“I am now in service to our foreign minister, Ribbentrop, who is charged by our führer to oversee various affairs of importance in Paris,” he explained, though I had not asked. “I’ve been assigned to the textile division of our military administration. Textiles are your trade, as well, yes?”
“You know I am a designer. So, yes, you could say that.” The wine went straight to my head, as I hadn’t had a drink in weeks. I found myself wanting to flirt with him. It was inexplicable, the impulse, and as Misia would have said, inexcusable. He was one of them, the invader. Yet something about him drew me; there was a hint of wry humor in his manner, an almost overt tone of ridicule, not directed toward me but at the absurd situation we found ourselves in, with the world askew all around us.
“You must be well connected,” I finally remarked. I was reaching into my beaded handbag for my cigarette case. As soon as I looked up, he had his lighter extended. It was a Cartier like mine. He lit my cigarette, smiling as I eyed him. “Do you know a lot of important people?” I said. I was probing, testing him, and he knew it. I could see the knowledge dancing in his eyes, mischievous and curious, ready to play. A man of evident sophistication who had moved in society circles, he was familiar with the ploy.
Inclining again to me, he whispered, “I know Reichsmarschall Göring is a morphine addict and the Ritz manager had to install a huge new tub in his suite because he believes long baths in scalding water can relieve his vice.”
I repressed a gasp. Looking over my shoulder to the fat Luftwaffe commander, Dincklage added, still in that hushed tone, as if he was imparting a state secret, “But that won’t cure his addiction to diamonds or ladies’ dresses, as Madame Corrigan has so conveniently discovered. He took over her suite, you see, evicting her, so she now must pay her rent by selling him certain pieces of her priceless collection, which he likes to wear along with purple tulle and silk organza while dancing the waltz with his boys.”
I had to bow my head, pressing my knuckles to my mouth to curb my laughter. Spatz leaned back again, his smile blasé. “Probably not very important in the scheme of things,” he said, taking up his wineglass. “But rather amusing nevertheless, wouldn’t you agree?”
I did. For the first time since the Nazis had swarmed in, I could reduce their fearsome darkness to the ludicrous image of Göring flouncing around his suite in a gown and Laura Mae Corrigan’s tiara.
“We are human,” Spatz added, uncannily reading my thoughts. “For the moment, we hold power. But”—he shrugged—“who’s to say for how long? Those of us caught in the middle, mademoiselle . . . well, as history has shown, we must find the easiest way to survive.”
I found myself nodding. “Yes, we must. I certainly intend to.”
He made a complacent sound in the back of his throat, a seductive hum of agreement. “I thought you might. So. I have told you a secret. Now, it is your turn to tell me one. Such as, why are you in Paris? I promise it will remain strictly entre nous. I am a man of honor. My word means everything to me.” His voice turned serious. “I would also like to offer my assistance, if I can. I have a feeling you are searching for something.”
“Do you?” I lit another cigarette. “Well, I am indeed searching for someone: my nephew, to be precise. And if we are to be friends, the first thing you should do is call me Coco.”
X
Spatz was not staying at the Ritz. In his nonchalant manner that made everything he said sound less significant than it was, he told me he had an apartment on rue Pergolèse—a trophy obtained from a recent affair with a “very attractive and rich Parisian hostess who,” he added, with a sly wink, “is not one hundred percent Aryan.” His lover had felt compelled to leave Paris with her complacent husband, entrusting their apartment to his care.
He was far more experienced in wielding his charm than any man had a right to be, and I sensed that while his interest in me was genuine, as was his offer to assist, he had more than one purpose in mind. He had made that clear toward the end of the evening, after he insisted on paying my bill and escorted me into the reception area, where the officers and their various companions mingled, smoked, and drank crème de menthe aperitifs.
“Shall I call on you tomorrow after I have made my inquiries?” he asked as we lit our after-meal cigarettes. I resisted scowling at the sight of Arletty draped on a chaise lounge by a window, gazing adoringly at her young officer as he regaled her with some tale. I saw other women likewise engaged, perfumed hands lightly grazing uniformed arms, demure glances through mascara-laced lashes promising enticement. As Arletty herself had said, apparently life must indeed return to normal—if welcoming the Nazis as guests could ever be called normal.
