Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art

by Christopher Moore

  “I will give you fifty francs, Madame, but my money is in the flat, so you have to let me in first.”

  “Welcome home,” said the concierge, swinging the door wide and stepping aside.

  “Did you feed Étienne?” asked the Colorman.

  Paris, Montmartre, 1891

  “SO YOU SEE, SHOOTING HIM IS NOT ENOUGH,” SAID JULIETTE. “I HAVE TO GO BACK.”

  They were sharing a baguette and butter with coffee at the Café Nouvelle Athènes in Place Pigalle. Juliette had volunteered to buy breakfast, since she was the only one with any money left.

  Outside, around the fountain in the square, models, young women and a few men, were lined up waiting to be hired. Artists in search of a model need only come to the “parade of models” to find a subject, and with a few francs, the contract would be sealed. Those girls who were not lucky enough to be hired by an artist might move down the boulevard to sell their wares in a different way. There was a fluid line between prostitute and model, dancer and whore, mistress and madame; all were denizens of the demimonde.

  “You’re really not hungover at all?” asked Lucien, who experienced something akin to seasickness every time he turned his head to look around the café.

  “Muse,” explained Henri. Then to Juliette, he said, “So, you and the Colorman are the reason Hadrian built his wall across Britain?”

  She nodded modestly. “Inspiration is my business.”

  “He built that wall because he was afraid of the Picts,” said Lucien, jealous that he was not emperor of Rome and could not build a wall across a country for her.

  “Or annoyed by them,” said Henri.

  “Mon Dieu! For painters, you don’t understand inspiration at all,” said the muse.

  “You’re not Jane Avril, are you?” asked Henri, recoiling from the bite of a shifty suspicion.

  “No,” said Juliette. “I have not been the pleasure of her company.”

  “Oh good,” said Henri. “Because I think she is very close to going to bed with me, and I would like to think she responds to my charm and not a proclivity for the color blue.”

  “I assure you, Henri, it is your charm,” said Juliette, laughing musically, leaning over and brushing Henri’s hand with her fingertips.

  “Perhaps then, mademoiselle, you and Lucien can accompany me to the Moulin Rouge this evening and help convince the lady to view me on the horizontal, as that is where my charm is most compelling.”

  “It’s like breakfasting with a goat,” said Lucien.

  “I’m sorry, Henri, but I can’t,” said Juliette.

  “A goat in a hat,” said Lucien.

  “I really have to return to the Colorman. I have no choice.”

  “You can’t,” said Lucien. “Stay with me. Make him come after you. I’ll defend you.”

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “Then we’ll run away. You’re the one who travels through time and space, right? We’ll go hide somewhere.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “He can compel me to return to him. I told you, I am a slave.”

  “Well, what then?” Lucien nearly fell out of his chair trying to move to her side, then caught himself on the table.

  “I won’t be free as long as he lives.”

  “But you said yourself, he can’t be killed,” said Henri.

  “He can’t be killed as long as there are paintings made with unharvested Sacré Bleu. That is my theory. When I saw the Manet nude, I thought that was my chance. I thought that painting must be what protected him, but now I know there are others, or it’s something else. He’s alive. I can feel him pulling me back.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lucien. “What can we do?”

  She leaned into the center of the table and the two painters leaned in for the conspiracy. “I’ve taken the Sacré Bleu we made with the Manet nude. It’s in the mine with your Blue Nude. He’ll need more. Gauguin is leaving for Tahiti, so I will go to the artist he’s found for me. A Monsieur Seurat.”

  “Seurat’s a peintre optique,” said Henri. “He paints with tiny dots of pure color. Enormous canvases. He’ll take years to complete a painting.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “The Colorman will have to go wherever he has the other paintings hidden. I know they have to be close, because I was only gone a day before he came with the Manet. And the canvas wasn’t rolled, it was on the original stretchers, so he couldn’t have traveled far with it. There was no crate. When he goes to get another to use for the making of the Sacré Bleu, then you can follow him, destroy the paintings, and make him vulnerable.”

  “And why haven’t you done that?” asked Henri.

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried? I can’t. One of you has to do it.”

