Sacré Bleu

“Come,” said Henri. “You’re going to need a cognac.” Henri led them another block, stopped in a doorway to unlock his studio, and led them inside. Dust motes hung in the beam of light through the door’s single oval window, making the open space seem deserted, despite the canvases leaning against every wall. There were perhaps a hundred different sketches of the angular entertainer Jane Avril in different poses strewn about the floor and tacked on the walls.

“So,” said Gauguin. “Jane Avril?”

“A professional interest,” explained Toulouse-Lautrec.

“Professional?” inquired Gauguin.

“She smells suspiciously of lilac and can put either leg behind her head while singing ‘La Marseillaise’*and spinning on the other foot. I thought further study was called for.”

“Bonking,” explained Lucien.

“Infatuation with aspirations of bonking,” Henri clarified.

“I see,” said Gauguin.

“Sit,” said Henri, gesturing to the café table and chairs he kept for just such emergencies. Crystal snifters were set around and cognac poured from a cut-crystal decanter.

“So there was a girl in your bed,” said Henri. “What of the Colorman?”

“I told you,” said Gauguin. “I went to see Père Tanguy this morning. I have an account at his shop—”

“Not Tanguy, the Colorman. Surely Vincent spoke of him to you.”

“The little bent brown fellow Vincent went on about?”

“Yes,” said Lucien. “That’s the one.”

“No.” Gauguin waved in the air as if to fan away Lautrec’s silliness. “I thought that was some Dutch folktale Vincent had conjured up from his childhood. He said that the little man had pursued him from Paris to Saint-Rémy, then to Arles. He was mad.”

“Vincent wasn’t mad,” said Lucien. “Such a man exists. Was there a girl?”

“A girl? You mean with Vincent?”

“Yes, was Vincent seeing a woman?”

“No. What woman would have him? No money, out of his mind half the time, drunk and melancholy the other.”

“He might not have seemed to spend much time with her. Perhaps he spoke of a model.” Lucien thought of all the time he had spent with Juliette out of time, just the two of them. Henri and Carmen, Monet and Camille, Renoir and his Margot, all had experienced the slip of time while alone together. Perhaps it was possible that there had been a woman with Vincent and Gauguin had never seen her.

Gauguin threw back his brandy and closed his eyes as he waited for the burn to pass. “Vincent painted landscapes, still lifes, the odd café scene, but no portraits in Arles that I remember, other than one of me and a self-portrait. No women.”

Lucien pressed. “Perhaps he spoke of someone. In passing.”

Gauguin twisted the end of his mustache mindlessly, as if wringing a stubborn memory from it. “On the day before I left we had a terrible row. It started with differences in color theory. Vincent had been trying to paint without using any blue. For a while he would use ultramarine only when painting at night. He said that darkness drained the color of its evil. It was absurd. Worse than trying to talk theory to you, Lautrec.”

“A woman?” Henri reminded him. He sloshed more cognac into Gauguin’s snifter.

“That’s the thing. Vincent became violent, screaming about blue, then he took his razor and cut off half of his ear. He waved the bloody piece around shouting, ‘This will be for her! This is her price!’”

“Oh no,” said Lucien.

“What?” said Gauguin. “Does that mean something? He was ill, right?”

“It means,” said Henri, “that you must leave Paris. Go far away. And if you see the girl who came to your bed last night you must run like you are being pursued by a demon.”

Lucien nodded to confirm Henri’s warning.

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