Sacré Bleu
“It is not. You get a chancre on your manhood, then later you go mad, your limbs drop off, and you die. Manet died of syphilis.”
“Nonsense. Syphilis is a myth. It’s Greek, I think—everyone has heard of the myth of syphilis.”
“That’s the myth of Sisyphus. He spends his whole life pushing a large stone up a hill.”
“With his penis? No wonder he has a chancre on it!”
“No, that’s not the story.”
“So you say. Shall I order more coffee?”
They had taken a booth at the back of the restaurant, away from the windows, due to Henri’s self-inflicted sensitivity to light, but now there was a commotion near the front. A large, ruddy-skinned man with a long hooked nose and a black mustache, wearing a long embroidered Breton jacket, had entered the restaurant and was going from table to table, imparting some news that was distressing the patrons; a few of the ladies held handkerchiefs to their mouths to cover their dismay.
“Gauguin,” said Henri. “Don’t let him see us. He’ll try to get us to join one of his movements.”
“But this would be a perfect time to ask him if Vincent was in contact with a woman in Arles.”
As if he’d heard them, Gauguin looked up, spotted them, and slalomed between the tables toward them.
“Here he comes,” said Henri. “Tell him we’ve decided that we are staunch adherents to the Incohérents movement. We will not be persuaded.”
“You and Willette just made that movement up to annoy him.” Henri and other artists who inhabited Le Chat Noir had formed the Incohérents as a response to the Salon des Artistes Français and all the overly earnest, humorless art movements that had risen since the Impressionists.
“That’s not true,” said Henri. “We made it up to annoy everyone, but yes, Gauguin in particular.”
Gauguin arrived at their booth and slid into the seat next to Lucien without being asked.
“Lautrec, Lessard, did you two hear? Theo van Gogh is dead.”
“Murdered?” asked Lucien.
“A sudden illness,” said Gauguin.
“Now the painter, he s
lept alone in his tiny Paris apartment and dreamed of tropical islands where buttery brown girls moved in cool shadows like spirits.” Self-Portrait—Paul Gauguin, 1888
Twenty-two
THE END OF THE MASTER
IDIDN’T BONK THE JULIETTE,” SAID THE COLORMAN. “I DIDN’T.”
“What’s she doing bent over the back of the couch naked?”
“Dusting?” He shrugged.
“She doesn’t need to be naked to dust.”
The island girl, Bleu, began to gather Juliette’s clothes from the floor and throw them at the Colorman. “Help me get her dressed.” To Juliette she said, “Get dressed.” The living doll straightened up and moved with clockwork awkwardness to retrieve her clothes as well.
“But I was going to make the color.”
“You can make the color with this body,” said Bleu. She didn’t care which body he used to make the color. She would be entranced during the process either way, not completely oblivious, but not completely present, either. There was a dreamlike separateness in it, ecstatic, blissful, removed, and essentially helpless. But unlike the Juliette body, who was just sort of a stringless puppet, if Bleu vacated the island girl’s body now, the girl would find herself in the midst of this strange scene with no memory whatsoever of how she’d gotten there. At best she would be reduced to a drooling lunatic, at worst she might dive through a window in terror. Sacré Bleu might be the essence of beauty, but making it was not a beautiful process.
“Wait,” Bleu said. Juliette paused, stood, and held her silk chemise between her breasts, posed like the statue of a shy Venus, as if she would happily wait a thousand years for the next command.
To the Colorman, Bleu said, “How are you going to make the color? We don’t have a painting.”