Leaving Van Gogh Read Online Free PDF Page A

hair. But Theo’s features were smooth, refined into conventionality. Vincent’s cheekbones, in contrast, were more pronounced, and he had a heavy ridge of bone above his very blue eyes. His skin was rough and uneven, as though it had been ruined by sun or by poor nutrition, and he had not shaved in recent days. More than that, he wore workman’s clothes: sturdy boots and heavy canvas trousers and a blue shirt with an open collar. And he smelled. A strong tang of turpentine, tobacco, oil paint, and unwashed man filled the room.
    “Dr. Gachet, I apologize for coming to you with no warning,” he said, holding out a letter. “Here is a note from my brother Theo. It explains everything. I am Vincent van Gogh.” His voice had a cracked, rusty quality, like a hinge that was rarely used and never oiled.
    “Of course,” I answered, nodding at him and shaking his hand. His grip was firm and the skin of his palm as hard as a laborer’s. “Won’t you come sit in my salon? This is not a terribly comfortable room.”
    The dog was now frantic, in the manner of pugs. He jumped repeatedly on the legs of the painter, howling a challenge. I picked Pekin up and showed Vincent into the salon across the hall. “Please sit down, make yourself comfortable. I must dispose of this animal. Can I offer you some coffee?”
    “No, thank you,” he answered, looking around the room. His eyes went immediately to the prints and paintings on the walls, an eclectic group. There were, among others, several eighteenth-century portraits, a copy of Titian’s Salome , two strange figures created from fruits by an Italian artist called Arcimboldo, and a group of Dutch flower paintings from the seventeenth century. I wondered what Vincent would make of them. I left him in order to toss the dog outside and ask Madame Chevalier to bring us coffee and some rolls. Vincent was desperately thin, all hollows and sinews beneath his loose shirt.
    When I returned to the salon, Vincent turned and said, “My brother said you are very much interested in painting.”
    “I am,” I answered. “I try to keep up with the way art has changed, I go to the galleries and the exhibitions. And I’m lucky enough to possess some paintings that I think very highly of. I don’t hang them down here.” I gestured around the room. “These are more …”
    “Conventional,” he finished the sentence for me.
    “Yes,” I agreed. “Some of the others are somewhat … demanding, perhaps. They are all upstairs. Perhaps you’d like to see them later?”
    “Very much,” he answered.
    Madame Chevalier came in with the tray and set it with some emphasis on the table between us, making it clear that she had better things to do than treat peddlers as honored guests.
    I sat on the small sofa and gestured to the armchair. Vincent sat down. He might have looked like a laborer, but I could tell from the way he moved in my salon that he had once been used to surroundings like these. Some of my patients in Paris—the ones I treated without charge—were overwhelmed by my parquet floors and very ordinary brocade upholstery. They would sit rigidly on a chair, unconscious of their fingers tracing the patterns in the fabric. But these things were not new to Vincent van Gogh. More, they did not matter to him. They were simply not worth noticing.
    Once I had taken in his shabbiness and his general air of poor health—he looked ten years older than Theo—I was struck by Vincent’s alertness. And indeed, over the next months, each time we met I marveled again at how I could see him looking . It was as if his eyes had a special sensitivity. You could almost feel him scanning everything around him and accepting or rejecting objects as interesting, or not. Sometimes this created a strange tension as people became aware that, sooner or later, he would look at them . One would want to be worth looking at.
    He didn’t care for my furniture, that was clear. The salon was furnished with a few