The Last Collection

by Jeanne Mackin

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Not with von Dincklage. With a friend, a woman, at Beauville, to get some sun. I turned down an invitation to von Dincklage’s house party.”

  Ania looked beat up and miserable with smeared mascara, untidy masses of blond hair falling out of the chignon she wore in the afternoon. Her dress was a shade of mauve that did not work well with her coloring; she needed vibrant colors. Yet, looking at her, I knew that Charlie would see none of this, would have seen only the love of his life, here on a bar stool, well beyond tipsy. That black eye would have made him fighting furious.

  “Strange husband, who prefers his wife to be with her lover rather than a friend.”

  Ania blanched. “I told you, Lily. Von Dincklage has important connections. We’ll need them, and him, in the days to come.”

  “There’s a word for your husband in English,” I said. “Do they have it in French, too? Pimp? Procurer?”

  “Merde, Lily, it’s not that simple or sordid, and could you for a moment stop being judgmental? If not, finish your drink and go.” She was crying then, so of course I couldn’t leave. Instead I put my arm around her and let her sob quietly against me as I finished my martini.

  “Better,” she said, drying her eyes and wiping away black smears of makeup with a handkerchief. “Let’s go see a movie. I need distraction.”

  She tripped leaving the barroom, and Olivier, the maître d’hôtel of the Ritz who happened to be passing by, caught her by the elbow. “Madame Ania,” he said gently. “Are we under the weather?”

  “Never,” she said, giving him her brilliant smile.

  We saw Algiers with Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer, and Ania made catty, silly remarks all the way through so that the people sitting unfortunately close to us made repeated attempts to hush her. “Look at that dress! A rag! See how she stoops. If she keeps eating and drinking like that she’ll have bosoms down to her waist before she’s thirty.”

  At one point, during one of the long kisses between Hedy and Charles, she took my hand. “I really miss him,” she said. She stared straight ahead at the screen, where Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr fled, their arms around each other, through the labyrinth of the Casbah. “But there is so much I’d have to leave behind.”

  Ania looked even more devastated than before, when we left the cinema. “I think maybe it wasn’t a good idea to see a love story,” I told her. “Meet me tomorrow? At the Ritz again?” Something in her face frightened me, the complete lack of expression in her eyes, as if she was about to do something desperate.

  “Yes. Tomorrow,” she agreed.

  I painted all the next morning, but the colors wouldn’t mix right, looked flat on the canvas, as if my worry about Ania and Charlie was interfering with the chemistry of pigments. And I was running out of supplies. I had gone through the money Schiap had given me for papers and pastels for her windows.

  When I went to the boutique Schiap was upstairs, checking inventory lists with her premier fitter, getting ready to begin order fulfillment for the new collection. It was a chore even the best generals couldn’t have achieved with minimum chaos: the Schiaparelli boutique made many thousands of gowns and ensembles a year, hand-sewn, hand-fitted not once but many times—even something as simple as a nightgown could require three fitting sessions. And it was all achieved on a tight schedule so that they could begin work, as soon as possible, on the next collection.

  I went into the office and sat in a shadowy corner, waiting, knowing better than to interrupt while Schiap and Bettina and the premier murmured together, flipping through charts and button cards.

  When they had finished, a tense half hour later, Bettina gathered up her jacket and purse to leave. “Did you hear?” she asked me. “Schiap’s black silk moiré dress with the strip down the side is so popular that six women wore it to the same event.” Bettina cackled with delight. She was a beautiful woman who loved fashion, but she also loved to poke at the too-rich.

  Schiap closed the door after her and we sat together, each waiting for the other to begin. She could be a mind reader, Schiap. She always knew when something was up, when my appearance was more than a friendly visit.

  She eyed me for that usual long, critical appraisal. “You know, most women overestimate their looks, their charm. You do the opposite. But you have a good sense of color. I like the pale blue blouse with the gray skirt. Maybe I will have them displayed like that on the sales floor.” She had given me both the skirt and the blouse at separate times, not intending them, I think, to be worn together. But as she said, the colors worked.

