Sunflowers

by Sheramy Bundrick

  My eyes fill with tears. “I haven’t seen Philippe in a week! I’m going to Papa.” I start for his room, but she grabs my arm and says the doctor forbids it. I pull myself free and say I don’t care.

  I run down the hall and throw open the door of Papa’s room. It reeks of camphor, it reeks of death. Papa’s face is white as he tosses on the pillow, the doctor’s face is grim. “Rachel, you shouldn’t be here,” the doctor says. “I told Pauline—”

  “Rachel?” Papa opens his eyes to look at me. I take a step, but he shakes his head.

  I want to hold Papa. I want to stay and look after him. “No,” Papa says when I take another step. “Not you. Not you.”

  “He doesn’t want you to catch the cholera,” the doctor explains, then hands me a bottle. “Tincture of camphor. Take three drops twice a day, well diluted with water, for a week. I’ve given your sister some for her family, too. Now you must go.”

  “I want to tell Papa good-bye,” I whisper. I know it will be for the last time.

  “Tell him from the doorway,” the doctor replies gruffly. “Unless you want to get sick.”

  Papa smiles, and I can tell it hurts him to talk. “Do not worry, little one. Your Maman will take care of me.”

  “I love you, Papa,” I say and cry harder.

  “I love you, my little Rachel.” He closes his eyes. I wonder if he has died in front of me, but his chest is still heaving.

  “Good-bye, Papa,” I tell him, but I don’t know if he can hear. I turn and walk down the hall, where Pauline waits to take me away.

  “Rachel?…”

  I jerked myself awake in the tattered armchair. Vincent was lying on his side and watching me under heavy eyelids. “Did Trabuc send for you?” he asked, the sedative slowing his words. “What happened in Arles…I didn’t mean…”

  I knelt beside him. “We both said things we didn’t mean. Let’s forget it.”

  “I knew it would happen again,” he whispered, his brow drawn into knots. “Pride, too much pride.”

  It took me a moment to understand. “You think you’re being punished for the article and the sale in Brussels? For being happy about them?” His lower lip trembled, and I said firmly, “Vincent, your paintings are a gift from God, not a punishment. You shouldn’t be afraid of success, not when you’ve worked so hard.” I smiled and nodded toward the Pietà. “Gracious, what a Protestant you are. Even if you did paint a Catholic picture.”

  The faintest light in his eyes, the faintest smile. “It’s the only one I can bear to have in here. It’s Delacroix.” The name came out as a long, weary breath.

  A tap on the door, then Monsieur Trabuc entered with a tray, looking pleased to see Vincent awake and talking. “Would you like some soup, Monsieur Vincent?”

  I asked what time it was, thinking of the train back to Arles. Monsieur Trabuc said it was a bit after four, and I hurried to pull on my cape. “Oh goodness, I need to start back to town. I wish I could stay longer, but I have to go.”

  “Will you come again?” Vincent asked, and I glanced at Monsieur Trabuc, who nodded his permission with a smile.

  On my way to the hospital gates, I passed the chapel where the hospital sisters said their prayers and the priest looked after his flock. No Last Judgment stood above this portal, no terrifying vision of the Apocalypse with fierce angels and fearsome demons. Mary stood there instead, arms outstretched in greeting and solace. Come in, come in, she seemed to say. Ignoring the time, I slipped through the door under her waiting arms.

  It was a simple place for simple prayers. No grand paintings, no grand tapestries. I didn’t feel afraid or unwelcome—I felt peaceful, as if the Presence in the chapel liked me being there and wanted to listen. As I drew near a placid statue of Mary beside the altar, I felt I could talk to her the way I had always talked to my mother, or Françoise, or even Madame Roulin. I told Mary everything, and before I left, I spoke the words of her prayer, imagining Maman’s rosary beads in my hands.

  Vincent’s crise lasted for two months, the longest of his attacks. I made the journey to Saint-Rémy whenever I could, and some nights, when Dr. Peyron was away, kind Monsieur Trabuc let me sleep in the room next door. The gray bourgeois dress stayed in Arles; I wore old clothes that could stand the chores of nursing and brought clean aprons in my basket. Monsieur Trabuc taught me how to care for Vincent: how to change the bedsheets without making him get up, give him a shave without cutting his chin, help him eat without making a mess. “And I said I wouldn’t force you to be my nursemaid,” Vincent said ruefully one afternoon as I gave the red floor tiles a better scrubbing than they’d had in months.

