April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  Harry’s building rose up majestically white from the street. Even the façade, with its intricately detailed brass metalwork, reminded me of its best occupant. A doorman greeted me with a dignified grizzle and rang a bell. The lift door opened – I’d forgotten about the lift and was suddenly glad I didn’t have to walk to the top floor – and a boy in a red uniform ushered me into his wire cage. The lift clanked and spluttered and the boy whispered to it until we reached the top floor.

  ‘Kiki! Darling! Wait, have you tipped the lift boy?’ Harry rushed out of her front door and handed a coin to the lift operator. ‘I didn’t think so, none of you garret dwellers think of such things. Let me look at you.’

  She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me this way and that, inspecting my face and my clothes, frowning at the dark shadows under my eyes in the warm light that spilled into the corridor. I’d barely even said hello but it seemed that I didn’t need to say anything much at all. I’d come to the right place.

  ‘Hmmm, as I suspected. I diagnose determined both-end candle-burning. When did you last bathe?’

  ‘Just the other day—’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘And when did you last eat?’

  ‘I had a biscuit—’

  ‘I’m looking after you tonight and I won’t be opposed,’ she tut-tutted and shook her head. ‘You’re as bad as ever, my dear.’

  I linked my arm in hers and she kissed the top of my head.

  No one was home but her lover, Wendy, who was painting in one of the rooms and wasn’t to be disturbed. Harry walked me into her luxurious bathroom, twice as big as I remembered from the war. There were black and white tiles on the floor and up to my head height, then the palest of purple up to and across the ceiling. Her royal purple towels and bath mat set off the brassy fixtures.

  ‘I redid it recently, Kiki, I just had to have a bath big enough for two after all those buckets of cold water behind the lines. Do you remember? Of course, how could anyone forget? Ugh, the memory still makes me shudder. You know, I think I ended up paying for hot water for the entire building! But what else was I to do? French plumbing is as reliable as French marital fidelity. I know how American my obsession sounds but I just don’t care – I am American and I like to be clean. We haven’t eaten yet so you can join us for dinner, but I’ll get Annette to rustle you up a little pre-dinner snack. No, no wine. Well, maybe a bit of brandy, to help the medicine go down. I’ll come back in an hour.’ She left the bath to fill with lavender-scented water.

  I came to Harry when I wanted, no, needed to be bossed about. She didn’t have to tell me that I looked a mess. I felt like a delicate glass figurine. I felt like a swallow caught in a storm. I felt like a nightingale, caged and clipped, made to sing on cue for my masters though my throat was sore and my tongue too dry to swallow. I wasn’t in some melodious plot of beechen green, but a twisted, tortured plot of shadows numberless. I sank into the bath with relief.

  The steam curled and danced and the warmth massaged my bones. Annette came in with a glass of orange juice, a bowl of apricot halves and a nip of brandy. A little food and a little booze, sinking under the hot water and letting the lavender into my skin, and I could untether my mind. Thoughts floated up, connections were made that I could never have made without the liquid assistance of bath and brandy.

  Fox had changed. Maybe it was because I couldn’t see him, because he couldn’t stand too close to me or look at me with his ambiguous expressions, but he didn’t seem as cruel as he used to be. Had he mellowed? It was more likely that my memory played tricks on me. But if I stopped trusting my memory, if I doubted what I knew to be true, then I was lost. Then I’d be in his power, completely, once again. I couldn’t do that. I had to take what I knew: that he wanted me and, underneath, he needed me.

  Fox needed me but I needed Tom. It was a compromise to my perfect, selfish freedom, but it wasn’t something I could ignore. Like not realising I was hungry until I smelt food, like not knowing I was tired until I closed my eyes for a moment, I hadn’t known I was lonely until Tom’s letter. I hadn’t known how precious he was to me until he left on the train for Germany.

