I love the work of Vincent van Gogh. As a youngster, one portrait especially drew my attention. It was the wedge shaped face of a man with a high, rounded brow, receding hairline, rosacean cheeks and hard, dark eyes that at first made me think the subject severe and humourless – except, on closer inspection, there was the slightest hint of a smile beneath the moustache and suggestion of crows feet at the outer corners of the eyes. The Portrait of Trabuc; an Attendant at Saint-Paul Hospital, its character and subtlety, provided an understanding of the artist’s capacity to observe and express.
The portrait has now assumed added perspective on reading Susan Fletcher’s book, Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew.
It is 1889. Jeanne and Charles Trabuc live in a white-painted cottage just a stroll along a path through an olive grove from Saint Paul de Mausole hospital at which Charles is a warden. They are a couple of mature age – he sixty and she in her fifties – and very little happens in their life, their marriage chaste since the birth of their children, their beds separated by three paces. Charles is neither cruel nor intentionally unkind but “…distant and hard, Jeanne knows… without meaning it.”
Charles works hard, with a group of nuns who tend the mentally ill residents within the hospital. One evening, Pastor Salles calls to visit. He tells Charles of a new arrival, a Dutchman who has harmed himself greatly. Jeanne has visions of cut wrists. Salles goes on to talk about the Dutchman’s madness, including walking through a village square in the rain, “…completely unclothed.” Charles cautions him against using such language in front of Jeanne. She says she is not shocked, but the words return to her.
She “…does not let her pulse slow down, she is aware of her body – its temperature, her breath.” Jeanne breaks the rules. At first, on the ruse of leaving her embroidered hankie in the church, she slips away to catch glimpse of the new arrival. He stands at the easel and “…the colour she sees is purple. Irises, on the canvas… He turns. She gasps: This man is on fire for his beard is a flame of bright orange and red. It is fox, perhaps. He pulls off his hat… his hair is the same as his beard. One ear is nearly gone…”
Jeanne begins an adventure that brings colour and emotion, danger and desire, discovery and rediscovery. She can’t help herself, returning time and again to the garden. Although barred from his presence, she finds a way to keep revisiting this strange but, at the same time, passionate man. She climbs a wall to be close to him. A protective instinct arouses her, taking her to him, finding him thrashing in an epileptic fit in a field of ripe wheat.
Although essential to its writing, this is not a story about van Gogh. His work is more the catalyst than it is the reactive agent. He is famous for his bold whorls and slashes and often intense colours; his unstable temperament created art that is emotionally charged and, in the words of one critic, ‘synonymous with the romantic image of the tortured artist.’ This, though, becomes something akin to the background for Jeanne’s voyage.
Susan Fletcher has woven a tale that is as expressive in the spoken word as the paint so vigorously applied to canvas by the artist himself. Close one’s eyes and it is possible to visualise a great artist at work, to feel a part of history. It seems one can almost smell the fields and taste the dust from the olive groves of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence where it all takes place while, at the same time, feeling an empathy for Jeanne.
A warning note. Allow yourself time to read Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew in one sitting. I will be surprised if it fails to draw you in, as it did me.
Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew by Susan Fletcher (published by Hachette Australia) is available now from Dymocks. Click here to learn more.