Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art Page 19

  “Gentlemen, please sit down.” Bastard gestured to two chairs, then reached into his trouser pocket and activated some sort of switch. Again there was the sound of gases venting, and Bastard lowered into a sitting position in a series of pneumatic jerks.

  Lucien and Henri did not sit, they just stared. While Le Professeur was sitting, he wasn’t sitting on anything. He was simply maintaining a sitting position in midair, like one of those annoying street performers one encountered around Paris who were always walking in the wind, or climbing imaginary stairs, or getting trapped in invisible boxes from which they could only be extracted by the donation of a ten-centime piece or a gendarme with a billy club.

  “Sit, sit, sit,” said Le Professeur.

  “But, monsieur?” said Lautrec, waving at the Professeur in the manner of a magician presenting a freshly bisected assistant. “You are—”

  “I am quite comfortable,” said Bastard. He reached into his pocket, clicked some sort of switch, and with a hiss and a click, he stood to attention, his head barely missing a ceiling beam. He lifted his trouser cuffs to reveal, extending from his shoes, a leg-shaped frame of brass rods, with pistons suspended in the center. “What do you think?”

  “You are certainly tall,” said Henri.

  “I built them for you,” said the Professeur. “They are entirely too tall for me. They’ll still have to be fitted to you, but I think you’ll find they function quite efficiently.”

  “For what?” asked Henri.

  “For effortless ambulation, of course. I call them Loco-ambulators, or steam stilts.”

  There was another hiss of steam being released and Lucien thought he smelled something burning.

  “Help me out of them, I’ll show you.”

  With the Professeur’s instruction, they first lowered him to the floor, so he was sitting splay legged, then helped him unfasten leather straps and buckles until he was able to wriggle out of his trousers, leaving the steam stilts on the floor and the Professeur to pace in his underwear and socks as he lectured.

  “I had noticed, when you visited before, that walking came to you with great difficulty and pain. Given your royal lineage, I deduced that this problem was one caused perhaps by your parents having been too closely related by blood.”

  “And I fell off a horse and broke my legs when I was a boy,” said Henri, somewhat amused by the Professeur’s pompousness, despite that he was wearing a tailcoat and no pants. (The tailcoat had concealed a small condensation chamber that was part of the steam stilts and rested across the small of the back.)

  “Just so,” said the Professeur, charging on, lifting the steam stilts to their feet as he spoke, so they stood there, a gleaming bronze skeleton (sans torso) with its trousers around its ankles. “I thought to relieve you of some of the effort, since you live on Montmartre, and climbing stairs and hills obviously caused you pain. At first I thought, wheels, but soon I realized that not only would wheels be conspicuous in company, they were useless on stairs. I designed the first set of walkers with Tesla motors, but the battery that would be required to run the machine would have been so heavy as to preclude your actually accompanying your legs.”

  “So my legs might have gone out drinking without me?”

  “Possibly,” snapped the Professeur. “Then it was clear that combustion was the only way to release enough energy to power you and still have the machine compact enough to be concealed. Steam was the answer. I designed the steam stilts so that by merely making the movement you normally make by walking, your legs would activate a series of switches and valves that extend and contract these pistons. You put out no more effort than if you were moving your legs underwater.”

  “I see,” said Henri. “Now I must ask you, before you go any farther, and this is important: Do you have any brandy or cognac in the house?”

  “Is something burning?” asked Lucien.

  “Ah, the boilers are in the shoes,” said the Professeur. “They burn powdered coal at a low smolder, but unfortunately there is some wasted heat. If you stand in one place for long, there is a danger of charring the rug.”

  Henri had begun to chuckle and was trying to conceal his amusement.

  “At first, I wasn’t sure how to shield your feet from the heat, then I thought, Of course, Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec wouldn’t mind being a bit taller. We’ll simply extend the rods of the calves so that you are suspended above the heat of the boilers, and voilà! You are six feet tall.”

  “But everyone knows I have short legs. Would you have me leave Paris so I could use your walker?”

