The Last Collection

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The Last Collection Page 8

by Jeanne Mackin


  The long summer day disappeared, and the evening stole all the colors. Ania and I sat in gray twilight punctuated with flickers of candles, glowing tips of cigarettes, and the headlights of passing cars. We were sitting outside, and I could hear Charlie inside, arguing with someone at the bar. He did not come back out to join us, and when a car came for Ania at ten, she gave me a quick embrace and walked out alone, to where the driver held the door for her. There was a defeated slump to her shoulders.

  Someone was waiting for her in the backseat, a man who kept his face turned away from the café. Von Dincklage.

  “Ania!” Charlie shouted, running into the street as the car pulled away.

  “Too late,” I told him. “Sit down with me. Have another drink. Charlie, what do you know about her?”

  “She’s from Warsaw. She married young, an arranged marriage. I think it helped to pay some debts her father had. Her husband is an antiques dealer, too. Furniture. Other things.”

  “Antiques?” She wore jewels that a duchess would have coveted and seemed to wear only couture. Her husband would have to sell a lot of Louis XVI chairs to pay those bills. I wondered if Ania, like Coco, embroidered her own story.

  Charlie turned away and with a long, steady finger traced the ornate molding on the black iron café chair. “Who we were yesterday doesn’t matter.”

  That was a physician talking. The past could be cut away like damaged tissue, like a crushed limb.

  Charlie and I spent the next day together, from breakfast till bedtime, and by his devotion to me I understood the depth of his quarrel with Ania. They were staying away from each other.

  “Oh, just call her,” I said. “We’ve gone to the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, too many gardens with too many roses. I’m tired of being a tourist, and you’re not really here with me, you know.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I can’t just phone her, can I?”

  No, of course not. Who might answer the phone?

  We were sitting in the dappled shade of plane trees in the Place Dauphine, watching old men play boules. Charlie, next to me on the bench, leaned forward so I couldn’t see his face.

  “I want her to leave her husband. To come with me, back to Boston. She may not be the perfect doctor’s wife. Marrying a divorced woman . . .”

  “If she can get a divorce . . .”

  “A divorcée wouldn’t have been my first choice. But I love her, Lily. The kid’s okay, too. I met her once. She’s about seven, looks just like Ania, sweet as honey.”

  Charlie, the boy who earned straight As and excelled in collegiate sport; who had dated girls whose fathers owned banks and whose mothers organized charity balls, who queened it in the society pages; Charlie, who planned to open a private clinic, would risk it all for Ania.

  “She is lovely,” I agreed, “but—”

  “Stop,” he said. “No lectures.”

  We sat in silence and watched the old men playing boules with a ferocity and competitiveness that made me wonder what they, in earlier years, had done for their various loves.

  “I’m sorry about Allen,” Charlie said. “I can’t imagine how difficult this has been for you. Well, maybe I can now, after this thing with Ania. If I lose her . . .”

  “I know. Missing Allen is all I have left of him.”

  “You need someone to take care of you, someone who is actually here, with you.”

  “Do I? You know, I’ve never really been on my own for more than a month or two. My brother-in-law wasn’t exactly sympathetic after Allen died, but at least he made sure I had a roof over me. Now, I have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “Is this the best time to find out? There may be a war, you know.”

  “Even if there is . . .” War was something that happened to other people, wasn’t it? For two years I’d carried a sense of immunity, the feeling that the worst had already happened to me. In Paris, if anything, it felt even stronger. Nothing could touch me. Nothing, except my brother’s unhappiness.

  • FIVE •

  COCO AND SCHIAP

  The fifth act was heavy weather. Storms and murders and tears and, finally, victory. Coco sat in her private box at the opera, trying to ignore the empty seat next to her. Alone, again. But not for much longer, she promised herself.

