Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2 page)

“Your hair's too long, girl, and your skirt's too short.”

Céline smiled, half apologetically touching her Alice band and tugging the hem of her miniskirt down. She knew she was being teased. “It's the fashion,” the girl answered.

“What do
you
know?” Coco snapped.

Stung, Céline resumed making the bed. But Coco, placing a restraining hand upon her arm, and in a gentler, almost beseeching tone, said, “I'm very tired now.” She leaned for support upon one of the brass balls at the corners of her bed and saw herself drastically foreshortened in its orb. She felt dizzy. “I want to lie down,” she said.

The maid nodded in response. Her lips leaped into a smile. Coco removed her coat and glasses and, with a kneading effort of her feet, her shoes. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed, she allowed her head to be set back on the pillow. She flinched a little in bringing her legs around.

She had never felt so exhausted. Seeing the dead birds had depressed her. Her stomach churned. Why did she have to confront this on her one day off? She needed rest before returning to work tomorrow. And there were a hundred things she had to do. She'd barely completed the spring collection, and already she was being pressed to submit designs for the summer. The pressure was on. Every year it seemed to get worse. Her mind busied itself with the following week's schedule, the details merging in an impossible knot. Her head began to throb, and a tension entered her shoulders. She felt the blood run sluggishly to her fingers and her toes.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to recollect those months she spent with Stravinsky in her villa. The century's greatest composer living with its most celebrated couturiere and perfumer. Who would have guessed it back then? Who would believe it now?

Slowly the tendrilous threads of her current worries unraveled, giving way to memories of sunlight and birdsong, and the re-created spasms of a piano. Its rhythms melted imperceptibly into the rhythms of her breathing as she slid into a dream-filled unconsciousness and succumbed to a deeper sleep.

An hour later, she awoke feeling a sharp star of pain in the center of her chest. The pain spread rapidly to crowd her arms. It pressed down from above upon her skull. Fear seized her body. Her mind filled with alarm. She glanced about. She saw first the white walls of her room, then the table by her bed. A glass of water rested there next to a white-shaded lamp and a triple icon—a present given to her by Stravinsky half a century before.

The white walls. The bedside table. The icon. In panic, Coco tried to orient herself from these reference points. Still she felt displaced.

Abruptly something tilted within her. Her eyes took on a wild expression. A surge of panic filled her head.

“Lift me up quick!” she called to the maid, who came running through from the adjoining room. A feeling of suffocation rose in her throat. “I can't breathe!” Her eyes were wide with fright. Her voice in her own ears sounded disembodied. As though they were responsible for choking her, she pulled at the white pearls strung around her neck. Then unpreventably the room began to spin, whirling in a vertiginous blur. Suddenly covered in sweat, her skin gave off a sharp scent of agitation. The spokes of her irises seemed to form wheels.

Céline grabbed a syringe and with difficulty broke open a vial of Sedol. “It's all right, I'm here now. Everything will be fine.”

Coco's eyes were drawn to a corner of the room. Her body drained of color. Her fingers lost their responsiveness. A high note penetrated her ears. “They're killing me!” she managed, with a half-silent scream.

At that instant, she felt something irrevocable fit itself around her. And in the split second before the shape of her death took hold, as the last swatches of oxygen escaped around her brain, a million images processed themselves on a palpitating membrane at the back of her eye.

It all came with the vividness of a mirror, the diffused brilliance of a dream. And in this final clarity she recalled how he looked as he bent to kiss her, remembered sharply his dark eyes.

She mumbled, “So this is it!”

Then she fell through into silence. Her face lost its shape. Around her, all she could see was darkness. Everything went blank.

Too late, Céline held the syringe fast against Coco's arm. Gently she set it down. With a calmness that surprised her, she closed Coco's eyes.

1913

Coco is at home in the rue Cambon, dancing spiritedly to some inner music. She sings to herself in front of a full-length mirror.

