Sacre Bleu (53 page)

“And you possessed me.”

“To know you. No one knows you like I know you, Lucien. I know how much you loved your papa. Really know. I know how Minette’s death broke your little heart. I know your passion for painting, like no one else will ever know. I know how it feels to be hit in the head, morning after morning, with a perfect baguette. I was there when you discovered the magic, elastic properties of your willy. I—”

“That’s enough.”

“You are my
only
and my
ever,
Lucien. I’m free now. I am yours. Your Juliette. We can be together. You can paint.”

“And what will you do?” asked Lucien. “Work in the hat shop?”

“No, I have money. I’ll model, for
you.
I’ll inspire
you.”

“You’ve given him syphilis, haven’t you?” said Toulouse-Lautrec.

“No, I haven’t. But it appears Monsieur Lessard needs to consider our good fortune. Dear Henri. Dear, brave Henri, you have some cognac around here, don’t you?”

“But of course,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.

L
UCIEN WAITED A WEEK AFTER THE
C
OLORMAN WAS DEAD, FOR HIS ANGER
to cool, before he was ready to tell Régine that their father had not been a philanderer and that she was not responsible for their sister Marie’s death. The trick was how to tell her without revealing the entire bizarre story of Juliette and the Colorman. He’d been faithful to his duties at the bakery, letting his sister sleep late and relieving her at the counter as soon as the baking was done, which went a long way in lightening her disposition.

It was Thursday morning, around ten, when the push of the day was already past, and he heard her singing a sweet song to herself as she swept the crumbs from behind the counter, when he decided to share the news that he thought might relieve her of a lifetime of guilt.

“Régine, Maman is a slut,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“I knew it,” said an old man who had been sitting at one of the high tables by the window, so still up until that point that he’d become part of the furniture.

“You just mind your own business, Monsieur Founteneau.” She turned so abruptly to Lucien that had the broom been her tango partner she would have snapped his neck. “Perhaps in the rear,” she growled.

“Oh, I’m sure she likes it that way, too!” said Monsieur Founteneau. “You can tell by the way the slut waves it around.”

Lucien stepped gallantly between his sister and the customer. “Monsieur, that is my mother you are talking about.”

“Don’t blame me, you brought it up,” said Monsieur Founteneau.

Régine grabbed Lucien’s sleeve and dragged him through the curtain into the kitchen. “Why would you say such a thing? And in front of a customer.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been waiting to tell you. I don’t mean that Maman is a slut, I mean that she is
the
slut.”

“She could come down the stairs any second and if she kills you, I’m not going to save you again.”

Régine started to walk away. Lucien grabbed her arm and spun her around. “I will tell you, but you must not mention it to Maman.”

“That she’s a slut?”

“That she was the woman you saw go into Papa’s studio all those years ago.”

Régine slapped his hand off her arm. “Go away, Lucien. You’re being silly.”

“Did you really get a good look at her? The woman in the studio with Papa.”

“No, you know I didn’t. That’s why Marie was up on the roof—to look through the skylight. But I know it wasn’t Maman. She was away visiting Grandmother.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“The woman I saw had long red hair. She was wearing a blue dress I’d never seen before. Don’t you think I would recognize my own mother? Why are you saying these things, Lucien? I’ve known about Papa and the slut for—”

“I found Papa’s journal. When I was cleaning out the storeroom. He wrote all about Maman coming to him in the studio. Spending days at a time there.”

“But she hates painting. She never said a good thing about Papa’s painting. Let me see this journal.”

Lucien hadn’t quite thought this all through. He thought that once he’d told Régine about their mother being the strange “other” woman she’d be so relieved that—well, he hadn’t expected to be questioned. “I can’t, I burned it.”

“Why would you burn it?”

“Because it contained embarrassing secrets about Maman and Papa.”

“Which you are telling me now. I’m going to ask Maman about it.”

“You can’t. She doesn’t remember.”

“Of course she would remember. Papa died in that studio. Marie died trying to look into that studio. She may not want to, but she’ll remember.”

“No she won’t, because she was taking opium. Lots and lots of opium. Papa wrote about it. He wrote about how she would take opium and come to the studio and they would make love for days and days. But she doesn’t remember any of it. There, now you know.”

“Maman was taking opium and none of us noticed?”

“Yes. Think about it. All the times we said that Maman was insane. It turns out she wasn’t insane at all, she was just a drug fiend.”

“And a sex fiend, evidently.”

“Papa described it in detail, the disgusting, revolting things they did together. That’s what you were hearing the night Marie went out on the roof. That’s why I had to burn the journal. To spare your sensibilities, Régine. I did it for you.”

“To spare my sensibilities you decided to reveal to me, in the middle of my workday, that our mother is a pervert and a drug fiend and our father not only took advantage of those things but wrote about them, and that is supposed to spare my sensibilities?”