  And my need for him led him into more danger. If I didn’t . . . but I stopped myself there. Whatever I had done and would do, I was not responsible for Tom’s charge of treason. To remember the details of Tom’s plight was a struggle, partly because I didn’t want to remember the war, partly because I kept seeing, smelling, hearing Tom as he was now. I took another sip of brandy and forced myself to concentrate. It had been after the final battle at Passchendaele, late 1917. I hadn’t heard from him for days when he turned up in my Paris hotel, skulking and sneaky, a man on the run. I remembered getting almost no sensible words from him for hours, until he’d warmed up, calmed down, eaten and slept. Then he told me that he’d been trapped in the mud for days, only to find himself charged, unbelievably, with treason, when he found the lines again. He said he’d had to flee, something about his superior officer, an old enmity; he couldn’t return, he needed to escape back to Australia, he needed my help. If I was going to help him again now – if I was going to work for Fox in order to do so – I’d have to get the full, proper story from him when he returned to Paris.

  As for the clues . . . Fox talked of the war. Pablo had a party with Violet and Ferny. Ferny and Violet spoke of the Russians. Fox sent me a photo of Ferny from the war. Everyone else talked about Hausmann. I wanted to talk to a certain Arkady Nikolaievitch Lazarev about art. I wanted to talk to Ferny about Romantic poetry. I wanted to talk.

  ‘Kiki? Are you ready? Dinner is almost on the table, darling,’ Harry called through the door. Perfect timing.

  ‘SO YOU SEE, it was just as I predicted!’ said Harry, waving her fork about. ‘That little man knew nothing whatsoever about it, and delayed our departure by hours! So we missed our connection to Venice—’

  ‘Et cetera, et cetera,’ Wendy cut in with a smile. ‘We did get there in the end though.’

  ‘Yes, and it was wonderful.’ Harry smiled at her lover and her face glowed.

  I’d never seen her like this before. I guessed that this union was ‘until death do us part’. Wendy wasn’t Harry’s usual glamour-girl style, twenty years younger and enthusiastic about herself. Wendy wore her ‘good’ work clothes: a loose white linen shirt and blue serge trousers, men’s brogues and one heavy gold necklace. Her hair was short and almost white and every laugh line was displayed, unadorned by make-up. I could imagine her digging for weeds, or trekking across Snowdonia, or even shearing sheep. She had greeted me with a handshake that moved into a hug. I liked her immediately.

  Perhaps it was Wendy’s influence that had changed Harry’s eating habits from the decadence of gin and an entire wheel of Brie to the healthy properties of fresh bread and orange juice. Dinner was simple and perfect. Fresh ingredients, all in season, cooked without too much oil or cream. An asparagus soup to begin with, followed by a very rustic steak and salad and baked potatoes. Annette shook her head at the simplicity of it but it reminded me of home. Not where I lived in Sydney with my aunt, but the sheep property I grew up on – when the men came in from the paddocks or the shearing sheds at sundown and Mum had baked two ovens’ worth of vegetables, as Dad stoked a fire out the back where Tom cooked slabs of beef, so the blackened edges smelt of eucalyptus and clean bush air. This steak was fried in a pan, in butter, and not nearly as romantically bloody, but tasty nonetheless. A few others had joined us – some American poets who had just arrived in Paris, and a Russian woman seated next to me. Eva said almost nothing, her pale face a mask, with her pale hair pulled back severely and her icy eyes seeming to pierce the light fittings.

  ‘You’re not a fan of Venice?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, sure. St Petersburg – sorry, “Petrograd” – was called the Venice of the East.’ She shrugged. ‘Many of my countrymen live there. I went there first, but it didn’t suit me. Too many Bolsheviks.’


  ‘There are a few here—’

  ‘No, they are only socialists, and only with champagne, in a café, after they finish their office work for the day. I mean the men with bombs and the women with poison who are intent on hunting down dissidents and bringing them to their so-called “justice”.’ Her face was blank but her hands fidgeted. I had to listen intently, as her English became thicker and harder to understand as she became agitated.

  ‘Those Bolsheviks aren’t here in Paris, then?’

  ‘Not yet. But they’re in Germany – I can read the newspapers, “between the lines” as you say. A very useful phrase.’

  ‘You’re a monarchist?’