  Hamlet was von Dincklage’s favorite French opera, he had told her. The others—Beatrice et Benedict, Carmen, La Vie Parisienne—had a certain frivolity that was fine for dance halls but not the grand stage. Opera should elevate and inspire the soul, not fill it with private ephemeral romance that fizzed away as quickly as an opened bottle of champagne. Hamlet, though. Wagner would have approved of Ambroise Thomas’s score and Barbier’s libretto. They had taken liberties with the play: no more the final crowded scene in which everyone dies, including Hamlet. In this version, ending in a graveyard, Hamlet kills the false king and hears his father’s ghost proclaim, “Live for your people! God has made you king!”

  That was a fine moment, Coco agreed, a glorious moment, but oh, the journey getting there! Well, the next time she saw von Dincklage she could mention this performance, the fine voice of Ophelia—who was she? Coco surreptitiously put on her glasses and checked the program, memorized the name.

  Her backside ached, her feet had gone to sleep, and she wished, more than anything, to be in her somber little bedroom in her dear little suite at the Ritz, feeling sleep finally creep up on her, take her more gently, more sweetly, than any lover. That was the problem with insomnia, and she’d had insomnia since Iribe’s death. No matter how physically tired she was, she never grew sleepy. Not without a little help.

  Soon, she promised herself. Soon, her bed, her little helpers, the little pills, or maybe even a syringe, to help her sleep. And sometime after that, in a day, a week, a month, von Dincklage would come to her. Madame Bouchard’s hold on him couldn’t last much longer, and she, Coco, could wait because she knew he would come. He must. She willed it!

  But first, she must leave the theater. And that would be a contest, because Schiaparelli, that Italian woman, was there that night as well, seated not in a box but in the orchestra, fourth row center, so that it seemed the entire audience had been arranged around her. Such a skill for theatrics, such a need to be the center of attention. She’d heard that when the woman was in New York with her husband, the fake Polish count who had abandoned her, they’d appeared onstage in a cheap mind-reading and hypnotism act and been asked to leave town rather hurriedly by the New York police, or be charged with fraud. Hah! At least the New York police knew a talentless cheat when they saw her.

  Coco calculated the best moment to leave her box, to make her way down the left arm of the grand marble staircase. Too soon, and no one would be there to see her. Too late, and they would have left or, worse, already crowded around the Schiaparelli woman.

  Count to one hundred. Slowly rise, let the maid arrange her wrap around her shoulders. Slowly glide to the grand staircase, pose a minute at the top, and then . . .

  They swarmed her. Photographers, journalists, fans, clients, nobody-women who wanted to be clients, who wanted private showings, who didn’t know better than to wear heavy furs on a warm night, men who wanted advice about wardrobes for their mistresses, husbands who needed an exceptional gift to make up for an exceptional “mistake” discovered by their wives.

  It was the opera, not the bal musette, so they were polite, they did not jostle her or shout at her, but it was adoration all the same.

  She pretended indifference, pretended fatigue, even a little humility, said yes, no, yes, yes, no. Maybe.

  And there was von Dincklage, standing far outside her circle of admirers, watching, and on his arm that blond tart, Madame Bouchard. She was wearing a Schiaparelli gown. A different one. How many had she purchased?

  Coco froze her face into a smile. Waved. Von Dincklage, from the great dista
nce, made her a little clicking bow, his eyes on her face, running down her figure. He liked what he saw. She saw it in his eyes. His politeness and attention at Elsie’s party hadn’t been forced or faked. Her smile became authentic. She felt the frisson of shared passion flow between them. Soon.

  There was a burst of loud laughter. And there, coming up behind von Dincklage and Madame Bouchard, there she was, Elsa Schiaparelli, looking ridiculous in white crepe with gray stripes painted on it, and a fluttering cape of goose feathers. A drowning duck, that was what Bendor, the Duke of Westminster, would have called her. He detested her and her Bolshevik leanings.

  Schiaparelli was with the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, who had dressed even more outrageously, in emerald-green satin, his black mustache too long, too waxed.

