Read Online Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace - Free Book Online

thinks of anything else, it is almost always related to painting. Even when he reads, he thinks about how the writer’s thoughts could be expressed in color. When he meets someone new, he wonders whether their face would be interesting to paint. He sees the whole world as if there were a palette always in his hand. Shall we go? I must get back to my wife and baby. We called my son Vincent, you know,” he added, looking back from the door. “After my brother, of course, although Vincent thought we should have called the child after our father.”
    “Yet he must be pleased,” I said, following Theo’s lantern down the narrow staircase.
    “Yes, of course.” Theo’s voice came from below. “In his own way. He painted the most beautiful canvas when he heard that our son had been born. He was in the asylum then. The painting is a branch of blossoming almond against a blue sky, the most limpid, serene blue. A picture of immense tenderness.” By now we were back in Tanguy’s shop. Theo carefully snuffed the lanterns and hung them back on the hook.
    “Thank you so much, Monsieur Tanguy,” he called through the door to the back room. “Please do not disturb your dinner. Good evening, Madame Tanguy. I left the lanterns on the stair. We will see ourselves out.”
    I was almost startled to find myself on a busy Parisian street on a warm May evening, with light and noise coming from the little square at the end of the block. I turned to Theo and held out my hand. “I am most grateful, Monsieur van Gogh, that you took the time to show me these paintings. Of course I will see more of Monsieur Vincent’s work in Auvers—I believe it is vital for his health that he continue to work—but I am glad you could show me some of his paintings from recent years.” I took a deep breath, trying to control the emotion that I knew was in my voice. “Please believe that I will do everything I can to preserve the welfare of a man with such a gift.”
    I knew I might seem overwrought, but I was not embarrassed. Let Theo think what he pleased. If he was taken aback, he had enough command of his features to hide it. “One could ask for no more,” he answered.

F our

    A FTER THAT EVENING , the image of The Night Café rose before me each time Vincent entered my mind. I wished that I had been able to see the painting of almond branches in bloom that Theo had described. It would have given me something to set against the desolation of the red and green café. But what was more significant, I found that I was now thinking of Vincent van Gogh as an artist rather than as a patient. Before I saw his work, he was for me a troubled man whom I might be able to help as I had helped others. Now I was glad that I had not seen his work before I examined him. As a patient, I had found him intriguing; as an artist, he was formidable.
    My mind was full of the beautiful and terrifying paintings stacked up in Tanguy’s attic when Vincent came to visit on the last Sunday in May. I was a little bit startled when Madame Chevalier, with an air of faint reluctance, showed him into the salon. He seemed so small compared to the image of him that his work had built up in my mind. The man who painted those canvases should, I thought, be a titanic physical presence, a man whose courage could be read in his features, not a slight figure in an ill-fitting coat.
    We skirmished over coffee and rolls—I was always trying to feed him. But Vincent had come ready to paint, and he would not be distracted. He roamed about the gardens a bit, considering, hesitating, then finally set up his easel before the house, where the terraces step down to the street. I left him, not wanting to hover as he worked. Curiosity, however, drove me to my studio on the third floor several times in the course of that morning. From its window, I could watch his progress. I saw him set a small oblong canvas on the easel and start squeezing colors onto his palette, tossing the mangled tubes back