Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (18 page)

P
ART
T
WO

From
A Baroness by Night

BY
LILY DE ROSSIGNOL

The Race at Montverre

 

BEFORE THE WAR,
our family firm employed Lou Villars, first the famous auto racer and later the infamous spy. Years earlier, I'd seen her throw a javelin at the Vélodrome d'Hiver. After walking away from a promising athletic career, she resurfaced as a “dancer” at the Chameleon Club. There her duties involved clumping around in a sailor suit and lifting Arlette, her tramp of a girlfriend, in their crude but popular Little Mermaid routine. Later Arlette would become the toast of Nazi-occupied Paris.

At the beginning, nothing, or almost nothing, hinted at the fiend that must have been lurking inside Lou. There was that time she punched a referee after a race in Louvain. But I'd missed the confrontation, having been kept in Paris on business with Gabor Tsenyi. Apparently Lou apologized, and the matter was forgotten.

Lou was never a normal person. A woman athlete who dressed like a man was in a class by herself. Sometimes she reminded me of a twelve-year-old boy balancing on the razor's edge between baby fat and manhood, hiding his insecurity beneath a veneer of surly aggression.

Anyone could see how unhappy Lou was. Her love for Arlette was like a dog's love, but so is all love, in a way. Arlette broke Lou's heart when she ran off with Clovis Chanac. He and Arlette were made for each other. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In any case, I believe that Lou's unhappiness went deeper than romantic heartbreak, that it ran like a vein of coal through the dangerous mine of her soul.

Once or twice I considered broaching the subject of psychoanalysis, which was becoming fashionable in our circle. I assumed that Lou must have suffered some childhood trauma. I vaguely recall her mentioning an invalid brother. It also occurred to me that rage and sadness were part of what made Lou such a maniac behind the wheel: fierce, focused, apparently fearless. As a patron of the arts, I'd learned that it could be counterproductive to
fix
whatever was “wrong” with an artist.

By then I'd helped many artists. But Lou was the only athlete whose career I advanced, whose success might not have happened without my help. For better and worse, I take partial credit. By which I mean
blame
. Partial blame.

Writing in full knowledge of the result, I add this entry to the catalogue of Good Intentions Gone Wrong. Could psychoanalysis have helped Lou? Would history have been changed if I hadn't asked Lou and Arlette to sit for Gabor? If I hadn't seen, in Lou, a person who would get noticed, photographed, talked about, and—to be honest—who could sell cars? Could a war have been averted had I not introduced her to my husband and brother-in-law?

The same things would have happened, regardless. Anyone could see that.

 

Our small but influential family business was always ahead of its time. Didi and Armand hired Lou to race our cars and to be the modern, semiscandalous face of Rossignol Motors. And so we became the first luxury brand to consider, as they all do now, the commercial value of a company's public image.

We were not like the Renaults, who made tires for German tanks. If you insist on blaming someone for Lou's crimes, blame the government. Blame Clovis Chanac and his thuggish Municipal Council for turning her against her own country, when all she ever wanted was to be its twentieth-century Joan of Arc.

Could I have seen what was coming? I suppose I could have paid closer attention on that day when Lou came to the studio so Gabor could photograph her and Arlette. He and I were arguing. I can't remember why. Suddenly, I looked up and saw her in the doorway. I wondered how long she'd been there, watching. But neither a psychiatrist nor a psychic could have made the connection between a bit of rude social eavesdropping and telling the German army where to breach the French defenses!

When Rossignol hired Lou, it was assumed—and Lou agreed—that she would end her professional association with the Chameleon Club. After a while, Didi, Armand, and I decided that we would work toward the 1935 Women's International, in June, at the Montverre track, near Paris. That race would open the door to the rest, to winning major backers and earning a chance to compete in the important, formerly all-male races. There were other women drivers, but Lou would be the best. It would take months of training. Lou would compete in local rallies and qualifying events throughout France and elsewhere.