“Because you’ve felt responsible for keeping the secret of the other woman from Maman all these years, because you felt responsible for Marie. See, none of it is your fault.”

“But now, knowing the truth, I have to keep this secret from Maman?”

“It would hurt her feelings.”

“She boinked our father to death!”

“Yes, but in a nice way. Really, when you think about it, it’s kind of sweet.”

“No it’s not. It’s not sweet at all.”

“I think Papa’s and Marie’s deaths shocked her out of her drug use, so it’s all turned out for the best, really.”

“No it hasn’t.”

“You’re right, we should murder her in her sleep. Do you think Gilles will help us with the body? She
is
a large woman.”

“Lucien, you are the worst liar in the world.”

“I’m more visual than verbal, really. The painting and so forth.”

She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. “But it’s very nice of you to try to make me feel better. I don’t know why, but you have a good heart under all those layers of stupidity.”

“What is going on here?” Mère Lessard’s voice came from the top of the stairs.

Régine pinched Lucien’s arm and turned to her mother. “I was just sweeping up and Lucien was telling me how you took opium and shagged Papa to death in his art studio.”

Lucien cringed, then bolted through the curtain to the front.

“Hmmpf. He should be so lucky,” said Mère Lessard.

Evidently, mothers and daughters had a different relationship than mothers and sons, or else Régine would have been trying to remove a rolling pin from her
derrière
right then.

Well, I tried,
thought Lucien.

T
HAT EVENING,
H
ENRI DE
T
OULOUSE-
L
AUTREC DINED AT THE
L
APIN
A
GILE
with his friend Oscar, an Irish writer who was in from London. He had not seen Lucien or Juliette since the night after they’d killed the Colorman. In fact, since burning the masterpieces, he couldn’t bear to spend time with any of his artist friends, and even the girls in the brothels could not distract him from the wretchedness he had heaped on himself, so he had crawled alone into a very deep bottle and stayed there until Oscar arrived at his apartment on the butte and insisted they do the rounds of the cafés and cabarets.

Oscar, a tall, dark-haired dandy and raconteur, preferred the cafés to the cabarets, so he could spout his practiced witticisms for all to hear, despite his dreadful French. But this would not be the week that Oscar would extend to Paris the reputation he already enjoyed in the English-speaking world as a most vainglorious tosser, for over the first meal Henri could remember eating in a week, he slurred a fantastic story that captivated the Irishman and left him nearly speechless in both languages.

“Surely, you’re doing me badly,” said Oscar in French. “No one eats such a book.”

“Your French is shit, Oscar,” said Henri around a bite of bloody steak. “And it is true.”

“My French is liquid and fat,” Oscar said, meaning to say that his French was fluent and expansive. “Of course it’s not true. I don’t care a fly. But it makes a delicious book. May I take notes?”

“More wine!” Henri shouted to the bartender. “Yes. Write, write, write, Oscar, it’s what men do when they can’t make real art.”

“Here it is,” said Oscar. “This little man never died because of the paintings.”

“Yes,” said Henri.

And so, for another hour, as he became more drunk and more incoherent, and Oscar Wilde became more drunk, and more incoherent in French, Henri spun the tale of the Colorman and how he had defeated death by using the paintings of masters. By the end of the evening, or what would have been the end for a sane person, the two stumbled out of the Lapin Agile, Oscar bracing himself on Henri’s head, and Henri bracing himself on his walking stick, and they paused at the split-rail fence on rue des Saules, realizing with some despair that no taxi was going to come by and they would have to navigate the stairs down the butte to Pigalle to catch a cab or continue their bar crawl, when a woman called out.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me, Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec?”

They looked to the bare vineyard across the street from the restaurant, and on the bench where once Lucien and Juliette had looked out over Paris, sat a lone figure in the dark.

Hanging on Oscar’s lapels for balance, Henri dragged the playwright across the street and leaned in close to the woman’s face, which he could now make out by the moonlight and the light spilling from the windows of the Lapin Agile.

“Bonsoir,
mademoiselle,” he said. He grasped the edge of his
pince-nez,
and while swinging from Oscar’s lapel, he did a semicircular inspection of the woman’s face. “And what brings you to Montmartre this evening?”

“I’m here to see you,” she said. “The concierge at your building said I would find you here.”

Henri swung in close again, and yes, he could see the light in her eyes, the recognition, the smile that he had missed so. This was
his
Carmen. He let go of Oscar’s lapel and fell backward into her lap.

“Oscar Wilde, may I present Carmen Gaudin, my laundress. I’m afraid you will have to continue the adventure on your own.”

“Enchanté,
mademoiselle,” said Oscar with a slight bow over Carmen’s hand, which Henri tried to lick as it passed his face.