Chapter 12
Claire
Reading Theo’s letters to Vincent is like being welcomed into a secret world.
I’m searching for places he might have mentioned me, but also for the incident with Paul Gauguin in Arles that both Anna and Agostina Segatori have alluded to, the one that drives Jo’s obsession with Vincent’s art.
I’m too nervous to ask her about it myself.
But there are other dark secrets. In one letter Vincent revealed to his brother that an acquaintance of his, Miss Begemann, had taken poison.
“I had heard about poor Margot Begemann in passing,” Jo explains as background for me. “She was a neighbor who had fallen in love with Vincent, but her family disapproved of the relationship for many reasons.”
“She lost the power of speech and mumbled all sorts of only half-comprehensible things, collapsed with all sorts of convulsions, cramps,” he wrote. Vincent forced her to vomit and seek medical care. The incident shook him greatly.
This letter contains Vincent’s secret, passed on to Theo. But also, Margot’s secret.
What are we to do with it? Should we even be reading this?
“I honestly cannot imagine revealing anything in these letters to the public. It would be an airing of our family’s dirty laundry,” Jo says as if she can read my mind.
Having no family myself and having lived a life where shame is not an option, I find it hard to relate to her concerns.
“And yet, a compelling narrative would also allow both of these men to live on beyond the grave,” I counter. “They would live forever through these stories if you were to publish them in a magazine or put them into a book. Perhaps not this one, but others.”
“You are right. Let’s find a way to use this one.
It does much to show Vincent’s care and empathy, to dispel some of the ideas that he was cold and calculated and uncaring about others,” Jo muses.
“I want people to understand him, to know him and believe in him the way Theo did. Like Anna said, interest has to be kindled. His intensity in his life is part of the intensity in his art. That is what I want to show collectors and the public.”
“How many paintings did Vincent paint, Jo?” I ask, changing the subject slightly. I keep finding references to works I’ve never seen. He writes about at least seven different versions of sunflower paintings alone.
Jo sighs, setting down the letter in her hand. There are dark circles beneath her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping well again.
“I have no idea how many are out in the world,” she admits, rubbing her temples.
“He gave so many away over the years. Used them as payments for rent, gambling debts, doctor’s visits.
He gave them to women he fell in love with who would never love him back.
He gave them to friends and to strangers in bars.
To other patients in the asylum. But I must never let it be known how many there are. ”
She presses hard on her temples and repeats her much-uttered mantra. “Scarcity is the key to making his paintings worth much, much more.”
To my concern, Jo has continued her late-night wanderings.
She does it when she feels too despondent to sleep.
Bussum is safer than Paris and I am no longer afraid Jo will be attacked; I fear what she might do to herself.
She is still so prone to melancholy, and her health constantly suffers for it.
A series of illnesses has led to hearing loss in one ear and terrible headaches that make her wince when she thinks I’m not looking.
She tries to pretend it isn’t that bad, but I know she is in constant pain, and I often have to repeat myself many times for her to hear me.
Since Anna’s party there has emerged a small group of the art world literati that Jo has managed to foster curiosity with.
Ever since she planted the seed of potentially showing Vincent’s work in Paris, Wijsmuller has shown genuine interest and after many more conversations with Jo, ones so taxing on her that she then spends days in bed, he has offered to fully support a show in Amsterdam.
We know everyone will be watching and Jo wants to have some of the letters organized beforehand to accompany the paintings.
“Perhaps we can quote from the letters for each of the paintings, give each of them a story to show that a painting does not exist in a vacuum, but came from a very unique and human moment in the artist’s life,” she says, her eyes alight with purpose.
“This one continues to move me.” I quote from it.
If one has fire in one, and soul, one can’t keep stifling them and—one would rather burn than suffocate. What’s inside must get out. Me, for instance, it gives me air when I make a painting, and without that I’d be unhappier than I am.
The more I read about and from Vincent, the more he feels like a friend, someone I would have enjoyed knowing, spending evenings discussing art and life with over cheap wine.
Jo is that person for me now, and I can hardly imagine how I endured my old life of constant and unrelenting labor on the nights when we sink into our well-worn sofa in front of the fire and chat.
Some of the letters have spawned inside jokes for us.
In one, Vincent writes that working out in the sun brings him so much joy he revels in it like a cicada.
We repeat it often. When I ask Jo how she enjoyed a dinner with Anna or a show with her mother in Amsterdam, she will giggle and say, “Oh, I absolutely reveled in it like a cicada.”