  “Men trust their perceptions, not their memories. Your trousers will conceal the mechanism. You would only have to slip away a few times an evening to add fuel to the shoes. Perhaps more if there is dancing.”

  Henri was giggling now, barely able to contain himself. “So I’m to shovel coal into my shoes hoping no one notices, while the smoke and steam—what of the vapor?”

  “There’s little more smoke than a cigar, and the steam would be barely visible by gas lamp. It vents out the back of your trousers, under the tail of your coat.”

  “Marvelous!” said Henri. “I use a similar port for my own vapors. I want to try them, immediately. Well, as soon as we’ve heard the results of your analysis of the colors.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Professeur, “the colors. Let me get my papers.”

  He went into the back room, which Lucien thought might have once been the bedroom, yet there was no sign visible through the doorway that there was a bed in there, only worktables and scientific instruments.

  Lucien leaned over to Henri and whispered, “Are you really going to try those legs of his?”

  “Absolutely,” Henri whispered back. “But no special trousers to conceal them. I’m wearing them on the outside. Did you hear that, Lucien? Dancing. On my mechanical, steam-farting legs. I shall be the toast of Pigalle.”

  “Oh balls,” Lucien said.

  “What?”

  “I think your miraculous new feet are on fire.”

  And indeed, flames were shooting out of the tops of the Loco-ambulators’ shoes and licking the brass legs.

  “I’ll get water,” said Lucien, jumping up and running to the kitchen.

  “Bring back liquor,” said Henri.

  Five minutes later the flames were out and the three sat, sadly looking at the charred remains of the steam stilts, which now stood just outside the door, in the dust, like the charred skeleton of a cannonball catcher, his torso carried off to parts unknown by the last shot.

  “Perhaps a clockwork design,” said the Professeur wistfully.

  “As long as the pendulum is enormous,” said Henri with a grin. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

  “So, Professeur,” said Lucien. “About the colors.”

  “Yes,” said Henri, “is there some kind of drug in them?”

  The Professeur shuffled his papers until they seemed suitably disorganized.

  “As you know, there have been theories since Newton that every material has its own unique qualities of light refraction, but beyond the visual analysis, there is no way to quantify that uniqueness.”

  “Which means?” asked Henri.

  “To our eye, different red things will appear red,” said Lucien.

  “Exactly,” said the Professeur.

  “Is it obvious for me to point out that it does not require a scientist to point out that that is obvious?” asked Henri.

  “Exactly,” said the Professeur. “Which is why I used a new process discovered by a Russian scientist called liquid chromatography, where substances are suspended in a liquid and then either placed on paper or in thin tubes, and the level to which each substance migrates is unique. So in a color made of different colored minerals, say an orange composed of red ochre and yellow ochre, the two minerals will migrate to different levels, and if the red were made from another mineral, or an insect compound, like cochineal beetles, it too would find a different level in the liquid.�
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  “And what about compounds that weren’t part of the color, like a drug, perhaps?”

  “Yes, that too,” said the Professeur. “But liquid chromatography is a new process, and no one has done any indexing of the behavior of the elements, so I did a simple comparison. I went to Gustave Sennelier’s shop near the École des Beaux-Arts. He makes all of his paint from pure, dry pigments, mixed to the order of each artist’s preferences. Since we knew what went into each of his paints, I was able to compare the ingredients of each of his colors with those of your Colorman.”

  “And?” asked Lucien.

  “Each of Sennelier’s colors is composed of the same elements as those of your Colorman, mostly purely mined minerals, except the blue.”

  “I knew it,” said Henri. “What is in the blue? Wormwood? Arsenic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t help,” said Lucien.

  “We compared every blue pigment that Sennelier had, as well as mineral samples I got from the geology department at the Académie. I also tested any element that appears blue under different light, or can be changed to blue by oxidation, like copper. I can tell you it’s not azurite, and it’s not lapis lazuli, the most common elements used to make blue. It’s not indigo and it’s not woad, nor any other plant or animal pigment that I could find. It’s an unknown.”