Her lips are red, her eyes sable, and her white dress cut with ravishing simplicity.

Several times she turns around, admiring her slim silhouette. She relishes the crackly sound her petticoat makes as it rubs against the silk of her gown.

All week she has labored over that gown, fussing over the collar and fretting at the hem. Now at last she is happy. It looks stunning, and she knows it. Daringly the tiered white silk hangs well above the ankle. Straight and fluted at the bottom, the dress flows like a liquid down her body.

She has slaved away, too, at the hat: a broad brim of black silk and a close-fitting crown. She pulls it on, and tucks away a lick of hair, adjusting the brim until it hangs at a sly angle. A shadow falls across one side of her face.

She laughs. Then tilting her head back amorously, she dabs with a single finger a smidgen of perfume along her throat.

Tonight she is excited. She has never been to a proper concert before. Several works are to be performed, including the premiere of a piece by Stravinsky. Everyone will be there. It should be an event. She feels a little apprehensive, but experiences, too, a heady intensification of her senses. Each whisper of her dress, each spore of her perfume, every texture that answers the touch of her hands seems to sharpen her awareness of the world around her.

The telephone rings, startling her. She chooses to ignore it. The driver is already waiting, and she doesn't want to be late. She checks she has her purse, her parasol. The ringing stops. She hopes it wasn't Caryathis saying she couldn't come. Too bad, she thinks, thrusting her hands into her gloves.

Descending the stairs, she's conscious of the mannequins in the shop below. Cold torsos. Plaster heads. Stiffly angled hats and gowns. She feels the heat they are cheated of. Everything seems so quiet and still here compared to the agitation she feels inside. As she opens the door, the smells and noises of a raw spring evening greet her. She takes several head-clearing breaths, inhaling deeply as if receiving a new draft of life. Then with a quick movement, she steps into the back of the waiting car.

It is dusk. Lighting-up time. All around her the city's lamps are coming on. A garish splendor spreads across the capital, extending up the avenues' spurs. Trams thunder along the boulevards. Omnibuses bully up the streets. The car moves slowly past the bar at the back of the Ritz and turns sharply right into the rue St. Honoré. Idling for a moment in the traffic, the driver swings left down the rue Royale toward the Place de la Concorde. Crossing one of the tram tracks at an angle, the wheels protest with a high-pitched squeal. The car jolts from the impact. Coco's hat bumps against the roof.

“Careful!” she scolds the driver.

“Sorry.”

“Pfff,” she says, waving him away.

She has been working hard all afternoon. Her stomach feels empty. She has not eaten now for several hours. She wouldn't feel comfortable in that dress otherwise. And she's keen to meet her escort. It's all been arranged by a friend.

Her nervousness and the motion of the car mix together to make her giddy. The sensation of weightlessness stretches to her limbs. It's odd, but as the car swerves lightly this way then that, she has the sensation of being drawn toward something by invisible lines of force. For a moment, she sees herself from above. She feels as if she's floating.

Finally, after picking its way through the crowds in the avenue Montaigne, the car comes to a stop. Glued to a Morris column is a poster advertising Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring
. The theater doors have opened. The flower sellers are out in force. Hundreds of people are milling around.

Coco slides out into the humming darkness. The air seems warmer here, as though charged. Something sappy in the atmosphere attracts her. The magnolia and horse-chestnut blossoms are brighter almost than the lamps.

She straightens her dress and retilts her hat to an even perkier angle. Something in the energy and press of the people here tells her this is going to be a good evening. She can sense the attention of men's eyes upon her. Her feet seem scarcely to touch the floor.

Feeling almost bridal, she glides toward the theater's lights.

 

 

 

Igor sits in his dressing room at the theater, cutting his toenails.

A scatter of crisp little moons has gathered on the carpet, the color of old piano keys. Snip. Bending low, he examines the horn of his big toe. He has cut too deeply with the cuticle scissors. A tender ridge of skin has been exposed, leaving a raw pink crescent around the nail.

