Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

by Chris Greenhalgh

  Noticing strands of hair clinging to the fabric of her dress, she picks them off and deposits them in an ashtray. Afterward she jabs her cigarette out on them. She watches the hairs flare briefly and blacken to a crisp.

  On an impulse, she telephones Adrienne. The shop sounds busy in the background. She realizes she misses that. She hates being away—always has done. Suddenly she yearns to return to rue Cambon, to throw herself back into her work. She doesn’t possess Igor’s self-discipline. He can work alone and regulate his days. She needs to have people around her. Though she’s been going in three times a week and putting in long hours at home, it’s not enough, she thinks. She’ll be there, she decides. Tomorrow.

  Looking in the mirror above the telephone, she sees a pallid spot on her cheek, a blanched oval where the skin has lost its pigmentation. And her fingernails, she notices, are tawny from so many cigarettes. She’s been smoking too much here.

  It’s worry, she concludes. And why? Because she has time to worry: about what she’s doing and where she’s going and who she wants to be with. For the first time in weeks, she thinks of Boy. How could he have wed someone else? He loved her. It didn’t make sense. It was wrong. What grotesque snobbery was it that had prevented him from marrying her? Just because she’d had other men and wasn’t highborn? She feels angry suddenly, as if she wants to spit.

  She recalls with pain the days immediately following his death. Allowed to sort through his personal effects to retrieve anything that belonged to her, she came across some letters. Going through them, she registered with dismay one mutual friend’s advice: “You don’t marry someone like Coco . . .”

  She couldn’t believe anyone would have written that. She couldn’t believe, moreover, that Boy would have taken it to heart. Yet in some deep recess of her mind, some obscure corner of her being, she knew this to be exactly what he had thought. She lacked the necessary pedigree. People of good breeding knew better than to marry beneath them. “You don’t marry someone like Coco . . .” The phrase stamped a white-hot iron into her soul.

  Abruptly, from down the hall, she hears the piano thunder in Igor’s study. It shocks her into consciousness. The skin on her hands feels tight. The smell of burned hair touches her nostrils. She begins shaking her head.

  She knows there is little prospect of her relationship with Igor developing much further. He is frantic enough as it is at the prospect of anyone discovering their affair. Is he secretly ashamed of her? Catherine, she knows, regards her with the disdain reserved for the ineligible, for those whose blood has no hint of blue. She can hear the superiority inform each of her remarks. The way she insists on speaking Russian with Igor whenever Coco is around. Perhaps that’s why she’s able to endure the humiliation of their affair. Maybe she knows, ultimately, that her position as his wife will always be secure. For her then, Coco feels, she poses no enduring threat.

  This realization is sharpened by a profound sense of abandonment, the roots of which lie, she recognizes, in her mother’s early death, her father’s absence from the family home, and her subsequent removal to an orphanage. She has a deep need of love and a frank need for physical passion. But these needs, she knows, are shot through with a wish, equally deep, never to get hurt and never again to be dependent upon anyone else for anything. She can cope alone if necessary. Her whole life so far has steeled her to accept loss. She’s strong; she knows that. And talented, she reminds herself, even though Igor sometimes tries to put her down.

  Entranced by the burning of Ludmilla’s hair, she goes on idly to light the loose end of a ball of wool as though it is a fuse. She watches the spark take hold and run smolderingly up the thread. But it fails to travel very far. After frazzling the wool for about a foot, the tiny flame gives up the ghost. Still, something catches inside her. It’s as if she internalizes the fire. Taking a pair of scissors, she snips the burned end off.

  Coco, her voice thinning with the pressure of utterance, looks at the italicized print on the card. “It seems you’re invited, but I am not.”

  A cigarette rests between Igor’s forked fingers. His legs are foppishly crossed. There is to be a party held at the Opéra. Everyone who is anyone in the arts world will be there, including Satie, Ravel, Picasso, and Cocteau.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t enjoy it,” he allows. “It’ll be very tedious. Just a lot of backslapping artists talking shop.”

