Mademoiselle Chanel

by C. W. Gortner

  That evening after everyone left, I invited Paul Iribe to my bed. He proved energetic, rousing a fire I had not felt in years. No one save Boy had done what he did with his fingers and tongue, and he was not satisfied until I was, highlighting the fact that for all our rapport, Bendor and I had not been compatible under the sheets.

  Iribe was not so accommodating outside the sheets, however. Despite his gluttony for luxury in all its forms, he despised my home. “You turned it into a museum for the diamond collection and that is how it should remain. So many rooms; so much waste. It’s preposterous, a mausoleum. Do you want to be entombed there among your Chinese screens?”

  At the time, we were staying in my suite at the Ritz, as I had emptied my living space for the jewelry show. Once he mentioned it, I realized I had ceased to feel at ease there since my return to Paris and the death of my beloved dogs. My butler Joseph’s wife, Marie, had also died recently, leaving him a forlorn widower. As with my other homes before it, unwelcome memories had begun to tarnish Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

  “If we lived here,” Iribe said, gazing at me from where he stood at the suite windows overlooking the place Vendôme, “we’d be more comfortable. There is no past here, no tokens of former lovers to taunt me. Here, I could even think of marrying you.”

  “Marry me?” With an uneasy laugh, I disguised my surprise. “You’re already married.”

  “I’ll divorce her.” He stared at me. “I don’t love her. I never have. I want you. And unlike Bendor or your other Englishman, I don’t care about lineage or children.”

  It was cruel: he was cruel. Remorseless, in fact, especially in his zeal to see France restored to national pride. In his latest issue of Le Témoin, he had depicted me as the face of our iconic symbol, la Marianne, lying at the feet of a gravedigger ready to bury France—the gravedigger being our embattled prime minister. I now saw he was sincere in this proposal, as well, opening doors inside me that had remained bolted since the end of my affair with Bendor.

  “Or don’t you want to get married?” he said. “If you don’t, I won’t ask again.”

  A valid question—even if, as usual, I had no easy answer. In August 1933, I had turned fifty. Did I intend to remain like this for the rest of my life, careening from liaison to liaison until men ceased to notice me? Until now, I had accepted this as my fate: to be wedded to my work and my friends. Iribe was hardly the man I envisioned for a husband; he was as unlike Boy or Bendor as any man could be—common born and uncouth, feral in his ambitions, and scathingly dismissive of what other people thought of him.

  Still, I did not want to grow old alone or, God forbid, chained to Misia. Children were out of the question, and in any event, I had my nephew André, who had completed his education and now worked overseeing one of my mills. He and his lovely Dutch wife had even had a daughter, naming her Gabrielle in my honor. Adrienne, too, had settled at the Nexon château in Limoges. Although she had not managed to get pregnant, she was content, a happy wife and aunt to her husband’s nephews and nieces. To finally have a companion, a husband with whom to share my waning years—how much time did I have before that door, too, closed on me forever?

  “You’ll marry me if we move here to the Ritz? I hardly call that romantic.”

  “Maybe not.” He stalked to the bed, ripping off his lounge robe to expose his hirsute body. He was erect, his manhood hard as he grasped it in his fist and said, “I want to fuck you every night, Coco, and help you conquer every day. I am ugly and greedy—but you like me and I like you, very much. Why shouldn’t we marry? Together, there’s nothing we cannot do.”

  Not romantic, no, but I was hardly of an age anymore for such posturing, and I began to laugh as he flung himself onto the bed, pressing himself against me and murmuring, his voice rough as ardor took over, “Say yes. Say yes and make me the happiest man in France.”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I gasped, his fingers stroking me. “I’ll think about it . . .”

  I had said the same words when I told him I would consider financing his magazine and in the end, I had written him a check. As he now played me until I was shuddering and bucking my hips, I realized I would probably agree this time, too.

  He was right. Why shouldn’t I grasp whatever happiness came my way?