  Dalí bowed for von Dincklage, wrapping his cape around his arm with a flourish, giving Madame Bouchard an exaggerated kiss on the hand. The three of them began an earnest conversation, probably about the little soprano’s voice, her heartbreaking version of Ophelia. But the Italian woman stood a little to the side, looking up at Coco.

  Neither of them waved or nodded. Yet the huge foyer was reduced at that moment to just two people, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, and the energy flowing between them was ready to catch on fire.

  Boring, Schiap thought. Does she never wear anything but black, has she no humor or wit whatsoever? But that was a good trick, coming down the grand staircase alone, even her maid hanging far behind. An entrance. Schiap had observed it all, watched carefully and done her best to distract Madame Bouchard and her German as long as she could, so that they did not look up at that white marble staircase landing, that woman in black and pearls, an overthought study in black and white, hypocritically prim.

  It had worked. Chanel had already been on the last stair when von Dincklage finally looked up, finally noticed her. But he had noticed, his eyes had lingered, and Schiap couldn’t read the look in her new client’s eyes. Was Madame Bouchard frightened of the competition or relieved by it? Not every mistress wanted to keep her lover always close by her side, and Madame Bouchard seemed quite taken with that American boy. A husband rich as Croesus, though no one knew exactly where the money came from, a handsome protector who was one of the most influential men in the German government, and Madame had fallen for a boy who had to haggle over the cost of a dress.

  Well, wasn’t that the way of the world. L’amore domina senza regole. Love has no rules. Or sense, for that matter. Good for Ania, Schiap thought. Touch iron for luck, she’s going to need it.

  Tableau: Coco and von Dincklage staring at each other, Madame Bouchard staring into the distance, Schiap taking it all in. The moment passed. Coco looked away, talked to a man who had just tapped her shoulder, and now Dalí was pulling at Schiap’s arm; he wanted to leave, now, to go down to the river, to one of the sailors’ drinking places where there was supposed to be a man who could swallow two-foot-long knives.

  People who had seemed as frozen as a photograph the moment before began moving, talking, heading toward the multiple arched doorways of the opera house, to rue Scribe where their taxis and limousines were waiting.

  “The Krauts will move into Czechoslovakia next, mark my words,” Schiap heard a man behind her say, heated words from the middle of an argument she had only just noticed, so focused on Coco had she been. “That Nazi-lover Henlein will gift-wrap it for Hitler’s birthday.”

  “Even so,” his female companion said, “Czechoslovakia is far from France. What difference does it make?” She shrugged, and her fur stole slipped a little down her shoulders.

  What difference? Schiap felt a flutter of panic. Am I the only one who sees? Who understands? I need an escape route. I must know I can get my daughter out of France, when the time comes. I need connections. More connections. Good connections. Ania could help with that. Impulsively, Schiap gave Ania a tight hug, her little dark head barely reaching Ania’s shoulders.

  Von Dincklage, unsmiling, took Ania’s hand and led her away. He hadn’t even looked at Schiap, and she knew why. Two years ago he had come into her salon with one of his mistresses and Schiap had refused to greet him, the embodiment of Nazi propaganda. Suave and as cold as a Moscow winter, he was the kind of man who changed the subject if the Jewish problem was brought up, who refused to acknowledge the labor camps Hitler had begun building as soon as he’d become chancellor. Because of what he stood for, she had refused to greet von Dincklage, and that had been a mistake. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

  And of course Coco saw all that, the snub from von Dincklage, and was satisfied to see that the Schiaparelli woman had become as discomfited as she had been. Their eyes met, flared, looked away.

  “To the sword swallower, then!” Schiap said brightly to a glowering Dalí, who was angry that so little attention of the past minutes had been directed at him. “Quickly, because once my daughter is here I won’t want her to know I go to see such monstrosities.”

  Schiap and Coco turned their backs on each other and left by separate entrances.

  * * *

  • • •

  For the next several days Charlie and Ania and I spent almost all our time together. There was a forced quality to our gaiety, and the little furrow between Charlie’s eyebrows became a constant. Allen and I had been so happy together, unlike Charlie and Ania, who veered between quarrels and desperation. But then Allen and I hadn’t had to hide and lie and pretend.

