Sacré Bleu

“To Renoir, simplicity is a virtue. Hasn’t he told you how he loves simple women?”

“I don’t think he means virtue simple,” said Lucien. “I think he means stupid simple.”

Not long after Renoir agreed to tutor Lucien, Père Lessard took the boy down the butte to the color shop of Monsieur Tanguy at Place Pigalle and bought him a drawing pad, pencils, a sanguine crayon, and some drawing charcoal. Then they rode on the top deck of a horse-drawn omnibus to the Louvre to look at paintings, so Lucien would have a reference point from which to start his career as an artist.

“There are many pictures of the Holy Mother,” said Lucien. “But each is different.”

“The Holy Mother has many faces, but you know it’s her from her blue cloak. She is said to be the spirit in all women.”

“Look, here she is naked and the baby Jesus has wings,” said Lucien.

“That is not the Holy Mother, that’s Venus, and that’s not Jesus, that is Cupid, the Roman god of love.”

“Wouldn’t she have the spirit of the Holy Mother as well?”

“No, she is a pagan myth.”

“What about Maman? Is the spirit of the Holy Mother in her?”

“No, Lucien, your mother is also a pagan myth. Come, look at these paintings of wrestlers.”

Back on the butte, Lucien watched his father watch the sunrise break the horizon, turning the river Seine into a bright, copper-colored ribbon across Paris. A wistful smile shone in his father’s eyes.

“Why don’t you paint, Papa?” Lucien said. “I can make the bread.”

“The racks are too heavy for you. And you are not tall enough to see in the top oven. And I am too old to learn. And if I did, I would have to do it in secret or my painter friends would tease me. And besides, I’m too old to start now, I could never be good.”

“If you keep it a secret, why do you have to be good?”

“How do you ever expect to learn anything if you are always arguing, Lucien? Come, the loaves are ready to come out,” Father said. He tapped out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, then cuffed Lucien playfully on the head and strode off across the square to work.

The crowd had grown around the bakery, maids and wives, young girls and old men, concierges, café owners, factory workers looking for a loaf to carry for their lunch, the odd whore, dancing girl, and piano player stopping for breakfast on the way home from a late night’s labor. All trading bonjours and gossip as the smell of freshly baked bread grew tall in the morning air.

At the edge of the group Lucien spotted the painter Camille Pissarro and ran to him.

“Monsieur!” said Lucien, stopping a respectful distance away, resisting the urge to throw his arms out to be swept up for rough kisses from the artist. Pissarro was Lucien’s favorite of Father’s artist friends. He was a bald, hawk-nosed Jew with a wild, graying beard and fringe; a theorist and anarchist who spoke French with a lilting Caribbean accent, he could argue fiercely in the bakery or café with his artist friends one minute, then give his last sou to them for bread, coal, and color the next.

He had a son Lucien’s age, who was also named Lucien (but there was no confusion when they played together, for reasons to soon be revealed), and a daughter, Jeanne-Rachel (called Minette), who was a year younger than Lucien. Minette was petite, and pretty, and could throw a rock as well as any boy. She inspired a love in Lucien so profound that it made him nearly breathless with the need to pull her hair and profess he

r passionate cooties to the world. Lucien was relatively sure that he would one day have to take her as his wife, if only she could be taught to be as spiteful as his mother, so she could properly ruin his life. But she was not with her father today.

“Rat Catcher!” called Pissarro, foiling Lucien’s respectable-distance strategy by snatching the boy up by one arm and mercilessly planting a beard-cushioned kiss on each of Lucien’s cheeks before dropping him back to his feet.

“Look, monsieur, how they gather to see who will win your painting.”

“I think they gather for your father’s bread,” said Pissarro. He exchanged a warm handshake with Père Lessard, who was about to recite the virtues of his friend’s painting and the deep ignorance of the Salon for rejecting his work when there came a tapping on the glass from inside and everyone turned to see Mère Lessard brandishing a demitasse spoon like a petite battle-axe, an eloquent and urgent eyebrow raised to convey that the loaves were ready to come out of the oven and Father could dawdle if he wished, and the bread could burn, but at some point he would have to sleep, and it should not surprise him in the least should he wake up dead with a small spoon driven into his brain by way of an ear or nostril.

“In a moment, my friend,” said Père Lessard. “The loaves.” He shrugged and hurried around the corner.

“I’ve been drawing,” said Lucien. “Monsieur Renoir has been teaching me to draw what I see.”

“Show me,” said Pissarro.

Lucien was off in an instant, down the alley, in the back door, through the bakery, up the stairs, and back with his sketchbook before Pissarro could get a good ember going in his pipe.

“See?” said Lucien, handing the sketchbook to the painter. “It is two dogs I saw fighting in the Maquis yesterday.”

Pissarro looked at the drawing, nodding and turning it in the air, holding it at arm’s length while he studied it and stroked his great thundercloud beard, as if he were Jehovah surveying an extracted rib for creative possibilities.