“You are very kind, Doctor. Why is the room . . . so bare?”
“I had everything taken out to protect you.”
“Against whom?”
“Against yourself.”
“. . . Yes . . . I see . . .”
“Well, I must go now. I’ll send the attendant in with your supper. Try to lie perfectly still. The loss of blood has made you weak.”
When Vincent awoke in the morning, Theo was sitting by his bedside. Theo’s face was pale and drawn, his eyes bloodshot.
“Theo,” said Vincent.
Theo slipped off the chair, went on his knees beside the bed, and took Vincent’s hand. He wept without shame or restraint.
“Theo . . . always . . . when I wake up . . . and need you . . . you’re by my side.”
Theo could not speak.
“It was cruel to make you come all the way down here. How did you know?”
“Gauguin telegraphed yesterday. I caught the night train.”
“That was wrong of Gauguin to put you to all that expense. You sat up all night, Theo.”
“Yes, Vincent.”
They were silent for some time.
“I’ve spoken to Doctor Rey, Vincent. He says it was a sunstroke. You’ve been working in the sun without a hat, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you see, old boy, you mustn’t. In the future you must wear your hat. Lots of people here in Arles get sunstroke.”
Vincent squeezed his hand gently. Theo tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
“I have some news for you, Vincent, but I think it had better wait a few days.”
“Is it nice news, Theo?”
“I think you’ll like it.”
Doctor Rey walked in.
“Well, how’s the patient this morning?”
“Doctor, may my brother tell me some good news?”
“I should say so. Here, wait a minute. Let me look at this. Yes, that’s fine, that’s fine. It’ll be healing fast, now.”
When the doctor left the room, Vincent begged for his news.
“Vincent,” said Theo, “I’ve . . . well, I . . . I’ve met a girl.”
“Why, Theo.”
“Yes. She’s a Dutch girl. Johanna Bunger. She’s a lot like mother, I think.”
“Do you love her, Theo?”
“Yes. I’ve been so desperately lonely without you in Paris, Vincent. It wasn’t so bad before you came, but after we had lived together for a year . . .”
“I was hard to live with, Theo. I’m afraid I showed you a bad time.”
“Oh, Vincent, if you only knew how many times I wished I could walk into the apartment on the Rue Lepic and find your shoes on the sideboard, and your wet canvases all over my bed. But we mustn’t talk any more. You must rest. We’ll just stay here with each other.”
Theo remained in Arles two days. He left only when Doctor Rey assured him that Vincent would make a rapid recovery, and that he would take care of his brother, not only as a patient but as a friend.
Roulin came every evening and brought flowers. During the nights Vincent suffered from hallucinations. Doctor Rey put camphor on Vincent’s pillow and mattress to overcome his insomnia.
At the end of the fourth day, when the Doctor saw that Vincent was completely rational, he unlocked the door of the room and had the furniture put back.
“May I get up and dress, Doctor?” asked Vincent.
“If you feel strong enough. Come to my office after you have had a little air.”
The hospital of Arles was of two stories, built in a quadrangle, with a patio in the centre, full of riotously coloured flowers, ferns, and gravel walks. Vincent strolled about slowly for a few minutes, then went to Doctor Rey’s office on the ground floor.
“How does it feel to be on your feet?” asked the doctor.
“Very good.”
“Tell me, Vincent, why did you do it?”
Vincent was silent for a long time.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What were you thinking of when you did it?”
“. . . I . . . wasn’t . . . thinking. Doctor.”
Vincent spent the next few days recovering his strength. One morning, while he was chatting with Doctor Rey in the latter’s room, he picked up a razor off the washstand and opened it.
“You need a shave, Doctor Rey,” he said. “Would you like me to give you one?”
Doctor Rey backed into a corner, the palm of his hand out before his face.
“No! No! Put that down!”
“But I’m really a good barber, Doctor. I could give you a nice shave.”
“Vincent! Put that razor down!”
Vincent laughed, closed the razor, and put it back on the washstand. “Don’t be afraid, my friend. That’s all over now.”
At the end of the second week Doctor Rey gave Vincent permission to paint. An attendant was sent down to the yellow house to get the easel and canvas. Doctor Rey posed for Vincent just to humour him. Vincent worked slowly, a tiny bit each day. When the portrait was finished he presented it to the Doctor.
“I want you to keep this as a souvenir of me, Doctor. It is the only way I have of showing my gratitude for your kindness.”
“That is very nice of you, Vincent. I am honoured.”
The doctor took the portrait home and used it to cover a crack in the wall.
Vincent stayed at the hospital two weeks longer. He painted the patio, baking in the sun. He wore a wide straw hat while he worked. The flower garden took him the full two weeks to paint.
“You must drop in to see me every day,” said Doctor Rey, shaking hands with Vincent at the front gate of the hospital. “And remember, no absinthe, no excitement, and no working in the sun without that hat.”
“I promise, Doctor. And thank you for everything.”
“I shall write your brother that you are completely well.”
Vincent found that the landlord had made a contract to turn him out and give the yellow house to a tobacconist. Vincent was deeply attached to the yellow house. It was his sole root in the soil of Provence. He had painted every inch of it, inside and out. He had made it habitable. In spite of the accident, he still considered it his permanent home, and he was determined to fight the landlord to the bitter end.
At first he was afraid to sleep alone in the house because of his insomnia, which not even the camphor could overcome. Doctor Rey had given him bromide of potassium to rout the unbearable hallucinations that had been frightening him. At length the voices that had been whispering queer tales in his ears went away, to come back only in nightmares.
He was still far too weak to go out and work. The serenity returned but slowly to his brain. His blood revived from day to day and his appetite increased. He had a gay dinner with Roulin at the restaurant, quite cheerful and with no dread of renewed suffering. He began working gingerly on a portrait of Roulin’s wife, which had been unfinished at the time of the accident. He liked the way he had ranged the reds from rose to orange, rising through the yellows to lemon, with light and sombre greens.
His health and his work picked up slowly. He had known before that one could fracture one’s legs and arms, and after that recover, but he was rather astonished that one could fracture the brain in one’s head and recover after that, too.
One afternoon he went to ask after Rachel’s health.
“Pigeon,” he said, “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”
“It’s all right, fou-rou. You mustn’t worry about it. In this town things like that are not out of the way.”
His friends came in and assured him that in Provence everyone suffered either from fever, hallucinations, or madness.