  She lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “The silk threads Lesage ordered aren’t identical to the ones he used for the models,” she sighed. “He will ruin me. He has to order a whole new shipment, dyed to order, and it will put that model a week behind the production schedule.”

  “Disaster,” I agreed, wondering if Churchill in England and Daladier in France paid as much attention to details and schedules as did the couture women of Paris.

  “Well, he’ll just have to hire some more embroiderers and make them work overtime, when the silks arrive. And I think it’s time to stock up on inventory. Soon, it will be difficult to get silk threads in any color other than khaki.”

  She pursed her mouth, considering, looking at all the cabinets and cupboards in her office, worrying that a day would come when she would open them and find nothing inside.

  Schiap looked at me from under glowering black brows. “You want something,” she said.

  “An advance. Or to borrow a little.”

  “Is that all? I thought it was something about Gogo. Do you see much of her?”

  “Yes, when she’s in town. But she has so many friends.”

  “And she likes to travel. We are going skiing in January. Before that, she’ll probably spend a month in London with her circle there.” Mama Schiap gloated with pride. “She’s the prettiest girl in London. How much? The advance?”

  I asked for a small sum, the equivalent of a few hours’ pay, just enough to settle with Sennelier so that I could keep painting. The cost of linen and cadmium red had doubled in just a few months. Inflation, and fears of shortages, were affecting the price of everything.

  “The next time you go to Sennelier’s, wear a good suit. One of mine,” Schiap advised. “You’ll get more credit if they think you are a rich amateur.”

  It was already midafternoon by then, too late for painting, and time for cocktails with Ania, so I crossed the Place Vendôme to the Ritz. A small crowd had gathered and was watching a bellhop from the Ritz scrub at something on the granite pavement in front of it. I forced my way through to see. Death to the Jews had been painted, in red.

  “The graffiti is all over Paris,” Ania said, coming up behind me and looking over my shoulder. “Some little Nazi-lover has been very busy.”

  The Ritz was subdued that afternoon. People spoke in whispers and kept their jackets close by, as if they might need to leave suddenly. Monsieur Auzello, the hotel manager, was beside himself, pacing and talking to himself, pulling at the lapels of his suit. He was a muscular, square-faced man who looked like Clark Gable. To see him so distressed, a man usually in control, confident, was unnerving.

  His wife, Blanche, a pretty brunette born in New York, whispered something to her husband, then came over and stood next to Ania.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, putting her hand on Ania’s arm.

  “Just fine,” Ania said, knocking back her martini. Madame Auzello tilted her head to the side and left.

  “She’s Jewish,” Ania said. “She says she’s Catholic, but she’s Jewish. So am I.”

  “But you’re married and a French citizen now. Won’t that protect you if . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. The rules seem to be written as we go along.”
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  “All the more reason to leave,” I said. “I’ve had five letters from Charlie this month alone, and every time he asks about you and wonders if you might change your mind.”

  “I won’t leave my daughter. But, oh Lily, I love Charlie so much. Even more, now that he’s gone. And yes, I am a little frightened.”

  We drank a lot, that afternoon. And by the end of it, Ania had decided, finally, firmly, to come to some sort of arrangement with her husband. Maybe he would let her take the child for half the year, or the school year. “Or even for a visit,” she said. “A trip to New York. And when we were there, we would stay. Just not come back.” She would book passage on the Île de France, leaving from Le Havre to New York. First class, of course.

  Three days later, I was seeing her off at the train station. Her daughter wasn’t with her, but Ania seemed full of hope.

  “I did it! I finally talked him into it. He will let me take her.”

  “How, Ania?”

  “I told him we would both come back after a couple of months. I lied. He will send her to me, next month, with her nurse.”

