The Beautiful American

by Jeanne Mackin

  “Rilke’s poem about the panther was one of my father’s favorites,” I told Lee. “About an animal caged so long it moves in circles and doesn’t remember the world before it was seen through bars.”

  “I know how it feels,” Lee said.

  The panther slowly, with mesmerizing grace, stood and began to pace, back and forth, back and forth, its eyes now on Lee.

  She had stepped nearer to the cage, so near she could press her face to the bars if she leaned forward another inch or two. The panther stopped pacing directly in front of Lee, and they stared at each other, both panting, waiting.

  “You’re standing too close,” I warned her.

  “Look at the flesh on my arms,” Lee whispered. Between her gloves and coat I could see the gooseflesh rising. “So thrilling,” she breathed. “How do you know you’re alive if there is absolutely no danger?”

  I had a quick, terrifying image of the panther’s claw slashing through the bars and into Lee’s beautiful face. Just as I thought it, the panther crouched and showed its teeth in a snarl.

  “I promised my father that if I came to Paris, I would come and see the panther. Step back a little, Lee. You’re standing too close to the cage.”

  “It is like childhood,” Lee said. “Cages and bars. God, some of those days . . .” But instead of stepping back, she moved even closer. She must have been able to feel the panther’s breath on her skin—she was that close.

  She was on the verge of speaking of it, that day on the porch, the early days of a childhood friendship when she wore a white dress and smelled not a panther’s breath but her own acrid smell of medicines, the lingering sourness of a hospital ward, the day I stretched my hand to hers and called her away from whatever she was remembering, whatever still frightened her.

  The panther snarled a second time.

  I pulled harder on Lee’s hand. I was feeling really sorry that I had brought her here, but this time Lee stepped back, out of reach of that great black claw. She laughed.

  “What a coat she’d make! I wonder,” Lee said, “if the zoo would let us do a photographic shoot here. Huene would love it.”

  She lit a cigarette and turned in a circle, trying to decide which direction she wanted to take, if she wanted to head to where the children had gone to find a carousel, or back toward the monkey or reptile house. “Lots of great places for photographs,” she said. “So, how are you and Jamie doing?”

  The question took me by surprise. “Great. Jamie loves Paris. He never wants to leave.”

  “And what do you want?’ Lee puffed out a circle of smoke and pulled a piece of tobacco off her lip.

  “What Jamie wants, because I want Jamie. For always.”

  “Never tempted, Nora? Never feel an impulse to stray, to discover how some other man makes love to you?”

  “Never. I have the one I want.”

  “I wish I could be that simple. For me, love and sex are two different things. Love is, well, you want to protect that person, help him, share with him. But sex. That’s just an urge, an itch. Scratch it, and it’s gone, and good riddance. On to the next itch.”

  Her philosophy seemed cold to me and, ultimately, defeatist, in the order of “all cats are gray at night.” There are ginger cats and tabbies, friendly and feral. House cats and caged panthers in a zoo, and lions roaming free on an African savanna. There are cats, and cats. There is sex, and then there is what Jamie and I had, in our little creaking bed in Montparnasse, that making the world new and exciting every time we touched flesh to flesh.

  “You mean that, Lee?”

  “I do. It’s what my daddy taught me, and I think he was right.”

  That comment haunted my idle moments. How could a father tell his daughter such a thing? And then I realized. This had been part of Lee’s treatment after the rape, the philosophy that had helped her survive. The body and the heart were separate and sex was just an activity, perhaps not so different from a strenuous game of tennis. This was the survival skill her father had given her, to disassociate sex from love, as surely as the surrealists, in their paintings and photographs, cut off limbs or put eyes on shoulders rather than faces.

  In that way, Lee was much more authentic than the surrealist artists. They made objects of their philosophies. She lived it.

  We went to a café for brandy and cigarettes before beginning the walk home. It was late afternoon and the sun had disappeared, leaving Paris in a gray twilight. When we passed a corner newsstand, Lee stopped and rifled through the magazines, looking at the covers, flipping through pages to see the photo layouts, until the old man who ran the stand grabbed one from her hands and said to buy or leave, no free reading.