  ‘Even worse – an aristocrat.’ She raised a manicured eyebrow. ‘Only a minor one, with hardly any title and no money. But as a practising painter whose third cousin was in the Tsar’s court and who had been seen, and I quote, “in the company of Imperialists and other enemies of the people” – that is, my sister’s in-laws – well . . .’ She trailed off.

  It was clear that the last few years had been difficult for her and I wondered if her experience was typical. She looked starved, her protruding wrist bones making her arms seem like sticks. I couldn’t help but glance at my own in comparison.

  ‘Do you know the teahouse here?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. My aunt runs it.’

  ‘I need to meet with someone and I hope to find him there. I was wondering—’

  ‘Meet me at the corner of the street at ten tomorrow morning. We’ll go there for breakfast. They do excellent blini.’ She smiled then, a proper smile that reached her eyes. She patted my hand.

  ‘It’s a piece of the real Russia,’ she said. ‘Without a Bolshevik in sight.’

  15

  Bolshevik Love

  IT WAS A WARM DAY but I shivered as I waited at the corner of rue Bonaparte. The sun played with the footpath as clerks and shop girls hurried past me to their jobs. The street smelt of baked bread but I was almost too hungry, it made me feel sick. Or maybe it was the small black coffee I’d downed as I rushed out of Montparnasse, mixing with last night’s berries and cream. Or maybe it was the cigarettes that I was smoking to ward off my nerves. Whatever it was, I could do without it. I could do with a clean bed and a warm body and—

  ‘Kiki.’ Eva appeared at my elbow like a ghost in the spring sunshine, pale and dressed in light grey. She took my newly lit cigarette for herself without a thanks.

  ‘I hope you’re hungry, as my aunt has never let a guest of mine leave without consuming three full plates of her hospitality.’

  ‘I’m starving – I haven’t eaten since last night,’ I said as I lit another cigarette.

  ‘Very good.’ She turned on her heel and clipped quickly down the street. Her clothes were scruffy, patched and frayed at the cuffs and heels, but she bore herself like a queen.

  I almost felt scruffy in comparison, though my hair was neat under my purple cloche hat and, thanks to Harry, my shoes were polished and my dress was clean. I wore a silk-cotton lavender shift with a sprig of violets embroidered at the shoulder, which matched the hat. I had pinned some fresh violets to the lapel of my cream coat, to complete the picture. The dress only just covered my knees, its hem riding up whenever I sat down. I had no idea if this was correct breakfast wear for the exiled Russian aristocracy, but I had to assume that what was popular in Paris was popular everywhere.

  Eva’s clicking heels led us down three connected lanes to a narrow, unmarked door.

  ‘No wonder I couldn’t find it last night,’ I remarked as she knocked three times in quick succession.

  ‘This is the back door,’ she replied. ‘You should have found the front easily enough.’

  The door was opened by a small boy, whom Eva ignored. We stepped into a dim passageway that led immediately round a corner and upstairs. She talked over her shoulder as we walked.

  ‘Although the front door is not marked with anything so simple as “the Russian teahouse”. It is Café Gogol. So perhaps if you are not educated enough to know that Gogol was a Russian master . . .’

  Her disparaging remarks were cut off as we entered a sumptuous room. It was on the second floor, with windows that extended beyond the floor, from which I could see Parisian heads near our feet. The high ceiling held aloft chandeliers that, by their snowflake reflections on the walls and roof, I guessed were real crystal. The polished marble floor was arranged with tables and chairs, lounges and a piano on a bandstand in the corner. We had emerged next to the kitchen, by the bar, which held three huge tea urns, piles of pastries and a wall of vodka, cognac and other bottles labelled in strange scripts. The middle-aged woman behind the bar turned to us with a severe expression, until she saw Eva and smiled, holding out her arms.

  ‘Eva,’ she said and kissed Eva three times. They had a brief conversation in Russian, Eva looking somehow bored and troubled simultaneously, the older woman nodding and looking concerned, her large gold cross bouncing on her black-clad bosom. They both turned to me at the same time, their blue eyes equally piercing.

  ‘Welcome, Kiki,’ the middle-aged woman spoke French to me and took my hand in both of hers. ‘Exiles of all kinds, both forced and chosen, are welcome here. Eva says that you’re looking for Arkady Nikolaievich, correct?’

