By lunchtime I was famished and made my way back to the villa, to the dining room. I wasn’t the only guest.
Already gathered on the terrace were Coco, looking chic in white silk pajama pants and a black sweater; another woman; and three men. One of the men was von Dincklage. Otto was with him, in his driver’s uniform, stiff and unsmiling. When our eyes met there was a flicker in his face, but then it was blank again. I could tell, though. He was as surprised as I was.
Instinctively, I started walking toward Otto, hoping he would put his arm around me, even lift me off my feet, as he had before. I realized in time, no, I couldn’t do that, not with the baron there, not with Coco watching. I did a quarter turn in Coco’s direction and headed to her.
They—all except Otto, who stood deferentially to the side—had been talking quickly, passionately, a combination of French, Italian, and English. They stopped midsentence when they saw me approaching. Coco looked at me as if she had never really seen me before, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open, and I knew that she had seen that flicker between Otto and me. Had seen, and was already wondering how it could be used.
I paused yards away from them, feeling foolish because of the lavender tucked behind my ear.
Coco wore her famous pearls dangling down her back, and they swayed when she turned and beckoned me forward.
“Come meet my friends,” she said.
Madame and Monsieur Lombardi were, Coco, explained, old acquaintances. Madame was English with an aristocratic accent that suggested she had been received at court and dined at Westminster. Her husband was Italian, and there was a quality of ramrod posture, hostile hauteur, suggesting he was a fascist, a fact ascertained over lunch, when he frequently referred to his good friend Mussolini.
“And of course, you’ve met Baron von Dincklage.” The head of Nazi propaganda in Paris bowed over my hand, but he did not smile.
“Madame Schiaparelli’s protégé,” he said coldly. “And Madame Bouchard’s friend. I understand you saw her off at the train station. Very kind of you.”
I stole a quick look at Otto. He blushed bright red. So he had been following Ania on von Dincklage’s orders. Was he supposed to stop Ania from getting on the train? He hadn’t. He had let her go to Charlie.
Coco winced at the reference to Ania and led us to the table for lunch, a long trestle set up in the garden with crystal, silver, vases of wildflowers.
“Sit here, next to me, Spatz,” Coco said.
Spatz. Sparrow. They are lovers now, I thought. She’s being kind to me because I helped remove her rival from Paris. Spatz—very strange, I thought, to think of one of the highest-ranking men in the Abwehr as a little sparrow—held the chair for Coco and took his place at the head of the table.
“The baron and I have been friends for years,” Coco told me. “Haven’t we, Spatz?”
“Surely not that long,” he said, staring hard at me. “Ania mentioned you. A painter, I believe. A professional woman.” His scorn turned up the corners of his mouth into more of a sneer than a smile.
Coco blinked and quickly composed herself, ignoring the condescension of his comment. An adroit hostess, she passed the bread basket and made certain everyone’s wineglass was full.
“The Lombardis just dropped in,” she said. “Unexpectedly. They won’t be staying,”
There was a distinct coolness between Madame Lombardi and Coco; old friends they might have been, but I sensed they weren’t any longer. Coco, during the introductions, had visibly stepped away to avoid touching or even coming closer to Madame Lombardi, and never looked directly at her.
Otto stood to the side, waiting. “Fetch the suitcases,” von Dincklage finally said to him. Otto’s right arm went up in the Nazi salute, and he disappeared. That awful salute. But he was in uniform; it was required of him, I told myself.
We dined on salad and fish with Sicilian oranges for dessert. The conversation was neutral to the point of being boring. Opinions were exchanged on the latest gallery exhibits, the latest films, which restaurants were outdoing the others with their winter menus.
“That fellow, Picasso. How dare he call that stuff he paints art?” Lombardi said. “Decadence. He probably uses drugs.” His wife laughed uncomfortably and said, “Now, dear. You know even art must progress and change. Isn’t that right, Madame Sutter? What do you paint?”
“Decadent art,” I said, but nobody laughed.
