Rouge

by Richard Kirshenbaum

  “Oh no, Jock…” Constance tapped her cigarette in the back of the car, the ashes dropping onto her mink and settling on the fur. “It won’t be a Herz salon over there but mine. Wait and see what I have up my sleeve next.” She raised a well-plucked arched eyebrow outlined with her sable-colored brow pencil.

  “I’m not betting against you, Constance”—Jock nudged Van—“in horses or in business.”

  “That’s right, Jock, better you don’t. But I will quote Josephine Herz herself and say, ‘Never discount a vinner!’” She laughed out loud as she mimicked and mocked her Polish accent, breaking up everyone else in the car.

  40

  THE LIST

  New York City, 1940

  Everywhere one went on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, it seemed one heard German-, French-, or Polish-tinged English. The wealthy and the lucky few who had escaped war-torn Europe had arrived in the nick of time—once confident, now somewhat unhinged, bringing their few assets and their specific accents to the English language. Years earlier, an accent would have been considered exotic in the city, but now the sound of a foreign tongue in New York or Los Angeles received either sympathy or derision. Most arrived by liner through Ellis Island, although one heard the occasional story of making one’s way to Cuba and then Florida or Los Angeles via Mexico. Some families broke apart altogether and would not see one another again for decades. Fractured families and spirits that needed to be rebuilt. Émigrés, all trying to make sense of a new life, new language, and a new land, and forced reinvention. The clothes and English were alien and disruptive. No one knew what to do with an Austrian tweed loden jacket in the Los Angeles heat. Once-famous German movie stars were reduced to waitressing and lauded European auteurs assigned to B movies or film trailers.

  Though these displaced people would form their own community and meet weekly at the Automat or a neighborhood teahouse to commiserate and reminisce about their former fame and riches in Berlin or Vienna, they knew they were lucky to have what little work was available. Most were Jewish, rich, or formerly rich, and a few were titled, like the Rothschilds and branches of the de Gunzburg family. There were downtrodden intellectuals of every stripe and religion, Catholic and Protestant homosexuals, and rangy, gap-toothed Romanians and Hungarians. One special group, the Russians, had been uprooted not once but twice, first fleeing to Paris during their own 1917 revolution and now having to abandon Paris for New York to escape the Nazis. These White Russian aristocrats were more often than not objects of pity, with their outdated evening clothes and medals to prop up their diminished self-confidence. That said, Americans always loved a good title, and if a former prince or princess attended a soiree, it still rang the cash register of prestige. There were also the odd, expat Americans returning home to safe shores.

  This new influx of elite émigrés would also redefine New York’s and Los Angeles’ creative culture with a wave of out-of-work artists, writers, and film directors bringing frenetic energy, raw talent, and vision to film, theater, music, and dance. They had been rewarded for their foresight, as doers who had been smart enough to read the tea leaves and uproot themselves. Josephine embraced this chic set at her weekly salons and felt a special kinship with adults in search of freedom who would have to remake themselves as she had. It was also good for her business, the cream of European café society adding a sophisticated flavor to the stolid Americans who showed up weekly for an exotic blini and vodka. There was nothing Josephine liked better than an eclectic crowd, and she knew it would be a more successful evening with the addition of a stray White Russian princess, a Jewish baroness, or a famous German theater director such as Max Reinhardt. She had been a guest at Schloss Leopoldskron, his palace in Salzburg, and knew what a comedown it was for him in New York after the countless rooms of his palace. She even offered him the use of a guest room on Fifth Avenue. With so much talent on the street, she also boosted her ranks with top people who were available for less. Claudine Lelong, who had run the atelier for Chanel before the invasion, had moved to New York a year earlier after a difficult divorce. She was in her forties, brunette, chic, and smart and had been married to a French count before he left her for a German film star. With her ex-husband involved with a German ingenue and Chanel herself dating Hans Günther Von Dincklage, a high-level Nazi intelligence officer, Claudine was smart enough to know that the cards were not in her favor, especially when Chanel closed her shop and moved with her lover to the Ritz. Josephine snapped her up and had her overseeing the salon business and her soirees. Within months Claudine became a trusted adviser. Chanel had not been easy; Claudine knew what powerful, enigmatic women needed, and she delivered. After a few business meetings, Josephine sensed a kindred spirit and also opened up about meeting an eligible man, as American men had a limited appreciation for Josephine’s charms, except perhaps for her wealth. Thus far, she had accepted dinner invitations with a doctor, a trial lawyer, and a WASP heir who had lost his fortune, but there was always a cultural divide and little understanding of who she was and how she lived her everyday life. “Everyone in New York has a bourgeois mentality,” she complained to Claudine, igniting her cigarette with her gold Cartier lighter. “At the end of the day they would all rather have me stay home and be a hausfrau.”

