“Not so. We can’t help ourselves, I’m afraid. It’s not about the work, it’s about the painting of it. It is when we feel ourselves to be alive. Most alive.”
I sat down on the bench next to Otto. We were getting strange looks from the other viewers in the gallery.
“They take them away at night, and if anyone asks, they say they are going to be cleaned,” Otto said quietly. “Except they don’t come back, the paintings. It is a wise thing to do, I think. The Führer is a great admirer of art.”
The Louvre was being emptied of its priceless art, piece by piece. Von Dincklage knew. Yet because France was not yet at war, there was no way for them to stop it.
“Has Madame Bouchard left Paris?” Otto asked.
“Just now, in fact.” How had Otto known? Had he been following us?
“I thought perhaps this would be the time, when the baron was away.”
“You knew she was going to?”
“I knew she was in love with your brother and had little reason to stay here. Soon, her husband will not protect her. She is Jewish, he is not. Such marriages are illegal now in Germany.”
“The racial purity laws. Probably devised by the same mentality that is painting swastikas all over Paris. But this is France, not Germany. Do you believe in those laws?”
“No. But it is the law now, and the Führer is more powerful than any of our beliefs.”
“Will Ania’s husband send the child over to her?”
“I hope so. Katya would be safer there.”
We sat in silence for a long while, long enough for one crowd of viewers to shuffle through the room and be replaced by another. The look I had first seen on Otto’s face returned. Sadness.
“Will you go for a walk with me? Have lunch with me?” he asked.
He seemed a different person when he was on his own, not standing stern and unsmiling behind von Dincklage. He seemed as lonely as I felt.
We had omelets and a sweetish white wine at the café on rue de Rivoli, sitting indoors because the day was cold and blustery. We both pretended to ignore the looks the other patrons gave us. Otto was not in uniform, but there was a sense of the military about him, the way he walked, how straight he sat even in a café chair.
“So, you are an artist?” he asked when the plates were taken away and our coffees arrived. He leaned back to smoke a cigarette and offered one to me. He exhaled the smoke in perfect rings and poked his finger through them, laughing at his own trick.
“If you use the term loosely enough, yes, I paint.”
“Landscapes? Portraits? Or are you a decadent?”
“More and more I am painting colors, not scenes or people. I guess that makes me a decadent, by your terms.”
“Not my terms. The terms of the fatherland. Art must elevate people and glorify our country.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and looked very serious again. He was reciting a lesson or something he had learned in a pamphlet.
“No,” I said. “Art must simply be art. Its only purpose is to make people look at it and to see something that perhaps they hadn’t seen before, or hadn’t known they had seen.”
“That is an American viewpoint.”
“I am an American.”
“You are. And I wonder why you are staying so long in Paris.”
Was it a warning?
“Come with me, if you wish,” I said, standing. “I’m going to show you some good modern work, art that doesn’t shout propaganda. Let’s go to the Rosenberg Gallery.”
“Can you walk in those shoes, or shall I find a taxi?”
I was wearing a pair of heels that Schiap had given me, and they were rough going over cobbled streets, but they were a beautiful shade of crimson. Since I never dressed for evening anymore, I wore them during the day.
“I’m uncomfortable in automobiles,” I said. “Let’s walk. Perhaps not too quickly.”
Otto smiled. “A good German woman would never wear such shoes. But I like them.”
We walked for several blocks, holding on to our hats to keep them from blowing off, leaning slightly into the wind. Shriveled leaves rustled down the pavement, and the bare branches of the trees swayed over us. I turned my ankle, not severely but enough to make walking inadvisable. I had been wearing the crimson heels since early morning, and my legs were feeling the effort. We took the metro.
We sat side by side, leaning into each other when the train went around a curve, seeing our faces ghostly reflected in the dark window. Otto’s fingers tapped on his knees as if they were a piano keyboard. “I was studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg,” he said. “The best. But now . . . Duty calls.”
“What music did you play?”
“The Brandenburg Concertos, certainly. And when no one was listening, Scott Joplin. I like him very much. I like jazz, though it is considered decadent and should not be played.”
His voice trailed into nothingness, the pause made when the pianist’s fingers leave the keyboard. He took a deep breath. “My professor, Herr Newton, is gone from the conservatory. All the Jews are gone. Any that were still there at the beginning of the year were told to leave in March, after the Anschluss. They all lost their positions. Jews can no longer have professions in Germany. If only you could have heard him play . . .” Again that trailing off in midsentence, the sound of music that has gone silent.
“Will he return, do you think?”
“He has been sent to a work camp. He was seventy years old.”
“Because he was Jewish,” I said.
“And Germany must be cleansed of foreigners. The people willed it, the people wanted it. And the Great Leader is giving them what they think they want. I am not supposed to notice that Herr Newton’s position at the conservatory has been given to a third-rate pianist who is a nephew of the department’s chairman. A member of the party. I would say that only to you. If it were repeated to certain people, I would be sent to a camp.”
We rode in silence after that, the train wheels clacking under us with a hard machine rhythm that mimicked a heartbeat. I felt a strange heat on my neck, as if I were being burned by the sun, except we were in a train underground, and the heat was fear rising to the surface.
