Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (31 page)

“But I do love you.”

“You'll have to do better than that!”

Catherine has managed to come through her crisis. She has learned to cope in her own way and learned to live without his love. Here he is, coming to her again, and she feels sickened. It is intolerable. His love is cheapened, bankrupt; his affection pathetic. She pushes him away. The simple fact is: she doesn't want him in the same way anymore.

“What about
us
?”

“Who do you mean by
us
?”

The question stuns him.

“Don't worry.” She can't resist belittling him. “I won't tell your mother, if that's what you're worried about.”

“For God's sake!”

“I'm not changing my mind, Igor. I'm leaving in the morning.” She closes the suitcase with a click of the buckles. The act possesses a solemn weight. “If you want to see us, you know where we are.”

He stands still, frozen into immobility. For an instant he feels like hurling her suitcase out of the door. He looks around for something to smash. His fists clench in suppressing the instinct.

Catherine moves with renewed purpose, wrapping up the ornaments that have constituted for both of them a family home. The room is quickly stripped of its domesticity. Lastly she packs away the objects from her bedside table: a photograph of her children, an icon, and a seashell with its single nacreous horn.

Igor retreats to the comfort of his study. He is shocked and upset, as well as embarrassed. Yet there is a sense, he knows, in which he's gone through the motions. His initial fury modulates into a conviction that this might not be such a bad thing after all. While it is a blow to his pride, Catherine's removal along with the children might help transform his relationship with Coco. It will leave him free to fight for her. It will give him a respite from the constricting guilt he feels when his wife is there. And then his mood changes again, from hope to fear. Fear that his betrayal of Catherine will be met with another, this time visited upon himself. Fear that nothing will resolve itself. Fear that he will become estranged from both Coco
and
his wife. Fear that the energy and inspiration he reserves for his work will be dissipated in emotional turmoil. Fear, simply, that he will end up with nothing.

In the hours that follow, the sound of the piano wanders across his study like a crack in the ice of a pond.

 

 

 

That night, Igor sits down with Catherine and tells the children they are quitting Bel Respiro. They are to leave for Biarritz with their mother the next morning. Because of the better climate, they are told. And because the schools are more suitable to their needs. And because the villa in Garches is becoming too full, now that Dmitri is here. Their father, it is explained, is staying on to finish his work.

The children are stunned. They greet the news with a morose silence. Only Theodore seems pleased to be leaving. But Igor and Catherine's hand-wringing excuses communicate their nervousness to the children. Oddly none of them asks any questions. Probably because something tells them they do not wish to know the answers. Soulima and Ludmilla both look at the floor, bewildered by the prospect of yet another move.

Later, once they are all in bed, Igor visits his children's rooms. In sleep, their lips are parted, where bubbles seem about to form. The picture of his children asleep is invested with a kind of holiness, always.

Already Theodore has the look of manhood upon him. Milène still wears the frowning expression of an infant in her bed. Soulima is the one he worries about most. Igor sees himself in the boy. The same shaped face, the same eyes and nose. It is himself he is looking at, thirty years younger, the combination jiggled.

Igor had loathed his father, who was cold and unloving toward him as a child. He always promised himself that, as a parent, he would be far more affectionate to any children of his own. But when it comes to it, he discovers his instinct is also to withdraw. He follows the model responses of his own papa in pushing the children off. Emotionally his reflex is to keep them at a distance. While he was proud and delighted at each of their births, he resents the perpetual demands they make upon his time. He finds the domestic music they generate too competitive with his own.

Leaning over them now, though, and regarding their sleeping faces, he experiences the sorrow of imminent loss. He puts his fingers to his lips and kisses them in turn. They stir minutely. He mouths the words “good night” just loud enough to make Ludmilla respond blindly in her sleep. The star of her hand tightens, then slowly unfolds again. He notices they all sleep with the light off. As a boy, he remembers he could never sleep in the dark. They're so very brave, he thinks.

 

 

 

The next morning, after much weeping, the children stand prepared to leave with Catherine at the door. Coco is there, too. Dmitri, having bidden his farewells, has gone out hunting in the woods. Coco offers Catherine her hand. Slow to obey the impulse, Catherine's hand moves involuntarily to meet it. For one absurd moment, she even feels privileged, obscurely grateful. Then a surge of anger rises, opening its wings inside her head. As Coco makes to kiss her, she turns, averting her hot cheek.

Soulima asks, “Why is Papa staying?”

“I've explained already,” Catherine says.

Ludmilla complains, “But I still don't understand why we're going.”