One day, as I’m sorting through the letters, I come across a note for Jo that she has left on our small wooden table in the back kitchen where we take our meals.
There’s a much larger dining area for guests in the front of the house, but we prefer to keep to ourselves when we can, and this is our sanctuary.
“Who is Isaac Israels?” I ask her when she returns from the market, rain dampening her shawl.
“Oh.” Her face flushes immediately, a spot of color I haven’t seen in weeks. “No one. I mean…he is a painter. I met him years ago with Theo, in Paris, and now he is living here in Holland. He’s written to me a couple of times.”
“Is he any good?” I try to sound casual, though I’m instantly intrigued by her reaction.
Jo considers it for a moment, hanging her wet shawl by the stove. “Yes,” she finally says. “His father was also a painter, a famous one out of the Hague School. Very realistic. Isaac seems different. He’s something of a rebel.”
Is that a smile I spy on Jo’s lips as she talks about this man?
“What does his note to you now say?”
“He asked if I remembered him.” Jo sits down. “And I do. Theo and I had just married when we met Isaac. We were all at a soiree at the Hotel Continental in Paris, and later that night everyone traipsed off to a bistro and then to a bar for dancing, which I rarely did.”
“I cannot picture you dancing,” I tease her.
“Because I am absolutely terrible at it and it brings me no joy,” she says. “I kept my eyes firmly on the drink menu and pretended I could not decide what I wanted so that I could avoid the dance floor. Apparently, Isaac was doing the same thing. He struck up a conversation with me.”
Jo fidgets with the napkins on the table.
“I told him I had seen some of his work and that it was promising. I think I was just parroting what Theo had once said. I did a lot of that in those days. He was slightly younger than I was, perhaps three years, but compared to Theo, who was a decade older, he looked like a boy.”
“Did you fancy him?” I ask bluntly.
Jo doesn’t look as taken aback as I expected. I often shock her with my words, and she will sometimes pretend to be offended, but I know she appreciates the way it helps her to open up.
“He was handsome,” she admits after a pause. “And I did like the way he looked at me.”
“How did he look at you?”
“Like I might be beautiful, and also interesting.” Her voice drops to almost a whisper. “Not many men looked at me that way.”
“Theo did,” I remind her gently.
“Theo was the exception.” Jo sips her tea.
“We chatted for a few minutes more, and then Theo returned from a frightful session of dancing with Madame Vignon. He did not have a jealous bone in his body. He merely squeezed in between the two of us and asked Isaac about his work. Then he invited Isaac to our home to look at some of Vincent’s paintings.
Theo was always looking for more champions for Vincent. ”
“Did he come?” I lean forward, captivated by this small glimpse into Jo’s life before grief carved its permanent mark on her.
“He did. It was a brief visit, and he admired Vincent’s paintings.
Theo asked him to stay for dinner, but he declined, saying he had plans that evening to walk the streets looking for inspiration.
” Jo traces the rim of her teacup with her finger.
“But several days later I received a letter addressed only to me, asking if I might visit him. I threw it in the trash bin. It felt a step too far, and he was making his affections too clear. Theo’s health declined soon after, and with his troubles and the baby, I had little time to think about Isaac. ”
“But now he is here. And you are a single woman,” I point out. “Perhaps you should meet with him?”
“To what end?” Her defenses rise.
“Because you deserve some joy, Jo.” I reach across the table to touch her hand.
When she scoffs, I try another tactic. “And if he was interested in Vincent’s paintings then, he may be able to help you now. You need all the advocates you can muster.”
This makes Jo consider the letter from the man who is clearly making her cheeks burn.
I take in the note’s final line and it makes me smile. Perhaps one of these days we could go to a café and watch other people dance for an evening, Jo, he had written.
“I like his sense of humor,” I say. “I think it would be nice for you to get out and meet with a friend who isn’t Anna or myself.”
“Women do not have men as friends,” Jo says flatly, but I can tell she’s weakening.
“Women also do not work as art dealers, and that is what you have been doing for this past year.” I push the paper toward her. “Write him back. What is the worst that can happen?”
She considers it for a long moment, then picks up her pen with unexpected resolve. “I will do so. But I will bring you with me.”
“Me?” I raise my eyebrows.
“So that he knows it is a formal meeting.” She’s already writing, her script neat and precise.
“Very well, then. I would like to meet him myself.”
I am delighted for her in the moment, watching as she signs her name to her response to Isaac with a flourish. There is no way I could have known I was leading her directly into the arms of the second man who would break her heart.