“It’s not.”
“If you like the tiny penis, you should try girls. Most have no penis at all.”
“Get out of my shop.”
“I’ve seen your paintings. You’re a much better painter. You should paint. The figures in your paintings are not such freaks as this.”
“He isn’t a freak. He is perfection. He is David.”
“Isn’t he supposed to be carrying the huge head?”
“Out! Angelo! Marco! Throw this devil out of here.”
“Devil?” said the Colorman. “Screw the devil. I tell the devil what to do. The devil licks the dust from my scrotum. Donatello’s David carries the big head. You can’t do better than Donatello. You should paint.”
Michelangelo started down the ladder, his hammer in hand.
“Fine, I’m going.” The Colorman hurried out of the workshop, chased by two apprentices.
“Did you convince him?” Ble
u asked.
“He’s annoying,” said the Colorman.
“I told you.”
“I think it’s because you have a big head.”
“I don’t have a big head.”
“We need to find a painter who likes women. You’re better at women.”
Back in London, in the National Gallery, Lucien was standing before a J. M. W. Turner painting of a steamship caught in a storm, a great maelstrom of color and brushstrokes, the tiny ship seeming to be swallowed in the middle by the pure fury.
“This is where real painting starts, I think,” said Lucien. “This is where object gives way to emotion.”
Juliette smiled. “They say that he went mad and tied himself to the mast of a steamship that was headed out into a snowstorm, just so he could see the real motion of a storm from inside it.”
“Really?” said Lucien, wondering how a shopgirl knew so much about painting.
“Really,” Juliette said. Not really. Turner hadn’t tied himself to the mast of the ship at all. “It will be fun,” she’d told him. “Hold still, I have to get this knot.”
They were a week in London and returned to the studio in Montmartre without anyone having ever seen them leave. Lucien walked in and collapsed facedown on the fainting couch. Juliette rubbed his neck until she was sure he was asleep, then kissed him on the cheek and took the studio key from his pocket so she could lock the door on the way out.
When she stepped out into the warm autumn evening she saw a glint of movement from her right. There was a blinding flash, then nothing.
The sound, like the striking of a muted, broken bell, rang through the neighborhood, causing even the few bachelors who were sharing in a dinner of pot-au-feu (beef stew) across the square at Madame Jacob’s crémerie to look at each other with a What the hell was that? expression.
Back in the alley, Juliette lay in the doorway of the studio quite unconscious, her entire forehead turning into a purple and black bruise.
“Maman,” said Régine, “I think you killed her.”
“Nonsense, she’ll be fine. Go check on your brother.” Madame Lessard stood over the model, holding a heavy steel crêpe pan from the bakery.
“But shouldn’t we bring her inside or something?”
“When Gilles comes home he can carry her in.”