“What’s wrong with a good landscape, something that looks like something?” Monsieur Lombardi grumbled. “Heh, Madame Sutter, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, if you want to stay in the nineteenth century,” I said.
His wife, bored by the conversation about art, changed the topic and ended her opinions with attempts at personal reminiscence with Coco. “Remember that night a few years ago when we drank too much champagne on Bendor’s yacht and my ring slipped off, into the waves? Oh, I still miss that diamond, so lovely,” and, “I loved his previous ballet. I think Diaghilev may be past his prime. Remember? We saw it together, Coco.”
But Coco ignored the attempts at intimacy. When Coco was cold, she could outfreeze an iceberg, and she was obviously feeling very cold to Madame and Monsieur Lombardi. Her arched eyebrows arched higher; her thin mouth became even thinner. The Lombardis had dropped in for lunch, but they weren’t invited to stay as well for dinner, for the weekend, as they seemed to have hoped.
“I brought my walking shoes,” Spatz said when the maid had taken away the cheese plate. “We’ll get exercise, yes?”
Coco murmured something unintelligible, but Madame Lombardi sat up straighter. She reminded me of a hound that has caught the scent.
“So you are staying for a day or two?” she asked.
“Most certainly.” Spatz helped himself to an orange and, using his fruit knife, cut off the peel in even wedges. Coco studied the sky.
Madame Lombardi and her husband exchanged knowing glances.
Oh Lord, I thought. I’m here as a decoy, a cover, a chaperone! But Coco’s cover has been blown. This is an assignation between Coco and Spatz, and this unctuous woman and her Mussolini-loving husband know it.
“Delicious fruit,” said Madame Lombardi, peeling an orange and still hoping to be invited to stay. She was not.
Coco and Spatz went for a walk, leaving me alone on the terrace with her guests. I pretended to nap and opened a magazine over my face to keep it from sunburn.
When Coco came back and the uninvited guests were still there, her irritation flared into a nervous cough. The sun had moved from directly overhead into the west; the light grew subdued, and the crickets began to announce the coming evening.
“You don’t want to be driving these roads after dark,” Coco said. The Lombardis rose and, with great reluctance, left.
“Such bores.” Coco waved them off as their chauffeured limousine disappeared down the road. Her face was like that of one who has eaten something sour.
“Good. They shouldn’t have been here.” Von Dincklage finished his brandy and glanced impatiently at his watch. He’d had other plans for the afternoon, and I could guess what they were.
“Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have a nap. All this fresh air . . .” I left Coco and her Spatz alone so they could speak freely and do what lovers do when the affair is still new, still electric and full of possibility.
I spent the rest of the afternoon reading one of Winston Churchill’s history books from Coco’s bookshelf, curled on a satin bedcover, the sounds of crickets making the warm air in the room vibrate. Eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke the room was dark and still. Had I slept through dinner?
Hungry, curious, I went downstairs. The villa was completely silent; I couldn’t even find a maid. Disoriented, I caught the smell of cigarette smoke and followed it out a side door, into a garden of potted herbs.
The cigaret
te smoker rose to quick attention when he heard me. It was Otto.
“Lily,” he said. “I didn’t know you would be here.”
“A last-minute plan. How have you been?” I tried to sound casual, friendly. Merely friendly.
“Well,” he said. “And you? You are painting?” He remembered, too, I could hear it in his voice. He offered me the chair next to his, and we sat side by side, staring up at the dark velvet sky.
“It is the color of the sky in the hunting scene in the Duke of Berry’s Book of Hours,” I said, “pale blue at the bottom, indigo at the top.”
“Ah. So decadent knows of classical art. May I? I have thought of you often, Lily.” He reached over and took my hand. It felt natural and logical, that we would sit in the dark night, holding hands.
I thought of Allen, and he seemed both very far away and very near. I thought of how he used to smile at me, his hand over his heart, how the smile had excluded everyone and everything that wasn’t me, the secret smile of lovers. In my thoughts, I watched him turn and walk out of the room that had been our shared bedroom at the school, his math books tucked under his arm. He never said good-bye, only I’ll see you later.
