…something…that looked like it’d been there a while.
“I ran out of money,” he said from the doorway. “Theo’s latest letter didn’t arrive until today. Anyway, I didn’t feel like eating.”
“Why didn’t you send a note? I could have taken care of you.”
“It’s nothing. Sometimes this happens when I work too hard, then I have a long sleep and I feel better. I slept sixteen hours straight after the winds stopped, and I had some soup earlier at the Restaurant Vénissat.”
“Vincent…”
“Rachel, please. You mustn’t worry.” The irritated frown briefly returned, then his face brightened. “Come upstairs, I want to show you what I’ve been doing. I’ve nearly finished decorating the second bedroom.”
I followed him with a heavy sigh, then stopped with a gasp in the doorway of the second bedroom. It was smaller than his own, but he’d lavished it with attention, the bed sturdy walnut and expensive-looking, the chest of drawers with fine brass fittings. The sunflowers—my sunflowers—hung proudly over the bed, and a second sunflower picture too, with a blue background instead of yellow. “I didn’t know you’d painted two,” I said, walking up to them and longing again to touch.
“I have two more downstairs. They make a fine effect, no?”
On the opposite wall hung four paintings of the Place Lamartine garden—four! I’d only seen the first one. The second showed the place where he’d found me sleeping, the cedar bush under a bright blue sky, small figures dawdling along the path. The third, another corner of the garden where the path curved beside a tall fir tree and a pair of lovers held hands. A pair of lovers appeared in the fourth painting too, strolling among cypresses as a glowing moon watched them from a sunset pink sky. Their faces were featureless, but the man wore a yellow hat.
“I ran out of money because of the frames,” Vincent said as I stared at the pictures. “But it was worth it.”
I wasn’t listening. “It’s us,” I whispered. “You painted us.”
The room was for me, I knew it was. He was going to ask me to share his life in the yellow house. Share his life as Sien had shared his life, but this time it’d work, together we’d make it work. Maybe he’d already explained everything to Theo and his family. I could leave Madame Virginie’s and be with him always. We’d take care of each other and be so happy….
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br /> “Do you like the room?” Vincent asked.
I tried not to let my excitement show, but “yes” hovered on my lips. “I love it.”
“Good. I think Gauguin will like it too.”
My “yes” faded away. “Who?”
“Paul Gauguin—a painter, a great painter.” Vincent walked to one of the paintings and straightened the frame. “Theo has arranged for him to live here. We’ve been negotiating for months, but he’s agreed to come, and he’ll arrive next week.”
Negotiating for months? I turned so he couldn’t see my tears and marched toward the stairs. “Rachel!” he called. “Where are you going?”
“Leave me alone!”
“No, wait! Tell me what’s wrong!” He hurried downstairs behind me and reached for my arm as my fingers brushed the doorknob.
I jerked myself free and whirled to face him. “You’re ashamed of me. You’re ashamed of being with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t told your brother about me, have you? All those letters I see you writing, not one word about me, right? You say such lovely things, you act like you care for me—”
He tried again to reach for my hand, but I shrank against the door.
“Rachel, I do care for you, what is all this?”
“—and the room—I thought the room was for me.”
His eyes were wide and puzzled. “For you?”
“The paintings! The sunflowers, our garden…I thought you’d ask me to live with you. What a fool I was. They were right, everybody was right!”
“What do you mean—who’s right?”
I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. “Everybody thinks you’re using me.”
“That’s not true, I swear it’s not true. Please, don’t go.”
My other hand was still on the doorknob.
“Don’t go,” he repeated. “I beg you. Come into the studio, and let’s talk about this.”
Only the pleading in his voice made me stay. I followed him into the studio and waited while he calmly circled the room and closed the windowpanes. It felt like all his pictures were staring at me. “No, I haven’t told Theo about you,” he began. “It’s not the time, not yet. You have to understand, he’s not likely to approve, and it’s best if I—”
I didn’t let him finish. “You’re ashamed of me. Just like you were ashamed of Sien.”
He yanked the last window shut with a bang! that made the others rattle. “Don’t you talk to me about Sien! You know nothing about what I went through with her!”
“I know what you told me! You said you kept your relationship with her a secret. It’s because you were ashamed of her!”
“I knew my family would make me leave her!”
“You didn’t leave her because of your family, you left her because of your painting!”
It was like I had slapped him. His face blanched, and he picked up a rag from the worktable to mop his forehead. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and sad. “Yes, I was concerned Theo would cut me off, but everything had already fallen apart by then. My work was one thing among many.”
My voice was quiet now too. “You left her, Vincent, and someday you’ll leave me.”
Realization dawned in his eyes. “Is that what you think? Is that what this is all about?”
“You won’t tell me you love me, although I know you do.” I flung my hand toward the starry night over the Rhône. “Look at the couples you paint—you won’t even give them real faces. You’re ashamed of me because I’m a whore.” I collapsed into a chair and hid my face in my hands.
He rushed to kneel before me. “I’m the last man in the world to think such a thing. Surely you must know that by now.”
