Sacré Bleu

“Well it will have to be a large canvas, I think.”

“Because I am a large woman? Is that what you’re saying?” She pretended to be offended.

“No, because it must contain my feelings for you,” said the painter.

“Oh, Lucien, that was the right answer.” And she kissed him swiftly, then snapped the parasol shut and was on her feet like a soldier called to attention. “Come, we’ll find you color. I know a dealer.”

How had that happened? Lucien stood and stumbled after her. “I still have questions for you, Juliette. I’m still angry, you know.”

“I know you are. Perhaps I will show you a satisfying way to vent your anger, no?”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Lucien.

“You will,” she said. Yes, he’s the one, she thought.

BACK ON AVENUE DE CLICHY, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC HAD APPROACHED THE COLORMAN.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” said the Colorman. “You are a painter, no?”

“I am,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.

When he was twelve, Henri’s mother took him to Italy, and in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, he saw a Tintoretto painting of the Blessed Virgin, in which there appeared to be the ghosts of dark faces in the sky, barely detectable, but the eager young artist couldn’t help but notice.

“The effect is called pentimento,” said the guide his mother had hired. “The master has painted over another painting, and over the years, the old image is beginning to show through. It is not clear, but you can see that something has come before and does not belong.”

Henri had, upon seeing the Colorman, felt a dark pentimento rising in his mind, and somehow it had drawn him across the street.

“You need color, perhaps?” said the Colorman. He tapped the wooden case he carried, big enough, Henri noted, that the Colorman himself might have fit inside with only minor contortionism or dismemberment.

He was shorter than Henri, and twisted in a way that made the painter think that someone may have once packed him into his case with a cannon ramrod, with no concern for comfort or integrity of limb. The painter felt a sad affinity for the Colorman, even as the revulsion of something past and forgotten made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“Don’t I know you?” asked Henri. “Have we traded before, perhaps?”

“Could be,” said the Colorman. “I travel.”

“Don’t you normally have a donkey to carry your wares?”

“Oh, Étienne? He’s on holiday. Do you need color, monsieur? I have the finest earths and minerals, nothing false. I have the syrup from which masterpieces are poured, monsieur.” The Colorman popped the latches on his case and opened it on the curb, displaying rows of tin tubes, held in place by bronze wires. He snatched one up, unscrewed the cap, and squeezed a dab of dark, bloodred paint onto his fingertip. “Crimson, made from the blood of Romanian virgins.”

“Really?” said Henri. His head was spinning and he had to lean on his cane to steady himself.

“No, not really. But it is Romanian. Made from beetles handpicked from the roots of weeds near Bucharest. But they are ugly beetles. They might be virgins. I wouldn’t fuck them. You want some?”

“I’m afraid I have all the paint I need. I have a lithograph to put on the stones today, a poster for the Moulin Rouge. And I appear to have some nausea which needs attending as well. My printer will have inks.”

“Ach, lithography.” The Colorman spat to show his disdain for all things to do with limestone and ink. “A fad. Once the newness wears off no one will do it. Perhaps some vermilion? Made from the finest cinnabar—I grind it myself—you know, to paint the redheads you love.”

Henri stepped back and stumbled off the curb, barely catching himself before he fell. “No, monsieur, I must be going.” He hurried away, as quickly as his hangover and the pain in his legs would allow him, chased by a redheaded ghost he thought he had long left behind.

“I will call on you at your studio, monsieur,” the Colorman shouted after him.

“THIS WON’T DO,” SAID JULIETTE. SHE STOOD IN THE STUDIO THAT LUCIEN shared with Henri on rue Caulaincourt at the base of Montmartre. They had rented the rear flat on the first floor, so Henri didn’t have to endure stairs when moving his canvases, but as artist’s studios went, being on the rear bottom floor of a five-story building that was attached to other buildings on both sides and only had a narrow courtyard behind, it had a rather distinct flaw.

“There are no windows,” Juliette said. “How can you work with no windows?”

“Look at all the gas lamps. And there’s a changing screen for the models. And a water closet. And a stove for making tea. And a café table, and a bar, with everything you could want. And there’s a window in the door.” There was, indeed, a window in the door, oval, stained glass, and about the size of a modest fedora. It provided just enough light from the foyer to allow Lucien to light the gas lamps without tripping on the clutter and killing himself.

“No,” Juliette said. She held her folded parasol as if she might have to use it as a weapon to fend off the canvases that were leaned against walls all around the studio in various states of drying. She took a swipe at an easel that stood empty in the center of the room, as if warning it to stay back. “I will look like a corpse in here. We need sunlight.”