Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (29 page)

“No. It must remain exclusive.”

“But what if the clients
don't
ask?”

“We'll tell the old ladies they need it if they still want to be kissed.”

“And the younger ones?”

“I'll tell them it's all they need to wear in bed.”

Adrienne laughs.

“We could have bottles displayed across the salon.” Coco leans forward conspiratorially in her seat. Her hands link together around her knees. Her toes just touch the floor. “The point is to flatter them. We say that if, in their opinion, the perfume will sell, then we might consider manufacturing it.”

“So you include them in the process.”

“We make them think we do.”

“You're such a fox, Coco.”

“It's a matter of getting people to know and talk about it, and then to buy the damn thing.” She readjusts her skirt and sits back.

“So when do we begin?”

“Here I am, and here's the perfume. Why don't we start right away?”

“I could get some of the girls to start spraying now . . .”

Coco looks suddenly tired.

Adrienne notices. “I'm sorry, I haven't asked how everything is.”

“Everything's fine,” Coco says, too quickly. Yesterday Joseph approached her, asking about the possibility—if it wasn't too inconvenient or impertinent, et cetera—of a holiday. The poor man is afraid of her, she thinks. She does vaguely recall promising them a few days off. It's just so inconvenient, though.

“And how is Igor?”

In response, she seems poised and cool. “Very well, thank you.” He has not gone with her to Paris for the last few afternoons.

In a low voice: “Are you in love, Coco?” Adrienne fixes her with a look that will admit nothing other than a reply of absolute candor.

Coco returns the look. She expects to feel uncomfortable but doesn't, and finds herself saying to her own surprised ears, “My work comes first. Always. Men come second.” They regard one another challengingly for a few moments.

“Good,” says Adrienne.

“Good,” Coco says.

“Shall we spray?”

“Let's spray.”

The two of them walk abreast down the stairs with a slightly intimidating rhythm, Coco clutching her bag as though it is a pack of high explosives.

 

 

 

Returning unexpectedly early from the shop next afternoon, Coco rushes to Igor's study. She has to talk to him. She wants to make up. She finds she misses him after all. And it was unforgivable of her to tear up the invitation. She knows that now, and she wants to say sorry. But no sound comes from the piano, and Igor is not there. She moves upstairs and hears low voices coming from the Stravinskys' bedroom. Inching toward the door, which is fractionally ajar, she listens to the conversation going on inside.

There is a tone of intimacy between Catherine and Igor. Coco dares to move closer. Through the thin strip of light between the door and the wall, she glimpses them together. Catherine is in bed. Fully clothed, Igor lies next to her propped upon one elbow. He has pressed her head like a child's to his breast and is lifting her hair in tender caresses. He speaks to her in reassuring tones. Coco strains to hear. She doesn't need to understand Russian to catch the atmosphere that hangs between them.

Catherine's cheeks shine wetly. Her eyeballs seem to tremble beneath closed lids. Her complexion is hectic. Igor kisses her tears.

Coco stands unseen, jaw firmly set, with one hand on the doorjamb and the other sunk into her pocket. She feels the skin on her face stretch tight and experiences a collapsing sensation inside her chest. Flinching, she turns away. Vertigo afflicts her as she stands at the top of the stairs. They seem steeper suddenly by several degrees. She needs to grip the banister hard for support.

She wonders why she bothered hurrying back from the shop at all. Adrienne had wanted her to stay. A wave of blankness breaks inside her, and she realizes she hasn't eaten for hours. All the radiance of expectation drains from her face. She feels utterly betrayed.

Although she has seen nothing revelatory, she senses something tip like a balance inside her head. There are things between Igor and his wife she will never be privileged to know or understand, things that can never be completely canceled out. She realizes that now.

Igor will never leave Catherine. That much is certain. That is an act of riddance to which he will never submit. And yet, Coco thinks, it is craven of him to stay with her. It is becoming too much. For all the loving tenderness he has afforded her over the last few months, the one thing he will absolutely not do is sacrifice his wife. There's a whole history of care and affection from which Coco feels excluded. And this latest glimpse of intimacy serves to estrange her still further. Their marriage will always be there: gnawing, irrevocable; a hard contractual fact.