“Then why won’t—”
“My dear girl,” he said wearily, “if you only knew.” He opened his palm so I could see his scar. “When I told Kee how much I loved her and wanted to marry her, do you know what she said? ‘No, never, never,’ and she left town to escape me. All my life that’s how it’s been. I’ve been rejected, laughed at, my heart’s been broken more times than I care to remember. By the time I came here, I resigned myself to thinking I’d never—I didn’t expect any of this.”
“Didn’t expect what? Me?”
He turned from me to glance at his paintings. “It’s like…it’s like the wheatfields. Right now in the plains of La Crau the farmers are tilling the soil and sowing the seeds. They’ll take root, brave the winter, then the wheat will grow and ripen to the harvest. But it doesn’t happen right away. The farmer has to be patient and have faith, let things happen in their own time.” He gazed into my eyes and wrapped my hands in his. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
He looked so lost. Like the youth he must have been in Holland, not the man he was in Arles. A wave of tenderness swept over me, and I pulled my hands free to run my fingers down his cheek. “You have nothing to fear, Vincent. You know that I would never—”
“I do know, but you must be patient with me, chérie. When the time is right…” He touched my cheek in return, then tugged me to my feet. “As for you thinking I’m leaving…I want to establish an artists’ colony here, an atelier du midi, a studio of the south. I’ve dreamed of it since I left Paris, and now it will happen. First Gauguin will come, then others in the spring if we can lure them.” He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why hide it?”
“I didn’t know for certain Gauguin was coming until the other day.” He handed me the rag from his worktable. “It’ll be splendid to have another painter to discuss ideas with. I think you’ll like him, he’s quite sociable.”
I dabbed at my eyes and blew my nose. “Have you known him a long time?”
“I met him briefly in Paris, but right now he’s in Brittany with another friend of ours. I have a self-portrait he painted and sent to me. It says more about him than I ever could.” Vincent fetched a canvas from the corner and propped it on the chair.
One look and I didn’t trust the man in the picture. With his reddened complexion and shifty eyes, Gauguin looked like a drunken sailor, the type of mec who thought he was something with his upturned moustache and affected goatee. The type of man who thought a girl should fall all over him but would treat her like his hired plaything once he got her upstairs.
“I see despair in this portrait,” Vincent said from behind my shoulder, “a man who is ill and tormented, a prisoner. Someone who needs peace and calm as much as I did when I first came south. Arles will do him good.”
I saw someone who couldn’t think of anyone except himself. I’d met Gauguin’s kind before, more times than I cared to remember. “It won’t be the same with him here,” I said wistfully.
Vincent started drawing a picture on my back with his fingertips. “Nonsense. It won’t change a thing.”
“But you’ll be so busy working with him, what if you forget about me?”
He brushed aside my hair to nuzzle my ear, and his hands grew bolder. “No chance of that, I assure you.”
I leaned into him, my body forgetting its anger to tingle under his fingers. “Mmm…stop, someone might see us through the window.”
“You think I give a damn?” He scooped me up in his arms as I giggled and squirmed. “Quit wiggling, I’ll drop you!” I stopped squirming and only laughed as he carried me upstairs.
Paul Gauguin arrived in Arles about a week later, although the gossip reached Madame Virginie’s before he did. Joseph Roulin met him first, bright and early after he arrived on the 5:00 a.m. train. Vincent, in his absentmindedness, had forgotten to tell Gauguin where he lived, so Gauguin stopped at the Café de la Gare to ask the address. Figuring he might do this, Vincent had lent Gauguin’s portrait to Monsieur Ginoux so he could keep watch. Monsieur Roulin was enjoying a last coffee before his shift when Gauguin entered the café looking tired and cross, only to be greeted by Monsieur Ginoux’s “Ah! You’re Vincent’s friend!�
�� Gauguin laughed when Monsieur Ginoux produced the painting from behind the bar, and Roulin introduced himself at once.
“He’s a true sailor,” Roulin told Françoise and me. “He’s been all over the world…Brittany, Denmark, Martinique, and he was born in Peru. He used to be a rich man, but he gave it up to paint. Can you imagine that?” He shook his head. “That’s the bourgeoisie for you.”
My first meeting with Gauguin came a few nights after that. The door of the maison swung open with a jovial bang, and all eyes turned to the two painters. Vincent tried not to attract attention, going quietly to a corner table as he always did, but Gauguin clearly enjoyed the stares. His walk was a strut, a swagger, his survey of the room amused as he stroked his moustache. He looked me up and down when Vincent introduced me as “my friend, Rachel.” Then Gauguin removed his hat with an exaggerated bow. “I’ve heard many tales of the beauty of the Arlésiennes, Mademoiselle,” he said, speaking more to my breasts than to me. “Now I believe them.”
“You are too kind, Monsieur,” I replied with a tight smile. “Shall I bring you a drink?”
“Absinthe, if you please, Mademoiselle. Vincent, an absinthe for you as well?”
“A beer, please,” Vincent said. “I had too much absinthe last night.”
“I didn’t know you drank absinthe,” I said.
“You must not know him very well,” Gauguin laughed. As I walked away, he said to Vincent with a low whistle, “Fine-looking girl, nice hips, nice ass. Tits to sink your teeth into.” I didn’t hear Vincent’s reply.
To my relief, they were discussing their work when I returned. “What do you think of Vincent’s paintings?” I asked Gauguin, my voice full of pride.
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