The Eleventh Year (30 page)

He was standing beside her, his hands on her hips, caressing them, massaging them. She turned around, angry, and he took her face roughly in his hand and forced her to kiss him. “Damn it,” he said, “don't do this, Elena. We're both so irritable these days, so nervous. But I do love you.”

“Love is boring.”

“This isn't.” He held her tightly to him, and she felt his arousal against her stomach. It would be wise to make him leave now, before he did anything else. Then she felt him pressing against her, forgot, kissed him back, and put her arms around his neck. So close, so close. She wanted to forget the pain, all the other pains in her life, the frustrations of her daily existence. He was pulling her back onto the bed, and she was thinking: Why am I allowing this? It makes no sense, and there is no love. And then she wanted to cry, because he was entering her and she was willing for it to take place, for her to be with him as one body. She'd always tried to be in control, but the pleasure was his doing, it was his technique, it was excruciating because she couldn't hold it back. She hated herself and him, hated the pleasure and its consequence, that she was so vulnerable and that he could see it. She was no stronger than Jamie. Perhaps this
was
love, after all. She pushed against him, ran her fingers over his chest, shut her eyes. Wonderful, wonderful. He made it wonderful as only he could make it, and she could only whisper: “Don't stop—make it last!”

Afterward she turned over and avoided contact. She was ashamed. And so he said: “May I stay awhile? I've got some powder. It's good stuff.”

She rolled back to look at him. “Cocaine?”

He nodded and went to the chest of drawers, pulled one out, removed an envelope, showed it to her. “Pure white snow.” Then he removed a small sheet of paper, spilled some of the powder onto the paper, and took a copious dose between his own fingers. She watched him stuff the cocaine into his nostril, inhaling, and then she imitated him, sitting down naked on the edge of the bed. Almost immediately she felt exhilarated. He was pulling her toward him, and she touched his nipples, his throat, his shoulder blades. He felt good, like an athlete. She wanted to make love again. What time was it? She started to laugh.

Hours later she awakened, in a stupor. It was dark. Time had passed oddly, the paper with the cocaine powder was gone. Had they sniffed everything? Probably, because the effect of each dose lasted less than an hour. Her hands felt ice cold. The sheet had fallen off or been kicked down. She sat up, remembered frantic copulating, talking, a flurry of words and bodies. He bought it from an Englishman, but one could obtain it from any chemist or doctor. The Alexandres in the Chambre had passed or wanted to pass a law against its sale. They'd never be able to control it, the way the Americans would never control the use of liquor with their absurd temperance amendment to the Constitution. Since Prohibition, there were more alcoholics than ever in the United States. She wondered what time it was and what had happened to Paul.

He was emerging from the bathroom, freshly bathed. “It's already eight. Jamie will be frantic. There is a dinner at Sylvia Beach's house….”

“She can go alone. May as well let her get used to it.”

“Why? I like Sylvia.”

“But Jamie doesn't need to be escorted everywhere she goes.

She needs a husband. Let her find one, to babysit her.” She felt irritable, angry, her nerves on fire.

“When the book comes out, so will the suitors. Are you planning to go out?”

“Would you miss the dinner?”

Their eyes met. She was testing him and also watching to see if she could detect guilt about Jamie on his features. There was none. He wanted to stay. Elena sat back, a smile spreading on her face. Why was it that she suddenly remembered what it had felt like to willfully run over a ladybug with her doll's carriage wheel, as a small girl? The ladybug had lain, crushed, on the handsome path, an insult to the cleanliness of the gardeners. She'd felt sad—and then exhilarated. She'd won, she'd crushed the
life
out of one of God's animals, at the age of five!

Later her governess had made her feel ashamed. She'd been punished. But Elena could vividly recall that sense of having won such a great, important victory. It had been worth the punishment, which she'd long since forgotten.

Jamie was nothing more than a ladybug, an insect in the path of her conquest of Paul. She was weak and provincial, not elegant. It was so easy to make Paul forget her, to make him beg her, Elena, to spend an extra hour with him. Jamie was like the ladybug. She was
there,
in the way of the wheel of her doll's carriage.

