Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (13 page)

 

 

That evening, Coco and Adrienne make the short walk to a restaurant. The two women are soon joined by their friend Misia Sert.

“I don't want to make this a late night,” Coco says. “There are things I have to do tomorrow, and I want to be back in Garches before it's dark.”

Adrienne remarks, “That makes a change.”

“You normally get up late and work until late,” adds Misia.

“Can't I change my work habits even for one day?”

“No need to get tetchy,” Misia says, with a wink at Adrienne.

Coco is not amused. They both see that. Adrienne attempts to cajole her, telling her everything is taken care of, but Coco throws her a determined look. She's not to be contradicted. Adrienne relents. In a mute gesture of surrender, she taps the ash from her cigarette.

Over dinner, Coco eats less and drinks more than usual. She watches the waitresses glide by like low-grade ministering angels. “Why can't
my
girls work like this?”

“Oh, come on! What's the matter?”

Pressed by Adrienne after several glasses of wine, Coco confesses she feels drawn to Igor. “But he's married,” she complains.

“So?” Misia says. “I've been married three times already. It needn't be an obstacle, believe me.”

Coco has seen Misia distraught often enough to know her flippancy is hard-won. “He has children, for God's sake!”

“That will keep Madame preoccupied, then, won't it?” Adrienne says.

Coco wonders why she's attracted to him, anyway. He isn't handsome, exactly. He certainly isn't wealthy. He's married, with four children. And she knows that, if she wanted, she could easily get other men. She'd be crazy to get involved with him, she reflects. And she cannot stand to be hurt again. Not after Boy. She shudders again to think of his death.

Fortified by wine, Adrienne blurts, “To hell with marriage. There are few enough men left after the war without worrying about that.” She's half joking, but Coco doesn't smile.

“Oh, this
is
serious!” says Misia, in a moment of revelation.

Coco sips a little water and blinks quickly. Then something within her trips. “I don't want to talk about it any more. I don't propose to humiliate myself. He cares too much for his work even to think of getting mixed up with me.” Suddenly sitting up: “And frankly I care too much for my own business, too.”

Offered more wine, Coco, newly resolute, clamps her hand on top of her glass. She's already drunk too much. “Anyway, I have other things to think about.”

“Such as?”

The redirection of her attention seems to energize her. She talks about introducing an in-house perfume into the store. Misia is enthusiastic. Adrienne is cooler about the project, fearing it will compromise the design side of the business. She is worried they might overreach themselves.

Coco says, “A new fragrance.”

“Most people don't even wash,” Adrienne says.

“A woman should smell like a woman, not a rose.”

“I need a new scent. Something less floral,” Misia says. “I've been bitten
twice
in the last few days.” As evidence she offers two small lumps on the back of her arm.

Adrienne winces in sympathy but is quick to counter. “People won't care so long as it masks the stench of their bodies.”

“People will change,” Coco says.

One thing the nuns taught her: to be clean, to wash properly. If women want to smell nice with her fragrance, then they'll have to rinse themselves first. It's that simple.

“You stand to lose hugely if a venture of this sort fails.”

Coco twists her glass in a ring of moisture, casting hoops of light on the tabletop. “You have to take risks in life.”

“I'll drink to that,” Misia says.

Adrienne speaks with exasperated emphasis. “You've taken enough risks already to last a lifetime.”

“It's worked for Poiret, hasn't it?”

There's a silence.

“The business will expand massively if it proves a success. It's simply a question of manufacturing the stuff. Once it's developed, the hard part is over. It's not like clothes where you have to design something new every season. You just churn the perfume out.”

“But why jeopardize everything you have for this . . .” Adrienne casts around for a more contemptuous word but fails to find one. “. . . scent?”

“It will give us a bit of distinction, enhance our standing. Think of it as an exercise in style.”

What she has in mind is not just another toiletry; it's something totally new, something unprecedented, something enchanting and sublime. She wants a perfume so splendid that, at the merest whiff, a man will be intoxicated. It will be glorious, she thinks. Along with love, she feels perfume is what makes a woman complete. And if one inspires the other, then so much the better.

