The Eleventh Year (18 page)

J
amie had submitted
her play as one of many offered to the workshop for competition during her junior year. Only one would receive the prize, but the three best ones would be acted out in front of all of Vassar. Although she didn't win, she felt a moment of unequalled elation. Her work had been chosen as one of the three best ones and was going to be read, heard, enacted! She hugged Professor Buck, who added, smiling: “Next time you might try for something lighter, more whimsical. We're in the middle of a war, and people want to forget sadness.”

“I'm not sad,” Jamie countered. “I'm just not light and whimsical.” She felt hurt, somehow, in this moment of glory. Hers was an important work, and it had been passed up because the world wanted amusement.

Lesley bought them a bottle of champagne. “The point is that you're going to be a celebrity!” she said brightly. “You're going to have an audience.”

Because of the play, she
was
in a sense a celebrity. The other students were a little in awe of her. The few boys left from conscription weren't sure how to take her. In the spring of their junior year, her mother wrote her that Willy Künstler had been killed—just that, no details. She wept for him, and for the daughter he had left behind, who would never know him. It seemed that the war would never end.

Then, in November of 1918, during the fall of their senior year, the armistice was signed. The Vassar girls rushed out to Sunset Hill in a tumult of joy, and there, like Greek nymphs, they made a ritual of burying a German helmet as the sun rose. They sang, lifting their voices to the gods of peace and victory, and they hugged one another and danced in their bare feet. Suddenly there was no difference between scholarship student and rich debutante: Everyone was proud, everyone was happy. In unison they went to chapel for a victory service.

France and England had been liberated, the doughboys would come home. Lesley and Jamie sat together on the grass. All at once they turned to each other, and Jamie said: “Why don't we pack our bags and go somewhere?”

“To Paris. Chatterton always speaks of the Parisian artists. But Daddy would never let me go.”

“I have my inheritance. I'd like to live there and write.”

“And it would be a wonderful change after Vassar.”

“Why don't we do it?”

Lesley stood up, stretched her small arms into the air, made a pirouette. “Paris. Chanel, the Seine, the riverboats. Painting in a garret.”

“Sunsets over Montmartre. Gertrude Stein.”

“We'd have to get an introduction.” Lesley picked up a leaf, turned it over in her hands. “To meet Picasso . . .” she murmured dreamily.

They were so caught up in their reverie that neither considered graduation, the shedding of parents, means of support. Victory had set a mantle of unreality over Vassar College. Jamie and Lesley, the odd ones, the writer and the would-be painter, remained in their own trance, hoping and making plans.

They were twenty and they didn't want to “settle down.” They didn't want to have to settle for anything that wouldn't be of their own choosing. Perhaps the war had made the choices clearer. Men had lost their lives, and life, therefore, loomed more precious than it had ever seemed before. They felt its excitement in the air. They felt it with mystical joy, and together they welcomed it.

V
ictory
. Paul was twenty-seven when the armistice came, and while processions filed down the Champs Elysées, he was preparing to relinquish his fighter plane and reenter civilian life. While eager young women threw bouquets of primroses into the air and danced through the streets of Paris, he sat quietly in the aviators' barracks and reflected on what was to come.

Others like Alexandre, had gone to war for their country as a matter of course. Paul's motives had been at once more and less ambiguous. Flying was exhilarating, and he had submerged his life in nonsense for so many years that putting it to the test of his skill and the Fates had seemed to give it a meaning it had never possessed. He wondered what life would be like for him when he returned. More of the same? He enjoyed the art hunts, bringing home intriguing new pieces for Bertrand. Bertrand might even make him a minor partner in the business if he played his cards right. But apart from that, what was there? Martine.

During his last resting period, a leave that had been granted him after several astute victories in the heavens, he had not written her about it but instead had sneaked off to London. He had been put up at the Kensington town house of a young Englishman he had befriended, had been wined and dined, and had been taken out to meet presentable young ladies and also those who were reputed to be less presentable. He had been to Soho and Bloomsbury, had relished his visit; and he had spent his last night amusing himself in the bed of a lusty young Englishwoman.

None of this had meant anything, he'd reasoned. So why should he have bothered to inform Martine of any part of it? She was happy in Paris, he believed. He had committed no greater sin than the one of omission. And which was better? To tell all and hurt someone, or to hold one's tongue? Still— at one time he would have rushed to her home, to be clasped to her small frail body, to bury his face in her red hair, to make passionate love to her for three days straight. Now he was about to be sent home, permanently, and the thought of Martine left him tepid. What did one do with an aging mistress?