  “I’ll buy it for her,” a man standing behind us said. I hadn’t heard him approach. He was American, well dressed, big diamond pinkie ring on his right hand. When he offered Lee a cigarette, he produced a silver case, all engraved. Money didn’t impress Lee. She was more liable to make fun of wealth too obviously displayed. But this man had looks and an impressive refined elegance.

  “You’re Lee Miller, aren’t you?” He made a little mock bow. “I saw you at de Brunhoff’s table at the Jockey last week. The brute refused to introduce me.”

  Michel de Brunhoff was the editor of Paris Vogue, the man who had hired Lee to model Patou and Chanel gowns.

  “And you are?” Lee extended her hand.

  “Let me tell you over dinner. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” Lee said, winking at me over her shoulder.

  I walked back to Montparnasse alone. Lee and her admirer went off in the opposite direction.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What is that perfume you are wearing?” Jamie came home late the day that Lee and I visited the zoo. He was out of sorts, frowning and in no mood for the kiss I longed to give him. Instead, he gave me a quick peck on the cheek, threw his damp coat on our bed, and slumped into his chair by the window.

  “Well, hello to you, my love,” I said, determined to be cheerful. “It’s Chanel No. 5.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “It is. Very.”

  “I thought we had agreed . . .”

  I put my finger to his lips to stop him. “It was a gift.”

  “A gift?” Both his eyebrows went up. “Who gave you an expensive gift? Why did you accept it?”

  “Jamie, you are starting to sound like my mother.” I told him the story of my day with Lee, the photo shoot, the errand of the red bag, the zoo, the promise of more work from Huene. I left out the panther and the man with the silver cigarette case.

  “The zoo!” He laughed. “That’s why Lee didn’t show up. At the studio,” he added. “Man was furious. Shouted at me all afternoon. Come here. Let me smell that perfume again.” He burrowed his nose into my neck, tickling me.

  “First there is the scent of ylang-ylang, from the Comoros Islands,” I breathed, remembering what my father had said about No. 5 in 1922, the Christmas he bought a very small bottle for Momma. “Next comes the scent of jasmine from Grasse. That’s in the south of France.” I could barely finish the sentence. Jamie’s mouth was moving south and had reached my breasts. His hands were moving north, up from my knees. “Then, there is the scent of sandalwood from India. Yes,” I breathed. “Yes. If you can’t go to Mysore, the bed will do nicely.”

  • • •

  Two weeks later I was picking Jamie up from the studio at the usual time, seven at night, when Lee opened the door. She had her own photography studio across the street, but still spent most of her time at Man’s. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said, tilting her head.

  Man looked up from the table where he had been examining contact sheets with a magnifying glass. Jamie was crouched next to Man and, as usual, looked worried. Man was demanding and Jamie’s confidence seemed to be shrinking rather than growing.

  “Not sure it�
��s a good idea,” Man said, not bothering to say hello to me. “You know how he feels about privacy.”

  “It’s a grand idea,” Lee said. “And high time. Come on, Nora, you’re going to meet Pablo.”

  “Pablo?” Jamie asked, his eyebrows moving toward his hairline.

  “Yes. That one. Put on your coat.”

  Evidently it had all been arranged beforehand, because when we arrived at Picasso’s rather grand house on rue la Boétie, a Champs-Élysées neighborhood with ritzy clothing stores and art and antiquities dealers, we were expected. A maid opened the door and led us to a sitting room where the great artist Picasso and his wife, Olga, rose to greet us.

  “Man. Lee. And the American,” Pablo said to me.

  “The other American,” I corrected.

  When Picasso looked at me, I felt, well, truly looked at. Some glances are cool and superficial; some are mere nods of the head with the eyes never engaged at all. But Picasso . . . his eyes locked onto yours and peered through to your innermost being. It was like being naked in a crowd, his gaze was so intense. And then his gaze would move slowly over your face, your body, not in a sexual way—well, at least not always in a sexual way—and you would feel as if he had taken you down to your slightest measurement, as if he could tell the length of each eyelash and which foot, in tight high heels, was hurting most.