  I sat back on my heels and put my hand on my hip. “Get better and I wouldn’t have to be,” I teased, and he managed a chuckle before sinking back onto the pillow.

  Some days were very bad. In fits of melancholy, Vincent would refuse to speak, lying in bed staring at the ceiling or turning on his side to gaze toward the window. Those days I patiently read to him, and although he gave no response, I hoped it calmed him to hear the words. He had no hallucinations in my presence, although Monsieur Trabuc told me privately that sometimes at night, he started babbling in Dutch and needed a drop of sedative.

  As quickly as a thunderstorm might materialize on a summer day, his quiet somberness sometimes gave way to violent weeping, and I set aside the book I was reading to hold him as he sobbed. I never knew why he grieved so, what memories or thoughts haunted him. I only knew he suffered, and it took everything I had not to collapse into tears with him. I stared over his head to the Pietà and asked the Virgin Mary for strength, for if I gave way to despair, then Vincent and I would both fall. Only when I was back on the train to Arles would I permit myself to cry into my handkerchief, when Vincent could not see.

  Other days—the best days—I arrived to find him nearly himself, however weak. We talked as he lay in his bed and I did the mending or other things that needed doing, or simply sat with my fingers entwined in his. Ironically those days felt like a blessing, as if we were forging bonds between us that we hadn’t attended to for a long time. Vincent told me things about his past that I never knew—things I will never repeat to a living soul—and I told him secrets from deep inside my heart. With each of those afternoons I knew with ever-growing certainty that I wanted to be his wife, that I was willing to bear any darkness for those precious minutes of light.

  One afternoon, he said he wanted to draw. Monsieur Trabuc found a pencil and sketchbook in the desk; I helped Vincent sit up and watched as he took the pencil in his shaking hand. “It feels strange,” he said, and furrowed his brow as he contemplated the blank paper. “I want to draw my foot,” he said then, and I pulled the sheet free so he could see his toes. Scratch, scratch went the pencil. With each stroke the crinkles in his forehead deepened, until he cursed in frustration and snapped the pencil in two. “Damn it! It won’t come right!”

  “Maybe it’s too soon,” I soothed. “You can try again another day.”

  The next afternoon he asked again for his sketchbook and a pencil. “Only if you promise not to break it,” I said after Monsieur Trabuc sharpened the tip with his pocketknife. This time Vincent wanted to draw his soup bowl, and this time he went more slowly, taking deep breaths with every line he made. When he finished, I asked him if he wanted to rest, but he insisted on drawing his mug and spoon before surrendering the sketchbook. Each day after that he asked for his drawing things, and the pictures kept him occupied when he didn’t feel like talking.

  “Souvenirs du nord,” he said when he’d been drawing for about a week and wanted me to see his sketches. “Memories of the north. During all my attacks, I’ve seen again and again my life in Holland, especially my childhood in Zundert and the time I spent painting peasants in Nuenen.”

  I flipped through the sketchbook to find, along with drawings of the furniture in the room, shaky drawings of country people digging in a field or walking beside snow-covered cottages. “You must have been happy there
, to keep remembering it so.”

  “When I feel well enough to write again, I’ll ask Theo to send me the old drawings. I’d like to rework some of them, maybe redo a few of my old paintings too.” He sat up straight when I turned a page. “That sketch you’re looking at now, I did that from memory of my most ambitious picture from Holland, of a peasant family eating their dinner by lamplight. That’s one I would really like to do again.”

  I frowned at him. “Vincent—”

  “I mustn’t rush things. I know.”

  I turned one more page. Here a man and woman walked a road in the rain, arm in arm, she with dark hair, he with a countryman’s hat. A man and woman I’d seen before. Pencil-scribbled clouds gathered above them, but they seemed not to notice. The woman held up her skirt with her other hand so it would not drag in the mud. The man held the hand of a small child, toddling along beside them, and both gazed toward the little boy.

  “If I draw it, maybe it will happen,” Vincent said quietly. “Like magic.”

  I could not speak. I closed the sketchbook.

