Zoya

by Danielle Steel

  “Zoya! What are you doing here?”

  “Keeping amused.” She said nothing about the brutally hard two years she had survived.

  “How silly of you! But rather fun perhaps, too, I suppose. You must come to dinner with us.” But she always declined. She no longer had the clothes, or the time, or even the energy to run with his crowd. That was over for her. She went home to her children every night, waiting for her in the apartment on Thirty-ninth Street, near the East River, that she had been able to move into in time for Christmas. They were both in decent schools, and the regular raises and commissions Axelle had been giving her did not allow them room for luxuries, but it was enough to keep them comfortable, which was a vast improvement over the previous two years when she was dancing at Fitzhugh's Dance Hall.

  She had been working for Axelle when the Lindbergh baby was found killed in May of 1932, and she read with surprise that Florenz Ziegfeld had died in July of the same year. She wondered what it would have been like to work for him and not Fitzhugh's Dance Hall. She wondered too what had happened to Jimmy by then. She had long since sent him the hundred dollars he had slipped into her bag when she was so desperate, but she had never heard from him again. He was part of another life, another chapter closed, as she went on working as the Countess at Axelle's. And she was particularly touched when Eleanor Roosevelt came to see her to buy some clothes during the campaign. She remembered Clayton's old friends with warmth, and sent them a telegram when Franklin won, and she sent Eleanor a lovely fur hat, which she said she would wear at the inauguration in March, and Axelle was thrilled with her.

  “You certainly have a way with them, ma chire. ” The elegant Frenchwoman beamed at her. She was fond of the girl, and she was enchanted by little Nicholas. He had the gentle ways of a young prince, and the stories Obolensky had told her one afternoon, of Zoya and the daughters of the Tsar were easy to believe now. She was an unusual woman, born at an unfortunate time. Had things happened otherwise, she might have been married to a prince of her own, and living in one of the palaces she had frequented as a child. It seemed so unfair, but no more so than the crushing depression that raged on. All except Axelle's customers seemed to be starving that year.

  At Christmastime, Zoya took Nicholas to see the movie Tarzan, and he was thrilled, and afterward she took him out to tea. He was going to the Trinity School and doing well there. He was a good student and a bright child, and at eleven years of age, he said he wanted to be a businessman one day, like his Daddy had been. Sasha wanted to be a movie star. Zoya had bought her a Shirley Temple doll, and she always carried it with her, along with Annabelle, who had survived the fire. They were happy children, in spite of the difficult times that had happened to them. In the spring, Zoya became the assistant manager of Axelle's. It meant more money and more prestige, and allowed Axelle herself a little more leisure time. Zoya convinced Axelle to let Elsie de Wolfe redesign the shop, and business seemed to boom.

  “God bless the day you walked in the door!” Axelle grinned at her over the heads of their excited customers the first day they reopened after it was redone. Even the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, came and business was even better than before. She gave Zoya a mink coat as a gift, and Zoya gasped as she looked at it. It was made of ranch mink, and was intricately made, and it only added to her remarkable elegance as she took the bus home to her children every day, and by the following year she was able to move into a new apartment with them. It was only three blocks from Axelle's, and it was convenient for her, the children each had their own rooms now, Nicholas was twelve by then, almost thirteen, and he was relieved not to have Sasha constantly underfoot.

  And two years later, on Sasha's eleventh birthday, Axelle invited Zoya to go to Paris with her, for her first buying trip. Nicholas went to stay with a friend, and she hired a baby-sitter to stay with Sasha for three weeks, and she and Axelle set sail on the Queen Mary in a flurry of excitement and champagne. As Zoya stood looking at the Statue of Liberty as they pulled slowly out of New York, she thought about how far she had come in the years since Clayton had died. It had been seven years. She was thirty-seven years old, and she felt as though she had already lived several lifetimes.

  “What are you thinking about, Zoya?” Axelle had been watching her, standing quietly by the rail as they reached the open seas. She was beautifully dressed in an emerald-green suit, the color of her eyes, and a little fur hat set rakishly on her head, and as she turned to face her employer her eyes were almost the same color as the sea.

  “I was thinking about the past.”

  “You do too much of that, I suspect,” Axelle said quietly, she had great respect for her, and often wondered why she didn't go out more. She certainly had ample opportunity. Their clients were crazy about her, and there was always a stack of invitations on Zoya's desk, addressed simply to “Countess Zoya,” but she seldom went out, and always said she had “done all that before.” “Maybe Paris will put some new excitement in your life.” Zoya only laughed, and shook her head.

  “I've had enough excitement in my life, thank you very much.” Revolutions and wars, and marriage to a man she had adored. She was still in love with Clayton after all those years, and she knew that seeing Paris again would be painful without him. He was the only man she had ever loved, and she knew there would never be another man like him … except her son perhaps … she smiled at the thought, and took a deep breath of the sea air. “I'm going to Paris to work,” she announced briskly to Axelle, and then laughed at the older woman's words.