Then, to Paul's surprise, Martine made it all so easy. One day they were spending the afternoon together in her apartment on rue de la Pompe.

Warily she asked: “You seem tired, listless. You're not the war-hero type, my angel. It must be something else.” She closed her lips together, bit them from the inside pensively, and continued: “You must be tired of me. Is that it?”

However did she always manage to understand him? Just now, when he would have welcomed hating her, she was doing it again. The most perceptive woman in the world. He took her hand and caressed it with absentminded fingers. He still felt gratitude for her love, but she might as well have been his aunt, his surrogate mother.

“I understand,” she said slowly. In the candlelight her face looked haggard, but her eyes gleamed marvelously, her beautiful eyes. There were tears in them. “I shall do as you like. You can come and go, my love, and lead your own life. You needn't feel that I'm a burden.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you don't have to stay faithful to me, and you don't have to wind your life around mine, around this place. I shall stay here, and you can be your own man. Come to me when you want. Try not to forget me too fast.”

“But—why are you saying this?”

“I've lived my life, and I love you. I'm not going to be thrown out like an empty bag yet, but I shan't make you miserable either. You're young, and you've been good to me. And the love I feel is enough. If yours has died—then all I can tell you is that I'd always hoped it wouldn't. But it has.”

He had expected anger, tantrums, rage—tears—but not this. She held her arms out to him, and, from custom, he came to her. Then she pressed his head against her bosom.

She was releasing him, and the terms were fair enough, he thought as a flicker of passion animated him for a moment. She was murmuring in his hair, and he felt her tears and wondered why he was not feeling more guilty. But she had chosen him, had known what might happen. This, then, was intelligent choice. They had both gotten wonder and magic from the relationship, and he had loved her. She had made him feel more virile than ever before in his existence. They still cared for each other. The rest…If she'd suggested it, then that too was a conscious choice on her part, something she could live with.

And she had given him back his freedom, or at least a great part of it. She was opening the cage to let the bird fly out.

J
amie thought
that Paris was the next logical step in the ladder of her life. She had arrived with her small inheritance hugged tightly to her. When one has never possessed much, one places great value upon one's choices. She had decided to go there, an ocean away from everything she'd ever known, to develop her mind. She was an artist; in America there was no room for artists to breathe freely. Others were fleeing to the city of light, where art flourished and was appreciated. American writers and poets were leaving their country in the hope that the atmosphere in France would be different from the staidness of the United States. Jamie felt that she and Lesley were part of an exodus spurred on by the end of the war.

Lesley, on the other hand, had had greater difficulties. Jamie remembered staying at the marble mansion on Fifth Avenue, listening to the endless discussions among the Richardsons: Lesley, in her armchair, hands laid rigidly over the armrests; Lady Priscilla, crisp and blond and distant; Ned, his face reddening, sensing that something essential was eluding him. He hadn't wanted to lose his daughter. Lesley had said, her voice strained, “But I'm not leaving
you,
Daddy. I'm going to take a trip and learn to paint. You know I want to become a good painter, and a change of atmosphere may make the difference.”

Eventually Jamie and Lesley had been seen off on the big white steamship, where dozens of yellow roses had greeted them in their stateroom. Les had had bright red spots on her cheeks. Jamie had looked out to sea, her beautiful blue eyes intent on her own private thoughts. There was a fire inside her that seemed to be let out only through her writing and through her eyes when she was self-absorbed. Then she became lovely: rounded, like a Rubens, with a gentle earnestness that gave her a grave maturity.

They had sat at the captain's table, had drunk champagne, had danced in the ship's ballroom. At Vassar Jamie had always been the scholarship student. On board she was traveling first class. She'd wanted to book passage in the second-class deck, but Lesley wanted to be with her, and the Richardsons insisted that their daughter have the best. They had offered to pay for Jamie's trip, and she had refused; to please Les she had finally accepted the difference between first and tourist classes as a gift from Ned.

It felt good, being on their own. Lesley felt less independent than Jamie. Jamie had her own money, whereas Lesley still depended on her parents. In Paris, however, one forgot who manipulated the strings. They were alone in the city of their dreams, and they felt excited and rich and free and talented.

Paris was so beautiful, with its manicured gardens of the Luxembourg, its avenues lined with maple trees, its lazy, indolent Seine. One could become overwhelmed by sights and sounds. Lesley's mother had told them to stay at the Ritz, on Place Vendôme, but they also knew that the opulence of the luxury hotel was not what they wanted. They would rent a place: something small and charming, to be redone by them. But to start off, they settled at the Ritz and began their endless walks to all parts of Paris, to explore their surroundings.