“Where are Coco and the baron?” I asked.
“They have gone into the village. They are dining there tonight.”
“And you didn’t drive them?”
“No. I have been given the evening off. Mademoiselle Chanel said she wished to drive.”
Oh she did, did she? Leaving me here, with Otto, and she had seen that flicker.
“Nice of them,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Are you hungry? I can ask the cook for something.”
“Maybe some cheese.”
“And wine,” he agreed. He disappeared into a large arched doorway and came back a few minutes later, carrying the tray himself.
“They are lovers, aren’t they? Now. Coco and the baron.” From one of the ground-floor windows I could hear a girl’s voice, laughing, a man’s lower voice. The upstairs maid, the one who had unpacked my suitcase, I recognized her voice. Was she with the butler? A boy from the village? Who would blame them? After frozen Paris, the air in the south felt as warm as a breath on your neck, the afterimage of the afternoon sun still burned red on the back of my eyelids.
“I think so. No, I am certain. He has many women, though.” Otto lit another cigarette.
“And you? Do you have many women?”
“You are teasing me, I think.” Even in the dark I could see his blush as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “There was a girl. At the conservatory. That was long ago, it seems.”
“You miss her.” I didn’t ask what had happened to her. His abrupt silence begged for privacy.
“I miss many things. I miss life before this.”
“Then why are you a part of this?”
“You think I had a choice? If I didn’t give the salute in school, my father would have lost his job. If I did not join the student party, I would have lost my scholarship. And to be in the army, well, that is compulsory. There is no choice. There are many in Germany who would resist the Führer if they could. But they are afraid, and so they keep silent. I was lucky that my father had enough connections to keep me off the battlefield. I shouldn’t even speak of these things. Tell me about your paintings,” he said. “What are they?”
“Color. Almost all color. Now reds. Sienna, which is more like brown, like a red that has not yet found its courage; scarlet, crimson. Flame red. Blood red.”
“I think blood red will be easy to find in days to come.” Otto sighed and crushed out the cigarette.
“If you had a piano, what would you play at this moment?” I asked him.
“Chopin. One of the études, slow and light. Full of questions. Questions I would ask you.”
“Now’s your chance.”
“Now I can’t think of them. I think I prefer the silence and holding your hand.”
“But it’s not silent. Listen. Crickets. An owl.” We listened to the countryside sounds of darkness, still holding hands. I leaned farther back in my chair, feeling the warm breeze on my neck, imagining what it would be like to have a kiss placed just there, in the hollow of my throat.
Otto and I finished the wine, the cheese, the plum jam spread on thick slices of brioche, and an hour later, when even the hem of the sky had turned from pale blue to cerulean, I took him by the hand and led him upstairs to my bedroom. The evening required it, demanded it. This desire for Otto, and I did desire him, the way the dry ground desires rain, the way plants desire sun. Zeno’s paradox expressed another way: we are always arriving, yet we never arrive, Allen told me once. There are no beginnings, no endings. Each stage of our life, each emotion, swims on the shore where another wave has just eased back out to the sea.
“Are you sure?” Otto asked, kissing me exactly where I had imagined that first kiss, that hollow where the shadow is mauve even in bright sunshine.
“Yes,” I said, closing the curtains, shutting out the night, excluding everything that was not just me and Otto.
I thought he would rush, that perhaps it had been as long for him as it had been for me and that impatience would disallow that lovely, slow lingering. He didn’t rush. He was slow and careful, his pianist’s fingers running trills on my spine, thrilling me, making anything other than a response to him impossible at that moment. I wrapped my legs around him; he arched over me. We slept tangled in each other, slippery with the heat of the night and our own heat, and he murmured in his sleep, German words I didn’t understand and didn’t need to. In his sleep, he nuzzled his head between my neck and shoulder and cupped a hand over one of my breasts.
