LUCIEN LAY UNCONSCIOUS FOR EIGHT DAYS. AS WORD OF HIS CONDITION spread around the butte, neighbors and friends stopped by the bakery to offer food, help, and relief for Mère Lessard, who did not want to leave her son’s bedside.
“If he wakes,” instructed the matriarch, “first make him drink some water, then remind him that his mother told him that girl would lead to no good.”
Régine was able to keep the bakery running, with the help of Gilles, who rose early and kneaded the bread dough in the heavy oak tray.
Two Parisian doctors were called, examined Lucien, found no reason for his coma, and each went away murmuring prescriptions of “wait and see.” Mère Lessard would not allow Lucien to be taken to the Hôtel-Dieu, the ancient hospital next to Notre-Dame Cathedral.
“That is a place where you go to die, and my son is not going to die.”
But by the end of the week, the visitors were taking on the aspect of mourners, offering to light candles and say prayers, and there was little talk of recovery, hope, or Lucien’s future. Mère Lessard and Régine took turns squeezing water from a cloth over Lucien’s cracked lips, and from time to time he would swallow, so drop by drop he was kept from dying of thirst.
On the seventh day, Régine took the morning train to Auvers-sur-Oise to fetch Dr. Gachet. She returned that afternoon with not only the good doctor, but Camille Pissarro, who had been visiting. Dr. Gachet, whose practice bent toward homeopathy, began adding tinctures of herbs to the steady drip administered by the women, and on the eighth day Lucien opened his eyes to what looked like the white-bearded face of God.
“Welcome back, Rat Catcher,” said Pissarro.
Mère Lessard pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and hurried from the room to hide her tears.
“Oncle Camille,” said Lucien. “How?”
“I came with Gachet. I was in Auvers, painting with Gauguin.”
“Is Minette with you?” Lucien’s voice was dry as dust.
Régine held a cup to Lucien’s lips and he took a sip of water, which gave Pissarro time to recover from the reminder of his daughter, dead now eighteen years. He looked to the doctor and raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if he should speak the truth to the boy, who was obviously still disoriented.
Dr. Gachet stroked his pointed red beard for a second, as if the friction might yield a prognosis, then nodded.
“Minette is gone, Lucien,” Pissarro said. “Many years ago. Don’t you remember?”
“Blue!” said Lucien, sitting up quickly, grabbing Pissarro by the lapels of his jacket. “Did it take her?”
Pissarro looked past Lucien to the corner of the room. There was nothing there to look at, just paint on the walls, but he couldn’t look at Lucien, whose gaze was begging for answers. The old painter’s vision glazed over with tears.
“She was sick, fever,” he said. He shook his head and looked down at the floor, ashamed. “A long time ago, Rat Catcher.”
Lucien looked to Dr. Gachet. “Did it take her?”
The doctor pulled a stool up next to the bed and sat. “Lucien, you’ve been unconscious for over a week. Do you know what happened to you?”
“I’m fine,” Lucien said. “I was painting. Wait. Juliette? Oh, Oncle, the painting! You must see the painting!”
Pissarro shook off his distress and looked at Gachet with a smile. “He’ll be fine,” he said, as if he were the physician now.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Gachet. “Lucien, did you eat anything different? Any shellfish, maybe? Mushrooms you didn’t know?”
“I had fish and chips. In London. With Juliette,” said Lucien. “Where is Juliette?”
“Mother brained her with a crêpe pan,” said Régine, who had been standing in the doorway. “She hasn’t been back.”
“But I love her,” said Lucien. “And the painting isn’t finished.”
Gachet stood. “Why don’t you rest a bit, Lucien. Camille and I will go look at your painting.”
IN LUCIEN’S STUDIO, DR. GACHET AND CAMILLE PISSARRO STOOD IN FRONT of the blue nude of Juliette.
“Extraordinary,” said Gachet.
“It reminds me of Renoir’s olive trees. In those days he had gone to the South and was working through a theory that all shadows were made of blue light—he would paint them no other color. His whole palette was built up from blue.”