  “MARRY HIM?” MISIA REGARDED ME, appalled, at breakfast in the Ritz dining room. Outside, a cold February snow, the first of 1934, drifted over the city. “Are you insane? He is monstrous, an opportunist! That magazine of his spews nothing but garbage. He goes through women and money like wine. He will bleed you dry. Everyone says so.”

  “Everyone being you, most of all,” I retorted. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s truly me you’re so concerned for. First, it was Boy, whom you thought a snob, then Bendor was a bigot, and now Iribe is a monster. Perhaps you just want me to yourself, seeing as your own three marriages have failed.”

  She quavered, “That’s . . . a horrid thing to say. I want you to be happy, but Iribe is—”

  I cut her off. “I’ll not hear another word. He has petitioned his wife for a divorce; he’s coming with me to La Pausa to plan our wedding. I’m moving out of Faubourg Saint-Honoré to live here. I gave Joseph notice, as I have no need for a butler anymore. I’ll use my apartment at rue Cambon to store my clothes and possessions.”

  “You let Joseph go . . . ?” Misia turned white. “Coco, he has served you for years! Please, think of what you’re doing—” She stopped abruptly, but this time, not because of me. Everyone in the dining room had turned in their chairs to stare, perplexed, toward the sound of distant thunder—a cacophony of shouts and tromping feet that within seconds had the maître d’ hurrying toward us to recommend that we remain inside.

  “Why?” I demanded. “What is the matter?”

  “A demonstration,” he said. “There are thousands of them marching to the place de la Concorde. The police warn that it is not safe to leave the hotel. We’re locking the doors.”

  “Honestly!” I huffed, and I dragged Misia to my suite on the top floor, from which we could look across the place. Alarm swept through me. Gusts of tear gas floated over raised, clenched fists as mounted police rammed into the crowd of bellowing young men in berets, carrying banners with slogans and sharpened sticks.

  Beside me, Misia whispered, “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.” As I watched the clash build to a furious struggle, with some of the men lunging at the police to yank them from their saddles, while others fled with faces bloodied, coughing and stumbling from the tear gas. “Come.” I drew Misia away from the window. “We’ll wait here. I have to telephone the shop to make sure everyone is safe. And Paul will be here as soon as he can; he’ll tell us what this uproar is about.”

  I called the store. They had shut the doors and sent the workforce home, although my manager, Hélène de Leusse, told me our workers had not shown up this morning. “They went to the demonstration against the government. They marched on the Chamber of Deputies and the Élysée Palace demanding the resignation of everyone. The unemployment and depression—” She gasped as I heard muffled chanting coming through the line from the streets outside the shop. “God save us, mademoiselle, it’s like the Bolshevik revolution. They want to bring everything down!”

  “Go up to my apartment,” I ordered. “Lock every door and window, pull the shutters, and stay there until it’s over. Do not go outside. Just stay there and I’ll come to you as soon as I can.”

  I wanted to go now, dreading the thought of violence, the inevitable smashing of windows and looting, and as I turned to Misia, she must have seen it, for she moaned, “Don’t leave me alone. You cannot go out there. It’s a mob!”

  “I won’t,” I reassured her. I poured two stiff vodkas, which she fortified with her habitual blue drops. I refused to take any. I had almost weaned myself from it, as Iribe loathed my dependence on it for sleep. Clenching my jaw, I smoked an endless succession of cigarettes instead, seated on the sofa with Misia noddin
g off as the riot outside went on for hours.

  Iribe arrived at dusk, drenched in sweat despite the cold. The riot had been crushed but it was the worst seen in Paris since the 1871 Paris Commune. The newspapers would report over two thousand injuries and seventeen deaths. Our prime minister now struggled for compromise before the 1936 elections; Iribe sneered, and his next magazine called for the defeat of the republican government.

  Paris was in shambles. Though my shop was spared damage, others reported looting and burning everywhere. I wanted to leave for La Pausa. Exacerbating my discontent was Iribe’s decision to delay our wedding plans. His wife had resisted his petition for divorce and he had his agenda to further, his nationalist propaganda in Le Témoin having gained a wide audience in the wake of the discord. He was illustrating and publishing a monthly edition, under my patronage, I noted sourly; but I had my own demons to battle, mainly Elsa Schiaparelli, whose latest collection had earned her the cover of Vogue. Enraged, I called the editor, demanding equal treatment for my most recent collection, which featured bias-cut gowns and embroidered cloaks. “I offer style, not circus costumes,” I shouted over the telephone. “You’re rewarding her for setting us all back a hundred years!”