When the train stopped at Saint-Lazare we climbed up the stairs, back to daylight. Otto took my hand. We walked like that, hand in hand, the way children and lovers do. It was a familiarity, yet it didn’t feel rude or even unexpected. His hand holding mine felt friendly and natural.
“Feet okay?” he asked. “Not hurting too much? I could carry you.” And to prove his point he put his arm around my waist and lifted me off the ground.
Suddenly, I was weightless. I was held closely, tenderly, by a man smiling into my gaze, both of us slipping into the surprise and delight of the moment. Then, I tensed.
“Put me down. Now.”
“Yes.” He had stopped smiling, and so had I. There had been a spark between us in that moment. We had both felt it.
Near the Rosenberg Gallery the streets were wider, the cafés less boisterous, and the dogs all on leashes, not running loose. This was the section of the city that artists moved to after they had made their fortunes, where the grand Champs-Élysées led to the Arc de Triomphe.
The gallery had reopened after the midday dejeuner break, and a few people, very well dressed, scuffed along the bare wooden floor, moving from painting to painting.
Monsieur Rosenberg had hung a show of Matisse for that month, and the walls were full of color, the exquisite blues and reds and yellows that reminded me of Fra Angelico, except the monk’s women were secretive and shy; Matisse’s models stared out at us from the canvas, bold and seductive and unafraid.
“Beautiful,” I said, moving from painting to painting. “Do you like them, Otto? Do you like Matisse? How can art, any art, be decadent? Especially with colors like these.” My fingers ached
from the desire to touch the canvases, to feel those brushstrokes, to close my eyes and let the pigment sink into my fingertips.
“In Germany women must be celebrated for their femininity by showing them with their children. These models, they are beautiful and sensual, but I think not that concerned with motherhood.”
He leaned closer to me and whispered into my ear, “I approve. They are beautiful. And they look like you. Dark eyes.”
“Lovely, no?” Monsieur Rosenberg, the gallery owner, came over, extending his hand to me.
In addition to wearing the crimson heels, I was also dressed in a Schiaparelli day dress, black satin embroidered with bright, monstrous flowers: another unpicked-up special order that Schiap had altered for me. Monsieur Rosenberg, recognizing couture, believed me to be a woman of wealth. Poor fellow, I thought. He thinks he’s about to make a sale.
“Very lovely. Dizzyingly so,” I agreed. “The lines seem to move rather than stay still on the canvas.” We were standing in front of Matisse’s Purple Robe with Anemones, a painting of a woman sitting in front of red wallpaper. Matisse’s reds were the most vibrant colors in the world, the color of creation itself.
“Most admirers just appreciate the pretty woman that Matisse painted,” he said. “Are you are an artist?” Monsieur Rosenberg looked at me with a little more interest, putting his long, slender hands on his hips and tilting his sharp face toward me.
“Yes. That is, I paint. Whether it is artistic or not remains to be seen.”
“Well, keep painting till you decide,” he recommended. “Don’t let others make the decision for you. Stay in the gallery as long as you wish. If you want to see the paintings in storage I’ll have an assistant guide you through them as well.” He made a slight but very gallant bow and turned to leave. He had ignored Otto completely, except to give him a dagger-sharp look over his shoulder. There was that hint of the military.
“Over here? The Van Gogh?” a man in overalls called to him. Monsieur Rosenberg nodded, and the Van Gogh was taken down.
“Sold?” I asked.
Monsieur Rosenberg hesitated. We were moving into an era when people cautiously weighed their words, how much to say, what to say. Otto walked off to look at a sculpture in an alcove, his hands behind his back.
“No,” Rosenberg said in a low voice. One of my blessings in life, Charlie had once told me, was that people felt they could trust me. Something about the earnestness of my gaze, he had gone on to tease. “It is being sent to New York. For safekeeping. Most of these will be crated and shipped. I won’t risk having them in Paris when the Germans arrive.” Otto was way at the other end of the gallery, his back turned to us.
“You are certain they will invade Paris?”
“Why take chances?”
Monsieur Rosenberg turned to the doorway that led to his private office. One step. He stopped. He looked at me over his shoulder.
“What is your name?”
“Mrs. Sutter. Lily Sutter.”
“Well, Mrs. Sutter, when you think you are ready, bring me a canvas or two to look at. No promises. But if they are interesting, I will visit your studio and perhaps choose something for a group exhibit. Just don’t wait too long, if you catch my meaning. And choose your friends more carefully.” One more dagger-look at Otto, and he disappeared into his office.
One moment can change so much. The moment when Allen and I got into our automobile and drove into the night, not knowing how cold the weather had turned, not seeing the ice on the road. The moment when Charlie offered to buy me a couture dress for my birthday and I said Schiaparelli, not Chanel. That awful moment when I saw Schiap on fire, blue flame turning to red on the finger/branches of her tree costume and realized life sometimes ends that way, Schiap could end that way. But there are beginnings, too, and Monsieur Rosenberg had just offered me one.
“He may show my work,” I told Otto, when we were back on the street. “At least, he has offered to look at it.”