Sensing the wine at work within her, Adrienne says, “Don't you have to research it first?”

“Darling, I already have. I've chosen my perfumer.”

“Who?”

“Ernest Beaux.”

“He's French, then.”

“He's from St. Petersburg. But he works in Grasse.”

“Another Russian!” Adrienne exclaims.

“His father was perfumer to the czar.”

Misia says, “You really go for these Slavs, don't you?”

“Oh, stop it, you two!” She clenches then unclenches her hand. “He's working on samples for me now.”

“It's your money,” Adrienne says, with qualified grace.

“It's not the money I care about,” Coco muses, “it's the independence.”

Misia says, “That's something you realize after husband number three!”

Resignation thickens Adrienne's voice. “I suppose.”

“Here's to us all, then,” Coco offers.

“Your perfume.”

“Your money.”

“And all our independence,” finishes Coco. The three of them raise their glasses to the light and clink hard.

The day after her return from the shop, Coco invites Igor for a walk in the surrounding woods. Above, the sky is vast and blue. Beyond stretch cornfields blotched with poppies. Visible in the distance is the spire of a church.

They stop to sit on the grass, and lean their backs against a cedar tree. To Coco, the tree smells of freshly sharpened pencils. All around them, crickets seethe.

She complains, “I wish
I
could play an instrument.”

Igor says, “But you can sing.”

“Like a crow!”

“That's not true.”

He starts telling her of a soprano who gave up singing because the sound of her own voice made her cry.

She says, “That's ridiculous!”

“Why?”

“It's so precious.”

“I thought it was romantic.”

“Sentimental. There's a difference.”

“I thought it would appeal to you.”

Straightforwardly: “You were wrong.”

She has this ability to belittle him in a way that no one else can. Perhaps, he has time to consider, it's because he cares what she thinks.

Coco prefers to talk about more down-to-earth matters: the amount of tax she has to pay, the interest the banks charge, the ever-increasing wages bill. In Igor's loathing of the Bolsheviks, she finds an echo of her own impatience with workers' rights. Having pulled herself up out of the mire, she has no wish now to give others a helping hand. They'll rise, she thinks, if they're talented enough.

Something reckless enters her head. She stands up and strikes out in the direction of an orchard. Moments later, she's back, her eyes bright with mischief. In her hands she holds two small apples. “Here.” She offers the more healthily distressed of the apples to Igor and burnishes her own against her chest. She twists off the stalk and takes a large bite.

Leaning back against the tree, Igor closes his eyes. With the sun on his face, he feels buoyed up. The world is good, he thinks. Suddenly the insect hum, the sunlight, and the crunch of the apple inside his head synthesize into a single chord. “Good,” he says aloud.

He looks at Coco. He's fascinated by this woman who always seems so much in control. Not only does she cope with everyday problems, she seems able to shape her destiny in a larger sense as well. In short, she's good at life. She has vivacity and strength. He likes that. So different from Catherine, he can't help but observe. And she's shrewd and beautiful, too. He's stirred by her, no question, and feels a strong animal attraction enter his bones. He realizes he hasn't made love now for weeks; months even. A sweet heaviness begins to thicken in his groin.

He has always resisted other women in the past. Here in the present, however, he finds himself tempted beyond measure. He turns his head toward her and sees her lit by the sun. Suddenly he wants to put out his hand and touch her. To prove to her his feelings, to match her audacity. He's so close at this moment he can see the pores on her nose. He feels the veils of flirtation dissolve before a raw urge, a blind will. His fingers stretch tensely. Seconds bend into a new space. His body involves itself in a tropism toward her.

Afraid, though, that some deceitful twist of perspective makes her seem nearer than she really is, he tilts forward to follow the instinct only to lean back, deterred. The moment is lost. She hovers out of reach.