“Shit!”

Worse, his new shoes pinch him, and he winces as he stands. As he pulls on his shirt, it snags around his head. The buttons are fastened too high. For a split second he experiences the panic of being smothered. His vision whites out. He hates it when that happens. It reminds him of the time as a child he fell under the ice. Headless, he wrestles his arms into the sleeves. Then he reaches up to release a button, and surfaces with a gasp.

Looking in the mirror, he's half startled as always by this extension of himself, this twin who appears with features tweaked, and with left and right queerly reversed. Testingly he raises a hand to his face. The motion agrees with a feeling in his cheek. He feels relieved, but when he coughs the noise seems to come from somewhere outside him.

Agitated, he paces around. His fingers perform complex phrases against his trouser legs. He worries that the first violin and flute parts are ill-balanced. He worries that the score is too difficult and that the dancers aren't fully prepared. The choreography is too intricate, he thinks. It doesn't correspond to the tempo. He's told Nijinsky over and over, but he doesn't listen. He seems incapable of counting properly and has trouble even clapping in time. Meanwhile Diaghilev just indulges him; his lover, of course, can do no wrong.

Igor has a premonition of terrible notices and humiliating reviews. His mouth feels scratchy; his throat is dry. He realizes he needs a drink and reaches for his glass. His spectacles catch the wine's vibration as it rises to his lips.

Simultaneously the muffled sound of tuning instruments insinuates into the room: scales being played, little runs undertaken, complex passages rehearsed. Unperformed, the music seems not to have left him yet. Its jerky rhythms twitch inside him, pulling invisibly at his limbs. Something fluttery in his stomach responds to the woodwinds warming up. He hears the stepwise descending minor chords against a rising sequence of sevenths in the bass and experiences that queasiness again. His hands, he sees, are mottled. He feels almost sick with fear.

In his mind, he pictures members of the orchestra crowding the stage, thickening like knots of crotchets. He tries not to think about the audience. A restless spectator himself, it unsettles him to conjure the image of hundreds of people filing in.

In truth, he's not quite sure they're ready for this. He almost pities them, sitting there. Little do they suspect what's going to hit them. God knows how they'll react.

His thoughts turn toward his wife, Catherine: his ideal listener. He half wishes she were here. She's pregnant with their fourth child. And sick with it. Instinctively he feels for the small studded crucifix she has given him as a good-luck charm for tonight. It's in the left breast pocket of his jacket: the side where his heart is. Detecting its shape through thicknesses of cloth, he smiles, uplifted. He wants that new baby. And yes, let it be another girl as Catherine wishes. Two of each would be good, he thinks; the symmetry appeals. He wants tonight to be a triumph for her. He takes out the cross and kisses it.

In a couple of hours it will all be over, he reminds himself. But the success or otherwise of tonight's performance could determine his whole future. His career as a composer may well depend upon it. In the last few years he's done some good things; he's been noticed. It's said that he's promising, that he has potential. And now, at thirty-one, he knows it's time for him to realize it. He needs a big success to secure his reputation, to establish himself; to arrive. If tonight goes well, it could be the turning point.

A boy knocks. “Five minutes, sir.”

As he drains the last of the wine, slivers of red flicker across his face. He worries at his cuffs. For the hundredth time, he looks at the clock. He waits until the spasms of the minute hand reach twelve.

He takes one final reassuring look full in the mirror and brushes some imagined fluff from his lapels. He crosses himself. “Please, God, let it go well!”

Then, breathing in deeply, he opens the door. The music grows louder. His heartbeat quickens. He strides toward the hall.

 

 

 

Inside the new white marbled splendor of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a line of gilt runs around the walls, connecting the boxes with a golden thread.

The whole of fashionable Paris is here. Everywhere there are perfunctory introductions and enthusiastic reunions between the coolest of friends. Laughter swells and ebbs locally. Fans ventilate the flames of gossip. Rumor and counter-rumor run along the aisles.