Joseph and Marie exchange a glance.

These late, awkward, tactlessly candid questions act like stabs in Catherine's side. Lost for a response, she picks up the cat. He's been wandering in and out of the space between her feet, gently bumping and nudging her leg, brushing his fur against her exposed ankle.

Little Vassily! Igor experiences a pang of dismay at seeing the cat. He has failed to register the fact that he, too, will be going along with the children and his wife. This detail, small but overlooked, operates like a lens through which he sees the true extent of his loss. The cat's self-sufficiency away from him is another mocking blow to the notion that he's needed. These few moments, he reflects, are perhaps the worst of his life.

Joseph's announcement that the taxi has arrived breaks the silence and robs the children of their answers.

Gravely Igor shakes his sons' hands and kisses his daughters on both cheeks. He tries to press a lifetime of affection into these gestures. But Theodore sternly refuses to meet his father's eye. Silent and aggrieved, even Soulima remains stone-faced. Igor regards them with admiration. He tries to imagine his own father acting out this scene, allowing his wife and sons to leave him. But he cannot, and his mind fills with shame.

Catherine bids him a stiff good-bye. Then, after a few hurried and guilty hugs of the children from Coco—including a prolonged embrace of Ludmilla—they are gone. The door clicks shut.

It is all so sudden. Igor looks at Coco. He feels weightless. His solemnity wars uneasily with the complex sense of relief he feels. Coco remains tight-lipped. The silence thickens around them.

“I'll let you get on with your work now,” she says, turning away from the door.

Igor lingers for a moment before returning to his study. How stupid, he thinks. The one moment that should be touched with triumph, the very instant that should see them leap into each other's arms, is instead clouded by resentment and doubt. A crushing sense of guilt and waste descends upon him. Now that he has all the quiet he requires, he has nothing left to fill it with. Has he abandoned his family for this? He feels the weight return to his body, almost forcing him to the floor. He's always believed his life to be ordered by some pattern, by some obscure allegiance to form. But he can't conceive of the design behind it now. His existence seems purposeless, and for a second he feels utterly desolate. Then with equal quickness he feels buoyed up by a renewed sense of conviction that what he is doing is right. He refuses to give in. To his feeling of dread he attaches a hope that all will be well. Coco
will
come back to him, he vows. She will see through this idiot, Dmitri. She must. Something, he knows, will bring them back together. He feels it in his blood.

 

 

 

Virtually the first thing Catherine sees as she takes a motorized taxi down the high street in Biarritz is Chanel's shop. She pretends not to notice but winces inwardly, as if she can never escape the name. It is the children who eagerly point it out. The impression grows within her that she can never get away. Like the Lord's, her signature is everywhere.

But the new house with its stone façades and timber beams seems a sturdy defense against Coco's presence. They're safe here, Catherine thinks, at least for a while. Not even Mademoiselle Chanel can penetrate these walls.

She sends a telegram to Igor's mother, informing her of their change of address.

Two days after Catherine's departure, Coco grants Joseph and Marie a week's holiday. At least with Piotr around, there will be someone left to serve in the villa. And better that there is one person in charge rather than Piotr and Joseph both fighting over who is boss. An unspoken hostility has already established itself between them.

Piotr acts like a bodyguard to Dmitri, steadfastly protecting his master and tending to neglect everyone else. What's more, there is some confusion over household duties. And because Piotr can speak little French, and Joseph knows no Russian, mutually uncomprehending arguments erupt in the kitchen over exactly who is to do what and when.

Joseph and Marie are relieved when the time comes eventually to take their leave of Bel Respiro. Glad to escape for a few days from Garches and its bizarre goings-on, they head for their native village in the north.

So with Coco and Dmitri increasingly away, either horse riding or working in Paris, and everyone else gone, the house is finally silent. And Igor—except for the monosyllabic Piotr—is suddenly alone.

Igor sits at a table in the living room, his glasses pushed on top of his head. He has just received a telegram from Diaghilev. It reads, “Shopgirls will always prefer grand dukes to geniuses. Ballet off to Madrid. Come with us!” He scrunches it up and hurls it against the wall.

Diaghilev must have heard from Misia. Igor had been right: the woman was poison. His instinct is to telephone Diaghilev and set him straight. Then it occurs to him—set him straight about what? About Catherine leaving? About why he is staying on at Bel Respiro? About Dmitri? His cheeks burn with the humiliation of it all.

Coco, too, has received some news. A letter postmarked Biarritz. She opens it to see blue, thready handwriting open its veins across the page.