The Devil in Montmartre (2 page)

A blaring cornet fanfare announced the Can-Can. A troop of pretty young women dressed in spotless white shirtwaists and long, flowing skirts of diverse bright colors—blue, green, red, yellow, and pink—trotted onto the dance floor in high-heeled shoes. Forming a line, they raised their skirts and white lace-trimmed petticoats above their waists and began their rhythmic high-kicking dance to the cheers, whistles, and applause of the adoring crowd.

To Lautrec’s unerring eye and calculating brain the dancers were a problem in geometry and physics; fluid energy, flashing color, transforming forms and shapes in motion. He worked like a fiend to render them on paper the way the very latest in fast photographic lenses and shutters would capture the moment for posterity. And the focal point of his composition was the lovely, wild-eyed, and uninhibited maenad of Montmartre, the incomparably exquisite Virginie Ménard.

Marcia saw Virginie with her artist’s eye, as Lautrec did, and she longed for her sketchbook and pastels. Ill as she was, Marcia could drink almost anyone under the table and she had kept pace with the insatiable Lautrec. Betsy, on the other hand, was fuddled. Her head was swimming and, as her bleary gray eyes tried to focus on Virginie, she saw two ineffably beautiful girls moving in concert like Siamese twins. Betsy rubbed her eyes, blinked, and turned her attention to Marcia. She noticed how her companion fixed upon the dancer as if at that moment nothing else existed. That sobering realization wounded Betsy like a knife stabbing her in the heart.

A pair of angry gray eyes glared at Virginie and those eyes were now clear and cold as ice.
She’s been playing around behind my back.
The beautiful dancer rekindled memories of Marcia’s past indiscretions.

Betsy’s eyes narrowed, her rouged lips tightened and, beneath the table her fists clenched, nails digging into the flesh of her palms until they bled. She turned toward Marcia who, like Lautrec, was unaware of anything except the dance and one particular dancer. Her heart racing and her breath coming fast and shallow, one singular thought repeated itself in Betsy’s jealous mind:
You promised to be faithful to me, Marcia. You promised. . . .

The early morning hours: the orchestra packed their instruments and departed; the dancers were gone; a broadly smiling Zidler counted receipts and locked his safe; the crowd dispersed to home, to bed, or to such further amusement as might be found at that hour in a cheap hotel, brothel, gambling house, or opium den. Toulouse-Lautrec shuffled off into the shadows on his stunted, painfully misshapen legs aided by his button-hook of a cane; Betsy staggered toward a cab supported by her seemingly sober, consumptive companion.

Electric and gaslights winked out; the raucous, riotous Moulin Rouge transformed into a mausoleum haunted by spirits of the evening past. Into this crypt waddled the charwomen, armed with brooms, buckets, and mops to clean up the revelers’ rubbish.

Virginie Ménard
nee
Mercier walked alone through dark, narrow streets snaking their way up Montmartre Hill to her rented fourth floor room on the Rue Lepic. Her heels clicked on the cobblestone pavement, footsteps echoing in the shadowy canyon of locked and shuttered shops, houses, and three- and four-story tenements. She lifted her skirts to step around puddles and muck. A yowling black cat chasing a rat rattled a garbage can and darted across her path. She stopped, shuddered, and crossed herself. Her large blue eyes glanced round, searching the murky recesses outside the dim aura of flickering yellow gaslight. She took a deep breath and walked on.

She hated being alone on the streets at this hour, but the money she made from her dancing and contacts at the Moulin Rouge seemed worth the risk. One of her fellow dancers, Delphine, a tough girl raised on the Paris streets, had given her some tips. Virginie carried a straight razor in her purse and Delphine had provided a tactic for self defense. “Slash at the bastard’s eyes,” she said, “and kick his nuts, then you scream like hell and run in the opposite direction.” All right in theory, Virginie supposed, but she dreaded putting it into practice. She preferred to rely on the police and good neighbors in this quarter, who tended to look out for each other.

Virginie relaxed as she spotted the familiar front door at number 62. She had tipped the concierge to wait up for her and longed for the comforting refuge of her room. Walking quickly, she soon reached the entrance and was about to ring when a soft voice startled her. She turned round, wide eyed and trembling, remembering Delphine’s warnings and the razor in her purse.

The man, who had emerged silently from the shadows, tipped his hat and smiled reassuringly. “I’m sorry if I surprised you.”

Recognizing the intruder, Virginie unwound. “Oh, it’s you. You gave me a start.”

“I apologize, my dear. Here, this will calm you.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a monogrammed gold cigarette case.

Virginie took a cigarette, held the man’s hand and leaned over as he gave her a light with a match. She inhaled and then exhaled gray smoke, her tension relieved. “Thank you. I feel much better now.”

2

DR. PÉAN’S CLINIC & A SIDEWALK CAFÉ

OCTOBER 14

A
large rectangular window flooded the operating theater with brilliant white light. Jules Émile Péan stood erect, dressed to perfection and dramatically posed, like an actor in the spotlight about to declaim his soliloquy to a silently anticipating audience. Universally acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest surgeons, Péan occupied the Olympian summit of the French medical profession. Before him stood four acolytes, young physicians hand-picked by the master to assist in his most daring and spectacular operations. Among the chosen few was Toulouse-Lautrec’s cousin, Tapié de Céleyran, an admirer of the Daimler automobile exhibit at the Exposition.

The acolytes hovered over an operating table supporting a woman in her early thirties, her nakedness covered by a white sheet. A classically educated witness might have compared the young woman to Iphigenia on the sacrificial altar. But unlike the tragic Greek princess of legend, this woman was not there to be slaughtered, but rather to be cured. An anesthetist sat beside the patient to the right of the table, one hand on her pulse, the other holding a chloroform mask.