  One afternoon, when Charlie had to attend another surgery demonstration, I took Ania with me to the Louvre and we sat in meditative silence before the Mona Lisa, Ania studying it with her hands folded childlike in her lap, her painted red nails echoing the reds of the road in the landscape, her blue dress matching the blue of the river.

  “Your eyes are the same coppery brown as hers,” I told her.

  “You must tell that to Charlie. It will make him laugh. Not much else does these days, I’m afraid.” She rose, and her heels clicked over the parquet floor. Heads turned in her direction; the guard at the door shook his hand loosely from the wrist, that very Parisian gesture that is the equivalent of a wolf whistle. She was oblivious to it all, lost in thought.

  We walked outside, between the green of the Tuileries Gardens and the pewter Seine.

  “I’m supposed to return to England in a few days,” I said.

  Ania stopped cold, her eyes flashing with panic. She took both my hands and pressed them to the base of her throat. We could have been a tableau of murder about to happen, so dramatic was the look on her face.

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Please, Lily. Charlie is so much happier when you are here.” She remembered herself and dropped my hands, smiled with one side of her mouth slightly turned down. “Anyway, what is there back in England? Paris is better, isn’t it?”

  I thought of my room over the garage, the way I met a memory of Allen at every turn, twist, and staircase of the school, in the gardens and wooded paths. I thought of the way Gerald looked at me, and of my studio there, where I hadn’t begun a painting in two years, the purgatory of my existence there. Orpheus and Eurydice. Live in the underworld with your beloved, or leave him behind, travel back into the light.

  “I’ll run out of money soon.” My allowance had ended when I turned twenty-one, and I had been living off the small amount of money Allen and I had saved to put down for a house.

  “Something will come up. I feel it. Please, please.” Ania took my hands again, this time with joy, shaking them and pulling me in the direction of the American Express office near the Hotel de Ville.

  Staying longer in Paris, I telegrammed to Gerald. Hope you are well.

  Gerald responded the very next day. Well enough. Will put your things in storage. Not a single friendly word, nor a suggestion that my job would still be there when I returned.

  A door slammed in my imagination, and I stood in the American Expre
ss office cold with doubt, already missing the memories waiting there for me at the school. How many ways can you lose a beloved? Every day seemed to offer a new one.

  “You look pale,” Charlie said the next morning.

  “I’m fine. I’m staying longer in Paris, you know. Until this big party you’ve been telling me about.”

  “Ball,” Charlie said. “The biggest high-society ball of the season. Thank you, Lily.”

  “I never knew you were so taken with costume parties. I understand potential patrons will be there, but there’s something else going on, isn’t there?”

  We were drinking coffee and eating ham sandwiches in one of the nameless corner cafés that are all over Paris; this one was across from Cador André, the tea shop. The windows were filled with pink, green, blue, and yellow pastries arranged in artistic mimicry of stained-glass rose windows.

  “Ania has promised to decide by that night. At least, her husband has promised to let her know if she can have a divorce or not.”

  “You mean she’s actually considering it? Leaving her husband and . . .”

  “Yes. She’s actually considering it.”

  “And the child?”

  “She won’t come with me if she can’t take her daughter with her. God, Lily, what have I got to offer her? I’m still in medical school, no money, nothing.”

  “You have everything a woman in love could want,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “I love her so much. God, I couldn’t even afford to pay for her clothes.”

  “I don’t think that’s a deciding factor, Charlie. Besides, she’d look good in anything, even a paper bag.”

  Beautiful Ania wore couture from morning to night and probably even in bed. Clothing can be worn as a kind of armor, a good-luck charm. I’m wearing Chanel, the woman says. Who can harm me in a Chanel suit? I’m wearing Schiaparelli. Who can abuse me? If only it were that easy. But maybe it’s enough to feel safe because, in fact, no one is safe. Not always; sometimes not ever.

 

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