  “Don't be so sure, my dear.” They walked back to their stateroom then, as Zoya unpacked, and set the photographs of her children next to her bed. She didn't need anything more than that, and never would again. She went to bed with a new book that night, and made a list of the clothes they were going to order in Paris.

  CHAPTER

  35

  Axelle had reserved rooms at the Ritz, conveniently located on the Place Vendome, and resplendent with all the luxury Zoya had all but forgotten. It had been years since she had taken a bath in a deep marble tub, just like the one she'd had in the house on Sutton Place. She closed her eyes, and lay luxuriating in the deep bathtub full of warm water. They were to begin their shopping the following morning, but that first afternoon, Zoya quietly left the hotel by herself for a walk, and was overcome by the memories as she wandered the streets and die boulevards and the parks she had once shared with Clayton. She went for a drink at the Cafe de Flore, and then, unable to stop herself, she took a cab to the Palais Royal, and stood silently in front of the building where she had lived with Evgenia. It had been seventeen years since she died, seventeen years of good times and bad ones, and hard work, and her beloved children. The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks as the memories of her grandmother and her late husband overtook her. It was almost as though she was waiting for him to tap her on the shoulder as he had the night they met. She could still hear his voice as though he had spoken to her hours before. The memories were overwhelming as she stood there, and then, turning slowly, she walked to the Tuileries and sat on a bench, lost in thought, watching the children playing in the distance. She wondered what it would have been like to bring Nicholas and Sasha up here, easier in some ways than it was in New York, but there her life moved at a brisk pace, and her work at Axelle's had given her life new purpose. She had been with Axelle for five years by then, and it was exciting to be on the buying end, instead of just waiting on endless hordes of spoiled, demanding women. She knew the women so well. They were women she handled well, women she understood, and had known all her life. More than once, she was reminded of her own mother. And the men liked Zoya too, she was just as capable of dressing their wives, as she was of discreetly outfitting the mistresses they brought there. No word of gossip ever escaped her lips, no unkind critique, merely good taste and interesting suggestions. Without her, Axelle knew the success of her shop would never have been as great. “The Countess,” as everyone called her, added an unmistak
able air of aristocratic chic to the lives of wealthy New Yorkers. But now, suddenly, she felt far, far from there. She felt young again, and at the same time sad, thinking of the new life that had begun for her when last she was in Paris.

  As she took a taxi back to the hotel, her heart gave a little leap as she wondered if she might meet Vladimir Markovsky. She looked for him in the phone book that night at the hotel, but his name wasn't there. She suspected that he might have died by then. He would have been almost eighty.

  Axelle invited her to dinner at Maxim's that night, but with a nostalgic look in her eyes, she declined and said that she was tired and wanted to get a good rest before they began their tour of the collections. She didn't explain to Axelle that her memories of Clayton taking her to dinner there would be too painful Here, she constantly had to close the doors to the past. It seemed only a step from St. Petersburg. All of it was so close now. She wasn't half a world away anymore. She was right there, in the places she had discovered with Evgenia and Vladimir, the places Clayton had taken her to. It was almost too painful to be there, and she longed to get to work, so that she could forget the past, and delve into the present.

  She called Nicholas that night, at his friend's, and told him all about Paris. She promised to take him there one day. It was such a beautiful city, and it had played an important role in her life. He told her to take care of herself, and that he loved her. Even at fourteen, almost fifteen now, he wasn't afraid to show his emotions. “It's the Russian in you,” Zoya teased him sometimes, lately thinking of how much like Nicolai he was at times, particularly when she heard him tease Sasha. Her call to her daughter was equally typical, Sasha had given her a shopping list of everything she wanted in Paris, which included a red dress and several pairs of French shoes. In her own way, she was as spoiled as Natalya had been, and almost as demanding. She wondered what Mashka would have thought of them, or what her own children would have been like, if she had lived to marry.

  It was a relief to go to sleep that night, and escape the memories. The trip to Paris was far more difficult than she had thought it would be, and she dreamed of Alexis, and Marie, and Tatiana, and the others that night, waking at four in the morning, and unable to go back to sleep again until almost six. The next morning, she was tired when she ordered croissants and steaming black coffee.

  “Alors, are we ready?” Axelle asked when she appeared at the door in a beautiful red Chanel suit, her white hair perfectly groomed, her Hermos bag over her shoulder. She looked suddenly very French again, and Zoya wore a blue silk dress and matching coat, made by Lanvin. It was the color of the sky, and her red hair was tied in a chic knot. They looked very Parisian, as the doorman assisted them into a cab, and Zoya smiled as she recognized the driver's accent. He was one of the countless elderly Russians who were still driving taxis in Paris, but when she asked him if he knew Vladimir, he only shook his head. He didn't remember hearing the name, or ever meeting him. It was the first time in years that Zoya had spoken Russian. Even with Serge Obolensky, she spoke French. And Axelle listened to the musical lilt of the words, as they drew up outside Schiaparelli's studios on the rue de la Paix. They had agreed to make it their first stop, and Zoya and Axelle went wild there. They ordered dozens of different sweaters for the shop, and had a long conversation with the designer herself, explaining the needs and preferences of their clientele. She was an interesting woman, and they were intrigued to find that she was only three years older than Zoya. She was enjoying a remarkable success at the time, almost as great as Gabrielle Chanel, still on the rue Cambon. They went there next, and later that day to the house of Balenciaga, where Zoya selected several evening gowns, and tried them on herself to see how they moved, how they worked, how they felt, as Axelle watched her.