“No, I’m busy tomorrow,” I said. “I have my shop to see to and then I want to visit some friends.” I gave him one of my dazzling, noncommittal smiles to ease my rebuff. I had enjoyed our time together more than I was willing to admit, but I had no intention of granting him further leeway until he delivered on his promise to look into André’s situation. “You have my room number and that of my shop,” I added, “in case you find out anything. You can telephone me.”
“But you are not otherwise engaged for the evening?” he persisted, again in that informal manner that indicated he was not dissuaded in the least.
I paused before stubbing out my cigarette in a nearby ashtray. “Who can say what tomorrow may bring?” I held out my hand. If he leaned over to kiss my fingertips or held my hand in his, I resolved that I would accept whatever information he might ferret out of his superiors, but that would be it. I would not be seduced simply because a well-connected attaché sought to add me to his no doubt already impressive roster of conquests.
To my disconcertion, he shook my hand once before letting go. “Good night, Coco,” he said, and he turned to depart, leaving me standing there, feeling somewhat bemused.
He had surprised me. That rarely happened anymore.
I SLEPT BETTER THAN I HAD since the occupation, buoyed on a light injection of my Sedol. I had relied on increasingly smaller doses of my liquid laudanum while away. When I awoke refreshed and without the cloudy bewilderment I’d grown accustomed to, I realized that I must wean myself from my dependency. Thinking of Göring submerged in his scalding baths added impetus: I had no idea if obtaining my sedative would be possible in the occupied city and did not want to end up resorting to black-market profiteers.
As luck would have it, after I dressed, the telephone rang. I did not answer immediately; I thought it might be Spatz, pressing his advantage. If so, he could leave a message with reception, for I doubted he could have discovered anything in so short a span of time. The phone stopped ringing but then clamored again, until I picked it up and Misia burst out, “Darling, I’m wondering if you have any of our blue drops?”
She sounded breathless again, almost frantic. I understood. She had not left Paris; secluded in the house with Jojo and his taunting humor, watching the Germans roll in, she had resorted to dosing herself around the clock and now suffered severe withdrawal.
“Yes, I’ll bring some by this afternoon,” I told her, gritting my teeth. Now, I had no choice but to exercise self-control, for she would prove voracious once she determined I could provide her with the coveted drug.
“Oh, thank God.” She sighed. “I am desperate. Jojo is just not taking any of this seriously. He wants to invite them to our home—here, in our living room! He says we need the money. They’ve declared Picasso and other artists degenerates, but they’ll buy any paintings on the side. He thinks he can earn commissions if we—”
I interrupted her. “Yes, yes. We can talk about it later. I need to get to the shop.”
She went silent. Then she said, in audible disbelief, “The shop? I thought you had closed it. You’re not planning on selling your clothes to these savages, are you?”
“Misia.” I tempered my voice, worried about surveillance on the line. “They ordered all the businesses to reopen. Everything: the stores, the cinemas
and theaters, the publishing houses and couture salons. Lucien Lelong, Madame Grès, Balenciaga, and other designers are preparing collections even as we speak. I simply cannot—”
“Schiaparelli isn’t! She went to America. So has Mainbocher. Vionnet closed her atelier, as well, and Molyneux is in London.” She took a heaving breath before she added, “Coco, it would be a scandal. A national disgrace. None of them is as famous as you are. And how on earth do you even know those other designers are working? You only returned yesterday.”
I went silent. The line crackled and hissed. Spatz had told me about the foreign minister’s command that all businesses in Paris must resume regular operations, except the newspapers and the wireless, which were now subject to censored oversight.
“You would not dare indulge . . . ,” Misia began. Then she thought better of delivering additional condemnation, knowing that as I refused to answer, I might hang up. “Fine,” she said, “do whatever you want. You always do, no matter what I say.”
