Sacré Bleu

“It hasn’t rained in Paris in a week,” said Henri.

“It’s been even longer since it rained in my parlor,” said the Professeur.

“Six paintings in a half an hour,” said Lucien.

“Yes, but what does that tell us? What does that mean?” asked the Professeur.

“It means that Lucien can’t be reasonable and behave like a proper chicken when he is hypnotized like everyone else,” said Henri.

“It means I am going to see Monet,” said Lucien. “I’m taking the first train to Giverny in the morning.”

“I can’t go with you,” said Henri. “I have to go to Brussels. Octave Maus is showing my work at his exhibition of the Twenty. I have to be there.”

“There is a painter named Octave Maus?” asked the Professeur.

“He’s a lawyer,” said Henri.

“Oh, that makes more sense,” said the Professeur.

“No it doesn’t,” said Lucien. “Octave Maus is still an absurd name, even for a lawyer. Wipe that blue off your watch, Professeur, it’s affecting your judgment.”

“It was a very small monkey in a very large park.” Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte—Georges Seurat, 1884

JUST BEFORE DAWN THE COLORMAN AND ÉTIENNE STOOD BY THE TRACKS AT Gare de Lyon waiting for a train that had departed a day ago from Torino, and before that, Genoa, Italy. There was raw color on the train, gouged fresh from the hills of Italy: tan and umber earths from Siena; red, yellow, and orange ochres from Verona, Naples, and Milan. Most makers of oil color would wait, have the wholesaler deliver the crushed minerals to their shops, but the Colorman wanted to pick the very rough ores of the earth from which his color was born. Sacré Bleu was his power, but he was a man of all colors. He even performed some of the ritual when making the other colors, not because it was necessary, but because it frightened the maids.

As the train’s brakes hissed and squealed and the great beast stopped, the Colorman noticed another man by the tracks, a slight fellow with a goatee, wearing a light gray plaid suit and hat that was entirely too fine for a stevedore or porter, and except for the Colorman, no one else was to be found this far down the tracks, away from the passenger platforms. The man in gray held a pince-nez and seemed to be trying to read the sides of the train cars.

“What are you looking for?” asked the Colorman.

“This is the train from Italy, I’m told,” said the man, eyeing Étienne’s boater hat suspiciously. “I’m expecting a shipment of colored ores, but I don’t know where to find it.”

“It’s probably that one,” said the Colorman, pointing to a train car he was sure it wasn’t. “You are a painter?”

“Yes. Georges Seurat is the name. My card.”

The Colorman looked at the card, then handed it to Étienne, who thought it tasted fine.

“You painted that big picture of the monkey in the park.”

“There was a very small monkey in a very large park. Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. That painting was about placement of color.”

“I liked the monkey. You should buy your paints from a color man.”

“I work in pure hues,” said Seurat. “After Chevreul’s theory of mixing color in the eye, rather than on the canvas. Dots of complementary color placed next to each other cause an instinctual and emotional response in the mind of the viewer—a vibration, if you will. Something that can’t be achieved by color muddied on the palette. I need the colors as raw as can be.”

“That sounds like bullshit,” said the Colorman.

“Chevreul was a great scientist. The world’s premier color theorist, and he invented margarine.”

“Margarine? Ha! Butter with the flavor and color taken out. He’s a charlatan!”

“He’s dead.”

“So you see, then,” said the Colorman, thinking he had made his point by not being dead. “You should buy your pure color from a color man. Then you can have more time to paint.”

Seurat smiled then, and tapped his walking stick on the bricks. “You are a color man, I presume?”

“I am the Colorman,” said the Colorman. “Only the finest earths and minerals, no filler, mixed to order, in whatever medium you like. I like poppy oil. No yellowing. Like margarine. But if you want linseed or walnut oil, I have them.” The Colorman rapped his knuckles against the big wooden case strapped on Étienne’s back.