Leaving Van Gogh Read Online Free Page A

In Cézanne’s paintings, it appears quite monumental.
    My house had once been a boarding school. It is on the upper side of the rue Rémy, situated slightly above the town. I must have thought, when I bought it, that higher ground would be better for my wife, Blanche. It was for her sake that we moved from Paris. She needed better air. There were other reasons, of course: we were living in the apartment on the rue du Faubourg St. Denis, which was and still is my office. It was not always easy to see patients there while Blanche and the baby, Marguerite, and our housekeeper were just steps away. Sometimes I administered electrical treatments that startled or pained my patients (temporarily only, I must add). Sometimes the baby cried, which I found distracting. The streets outside were noisy and crowded and dirty.
    But in truth, I hoped the move would improve Blanche’s health. I knew she had consumption. She must have known as well; her mother had died of the disease, and Blanche surely recognized the symptoms. I could not bear to think of her breathing the dirty air of Paris. There was nothing I would not have done for her, or so I thought. And indeed, she loved Auvers. Our tall white house very soon shed any trace of the pensionnat . We planted gardens, in front of the house and behind. Our housekeeper, Madame Chevalier, who was the willing slave of the baby, Marguerite, sat for hours on the grass outside, watching the child explore her new surroundings. One of my prized mementos from that period is an etching I made of the two of them sitting on the grass side by side. They had their backs to me, and they were shaped exactly the same, the stout little woman and the sturdy toddler.
    To our human household we added animals. I have never been able to resist the plight of a wounded beast, and sometimes villagers would bring me their injured creatures. Blanche never minded that the animals rarely returned to their original owners. She was even patient about the peacocks, which Madame Chevalier despised. It was true that the male’s showy plumes never did grow back after his encounter with a herding dog, and nobody could love the sound a peacock makes. Madame Chevalier often threatened to bake them into a pie.
    Having come to us first in Paris as housekeeping help for Blanche, Madame Chevalier soon revealed her true nature as a benevolent despot. She took over the housekeeping, working with an efficiency that made Blanche’s efforts unnecessary. (“Go play the piano, Madame,” she would say when my wife picked up a duster. “The work will go so quickly if I can listen to you.”) Then when Marguerite was born, she ruled the nursery as well. She was pleased with our move to Auvers, sure that all children should be raised in the country, though she herself was Parisian born and bred.
    And then we had Paul, as lovely a baby as Marguerite had been, and curiously elegant for an infant. To this day he has long, slender hands, an inheritance from his piano-playing mother.
    Blanche’s symptoms went into remission while she was pregnant: tuberculosis often retreats that way. So we were a happy family of four in our tall white house on the hillside. Briefly. Then Blanche died. It was a terrible time.
    Blanche had been gone for fifteen years when Vincent came to Auvers. The children were almost grown by then. That summer Paul was still in the lycée in Paris, coming home on weekends until the term ended in June. He was tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed—a very handsome boy. He had a fastidious quality unusual in a youth of seventeen. Yet he was a feckless student, given to secrecy and a kind of mute stubbornness. Now that we are both grown men, he is something of a confidant and colleague. But in that summer of 1890, I was anxious about him; I could not imagine his course in life. I know that Madame Chevalier shared my concern. She adored the boy, but she wanted to be proud of him. He did not always make that possible.
    While Paul went