“No.” Lucien rubbed his eyes as if pushing back a rising migraine. “No.”
“Yes, Lucien, my
only,
my
ever,
for you.”
He looked distressed. “So I’ve been shagging a drowned beggar from the morgue?”
“And at the same time you were with me?” Henri said. “Possessing Carmen?”
Lucien leapt to his feet. “Slut!”
“Drowned, dead, duplicitous slut!” Henri added.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “Not at the same time.”
“But Henri was seeing Carmen at the same time I was seeing you for the first time!”
“Not at exactly the same time. I can’t do that. I can only go from one to another.”
“So it’s like changing trains for you?” said Lucien. “Get off at one artist, get onto another.”
She nodded. “That’s not a bad way to put it.”
“That’s a horrible way to put it,” said Lucien. “What happens to the train you were just on, I mean the body you leave to go to another?”
“They carry on with their lives. I went from Camille Monet to others dozens of times, back and forth.”
“But you said Juliette doesn’t have another life. She’s you? What happened to Juliette when you took over Carmen?”
“She sleeps a lot,” said Juliette.
“When you were first around, Carmen spent weeks with me,” said Henri.
“I said
a lot
.”
“And when you left?” said Lucien. “When you went away? Broke my heart, where did you go?”
“Vincent was a great talent,” she said. “I didn’t want to go. I don’t always get to choose.”
“You left Paris to go after Vincent? As Juliette?”
“Yes, as Juliette. Juliette always has to be nearby now, no matter what body I’m in, so I had to go. The Colorman wanted him to paint with the Sacré Bleu. I had to go. I’m sorry.”
“And Carmen nearly died when you left her,” said Henri forlornly.
“That’s what she does,” spat Lucien. “She takes them, she uses them, uses the artist, then she leaves and they die, not knowing what has happened to them. You leave the artists broken, grieving.”
“There’s always a price, Lucien,” she said softly, looking down. She wasn’t prepared for him to be angry with her. It hadn’t occurred to her that he could be, and it hurt. It confused her and it hurt.
“A price? A price?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you think great art comes at no cost? There’s a price to be paid.”
“And how will you collect for my painting of you? Kill this person, this
thing
I call Juliette?”
Now she stood and slapped him, pulling the force of the blow at the last second so she didn’t shatter his cheekbone.
“It’s him! It’s the Colorman who decides. I am a slave, Lucien! I am bound to him, to his power to make the blue. I do what he wants. He makes the color, I inspire the artist to paint, then the Colorman uses the painting to make more Sacré Bleu. More goes into it, must go into it, than just the paint. Love, passion, the force of life, even pain goes into the Sacré Bleu, and the color keeps the Colorman alive forever. Forever, Lucien! And without the Sacré Bleu, there is no Juliette. No muse. Without it, I don’t exist. So I do what he wants, and I live, and others grow sick, and suffer, and die because of it.” She was crying now, screaming at him through tears, feeling as if he was falling, spinning away from her. “That’s the price, and he always demands it, and I collect, but it is not my choice. I am a slave.”
Lucien snatched her hand out of the air and held it to his heart. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, furiously, but turned her face away from him so he wouldn’t see her. Suddenly Toulouse-Lautrec was beside them, snapping a crisp linen handkerchief from his breast pocket and presenting it to her.
“Mademoiselle,
s’il vous plaît,”
he said.
She took the handkerchief and dabbed her eyes and nose, sniffled into it, hid behind it, taking her hand from Lucien’s chest to fuss with strands of her hair that were sticking to her face. Then she peeked over the handkerchief and noticed that Henri was grinning at her. She looked to Lucien, who was grinning as well.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” said Lucien.
“What? What?” she said. Wretched creatures, men. Were they laughing at her pain? She looked at Henri. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“You’re grinning at me like lunatics? I am a creature of awesome power and divine aspect. I am the spark of invention, the light of man’s imagination. I raise you drooling monkeys from rubbing your own pathetic shit on the rocks to bringing beauty and art to your world. I am a force, the fearsome muse of creation. I am a fucking goddess!”
“I know,” said Henri.
“And you’re grinning at me?”
“Yes,” said Lucien.
“Why?”
“Because I nailed a goddess,” said Lucien.
“Me too,” said Henri, grinning enough now to unseat his
pince-nez.
“Although not at the same time.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said the muse.
O
NCE IT WAS DETERMINED THAT
L
UCIEN AND
H
ENRI WERE, INDEED, WRETCHED
creatures with ethical compasses that pivoted around a point at their groins, which is to say, men, and that Juliette was also a creature of abstract, if not altogether absent, ethics herself, although with some fealty to beauty, which is to say, a muse, it was further determined, by unanimous consent, that in order to proceed with her revelation, more alcohol would be required, which left only to be decided the matter of where.
They wound their way up the butte with no particular destination in mind.
“We’re out of cognac at the studio,” said Henri, wanting very much to ask Juliette if somewhere, somehow, he might see Carmen,
his
Carmen, again.
“My apartment is too small,” said Lucien. “And the bakery is out of the question.” He wanted to be alone with Juliette, to lose himself in her presence, but his desire was somewhat dampened by the fear that she might murder him.