 

I began bringing Gabor to the track, and he started taking pictures. He'd been having a bit of a dry spell since his book appeared, and especially after a visit from his adoring, adorable parents. He was paralyzed by grief at how much they'd aged since he'd seen them last. For a few worrisome weeks he stopped working altogether. He'd begun to say that his muse had left Paris and that he might have to leave the city to find her again.

How fortunate that the racetrack was one of the milieus in which Gabor would reinvent himself as an artist. He was able to sell his racing photos to
Auto
magazine, where circulation was booming. This lessened Gabor's dependence on me, which in turn was good for our friendship.

My brother-in-law found Lou a cottage near the track, to which, he told me in confidence, she brought a succession of women. That my pious brother-in-law permitted this was proof of his high hopes for Lou. In her sitting room Lou set up an altar to Joan of Arc, which may have consoled Armand for her unholy romances.

Armand hired an assistant, Fraulein Schiller, a Prussian who'd coached the German swim team in the '28 Olympics. Starched up, sporting a monocle, she was straight out of
Madchen in Uniform,
a German film about lesbians that was a big hit in Paris.

It was the fraulein's idea—rejected—that Lou exercise outdoors, naked. In fact she did jumping jacks in a man's shorts and undershirt. A farm ox would have mutinied from exhaustion and boredom. It was painful to watch Fraulein Schiller counting to a hundred while Lou did knee bends in the cold. Lou boxed, ran, jumped, swam in the icy lake, and worked out on parallel bars. She lifted weights to strengthen her arms, for better control of the wheel. We all understood what had to be done so she could drive on instinct without her body or brain interfering.

Like all of us, Lou loved speed. And she wanted to win. I wouldn't have wished—I wouldn't have dared!—to compete against her.

When I was asked if I'd glimpsed warnings of what was to come, I could have mentioned the look of transport on Lou's face when Fraulein Schiller shouted orders at her, in German. Later I observed that gleam on the faces of the Hitler youth in the film of the Nuremberg Rally, faces that Lou must have seen when she attended the Berlin Olympics.

Months passed before Didi and Armand let her drive the Rossignol 280, which they'd kept under wraps. They allowed her to take it around the track and push it up to the highest speed she could. Armand let her get a taste for it, then told her she had to work harder. I noticed the envy with which Lou watched the men sliding in and out of the driver's seat, behind the wheel—always a problem for buxom Lou.

My husband and brother-in-law hired a physics professor to teach Lou about gravity and motion, an engineer to analyze the geometry of the track. At Fraulein Schiller's suggestion, they brought in a Japanese monk from a temple in the Dordogne. The monk blindfolded Lou and walked her around the course, telling her to follow his voice and feel the earth under her feet. Sometimes he would make her crawl. When the blindfold was removed, Lou lost her balance and stumbled, and the Japanese monk, the Prussian coach, the physics professor, the engineer, and my brother-in-law would laugh.

 

The intervening years have long since put my own trivial problems into perspective—miniaturized them, you might say. Considering what I lived through and the person I proved myself to be, I feel I can speak more freely than I could have when Didi was alive. Also it is easier to write about such matters at a time when it is widely, if not everywhere, understood that true love can exist outside the bounds of conventional marriage.

I loved my husband, but I also knew what kind of boys he liked. I enjoyed our evenings home alone, but when we went out together, I never had any fun. I was always on guard for that special boy. Often I spotted him first. It was more relaxing to be with artists, especially Gabor, whom I can say, also from this safe distance, was not only my great art discovery but the love of my life.

Didi should never have married me, but he wasn't foolish or cruel. He too had been lonely in Hollywood. He'd been thrilled to find me.

In many ways Didi was loveable. And we loved each other. I've mentioned that we met at Douglas Fairbanks's private track. Later, back in France, we joked about those soap-box derbies where movie stars played at driving. It brings a couple closer to find out that their pasts have become the same past. Who could have predicted that our marriage would turn out so much better than so many unions that burn with the flames of (heterosexual) passion and see those fires burn out?