  Vogue’s response was to refuse me further coverage until I cooled my temper. In a fit of frustration, I left Iribe behind and took Misia to La Pausa, where Lifar and several others joined us. There, amid my olive groves, with the vista of the coast below my windows, I tried to let go of my discontent, my growing fear that I was becoming what I dreaded more than anything else—irrelevant.

  Such was my blindness that I did not allow any newspapers or political discussions inside the house. I did not want to see or know that while I sought retreat, time was running out.

  V

  I greeted 1935 with renewed resolve.

  Schiaparelli debuted a new military look of regimental suits with peplums and more of her outrageous squashed capotes. The magazines went into ecstasies; I wanted to shriek when I read that the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, whose scandalous liaison with the Prince of Wales rocked the British monarchy, had visited Schiaparelli’s atelier for a fitting. My premières urged me to bow to the taste of the times by incorporating an element of surrealism in my designs. I refused. During my summer at La Pausa, I had seen my beach pajamas everywhere on the Riviera. I was not finished yet, and set myself to presenting half-sleeve bolero jackets in velvet with overlapping V-necked collars; tucked-waist tweed suits with double rows of buttons, crisp frilled blouses, and my signature two-tone pumps.

  My latest collection proved a success. British Vogue abased itself and offered to send a photographer to La Pausa to take pictures of me; I left Paris early to prepare the villa. Iribe said he would join me later, once he had seen to his latest magazine. Our relationship had cooled, given his obsession with everything political, but I reasoned once he was at La Pausa with me, away from work, we could discuss our future. I was beginning to regret my precipitous agreement to marry him. Not only was I uncertain of whether we loved each other, but I had my doubts that either of us was even capable of sustaining an actual marriage. I was still willing to try, but first I must be reassured that he shared my vision of a life together, one that was not subject to more pressing, outside engagements.

  La Pausa was glorious that year, the irises and roses blooming in profusion, so that their delicate scent tinged everything in the house. The photographer employed by Vogue was a Russian baron who had fled the motherland; he told me that his father had once refused to salute the kaiser because he considered the German a mere upstart compared with his own exalted lineage. I mentioned that I was friends with Dmitri Pavlovich, who was currently speaking at rallies in France against the German chancellor. Misia then regaled him with tales of her own fabulous, if mostly fabricated, ancestry, her shameless flirting making him smile.

  Iribe telephoned that he would take the overnight express from Paris. We picked him up at the station in Cannes; during the drive to the villa, I noticed he looked paler than usual and unsteady on his feet when we arrived. “I’m just tired and hungry,” he grumbled, waving off my concern. “Let me rest and tomorrow we’ll play tennis. You put that new court in, right?”

  “Yes.” I gave him a wary smile. He really did not look well. “But it can wait. Our guests are arriving in a few days. Take all the rest you need.”

  He ate a little and went upstairs to the suite that had been Bendor’s. He did not come down for our informal dinner, so I took him a tray. I found him fast asleep, but still sweating, though the room located at the rear of the house was cool. Tucking the sheets about him, I left one of the windows ajar to let in the breeze from the sea and retired. If he wasn’t improved tomorrow, I would insist that he see a doctor.

  The next morning, he seemed like himself. We shared breakfast on the terrace, where he went on at length about his political preoccupations, and then we went to play tennis. I wasn’t skilled at the game and he soon had me perspiring and chasing after the ball as he whacked it hard across the net. Finally, breathless and aggravated that I was spending the morning running rather than actually playing, I snarled, “Can you at least try to not humiliate me?”