“How
is
your mother?” asked Juliette, wondering if there might not be a perfect amount of cognac that would ease the struggle of making a confession without releasing the impulse to kick portholes in the kidneys of her confessors and get on about her day.
“She sends her regards,” said Lucien.
“Was that a breadboard she hit me with?”
“Crêpe
pan.”
“She’s a strong woman.”
“She didn’t really send her regards. I was making that up.”
“She’s always been very kind to me,” said Henri. “But I’ve never almost killed her son.”
“Or broken his heart,” said Lucien.
“It was for art, you know? I’m not a monster,” said Juliette.
“You take people’s lives, their health, their loved ones,” said Lucien.
“I’m not
always
a monster,” she said, pouting.
“A monster with an exquisite bottom,” said Henri. “Speaking from a purely aesthetic point of view.”
They were just passing by a tobacco shop where a gruff-looking woman stood in the doorway and scowled at them, rather than nodding the usual
bonsoir.
“Perhaps we should discuss my bottom in a more discreet locale,” said Juliette.
“Or not at all,” said Lucien.
“You painted an enormous nude of me, Lucien. Did you think no one would notice?”
“It’s hidden down a mine.”
“It was the only place I could think to hide it that was close to Bruant’s club.”
“I have a fully stocked bar at my apartment,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
And so they found themselves in Toulouse-Lautrec’s parlor, drinking brandy and discussing the awkward business of modeling for classical motifs.
“You know what I hated most about posing for
Leda and the Swan?”
said Juliette. “The part where you have to bonk the swan.”
“If it’s all about the painting, why don’t you just become the painter?” asked Henri.
“I’ve done that a couple of times, become the painter. It doesn’t seem to work to make the color. It turns out I have no artistic talent. Although I was able to inspire paintings also as a model at those times.”
“Berthe Morisot?” asked Lucien.
“Yes.” Juliette drained her glass and held it out for Henri to refill. “Don’t misunderstand, I loved standing there with the others, our easels all lined up, painting the same motif. Cézanne, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, sometimes Sisley and Bazille as well. Cézanne and Pissarro dressed in their high boots and canvas jackets, like they were on an expedition in the country. Cézanne wearing that ridiculous red sash to show he was from the South, not a Parisian, and Pissarro carrying that heavy walking staff, even if we were only on the banks of the Seine, painting Pont-Neuf. Me in my spring dress, looking completely out of place among all the men, but one of them, accepted by the Rejected.”
She sighed and smiled. “Lovely Pissarro. Like everyone’s favorite uncle. I remember one time we were all at a showing of our work at Durand-Ruel’s gallery, and one patron saw me among the male painters and called me a
gourgandine,
a hussy. Pissarro punched the man in the face and stood over him with Renoir and the others while he lectured him, not about my lady’s honor, but about my value as a great painter. Gentle Pissarro. So fierce in truth. So gallant.” She raised her glass and drank to Pissarro.
“You really have great affection for him, don’t you?” asked Lucien.
“I love him. I love them all. You have to love them all.” Again she sighed, rolled her eyes like a dreamy teenager. “Artists…”
“Renoir says that,” said Henri. “He says you must love them all.”
“Who do you think taught him that?” She smiled over her snifter. Her eyes shone from the brandy, sparkled with mischief, reflected yellow highlights from the gaslights, which threw a spectral halo off her dark hair as well. The painters were having a hard time following the conversation and not getting lost in the way the light fell on her.
“You taught him?” said Lucien. “As his Margot?”
She nodded.
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Henri. “If Berthe didn’t make the painting for the Colorman, then—”
“Manet,” said Juliette. “He worshipped Berthe and painted her—me—her, often. And I was Victorine before that, for his
Olympia
and
Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
That was about the sex, like a bunny with Victorine. Manet and his models made a lot of the Sacré Bleu for the Colorman.”
“But as far as I know, both Berthe Morisot and Victorine Meurent are alive and healthy,” said Henri. “You said there was always a price.”
“Manet’s suffering over never being able to be with Berthe and, finally, his own life.” She became melancholy as she said it. “Dear, dear Édouard paid the price.”
“Manet died of syphilis,” said Lucien. “Henri and I were just discussing it.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s often syphilis.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lucien. “Why syphilis?”
“It’s a way for their dick to kill them. I’m a goddess, Lucien, there’s nothing we like better than irony. It’s really the only sense of order we have.” She drained her snifter and held it out for a refill. “It’s slow, but before all the madness and amputations set in, so many paintings!”
“Well that’s depressing,” said Henri. “I was sure it was a myth.”
“But Vincent?” said Lucien. “Him you shot?”
“I don’t shoot people. The Colorman did it. What a waste. Vincent’s pain should have been the Colorman’s payment.”
“Then he painted you as Juliette?” asked Lucien.
“They don’t have to paint me for me to inspire them. They just have to paint.”
Lucien and Henri stared across the parlor at each other, each wondering how it was that they could discuss the murder of their friends and heroes over brandy, with a goddess. An increasingly drunken goddess.