Afterlives of Dr. Gachet

Sam Meekings

Description

Who is that mournful man in the painting? The Afterlives of Doctor Gachet tells the story of Paul Ferdinand Gachet, the subject of one of Vincent van Gogh's most famous portraits: one that shows what the artist called 'the heartbroken expression of our times'. But what caused such heartbreak? This thrilling historical novel follows Doctor Gachet from asylums to art galleries, from the bloody siege of Paris to life with Van Gogh in Auvers, and from the bunkers of Nazi Germany to a reclusive billionaire in Tokyo, to uncover the secrets behind that grief-stricken smile.

Informations

• Publié par: Eyewear Publishing
• Date de parution: 29 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839780332
• Langue: English

Extrait

by Eyewear Publishing Ltd
Suite 333, 19-21 Crawford Street
London, W 1 H 1 PJ
United Kingdom
Graphic design by Edwin Smet
Author photograph by Vedran Strelar
Cover image by Vincent van Gogh
Printed in England by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved
2020 Sam Meekings
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
ISBN: 9781839780332
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without theprior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Set in Bembo 12 / 15 pt
WWW.EYEWEARPUBLISHING.COM

Contents
THE ELIXIR: May 1890
A QUESTION OF DEPTH
ANATOMY LESSON: 1840
FALLING
A STUDY OF HORSES: 1841
NEITHER HERE NOR NOT HERE
STILL LIFE: 1845
A SUIT OF BONES
A RATIONAL MAGIC: 1853
A VISIT FROM THE MONEY GOD: 1990
SKIN DEEP: 1863
LIMBO: 1941-1990
THE PRINCIPLE OF ATTRACTION: 1867
OLIVES, EGGCUPS, AND THE AMSTERDAM OFFICE OF YOUTH ALIYAH: 1938
JE SUIS UNE BANANE : 1869
CAN A SMILE BE A POLITICAL ACT?
ELEPHANT SOUP AND NIGHT BALLOONS: January 1871
VANITAS
THE MINIMALISTS: 1872
A WAREHOUSE ON KOPERNIKUSSTRASSE: 13 January, 1938
MOTION SICKNESS: 1875
REPLACEMENT
THE HOUSE OF THE BROKEN PROMISE: 1883
GOLDFISH
EXCERPTS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF VINCENT VAN GOGH IN THE LAST YEAR OF HIS LIFE
RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH: May 1890
DOPPELG NGERS
UNDER CLOUDED SKY: June 1890
THE STARRY NIGHT
NOT A QUESTION OF LOGIC: July 1890
BEYOND THE SHORE: 2291
ALL THE EYE MISTAKES FOR LIGHT: 1909
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PRAISE FOR SAM MEEKINGS PREVIOUS BOOKS
THE ELIXIR
May 1890
It wouldn t help you.
He tapped his pipe against the table to dislodge the last grey knuckle of ash, before tipping the mangy contents onto the grass. Then he reached into his left jacket pocket - raising a quizzical eyebrow when he found it empty - and, next, his right, retrieving the little pouch of tobacco and measuring out a good pinch. He began to fluff it up between his jittery fingers, then started to pack it into the bowl of his pipe.
Why ever not? his companion asked. I ve tried everything else.
Ah, you see, you re too sharp, my friend, the doctor said, keeping his eye on the pernickety task in hand. His fingers shook occasionally these days, and he found it harder than ever to do those fiddly jobs that required a steadiness he could not always muster.
And that will stop it working?
The doctor looked up. No, don t be absurd. It won t work because you won t believe it will work.
That really matters?
That is the only thing that matters. I wish I could tell you otherwise. But it is nothing more than a placebo, my friend.
I don t believe you. I ve heard people talk about it. The famous herbal elixir of the venerable Doctor Paul Gachet.
Less of the venerable, please. The doctor smiled, spreading creases across the deep craters of his face. Now, listen to me: the best way to heal the body is to heal the mind. I suspect you know that as well as anyone. All this concoction contains is a few herbs, a little spring water. But if you really believe
Then you admit it is a type of magic - or rather a kind of trickery!
No. It is a form of mercy. People want to believe they are cured. Sometimes I can grant them that.
The younger man rubbed a hand over his bearded chin. His hair was strawberry-blonde and sunblushed, and he wore an old white shirt and a straw hat big enough to obscure the mottled petal of curled and ruined skin that scarred the left side of his face where his earlobe should have been.
I wish for that above all else.
I know, the doctor replied, setting down his pipe for a moment to concentrate on the subdued young man in front of him.
But you think it is beyond hope.
No, not at all. Don t be so defeatist. But I do not think you would be able to convince yourself that all your troubles had been miraculously cured by a hokum potion from an old provincial quack. And if you were then - heaven forbid - to suffer from another attack, then you would feel more hopeless than ever.
The younger man nodded. I see.
His tone was one the doctor recognized. He knew that place: the giddy hinterland between hope and hopelessness.