  It was like being locked in the panther’s gaze. You couldn’t look away until he did.

  “And her young man.” Picasso extended his hand to Jamie.

  Lee gave me a sideways glance. Is it everything you expected? her look seemed to ask.

  It was not. Pablo wore a tailored suit and his graying hair was combed smartly back. He looked more like a banker than an artist. The furnishings in the room looked even more formal, more expensive than his suit. The sitting room, and I assumed the other rooms of the apartment, were done in Regency style, with delicate curved-leg tables and sofas, pink and yellow cushions, patterned wallpapers, gilt mirrors.

  Jamie looked disappointed. We were used to the bohemian, often run-down but interesting studios and apartments of the artists in Montparnasse. This room would have impressed my mother.

  When we were formally introduced to Madame Picasso, I understood. The home, the furniture, were chosen by her and they were a statement of intention: respectability, invitations to and from the right people, not the lowlife.

  Olga was still very beautiful with her slender dancer’s body and dark eyes and hair. She had been in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes when Picasso met her, and ten years ago she had given up her dancing career for the more ambitious prospect of being Picasso’s wife.

  Ten years is a long time in some marriages. Olga, when I met her, was a furious woman. She suspected what everyone else already knew and the suspicion of her husband’s infidelity had frozen her beautiful Russian face into a permanent expression of jealousy and bitterness. Even when she forced a smile, there was a deep line between her eyebrows, an aggressive jutting of the chin. She looked like a woman about to throw something, and when she walked, there was a suggestion of violence in her footsteps. I wondered which roles she had been assigned when she had danced with Diaghilev’s ballet troupe, to match that quiet and intense sense of a building storm.

  Their son, Paulo, was there that night as well, though he was sent to boarding school soon after. Nine years old, he had the same blazing eyes of his father, the same barely restrained drama in his movements as his mother. In other words, he wasn’t a child as I imagined children to be, but a smaller, sweeter-faced man-boy who seemed already to suspect he would never measure up to his father.

  “Drinks,” Olga said, and I imagined someone could have said “screw you” in the same tone of voice, except with a Russian accent.

  A maid appeared, carrying a tray.

  Lee looked at me over Man’s shoulder. Her smile was that of a teenage girl who has nailed her brother’s shoe to the floor. What fun, her eyes seemed to say.

  Jamie stalked through the room, studying the paintings on the wall, the sculptures on the floor and tables. There were photos of Olga and Paulo set into silver frames and in them I recognized various corners of Man Ray’s studio. Every once in a while Jamie glanced my way, eyebrows still raised after examining a Matisse or a Braque, and I found myself wishing he did not impress so easily. He seemed so young compared with Man and Picasso. He was so young. And young things often got hurt.

  I sat carefully on a settee, self-conscious about the run in my stocking and wishing Lee had not sprung this event as a surprise. For someone like Olga, now sitting ramrod straight in a Louis Quinze chair, one should at least comb one’s hair, refresh one’s lipstick. I felt like a child at a grown-ups’ party.

  In one corner, an electric train had been set up for Paulo and several times I caught Olga giving that messy train set the kind of look a hostess gives a stray dog that wanders into a formal garden. She did not want it there. I decided I would spend the evening playing with Paulo and his train.

  Picasso stood smiling in the middle of this battle of wills, perfectly at ease, the sun around which everyone else in the room revolved. (Lee explained later that his real studio, his working studio, was upstairs in a different part of the building, and no one, absolutely no one, not even Olga, was allowed into it. No one except his mistress, Marie-Thérèse, that was.)

  Lee sat on a settee opposite Olga, and Man sat next to her, so close their elbows rubbed.

  “Lee,” Picasso said, “are you still wasting your time with those fashion photographers?” He looked at her from under graying but still thick lashes. He tugged at his long, straight forelock and smoothed it back, a gesture he repeated frequently that evening. It was a gesture I had seen in other men, usually those proud of their thick hair, an emblem of youth, but in Picasso the gesture was so exaggerated it seemed more a ritual, a superstition, than simple vanity.