  “You should have been a designer yourself,” Axelle smiled at her, “you have an amazing feeling for the clothes.”

  “I've always loved pretty clothes,” she confessed as she whirled in the intricately made creations of the Spanish genius. “Even as children, Marie and I used to look at the clothes our mothers and their friends wore,” she laughed at the memory, “we were very nasty about the ones we thought had awful taste.”

  Axelle had been looking at the faraway look in her eyes, and asked gently, “Was she your sister?”

  “No,” Zoya quickly turned away, it was rare that she opened the doors of the past to anyone, least of all Axelle, with whom she maintained an air of business almost always, but this was all so close to home for her, almost too much so. “She was my cousin.”

  “One of the Grand Duchesses?” Axelle looked instantly impressed, as Zoya nodded. “What a terrible thing all that.” They went back to business then, and the next morning they went to see Dior's sketches after dining in their rooms that night, and poring over the lists of what they had ordered, what they had liked, and what they still thought they needed. Some of it Axelle wasn't going to buy, but only wanted to see so that she could draw sketches for the dressmaker they used occasionally to copy someone else's designs. She was very skillful, and it allowed Axelle greater profit.

  They met Christian Dior himself, a charming man, and Axelle introduced Zoya with her full title. Lady Mendl was there that day, previously Elsie de Wolfe, and after they had left, she filled Dior in on the details of Zoya's life with Clayton.

  “It's a terrible shame, they lost everything in twenty-nine,” she explained, as Wally Simpson came in. Dior was a great fan of hers, and she arrived with her two pug dogs.

  That afternoon, Zoya and Axelle went back to see Elsa Schiaparelli again, this time at her more luxurious showroom, built two years before on the Place Vendome, and Zoya laughed at the amusing couch Salvador Dali had designed for her in the shape of a pair of lips. They talked about the sweaters again, and several coats that Axelle wanted to order. But they were rapidly reaching the limits of their budget. It all went too quickly, Axelle complained, and it was all so lovely. It was an exciting time to be involved in fashion in Paris.

  Schiaparelli left them then, she had an appointment with an American coat manufacturer. Like Axelle, he was one of her better foreign clients, she explained, as one of Schiaparelli's assistants came and whispered to her in Italian.

  “Will you excuse me, ladies? My assistant will show you the fabrics the coat can be ordered in, Mr. Hirsch is waiting in my office.” She said good-bye to Zoya too, and the two women conferred at length with the assistant, and ordered the coat in red, black, and a dove gray that Zoya particularly liked. She always seemed to favor the more muted colors, just as she did in her own clothes. She was wearing a delicate mauve dress designed by Madame Gros that Axelle had let her buy at an enormous discount.

  As they left the shop an hour later, they were followed by a tall, rugged-looking man with a shock of dark hair, and a face that looked as though it had been carved from marble by a master. They saw him again in the elevator of their hotel.

  “I'm not following you. I live here too,” he said, smiling at Zoya with a boyish look on his face. Then he reached out and offered a hand to Axelle. “I think you've bought a few things from my line. I'm Simon Hirsch.”

  “Of course,” she smiled, seeming very French again now that she was here. Her accent even seemed to have gotten thicker. “I'm Axelle Dupuis,” and she quickly remembered Zoya. “May I introduce the Countess Ossupov, my assistant.” It was the first time in a long time that Zoya had been embarrassed by her title. He looked like such a straightforward, pleasant man that she felt foolish putting on airs as she shook his hand. He had the powerful handshake of a man who ran an empire of his own, and he looked straight into Zoya's green eyes with gentle brown ones.

  “Are you Russian?” he inquired as the elevator stopped on their floor, and she nodded, blushing faintly, a failing she had decided was destined to plague her for a lifetime.

  “Yes,” she spoke in a soft voice, admiring the way he walked. His room seemed to be right next to theirs, and he strode along the ample corridors, sudden
ly making them seem too narrow. He had the shoulders of a football player, and the energy of a boy as he walked beside them.

  “So am I. My family is anyway. I was born in New York.” He smiled, and the two women stopped at Zoya's room. “Have a good time with your shopping. Bonne chancel” He spoke in heavily accented French as he disappeared into his own room.

  Axelle commented as they walked into Zoya's room, and they took their shoes off, “God, my feet hurt … I'm glad we met him. He has a good line. I wanted to take a look at it again when we go back. We need more coats for next fall, and if we don't get everything here, we can buy a few models from him, if he gives us a decent price.” She smiled and Zoya ordered tea as, once again, they went over the day's orders. They only had four more days in town, before they sailed back to New York on the Queen Mary.