  Her voice deepens noticeably. “No, it wouldn’t really be my style, would it? A bit too intellectual for me. A bit too sophisticated. I wouldn’t want to show you up, now, would I?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They don’t invite tradespeople. I know that. You don’t have to patronize me.”

  Bewildered: “What are you saying?”

  “I know when I’m being snubbed.”

  The ferociousness of her tone provokes him. “Don’t be absurd. You’re imagining a slight where none exists.”

  “You’d obviously prefer it if I didn’t come.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You’re still not sure about being seen with me, are you?” Framed against the window, the frizzed edge of her hair forms a kind of halo.

  “That’s preposterous. I’d love you to come. I’ll be bored silly without you.”

  “It’s all right for you to fuck me in private, but you don’t want to be within ten yards of me outside the house.”

  Igor is shocked by her language and embarrassed by the loudness of her tone. She doesn’t seem to realize that there are servants around and that Catherine is just upstairs. Her features, which he has seen idiotized by desire, close over. Her eyes and mouth seem holes in a flat mask.

  “I repeat,” he says with emphatic calmness, “I think you’d find it tedious.”

  She answers, “All right. As it will be so tedious, I don’t suppose you’ll want to go either.” Abruptly, to his astonishment, she starts to rip the invitation in half.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, startled.

  The card makes a thick tearing sound. Her lips purse with the effort. “There! You see?”

  “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “No slight intended, and none received.” Her voice rises with the assumption of hauteur. In profile, her chin lifts as if it has been hit.

  “It will be extremely rude of me not to attend.” The skin tightens across his face. His scalp moves backward visibly.

  With severe politeness, Coco says, “Then you’d better telephone and explain. Tell them your wife is ill or something, that you have to look after her. That should do the trick.”

  She feels a tingling in her hands. Glancing down, she’s surprised to find blood on the skin around one of her nails. A paper cut. There’s a russet smudge on the torn card, too. The appearance of blood seems to spice her temper even more.

  “It’s fine to invite me to parties as a patron where there’s a good chance of a handout. But it’s not all right for me to be with you when you’re consorting with friends. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  His expression grows stern. “I do not seek handouts.”

  “Oh, really?”

  He warms to a theme. “No. Though, of course, it’s not unknown for people to support artists in order to further their own social ambitions.”

  “You ungrateful bastard!”

  She recalls her donation for the revival of The Rite. She knows she gave anonymously, but he might have guessed, she thinks. She’s certain Diaghilev has told him, yet he hasn’t so much as mentioned it to her.

  More heated: “In fact, the way people sponsor the arts these days is often quite insincere.”

  Her words come faster now, with venom in them. “You can never quite get over the fact that I’m a woman, can you? A woman who is intelligent and successful, and an artist in ways that you’ll never understand.”

  Incredulous. “An artist?”

  “Yes, an artist, who works every bit as hard, if not harder, than you do.”

 
“If you spent more time making and less time selling, then I might agree with you.”

  “That’s called reality, Igor—something you seem immune to in your own little world.”

  He discovers a raw burst of energy. “You’re not an artist, Coco.”

  “Oh, no?”

  Contemptuously: “You’re a shopkeeper!”

  “I don’t have to put up with this.” She moves toward the door. “Remember where you’re living, dear,” she hurls at him. “One of these days, you’ll see.” Then, turning smartly on her heels, she leaves the room.

  He feels the draft from the door as it slams behind her. With his legs still crossed, though more stiffly posed, Igor’s head tips sideways in thought. His heart is galloping. He hates it when they argue. But she shouldn’t have torn up the invitation like that. He leans to pick up the fragments from the floor.

  She’s too easily seduced by surfaces, he thinks. She’s too much moved by the glisten of things. He finds it hard to take clothes design seriously. He can’t deny that her outfits are ravishing, but it has more to do with vanity, he considers, than any claim to art. There’s something too palpable about its manufacture. He can’t help taking it for granted somehow. With the perfume, he admits, there’s a mystery, an elusiveness, an unseen quality he enjoys. It appeals to the senses in the same way music does; and he’s prepared to concede it needs artistry, genius even, to produce it. The trouble is, she’s become so obsessed with the business side of it, he’s lost interest. She seems to speak of little else.