“Really, Camille? She reminds you of olive trees? Let me check your pulse, my friend, you may be dead.”
“I meant the colors.”
The studio door opened and they turned to see Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, looking quite rumpled, as if he had been recently unpacked after having been stuffed in a small box for a long time.
“Bonjour, messieurs.” Henri had met Pissarro at Theo van Gogh’s gallery, where both were showing paintings. The moment Toulouse-Lautrec entered, the air in the studio had changed from the rich, nutty smell of linseed oil, with the slight astringent note of turpentine, to a choking miasma of patchouli, musk, absinthe, tobacco, and secretions of well-ripened lady-parts, possibly of the deceased. Dr. Gachet surreptitiously wiped his hand on his trousers after shaking Lautrec’s hands.
“I have seen your work, monsieur,” said the doctor. “Your lithographs in particular are very striking. I am a printmaker myself.”
“I have heard,” said Henri. “I look forward to seeing your work. But now Lucien, I was told that he is awake?”
“An hour ago, perhaps,” said Gachet.
“Then he will recover?”
“It appears so. He’s very weak. Dehydrated.”
Henri removed his hat and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Thank God. I tried to rescue him but was unable to convince him of the danger.”
Pissarro, who had been looking at the painting since Henri had entered, trying to keep his mind off the atrocious odor, said, “Rescue him? From what?”
“From her,” said Henri, nodding to the painting.
“Danger is not the first impression she inspires,” said Gachet.
“Not just her,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “The Colorman, too.”
Now both Gachet and Pissarro looked to the diminutive painter.
“They are together,” said Lautrec.
“Vincent said something about a color man right before he died,” said Gachet. “I thought it was just delirium.”
“Vincent knew him,” said Henri. “A very specific color man. Small, brown, broken looking.”
“And this girl, Lucien’s model, is associated with him?” asked Pissarro.
“They live together in the Batignolles,” said Henri.
Pissarro looked to Gachet. “Do you think Lucien is strong enough to talk?”
Lucien studied Gachet’s eyes, which were large and always a bit doleful, as if he could see some sadness in the heart of everything. Portrait of Doctor Gachet—Vincent van Gogh, 1890
RÉGINE FED LUCIEN BROTH AND A LITTLE BREAD—THE COLOR GRADUALLY returned to his cheeks. Madame Lessard brought in a basin and shaved him with a straight razor while Pissarro and Dr. Gachet looked on. When she left the room, Dr. Gachet closed the door behind her and took a seat on the stool by Lucien’s bed. Pissarro and Toulouse-Lautrec stood by.
Lucien looked to each of them, then grimaced. “Good God, Henri, is that smell coming from you?”
“I was going to come right over as soon as I heard you were awake, but the girls insisted upon giving me a bath first. I sat vigil for you for a week, my friend.”
“One sits vigil over the dying, not ten blocks away, on a pile of whores, out of his mind on opium and absinthe.”
“Each grieves his own way, Lucien. And since you are going to survive, it appears that my method may have therapeutic benefits. But I will defer to the good doctor’s judgment.” Henri looked over his pince-nez at Gachet.
“No, I don’t think that’s the case,” said the doctor.
“My apologies, then, Lucien, you aren’t going to survive.”
Gachet was nonplussed. “That’s not what I was saying—”
“If not, may I have the new painting? It is your masterpiece.”
“It’s not finished,” said Lucien.
“Should we go?” Pissarro asked the doctor, gesturing to himself and Toulouse-Lautrec.
“No. I may need you two to help me diagnose Lucien’s trouble.”
“But we are painters—”
“And therefore somewhat useless,” said Lautrec.
The doctor held up his finger to stop him in his place. “You will see.” To his patient, he said, “Lucien, when you first woke up, you asked about Minette. You said ‘the blue’ and asked if it had taken her. What did you mean?”
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.”
“Margot,” said Pissarro. “I don’t remember her surname. She modeled for Renoir. His swing picture, and the big Moulin de la Galette picture.”
