Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

by Chris Greenhalgh

  Afterward, Igor wipes a thin film of dust from the top of the piano. He opens the lid the way a horse might lift its gums to reveal a set of healthy teeth. Bending his head close to the keys, he guddles for a moment in the lower registers.

  Music spills from the study for the remainder of the afternoon.

  Exhausted, Igor lies in the dark, lengthways, next to his sleeping wife.

  Normally he sleeps on his stomach, but tonight he lies on his back. He’s afraid he will smother facedown. The moon is full, giving the room an incubatory glow. His eyes stare at the ceiling. His toes point upward. His hands, slightly curled, rest inertly at his sides. He finds it oppressively hot. Stifling. Heat presses in at the window, and a pain presses behind his eye. He experiences an inner tightening.

  He feels terrible. Sternly raised by his parents, he finds faithfulness a hard standard to break. Loyalty has always had for him the force of an implacable law. Marrying, he’d taken a sacred vow. And in breaking it he feels guilt like a liquid thicken his blood. Yet when he asks himself if he wants to spend the rest of his life with Catherine, he suffers the realization that the answer is no. Doesn’t he deserve to be happy, too?

  A wild hope takes over that perhaps Catherine need never know. Better still, she might grow to accept it. But Coco might not want that. Then it crosses his mind: what exactly does she want? A fling? A long-lasting relationship? Marriage? If a mere fling, he’d hate it. He’s too infatuated to want just that. But marriage: that would require a complete and potentially messy renegotiation of the terms of his life. The possibilities branch and fork before him until his future seems suddenly out of control.

  Next to him, his wife’s head is exposed above the sheet. Her breathing is uneven, her hair fanned out like a shadow behind her head. He reaches across to touch her forehead. It is hot. Her cheeks are hectic with fever. Her body has always generated more heat than his own. She has always enjoyed this caloric superiority over him. He closes his eyes. All he can see is Coco. All he can think of is Coco. She’s the first thing he thinks of in the morning and the last thing he contemplates late at night. She has become his whole world. It’s as if nothing came before. Everything else is canceled out. He wants his life to start over again, he decides: here and now, with her.

  In thinking this, he becomes vaguely conscious of a shape surrounding him. Something dense and vengeful spreads in the dark above his bed. He feels a weight oppress his chest. His scalp freezes. Terrified, he pulls the covers up to his neck. Try as he might, he cannot sleep. And this after having attempted to deaden his senses with vodka until quite late.

  He lies on his wrong side as the small hours slide by. And he’s bitten alive. It seems the mosquitoes have registered the rise in his blood. All night, they fizz above him like watches being wound. Worse, cats scream like babies outside his window. The sound—its high-pitched whining, its intimations of bristling fur—rips with its claws into his appalled consciousness.

  Abruptly, he awakes. A twinge of pain starts from deep within him. Dyspepsia. Little acid secretions set off a burning sensation in his chest.

  It is very early in the morning. He feels dizzy with the twin burdens of guilt and fatigue. Sitting up, he senses the room’s angles tilt. An unstable sense of gravity seems to have entered the fabric of things. Objects upon their surfaces appear uncertainly sustained, held down by a pressure unseen. As he rises from the bed, Igor is frightened that the floor might fall away beneath him to reveal the abyss beneath. Tentatively his feet reach for the ground. Only miraculous forces conspire, it seems, to keep him upright.

  In truth he is preoccupied: blissfully, hopelessly preoccupied, and subject to ungovernable urges. He cannot help himself now. Everywhere he is reminded of her. Her smell crowds his nostrils, her image clings to the mirrors. The gravity of her warm mass drags him toward her. He is in torment. The heat is driving him to despair.

  And he is afraid there will be a price to pay. What if Catherine finds out? She would be destroyed. She’s already very weak. This might push her over the edge.