  “And if we do this, you will be free?” asked Lucien. “And we can be together?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Jane Avril will go to bed with me?” asked Henri.

  “That has nothing whatever to do with this,” said Juliette.

  “I know, but I was wondering if you might intercede on my behalf, since you have broken my heart. Just influence her until we’re in bed, out of gratitude for helping you to gain your freedom.”

  “No!” said Lucien.

  Juliette smiled. “Dear Henri, she will be yours and there will be no enchantment but your delightful presence.”

  “Fine then, I’m in,” said Henri. “Let’s rid the world of this Colorman.”

  “Oh, my heroes,” she said, taking each of their hands and kissing them. “But you must be very careful. The Colorman is dangerous and crafty. He’s been the end of hundreds of painters.”

  “Hundreds?” said Henri, a quaver in his voice.

  “She smells suspiciously of lilac and can put either leg behind her head while singing ‘La Marseillaise’ and spinning on the other foot.” Jane Avril at the Jardin de Paris (poster)—Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893

  Interlude in Blue #4: A Brief History of the Nude in Art

  Hey, have a look at these!” said the muse.

  Twenty-six

  THE THE, THE THE, AND THE COLOR THEORIST

  JULIETTE BREEZED INTO THE FLAT AS IF MAKING A STAGE ENTRANCE. SHE paused by the hall tree for applause, which, not surprisingly, did not come, since it was only her and the Colorman in the flat.

  “You’re angry, aren’t you?” said the Colorman.

  “No, not at all,” she said. “Why would you say that?”

  “You shot me. Five times.”

  “Oh, that. No, that wasn’t me. That was the island girl. I jumped into this body to help Juliette adjust her hat, and before I looked around, Vuvuzela had a gun and was shooting you. Where did she get a pistol, anyway?”

  “It was mine. Five times.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Juliette is so peaceful when she’s unoccupied, I’d forgotten how disturbing it can be to suddenly wake up naked, painted blue, with a crooked little monster standing over you holding a knife.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Sometimes she was more subtle than he liked.

  “That to a young girl, you can be a horrifying nightmare.” She smiled.

  “In what way?”

  “Penis,” she explained.

  “But of course.” He grinned.

  The Colorman didn’t remember exactly what had happened, except that it had hurt and he had been surprised, but the concierge said the island girl had been the one holding the gun when she came in.

  “Well, where have you been?” he asked. “Where is the Sacré Bleu? Why didn’t you come get me out of the morgue?”

  “I thought you might be angry,” said Juliette. She was fussing with the black chiffon scarf tied around her hat and noticed that there were still a few streaks of white gypsum dust on it where she’d brushed against something while in the mine. She went to the bedroom and made a show of pulling a hatbox from the closet. “I’ve been to Montmartre. The Sacré Bleu is gone. I used it to clean the memories of Lucien and Toulouse-Lautrec. Th
ey have no recollection of us ever having existed.”

  “But I was going to shoot them,” the Colorman said, tapping a pistol, which he had gone out just that day and purchased from a scoundrel near the market at Place Bastille. The police had taken away his first one.

  “Well, now there is no need.”

  “You used all of the Bleu for that?” He seemed to remember, although he was not sure, that they had made quite a lot of the color. It had been a big painting that had taken Manet a long time. “What did they paint? Where are the paintings?”

  “No paintings. They painted me. In the old way. Right on my body. With olive oil.”

  “Both at the same time?”

  “Oui.”

  “Oh là là.” The Colorman rolled his eyes, imagining it. He liked the idea of painting the color on this Juliette body; then it occurred to him. “You washed it off?”

  “I couldn’t very well take a taxi across the city while painted blue, could I?” She wiped a finger behind her ear and the nail came out with a bit of blue pigment. “See, I missed some.”

  The Colorman scampered over to her, grabbed her hand, and put her finger in his mouth, then ran his tongue around her fingertip as he rolled his eyes. Yes, it was the Sacré Bleu. He spit her finger out.

  “If you washed it off, we can’t make more of the color. What about the painting the baker did of you? Did you get that?”

  “Burned, so they couldn’t use it to remember.”