When he took her in his arms she thought of Jamie arriving alone, late and slightly disheveled, at Sylvia Beach's dinner party. There would be tears stinging her blue eyes, she'd apologize, a little breathlessly, to the assembled group: “Paul couldn't make it, he's so sorry—the car—you know modern automobiles, they're not like the Fords back in the States. . . .”

And someone would laugh, to help her out, to ease her discomfort. Maybe Hemingway, perhaps Joyce. A man who'd guess at once why Paul had left her hanging. One had to pity her. Maybe Harold Ober and that editor, Perkins, were publishing her novel out of a similar sense of pity.

But if Jamie was so pathetic, then why was Elena suddenly unhappy, thinking of her? “I wish you could love me just a little bit,” Paul was murmuring against her ear, into the softness of her neck. She closed her eyes, pushed back the pain. No, she would not love him, it would be too easy, for then he would turn her into the ladybug that got crushed and mangled. Another Jamie. “Not even a little bit?” he was insisting.

“Yes,” she whispered, amazed that she was mouthing the words. He hadn't heard her, her voice had been a bare whisper. But
she
knew she had said the words, and now she was afraid.

N
ineteen twenty-four
began with political unrest. Poincaré's expedition into the Ruhr Valley had weakened the value of the franc, and at last the members of the Bloc National realized that taxation, which they had so ardently sought to avoid, could no longer be delayed. Their capitulation was marked by fear. The French people who had brought them to office as strong saviors now viewed them cynically as a group of conservative men of indeterminate leadership. Alexandre, tense with concern, waited for something to break, for something to happen to his government—and felt engulfed by a deep depression. He felt absolutely helpless. His country was plunging toward darkness and he would not, as he had been made to believe by the financiers who had backed him in 1919, be able to rescue it. And Lesley seemed remote, and as the months passed, increasingly nervous and walled off from him.

In the fall he felt her withdraw even more. At twenty-six, she had thinned down to where her looks had become almost severe. She had stopped wearing gold-looped earrings and instead affected neat little tailored suits of hand-knitted wool tubed with raw silk, in toneless beiges or dark, joyless colors. He came home one afternoon and heard voices from the salon. Lesley, her cheekbones dotted with rouge, her white lips dry, was pacing the floor in front of a middle-aged man with a trimmed Van Dyke beard and a young woman who stood deferentially aside. Lesley's voice was harsh, almost strident: “Monsieur Franchot, this turquoise lamp doesn't belong on that Louis Sixteen side table. It simply doesn't!”

“But mother-of-pearl would clash, my dear Marquise.”

“It would be perfect!”

“What do you think, Mademoiselle Markovitch?”

“I'm afraid,” the young woman said softly, her Russian-accented voice melodic and timid, “that I agree with you, Monsieur. Turquoise makes a lovely contrast. The mother-of-pearl will clash.”

Alexandre stood in the entrance hall, hesitant. There was something awful about Lesley and these two people. She was stuffing a long, gold-tipped cigarette into an ivory holder, her hands trembling, and Monsieur Franchot, whom Alex recalled being
the
decorator of the day, hastily produced a light. His assistant seemed reticent to speak, but Alex saw her face hardening. Then Lesley asked, with irony: “Tell me, Monsieur Franchot: Who is paying your bills?”

“Why, Madame, you are. And the deputy.”

“Then—is there any reason to continue this argument? This is my salon. This is my Louis Sixteen side table. This is my lamp.” She walked over and touched the Chinese body of the lamp, all turquoise enamel, and suddenly pushed it off the table. Franchot's face mirrored the horror he must have felt—that Alex himself felt. The elegant lamp fell with a thud and lay on the Aubusson carpet, its shade tossed to the left like a discarded hat.

“Madame, this lamp is worth five thousand francs,” Mademoiselle Markovitch reproved softly.

“And I don't like it!” Lesley's chin had begun to tremble, and she stubbed out her cigarette and pulled out a new one from a silver box on the side table. She went through the same motions as before, and when Franchot had lit this one for her, she began to inhale. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, and Alex saw her other hand clenching and unclenching. Finally she looked at the decorator and said tonelessly: “I'm sorry.”