  ‘Lazarev?’

  ‘Yes, it’s the same man, but only the British use family names.’

  ‘Arkady—’

  ‘Nikolaievich, yes. He will be in soon but is not here yet. You have time for tea and breakfast. You are hungry.’

  ‘Not terribly . . .’ Eva frowned at me. ‘Oh yes, starving. I’d love some breakfast.’

  ‘You are too thin, like Eva,’ she surveyed me. ‘We don’t have any kasha for you, but plenty of cheese. Vanya!’ She yelled through to the kitchen and followed the reply with a blast of Russian, going into the kitchen after her instructions.

  ‘Good,’ said Eva. ‘You sit there.’ She pointed at a table near the bar, from which I could survey the entire teahouse. She sat instead at the bar, a glass of tea held delicately between her fingers, and chatted to her aunt who polished and sorted and arranged.

  A grumpy waiter brought a mountain of food to my table – black bread, an aromatic hard cheese, pickled cucumbers, little crepes dripping with jam and whipped cream, bread-like pastries that smelt sweetly of apples and cinnamon. Eva placed a glass of tea in front of me and whenever I finished it would refill it for me from the ornate urn on the bar. It felt strange to sit in this sumptuous place, in bright daylight, completely ignored. But the food helped – food always helped – in the moments I had to myself before Lazarev walked in.

  Which he did with a flourish of watch and cane. I knew it was him, as the aunt called his name from across the room. He was tall and well built with thick silver hair – he must’ve been a ladies’ man when he was younger. He didn’t have those piercing blue eyes, thankfully, but big soft brown ones that tempered his dramatic gestures. He put the watch away and swung his cane under his arm. He chatted to the aunt, he chatted to Eva, before turning his grey-suited body to me.

  ‘Kiki?’

  ‘Arkady Nikolaievich?’

  ‘Please, just Arkady will do.’ He took my hand and held it – not a handshake, more like the beginning of a courtly kiss. He couldn’t turn off his charm, it seemed, especially not with a young woman in front of him. But he didn’t kiss my hand in the end. Instead he took a glass of tea and sat down opposite me.

  ‘Eva Sergeyevna says that you come from Picasso,’ he said. ‘Does he have word for me?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ I tried to act coy but his look was too intense. Clearly the preference for coquettish women of indirect speech was for French men only. This Russian almost stared: he wanted passion. I met his gaze.

  ‘He wants to know about his portrait of Olga.’

  ‘The beautiful fierce picture? The one we saw last week?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘It was extraordinary.’ He le
ant back and played with his tea glass. ‘That stunning contrast of the gold and blue, Olga Stepanovna’s eyes both commanding and caressing, her posture on the couch both inviting and in control. I’ve never seen her look so regal. I think I fell in love with her a little in that picture.’ He smiled. ‘It’s another masterstroke of genius. His previous portrait was more traditional, muted, clear and available. This one is . . . wild, it’s modern, it shows the tension and passion within their marriage, that she can do this to him, that he can do that to her.’ His soft brown gaze rested on me.

  ‘You speak very eloquently.’

  ‘I was an art dealer in St Petersburg. When it still was St Petersburg. I already have a buyer lined up who would purchase the portrait unseen – this is Picasso’s power. Unseen! Just to own a Picasso.’

  ‘And it would make your fortune.’

  ‘Fortune!’ He snorted and waved his hand away. ‘No single painting can replace the fortune I lost. But I want that portrait very much.’

  ‘What would you be willing to do for it?’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ His eyes lit up as he leant across to me.

  ‘If you were to . . . appropriate the picture, how would you do it?’

  ‘I see—’

  ‘Just hypothetically, of course.’

  ‘Of course! Well, I would apply to the housekeeper first of all—’

  ‘The older woman?’

  ‘Precisely. Servants always have grievances, it’s just a matter of getting them on the right day. And artists are such hard work, there are more days than usual to catch them on.’ His smile was a well-worn charm.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I suppose I would somehow make it more worth her while to work with me than to be loyal to Picasso.’

  ‘With money?’