But there have to be triggers. I saw them in my mother, the things that sent her into a psychosis over the years, and I think about her periods of illness as I try to enter Vincent’s brain to replicate his art. I relive the times she would suddenly suffer one of her attacks, staying awake for a week, eating nothing, and composing unsolvable equations on our rental apartment walls. She’d whisper to me about her religious hallucinations, the devils inside the torn wallpaper, the angels in the water of the toilet. I’ve been trying for so long not to become her, and now I feel my sense of reason flaking away.
When I hear Vincent’s voice in my head, it’s nothing like I expect it to be. It’s softer, friendlier, slightly high-pitched and feminine.
“The great doesn’t happen by impulse alone. It is a succession of little things that are brought together. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we didn’t dare to take things in hand?”
He is so clear, as though he is whispering directly in my ear.
“Note the certain blackness enveloped in blue moving in great circulating currents of air. What do you think, Emma, is there a lullaby in there?”
There are dozens of lullabies, and also entire symphonies. I can hear them as I throw more paint on the canvas and then painstakingly scrape it away and reapply it with the precision of a surgeon. Vincent was obsessed with the ways complementary colors played off one another. He referred to it as a sort of color gymnastics and ascribed a sublime power to their union.
When I’m finished, there is no grand revelation. I simply hear his voice telling me to put down the brush.
Sleep is my sanctuary. I don’t stir or dream for at least twenty-four hours, and when I open my eyes Stella is perched on the edge of my bed, same as she was that first morning in the cottage.
“What time is it?” I murmur.
“A little past noon. I rode over with one of the fishermen at dawn. Claude. We’ve grown close over these past few weeks.” There’s a sultry curl to her lips. She picks up my hand, which bears her massive diamond ring. I’ve been wearing it while I paint. “How did you feel walking out of there with all this?”
I want to tell her about the thrill as I discovered the safe, followed by the calmness that emerged as the jewels fell into my sweaty palm, the strange sense of security that washed right over me, but I don’t have the right words.
“I felt like I was high.”
This makes her laugh. She looks absolutely fantastic, healthy and carefree. She radiates energy, even more so than after her resurrection when she found us at that jazz café in the Fleas.
Only then do I remember the letters from the safe. I’d fallen asleep reading them but was certain I had mistaken a lot since they were written in a mix of French, Dutch, and even English. Bits and pieces float back into my consciousness.
“How did your grandmother get Vincent’s paintings from Jo van Gogh, Stella?”
She looks at me with a raised eyebrow, as if she knew this question was coming, and allows me continue asking questions.
“Jo didn’t give her the paintings as gifts, did she?”
Stella pulls in a deep breath and reaches for my hand. I think she’s about to hold it, but instead she slides the ring off my finger and onto her own. It’s much too big for her now. Her hand looks like that of a child trying on their mother’s jewelry.
“You read the letters?”
“I did. You must have wanted me to find them.”
“I did. And yes, Claire did steal several paintings, though she had good reasons, not that theft is ever justified, but she did it to survive, same as we are doing. She needed to support herself and we know very well that there were few ways for women to do that on their own without a man back in those days. In my day as well. And she needed to take care of my mother and eventually me, so I do not begrudge what she did.”
“Does anyone else know that she stole them?”
“Maxwell knew. It was his father, Henrik, who she sold several paintings and sketches to. It’s how he knew I must still have theSunflowers, but I believe he is the only one, and the secret died with him.”
“But that is another reason you didn’t want to personally sell the painting. You have letters between the two women, but those letters prove that your grandmother stole them from her best friend. What else happened between the two of them? There are hints of other betrayals in the letters.”
“Half a lifetime of companionship, of working together, there were bound to be secrets, don’t you think?” Stella asks me sharply. “Both women struggled. Life wasn’t easy and I believe they did the best that they could.”
“What was Claire’s relationship with Theo?”
With this answer she doesn’t mince words. “He was a client when she worked as a prostitute.”
“And Jo found out eventually?”
“Yes. She did not take it well.”
“What did your grandmother tell you about all of it?”