  Looking down, he adjusts the angle of his ankle minutely to align with the shadows in the room. He closes one eye to achieve an exact fit. Then outdoors he hears a scream. He jumps up and looks out the window. Vassily is scrapping with one of the Alsatians. Fierce snarls and barks accompany a series of tussles that seem to take place in a furious blur.

  He rushes into the garden and manages to separate them before any real damage is done. But, of course, the cat has come off worse. The poor thing has several deep cuts about the eyes. And where a patch of fur is missing around his neck, there’s a raw wound of matted blood.

  Igor winces. It had to happen sooner or later, he reflects.

  Pathetically the cat dabs at his injuries with his paws. Igor strokes him and inspects the vivid welts already swelling on his skin. Vassily’s claws are still extended as Igor picks him up. Cradling him in his arms like a newborn baby, he carries the cat inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Petite but fierce, Coco strides into 31 rue Cambon. Her shop. She’s wearing a trim dark jacket, an open-necked white blouse, and a flared, softly pleated beige skirt whose hem stops midcalf. She half acknowledges the greetings from the shopgirls but does not stop to talk. Continuing on through the salon, she mounts the stairs to her suite of private rooms. The carpets are beige, the chandeliers smoked crystal. Carvings of lions rest on the tables. Lilies in vases open like stars.

  Adrienne is kneeling over a piece of material with a fat piece of tailor’s chalk in her hand. She makes quick unerring lines across the cloth. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she looks up. “Coco?”

  “Adrienne.”

  Adrienne rises, wiping her hands clean of the chalk. The two embrace. Then, disengaging, Coco rummages in her bag. She takes out a small box with a brushed velvet exterior. She undoes the clasp and lays bare the contents. There is a moment of awed silence as though the relics of a saint are being unveiled.

  “The new samples—they’ve arrived.”

  “At last!”

  “Here. Try some.”

  Coco removes the stopper from one of the flacons. The glass feels tepid in her hand. Upending the bottle for a second, she allows a quantity to seep through and wet her fingertip. She applies a smidgen to Adrienne’s wrist. Lifting it to her nose, Adrienne inhales.

  “Well?”

  “It’s . . . good,” she says. Adrienne smells more carefully. There is caution in her voice. “I’m not sure I can place the fragrance, though.”

  “I’m not surprised. There are over eighty ingredients in that bottle.”

  Adrienne raises an eyebrow. “It’s very delicate,” she says.

  “But the idea is, it lasts longer.”

  “And you think it’ll sell?”

  “I’m convinced it will. The samples that Beaux sent out got a very positive response.”

  Coco stoppers the flacon. She replaces it in the valise and snaps it shut. “I propose we spray it in the changing rooms. Then, when clients ask what it is and whether they can buy it, we say we’ve just had a small amount made up as gifts.”

  “The girls in the shop can wear it, too.”

  “No. It must remain exclusive.”

  “But what if the clients don’t ask?”

  “We’ll tell the old ladies they need it if they still want to be kissed.”

  “And the younger ones?”

  “I’ll tell them it’s all they need to wear in bed.”

  Adrienne laughs.

  “We could have bottles displayed across the salon.” Coco leans forward conspiratorially in her seat. Her hands link together around her knees. Her toes just touch the floor. “The point is to flatter them. We say that if, in their opinion, the perfume will sell, then we might consider manufacturing it.”

  “So you include them in the process.”

  “We make them think we do.”

  “You’re such a fox, Coco.”

  “It’s a matter of getting people to know and talk about it, and then to buy the damn thing.” She readjusts her skirt and sits back.

  “So when do we begin?”

  “Here I am, and here’s the perfume. Why don’t we start right away?”

  “I could get some of the girls to start spraying now . . .”

  Coco looks suddenly tired.