  “Then find a European. The city is overrun with them, and who wouldn’t want to be with you … beautiful, successful, and wealthy.” Claudine laughed as she observed Josephine’s stack of glittering diamond bracelets, which were enough to awe a pasha.

  “Not just wealthy, my dear, enormously rich. What do you think, Claudine? What should Josie do?” She smiled, talking about herself in the third person. She felt she could be honest with Claudine.

  “Do it à la française. You don’t need a successful man, or a rich man.” She smoked a smuggled Gitanes at the Plaza bar and blew smoke rings that resembled musical notes. “Do what men do. Meet a handsome young one who has nothing. You can own him mind, body, and soul. I have one myself and would gladly give him to you”—she paused and laughed—“but he’s married.”

  “You know, Claudine, you’re smarter than I thought.”

  “Wait … you didn’t think I was smart?” She looked up with a question mark on her forhead.

  “I didn’t say that, I said I think you are smarter than I thought. Take it as a compliment.” Josephine knew having the well-brought-up French society matron on her staff had added an extra dash of polish and élan to her business meetings and soirees.

  “C’est bon. There are a few I can invite on Thursday evenings.… There is Ducalet. He’s a very intense poet, dark, brooding.”

  “I hear he likes young girls. And boys.” Josephine looked at her intently.

  “Who doesn’t?” she said with the resignation that comes with disappointment and age.

  “Who else do you have on your list?” Josephine scrutinized Claudine’s navy Chanel slacks admiringly. She would have to get a pair.

  “What about Ludwig Grunewald?” She went down her mental list.

  “The painter? He’s neither young nor handsome, and he smells like mothballs. Next.” It was as if she were giving comments on a new product line.

  “Don’t be so picky. He’s quite famous. He had a well-received installation at the last biennale in Venice.” Claudine puffed on her Gitanes.

  “I liked your first idea of young and handsome. Who else? Anyone with a title?” She blew air out of the side of her mouth at the thought: a prince, count, or baron. It would drive Constance Gardiner crazy if she had a title.

  “You know…” Claudine applied a thin veil of face powder from her circular gold Herz compact and eyed herself and Josephine in the compact mirror with a knowing smile. “I think I actually might have someone for you.” Claudine’s eyes sparkled.

  “Go on.” Josephine seemed a bit overeager at the prospect.

  “I’m not going to say anything more. I’ll just bring him to one of the Thursday evening soirees.” She paused. “He’s new in town.�
��

  “So is everyone else.” She sighed. “Straight off the boat? A real greenhorn you’re giving me?”

  “Don’t worry, Josephine. I thought you said I was smarter than you thought.”

  “Yes, and I pay you well for it, darling.” Josephine appraised her. “Remember, I want someone who is young, handsome, and will take orders.”

  “Perhaps you don’t want a husband, you just want a gigolo.”

  “I don’t have the time for trysts and love affairs. I just want a man in my bed and at my side at events, holding my drink and my purse. That’s what I want.”

  “And you’ll get it. Be patient.”

  “I have no patience for such things. But remember, I want younger and handsome. Perhaps a faded title.”

  “That’s what I adore about you, Madame Herz. You are a woman who knows exactly who she is and what she likes.”

  “One thing for sure. I would rather be a nanny than nursing the elderly any day of the week,” she quipped as she smoothed last year’s Chanel.