It was always a challenge to be with Didi and his brother Armand, knowing that Didi was cruising for boys and not knowing when Armand would spiral into some rant about Bolsheviks and Jews, about whipping one's self bloody and surrendering to Christ. People pretended not to hear, but conversation stopped. I used to worry that someone might physically attack him, but no one ever said a word or even asked him to be quiet.

The races were a fantastic distraction. The caustic fumes of auto fuel and burnt rubber took one's mind off one's problems. The noise was excruciating. We yelled along with the crowd for Lou to beat her opponents, the clock, her previous best.

Only at the track was I able to forget my marriage, my brother-in-law, my unrequited love for Gabor, the riots, the crashing economy, the threats from Hitler across the border. There was plenty of entertainment available in Paris: the symphony, the opera, the all-boy
Mikado
at the Chameleon Club. But in the midst of those performances, one's mind could begin to wander. At the track I never thought about anything but the race.

Drivers had died at Montverre. Part of the track was a wooden bowl called the Tea Cup, another section an obstacle course, known as the Gates of Hell. And a rutted, bumpy stretch was nicknamed the Snake Pit. The course was banked so that the fastest drivers could hit 220 on the curves. I told Armand and Didi that I didn't want Lou getting hurt, but they only made fun of me for being female and weak.

One reason our marriage lasted so long was that Didi and I never talked about money. I didn't ask how much it cost to rent the track so Lou could practice. Didi never asked how much I spent on Gabor and his friends.

Once Didi did say, For all the funds I was laying out, where were Gabor's pictures of
me
?

I laughed and laughed. How hilarious. I was upset for days.

I don't remember how our understanding evolved: Gabor was never to take my picture. I don't think we discussed it. He never asked me to sit for him. I didn't want to know why. The few times I wandered into the frame, my image stayed in the darkroom. Did he fear that an unflattering likeness might affect my support? I preferred to think so, rather than to suspect that he worried a photo might reveal something too personal—too unflattering—about how he saw me. How old, unattractive, how dried up compared to his toothy tomato, Suzanne.

When Lou began to race professionally, Gabor traveled with us. He took pictures for the auto journals and kept me company while Didi was pursuing his Swedes, and when Armand sequestered himself with Lou to indoctrinate her with his madness.

Gabor and I stayed in the same hotels but never in the same rooms. Many nights, I couldn't sleep, knowing how near he was. I felt we were growing closer, though I couldn't have said how. In my mind I talked to him in such vivid detail that I occasionally got impatient with him for forgetting something I only imagined I'd said.

Lou lost the first few races, then began to come in third, then second, then first. She was glad to reconnect with women she'd met touring the sports-association circuit. Invited to speak at regional clubs, she made many new friends, women with whom she spent the night and later kept in touch.

Once I watched her address a cycling society in Toulouse. I was amazed to hear Lou, so taciturn in our company, talk so eloquently about the suffering and sacrifice required of female athletes. I was taken aback by the audiences who mobbed her and asked how soon she could return.

Lou had thrived on the applause at the Vélodrome d'Hiver. She'd enjoyed meeting her fans at the Chameleon Club. She liked talking to reporters and seemed flattered by the attention. When they asked, as they always did, why she dressed like a man, she repeated that everything she did was for God and France. When they asked her to elaborate, she said it was self-evident.

I knew my brother-in-law had told her to mention France whenever she could. I tactfully suggested that we would also like her to say more about the Rossignol. Not that it would have mattered. The reporters were less excited by our car, or a victory for France, or even by how Lou drove “like a man” than they were by how she dressed. But our name would stick in people's minds. Especially if Lou won, the next car they bought would be ours.

We needed the papers to print those stories. But I worried. Cross-dressing was technically illegal, thanks to some archaic remnant of the absurd Napoleonic code. And Lou had a serious enemy in Clovis Chanac.

Around that time, Lou requested a three-week leave from practice. She claimed she was in urgent need of a medical procedure. I assumed it was some female disorder related to the male hormones, extracted from bulls, that she was said to be taking. So naturally I was irritated when I had to read in the papers that she had voluntarily undergone a double mastectomy in order to fit more comfortably behind a steering wheel.