  Adrienne notices. “I’m sorry, I haven’t asked how everything is.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Coco says, too quickly. Yesterday Joseph approached her, asking about the possibility—if it wasn’t too inconvenient or impertinent, et cetera—of a holiday. The poor man is afraid of her, she thinks. She does vaguely recall promising them a few days off. It’s just so inconvenient, though.

  “And how is Igor?”

  In response, she seems poised and cool. “Very well, thank you.” He has not gone with her to Paris for the last few afternoons.

  In a low voice: “Are you in love, Coco?” Adrienne fixes her with a look that will admit nothing other than a reply of absolute candor.

  Coco returns the look. She expects to feel uncomfortable but doesn’t, and finds herself saying to her own surprised ears, “My work comes first. Always. Men come second.” They regard one another challengingly for a few moments.

  “Good,” says Adrienne.

  “Good,” Coco says.

  “Shall we spray?”

  “Let’s spray.”

  The two of them walk abreast down the stairs with a slightly intimidating rhythm, Coco clutching her bag as though it is a pack of high explosives.

  Returning unexpectedly early from the shop next afternoon, Coco rushes to Igor’s study. She has to talk to him. She wants to make up. She finds she misses him after all. And it was unforgivable of her to tear up the invitation. She knows that now, and she wants to say sorry. But no sound comes from the piano, and Igor is not there. She moves upstairs and hears low voices coming from the Stravinskys’ bedroom. Inching toward the door, which is fractionally ajar, she listens to the conversation going on inside.

  There is a tone of intimacy between Catherine and Igor. Coco dares to move closer. Through the thin strip of light between the door and the wall, she glimpses them together. Catherine is in bed. Fully clothed, Igor lies next to her propped upon one elbow. He has pressed her head like a child’s to his breast and is lifting her hair in tender caresses. He speaks to her in reassuring tones. Coco strains to hear. She doesn’t need to understand Russian to catch the atmosphere that hangs between them.

  Cather
ine’s cheeks shine wetly. Her eyeballs seem to tremble beneath closed lids. Her complexion is hectic. Igor kisses her tears.

  Coco stands unseen, jaw firmly set, with one hand on the doorjamb and the other sunk into her pocket. She feels the skin on her face stretch tight and experiences a collapsing sensation inside her chest. Flinching, she turns away. Vertigo afflicts her as she stands at the top of the stairs. They seem steeper suddenly by several degrees. She needs to grip the banister hard for support.

  She wonders why she bothered hurrying back from the shop at all. Adrienne had wanted her to stay. A wave of blankness breaks inside her, and she realizes she hasn’t eaten for hours. All the radiance of expectation drains from her face. She feels utterly betrayed.

  Although she has seen nothing revelatory, she senses something tip like a balance inside her head. There are things between Igor and his wife she will never be privileged to know or understand, things that can never be completely canceled out. She realizes that now.

  Igor will never leave Catherine. That much is certain. That is an act of riddance to which he will never submit. And yet, Coco thinks, it is craven of him to stay with her. It is becoming too much. For all the loving tenderness he has afforded her over the last few months, the one thing he will absolutely not do is sacrifice his wife. There’s a whole history of care and affection from which Coco feels excluded. And this latest glimpse of intimacy serves to estrange her still further. Their marriage will always be there: gnawing, irrevocable; a hard contractual fact.

  It all seems so wildly obvious now. And the hurt is worse because she feels she’s connived in her own blindness. Was she insane? Did she not see? Could she ever have imagined he would give her up? And is that what she really wanted, anyway? It is the most banal of realizations, yet it does not prevent her experiencing a swelling sense of dread.

  Seeing them together, Igor and Catherine, man and wife, has started a pang of jealousy within her. A terrible sense of illegitimacy assails her again. For an instant, she feels physically sick. Back in her study, with one violent movement, Coco sweeps off the table all the fabrics that lie in neat piles. In a fury, she picks up the racquet that Igor used that day in August with the Serts. It has lain there in her study ever since. She pulls at the broken string until its whole length unravels from the head. Scrunching up the catgut, she throws it across the room. Then she bangs the frame so strenuously on the desk that the wood begins to splinter. Hearing it crack, she continues smashing it down until the head snaps off completely.