He appeared relieved, smiled, touched the point of his salt and pepper beard. “Then, Madame, will you let us proceed with the room? As Mademoiselle Markovitch and I conceived it?”

Lesley shrugged. “Do as you wish,” she replied, and put this cigarette out in the crystal ashtray beside the first. She sighed, then gave the decorator her ring-studded hand, which he raised elegantly to his lips. She withdrew her hand with a slight grimace of disgust that she hardly attempted to conceal.

Then she nodded to the assistant and left the room in short, hasty steps. Alexandre, embarrassed, walked in at once, smiled, pretended to have only just arrived. Mademoiselle Markovitch's wide gray eyes remained steady and he felt himself coloring. She was sorry for him. She was ashamed for him, for what had taken place. Clearing his throat, he said, a surge of anger rising in his body that anyone should think him ashamed of his wife: “Thank you very much, Monsieur Franchot. I'm certain we shall both be very pleased with your work—and Mademoiselle's. Come back when you need to confer with us.” It was a polite dismissal, but he didn't want these people in the house anymore. Lesley had been right—she paid the bills, and they had no privilege to judge her.

When the two decorators had departed, Alexandre went into his study, where a silver tray with a snifter and a decanter of Napoleon cognac stood on a small Louis XIII table. He poured a glass for himself and tasted it thoughtfully. Again the sensation of helplessness overwhelmed him. He downed the contents of the glass in a series of swift gulps and then sat down behind his large ebony desk. He laid his head in the palms of his hands and allowed the despair to wash over him. Then he stood up and went out, up the stone staircase that curved toward the bedrooms. At the far end was her boudoir, and he tapped on the wooden door that faced him. When she didn't answer he turned the brass handle and stepped inside.

Lesley had tossed off her day clothes and was sitting, in the filmiest of silk nightgowns, at her vanity, smothering her neck and shoulders with perfume. Near the perfume bottle of sculpted glass lay an ashtray of Chinese enamel, with a cigarette burning in it, and a glass beside a cordial decanter. The glass was half full. She turned and looked at him. “You're home? Franchot was here.”

“I know. I saw. I heard. Is it really that important, darling, to have these endless discussions with your decorators?”

“Don't be so disagreeable, Alex,” she said, picking up the glass and drinking. She set it down abruptly, took the cigarette, without holder, between her fingers. “Franchot isn't a decorator; he's an artist, in great vogue!”

The words hit him as false. “Just because Hélène Berthelot and the Princesse Murat have used him doesn't turn his work into ‘art.' He merely puts rooms together. Other men have crafted the materials he works with. I wouldn't call him an artist.”

“But who are you to call him anything? You don't know the first fact about art. You're a businessman!”

Stung, he bit his lip. She crushed out her cigarette and finished her drink, poured herself another. His eyes remained hypnotized by the brusque gestures with which she was accomplishing these things. He tried again: “Lesley…what's really wrong?”

She jerked her head up, stared at him. “Why must something be wrong?”

“Because you're not yourself.”

“And who is this self? Do
you
know, Alex?”

He went to her, put a hand on her neck, caressed it. “Sweetheart—I love you so much. I'd like to have a family. …”

He felt her stiffening, pulling away. “You know I don't want a baby. I never wanted one! Don't keep bringing it up—I'll keep on refusing!”

“But why?”

“Because! Just ‘because'!”

Her green eyes, slightly bloodshot, pierced him. He could feel the frustration mounting. He closed his eyes and fought it. His hand remained on her neck, still, its fingers immobile. He waited, opened his eyes, touched her face. The cheeks were hot. He bent down, on one knee, and held her chin. She had a feverish look about her, and her breath smelled of wine. Quickly, he kissed her. He felt her bending back her long, delicate neck, so that he could better taste her warm, moist mouth. Then, without warning, she pushed herself away from him. He stared at her, bewildered.

“You can't persuade me this way,” she said, her voice unsteady.

“‘Persuade' you? I wasn't trying to ‘persuade' you. Only to make love to you.”