Something of the northern puritan in him has drawn him back; all that formal restraint, that coolness. He hates that in himself. He's afraid to say or do anything irrevocable. Here he is living in Coco's home and, thanks to her patronage, enjoying a fine lifestyle. If he were to make advances, he's not sure what she'd do. She might react badly and tell Catherine. Perhaps her invitation to Bel Respiro was wholly altruistic, after all.

Sweating, he rubs at the reddened dents where the pads of his glasses have chafed in the heat. He thinks of all the love in the world, and none of it for him. He'll never make love to anyone again in his life except Catherine. He sees the possibility, the probability, stretch in front of him, extending to a vanishing point which, he guesses, is his death.

Then sternly he reminds himself, he is here to work. This, for him, is paramount. And there's a strong sense of loyalty in him—always has been. He feels he'll never stop loving Catherine, or the children. They are, and will forever remain, fixtures in his life. There's something charming in flirtation, but something noble in resisting it, he tells himself. Yet he knows, too, that Coco's proximity within the villa is killing him.

He watches her throw away the remains of her apple and follows suit. Then they set off back through the woods. Dog roses blossom in the hedges. The grass is thick with butterflies and fungus. Birds call sweetly from the crowns of the trees.

Coco offers her arm and, with exaggerated gallantry, Igor takes it. There is an intimacy in their just being together, he thinks; the two of them touched by the same air. He feels her lean against him. Their embrace tightens, though visibly they move no closer. For a time, they are conscious through layers of cloth that their arms touch. Then without warning he reaches across to kiss her, quickly and deliberately, in a way that still might be interpreted as merely playful. A noncommittal kiss on the cheek, soft and moist, lasting less than a second.

She permits it, and smiles without looking at him, but doesn't encourage him to go on. He senses it as a rejection. She has drawn her line. Only so far, but no further, he understands.

Walking in silence back to the house, they disengage just before they enter the garden. For there Catherine sits, reading in the sunshine. And there the children play.

 

 

 

At night, on the balcony, Catherine stands close to her husband. She says, “It's romantic, isn't it?”

Romantic: the smell of jasmine on the air, the moon in three-quarter profile, and the cicadas fiddling like café violinists. He cannot deny it. “Yes,” he says, leaning against the rail.

He feels the need to appease her after their fight the other night. They have not spoken openly for several days now. Humiliated still, Igor has been uncommunicative and sullen. He can sustain a sulk for weeks. Usually it falls to Catherine to make up. But on this occasion, it is he who attempts to be conciliatory.

He moves toward her. They hold hands; his eyes grow soft. Taking her in his arms, he kisses her on the forehead chastely. His fingers stroke her cheek. She inclines her neck to accommodate his touch. His lips wander tenderly to her eyelids. But when he tries to kiss her on the lips, she moves her head so that his mouth meets only her hair.

“No,” she says, almost inaudibly.

In avoiding his lips like this, in averting her head, he feels she's withdrawing her whole being. She seems, suddenly, a lifeless doll in his arms. The faintest impulse of desire drains from him. He holds her slackly for a moment, feels her head press against his chest. She's sleepy, she says. It's been a long day. The children are already in bed.

Igor can't remember the last time they slept together as man and wife. She's sick, he knows, and that doesn't make it easy. And perhaps it shouldn't matter, but it does. He aches with frustration. The absence of physical love is burning a hole inside him. He feels a tension within him that is desperate to be released.

With a final hug, he releases her from his arms. At that moment a gust of wind buffets her from one side, causing her to stagger. He can't believe she stays upright. She has to steady herself against the railing. He thinks of Coco and the way she'd find the wind invigorating, the way she'd feed off its energy and make it her own. A vision of her comes to him: her dark hair, her inky eyes and ardent mouth, that wide, shapeless smile. In thinking of her, he looks at his wife. In his mind he attempts to superimpose the image of the one upon the other. Try as he might, the image will not fit. They're too different, misaligned. White note and black note. Together they jar.