  Although it had flown by, it had been a grueling and upsetting week, though it hadn’t started that way. CeeCee had returned, excited to have found a prime Beverly Hills flagship location in an up-and-coming shopping area. Yet the negotiations for the Rodeo Drive store had stalled and then fallen to pieces once Josephine’s offer to buy the property had been turned down. She had never had someone decline an offer for one of her stores, and she couldn’t understand why. The offer was more than generous. She put Felix, her lawyer, on the case to discover what had transpired and he visited her a few days later, looking none too pleased. He just placed a file on her desk and indicated that she review it. Her face fell when she read the document. He had uncovered an anti-Semitic covenant in the deed, prohibiting Jews and other minorities from buying the property. Felix explained that California had pioneered these racial clauses as far back as the 1880s, initially to restrict Asian Americans from buying property. Even though all he needed to do was set up a shell company that would buy it and then sell it to Herz Beauty, it disturbed her when she saw the words in black and white: “The said premises should not be at any time sold, conveyed, leased, or sublet or occupied by any persons who are not Caucasian, full bloods of the white races, including Asian, Jews, Negroes.…” And the covenant brought home more terrible reports she was hearing from her émigré friends from Europe. Jews were being systematically targeted, stripped of their rights and possessions and herded into ghettos or shipped off to something called concentration camps. For the past two years, Josephine and her sisters had tried everything to get their youngest sister, Chana, out of Poland. She had had more than a few opportunities in 1937 and 1938, when they secured her passport and papers to London and New York, but Chana was headstrong and would not leave. She wrote that she was in love with a gentile university student she met while she was finishing secondary school. Every time she said she was leaving, she demurred. To some extent, Josephine understood what it was like to not want to leave and remembered back when the day arrived for her to make her own journey. She had cried uncontrollably and fought with her dear, dear mother about going. Chana, at sixteen, had no such support. And now the window of opportunity had closed. Despite her money and connections, Chana was just another Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Poland. Josephine shivered at the thought. It was evil and depressing and she was afraid for herself and Miles’s future. What was the world coming to?

  Later that evening, she tried to banish her anxieties as she walked into her capacious closet and chose a black-and-white taffeta gown for the salon she was hosting. Black and white. That was how she was feeling. After Max, the head stylist from her salon, had arrived and finished her hair and makeup, she took off her smock and stepped into the gown; Maria, her maid, helped her with the hooks, eyes, and buttons. The gown had an off-the-shoulder fitted bodice, a lovely A-line skirt with a crinoline, and a small white bustle bow in the back. She chose a diamond necklace in the shape of a repeating bow pattern from her formidable jewel box and surveyed herself in the three-way mirror. The stress of the week had caused her to skip a few meals and she had lost a few pounds thanks to her lack of appetite. Her naturally curvaceous body had responded well, though, and the corset and boning in the gown gave her an uplifted décolletage set against her small waist. The cinching really set her off to great advantage, and she looked a decade younger than her forty years. After touching up her Herz maquillage, she put her lipstick and compact in her evening bag, put on her white satin opera-length gloves, and walked slowly down the glamorous curved staircase to the oval black-and-white marble-tiled entry foyer. She often came down a bit earlier to survey the enfilade of rooms and to check that everything was in order for the evening’s festivities. It was 7:15 on the dot and a few guests were already starting to trickle in.

  “Darling, I’ll have a glass of champagne with a small cocktail napkin, thank you,” she told the handsome, dark-haired waiter at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Of course, but where is the bar?” he said in a pleasant, accented tone.

  “Don’t you know? That is your job.” She was not happy about having to tell the staff where the bar or service was.

  “It is every man’s job to get a beautiful woman a drink, but this is my first time here,” he said softly, smiling at the glamorous vision descending the staircase.

  “So that’s your excuse?” Josephine fumed.