  I wondered if Ania’s lie had been as fully believed by her husband as she hoped, if he might also have been lying to her. “I love Charlie. I really do,” she repeated, fussing with the tags on her luggage, and I wondered if she was convincing me or herself. “I know there will be problems.” Her voice trailed off.

  Understatement. The other medical faculty wives, for a start. And how does one arrange a divorce long distance? How would Ania manage in Boston? I tried to imagine her in a sedate black day dress, her only jewels small pearl earrings, her shoes with sensible one-inch heels. Without that blue Isotta and driver she’d be doing a lot of walking. Did she know how alone the wives of doctors could be, how independent and resourceful they needed to be, just to keep their families together?

  And did she really believe her husband’s promise?

  “Don’t cry, Ania. Charlie will make it work,” I said, hugging her.

  “Do you really think so?” She looked at me with the pleading, open gaze of a child who has been told she can go to the circus after all. “How do the women in Boston dress? I hope I packed the correct clothes.”

  As if her wardrobe was going to be the most serious problem. “Oh, my dear, Charlie loves everything you wear, you know that. As for the others, they’ll adjust. Bring them a touch of Paris.”

  I helped her find a porter to wheel away her many cases and trunks, helped her choose magazines from the kiosk—Vogue, Time, Journal de la Semaine.

  It was a gray morning, damp and distracting with the last leaves falling, people huddled into the turned-up collars of their coats. We bought cups of coffee at the train station buffet and took a little table near the window to wait for her train.

  Ania knocked back a shot glass of whiskey she had bought to go with her coffee. “Von Dincklage doesn’t know I am leaving. Maybe he won’t care. I think he and Coco are lovers now; why does he need me? Maybe I’ll have a second shot. I feel nervous. Do I look alright? Lily, what will I do in Boston, after I have set up my apartment? I’ll get pink curtains for Katya’s bedroom. She likes pink. I’ll have to find a ballet teacher for her. She has just started studying, and loves to dance.” Ania’s hands trembled. Outside the window, a train pulled away with a loud grinding of metal on metal, clouds of steam, people shouting their good-byes, the same sounds that had accompanied Charlie’s leaving.

  “Have you considered taking a class? Studying something?” I knew how my aunt would have answered that question: Be a good companion to Charlie, improve yourself. Charlie would be working twelve hours a day. There would be no parties, no cocktail hours, and there was Katya.

  “What kind of class?” Fear made her voice small and thin.

  “Well, have you ever wanted to paint? To sculpt? To learn German? Dressmaking?”

  “German I already know.”

  “Maybe a night class in the classics? Aristotle and Voltaire?”

  She made a face like a bored schoolgirl.

  “Can you cook?” I asked. Ania and Charlie would be living not together but in separate small apartments, side by side. Cohabitation before they were able to marry would be more than Boston could cope with, although everyone who knew them would understand the situation immediately.

  “Yes!” Ania finally smiled. “I can scramble eggs. I can make escargots and cassoulet. Oh, I make a wonderful tarte tatin.”

  Snails and duck confit might be a little difficult to find in Boston, but if she said the tarte was an apple pie that would work.

  “Then make meals for Charlie. Keep him company, and when you have time visit museums, take long healthy walks with your child.” Oh God, it was the advice Allen’s mother gave me, when Allen and I married, before I had become the school art mistress.

  She looked at me as if she no longer understood my language. “I studied piano when I was a child,” she said. “Perhaps . . .”

  We finished our coffee just as her train departure was announced.

  A doctor’s wife should read medical books so that she could follow his conversation when he came home from the clinic. She should entertain his friends, men who spoke only of research and funding, and their wives who talked of their children. I couldn’t see beautiful, worldly Ania doing any of that.

  I was afraid for Ania and for a moment was angry with Charlie. He, who had criticized Josephine Baker once because she kept a cheetah for a pet and walked it on a jewel-studded leash, was going to try to leash Ania. I loved my brother completely, unconditionally, yet I knew he could be demanding and stern.