I stayed awake long after he had fallen asleep, remembering what it was like to breathe lightly, slowly, so as not to disturb my lover, that hand resting on my breast.
In the morning, he was gone, and so was the baron. But we were still connected. I knew it, just as I was certain I would see him again. And again.
* * *
• • •
Bettina helped me make some sense of the scene between Coco and the Lombardis later when I returned to Paris. “Politics,” she said. “The Lombardis are known spies.”
“For whom?”
“Probably anybody who will pay. Her housekeeper is German, the husband is Italian, the wife is English. I’ve heard their phone bill every month is a thousand francs for all the calls to Munich and London.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“We need to know about them. They hate communists; they are our worst enemies.”
“And why does Coco dislike them, if they share political beliefs?”
“They have gotten her in trouble. They are too notorious, too obvious, and they brought her to the attention of the minister of the interior, just because of her friendship with them. Or, perhaps, she just can’t be friends with them in public, in the light of day.”
Bettina frowned over the sketches I’d been showing her, for a new display. “This,” she said. “This might work. The others, I don’t think so. You aren’t focusing, Lily.” She pursed her scarlet lips and studied me. “So, you had a pleasant weekend? I won’t ask with whom. I already know. Chanel. That’s where you met the Lombardis, I assume. And I do not approve.”
“I didn’t ask for approval. And besides, you know that Schiap wanted me to spend time with Coco; a little back-and-forth serves her purpose.”
“Time, yes. But don’t dig yourself in too deeply.” She lit a cigarette and glowered. “Not with Chanel, nor with that driver. Ah. She blushes.”
How did Bettina know, and so quickly? There are no secrets in Paris, Schiap kept telling me. In the fitting rooms of couturier salons and boutiques, women were more confessional than with their priests, and women, some women, knew everything, about everyone. Chauffeurs tell maids, greengrocers tell cook
s, secretaries and receptionists repeat gossip over coffee. Round and round.
• FIFTEEN •
“No. No, and no again,” Bettina shouted at me again, several weeks later. It was spring again, the first day warm enough to throw open the windows and air the rooms of their winter damp. She flung down the sketches I had shown her. She hadn’t forgiven me for what she thought was my betrayal of Schiap, when I’d gone south with Coco.
I’d had a particularly rough morning in my attic, when the colors wouldn’t come out right and I wasted half a tube of expensive carmine red. Bettina’s mood made me wish I’d stayed hidden in my attic.
“Well,” I said, gathering up the sketches and jamming them into my purse. “I’ll come up with some new ideas.” I wanted to shout back at her but didn’t dare. I needed the work.
“Do that,” Bettina agreed, and when I left I let the door slam behind me.
I ended up at the Ritz bar for an early cocktail. Several of them, to wash down the sourness of loneliness and defeat.
I hadn’t seen Otto since my return to Paris. Not a word from him. We had exchanged no promises and I knew his time was not his own. He was a soldier. A German soldier. There was a possibility that my adopted country, France, might soon be at war with his. Even that my native land, America, would join that war against his country. Madness, I told myself. That night in Provence was a onetime affair, not to be repeated. Forget it. But I didn’t want to forget it. I wanted to feel his breath on my neck again, his fingers playing a Chopin étude on my back.
Schiap and Gogo returned from Switzerland during my trip south, then left for Tangiers when I was back from La Pausa. When they came back to Paris they were rosy with sunburn, their trunks filled with bead jewelry and exotic fabrics, deep reds embroidered in black and white, orange, blue the color of a late-summer afternoon. “No greens,” Schiap pointed out. “It is a sacred color, not to be used with indiscretion. Maybe that’s why you don’t like green, Lily, because it is meant to remain a mystery. Always,” Schiap said. “Always, one must be dreaming of what comes next.” She wrapped beaded necklaces around my neck, then stepped back, considering. “I think the fantasy of the clothes must be even stronger now. Clothes you can escape from reality in.”
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