Sunflowers

by Sheramy Bundrick

  Vincent was asleep in his bed, tossing and moaning, but asleep. I stood at the window and watched for the doctor’s carriage. Finally it came racing through the square, and I hurried down to meet him. “We’ll take Vincent to the hospital, Mademoiselle,” Dr. Rey said, striding into the house with his black bag in hand. He’d brought two orderlies, who carried a stretcher, and Roulin was with them too. The doctor stopped me before I could follow them upstairs. “You should stay here. Vincent’s not likely to react well.”

  When the men entered Vincent’s room, first there was quiet, then the furious cry, “I will not go back there! I will not be caged!” A loud crash and Vincent’s voice again, spewing hateful curses I’d never heard him use.

  I dashed up the stairs, calling his name, but Joseph Roulin hustled out and grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’ll only make it worse.”

  “They’re hurting him!”

  “The doctor is trying to give him a sedative. Go downstairs and stay out of the way.”

  Another crash, now Dr. Rey’s voice: “Vincent, we’re your friends, we’re trying to help you. Hold him steady!”

  I squirmed to break free from Roulin’s grasp. “I won’t leave him! Let me in!”

  “They’ll be bringing him out, and they’ll need to get down the stairs. Now get out of the way as I tell you, or I’ll carry you myself!” Reluctantly I returned to my post downstairs in the hallway, and Roulin hustled back inside.

  Finally it was quiet again, then Dr. Rey emerged, cautioning the two orderlies who followed him to be careful on the stairs. Roulin brought up the rear. Vincent lay motionless on the stretcher, wrapped in thick white fabric so he couldn’t move his arms or legs, face frozen into an angry snarl. I blocked the path to the door. “Why did you tie him up? He’s not an animal!”

  “It’s to protect himself as well as those around him,” Dr. Rey said. “We’ll take it off when we get to the hospital.” He raised his hand before I could object. “I wish to help Vincent as much as you do, Mademoiselle. Please trust me to do what is best.”

  I looked from Dr. Rey to Vincent’s chalky-gray face and moved aside. Roulin followed the orderlies to help lift the stretcher into the carriage, while the doctor stayed behind long enough to say, “I feared he might relapse—he tried to do too much, too soon. I will do everything I can, Mademoiselle.” I wondered if I should tell him about the news that had caused Vincent’s collapse, then decided I would not. Our baby was our sadness, Vincent’s and mine. I didn’t want anyone else to know.

  Roulin patted me on the shoulder as the doctor joined the orderlies in the carriage and they drove away. “Vincent pulled through this once, Mademoiselle Rachel, he’ll pull through it again. The lad’s got gumption.” He cleared his throat and added gruffly, “I’m sorry I had to be rough with you inside. Shall I walk you home?”

  “No, thank you, Monsieur, I’ll stay here a while.”

  “I’ll send word if I hear any news. Let me know if you need anything, d’accord?” I thanked him for his help before he tipped his cap and left for the postal headquarters.

  Little things around the house—the barely begun painting on Vincent’s easel, his pipe sitting on the chair together with the book he’d been reading—made me feel more helpless and empty. I had to do something, anything, so I carried the broom and dustpan up to his bedroom. In the scuffle he’d broken his porcelain pitcher and basin, and thrown things everywhere. His dressing table was empty, the bedding crumpled on the floor. All the pictures were gone from the walls, even his Japanese prints, their glass frames shattered into tiny pieces. Only the mirror hung untouched where it belonged.

  Careful not to cut my hands, I swept up the fragments of porcelain and glass and stacked the prints on the chair. The paintings I hung back on the wall, then I brought a pitcher and basin from the other room and made the bed, straightening the covers and fluffing the pillows as I’d done many a time before. I retrieved Vincent’s other things, his yellow straw hat almost making me cry as I hung it on a peg with his blue smock. That silly yellow hat, even more battered now than when I’d first seen it.

  His razor lay in the corner. As I walked to the table to set it with everything else, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, holding it, and my hand shook. Had he looked in the mirror like this, that December night? Had it been a slow, deliberate cut or a sharp one, done in a flash? Had he cried out or borne the pain without a sound?