It all seems so wildly obvious now. And the hurt is worse because she feels she's connived in her own blindness. Was she insane? Did she not see? Could she ever have imagined he would give her up? And is that what she really wanted, anyway? It is the most banal of realizations, yet it does not prevent her experiencing a swelling sense of dread.

Seeing them together, Igor and Catherine, man and wife, has started a pang of jealousy within her. A terrible sense of illegitimacy assails her again. For an instant, she feels physically sick. Back in her study, with one violent movement, Coco sweeps off the table all the fabrics that lie in neat piles. In a fury, she picks up the racquet that Igor used that day in August with the Serts. It has lain there in her study ever since. She pulls at the broken string until its whole length unravels from the head. Scrunching up the catgut, she throws it across the room. Then she bangs the frame so strenuously on the desk that the wood begins to splinter. Hearing it crack, she continues smashing it down until the head snaps off completely.

The truth is tortured into her. He might dally with her, but at the end of the day he will always crawl back to Catherine.

“Bastard!” she curses, sinking into her seat. Impotently she hits the dinted surface of the desk and lays her head down, defeated. She sobs fiercely. A feeling of emptiness possesses her. After a time, she manages to calm down. Supporting her face with both hands, she plants her elbows on the desk. Silence surrounds her, pressing through the darkening afternoon.

Biting her lip, she remembers what she said to Adrienne about her work coming first. Something within her tightens. She begins thinking hard.

Six days after Coco telephoned inviting him to stay, Grand Duke Dmitri arrives with little ceremony but several trunkloads of luggage. He also brings with him his majordomo, Piotr: a hairy, bearlike man, utterly servile and grimly inarticulate.

Coco first met Dmitri in Biarritz last spring, where they established an immediate rapport. Dashing and handsome, with impeccable credentials, he is the grandson of Alexander II, cousin to Czar Nicholas II, and one of the assassins of Rasputin. She passes off his arrival as a gesture toward Igor. He can speak Russian to his countryman and enjoy some male company at last. But Igor senses that Coco has other, more shadowy and as yet undefined motives. And he's a little perplexed as to why Dmitri, and why now.

Immediately he feels jealous and resentful. Swashbuckling, and with a confirmed reputation as a lady's man, Dmitri brings into the house a sense of irrepressible energy and force. This dispirits Igor, and he can barely conceal the fact. He manages to be polite but cannot avoid a certain curtness in addressing him. It is one thing to owe allegiance to a czar whose portrait you fix on the wall. It is another to have some jumped-up courtier come in, look up at the print, and say, “Ah, Cousin Nicholas. A good likeness.”

Dmitri radiates an uncommon aristocratic vitality. Tall, he towers comically over Igor. And his acid green eyes seem, with each hurled look, intent on dissolving Igor's features.

Eleven years her junior, at first Coco thinks him immature. But this, she sees, is just in contrast to Igor, who always seems so solemn. She begins to appreciate his bluff good spirits and his pranksterish love of fun. Such a change from Igor's self-regarding earnestness. It's funny seeing them together, she thinks. They stand off like prizefighters. Igor bristles every time he comes near.

She realizes with a thrill that he's becoming possessive. The two men rarely speak, though they greet each other with near military courtesy. When they do converse, it is in rapid bursts of Russian. Usually they end up disagreeing. Privately Igor calls Dmitri a dolt. Dmitri speaks of Igor's social constipation, relishing the potential for mischief in imposing himself upon the house. Coco sits in the middle and watches as each heatedly debates, then shrugs and translates—or willfully mistranslates—what the other has to say.

Unlike Igor, Dmitri was in St. Petersburg when the Revolution broke out. And, acting quickly, he managed to rescue some of his wealth before the Bolsheviks took over. But his finances are not so robust as to allow him to resist the offer of free accommodation. Especially when his hostess is the charming Mademoiselle Chanel. Shrewdly he has come armed with a present: a set of Romanov pearls. There is even talk, to Coco's unashamed delight, of him securing for her a Fabergé egg.

Igor looks on with bitterness. He could never afford to give such gifts. Meanwhile, it occurs to him, he still hasn't finished his symphony.