“I knew her,” said Gachet. “Renoir called me to Paris to treat her. Marguerite Legrand was her full name. Do you know if Renoir bought color from this color man?”
“Why?” asked Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Because he has had these lapses in memory,” said the doctor. “Whole months that he lost, as has Monet. I don’t know about Degas, or Sisley, or Berthe Morisot—the others among the Impressionists—but I know these Montmartre painters have all had these memory lapses.”
“And Vincent van Gogh as well?” said Henri.
“I’m beginning to think so,” said Gachet. “You know that oil color can contain chemicals that can harm you? The mercury in vermilion alone could drive a man to what is called the ‘hatter’s madness.’ We all know someone who has been poisoned by lead white. Chrome from chrome yellow, cadmium, arsenic, all elements of the colors you use. That’s why I’ve always discouraged my painter friends from painting with their fingers. Many of those chemicals can enter the body just through the skin.”
“And Vincent used to eat paint,” said Henri. “Lucien and I saw him do it at Cormon’s studio. The master scolded him for it.”
“Vincent could be … well … passionate,” said Lucien.
“A loon,” said Henri.
“But brilliant,” said Lucien.
“Absolutely brilliant,” agreed Lautrec.
Gachet looked to Pissarro. “You know how Gauguin was saying that he and van Gogh had fought in Arles? Vincent became so violent that he cut off a piece of his own ear. Gauguin was forced to return to Paris.”
“Van Gogh committed himself to a sanitarium after that, didn’t he?” said Pissarro.
Lucien sat up now. “Vincent was not well. Everyone knows that.”
“His brother said he has had spells for years,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Vincent didn’t remember the fight,” said the doctor. “Not at all. He told me that he had no idea why Gauguin left Arles. He thought Gauguin had abandoned him over artistic differences.”
“Gauguin said he had fits of temper that he didn’t even remember the next day,” said Pissarro. “The lapses were more disturbing than the temper.”
“Drinking?” said Lucien. “Henri loses weeks at a time.”
“I prefer to think of them as invested, not lost,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Gauguin said he hadn’t been drinking that day,” said the doctor. “He said that Vincent thought his distress had something to do with a blue painting he had made. He would only paint with blue color at night.”
Lucien and Pissarro looked at each other, their eyes widening.
“What?” asked Gachet, looking from the young painter to the older and back. “What, what, what?”
“I don’t know,” said Pissarro. “When I think of that time, I feel something terrible. Frightening. I can’t tell you what it is, but it seems to live just outside of my memory. Like a phantom face at a window.”
“Like the memory of a dog that’s been mistreated,” said Henri. “I mean, that is how I feel about the time I lost. I don’t understand what happened, but it frightens me.”
“Yes!” said Lucien. “As if the more I think about it, the more the memory runs away.”
“But it’s blue,” said Pissarro.
“Yes. Blue.” Lucien nodded.
Gachet stroked his beard and looked back and forth again, searching the painters’ faces for some hint of irony, amusement, or guile. There was none.
“Yes, there’s that, the blue,” said Henri. Then to the doctor, “What about hallucinations? Remembering things that never happened, maybe?”
“It could all be caused by something that this color man put in the paint. Even trace amounts from breathing fumes could have caused it. There are poisons so powerful that the amount you could put on the head of a pin could kill ten men.”
“And you feel that this is why Vincent killed himself? That he had bought color from this little color man?” asked Lucien.
“I’m not sure anymore,” said Dr. Gachet.
“Well,” said Henri, “you will be more assured soon. I’ve commissioned a scientist from the Académie to analyze color I bought from the Colorman. We should know any day.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Gachet. “I mean, yes, he may have been under the influence of some chemical compound, but I’m not sure that Vincent killed himself.”
“But your wife said he confessed it when he came to your house,” said Pissarro. “He said, ‘This is my doing.’”
“That was enough for the constable, and at first, I didn’t question it. But think: who shoots himself in the chest, then walks a mile to the doctor? This is not the action of a man who wants to end his life.”