Paris was still afflicted by wartime shortages. The Louvre museum still had not regained the Venus de Milo and the famed Victory of Samothrace, which had been sent to Toulouse for safekeeping. But there was a calm in the city that was different from the fever of 1916. If there was panic at all, it rose when people talked of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The French were terrified of the Reds, of upheaval. They had suffered losses of a million and a half men, and from being world creditors they had become debtors with an internal debt of two hundred seventy million francs. People wanted a return to the status quo: anything but new upheaval, now that peace had come.

Lesley had arrived armed with the names and addresses of people to find: her mother's friends; her teacher Chatterton's contacts; associates of Ned Richardson who had set up businesses in Paris. Jamie was amused; she really had but one desire, to meet Gertrude Stein. For the rest, Lesley could do as she pleased. Jamie wasn't particularly interested in meeting eligible young American boys here in Paris, or of being dined at the sumptuous town houses of elegant French matrons.

Lesley enrolled at the Académie Julian. She was serious about her painting. Jamie had recently resumed writing poems: formless thoughts encased in strange rhythms. She read and she wrote, and she ached to have someone of note read her work.

It was wintertime. Paris lay beneath a thin coat of powdered snow, and it was very cold. They were still alone and Jamie was becoming worried that her money would run out. It was time to look for a small apartment. And yet she was oddly inert. She didn't feel like being constructive. Solidity had been Cincinnati, maybe even Vassar. But Paris…She wanted the luxury, unparalleled in her life, of being a lady of intellect and leisure.

And this was how, one Saturday, they decided to call on the odd couple at 27, rue de Fleurus, in the Sixth
Arrondissement.
Lesley held in her hand a note of introduction from Clarence Chatterton, the artist-in-residence at Vassar; Jamie had a similar paper from her favorite teacher, Gertrude Buck. The girls had been in Paris for a month; it was late December 1918. Suddenly it had seemed imperative to mix, not just to stay together exploring. They missed the excitement of being with people, and Jamie had been so interested in this Stein woman that Lesley gave in and passed up Anna de Noailles, the famous poet and hostess, who had met Lady Priscilla years ago in London.

They'd been told that she held open house after dinner on Saturdays, and so, feeling shy, they dressed the part. Lesley donned a green dress with a cowl neckline and a loose belt encrusted with beads, draping around her neck a string of colored beads. She wore her looped gold earrings and gold bangles at her wrists. She was stunning, her red hair and emerald dress points of high color to catch the eye, her skin pale and pure by comparison. Jamie was more modest, in an ashes-of-roses silk blouse and a string of fake pearls and a woolen navy-blue skirt. Their legs in silk stockings showed beneath the edge of their skirts.

A maid answered the doorbell and stared at them. “We're here to see Miss Stein,” Lesley said bravely, in her impeccable French from Miss Spence and Vassar and other trips abroad. The woman nodded and darted inside. Presently someone else came to them. She was thin, with dark short hair and loops around her ears, just like Lesley's. She wore a dress of flowered print, and above her upper lip was the hint of a mustache, a somber shadow. A strange thin woman with the coloring of a Jewess or a Mediterranean.

Lesley repeated, her voice more shaky now: “We've come to see Miss Stein. Are you she?”

Unsmiling, the other countered: “Who are
you?”
She spoke perfect American English.

Jamie said: “We're from Vassar College. I'm Jamie Lynne Stewart, and my friend is Lesley Richardson, of New York. We've only just arrived, and we have notes of introduction.”

“Oh? Please, let me see them.” The woman extended a thin hand, and Jamie complied. Lesley was standing quietly at her side. Jamie admired her. She herself was beginning to perspire, but Lesley's poise was such that no one, not even the thin brown woman, could have guessed at her nervousness.

“Well,” the woman was saying. “I'm Alice Toklas. Come in, we're having an open house.”

Alice Toklas. Lesley looked at Jamie, who nodded: Stein's companion, from San Francisco. They followed her into a house all done in Florentine furnishings, with paintings spread over every wall. Lesley's eyes widened. There was a Matisse, a Picasso from the Rose Period, one from the Blue. A soft pastel that must have been done by Marie Laurencin. People stood talking together with animation, a gusto that she could not remember ever having encountered. It was as if Vassar had been millions, not thousands, of miles removed from this eclectic company.

At the center of the most vociferous group stood a very small, very stout woman with hair so short that it appeared barely longer than a crew cut. She had a large, hooked nose and a mountainous breast. Her outfit was a kind of loose caftan that draped to the floor. Lesley was amazed, mesmerized. But Jamie whispered: “That's her: Gertrude Stein.”