  We paused for a hug outside her train compartment, and for a moment I thought Ania might change her mind. But she sighed, smiled, tipped her hat bravely forward, went up the steps, opened the door, and disappeared into the great unknown.

  When the train had pulled out I realized how very alone I was. I tried to be happy for Charlie, who was getting his wish, but there was a nagging premonition that this was not going to go well for him. Nor for Ania.

  The numb hollowness that had replaced my mourning and grief after Allen’s death made my stomach lurch.

  By instinct, I went to the Louvre. The train station had been so gray, so busy with farewells and the sadness that hangs in the air when people part. I needed color.

  • TWELVE •

  There were sandbags piled in front of the entrances to the various wings of the Louvre. There were sandbags all over Paris: at the base of the Eiffel Tower; at the Arc de Triomphe; at la Madeleine, the church built to honor Napoleon and his army; in front of the grand hotels. France wasn’t at war. Not yet, those sandbags said. Not yet, but take nothing for granted, not the blue sky or the golds of autumn trees on the Paris boulevards, nor the dying red geraniums in their window boxes.

  I entered the museum through the Cour Napoléon. Maybe it was because I had just said good-bye to Ania, but it seemed a day in which I needed to pay particular attention, to memorize the images of Paris I would want to keep for the rest of my life, especially that majestic building, rigorous in its mathematical architecture, the starting point of the ancient axis that runs through Paris, through the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, and the Arc de Triomphe.

  “Stand here,” Allen had said to me one day, years before. He turned me with my back to the entrance, one wing of the Louvre on each side of me. “Look straight ahead.” I did, and saw all the way down to the Place de la Concorde, perhaps a mile or more, straight through the city. “You are looking at the great axis of Paris,” he said. “It follows the sun from east to west, except the axis is off kilter by several degrees.”

  “Nothing’s ever perfect,” I said.

  “We are,” he said. “We are perfect together.”

  I stood there again, that day, thinking of Allen and departures, of how the red of dawn is echoed in the
sunset, how everything runs in a circle.

  In the Louvre I made my way through the French painting wing to study the reds in the robes of the angels protecting Fouquet’s St. Martin. Martin, an ex-soldier turned priest and bishop, was one of the most popular saints of France, famous for having turned the barbarians away from Paris without even lifting a weapon.

  Where it had hung on the wall there was now a blank space, a sign saying that it had been removed for cleaning. A small crowd had gathered in front of that empty space, scratching their heads, frowning. “The saint who keeps away invaders has been taken away himself,” a woman whispered, and she crossed herself. “St. Martin the protector has been taken into protection,” a young man joked. “Shut up,” an older man growled at him.

  It seemed a bad sign. Numbed, I went up to the second floor to see if another favorite of mine, de La Tour’s The Card-Sharp, had been removed. No, it was still there, in all its perfect reds and browns and pinks, a painting vibrating with barely controlled passion. And sitting in front of it was Otto, von Dincklage’s driver. I started to wave to him, without even thinking about it, and stopped myself. Yet it was good to see him, I thought, remembering the Durst ball, when we had danced together. He was one of the few friends I had left in Paris, except for Schiap and Coco.

  He seemed absorbed in the painting and there was something in his face, a sadness, that made me pause. He’s missing someone, I thought. Or something.

  “Another day off?” I asked, approaching.

  Otto sprang to his feet. “Several days. The baron is making a quick trip to Germany and did not require me.”

  Ah. So that was why Ania had chosen to leave this week.

  Otto glanced at me briefly, then turned back to the painting, and the yearning returned to his eyes. I wondered who he was missing.

  “She is surprised but hiding it very well, don’t you think? Cheats being cheated. I like this painting. Soon, they will take this away, too. Sometimes I think that if artists knew all that would happen to their work, they might not make it.”