  “Excuse? It’s the truth.” He looked at her with penetrating, deep-set sea-blue eyes set against the palest skin and longer blue-black hair. Josephine was taken aback, as she could have sworn he was wearing Lashmatic, his lashes were so long, dark, and lustrous. He would have looked feminine if he didn’t have such a large, handsome physique and five o’clock shadow. She had never seen a man with such lustrous lashes and took a step forward to evaluate. They were natural. Figures, she thought. Women had to pay for it and a waiter had it for free.

  “If you’re going to do a job, get here earlier and make sure you know where everything is.” She shook her head at him and his abundant lashes.

  “It’s seven fifteen,” he said, looking at her a bit cockeyed.

  “I don’t expect back talk in my house.” Josephine opened her evening bag and held the Cartier lighter out for him, indicating she needed a light as she rummaged for a cigarette.

  “Oh, so I see you both have met.” Claudine Lelong walked over and saw them both talking and kissed the handsome young man on both cheeks.

  “Alexei, what have you said to Madame Herz?”

  “Madame Herz?” He cocked his head in confusion. “Oh. Nothing. Nothing at all. I just didn’t know where the bar was.” He looked down sheepishly, realizing she was his hostess.

  “He’s not a waiter?” Josephine asked brusquely, and realized her mistake at once.

  “No, this is my friend Alexei I was telling you about. Alexei Orlove?” she said in a questioning tone. “Prince Orlove?”

  “Oh, my dear, I thought you were a waiter.” She laughed out loud.

  “Josephine, really?” Claudine shook her head.

  “Is there a job available?” Orlove smiled widely, his charming, slightly crooked white teeth setting off an impish grin.

  “It’s because he’s too young and handsome. And when they are young and handsome and wearing evening clothes, I assume they are the staff.” Josephine shrugged and smiled as well.

  “Don’t worry, Madame Herz. It’s a pleasure. Here, let me carry your evening bag and I’ll be back in a moment with your champagne.” He kissed her gloved hand European style and started to walk away, then stopped and suddenly turned.

  “I have a confession as well.” He smiled.

  Josephine was charmed. “Yes?”

  “I too had no idea who you were. I assumed my hostess would be a much older woman, not a young beauty like you,” he explained.

  She blushed. “You’re too kind. Isn’t he, Claudine?”

  “Entirely. Josephine, really? A waiter?” She shook he
r head at her again as he walked away in search of her bubbly with her evening bag.

  “You told him to carry my bag as well?” Josephine scrutinized her.

  Claudine shook her auburn mane. “No. I did not say a word.”

  “Really.” Josephine blinked. “Claudine, did I tell you I am giving you a raise?” She looked at her with a sly smile. “Orlove. He’s a real prince?”

  “Yes. A very distinguished White Russian family. His father was a military man, but his grandmother was a cousin of the czar. Irina Yureivskaya.”

  “And he’s poor?”

  “Poor as a church mouse. All he came over with was one tuxedo, some medals, and a signet ring.”

  “Well done.” Her large eyes lit up the room.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I think young Prince Orlove is exactly what the doctor ordered.” She exhaled a smoke ring in the shape of a kiss.

  41

  CHESS

  New York City, 1941

  The stately Georgian town house on East Seventy-third Street between Madison and Fifth had always been cold and imposing, not unlike Constance’s persona. Now it seemed enormous and empty after weeks on the road in contrast to the many sterile hotel suites she had endured. Constance was relieved to be back home and nodded politely to Gerta, her severe German maid, who silently nodded back as she took Constance’s coat from her shoulders in one fluid motion, carried it to the coat closet, and arranged it on the wooden hanger, as her husband, Gunter, brought her suitcases up to her bedroom. German efficiency: just the way she liked it and had instructed them in the initial interview. Quick and silent service, with absolutely no chatter. Now that Van Jr. was off at Milton Academy the house seemed to lack the cacophony and chaos it once possessed, and that was heaven for Constance. It was finally quiet enough for her to think. There were no more annoying toy trains to trip over and awful fingerprints the staff had to wipe off the walls. No more invasive, unattractive nannies who invaded her space. She sighed and walked into her bedroom, delighted that Van was not at home.