Sacre Bleu (3 page)

In the ancient world, blue was a breed of darkness.

Paris, July 1890

L
UCIEN
L
ESSARD WAS HELPING OUT IN THE FAMILY BAKERY ON
M
ONTMARTRE
when the news came of Vincent’s death. A shopgirl who worked near Theo van Gogh’s gallery Boussod et Valadon had come into the bakery to put together her lunch and dropped the news as blithely as if commenting on the weather.

“Shot himself. Right there in a cornfield,” said the girl. “Oh, one of those lamb pasties, please.”

She was surprised when Lucien lost his breath and had to steady himself on the counter.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Lessard,” said the girl. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

Lucien waved to dismiss her concern and composed himself. He was twenty-seven, thin, clean-shaven, with a shock of dark hair that swept across his forehead and dark eyes so deeply brown that they seemed to draw light from a room. “We studied together. He was a friend.”

Lucien forced a smile at the girl, then turned to his sister Régine, six years his senior, a fine, high-cheeked woman with the same dark hair and eyes, who was working down the counter.

“Régine, I must go tell Henri.” He was already untying his apron.

Régine nodded and turned away quickly. “You must,” she said. “Go, go, go.” She waved him off over her shoulder and he could see that she was hiding tears. They weren’t tears for Vincent—she had barely known him—but for the death of another mad painter, which was the Lessard legacy.

Lucien squeezed his sister’s shoulder as he passed. “Will you be all right?”

“Go, go, go,” she said.

Lucien brushed flour from his trousers as he made his way across the square to the edge of the Montmartre, where he looked out over Paris, shining in the noonday sun. Streams of black smoke from the factories in Saint-Denis to the east threw shadows over whole neighborhoods; the river Seine was a silver-blue blade bisecting the city. The boulevards shimmered with heat and activity and the acrid steam of horse piss. Butte Montmartre was above it all, the Mountain of the Martyrs, where St. Denis, Paris’s first bishop, was beheaded by the Romans in
A.D.
251, and then, performing his final canonical miracle, picked up his severed head and carried it to the very spot where Lucien stood, and looking out over his city for the last time, thought,
You know what would go good right there? A great, skeletal tower of iron. But then, I’ve lost my head. Ugh.

They say his head rolled all the way to what is now avenue de Clichy, and now Lucien set off down the two hundred and forty-two steps to that very same boulevard in the neighborhood around Place Pigalle, which was alive with cafés, brothels, cabarets, and on some mornings, the “parade of models” around the fountain in the square.

Lucien went first to Henri’s apartment at 21 rue de la Fontaine, where there was no answer. Thinking Henri might be passed out after another late night of absinthe and opium, Lucien asked the concierge to open the door, but alas, the painter was not there.

“I have not seen the little gentleman for two days, Monsieur Lessard,” said the concierge, a round, slope-shouldered woman with a bulbous nose and broken veins mapping her cheeks. “That one is out to bite the ass of the devil before he’s done.”

“If he comes in, please tell him I called,” said Lucien. He hoped Madame would not mention to Henri about biting the devil’s ass. It would inspire him, and not to art.

Then around the corner to the Moulin Rouge. The cabaret was not open to the public during the day, but sometimes Henri liked to sketch the dancers while they rehearsed. Not today; the dance hall was dark. Lucien asked after his friend at the restaurant Le Rat Mort, where the painter sometimes dined, and several of the cafés on avenue de Clichy before giving up and heading for the brothels. In the salon of the brothel on rue d’Amboise, a girl in a red negligee who had been dozing on a velvet divan when he came in said, “Oh yes, he has been here two days, maybe three, I don’t know. Is it dark out? One time he wants to fuck, the next he wants to draw you combing your hair, the next he is making you a cup of tea, and all the time with his absinthe or cognac—a girl needs a personal secretary to keep track of his moods. This work is not supposed to be complicated, monsieur. When I woke yesterday, he was painting my toenails.”

“Well, he is an excellent painter,” said Lucien, as if that might ease the girl’s anxiety. He glanced at her feet, but the whore wore black stockings. “I’m sure they are magnificent.”

“Yes, they were as pretty as a Chinese box, but he used oil paint. He told me I had to keep my feet in the air for three days while it dried. He offered to help. A rascal, that one is.”

“And where might I find him?” Lucien asked.

“He’s upstairs with Mireille. She’s his favorite because she’s the only one littler than him. Second or third door past the top of the stairs. I’m not sure, listen at the door. The two of them laugh like monkeys when they’re together. It’s unseemly.”

“Merci,
mademoiselle,” said Lucien.

As promised, when he reached the third door from the top of the stairs, Lucien heard laughter punctuated by a woman’s rhythmic yipping.

Lucien knocked on the door. “Henri. It’s Lucien.”

From inside he heard a man’s voice: “Go away, I’m riding the green fairy.”

Then a woman’s voice, still laughing: “He is not!”

“I’m not? I’ve been lied to! Lucien, it appears that I’m riding the completely wrong imaginary creature. Madame, upon completion of my business, I will expect a full refund.”