  I flung open the window shutters and threw the razor into the street with all the force I had in my arm. A passing delivery boy looked hastily around before tucking the razor into his pockets and continuing on his way. I pulled the shutters closed, then pulled back the blankets on the bed I’d just made and crawled into them. Vincent’s pillow smelled of paint and pipe smoke.

  “Rachel, dear, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes to find Madame Roulin, hair caught up in a plaited bun, apron over her green dress, as if the portraits in the studio had come to life. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  I sat up and held Vincent’s blanket to my chest. “Since they took him away.”

  For three days I’d been wandering the lonely rooms, sitting in the studio among his paintings or in the kitchen with cold cups of tea. Staring out the bedroom window into the Place Lamartine, staring at the sunflowers or the splashed paint on the studio wall. I’d jumped at every sound and run to look when the post had been shoved into the letterbox. Nothing from Joseph Roulin, nothing from Dr. Rey. Only a letter from Theo, which I’d left on the kitchen table for Vincent to find.

  “Making yourself ill will not help him, dear,” Madame Roulin said with a frown.

  I shrugged and pulled my feet under me. “Forgive me, Madame, why did you come?”

  “My husband told me what happened. I was away with the children visiting my mother in Lambesc. I came to clean things up, but it seems you already have.” She glanced around the room, up at Vincent’s paintings on the wall, then back at me. “Now we need to get you cleaned up, that’ll make you feel better. Stay here and I’ll fetch some water.”

  She returned with a full pitcher and poured fresh water into the basin. “Come wash your face,” she said in a motherly way, as if I’d been young Camille. It felt good to scrub away three days’ worth of dried tears. “Now sit.” She dragged Vincent’s comb through my tangled hair and clucked her tongue over the knots. “Where’s the bath?”

  “He doesn’t have one. He goes to the hotel next door, or to the public bathing-house.”

  She clucked her tongue again. “Only a man could live without a proper washtub. They wouldn’t wash at all if we didn’t make them. Gracious, what pretty hair you have.”

  That’s what Maman used to say. She combed my hair like that too, slow and careful from the crown of my head down the length of my back. She’d keep combing my hair even when there were no more tangles, to make it shiny, she said. Any worries I had, any bad things that happened that day, vanished while Maman combed my hair.

  “Madame Roulin,” I said quietly, “there’s something you must know. Vincent and I—”

  The comb made another sweep down my back. “I already do know, dear. Vincent told me everything the day I visited him in the hospital, after his first crise.”

  She’d been so kind to me in the Café de la Gare, was being so kind to me now. Kind to Vincent, coming to pose for him and cooking him dinner at her family’s house. Did she know other things, did she know her husband had been with Françoise that night and many other nights besides? “Oh, goodness, don’t cry,” she said when she saw my hand go to my eyes. “Vincent needs you to be strong.”

  “No one has told me anything,” I said. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “There’s nothing new to tell. My husband learned this morning that Vincent still…sees things and hears things. But the doctor thinks he’ll come out of it, take comfort from that.” She patted me on the shoulders. “There, you look better already. Why don’t you come home with me? You ca
n have a warm bath, a good supper…”

  Sitting around the table with the Roulins? Watching her hold Marcelle as the baby giggled and cooed? “Non, merci, that’s kind of you, but—”

  “You can’t stay here forever, dear.”

  “I feel close to him here,” I said numbly. “I can’t leave.”

  Françoise was the next to find me. Roulin had told her the whole story too. “Making yourself sick isn’t going to help matters,” she said, sounding more like a bossy big sister than a soothing mother. “Come back to the maison and leave this place.”

  “I can’t go back there, Françoise. If I see Jacqui—”

  “Jacqui’s gone.” Françoise told the story with relish: how furious Madame Virginie had been after I’d left with Vincent, how she’d slapped Jacqui and called her an ungrateful bitch. I smiled with grim satisfaction as I pictured Madame flinging Jacqui’s things down the stairs, Raoul pushing her into the street—my first smile in days. “She’s working for old Louis,” Françoise said. “Good riddance, although as far as I’m concerned that’s too damn close.” Her voice softened. “Madame and the girls are worried about you, Rachel. Please come home.”