  The next week Vincent announced he was ready to paint. When Monsieur Trabuc cleared his throat and said Dr. Peyron had forbidden it, Vincent said irritably, “I’m not planning to eat my paints, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You can’t even get out of bed,” I protested.

  “I can if you help me.”

  He’d nag until he got what he wanted, so I pulled Monsieur Trabuc aside and suggested he fetch Vincent’s easel, paint box, and a canvas. Vincent hauled himself out of bed, and I supported him as he made his way to the chair beside the open window. He inhaled the spring breeze and smiled. “You see, ma petite? This is good for me.”

  His eyes were as bright as a boy’s at Christmas when Monsieur Trabuc reappeared. He told us how to set up the easel, and once we arranged it to his satisfaction, he opened his paint box and pulled out his palette. “I won’t overdo it, I promise,” he said to my worried eyes as he pawed through paint tubes.

  I helped squeeze paints, pour a little turpentine into a jar, set the canvas on the easel. He took a deep breath and dipped his brush into a puddle of green paint, sighing as if he were the happiest man in the world. I let him be as he worked, although I kept glancing at him while I changed his sheets and dusted his books. When he finished—Monsieur Trabuc had brought a very small canvas—he tilted his head and studied what he’d done, and I peeked over his shoulder. He’d painted a row of green-roofed cottages under a hot yellow sun, waving green grasses, a stiff-legged man strolling among them with a spade over his shoulder. “It’s not quite right,” Vincent declared, “but something’s there.”

  “He has exhausted himself,” Monsieur Trabuc complained as we walked to Vincent’s room on my next visit, his tone cranky and unlike his usual placidity. “I tried to tell him he should stop drawing and painting for a few days and rest, but would he listen? Now he’s back in bed, unable to do anything at all. And he wants his pipe. I told him no.”

  “If we didn’t let him paint, he’d only get upset,” I said. “He’s stubborn as they come, we can’t stop him.” Monsieur Trabuc snorted and grabbed a broom to sweep the corridor.

  “Bonjour, mon cher,” I sang out as I opened Vincent’s door, then walked to his bed to kiss him on the cheek. “Why, you’ve nearly got all your color back.”

  “That’s because I’ve been working. I’ve made myself tired now, but I feel stronger than I have in weeks. Look at that drawing on the desk.” I studied his sketch of a chair beside a fireplace. “The perspective is almost perfect. It’s coming back, my girl, it’s coming back.”

  “Very good,” I said and lay down the drawing. “But let’s not hurry things, d’accord? What are we reading today?” I picked up the yellow-covered novel Monsieur Trabuc had left on the armchair: L’Oeuvre, by Émile Zola.

  “Actually, Theo has sent a package. Would you open it and read his letter to me?” He’d never let me read any of Theo’s letters before, and when I asked if he was sure, he nodded his head vigorously. The package contained prints, which he exclaimed over in delight. “Theo always knows what I like. The Raising of Lazarus, isn’t that fine.” Jesus stood in the center of the picture, lifting his hand to draw the weakened Lazarus from his tomb. “Rembrandt,” Vincent said, pronouncing the name with the solemnity of a priest.

  “Rembrandt. He did the painting of the surgeon that you showed—” I stopped myself.

  Vincent didn’t seem to notice. “A genius. In Amsterdam and The Hague I spent hours in front of his paintings. Read the letter, please.”

  I tried not to rip the envelope, and I was careful too unfolding the fine paper. The address of Theo’s gallery appeared at the top, and the name Goupil & Co., Tableaux, Objets d’Art, Boussod, Valadon, & Cie., Successeurs was stamped in an elegant design. “Theo’s handwriting is better than yours,” I said. “He writes like a gentleman.”

  “That’s because he always did what he was supposed to in school. I didn’t.”

  I started to read. “My dear Vincent, how happy I should be if I could go to you and shake your hand on the festive occasion of your birthday.’ Oh! When was your birthday?”

  “A few days ago, March thirtieth.”

  “You never told me. So you must be…”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Thirty-seven, if you must know.”