  He looks across at her. She no longer seems like someone he knows. A distance has opened up between them that calls into question everything they’ve ever shared. He tries to remember a time when they were happy. A collection of moments is summoned, but they seem in his mind to be stiff as pictures, remote and even vaguely unreal. A seashell on her bedside table gleams creamily with its inner light.

  He walks toward the window and peeps through the curtains. The sky is dark still. The usual stars swarm into his vision. Oddly, the universe seems unaltered.

  He thinks of the invisible sinews of connection, the unseen webs of contingency that have delivered him here, with Coco in this villa, at this irreducible point in time. He wonders what benign or malevolent effort of destiny has so tugged him toward her.

  He’s never been one to give up on things, to quit. He likes to stick at a task until it’s done. But where is his responsibility now? His sense of endurance, his ability to see things through? And what is it all for, anyway? A glimpse of freedom, wholly unreal? A taste of desire, ruinous?

  His face is filmed with perspiration. His pajama top adheres tackily to his back. A white heat ripples across his skin. Fear touches him. He resists an impulse to kneel and pray more fervently than he has ever done before. For what, after all, could he say? What has happened, he wanted to happen. He had willed it, even, and yielded with shameless speed.

  He moves into the bathroom and confronts his image in the mirror. A gray, taut face is thrown back at him. He sees his thinning hair, his rotting teeth. The network of fine lines on his palms seems deepened into trenches. Another two years and he will be forty. What is he doing at his age, falling in love? It is absurd. A feeling of utter bliss at his experience vies with a feeling of terror at the possibility of its loss. He wants more of her, needs more of her. Nothing in his life has prepared him for this.

  He removes his glasses and turns on the tap, scooping handfuls of cold water onto his face. He winces at the shock. Then, with the air of a man who has just discovered appetites that scream out to be appeased, he fills a bath and pours jugful after jugful of water over his head. The water cascades over his torso, flattening the dark hairs on his chest and back. He shivers with exhilaration.

  Dressed, he makes his way downstairs. Entering his study, he prepares to take on the world through his work. It is still too early for breakfast, still too early to wake anyone by playing the piano. In any case, it is out of tune. It has warped in the heat—or the humidity, which is also very high. At least it is cool right now. Outdoors, the morning light is shadowless. The apple trees are glazed with dew.

  He glances at the photographs of his family on the desk. They seem alien to him now, as if overnight someone has changed the frames. He feels guilt perch like a squat bird on his shoulder, its talons sinking deep into his skin.

  Seeking respite in his music, he takes out a clean sheet of paper. He picks up a sharpened pencil and shoves his glasses up on his head. Then, taking great pains not to extend his strokes a millimeter above or below the staves, he marks off the bars in regular lines.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  On subsequent days, always at the same time in the middle of the afternoon, the piano stops playing.

  A tense silence establishes itself within the house. Catherine’s head stiffens on her pillow, braced for sounds that do not come. She listens as the piano’s last note withdraws slowly from the air. Like an acid, the silence works its way through her body, leaving a feeling of afterburn in her guts.

  Each day, as the piano comes to an abrupt stop, the cat bristles and arches its back; the birds in their cages tilt their heads; the dogs’ ears assume a worried angle. The children freeze for a moment and exchange curious glances, surprised by the lengthening silence that reigns in the middle of each afternoon.

  Joseph and Marie shoot one another a knowing look. Both raise their eyes to heaven.

  Marie whispers, “It’s s
tarted!”

  “This is all we need,” Joseph says.

  Each afternoon for the next few weeks the same routine repeats itself. The piano breaks off in the middle of a phrase, only to pick up a little more jauntily about half an hour later. The silence creates a hollow into which everything is drawn.

  As the days pass, the hollow deepens into an emptiness within Catherine, an emptiness she fills with anguish and fear. Part of her wants to investigate this bizarre hiatus, but another part dreads what she might find. She prefers ignorance to the possibility of horror. She is too weak at present to deal with the consequences. The silence widens within her like a wound.