Lesley was a little afraid of the formidable woman, but it did not seem that she was even going to speak to them, so she felt a wave of relief. It had been silly. They should have sent a note to Anna de Noailles, reputed to be a worldly woman of brilliant spirit. This person was bizarre. But Jamie admired her books, books that no one appeared to want to publish in America, because they were impossible to understand. Her prose seemed like thoughtless blurbs. Jamie read them aloud with great delight, but Lesley found them much too hard to follow. What had intrigued her about Stein was her reputation as a collector of artists and art works—a trendsetter in the visual arts.

“Miss Stein doesn't speak to newcomers, she sends the good Alice,” somebody said in the lovely French of the upper classes, and Lesley and Jamie turned to face the speaker. He was tall, with broad shoulders and very handsome features. He had thick brown hair, and his large, intelligent eyes were riveted on Lesley. They gleamed with a touch of irony. Jamie stood back a pace. This was the most attractive young man she had ever seen. She blushed. He was like a work of art, hewn out of ivory and walnut. But Lesley was appraising him with greater detachment. She nodded, smiled back. “This is Jamie Stewart and I'm Lesley Richardson,” she was saying, “and there's no doubt that we're newcomers. Our French is redolent of Poughkeepsie.”

“What's a Poughkeepsie'?” The young Frenchman asked, laughing.

“Oh, it's a small town in upstate New York, and Jamie and I went to college there.”

“I'm Paul de Varenne,” he said, and took Lesley's small hand and raised it elegantly to his lips. Jamie was watching him. He then dropped Lesley's hand after holding it lightly for a moment and took Jamie's. “You're Jamie?” he asked. “Is that really a girl's name in the United States?”

“It's
my
name. Not many people have it.”

Paul de Varenne. Lesley was standing to the side, looking at his large hands, at his athletic body. He said: “Miss Stein has an excellent collection of wines. Would you like a glass of Bordeaux
graves?
You, Miss Richardson?”

She nodded, grateful for the lack of Prohibition here, and followed him a few steps to a large table laden with drinks and foodstuffs. Jamie was asking: “And what do you do, Monsieur de Varenne? Are you an artist or a poet?”

“Neither. I'm an art dealer,” he replied pleasantly, decanting the wine.

“Do you ever go to England?” Lesley asked lightly, accepting the glass from his fingers. “I ask because we're so new here, and England is such familiar territory to me. I'm half English. My grandfather is the Earl of Brighton? He's very old now.”

Jamie stared at her friend, dumbfounded. It was the first time that she had ever heard Les drop the name of her illustrious relative. And beneath the sweet beguiling femininity was a nervousness that Jamie sensed. The good-looking man made Lesley deeply ill at ease. He raised his eyebrows, made a mock bow. “Ah, yes, the noted peer. No, I don't go to London too often. Now and then.”

“Do you like it there? Do you have friends?”

“Some. But enough about London. I'd rather hear about you. You're very appealing, Miss Richardson. Too appealing for this salon. And
la bonne Gertrude
—God help it if she hears me!—isn't about to speak to you on a first visit. You're only women. How about coming away with me to the Closerie des Lilas, for a glass of absinthe?”

“Oh, yes, we'd love to,” Jamie said eagerly, and now it was Lesley's turn to be astounded. They'd passed up the lovely Anna de Noailles for this supposedly essential meeting with Gertrude Stein, and here was Jamie, willing to give her up in an instant for an absinthe! It didn't make sense.

She looked at her friend and saw the high color, the sparkling eyes. She turned to Paul de Varenne and shook her head.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “but I'm exhausted. Why don't you both drop me off at the hotel and go together from there? Jamie isn't tired, but I'm not so strong, I'm afraid.”

“We'd miss you,” Jamie stated.

“Then drink to my health. Come on,” she added, looking around. “Even Alice Toklas is too busy to notice if we leave: her two most insignificant drop-ins!”

Paul de Varenne did not look happy, but he escorted them to the door, and when they exited into the cold winter air, Lesley felt his hand on the back of her coat. He was holding Jamie's arm, saying something that was making her laugh, a nervous excited laugh. But while he was speaking, Lesley could feel the very slight pressure of his fingers running circles on the material of her coat. She could feel every muscle resist his obvious sexuality.

There, in the star-brushed Paris night, she decided that she'd stay away from Paul de Varenne. And, at the same moment, Jamie knew that she was falling madly, irrevocably in love with him.