Sacré Bleu

Lucien tried to think, but there were things muddled up in his head. He remembered London, and seeing the Turners and Velázquez’s Venus, but he had never been to London. Everyone was sure of it but him. They said he’d been in the studio for days before they found him, and no one had seen him leave.

“I don’t know,” Lucien said. “Maybe it was a dream. I don’t remember. I just felt Minette, gone. Like it had just happened and something had taken her from me.”

“You asked if ‘blue’ had taken her,” said the doctor.

Lucien studied Gachet’s eyes, which were large and always a bit doleful, as if he could see some sadness at the heart of everything.

“That doesn’t make sense, does it?” said Lucien.

“The boy is tired,” said Pissarro. “Let’s let him rest.”

“Not to worry,” Gachet said. “But you don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember Minette being sick?”

“No,” said Lucien. He could feel the heartbreak of her loss, but he didn’t remember his first love falling ill. Only the arrow to the heart when they told him of her death. He could still feel it.

“And you don’t either?” Gachet said to Pissarro.

The painter shook his head and looked at his hands. “Perhaps it is a blessing.”

“Yet you both were there,” said the doctor. “I treated Minette for her fever. I remember, you were both there.”

“Yes,” said Pissarro. “I had done several paintings of Lucien, so I …” Pissarro lost his thought.

“Where are they?” asked the doctor.

“What?”

“Camille, I’ve seen nearly every painting you’ve done. I’ve never seen a portrait of Lucien.”

“I painted them. Three, maybe four. I was teaching him while I painted. Teaching my own son Lucien, as well. Ask him.”

Gachet looked to Lucien. “Do you remember those sessions?”

Lucien tried to remember. It had to have taken hours and hours of sitting still, back in a time when sitting still was a very difficult thing to do, yet all he could bring up was a sense of anxiety, rising to almost a panic from his core. “No. No, I don’t remember.”

“And you’ve never seen the paintings?”

“No.”

Pissarro grabbed his friend’s arm. “Gachet, what is this about? Minette died eighteen years ago.”

“I have lost memories, too,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “And I know others, well, one other, a model. It’s the color.

Isn’t it?”

“What is the color?” said Pissarro, his grief turning to exasperation. “We don’t remember because of what color?”

“I don’t know, let us examine this.” Gachet patted Pissarro’s hand to reassure him. “This color man, have you had dealings with him, Camille? Specifically, back in the time when you were painting Lucien?”

Pissarro closed his eyes and nodded. “I remember such a man. Many years ago. He came to Lessard’s bakery the day Père Lessard was raffling off one of my paintings. I paid him no mind. He gave me a tube of paint to try. Ultramarine, I think. Yes, I remember seeing him.”

“Did you use the paint?”

“I don’t remember. I suppose I would have. Those were lean times. I couldn’t afford to let color go to waste.”

“And, Lucien,” said the doctor. “Do you remember this color man?”

Lucien shook his head. “I remember a pretty girl won the picture. I remember her dress, white with big blue bows.” Lucien looked away from Pissarro. “I remember wishing that Minette had a dress like that.”