Lust for Life

“. . . Yes . . . well . . . life is long. Theo, for my sake, take care of yourself. Guard your health. You must think of Jo and the little one. Take them into the country somewhere so they can grow strong and healthy. And don’t stay with Goupils, Theo. They have taken the whole of your life . . . and given you nothing in return.”

“I’m going to open a tiny gallery of my own, Vincent. And my first exhibition will be a one-man show. The complete works of Vincent Van Gogh . . . just as you laid it out in the apartment . . . with your own hands.”

“Ah, well, my work . . . I risked my life for it . . . and my reason has almost foundered.”

The deep quiet of the Auvers night fell upon the room.

At a little after one in the morning, Vincent turned his head slightly and whispered.

“I wish I could die now. Theo.”

In a few minutes he closed his eyes.

Theo felt his brother leave him, forever.

5

ROUSSEAU, PÈRE TANGUY, Aurier, and Emile Bernard came out from Paris for the funeral.

The doors of the Café Ravoux were locked and the blinds pulled down. The little black hearse with the black horses waited out in front.

They laid Vincent’s coffin on the billiard table.

Theo, Doctor Gachet, Rousseau, Père Tanguy, Aurier, Bernard, and Ravoux gathered about, speechless. They could not look at each other.

No one thought of calling in a minister.

The driver of the hearse knocked at the front door.

“It is time, gentlemen,” he said.

“For God’s sake, we can’t let him go like this!” cried Gachet.

He brought all the paintings down from Vincent’s room, then sent his son Paul running home to get the rest of his canvases.

Six of the men worked putting up the paintings on the walls.

Theo stood alone by the coffin.

Vincent’s sunlight canvases transformed the drab, gloomy cafe into a brilliant cathedral.

Once again the men gathered about the billiard table. Gachet alone could speak.

“Let us not despair, we who are Vincent’s friends. Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world. Not an hour passes but that I look at his paintings and find there a new faith, a new meaning of life. He was a colossus . . . a great painter . . . a great philosopher. He fell a martyr to his love of art.”

Theo tried to thank him.

“. . . I . . . I . . .”

The tears choked him. He could not go on.

The cover was placed on Vincent’s coffin.

His six friends lifted it from the billiard table. They carried it out of the little café. They placed it gently in the hearse.

They walked behind the black carriage, down the sunlit road. They passed the thatched cottages and the little country villas.

At the station the hearse turned to the left and began the slow climb up the hill. They passed the Catholic church, then wound through the yellow cornfield.

The black carriage stopped at the gate of the cemetery.

Theo walked behind the coffin while the six men carried it to the grave.

Doctor Gachet had chosen as Vincent’s last resting place the spot on which they had stood that very first day, overlooking the lovely verdant valley of the Oise.

Once again Theo tried to speak. He could not.

The attendants lowered the coffin into the ground. Then they shovelled in dirt and stamped it down.

The seven men turned, left the cemetery, and walked down the hill.

Doctor Gachet returned a few days later to plant sunflowers all about the grave.

Theo went home to the Cité Pigalle. His loss pushed out every aching second of the night and day with unassuagable grief.

His mind broke under the strain.

Johanna took him to the maison de santé in Utrecht, where Margot had gone before him.

At the end of six months, almost to the day of Vincent’s death, Theo passed away. He was buried at Utrecht.

Some time later, when Johanna was reading her Bible for comfort, she came across the line in Samuel:

And in their death they were no divided.

She took Theo’s body to Auvers, and had it placed by the side of his brother.

When the hot Auvers sun beats down upon the little cemetery in the cornfields. Theo rests comfortably in the luxuriant umbrage of Vincent’s sunflowers.

Note

The reader may have asked himself, “How much of this story is true?” The dialogue had to be reimagined; there is an occasional stretch of pure fiction, such as the Maya scene, which the reader will have readily recognized; in one or two instances, I have portrayed a minor incident where I was convinced of its probability even though I could not document it, for example, the brief meeting between Cezanne and Van Gogh in Paris; I have utilized a few devices for the sake of facility, such as the use of the franc as the unit of exchange during Vincent’s trek over Europe; and I have omitted several unimportant fragments of the complete story. Aside from these technical liberties, the book is entirely true.