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Lucien looked at the painting of Carmen—the soul that Henri had captured, the intimacy he’d put on the canvas—then into Juliette’s eyes. She had been there present and adoring in Carmen when this was painted. “How will I ever know you’re true?”
“You’ll know. If you want recipes, bake bread. I love you, Lucien, but I am a muse, you are an artist, I am not here to make you comfortable.”
He nodded, letting the reality of it wash over him, all of his father’s words, all of the words of his masters, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet. All the uncertainty that they accepted, the risks they took, the peace they resolved to never have, all so they could paint, all for art.
He looked at her again, smiling at him adoringly over the beautiful painting his friend had made. He said, “Henri has to be protected. We can’t make the Sacré Bleu from Henri’s painting if it means he will come to harm.”
She sat, still holding the painting, looking over the edge to Carmen’s image. “We’ll have to leave Paris,” she said. “Not forever, but for a long time. Henri must forget our story. If we are here he will remember, eventually, and that can’t be. He’s already forgotten the Colorman’s death, those last sessions with Carmen, but he remembers the rest, about me, us.”
“And you’ll need the Sacré Bleu to make him forget?”
“Yes. And there is no more.”
“Then we have to use his painting, and he’ll suffer.”
“No, we’ll use another painting.”
“The Blue Nude? My painting? Can I do that? Can I paint the paintings that we make the color from?”
“No. You would waste away. No, your Blue Nude has been crated, wrapped in layers and layers of oilskin, and the entrance to the mine sealed by a discreet explosion. To protect you, the way the cave paintings protected the Colorman.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I love you.”
“But if we don’t use my painting, and Henri doesn’t have to suffer for the ones he’s made, how will you—how will we make the Sacré Bleu?”
Juliette handed him the Toulouse-Lautrec, which he leaned face-in against the wall under the window behind him; then he turned back to her.
She reached behind the divan. “Just dusting,” she said. Then she looked over her shoulder and grinned. “I jest. Voilà!” She pulled up a medium-size canvas with a wild motif of
nymphs playing in a meadow, pursued by satyrs, all of it rendered in meticulously placed dots of pure, bright pigment, a dominant blue tint to the air all around the figures.
“What is that?” he asked. He’d never seen something with so much motion and life rendered in the pointillist technique.
“The last Seurat,” she said. “Pick up your knife, love. I’ll teach you to make the Sacré Bleu.”
“I have to say good-bye to my family, and Henri.”
“You will, we both will. We have to.”
“The bakery. Who will make the bread?”
“Your sister and her husband will take over the bakery. Pick up the knife.”
He did, felt the blade vibrating in his hand. “But there’s blood on it.”
“Well, you want to make an omelet…”
THEY MET FOR COFFEE AT THE CAFÉ NOUVELLE ATHÉNES IN PIGALLE, just below the butte. Lucien had only just told Henri that he was leaving when Toulouse-Lautrec said, “You know Seurat is dead?”
“No? He’s barely older than us. What, thirty-one, thirty-two?”
“Syphilis,” said Henri. “You didn’t know?”
Lucien shrugged, giving up the ruse. “Yes, I knew. Juliette would like to say good-bye, too, Henri. She’s going to meet us at your studio.”
“I look forward to it,” said Henri.
