Her body curls into herself as she approaches, but the man’sdour expression lights up at the mention of Theo, of course it does. Jo’s husband was well loved both here and in Paris.
“I am very sorry that you lost him,” he says politely.
“Me too. He was a wonderful man, and he would have loved what you have on the walls. You have an incredibly keen eye. May I show you something?” Jo asks tentatively.
“You may,” he says with curiosity.
She pulls Vincent’s painting from her satchel and places it on the desk in front of him.
“It is Vincent’s. He was Theo’s brother. Are you familiar with him?”
His gaze shifts from curiosity to pity. “A bit.”
“My late husband was his champion. He believed Vincent saw the world the way no one else did, that he painted the soul of things.” Her speech is more confident now; she has straightened up. “This one here reminds me of the Monticelli you have hanging near the window, but it goes further. Can’t you smell the petals? Don’t you feel like you could reach out and touch them?”
He removes a looking glass from a drawer to inspect it.
“It is certainly interesting. A bit hectic though.” When he coughs into his handkerchief, a bit of spittle escapes onto the swirl of a petal on the canvas. Jo twitches, desperate to wipe it up. Instead she clenches one of her tiny hands into a fist before she speaks again. I reach down to unfurl her fingers before he notices.
“Look closer, sir. Spend some time with it. I promise that eventually his work will grip you and never let you go.”
“Why are you hauling it around in a satchel?”
“I am hoping to hang it on your wall. I have taken on my husband’s work of selling and exhibiting Vincent’s paintings.”
“You?” The man does not hide his surprise.
“Me.” Jo stands even taller.
“Fascinating,” is his only reply. Jo has carried this paintingwith her to three other galleries today but has not had the courage to take it from the bag.
“I do not know what my patrons will think of this. It is strange, but as you say, there is something in it that keeps you looking. I cannot promise you anything, but I will take this on commission and if it sells you can bring me more.”
Jo’s entire body is vibrating next to me. I grasp the fingers I just helped to unfold, fearing she will leap over the desk and kiss the man.
“Thank you,” she cries. “I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this.”
“Thank me if it sells,” he says, running a tobacco-stained finger over Vincent’s thick brushstrokes. “As you must know, collectors are a fickle bunch.”
“But if it is hanging in a gallery such as this one, they will be intrigued,” Jo asserts.
He chuckles, not at her, but along with her. “We shall see, Mrs. Van Gogh. We shall see.”
Jo takes meetings every week,always with men, always older than the two of us by decades. They’re critics and dealers, journalists and collectors. Many are former colleagues of Theo’s who have accepted Jo’s invitation in order to be polite. I accompany her because it is unseemly for a woman to meet with a man alone. No one blinks when Jo introduces me as her secretary, and I take careful notes. Some say they appreciate what Vincent was trying to do, but they cannot see the value in it. On the worst days, they outright ridicule his work as that of an amateur. Jo is dismissed as a novice, told in no uncertain terms that there is no space for an independent-minded female with big opinions in the art business. One journalist called her a “charming littlewoman” who forgets that her personal grief “turns Vincent into a god in her eyes.” They would never dare say such things about a man. But their criticism only makes her more persistent, more determined.
Jo often screams in the middle of the night. When I shake her awake, she is in a halfway state between dreams and reality, crying out, “The sadness will last forever.” It happens again and again, but in the morning she never remembers.
“I say that?” She seems surprised about her choice of words when I confront her about them.
“You do. It has happened many times. Do you believe it? That you will grieve like you do forever?”
“Sometimes I do. But that phrase is so particular. They were the exact last words that Vincent ever spoke to Theo, right before he finally died from a gunshot wound he gave to himself. He whispered, ‘The sadness will last forever,’ and then he passed.”
It’s as though Vincent and Theo both live on in Jo’s head. On the anniversary of her husband’s death, Jo brings me to his grave in Utrecht. She’s so overcome she lies above his body on the cold earth, whispering into the dirt, “Oh darling, my darling, if only I could think that your spirit is still with us. Why did you leave us so early? We needed you so much and you were making me a better person. What will become of me now?” It is only a thunderstorm that forces her up from the dirt when it quickly turns to mud.
Vincent’s paintings take up more room in the boardinghouse we now operate in Bussum than we do. Jo borrowed money from her family to have them all crated and shipped, 361 works altogether, 258 paintings, the rest drawings and sketches. I have been doing my best to keep a careful inventory of all of it for her.
ThePotato Eatersis over the fireplace,TheHarvestabove the door, and the drawings of the hospital at Arles and the fountain at Saint-Rémy are in the downstairs passage. The three flowering orchards are in the bedrooms. It takes us an entire month tohang the ones we enjoy. The rest are in rows in the attic. Though there are days I can see that Jo still resents the path life has chosen for her, the paintings and her brother-in-law’s legacy are her singular obsession, second only to caring for her son.