“I'm sorry, Alex. I guess the timing is wrong.” She wasn't looking at him now but was drinking from the wineglass, peering into the golden liquid, as if fascinated by its color.

He stood up, his heart knocking inside his chest in erratic beats. “I'm sorry too,” he murmured, and left the room. As he closed the door, he could hear her beginning to cry. But he didn't go back. He felt a numbness, as when Charlotte had shouted abuse at him in his childhood.

I
n the morning Lesley awakened
, her temples throbbing painfully. She put a hand out, felt for the light, turned it on. The vanity was messy, as she had left it the previous evening: the decanter almost empty, four cigarettes stubbed out in the ashtray, pots of makeup open. She felt her forehead, pressed her fingers against her sinuses. She wondered what time it was and rang for the maid.

Within moments she heard the knock, and then the girl, neat in her frilled apron and frilled cap, entered the room. “Madame rang?” she asked. “For breakfast?”

Lesley said: “Just coffee, Marianne. A full pot, very strong.”

“Very well, Madame.” She made a small curtsey and backed out of the room. Lesley fell back against the pillows and noticed that they were streaked with the kohl she had forgotten to wipe off last night. No—that wasn't it. Alex had come to talk to her, and she'd pushed him away, and he'd felt insulted and hadn't come back. Lesley could feel drops of perspiration gathering on her upper lip. She stood up, moved unsteadily toward the connecting bathroom, splashed cold water over her temples and eyelids. Then she heard the bedroom door opening again, and she saw Marianne setting up the silver tray on the bedside table and pouring out the coffee into a cup of Meissen china.

She walked back inside, sat down on the bed, ran her fingers through her short, straight hair. Marianne was adding hot milk. Lesley said: “Don't. I just want it black this morning.”

“Yes, Madame. Will that be all?”

“For right now. What do I have scheduled for today?”

The young maid said: “A fitting at Lanvin, at eleven thirty. Then luncheon at Sirdar's with the Princesse de Polignac. This afternoon, Madame has a tea at Miss Barney's, and a tentative appointment with the Princess Egorova to see the new Picasso exhibit at Madame Sert's, for cocktails. Madame is to telephone the Princess to confirm. Tonight—”

“Please, Marianne, stop! What time is it now?”

“Ten o'clock, Madame. Would Madame like her bath prepared?”

“Yes, yes. That would be lovely. Scent it, will you, Marianne?”

“Very well, Madame.”

The girl curtseyed, left the boudoir soundlessly. Lesley groped for the cup of coffee, drained it. She felt better. She opened the lacquered box by her lamp and took out a cigarette. Her fingers were moist on the silver lighter, and the flame flickered and missed the tip. She tried again, and this time it worked. She propped herself back into bed, poured herself a new cup of black coffee.

When the maid returned, Lesley said: “Marianne, cancel my appointments, will you? Except the Princess Egorova. Telephone her, and ask her to come as planned, at six. When is my husband going to be home?”

“In time for the masqued ball at the Comte de Beaumont's. At three thirty Monsieur Poiret is having Madame's costume delivered.”

“My costume?”

“Madame is going as Aspasia, and Monsieur le Marquis as Pericles. His costume will be delivered at the same time.”

“Oh, God.” Lesley swallowed, feeling helpless. She pressed

unsteady fingers against her temples and waited. “Thank you, Marianne.” Then she turned away, burying her face in her pillow.

A
s soon as
Elena stepped into the Varenne hallway, and Bouchard, the maître d'hôtel, had ceremoniously removed her fur coat and ushered her in, she felt something odd in the household. She was wearing a black velvet suit cut like a man's tuxedo and two long rows of pearls—perfect for a cocktail showing at Misia Sert's. It was strange, going to see an art exhibit. Usually her own figure stared back at her, changed through the interpretation of a particular painter, yet unmistakable. But Picasso hadn't used her. She liked going to exhibits dressed in severe, striking clothes—to shock people away from her canvas nudity, so that they became aware of her as a person and not simply as a painter's model. But Bouchard was saying: “Madame is waiting for the Princess in Monsieur's study, if the Princess will follow me….”