  I agreed to return with Françoise to the Rue du Bout d’Arles. Everyone treated me with kindness, like I was some fragile, wounded bird, but I felt no peace. I sat awake in my room every night as I’d sat awake in his, waiting, waiting.

  On the fifth afternoon, Roulin brought news. For three days Vincent had heard voices and hadn’t been able to recognize anyone, not even Reverend Salles or Dr. Rey. He wouldn’t eat—had said he was being poisoned—and he wouldn’t sleep. On the fourth day, he’d been calmer and had recognized people again, and Dr. Rey had moved him from the isolation room to the main ward. Roulin had gone to see Vincent that morning, and he seemed much better. “He asked if you were all right,” Roulin said. “He’s worried about you.” That was all I needed to hear, and I started toward the stairs to fetch my shawl. “Wait until tomorrow, Mademoiselle Rachel,” Roulin called after me, “when he’s feeling even better.”

  “No, Monsieur Roulin,” I called back. “I’m going now.”

  I paid for a carriage to the hospital and took the familiar route to Dr. Rey’s office, this time without anyone trying to stop me. He didn’t appear at all surprised when I turned up at his door and announced, “I want to see Vincent.”

  “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle,” the doctor said calmly, pulling a pair of spectacles from his nose. “Monsieur Roulin has spoken with you, I presume.”

  I felt myself blush: where were my manners? “I mean—Good afternoon, Doctor, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I really must see—”

  “And you shall, Mademoiselle. Vincent’s much improved. The hallucinations have stopped, he’s been eating, he’s much better. Monsieur Roulin’s visit cheered him considerably.” While Dr. Rey walked me to the main ward, he continued, “Vincent felt well enough to get out of bed this afternoon, so you might find him near the stove. You may stay longer this visit, because I think it will cheer him even further.”

  I walked past the rows of beds to the potbellied stove in the back, where Vincent sat alone, engrossed in a book. “What are you reading?” I asked as I sat beside him.

  He looked up, and his face brightened. “It’s Dickens, the Christmas stories. I know it’s not Christmas, but they comfort me.” He held the book to his chest, suddenly looking all the world like a boy who thought he was in trouble. “I frightened you again. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, dearest,” I said. “You’ve had a terrible shock.”

  “Are you all right? Truly all right, you’re not—?”

  “You mustn’t worry about me, mon cher. Let’s worry about making you better.”

  His gaze moved from me to the book in his hands. “Dr. Rey thinks that even when I do feel better, perhaps I should sleep and eat here at the hospital. I could go to my studio or out to paint during the day, then come back here at night.”

  “That might be a good idea, until you’re stronger,” I said with a smile and reached for his hand, toasty warm from sitting near the stove. “I can look after the house while you’re gone, have it ready when you come back.”

  “You don’t have to,” he murmured. When I told him nonsense, I wanted to help, he fidgeted in his chair. “I mean, if you’d rather end things, I’d understand.”

  My smile faded, and I let go of his hand.

  “The doctor says I should improve,” he rushed on, “but what if I don’t? I’d understand if you don’t want to see me anymore, we can just—”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not. But I can’t ask you to give up your life for me.”

  I tried to take him in my arms, to show him what I wanted, but he shied away, carefully keeping his left side hidden. It took me a moment to realize what was upsetting him. His bandage was missing.

  His hand went to his ear when he saw the direction of my eyes, and his voice became a whisper. “Dr. Rey made me take it off. It’s hideous. I’m hideous.”

  “May I see?” I asked, as gently as I could. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. He didn’t say anything. I circled to his side and knelt beside him as he pulled his hand away. The wound had healed, but what he’d done was there for everyone to see. He’d cut the lobe in a sharp diagonal, leaving behind a ragged flap of raw flesh at the top. The rest was gone.

