Sacré Bleu

Later, as they made their way up rue Caulaincourt, Henri limping badly and Lucien walking sideways so he could keep his friend in sight, Lucien told him.

“I probably won’t see you again. Juliette says we have to stay away from Paris for a while.”

“Lucien, I know you love her, but if you don’t mind me saying, I think Juliette is inordinately fond of syphilis.”

“What do you mean you know I love her? She was Carmen. You love her, too.”

“But I have chosen to ignore that.”

“You slept with her when she was possessed by a muse who is, as you put it, ‘inordinately fond of syphilis,’ particularly as a way of dispatching painters.”

Henri looked at the cobbles, then bounced his walking stick off its tip and caught it in front of his face as if snatching an idea from the very air.

“I think I should like to paint a clown fucking a bear. To round out my oeuvre. You know, they say that Turner left thousands of erotic watercolors and that twat critic Ruskin burned them upon his death to save his reputation. Critics. I’m glad Whistler ruined Ruskin with that lawsuit over his night paintings. Served him right. Can you imagine? Turner erotica? I’m going to buy Whistler a drink the next time he’s in Paris.”

“So, you’re choosing to ignore the whole Juliette-Carmen-syphilis connection?”

“Exactement.”

“Well then,” said Lucien. “What kind of bear?”

“Brown, I think.”

WHEN THEY CAME TO THE STUDIO, JULIETTE WAS WAITING BY THE DOOR, wearing a dark dress, appropriate to winter.

“Bonjour, Henri!” She bent and they exchanged kisses on the cheeks.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Lucien tells me that you’re leaving.”

“Oui, I am sorry to say.”

“Where will you go?”

“Spain, I think,” she said, shooting a glance at Lucien. “There is a young painter there who needs to start using more blue in his work. Barcelona, I think.”

“Ah, well, it will be warm there. You will both be missed.”

“As will you, mon cher. Shall we go in and say good-bye properly?”

Henri tipped his hat. “Over a cognac, you mean?”

“But of course,” she said.

Epilogue in Blue: Then There Was Bleu, Cher

New York, October 2012—The Museum of Modern Art

IT WAS A WEEKDAY AND THE MUSEUM WAS NOT BUSY, WHICH WAS UNUSUAL anytime. A striking, fair-skinned brunette, her hair pinned up with chopsticks, in an elegant suit of ultramarine blue wool and impractically tall shoes, stood in front of Starry Night, staring into the white and yellow swirls painted through a night sky of Sacré Bleu. She had staked out a territory directly in front of the painting, about a meter away, making the other museum patrons look around her, or just peek at the painting as they passed by, most thinking she was a self-absorbed model, as there were a lot of those wandering around this neighborhood, and her skirt seemed confidently well fitted about the bottom. She rubbed at a pendant on chain around her neck as she examined the painting.

“This is mine, you know?” she said. “I wouldn’t try to take it. I’m not going to take it, but it’s mine.”

The young man, who sat on a bench nearby, sighed, slightly amused. He was about thirty, and had dark eyes, and a shock of dark brown hair fell across his forehead.

She said, “He painted it at night and had Theo store it in the dark. That’s why Poopstick couldn’t find it.”

“As you’ve told me,” said Lucien. “Don’t you have someone you have to be?”

She did. There was a boy in the Bronx who painted subway cars with spray cans, who loved a Latina girl with vibrant blue eyes. She would go to him, enchant him, inspire him, and leave the Juliette doll in an apartment with Lucien to wait. And when the boy finished his work, she and Lucien would go to a tunnel or depot where no one was around, and Lucien would light the fires and chant the strange words, sending her into a trance, then he would scrape the Sacré Bleu from her body, as he had done now for more than a century, as the painting on the train faded away.