“It’s just my perfume,” I said. “That is all. My staff had to open. They are selling Number Five and my other fragrances, nothing else. My atelier will remain closed.”
“Oh.” She went quiet for a moment. “Well. I suppose it can’t be helped.”
“No, it can’t. Misia, I really do have to go. I’ll see you soon. Please, don’t worry. I am fine, honestly. I just have to do this. André, he . . . he is—” All of a sudden, my voice broke. Before I started confessing things that must never be said over a telephone, I put down the receiver and ended our call.
Going to my trunk, I took out three syringes and vials. I’d help her as much as I could under the circumstances but, I thought as I walked out the door, I must help myself first.
HÉLÈNE AND MADAME AUBERT were delighted to see me once I reassured them I understood they had to open the shop. We were doing a brisk business; German soldiers on leave stood outside my ground-floor boutique, queuing up to purchase my fragrances. I entered through the back door; Hélène showed me the empty stores, saying, “They’re buying up even the display bottles, mademoiselle. They want your logo to show back home, to prove they were here. They’re not at all rude, but we simply can’t keep the perfumes in stock. We had to hire back five of our employees to deal with the demand. It has been like this every day. We’re down to our last hundred bottles or so. By tomorrow or the next day, we’ll be completely sold out.”
Checking the account tallies, I saw she was right. I lifted my eyes to her. “What about the bottles we put upstairs in my apartment?”
“Gone,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we had no other option.”
“No, no. They want perfume and we’ve been ordered to sell it. It cannot be helped,” I said, echoing Misia. “Let me call Pierre Wertheimer. He will just have to increase our standing order from the distributor. After all the grief he put me through, it’s the least he can do.”
Madame Aubert said, “We already tried. Monsieur Wertheimer is not available.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“He’s not in France. He and his brother left for New York. When we called the distributor, we were told that Bourjois and its affiliates have been entrusted to their cousin, Raymond Bollack. He refused to take our calls. He will only speak to you.”
“Fine.” I grabbed my account books and went to the staircase. “I’ll phone him from my apartment. Sell whatever we have left in stock and I’ll get us more.”
I spent the remainder of the afternoon wrangling over the telephone with Raymond Bollack, the newly appointed overseer of my Parfums Chanel subsidiary. He was obstinate, as only someone of the Wertheimer blood could be. He drove me into a frenzy, citing the higher costs of transportation and other obstacles implemented by the Germans in order to exact an additional percentage for increasing a supply of my perfume. I ended up shouting at him as I paced my living room, dragging the telephone wire behind me until I almost yanked it from the wall. I had to concede, there was no way around it, but I emerged from my argument with him determined once again to escape the stranglehold of my eighteen-year partnership with the Wertheimers. Court injunctions and lawsuits had failed; I no longer held a position on the board of my own company, after paying a ransom in legal fees. How long was I expected to tolerate it?
Echoes of my harangue must have been overheard downstairs, for when I went back down to the boutique, now crammed with Germans, Madame Aubert gave me an arch look.
“He’s impossible,” I spat out. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” And I stormed out to get a taxi to rue de Rivoli, my anger such that had it not been early evening, with me out in public, I would have dosed myself right there in the backseat with a syringe.
TIME SPENT WITH MISIA relieved some of my frustration. Jojo was in his habitual sarcastic mood, quipping that the Germans would finally make him like the taste of bratwurst. After taking an injection in the bedroom, with me helping to hold the syringe, as her hands were trembling, a much-calmer Misia told me that Cocteau and his lover, the actor Jean Marais, had fled to the Côte d’Azur to seek the hospitality of the writer Colette and her Jewish husband.
“They went to Colette?” I snorted. “Why on earth would they do that? She never liked our sort. Didn’t she tell you she was horrified that I was considering marrying Iribe?”