“That would be good. One should never turn one’s back on one’s art, if there is a choice. I’m happy for you. But better not to wait too long.” He took my hand in both of his and held it, the way one would hold a captive bird, gently, and knowing he must release it. “And now, I leave you. The baron is gone, but there are other matters for me to attend to.”
He left me there, on the sidewalk, in high heels and with my sore ankle, staring after him with a sense of disappointment. Just when I thought perhaps I had been confused about what had happened, that spark between us, he turned and waved. He looked sad, but when our eyes met again, he smiled.
Allen, I thought. I like that young man, that student of music. Do you mind? People should be happy, he told me once. We aren’t supposed to be alone. Life is meant to be shared. And grief must end sometime. Life must begin again.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to think about Otto, trying to forget that pleasant shiver when he had swung me off my feet. The more I tried to forget the moment, the more I thought about it.
* * *
• • •
Why did I decide to go see Coco after that? Did my own awakened sense of ambition need to meet on the battleground of another woman’s ambition? Or did the “no promise” promise from Paul Rosenberg give me a certain generosity?
Heightened alertness can be the recompense for spending too much time alone with grief keeping you company. When I saw Coco, I saw what the world saw: a beautiful woman, a successful businesswoman, a fabulously wealthy woman, one of the richest in the world. But I had observed the secrets of Coco: her fear of aging, terror of competition, those memories of orphanage meals of soured milk and stale bread, undecorated white walls and black doors.
When you see more than the person wishes you to see, you begin to feel affection, whether you want to or not. It’s the same impulse that makes little boys bring home stray dogs, that makes a grown woman dry the tears of a strange child on the street. You feel the humanity underneath it all.
I just knew I couldn’t paint that day; I was vibrating with too much urgency. And something drove me to Coco’s salon. I owed her a visit, after all. Schiap was paying me for painting backdrops and displays but also for annoying Coco once in a while.
Coco, like the other couturiers, was working on the next season’s collection and was in one of the sewing rooms upstairs, the girl who received me at the door said. She must have been new—Coco tended to have a high turnover of workers—and she mistakenly led me up several flights of stairs, past rows of doors that quickly closed as I approached, past clothes hanger racks draped in white canvas to hide their contents, past rooms whirring with the sound of Singer sewing machines, to one of the finishing rooms.
The poor girl had forgotten what had probably been Coco’s first rule of her training: no visitors in the workroom unless called for. The girl opened the door of the last room of the hall, and there was Coco, in the middle of a fit of temper.
“No,” she yelled. “No and no.” She picked up a garment one of the seamstresses had been working on. “The hem is crooked, the seam stitching too loose. And the braid! Did you think it was meant to be worn inside, on the lining? Move it a half inch, an exact half inch, beyond the seam.” She flung it in the girl’s face. The seamstress lowered her face but not before I saw tears starting.
“Go ahead,” Coco said. “Weep. Baptize the gown if you must.”
The other girls, some of them no more than fourteen or fifteen, squirmed and stared at the floor. She is hard on her workers, Schiap had told me. They are afraid of her. Hell, her own customers are afraid of her. Even the formidable Lady Mendl once left a Chanel fitting room close to tears.
I coughed. Coco turned and glared at the intrusion.
“What the hell is she doing in here?” the lioness roared. “Take her back downstairs. Immediately.” She recollected herself, and the glare turned into a smile. That, I
thought, is how the lioness smiles before the attack. “Back to work,” Coco called to the seamstresses, clapping her hands.
The seamstresses went back to their tables and workstations, and the room filled with the sound of seams ripping, scissors clacking. No one spoke. This, I thought, must have been what the orphanage sewing room was like for her—anger, demands, fear.
We, the greeter and I, fled back to the main floor. She, too, was in tears, having realized her mistake.
“I’ll tell her it was my fault,” I said, trying to console her.
“Oh, please, Madame!” She fled, wringing her handkerchief. I waited, my hands folded in my lap, trying to look innocent but taking mental notes of what I had seen in that room—purple, in all its various shades: a suit in plum velvet, an evening gown in orchid tulle, a day dress in more demure violet.
When the primary colors of red and blue are combined, purple emerges: purple for royalty, for mourning, for daybreak because it is the color of Archangel Michael’s robe, Michael the angel of morning. Purple absorbs light, like blue, and so is seen as a cool color rather than warm, a color of royalty. Chanel’s collection, the next season, would offer the color of victory and authority.
“It’s the colors of the irises I’ve planted at my home in the south, La Pausa,” Coco said, sitting next to me half an hour later on one of the many beige sofas. “That was the inspiration. Flowers. Beautiful summer flowers. But unlike your friend Schiaparelli, I use only their colors, I don’t make giant cut-outs and gaudy embroideries of them. You will tell her, of course, what you saw.”
She was right; she knew human nature. “Well, the damage is done. Since you are here, I want your opinion.” She leaned deeper into the sofa and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke gently over her shoulder. “For a very fair blonde, do you think that is a good color?” She waved her cigarette at a bolt leaning in a corner. It was violet satin, shimmering with hints of blue.
“Lovely,” I said, “though I’m not fond of violet, myself.”
The Last Collection Page 19