  Igor, meanwhile, is bewitched. Coco offers him an un-apologetically sensual love, the quality of which he has never experienced before with Catherine. Hers is a passion uninhibited by any residual bourgeois scruple, a passion approaching vulgarity in its frankness. He is astonished by Coco’s sexual confidence and her willingness to experiment. He wonders if she finds him sexually naïve.

  Catherine in lovemaking has always tended toward passivity. Unresponsive at the best of times, her illness now makes sex a difficult and clumsy business. If her body participates at all, he considers, it is only through a reflex that answers him out of habit. The truth is, she hates the physical demands he makes upon her.

  Where Catherine endures making love as a wifely duty, a procreative act that has all too quickly yielded four children, with Coco, Igor experiences it for the first time as a mutually jubilant and rawly pleasurable bliss. It is like the sudden and liberating discovery of jazz. There’s something joyous about it, glorious even. It’s as if, released from timidity, he feels free to improvise. There are no rules. Emboldened to follow his impulse, it’s different every time. There’s a gleeful abandon in their lovemaking. An unquenchable momentum establishes itself in their relationship. The bird of guilt is blown from his shoulder. He cannot stop himself now.

  The affair makes him see everything in a vivid light. It’s as if he’s been given new eyeglasses that allow him to see colors more brilliantly than ever before, and, having glimpsed the high tones and contrasts, the vibrancy of life around him, he’s reluctant to give them up.

  They take to exchanging love notes. Igor writes a note and sets it in the piano stool. Then, in the afternoon, Coco collects it and leaves one of her own in her familiar, sprawling, slightly childish hand. They are simple and effusive and full of endearments, and secret, which makes them more thrilling. Igor writes more than Coco usually. But she has all the emotional delicacy and uncanny eloquence, he thinks, so that just a few short sentences from her can be more moving and tender and true than any well-turned phrases he might conjure up.

  In the mornings they both work. Then in the afternoons they make love. At other times of the day, when they meet at dinner for instance, they attempt an outward show of aloofness in each other’s company. It’s as though there are two distinct and separate levels upon which they can operate. One does not seem to interfere with the other so the two do not, for the moment at least, need to be reconciled. They are like two clarinets playing simultaneously in harshly conflicting keys. The only reconciliation necessary is an acceptance of their duality.

  They coexist in a kind of super-key.

  Eager to escape the hazardous privacy of his study, Igor and Coco take a walk in the woods.

  Coming across a remote clearing, they abandon their usual care. The illicit nature of their relationship generates a sudden heat. A sympathetic seethe of insects surrounds them. Their needs converge in an instant and focus on a scorched patch of ground. They undress rapidly and form a rocking knot that has them both grunting furiously with all the relief of a passion no longer strangled but given voice at last. The whole wood seems to catch the vibration. Birds answer from the topmost branches. A distant dog barks. The minutes of the day for both of them warp and broaden into a delicious and unanticipated second life.

  Afterward, as they retrieve their garments, Coco says, “I think they know.”

  “Who?”

  “Joseph and Marie.”

  “How?”

  “They run the house. They know everything.”

  Fear pulses through him. “My God, what are we going to do?” He stumbles pulling his trousers on.

  “Calm down. They’re loyal to me. I employ them, remember.”

  There’s a silence.

  She secures the last button on her chemise. “But doesn’t Catherine suspect already?”

  He looks at her. “I live in fear of her finding out.”

  “Do you want to stop it now?”

  “I can’t.” He’s never felt so alive. It’s like when you have your first child, he reflects. You love it utterly and think you could never love another so much. And then the second child comes along, and you do love it as much if not more. He feels the same about marriage. He never thought he’d meet anyone he’d love as much as Catherine. And here he is now with Coco, and his world is turned upside down.

  She, too, explores the revelation that she is in love. It hits her as something essential; something as necessary as the walls of the house, as the sunstruck windows or the warm tiled roof above her head. There is nothing fussily luxuriant or emptily decorative about the sensation. It has about it the pure clean lines of a given fact. There’s no mistaking it. Like a scent, it is simply there.

