Sacré Bleu

“Margot,” said Pissarro. “I don’t remember her surname. She modeled for Renoir. His swing picture, and the big Moulin de la Galette picture.”

“I knew her,” said Gachet. “Renoir called me to Paris to treat her. Marguerite Legrand was her full name. Do you know if Renoir bought color from this color man?”

“Why?” asked Toulouse-Lautrec.

“Because he has had these lapses in memory,” said the doctor. “Whole months that he lost, as has Monet. I don’t know about Degas, or Sisley, or Berthe Morisot—the others among the Impressionists—but I know these Montmartre painters have all had these memory lapses.”

“And Vincent van Gogh as well?” said Henri.

“I’m beginning to think so,” said Gachet. “You know that oil color can contain chemicals that can harm you? The mercury in vermilion alone could drive a man to what is called the ‘hatter’s madness.’ We all know someone who has been poisoned by lead white. Chrome from chrome yellow, cadmium, arsenic, all elements of the colors you use. That’s why I’ve always discouraged my painter friends from painting with their fingers. Many of those chemicals can enter the body just through the skin.”

“And Vincent used to eat paint,” said Henri. “Lucien and I saw him do it at Cormon’s studio. The master scolded him for it.”

“Vincent could be … well … passionate,” said Lucien.

“A loon,” said Henri.

“But brilliant,” said Lucien.

“Absolutely brilliant,” agreed Lautrec.

Gachet looked to Pissarro. “You know how Gauguin was saying that he and van Gogh had fought in Arles? Vincent became so violent that he cut off a piece of his own ear. Gauguin was forced to return to Paris.”

“Van Gogh committed himself to a sanitarium after that, didn’t he?” said Pissarro.

Lucien sat up now. “Vincent was not well. Everyone knows that.”

“His brother said he has had spells for years,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.

“Vincent didn’t remember the fight,” said the doctor. “Not at all. He told me that he had no idea why Gauguin left Arles. He thought Gauguin had abandoned him over artistic differences.”

“Gauguin said he had fits of temper that he didn’t even remember the next day,” said Pissarro. “The lapses were more disturbing than the temper.”

“Drinking?” said Lucien. “Henri loses weeks at a time.”

“I prefer to think of them as invested, not lost,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.

“Gauguin said he hadn’t been drinking that day,” said the doctor. “He said that Vincent thought his distress had something to do with a blue painting he had made. He would only paint with blue color at night.”

Lucien and Pissarro looked at each other, their eyes widening.

“What?” asked Gachet, looking from the young painter to the older and back. “What, what, what?”

“I don’t know,” said Pissarro. “When I think of that time, I feel something terrible. Frightening. I can’t tell you what it is, but it seems to live just outside of my memory. Like a phantom face at a window.”

“Like the memory of a dog that’s been mistreated,” said Henri. “I mean, that is how I feel about the time I lost. I don’t understand what happened, but it frightens me.”

“Yes!” said Lucien. “As if the more I think about it, the more the memory runs away.”

“But it’s blue,” said Pissarro.

“Yes. Blue.” Lucien nodded.

Gachet stroked his beard and looked back and forth again, searching the painters’ faces for some hint of irony, amusement, or guile. There was none.

“Yes, there’s that, the blue,” said Henri. Then to the doctor, “What about hallucinations? Remembering things that never happened, maybe?”

“It could all be caused by something that this color man put in the paint. Even trace amounts from breathing fumes could have caused it. There are poisons so powerful that the amount you could put on the head of a pin could kill ten men.”