  “That must be it, then,” said Lucien. “There is some kind of drug in the blue compound. Can you test that?”

  “Well, there wasn’t much in that small tube Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec gave me, but I suppose we could give it to some rats and see if they behave differently.”

  “Dr. Gachet said that even a very tiny amount might affect the mind—what might be absorbed through the skin or inhaled as you are painting. Henri and I certainly didn’t eat any paint.”

  “I see. And you would have both been exposed to the compound over a longer period of time?”

  Lucien looked at Henri, trying to measure the reality of it. If, indeed, both Juliette and Carmen had somehow been complicit in exposing them to the Colorman’s blue, then it would have been over a period of years. But he didn’t paint Juliette before, in the time before she went away. Or maybe he just didn’t remember painting her.

  “Henri, do you remember, when I was with Juliette before, did I paint her?”

  “I never saw a painting, and you didn’t speak of it, but now I wonder. You don’t know?”

  “Gentlemen,” interrupted the Professeur, “you believe something in this pigment affected your memory? Correct?”

  “Yes,” said Lucien. “And perhaps it caused us to have false memories.”

  “I see.” The Professeur shuffled through his notes for a moment, then stopped, stood, and quickstepped to a bookshelf in the corner of the room, where he snatched up a leather-bound volume and quickly flipped through the pages until he seemed to find what he was looking for. “Aha!”

  “Aha, what?” asked Henri.

  “This Austrian doctor writes of a process he uses on his patients to access what he calls ‘suppressed memories.’ Have you ever heard of hypnosis?”

  “Mesmerism?” said Henri. “That’s a carnival trick they use to make people behave like chickens. A service that, I can attest from experience, can be attained at the rue des Moulins brothel by slipping an extra three francs to the madame.”

  “Really?” said the Professeur.

  “Four francs if you require an egg to be laid.”

  The Professeur seemed perplexed by Henri’s revelation and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as if the great gears of his mind were being strained by the mathematics of the scenario. “Seems rather dear for an egg,” he said finally.

  “Forget the egg,” said Lucien. “Are you saying that you can help us remember?”

  “Well, I can certainly try,” said the Professeur. “I have hypnotized subjects.”

  “Professeur Bastard,” said Henri, “I’m not sure I understand. You are a chemist, a geologist, you dabble in engineering, build machines, and now psychology; what exactly is your field of study?”

  “Truth, Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec, does not confine itself to a cage.”

  There came a whirring sound from under the Professeur’s chair and the rat-sized brass nut-counting machine scurried out into the room and skittered from shell to shell and gaily chimed its findings.

  “Ah, it’s two o’clock,” said the Professeur.

  Seventeen

  IN THE LATIN QUARTER

  DID YOU FIND US A PAINTER?” ASKED THE COLORMAN WHEN SHE CAME IN. He was sitting on the divan, feeding a carrot to Étienne, the donkey, who was wearing a straw boater with holes cut out for his ears.

  The Colorman had rented them an apartment in the Latin Quarter, on rue des Trois-Portes, just off boulevard Saint-Germain.

  “What is he doing here?” she said, unpinning a rather complex hat from her hair, and in the process releasing several silky black tendrils from her chignon.

  “He was on holiday,” said the Colorman.

  “Not what is he doing in Paris, what is he doing on the divan?”

  “Eating a carrot. I am eating a carrot as well. We are sharing.”

  She had already folded her parasol and put it in the stand by the door, so she thought perhaps she could use the Colorman’s walking stick to drive into his eye socket and out through the back of his head. Only the thought of trying to get brain stains out of the rug stopped her, as they, of course, had not yet found a maid.

