Free Sunflowers by Sheramy Bundrick Page B

that had come to pass.
    He happened to glance over at me in the same second. “What is it? You have the most extraordinary look on your face right now.”
    “I was thinking about how much I love you.”
    Astonishment flickered across his face. He stared at me for a moment, then turned back to his canvas and tapped his brush on the palette with a soft “Oh.”
    The water lapped. The wind blew. I waited, but Vincent said nothing, only painted. I pulled up my knees and hugged them without another word, tears pooling in my eyes. I couldn’t look at him anymore and turned to the river instead.
    “Come and see,” he said gently after a while. That was all: Come and see . Wiping my eyes on the sleeve of his jacket, I slid off the wall to stand beside him, not touching him, not speaking, trying vainly to pretend I hadn’t spoken in the first place.
    The painting pulsed with energy and movement, the gaslights of Arles golden beacons under the midnight sky. Restless reflections shimmered and shone in the restless waters, stars blooming above like flowers, constellations unfurling across the horizon. Empty boats rocked against the shore, and on the riverbank he’d painted a pair of lovers strolling arm in arm where in real life no one stood. The woman had a blue dress like mine, and the man wore blue too. With a yellow straw hat.
    Vincent turned to me, and on his face was, as he put it, the most extraordinary look. “How do you call the stars in Provençal?”
    “ L’estelan ,” I murmured.
    “ L’estelan ,” he repeated, then took my chin in his fingers and kissed me. It was the slightest brush of the lips—as soft as the breeze on my face—but the sweetest kiss, more loving in its tenderness than any words he could have spoken. Words were not necessary. His eyes told me, his kiss told me what I wanted to know. So did his painting.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Studio of the South
If I set up a studio and refuge right at the gates of the south, it’s not such a crazy scheme .
—Vincent to Theo, Arles, September 1888
    V
    incent showered me with little attentions after that night by the river. Flowers he picked on his walks, novels with tattered yellow covers—one visit he surprised me with a bird’s nest he found lying in an orchard. “I kept over a dozen nests in my studio at Nuenen,” he said shyly when he handed it to me. “Birds are artists in their own right, no?” Jacqui, sitting at the next table with a customer, erupted into giggles overhearing him, but I ignored her and kissed him thank-you in front of everybody. I didn’t care what she thought, I didn’t care what anyone thought. The flowers watched over me from the vase on my bureau, and the bird’s nest earned a place of honor on my windowsill.
    The yellow house became my refuge, the nest where I flew when I was free. Vincent and I shared suppers I cooked on my evenings off. We chatted by the fire, satisfied each other in the blue-walled bedroom. Some nights I imagined what it would be like to stay forever, not leaving in the morning for the Rue du Bout d’Arles, giving myself to no one but him. Some nights I dared to think what it would mean to bear his child, have a family together like he’d had with Sien. Then dawn would come, he’d rise from the bed to go to the studio, and my fancies would fade with the moonlight.
    Some days I joined him on his painting trips. I sat with him in the Place Lamartine when he painted a picture of the house; I walked with him to the vineyards outside town when he wanted to paint the grape harvesters. With my hair up and face hidden under a parasol, no one took any notice of me, although Vincent was ogled by the curious everywhere we went. He talked to me as he worked, telling me the names of the colors he used and why he arranged the picture a certain way. “There, you see, Rachel”—he’d always begin—“if I painted all the trees that stand in front of my house, you couldn’t see my house. Bless me, look at that