IT WAS NEARLY SUNDOWN BEFORE LUCIEN WAS FINALLY ABLE TO GET HENRI sobered up enough to make an assault on the mine. Each carried a storm lantern and Lucien had candles and matches in his jacket pockets. Henri had his cane with the sword in the hilt (Lucien had made him check that it wasn’t the one with the cordial glass), and Lucien had a long, hook-tipped brush knife he’d borrowed from a neighbor who used it for keeping weeds at bay in the hedgerow of his backyard garden.
“Perhaps we should wait until it’s not so dark,” said Henri, ducking under a low archway of brambles.
“It’s a mine, it’s always dark.” Lucien hacked away at some blackberry bushes with the brush knife, losing some skin from his knuckles on the thorns in the process.
“Well we should have brought a pistol. I have an uncle in Paris who would gladly lend us one.”
“We won’t need a pistol.”
“That’s probably what Vincent thought that last day he went out to paint.”
Lucien started to argue, but instead said, “Strange, what Gauguin said about Vincent wanting to use blue only in night scenes.”
“Poor Vincent,” Henri said.
They had reached the mouth of the mine. Lucien knelt and pulled a match from his jacket pocket. “We should light the lanterns. Give me yours.”
“I’ll watch for rats,” said Henri.
“They won’t come out where it’s light. That’s why I had to go in here in the first place. To set my traps.”
“Why were you hunting rats?”
“For food.”
“No, really?”
“For my father’s pastries.”
“No, really?”
“The city was under siege. There was no other food.”
“Your father made rat pies?”
“The plan had been tureens—country pâté—but then there wasn’t enough bread to eat them with, so he made pies. The crusts were about half sawdust. Yes, rat pies, like Cornish pasties.”
“But I love your meat pasties.”
“Family recipe,” said Lucien.
They crept into the mine, lanterns held high. There was scurrying in the deep shadows.
“Was Berthe as beautiful as I imagine her?” asked Henri.
“I was seven. I was terrified. I thought the Colorman was torturing her.”
“I hope she’s here. I have a small sketch pad in my pocket.”
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“She’s not going to be here. That was twenty years ago. She lives in Montparnasse with her husband and her daughter.”
“Oh, and all of a sudden we are bound by time and the possible.”
“Good point.”
“Thus, I brought a sketch pad.”