“You’ve been in Le Chat Noir a thousand times.”
“Yes, but today I shall be sober! And I need your opinion.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“On what I should paint.”
“Right. Sorry. Lead on, then.”
Rodolphe Salis, a dark-bearded, formally dressed man of forty, unlocked the cabaret for them and led them to a booth where they could see the walls Henri was to paint. Salis had moved the Chat Noir from its location up the street so he might appeal to a higher class of clientele, and the décor in the cabaret, carved Louis XIV tables and chairs—red velvet, gold leaf, and crystal adorning anything that wasn’t moving—reflected his intent. Behind the marble-topped bar was an enormous mural by Adolphe Willette, a cartoon, really, depicting a modern-day bacchanalia, with bankers in tailcoats gunning each other down over half-naked, fairy-winged showgirls at the margins, while the bulk of the revelers danced, drank, and groped in a maelstrom of oblivious debauchery in the center. It was a satirical indictment of Le Chat Noir’s clientele, Paris patricians slumming on Montmartre with their working-poor mistresses, the artist, Willette, simultaneously
celebrating the joie de vivre and biting the hands that fed him.
“I know,” said Salis, waving to the painting. “It’s quite a painting to have your work in company with. Thank the stars no one actually looks at the art.”
“I’m flattered for the opportunity,” said Henri. “Perhaps a glass of wine for Lucien and me while we discuss the motif.” He patted a leather briefcase he carried with him.
“I’ll send it over,” said Salis, heading off to his office.
“You said breakfast,” Lucien whispered furiously.
“Yes?” said Henri, looking perplexed. He lit a cheroot and pulled a stack of mail from his briefcase. “All this in just two weeks. Oh look, a letter from Grandmama in Albi.”
“I’m worried to death about Juliette,” said Lucien. “I can barely sleep.”
Their wine arrived with a thin, redheaded girl who looked too young to be working in a cabaret, perhaps thirteen. She curtsied as she backed away from the table.
“Don’t look at her,” said Henri. “She’s Salis’s daughter. I don’t know why she’s not away at a boarding school. Salis certainly has the money. But she’s a redhead, so she’s probably evil, even at her tender age.”
“I thought you liked redheads.”
“I do. What’s your point?”
“Nothing.”
Henri slurped his wine and returned to his mail. “How sweet, Grand-mère wishes me luck with the show in Brussels. Listen. ‘I would like to hope that my grandson’s brush, when he shows his work in public, will always be in good taste.’”
“She doesn’t know how you live in Paris, does she?”
Henri dismissed the question with a wave of his cigar and regarded the empty plaster panels over their booth. “I want to paint a picture of a clown fucking a cat.”
“I’m not sure that will work, even on the walls of Le Chat Noir,” said Lucien.
“All right, a ballerina. One of the petits rats from the opera that Degas paints so often.”
“With a clown?”
“No, fucking a cat. It’s a theme, Lucien. The name of the place is Le Chat Noir.”
“Yes, but when you did the poster for the Moulin Rouge you didn’t do a clown fucking a windmill.”
“Sadly, no, they rejected my first drawings. And I’m good friends with one of the clowns there, Cha-U-Kao. She would have modeled for me. She’s both a clown and a lesbian. At the same time! Art weeps for the missed opportunity.”
“You could still paint her,” said Lucien.
“No. She hates cats. But what magnificent symbolism that would be. I tell you, Lucien, these symbolists, Redon and Gauguin, they’re on to something.”
“You said Gauguin was a self-important tosser,” said Lucien.