The audience was a privileged group of physicians and surgeons, but there was an interloper among them: Toulouse-Lautrec. The artist had been attending the surgeries at Péan’s invitation, having been introduced by his cousin, Dr.Tapié. Like most, or perhaps all, celebrities, Péan was a savvy self-promoter, and he figured Lautrec’s drawings would provide good publicity for his professional services, not to mention a record for posterity.

The acolytes wore clean, white operating coats, but the high priest simply tied a towel around his neck to shelter his immaculate waistcoat from spattered blood. Thus accoutered, the stocky surgeon looked like a gourmand about to crack a lobster. Péan did not follow Pasteur’s Germ Theory, nor did he countenance Listerism, but he possessed a practical, commonsense belief in personal hygiene and cleanliness in surgery and the clinic that kept his post-operative infection rate reasonably low.

“Gentlemen,” announced Péan, “the diagnosis is Uterine Fibroids; the procedure Vaginal Hysterectomy.” With that, the surgeon chose a scalpel from among a sparkling array of instruments set out on a white cloth-draped table.

Toulouse-Lautrec observed and recorded the procedure the way he rendered the dance at the Moulin Rouge. His brilliant mind, curiously active brown eyes, and deft, charcoal-wielding hand operated swiftly and efficiently on the sketching paper, mimicking Péan’s audacious precision. As he worked on his sketch, Lautrec marveled at the machine-like functioning of the surgical team as they applied clamps and forceps without a scintilla of time or motion wasted.

Lautrec had barely completed his sketch when the diseased uterus and cervix lay in a pan. Péan removed his bib, washed his hands, and rolled down his sleeves, leaving the clean-up and dressing of the surgical wound to his assistants. Soon, two attendants arrived with a hospital trolley to wheel the patient out of the operating theater.

The drama over, most of the spectators filed out, but a few milled around while discussing the operation. One doctor remarked, “Péan is a virtuoso of the knife
sans pareil
. He operates on his patient the way Sarasate plays his violin.” “I agree, doctor,” chimed in another. “It’s one thing to do a neat job of surgery. But to remove a woman’s reproductive organs with such élan, such panache, is a mark of true genius.”

Lautrec closed his sketchbook, put away his charcoal sticks, and was about to leave when Dr.Tapié, who was in conversation with Péan near an easel upon which hung an anatomical drawing of the female lower abdomen, gestured for the artist to join them. As Lautrec approached, the great surgeon smiled broadly at the painter.

“Well, Monsieur, did you obtain a good study of our operation?”

“Yes, doctor, I believe I did. Would you care to take a look?”

“Of course, Monsieur; I’d be honored.” Péan held out his well-scrubbed hand and received the sketchbook. He examined the drawing with a critical eye, then smiled and returned it. “That’s splendid, Monsieur. You know, I was just saying to your cousin Tapié, ‘Monsieur de Toulouse-Lautrec has observed and sketched so many of my operations I wouldn’t be surprised if he could perform one himself.’”

Lautrec laughed, and the doctors laughed with him.

From Péan’s clinic Lautrec took a cab to a popular sidewalk café on the Rue Lepic, not far from his studio. There he joined his friend and fellow artist, Émile Bernard, at a small marble-topped table set up on the sidewalk under a fluttering yellow awning. The day was sunny, warm and pleasant under a clear blue sky. A variety of horse-drawn vehicles clip-clopped and rumbled up and down the cobblestones; a persistent conversational buzz pervaded the café, emanating from its diverse clientele—bohemians, bourgeoisie, working men and women, tourists, and
flâneurs.

Lautrec and Bernard drank coffee and pastis. As they talked, Lautrec doodled on the tablecloth. His subject was a stocky, balding man with mutton-chop whiskers and a stained bib round his neck. The man was slurping his lunch, an immense bowl of onion soup. The man bore a remarkable likeness to Péan. Lautrec’s purplish lips grinned wryly as he drew objects floating in the soup that resembled the woman’s extirpated organs.

Bernard, a thin, intense young man in his early twenties with a thick shock of brown hair and slight beard, eyed the tablecloth caricature. “So, you attended another of Péan’s surgeries. Frankly, I find the subject morbid and rather distasteful.”

Lautrec stopped doodling and confronted his friend with a quizzical squint. “Morbid and distasteful, you say? Leonardo and Rembrandt attended dissections, and Gericault studied guillotined heads and cadavers at the Morgue. I assure you, my dear Émile, we artists can learn something of the human animal by witnessing its evisceration.”

Bernard made a face, registering his disgust. He changed the subject. “I’ve news from Theo; Vincent’s making progress at St. Remy. He’s working again.”

“I’m glad to hear it, though it’s his work that put him there. Rather, I should say his work and a host of other things, among them metaphysics, mysticism, hashish, absinthe, whores, the clap, rejection—and Gauguin.”

Bernard was accustomed to his friend’s cynical observations, and typically let them pass without comment. “Anyway, I’m glad to hear Vincent’s doing better. Theo worries too much about his brother and he has his own troubles, with a family to support and his own poor health.”

“Life’s no joke, Émile. We all have our crosses to bear in this vale of tears.”

Bernard used the biblical reference as an opening to a topic much on his mind of late. “Vincent and I corresponded on the subject of religion and the use of symbolism in modern art. In one of his letters he wrote something immensely profound, so much so I’ve committed it to memory: ‘Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely,
as an artist greater than all other artists
, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made . . .
living men
, immortals.’