  She says, “I won’t smother you, I promise.”

  “Maybe I want to be smothered.” Dressed, he embraces her again.

  “Let me be your mistress.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “You’ll be my lover.”

  They touch foreheads for a moment before he shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s crazy, but for the first time in years, I’m really happy.” He means it. A feeling of well-being overtakes him.

  “I’m glad,” she says.

  As she looks up at him in the sunlight, everything around her suddenly whites out.

  Obsessed with cleanliness at the best of times, Igor is careful always to scrub himself of Coco’s scent. He is careful, too, to ensure the children are preoccupied either with their lessons or playing out of earshot in the afternoons. If the affair is reckless in itself, then his pursuit of it—save for the impetuous episode in the woods—is rigorous in the extreme.

  Yet something impish within Coco wishes to buck the regulated nature that their assignations quickly assume. Every so often, she deliberately fails to appear on time. On such occasions, Igor feels an icy void dilate inside his body. Religious about keeping appointments and fanatically punctual himself, he begins pacing around inside his study if she is even a minute late. He grows increasingly frustrated if that one minute then stretches to five or ten. Eventually, of course, she does arrive, and his longings are soon healed. But she takes a sly pleasure in registering his dismay.

  With inevitable quickness, Catherine becomes suspicious. She watches closely, scrutinizing their behavior for any telltale signs. She knows Igor has been attracted to other women in the past, but this time it’s different. There’s a gravity about his relationship with Coco that none of his previous friendships with women ever possessed. What worries Catherine now is that Igor is no longer a young man. This can’t be ascribed to some passing infatuation. He’s thirty-eight, for God’s sake. A mature, grown-up man. This is serious.

  For all the lip service Coco and Igor pay to discretion, it is at mealtimes that Catherine realizes, with a crushing sense of helplessness, that something is indeed going on. She sees that, as they speak, there flashes a spark between them. For the first time, their relationship is on display. And Igor, at least, seems unaware of the embarrassing transparency with which he behaves when the two of them are together.

  They betray themselves involuntarily. Their closeness broadcasts itself despite their best efforts. Their voices grow softer in one another’s company, braiding into one. A kind of languor steals over them. They eat little. She shoots him dewy glances across the table. He responds with i
nvolved stares. Her knee rests heedlessly against his.

  Sickened, Catherine is scarcely able to touch her food. She has no friends close by to consult or share concerns with. Lonely, she exists in a kind of bubble. When she’s with them, she feels herself go completely numb—the way a body in shock closes down all but its essential functions. The only time she escapes is when she goes to church each Sunday.

  With little independent means, she is totally reliant for the moment upon Coco for financial support. And here is Coco with her shops, her Rolls-Royce, her villa, and her servants. Catherine feels trapped, isolated, violated, and betrayed. The servants tiptoe around her as though around an unexploded bomb. The children sense instinctively that she’s upset, that something is wrong, and yet she finds herself in the ludicrous position of having to reassure them that everything is fine.

  Igor is slow to recognize the children’s misgivings about their being there, even though Theodore in particular has been sulky of late. And as regards Catherine, he so convinces himself of his discretion that he feels she must be unaware. It’s as if, blinded by desire, he really doesn’t feel he’s doing anything wrong. So that when she does confront him with her doubts, he laughs it off as her paranoia, telling her she’s being silly and demanding that she stop being so possessive. Of course she wants to believe in his innocence. And so each time, despite her better judgment, she allows herself to be duped. But she never quite manages to banish her fears.

  Questioned further, Igor becomes sullen and grudging of the time he spends with his wife. And Coco, though she remains civil, increasingly keeps her distance. Catherine is in agony. How can she accuse the woman, whose benevolence is seeing them live rent-free, of conducting an adulterous affair with her husband? Where would that leave her? What if, after all, it wasn’t true? What if Igor was right: that in her feverish state, she was erecting an elaborate apparatus of deceit that in reality didn’t exist?