“Oh, yes, she did.” Misia’s expression turned avid. Bored out of her skin with being cooped up indoors, she was eager for her favorite pastime, gossip, and wasted no time in giving me the details of our wayward playwright’s latest plight. “Of course, once she saw our Jean et Jean going through opium like it was their last day on earth and drinking her out of everything but seawater, Colette told them they had to leave. She was terrified their antics would draw the attention of a Nazi spy and her husband would be arrested.”
“I don’t understand. Why would she worry? The Germans are not occupying the south.”
Misia glanced at Jojo, who was snoring on the couch after having imbibed an entire bottle of cheap table wine and eaten a plate of disgusting tripe. “There are rumors the Vichy government will do whatever they are told,” she said, turning back to me. “Otto Abetz, the Reich’s ambassador, hates Jews. Everyone knows he shares Hitler’s paranoia of them.”
Interesting. It never ceased to amaze me how even in alleged isolation, Misia somehow managed to keep apprised of the wider world. It was also, I thought, rather chilling to hear the Nazi policy declared aloud, considering that they were right outside our door.
“And Lifar?” I said, changing the subject. “I haven’t told him yet that I’m back. Is he still dancing?”
“He never stopped.” She grimaced. “He even welcomed Hitler personally when the führer came here to visit. He gave him a tour of the Opéra. According to Lifar, Hitler took quite a liking to him. He claims no one has handled him like that since Diag.”
“Yes, well,” I chuckled, “he’s always been vain. He thinks he’s so beautiful, no one can resist.”
Misia gave a smug smile. “Still, it could be true; they say Hitler is an odd duck. In any event, Lifar has made himself a target. He should be careful. Not everyone in Paris is as eager as him to welcome the Germans.” She paused, regarding me with discomfiting purpose. “And you, my dear, what are your plans? Have you impressed a Nazi or two yourself?”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes but she saw right through me, as she invariably did. “Who is he?” she demanded. “Please tell me it’s some high-ranking pig like Göring.”
“Göring?” I burst out laughing. “Let me tell you about the feared Reichsmarschall . . .”
My story about Göring’s eccentricities made her cackle so much that I thought she had forgotten her prior inquisition. Yet as I prepared to leave before curfew—the Germans had set it for nine P.M. and no one wanted to be caught in the street—she helped me into my coat and said, “You must be careful, whatever it is you’re doing. Helping your nephew is admirable, but when this is over, there will be repercussions. Lifar’s boasting h
as proved it. The Free French are watching and you don’t want to be trapped by your own actions when we kick these swine out.”
I nodded, kissing her. “I’m as innocent as a nun these days,” I teased, but as I went down to the curb to hail a taxi, her warning stayed with me, gnawing in the back of my mind.
Perhaps it would be safest to pretend I had never met Spatz von Dincklage.
IN THE NEXT WEEKS, as September crawled through sluggish heat into October, I busied myself in my boutique and attended informal gatherings at the Serts’. Lifar came to see me, as slender and bronzed as ever, overjoyed to have me back, kissing me effusively and regaling me with lurid tales of various encounters with German officers who brought their French mistresses or stodgy wives to see him dance but came backstage afterward to fondle him “like a whore.”
“Well, you are,” I chided, and he laughed.
“How can I help it? They are all so blond and muscular, so Aryan. I tell you,” he said, inclining to my ear with his lascivious grin, “we must persuade Cocteau to return. The pickings in Paris this year are so very ripe!”
It was all talk, only perhaps in Lifar’s case, rather more than that. He had been invited to tour the Ballets Russes in Berlin—an announcement that brought an immediate glower to Misia’s face. “You wouldn’t dare. Would you flaunt yourself before Hitler himself?”
“I already have,” Lifar smirked. “That is why he invited me.”
Marie-Louise, who had joined our soirees, mentioned she was hosting lunches where “pleasant” French-speaking Germans, such as Propaganda Director Heller, came to partake of her black-market goods, hear poets, and enjoy dance recitals by Caryathis.
“Didn’t you once take lessons from her?” she said to me as I sat at the piano playing one of my old ballads from my days in Moulins. “She was telling us just the other day about how dedicated you were. You wanted to be a professional dancer, or so she claims.”
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