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not been kind to him, that he often felt like a lost ship among those steadier and sturdier than he.
    My heart actually ached for my little brother when I read these letters. He was almost seventeen years of age now but his upbringing had been quite unconventional. I could see how he might be a target for certain secondary-school bullies.
    The fact that, over the winter, he had decided to grow a small goatee like Father’s probably didn’t help things. The narrow tuft of beard only accentuated his sharp angular face. Tall and thin, he appeared almost sickly. Like a fragile duck, with a long neck of blue veins. I could almost hear the taunts echoing in my head.
    Recently, when Paul returned home for the weekend, he began to show less and less interest in adapting to the lifestyle of his peers. Perhaps in a reaction to their rejection of him, he began to cultivate an attitude of eccentricity just like Papa’s. At first, it began quite benignly. He would withdraw after his Saturday dinner to his room, where he proceeded to dabble with some borrowed paints of Papa’s. Then he started to imitate our father’s style in other ways. He would wear similar smocklike jackets and brightly colored cravats.
    He began to mimic Papa’s way of walking, the way he held one hand under his breast pocket, the other dangling awkwardly with a pencil clutched between his fingers. He memorized Papa’s gestures and expressions, even the odd way he tied his tie.
    But whereas Father’s quirks were the eccentricities of an aging doctor, they seemed particularly worrisome in a boy of school age.
    At dinner one Sunday, Paul announced that someday he would be a famous painter. I knew he was trying to impress Father with the idea that his only son would fulfill the dream he had been too bourgeois to devote himself to.
    Papa looked up from his lamb chop, holding his fork steady on the bit of meat, and smiled. “There will always be space on the walls here for your paintings.”
    It was a far kinder response than I had expected, though Papa said little else to encourage him.
    Still, Paul threw himself into his newfound ambition. He would return on weekends not with textbooks, but with a stack of sketch pads and a tin full of pastels. He set up an easel in the corner of his room and spent several hours a day drawing or painting with his window wide open.
    He took the name Paul van Ryssel as his “painter’s name,” as Father had painted under the name Louis van Ryssel since he was a little boy. He copied paintings out of Father’s books, trying to imitate Cézanne. Even I could not help but admire his determination, though I did wonder how well he was devoting himself to his other studies.
    That afternoon, as I rolled pie dough in our hot, crowded kitchen, he chirped confidently: “I doubt anyone will ever hear of this Vincent van Gogh in years to come, but they will surely have heard of me!”
    “Paul, I hope the world hears of both of you,” I replied sweetly. I wanted to share his confidence, but I had seen his sketches and paintings. They were awkward and revealed little talent.
    I looked over at my brother. His eyes were cast downward, his fingers were still nimbly fiddling with his watch. I could not help but remember him when he was just a little boy of seven, playing with me in the garden. He wanted to be special even then, begging me to weave him a crown of laurel leaves so that he could be the ruler of the forest. So that he, in our tiny little realm, could be king.

SIX
     

Gachet’s Secret Water
     
    T HERE was little doubt in my mind that Father must have seemed odd to the villagers of Auvers. Every Sunday, he walked through the streets with our pet goat—whom he had affectionately named Henrietta—on a leash. “She’s the town’s lawn mower,” he would tell those who looked at him puzzlingly as the goat grazed on the long grasses that grew alongside the road.
    Father stood out against the rustic farmhouses like a fauvist