  “Thirty-seven,” I teased with a click of my tongue. “My goodness. ‘Will it be a festive occasion for you, or is your condition still such that you are unhappy? What do you do in the daytime, and do you have something to divert your mind? Can you read, and do you get everything you want? After your last letter I hoped that you had entered upon a period of convalescence, and that you could have told me soon after that you were feeling better. My dear brother, how sad it is for us to be at such a distance from one another, and to know so little what the other one is doing.’ How nice Theo sounds. Why doesn’t he come to visit, I wonder?”

  “It’s a long way, and it’s expensive. He’s got work and the baby to think of.”

  The next sentences swallowed my voice. For this reason I am very happy to be able to tell you that I met Dr. Gachet, that physician Pissarro mentioned to me. He gives the impression of being a man of understanding. Physically he is a little like you. As soon as you come here we are going to see him; he comes to Paris several times a week for consultations. When I told him how your crises came about, he said to me he doesn’t believe it had anything to do with madness, and that if it was what he thought, he could guarantee your recovery, but that it was necessary for him to speak with you in order to make a more definite statement. He is a man who may be of use to us when you come here. Have you spoken to Dr. Peyron about it, and what does he say?

  “What is it?” Vincent asked anxiously. “Is something wrong with the baby?”

  I didn’t want to ask questions, not when Vincent was sick and easily upset. I skipped the passage about Dr. Gachet and continued with the rest of the letter. “I have not yet gone back to the Indépendants, but Pissarro, who went there every day, tells me that have achieved real success with the artists. There were also art lovers who discussed your pictures with me without my drawing attention to them.’ That’s good news,” I said, trying to perk myself up.

  “No sales?”

  “It seems not.” Vincent frowned and asked me to keep reading.

  Theo said more about the exhibition, gave a description of springtime in Paris, some news of Johanna and the baby, and closed the letter: “‘My dear brother, I am anxious to know whether you are feeling better, and to receive particulars about your health. Be of good heart and cling to the hope that things will soon take a turn for the better. I am sending you some reproductions of etchings by Rembrandt; they are so lovely. A cordial handshake, and believe me to be your loving brother. Theo.’”

  “He truly does sound nice,” I said. All this time I’d pictured a prudish sort of man, cold and unfeeling, but Theo didn’t sound that way at all.

&
nbsp; “He’d have to be nice to put up with me,” Vincent replied.

  I set aside the letter and package to pick up L’Oeuvre. On that particular day, the story of obsessed painter Claude and his long-suffering mistress/wife Christine was the last thing I needed, and my voice started to shake as I read aloud. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “It’s such a sad story.”

  Vincent’s eyes were probing me. “Maybe we should stop reading today.”

  I lay the book on the floor. “Which paintings are in the Paris exhibition? You never told me which ones Theo chose.”

  “I wanted a mixture of work from Arles and Saint-Rémy…” I pretended to listen while my mind teemed. Who was Dr. Gachet, and why had Theo contacted him? What did Theo mean, “when you come here”—had Vincent made plans to go to Paris without telling me?

  “Are you certain you’re all right?” Vincent had stopped talking and was looking at me. I answered that I was just tired, and he said unhappily, “You’ve worn yourself out on my account. I told you that you didn’t need to come so often—”

  “That’s not it. I like visiting you, I love spending time with you.” My voice started shaking again.

  “Come here, ma petite.” He sat up in bed to hold me, the first time we had embraced each other since his collapse. I normally kept my distance for Monsieur Trabuc’s sake. “Now, what’s this fretting? I’m better today than I’ve been in a long time. I’ll be up and about soon, I know it.”

  Up and about in Paris, the thought sneaked into my head. “Monsieur Trabuc said you’ve exhausted yourself with working. I’m worried about you getting worse again.”

  “Is that all? I’ll slow down if that’ll make you feel better. No more painting for a while, and very little drawing. Not until I’m well enough to get out of bed. D’accord?”

  I smiled into his shoulder. For today, it’d have to be enough.

  It was another three weeks before Vincent’s crise fully passed. A bad day here, a few good days there, his mood and strength wavered and wobbled without pattern. Then, one afternoon near the end of April, I returned to Saint-Rémy after a few days’ absence to learn that Vincent had left his bedroom and was working in his studio. Had been working there three afternoons in a row. My arms filled with pink spring roses I’d picked along the road, I opened the door to find Vincent standing in front of his easel.