Above them, dun clouds were slowly being unspun by the southeast wind, and the cornfields beside the garden were beginning to shake off their rain-sparked vestments. The doctor struck a match to make the charring light, then tamped the tobacco back down into the pipe s bowl. He looked across at his new friend, who was staring up at the sky while his top teeth worried at his lip. He had been there too, had touched upon that other shore. At last the doctor made the true light, taking a series of shallow puffs before raising the pipe from his mouth to use the stalk to itch his brow.
I am confident that, given time, you will begin to feel like yourself again, the doctor said, not because it was true, but because both men knew it was better to pretend than to admit defeat. Now, I have a few homeopathic remedies that may do you some good, but really, these attacks - they are the product of an agitated mind. You must try and get some rest, take a long draught of the country air. Let it blow away the cobwebs, eh? And above all, keep painting. Distract yourself. That is the key. Do not fixate yourself on purgatives and miracle cures. That is not a dependable way to deal with the melancholy.
You speak from experience.
The doctor did not reply. He merely sucked on his pipe.
A QUESTION OF DEPTH
We have been here for some time. Look at his face. Or rather, try to look at him without tilting your head.
He is leaning backwards, his head nestled against his fist, and his tired but unflinching eyes stare back at you. Or rather they stare into you, they burrow as deep as a corkscrew through the skull. His look confirms that there is nothing that can be done. His left hand steadies himself against the table. His face - and, therefore, the focus of the painting - is off-centre, and hence the immediate impression is that everything is slightly out of kilter. The world is worn down at the edges, as weather-beaten as his thin and haggard face. We have moved in so close that he need only whisper to be heard, though this is not necessary; there is a closeness between us that nudges beyond the limits of speech. We have been here for some time.
Get a better look. His body looms large - the canvas cannot contain him, and he threatens to spill over the sides. His heavy blue jacket appears stitched from some stormy ocean. It is buttoned close to his neck (the collar sags open, revealing a shock of white) and is almost indistinguishable in texture and material from both the cobalt blue mountains seen behind him, and, beyond them, the azure blue sky - each laps at the edges of the next, like waves crashing one after another at the edge of the shore. There is little attempt at depth: the background is blurred and empty of detail, a wash of swirling blues. The painter appears to suggest that his subject knows full well that blue is shorthand for a particular kind of melancholy, and knows too that he is already deep within it. His eyes affirm that this is the depth to which we test ourselves.
Though he seems to have been here in this same spot, in this same pose, for an eternity, the painting has been done in a hurry. The rapid, almost frenzied brush strokes and the minimal, hasty details (the ginger hair poking out beneath his pale flat cap, the rough yellow books, the spiky foxgloves on the red-speckled table cloth, the distance as flat as a stage set) tell us the artist was in a rush. He did not ponder it for days in some empty studio. He did not make preliminary sketches, trying out different angles and perspectives, nor did he work on a succession of drafts. No, he did it as fast as he could. He got the essentials of that gaze - those eyes - down while the expression was still burning in his vision. Nonetheless the figure must have sat for the painter for many hours, and indeed there is something unsettling about his stillness. It is a preternatural calm, an acceptance that there is nothing that can be done.
Step back from the painting and his eyes follow you. But nothing else moves. Nothing matters but the intensity of the gaze.
Where are we? Some bar or caf , or a private picnic spot? What is out there, behind him, over the ridge? It is not important.
What time of day is it? Is that the glowing blue of mid-morning, or the simmering blue of early afternoon? Or is it instead the worn-blue of dusk, or the bristling blue of dawn? It is impossible to say.
Who is this man? We can cheat, of course, and look at the title, and see that he is Doctor Paul-Ferdinand Gachet. But he does not look like much of a doctor. His clothes are blank and anonymous, and so he could just as easily be a farmhand or a merchant, a fisherman or a landlord. It does not matter.
What matters is his expression. He is looking at you. He has tasted sadness, a full bottle, a draught, a flagon, a gallon, an ocean, and is drunk on it. That is not to say he understands, that he can comprehend it. But that he empathizes. He has been submerged, churned through its rain and spray, tangled in its nets.
The picture is, by the artist s definition, a success: it has that touch of the eternal that he was striving for. Van Gogh wrote to his sister that I should like to paint portraits which appear after a century to people living then as apparitions. By which I mean