  “Fashion pays the bills,” Lee said. “Cheers.” She drained her glass and held it out for a refill.

  “My portraits pay the bills,” Man said darkly.

  “And you, young man, are the new assistant?” Picasso turned to Jamie. “Man doesn’t usually take male assistants, only young girls.”

  “He did it as a favor to me,” Lee said, finishing her second cocktail. “I thought it would be fun to have a young man around.” She turned white, realizing what she had just said, and that it could not be taken back. Trying to make it mean something else would only underline what she had actually meant. So she went forward. “Besides, he’s taller,” she said, slipping her arm through Man’s. “Finally, I can make you jealous.” And that was the perfect ploy. His ego was flattered. His mistress longed for his jealousy.

  It was dark outside, and my stomach was rattling with hunger. Olga’s sardine hors d’oeuvres were small and she, in good frugal housewife fashion, had portioned only one each. I wondered where we would be going for dinner—Jockey, Taverna, or even just the local bistro for beer and plates of sausage.

  First, though, must come the shoptalk: what dealer was doing well, who was going out of business, which collector had paid what price, what museums were scheduling group exhibits of which school; which mistress was being unfaithful to her artist lover. Jamie sat and listened as Man and Picasso quipped back and forth in a coded language of commerce and art.

  Lee and Olga gossiped quietly about the wives of various collectors, people I didn’t know. I pushed Paulo’s toy locomotive around the tracks and rearranged the miniature cows grazing alongside it.

  After a half hour and another round of cocktails, Paulo was taken away by a nanny for his bedtime, and Pablo rose.

  “Don’t wait up,” he instructed Olga. “We may be late.” Exeunt husband and friends, leaving behind angry, suspicious wife.

  Outside, I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  “Well?” Lee asked.

  “Warn me ne
xt time,” I said.

  “Then this is a warning. There’s more to come.” She slipped her arm through mine. “Having fun?”

  Pablo’s mistress was already at Trianon, waiting for us. Pablo had kissed Olga good night on the cheek. He greeted Marie-Thérèse Walter with a long kiss on the lips.

  Marie-Thérèse was blond compared with Olga’s darkness, athletic and strong compared with Olga’s slender fragility. Her smile was warm and open, compared with Olga’s closed face.

  “So you are the American,” she said, shaking my hand and repeating exactly Pablo’s greeting to me. That was how I knew Jamie and I had been discussed. What had been the point of the discussions?

  Marie-Thérèse slid over on the banquette, making room for me next to her. Pablo sat next to me, and Lee, Man, and Jamie sat on the other side, Lee in the middle, looking very pleased with herself. I looked at the trio and thought how lucky I was to have beautiful Jamie as my darling rather than sour, angry Man.

  “Poughkeepsie?” Marie-Thérèse asked, emphasizing the long e’s so that my hometown sounded almost exotic. “Like Lee?”

  “But we didn’t really know each other there,” Lee said, not looking up from the menu. “We met in a bookstore, didn’t we, Nora? You were wearing that funny hat. I wonder how the sole is tonight, and if there are oysters.”

  Pablo ordered four bottles of a good crisp rosé for the table, but when it arrived, he poured none for himself, just as he had refused cocktails when Olga served them. So Jamie and I drank his share for him. Man and Pablo relaxed finally, and Lee and Marie-Thérèse and I talked about skirt lengths and movies and the cold weather.

  Pablo’s mistress was sweet and earnest and very young. I felt sophisticated, even old next to her, though there wasn’t that much age difference, really. Lee gave me the details on Marie-Thérèse later: Pablo had seen her coming out of the Galeries Lafayette three years before, and walked right up to her, offering to do her portrait. The poor kid had no idea who he was, knew nothing about art and less about a man called Picasso, but she liked his face and his manners and agreed to meet him the next day. She was only seventeen, jailbait, so they had to lie about when they had actually met and when the affair began, placing it officially a year later.