  The Colorman growled and stomped around the room. “Well, you’re going to have to get the island girl back, because Gauguin—”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “He’s already purchased a ticket to the South Seas. He’ll never finish a painting before he leaves. And the girl’s family won’t let her out of their sight.”

  “Well you need to find someone for this theorist Seurat to paint, and quickly. Maybe his wife, I don’t know. And when you switch, drown this Juliette body.”

  “No,” she said. “This body will be perfect. I have an idea.”

  IT WAS JUST AFTER DAWN ON MONTMARTRE. THE LOAVES HAD BEEN OUT OF the oven for only ten minutes and were still warm. Lucien felt the baguette hit him just above the right ear but wasn’t quick enough to dodge the crumbs that went in his eyes as the loaf wrapped around his head.

  “Voilà!” said Mère Lessard as she pulled the loaf away and surveyed the crunchy-chewy wiggle of the broken crust. “Perfect!”

  “Merde, Maman!” said Lucien. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I know how to make bread. You don’t have to hit me in the head with a loaf anymore to make sure it’s right.”

  “Nonsense, cher,” said Madame Lessard. “The old ways are the best. That’s why we do them. And it is so good to have you back baking again. Your sister can do the job, but it takes a man’s inborn carelessness to make a perfect baguette. Baking is art.”

  “I thought you hated art.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She lovingly brushed the breadcrumbs from his eyebrows, applying just a touch of mother spit to smooth them down. “Are these the hips of a woman who doesn’t appreciate the art of baking?” The movement she made sent a wave traveling down her skirts, which snapped at the hem, sending up a small whirlwind of flour from the floor.

  Lucien pulled out of her grasp and bolted out to the front with a basket of baguettes to avoid having to even consider his mother’s question. He preferred to not think of his mother as having hips. He preferred to not think of her as a woman at all, more as a traveling mass of loving annoyance—a mother-shaped storm that inhabited the bakery and, in bringing rain for the growth of the living things over which she hovered, didn’t mind scaring the piss out of them with a few thunderbolts from time to time.

  He’d thought this way, had carried this mystical view of his mother, since he was a boy. In those days, the painter Cézanne would come into the bakery, usually with Monet, Renoir, or Pissarro, and he would almost hide behind his friends until Madame Lessard went to the back room, then the Provençal would wipe the sweat from his bald head with his sleeve and frantically whisper, “Lessard, you must get your wife under control. The way the tendrils are always falling from her chignon, and the way she smiles and sings in your shop—well, I’ll say it: Lessard, your wife always appears freshly fucked. It’s unnerving. It’s indecent.”

  Père Lessard, along with the other artists, would laugh at the chagrined Cézanne. Little Lucien, as the son of a baker, thought that anything that was “fresh” must surely be a good, and would only learn later what Cézanne had been talking about, and then, after having a soul-chilling shudder, he would choose not to think of it again. Ever. Until, of course, for some reason, this morning she reminded him.

  Lucien handed the basket of bread to Régine, who had been working the counter. “We need to hire a kid for Maman to hit with the baguette,” he said. “You were supposed to have children by now for just that reason.”

  Régine looked at her brother, aghast that he would say such a thing, and without her saying a word, Lucien knew he had hurt her feelings.

  “I’m sorry, ma chère,” he said. “I am a cad.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She was about to elaborate on just what variety of cad he was when someone at the counter snarled, “Bread!”

  Lucien looked over to see a bowler hat floating just over the counter, and beneath it, the simian visage of the Colorman.

  Lucien took his sister by the shoulders, kissed her on the forehead, then steered her through the curtain into the back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Now, please, for the love of God, stay back here.”

  Lucien came back through the curtain wearing a big smile. “Bonjour, monsieur, how may I help you?”

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

  “I am the baker,” said Lucien, extending his hand over the counter, “Lucien Lessard.”

  The Colorman shook Lucien’s hand while squinting at him and tilting his head, as if trying to lever his way past Lucien’s smile to the lies behind it, or so it felt to Lucien. What was he doing here?

  “I am the Colorman,” said the Colorman. “I sell color.”

  “Yes, but what are you called? Your name?” said Lucien.