  He paused, wiping sweat from his brow with a towel, peering at me from over his damp glasses. “Humiliate you . . . ?” he echoed, and then, as I stood there watching in confusion, the blood drained from his face. He swayed. The racket he held dropped from his hand. “I feel faint,” he whispered. All of a sudden, he collapsed to his knees, clutching his arm. Crying out, I bolted around the net; by the time I reached him, he was prone on the court, groaning. “A doctor,” he said through colorless, pinched lips. “My heart . . .”

  Screaming toward the house, I cradled him in my arms as he gave a spasm and then, to my wail of horror, went still.

  Misia and the servants raced from the villa. We bundled him in the car and drove at breakneck speed to the clinic in Cannes, but by the time we arrived, it was too late.

  At fifty-two years of age, the same age as me, the man I had planned to marry was dead.

  “COCO, DARLING, you must eat something. You cannot go on like this.” Misia spoke from the doorway of my bedroom; without looking up, I said, “Leave me alone. I’m not hungry.”

  “But you must eat.” I heard the clack of her heels cross the threshold. “It’s been four days. It wasn’t your fault. He had a coronary. It happens. He was ill and he—”

  I whirled around. I had not seen myself since his death, but I could imagine the sight I presented, the disheveled shock of it reflected in Misia’s recoil. “Shut up,” I hissed. “You wanted him dead. You hated him! You’ve hated every man I ever loved. Go away. I don’t want you here. I never want to see you again.”

  “Oh, Coco,” she said, and the tremulous pity in her voice, in her open hands as she reached out to me, dislodged the cold stone inside my chest, the ember of my hope and illusions charred to ash. Once again, someone I loved had deserted me; once more, I was left stranded, struggling to absorb the unexpected blow. Only this time, I felt as though I had no strength to withstand it. I did not fail to recognize the irony that only days before Iribe’s arrival, I had doubted our commitment. It gnawed a wound in my broken heart, a splinter of guilt driving home my lifelong fear that I was not worthy of love. Grabbing the nearest object, which happened to be a half-empty glass of water, I threw it at Misia. She ducked in time, the glass shattering against the wall behind her.

  “Go away!” I shrieked.

  She bolted from the room, but she did not leave. She sent up Lifar, who had arrived as planned for a visit and found me grieving. “Coco,” he said, coming toward me without any fear, his beautiful features drawn with worry. “You cannot do this. Misia is just trying to help. She is distraught for you. Please, let us do something to comfort you.”

  “There is nothing anyone can do,” I whispered. Seeing him brought back the vivid reminder of his own wretched agony on the day Diaghilev had died. I clapped
my hands to my mouth and started to sob, my legs giving way as he caught me in his arms. “No one can do anything,” I heard myself say through choking breaths. “No one. He left me alone. They always leave. Why? Why does nobody stay?”

  He cradled me against his broad chest. I didn’t see or hear anyone else in the room until he whispered, “We must fetch the doctor. She is hysterical. She needs a sedative . . .”

  THE SYRINGE PRICKED MY ARM; a cool pulse turned to warmth as the injection shot into my veins. The doctor from Cannes, who had overseen Iribe’s corpse, smiled at me. “There, now. This will help you sleep. You must not take it so to heart, mademoiselle. You’re making yourself ill, and your friends are very anxious for you. Rest now. Tomorrow, you’ll feel better.”

  It was easing, the terrible pain. Disappearing into vaporous nothingness.

  I sighed. Oblivion.

  It was all I wanted now.

  VI

  I did not recover. I knew I never would recover, not this time. Every loss—every death, every abandonment, every betrayal from the time I’d been a child—was unearthed, stripped of its layers of lies and myth. Exposed.

  It showed in my face; it calcified in my heart.

  I was not the same woman when I returned to Paris in the autumn of that year. I had dictated my latest collection over the telephone to my premières without caring if it made an impact, though it did, for my work always thrived on misfortune, and my sleeveless azure lamé evening gown caused a sensation. My staff noticed the change in me at once. The deference they showed me, the caution; it was palpable. I wasn’t as I had been after Boy, lost in a rage of smoke. Now, cruelty became my defense, a shield to deflect anything that did not serve my purpose, which was to survive, no matter what.