“Henri, I have news.” Lucien didn’t think the death of a friend the kind of news one should shout through a whorehouse door.

“As soon as I have completed my—”

“Your business
is
completed,” giggled Mireille.

“Ah, so it is,” said Henri. “One moment, Lucien.”

The door flew open and Lucien jumped back against the railing, nearly tumbling over to the salon below.

“Bonjour!”
said Count Henri-Marie-Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, who was quite naked.

“You wear your
pince-nez
when you’re shagging?” said Lucien. Indeed, the
pince-nez
was perched on Henri’s nose, which abided at the level of Lucien’s sternum.

“I am an artist, monsieur, would you have me miss a moment of inspiration due to my poor eyesight?”

“And your hat?” Henri wore his bowler hat.

“It’s my favorite hat.”

“I will vouch for that,” said Mireille, naked but for her stockings, who slid from the bed and padded over to Henri, snatched the cheroot from his lips, then scampered away to the washbasin, puffing like a tiny marshmallow locomotive. “He loves that fucking hat.”

“Bonjour,
mademoiselle,” said Lucien, remembering his manners even as he peeked around Toulouse-Lautrec’s shoulder to watch the prostitute washing herself at the bureau.

“Ah, lovely, is she not?” asked Henri, following Lucien’s gaze.

Lucien suddenly realized that he had stepped into the doorway and was now standing very close to his naked friend.

“Henri, would you put on some trousers, please!”

“Don’t shout at me, Lucien. You come here at the crack of dawn—”

“It’s noon.”

“At the crack of noon, and drag me away from my work—”

“My work,” said Mireille.

“Away from my research,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “And then—”

“Vincent van Gogh is dead,” said Lucien.

“Oh.” Henri dropped the finger he had raised in the air to mark his point. “I had better put on some trousers, then.”

“Yes,” said Lucien. “That would be better. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

He hadn’t meant to, but seeing the look on the painter’s face, Lucien realized that he had just done to Henri what the shopgirl had done to him: opened a trapdoor in the world through which Vincent had dropped.

L
UCIEN WAS ANXIOUS WAITING AMONG THE WHORES.
T
HERE WERE ONLY
three in the salon at this time of day (when the house probably supported thirty in the evening), but they all sat together on one of the round divans, and he thought it would be rude not to sit near them.

“Bonjour,”
he said as he sat down. The girl in the red negligee who had directed him was gone, perhaps entertaining a customer upstairs. These three were new to him, or at least he hoped they were new. Two were older than he, a bit time tattered, and each had hair dyed a different unnatural shade of red. The other was younger, but very round and blond, and looked somewhat clownish, with her hair tied up in a knot on the top of her head, lips large and red, painted into an unlikely pucker of surprise. None of the three looked capable of being surprised anymore.

“I’m waiting for my friend,” said Lucien.

“I know you,” said the round blond. “You’re Monsieur Lessard, the baker.”

“The
painter,
” Lucien said, correcting her.
Damn it.
Henri had brought him here two years ago when he was in the throes of an agonizing heartbreak, and although through the mystic haze of brandy, absinthe, opium, and despair Lucien could remember nothing, apparently he had made the acquaintance of this rotund girl-clown.

“Yes, painter,” said the blond. “But you make your living as a baker, right?”

“I sold two paintings just last month,” said Lucien.

“I sucked off two bankers just last night,” said the whore. “I’m a stockbroker now, no?”

One of the older whores elbowed the blond in the shoulder, then shook her head gravely.

“Sorry. You don’t want to talk about business. Did you ever get over that girl you were crying about? What was her name? Josephine? Jeanne? You kept wailing it all through the night.”

“Juliette,” said Lucien.
What is Henri doing? He only had to get dressed, not paint the whole scene.

“That’s right, Juliette. Did you ever get over that slut?”

Another elbow, this one from the other whore, and to the ribs.

“Ouch. Bitch. I was just showing an interest.”

“I’m fine,” said Lucien. He was not fine. He was even less fine now that he thought he may have tried to find comfort on the body of this rough beast.

“Ladies,” called Toulouse-Lautrec from the staircase. “I see you have met my friend Monsieur Lucien Lessard, painter of Montmartre.” He was pacing off the steps with his walking stick, stopping on each step. Sometimes his legs hurt him more than others, like when he was coming off a binge.

“He was here before,” said round clown.

Henri must have seen the alarm on Lucien’s face, because he said, “Relax, my friend. You were entirely too drunk and sad to avail yourself of the ladies’ charms. You remain as pure and virginal as the day you were born.”

“I’m not—”

“Think nothing of it,” Henri said. “I remain your protector. Apologies for the delay, it appears that my shoes escaped during the night and I had to borrow a pair.” As he reached the foot of the stairs he lifted his trouser cuffs to reveal a pair of women’s high-button shoes, rather larger than one was used to seeing in a women’s style, for although Henri was short, only his legs were of small proportion, due to a boyhood injury (and his parents being first cousins); his other parts were man size.