  She was annoyed. The Colorman was annoying, made more annoying, perhaps, because it was a warm autumn day and she’d been out strolling through the Jardin du Luxembourg, looking for a new painter, and she was sweating under the ridiculous layers of skirts, corsets, petticoats, and other accoutrements required of the fashionable, modern woman. A bustle! Who had thought of that? Two of the city’s finest painters had declared this bottom exquisite, had they not? Had this bottom not been favorably compared to the finest bottoms in art and been judged superior? Had she not willed it to be thus? So why, why, why did she have to strap a pumpkin-sized tumor of silk and taffeta to her backside to appear acceptable to Paris society? Sweat was running down the crack of her ass and it was annoying. The Colorman was annoying, this new apartment was annoying, and Étienne, sitting on the divan, his front hoofs on the floor, crunching away at his carrot, was annoying.

  “Take him outside,” she snapped.

  “His stall isn’t ready. The concierge is going to have her man clean it out.”

  The new building had a stable and carriage house for the residents’ horses, a feature that was becoming a rarity in the city.

  “Well take him out with your color case and you find us a new painter.”

  “I can’t go out. We have an appointment.”

  “An appointment? You and Étienne have an appointment? Here?”

  The Colorman pulled another carrot out of a flour sack and chewed off the tip, then held the rest out for Étienne. “We are interviewing a maid.”

  “And Étienne has to be here because…?”

  “Penis,” explained the Colorman.

  That was it. She’d just have to clean the brains out of the carpet herself. She snatched the Colorman’s walking stick out of the brass stand and assumed an “en garde” posture, the cane’s silver tip aimed at the little man’s eye.

  “Mine doesn’t frighten them like it used to,” said the Colorman mournfully. “I think I am losing my touch.”

  Étienne nodded sadly, or it seemed sadly, but to be fair, he was actually just signaling that he was ready for another carrot. Juliette let the tip of the cane drop, then sighed, whirled, and plopped down on the couch between the two pathetic penis plotters.

  “Besides,” said the Colorman, “we’re out of the blue. I gave the last I had to the dwarf. He would be easy for you. And he paints fast. Find another redheaded laundress to tempt him.”

  Yes, he would be easy, but she did not want to return to Toulouse-Lautrec, desp
ite his talent. She didn’t want any of the painters in the park, or the dozen with their easels lined up like dominos on either side of the Pont-Neuf. She wanted Lucien. She missed Lucien. She had been sleeping with a shirt she had stolen from him, snuggling it to her face and breathing in his unique yeast-and-linseed-oil-mixed-with-man aroma. It was a problem.

  “This apartment is rubbish,” she said.

  “It’s nice,” said the Colorman. “It has two bedrooms and a bath. You should take a bath. Étienne hasn’t seen this one naked. He’ll like her.”

  “There are too many bloody cathedrals. Every way I turn here, it’s like gargoyles are biting my ass.” The rue des Trois-Portes was, in fact, situated in the midst of three large churches. A hundred or so meters to the southeast stood the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (patron saint of wine in a box); to the west was the Church of Saint-Séverin; and a hundred meters to the north, perched on the Île-de-la-Cité, riding up the middle of the Seine like the bridge of a great warship, stood Notre-Dame Cathedral. And that wasn’t even counting Sainte-Chapelle, another two blocks from Notre-Dame, the jewel box of stained glass that she had helped inspire. And although they had avoided it in the case of Sainte-Chapelle, probably because the Colorman had established himself as an imbecile bell ringer up the street at Notre-Dame at the time, it was the burnings that she’d hated about cathedrals. And the windows. And being the Mother of God. But mostly the burnings.

  Chartres, France, 1174

  DAWN. THE SPIRES OF THE CATHEDRAL ROSE BLACK AGAINST THE SUNRISE AND cast long, knife-shaped shadows across the town.

  The Colorman led the girl to a wide, calm spot in the Eure River where a simple crane made of long wooden poles was levered out over the river with its nose dipped into the water like a drinking bird. The girl was thin, and only a little taller than he, with dirty ginger hair that hung in tangles around her face. She might have been thirteen or twenty, it was hard to say, as her face was the blank, unprimed canvas of a simpleton, portraying no interest in what was going on around her. Her green eyes and a thin sheen of drool on her lower lip were the only things about her that reflected light; the rest of her was muted by a patina of filth and stupidity.