  “The Colorman.”

  “But what is your surname?”

  “Colorman.”

  “I see,” said Lucien. “How may I help you, Monsieur Colorman?”

  “I know where the girl is.”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl in your painting. Juliette.”

  “I’m sorry, monsieur, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a painting of a girl and I don’t know any Juliette.”

  The Colorman considered him again, tilted his head the other way. Lucien was trying to radiate innocence. He tried to assume the beatific look he’d seen on the Renaissance Virgin Marys in the Louvre, but he only succeeded in looking as if he were being touched inappropriately by the Holy Ghost.

  “Two baguettes, then,” said the Colorman.

  Lucien exhaled with relief, then turned to retrieve the loaves and heard the bell over the door ring. When he turned back with the baguettes in hand, Le Professeur was standing behind the Colorman.

  “Bonjour, Lucien,” said the Professeur.

  “Bonjour, Professeur,” said Lucien. “Welcome home.”

  The Colorman looked from Lucien to the improbably tall and thin Professeur, then back to Lucien, then blinked.

  “Excuse me,” said Lucien. “Professeur, this is the Colorman. Monsieur Colorman, this is the Professeur.”

  The Professeur offered his hand to shake, and the Colorman just looked at it. “Your first name is ‘The’?” He seemed disturbed.

  “Émile,” said the Professeur. “Professeur Émile Bastard.”

  “Oh,” said the Colorman, taking the Professeur’s hand. “The Colorman.”

  “Charmed,” said the Professeur. “You are a wise man, no doubt, having s
ought out the best baker in Paris.”

  “The painter?”

  “I mean Lucien,” said the Professeur.

  “I have to go,” said the Colorman. He hurried out the door without looking back. His donkey had been tied up outside, a large wooden case strapped to his back. The Colorman untied him and led him across the square.

  They watched through the bakery window until he disappeared on the stairs down the butte to Pigalle, then the Professeur looked at Lucien.

  “So that was him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “Juliette killed him a week ago.”

  “Not very thoroughly, evidently.”

  “I have much to tell you,” said Lucien.

  “And I you,” said the Professeur.

  “We’ll go across the square to Madame Jacob’s, have coffee,” said Lucien. “I’ll get Régine to watch the front.” He peeked his head through the curtain. “Régine, could you watch the counter please, I need to speak with the Professeur.”

  The baguette hit Lucien square in the forehead and wrapped around his head, crunching in his ear.

  “Perhaps The Circus, with all the figures off balance, ready to tumble down on each other in the next second, would be his portal back into life.” The Circus—Georges Seurat, 1891

  “Ouch! What—”

  “Maman is right,” said Régine, regarding the crust. “Perfect. Just double-checking.”

  GEORGES SEURAT STOOD BEFORE HIS PARTIALLY COMPLETED PAINTING The Circus, holding a small round brush loaded with red, trying to ascertain where, exactly, the next small red dot would go. Four identical brushes loaded with different colors poked through the fingers of his left hand, as if he had snatched some great, gangly insect out of the air and its multicolored legs were shot with rigor mortis or surprise. He was making a picture of a bareback rider standing atop a palomino, trying to convey the dynamic movement of the scene while meticulously forming the figures out of one dot of color placed next to a complementing color, laid down in harmony and contrast so that when one stood back, the scene formed for the first time in the mind of the viewer. It was a solid theory, and applying it in his major paintings, The Bathers and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, had brought him great success and had made him the unofficial leader of the Neo-Impressionists, but the process was the problem. It was too meticulous. It was too static. It took too damn long to do a painting. In ten years he had completed only seven major paintings; his last one, The Models, a scene from an artist’s studio, with models undressing, had been panned by critics and rejected by the public as being a picture of daily life with all the life taken out of it. The nude models appeared as cold and sexless as marble pillars. And meanwhile, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec were splashing their dancers and singers, acrobats and clowns across the public’s consciousness with vivid, fluid vigor and movement. Seurat had invented and perfected a technique, pointillism, based on solid color theory, but now he felt imprisoned by it. Sometimes, it turned out, art was what you had to say, not how you said it.