  I felt a wave of revulsion, not for how he looked so much as for the forces inside that had driven him to do this. Revulsion at the memory of that night, of his blood on my hands. I blinked and glanced away, then forced myself to look again. That night doesn’t define who he is, I told myself, this does not define who he is. He is still my Vincent, who paints beautiful pictures and smiles at me with crinkles around his eyes and holds me and kisses me and calls me his little one. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.

  It’s what happened to you, but it’s not who you are. I know who you are.

  I reached out my hand to lightly trace the outline of the remaining skin. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he shook under my fingers. I gently—so, so gently—pressed my lips to him. “There’s your answer,” I said. “I’ll never leave you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Petition

  This so-called good town of Arles is such an odd place that it’s with good reason that old Gauguin calls it “the dirtiest hole of the south.”

  —Vincent to Theo, Arles, February 1889

  A

  mere ten days after his collapse, Vincent had improved enough to return to the yellow house. But only to use the studio—he accepted Dr. Rey’s suggestion that he sleep and eat at the hospital, at least for a while. I believed he would feel better at home, but I kept my opinions to myself. Monsieur Roulin whitewashed the studio wall so the splattered paint was no longer visible, and I went searching for new brushes, carrying Vincent’s ruined ones with me for the shopkeeper to compare. Their quality wasn’t as fine, but I hoped they would do for now. When he saw them standing in a jar next to his easel, Vincent kissed me on the cheek and told me they were perfect.

  The first afternoon he drew quietly in his sketchbook, practicing with things lying around the house. He spoke little—ever since he’d gone back to the hospital, he’d spoken little, and his silence worried me. He never mentioned the baby or anything that had happened, but sometimes I’d catch him watching me, and the grief and regret in his eyes were plain to see.

  The second afternoon I arrived to the smell of turpentine. “You’ve started painting again,” I said as I walked into the studio. “What are you working on?”

  “The fourth répetition of Madame Roulin’s portrait,” he said, frowning at the canvas on the easel. “The fourth Berceuse.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You were working on the first one when you got sick the first ti
me,” I said hesitantly. “You’d finished the third one and started this one when you got sick the last time…”

  “I didn’t get sick because of the painting,” Vincent said. “This is a comforting image, the kind of picture that lonely men would see and remember their own wives and mothers. I imagine it hung between two of the sunflower canvases to form a triptych of musical color—don’t you think that would make a fine effect?”

  “Yes, mon cher,” I gave in.

  “You shouldn’t be so superstitious,” he added, and I let the matter drop.

  He worked on the portrait a few days, then set it aside to make another copy of the sunflowers. Aside from the occasional grumble, he seemed satisfied as he worked, but something was missing: some fire, some passion that he’d never lacked before. The high yellow note, as he called it.

  A week after he left the hospital, I told him he could paint me.

  He was fiddling again with the fourth Berceuse. “Damn it, I can’t get her hands—what did you say? Right now?”

  His eagerness made him stumble over his own feet as he scurried around the studio to find a length of canvas and tack it to a stretcher. Then he dug in his jars and boxes. “I can’t believe you’ve said yes,” he said, a new flame blazing in his eyes. “I’ve waited for this since the day we met!”

  He brought the armchair that he used for posing from the kitchen and positioned it between the windows to catch the afternoon sun. Taking a deep breath, I sat and arranged my skirts as he circled me and studied me the way he had Dr. Rey: crouching, standing, muttering to himself. I wasn’t Rachel anymore. I was a collection of lines, curves, and colors, his challenge to capture in paint.

  At last he nodded with approval and started to pose me, moving my hands and arms like a doll. “You’re too stiff,” he scolded. “I can’t paint you like that.”

  “I’m sorry, Vincent. I’m very nervous.”

  “Don’t worry, I promise I won’t hurt you.” He touched me under the chin, and I was his Rachel again. “Drop your shoulders. Place this hand in your lap and drape the other over the arm of the chair. Now you’re relaxing too much. Don’t slouch.” He pressed his hand against my spine to force me straighter, then backed away, still giving instructions as he steadied the new canvas on the easel and prepared his palette. “This will be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done, you’ll see. It makes such a difference when the painter—”