Sacré Bleu

IN THE MONTH THAT FOLLOWED THE COLORMAN’S DEATH, LUCIEN FOUND IT very difficult to paint, despite Juliette’s inspiration. For one thing, she was only seeing him every second or third day, and then only for a few hours. And while he had hoped that she would stay with him in his little flat on Montmartre, she insisted that she keep the apartment in the Latin Quarter that she had shared with the Colorman.

“But, mon chèr,” she’d said, “the rent is paid for months in advance. It would be a shame to waste it. And besides, I am thinking of going to university and the Sorbonne is so close.”

“I could stay there, then,” he’d argued, but as soon as he’d said it, he knew it wouldn’t work. Until his paintings began to sell bett

er, he still needed to be at the bakery at four in the morning. It was an hour’s walk from the Latin Quarter to Montmartre, and there was no finding a taxi at that hour. Finally, he relented, and had stayed in with Juliette only on Saturday nights.

He had even suggested that she let him mix up some of the last of the Sacré Bleu that the Colorman had made, use it to shift time so he could paint for weeks on end and still make it back to the bakery to make the dough for the loaves, but she would not hear of it.

“No, cher, we cannot use the Bleu. That is all there is left. It would be wrong.”

She never told him exactly why it would be wrong but redirected his questions, as she often did, with her physical charms.

So, one afternoon after finishing at the bakery, when Juliette had announced that she would be otherwise engaged and Henri was nowhere to be found, Lucien made his way down the butte to the Maquis to visit Le Professeur, in the hope that a man of science might help make sense of it all.

“My boy, I’m so glad you’ve come,” said the Professeur with enthusiasm he seldom showed for anything that anyone else could understand. “Come in. Come in. I was going to come see you at the bakery. I’ve just received a telegram from a colleague of mine, Dr. Vanderlinden from Brussels. He’s working at a place called Pech Merle, near Albi, and he’s just discovered a new series of caves with drawings. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Oh, that’s terrific,” said Lucien, not understanding why he would want to know, but not wanting to be rude.

“You see, from the animal bones they’ve found among the ashes, they know the caves were used by humans many years before the others we’ve found.”

“Splendid,” said Lucien, having no idea whatever why this would be splendid.

“They could have been used ten, twenty thousand years ago. We don’t know.”

“No?” Lucien was having trouble coming up with falsely enthusiastic things to say, so he was going with false incredulity.

“Yes. And these drawings, older than any we have found, have figures rendered in blue pigment.”

“But you said ancient blue pigment didn’t last, it?—”

“Exactly. I’m leaving in the morning to go test the pigment against the samples we used when I tested the color Toulouse-Lautrec brought to me.”

“You think it could be—”

“Yes! Do you want to come with me? The train to Albi leaves from Gare du Nord at eight.”

“Absolutely,” said Lucien. There had been a lot of interest in primitive art among Paris artists lately, but no artist had seen anything this old, and apparently, no one at all had seen anything this old and blue. And nothing was going well for him in Paris. Why not?

“And Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec?”

“Henri is from Albi. He’ll probably want to join us. I’ll find him and meet you here at six thirty.”

But Henri was nowhere to be found, and Lucien even ended up leaving a note for Juliette with the concierge at her building.

“Do you want me to give it to her maid?” asked the woman.

“She has a maid?”

“Oh yes, for nearly a month now. The first she’s been able to keep. That uncle of hers was—well, monsieur, their last maid shot him, and I don’t mind telling you—”

“I know,” Lucien interrupted. “No, please, just give it to Juliette, personally. Thank you, Madame.”

LUCIEN LEFT A MESSAGE FOR HENRI AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, WHERE LAUTREC could be depended upon to show before anywhere else, and so Lucien boarded the train to Albi with only the Professeur. They were met at the Albi station by Dr. Vanderlinden, a silver-bearded walrus of a man who spoke French with a clipped Dutch accent that accentuated his formal, academic demeanor, despite the fact that he dressed like a mountaineer in canvas and leather, his boots dusty and run over at the heels.

Vanderlinden installed them in a modest inn where he kept his quarters, and in the morning they rode several miles into the hills in a workman’s wagon, then hiked two more, on steep forest trails that would not have accommodated a horse, let alone the wagon.

The mouth of the cave at Pech Merle was long and low, as if some giant, clawed creature had worked away the stone while trying to dig out its prey. They had to crawl on their hands and knees for nearly twenty meters before they entered a chamber in which they could even stand. Dr. Vanderlinden had prepared them for the crawl, however; they all wore gloves and had padded their knees with leather backed with wool.