 

 

 

Increasingly irritated at having to tiptoe around the rooms of her own house, Coco feels the novelty and excitement of her relationship with Igor quickly diminish to indifference on her part. Her frustration modulates to nonchalance in his company.

She resolves to spend more time at the shop. Determined to break free, she stops seeing Igor completely in the afternoons. After a week in which they fail to meet alone even once, Igor seeks an explanation.

It would be inappropriate, Coco says, now that they have a guest, to sneak off together. Besides, it would be that much riskier with Dmitri around. They must take care not to be exposed, especially given their efforts in previous weeks to keep the affair hidden. They don't want people to start gossiping now, do they? Least of all Dmitri, who would quickly spread news of Igor's peccadilloes among his network of expatriate friends. No, a cooling-off period is necessary, she insists.

Igor assents, but smarts unhappily at his displacement from the center of Coco's life. He sees the sense in her argument but is less certain of her sincerity. If she feels strongly enough about him, he thinks, then why is she jeopardizing the success of their relationship by inviting Dmitri in the first place? He tries not to appear too upset by the new arrangements, but he detects a new languor in her behavior. At times her attitude toward him borders on a coolness he finds shocking.

 

 

 

Then one morning, Coco wakes up to find that she no longer loves him. There is no moping, no anguished reappraisal or tortured self-doubt. Enough is enough. She was seduced by Igor's talent and his power. She liked his seriousness. He was interesting to be with. But now when she looks at him as a man, rather than as a musician, she finds she's not attracted to him anymore. She has time to consider that this will delight Catherine. Maybe this is the cure she's been waiting for. She wouldn't be surprised if, anyway, the real ailment lay inside her head.

New routines establish themselves within Bel Respiro. In the mornings, while Igor is at work, Coco and Dmitri go riding together. Igor does not ride and, anyway, to forsake a morning's work would cost him more guilt than it was worth. Dmitri, by contrast, is a keen and accomplished horseman and constitutionally averse to hard work. He rides invigoratingly quickly. Even Coco, a practiced equestrienne herself, has trouble keeping up with him.

Igor sees them each morning in the broad ramp of sunshine outside his window. Piotr brings the horses from a nearby stable. He harnesses the mares while Coco and Dmitri flirt in the garden. Igor watches as, gallantly, Dmitri helps her up onto the saddle. For a moment she lords it over him.

Then they are off at a smart pace. Plumes of dust trail behind them as they disappear down the lane. The clatter of hooves remains in Igor's ears long after they have gone.

Since coming to Garches, Coco has not ridden once. It's absurd, she thinks. And she used to ride so much. The muscles of her horse ripple tensely beneath her. She sees the broad blaze of white that travels the length of the animal's head. Immediately she feels less jaded. Her skin feels taut, as though renewed.

Heedlessly the two of them race through the woods and through the undergrowth that erupted unchecked during the months of the summer. Now a November sun cuts through the leafless trees. The whole wood is visible for the first time since she moved here. And everything in her life seems suddenly transparent, too. There's a new crispness to her vision. A vista within her is opened wide.

Dmitri spurs his horse until it is hurt into a reckless gallop. Coco gives her mare a deft flick and works hard to keep up. Her legs tighten as she leans forward, and the wind quickens against her face. Around her, the smell of wet soil is cut with the pungency of horse. Her face is ruddy, and her breath bursts in long shapeless clouds from her mouth. She feels her back start to trickle with sweat. Her legs tremble with the effort. And after a few minutes of this hard gallop, her lungs begin to burn. When she does finally catch up with him, and she feels her breathing slow, it is as if the world—still galloping around her—continues to pour past.

She feels giddy then as they saunter through the burned-out remains of a bluebell wood. Poplars surround them on all sides. She remembers from the summer its smoky bluish gloom. Within lies a pond. The horses snort. Steam eddies visibly from their skins. All around, and despite the season, there explodes a jubilant riot of chartreuse-green ferns. The light is blue-green and reflective. Dmitri's eyes vibrate with the same color. Everything seems filled with quietness and mystery. Coco feels closed in and secure.