Igor says nothing, just bites his lip and carries on scribbling.
“You never talk to me anymore. Even Joseph pays me more attention than you do.”
It is true; at this moment he resents being with her and has nothing to say. He feels ashamed but is unable to deny it. Part of the problem, he realizes, is that he feels powerless, living here on another woman’s charity and subject to her whims. He needs to impose control over someone—and who is more convenient than his wife? Of course on one level he knows this is pathetic. Yet, try as he might, he finds he cannot help himself.
The boys hurry back toward them. “Come on, Papa, come on, Mama!”
Having come to an impasse in his composition anyway, and hurt into activity by Catherine’s slight, Igor responds immediately. In a vindictive show of energy, he slides his papers into his wallet, lays down his pencil, and sprints after the ball.
Rising from her chair, Catherine feels her lungs labor with the effort. She senses the air in her chest begin sluggishly to churn. While the fresh air is good for her, she knows the emotional upset she’s experiencing is potentially calamitous for her health.
The sermon today, she recalls, was all about tolerance and forgiveness; how we shouldn’t allow our grievances to get in the way of giving our love. Ordinarily she’d be quick to forgive him. But she feels hurt and angry still. He’s made no effort, really, to reconcile with her, apart from his grand gesture on the balcony last night. It was clear all he wanted was sex—to force himself upon her—while what she craves with increasing desperation is tenderness, affection, and, above all, respect. She’s not willing to surrender just like that. That would be too easy.
She watches him now as he runs around the garden. It is as if he is possessed, she thinks. Finally he kicks the ball so hard against the outhouse that all the parrots squawk.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Coco arranges a game of tennis with the Serts. A club in a neighboring village boasts several well-maintained grass courts. Igor enjoys playing, and Coco is keen to see Misia again. So, in the heat of the afternoon, the two couples—for so they seem—are driven out by Coco’s chauffeur.
Coming to a narrow bridge over a stream, the driver brakes sharply. A car has drawn up simultaneously on the other side. As both approach roads are on an incline, neither is aware of the other’s presence until both are practically on the bridge itself. The two vehicles come to a stop. The driver of the other car makes it plain he has no intention of reversing; so Coco’s chauffeur starts to back up. But she screams at him not to budge. Both cars are thus stuck on the creaking wooden slats of the bridge for about ten minutes. Igor remonstrates, but she refuses to back down. She grows adamant, instructing the driver to switch off the engine and sit back until the other man yields—which, eventually, in high dudgeon, he does. Driving on, Coco offers a magisterial wave to the driver of the other car as they pass. He is red-faced with indignation, she white with self-righteousness.
“Stupid man!” she blurts.
Looking out, Igor sees the telegraph poles stretch into the distance like bars and bars of rest.
“She’s a woman who likes to get her own way,” José says, as he and Igor emerge from the changing room half an hour later.
Tanned and glowingly healthy, both men look dapper in their whites. Igor bends to measure the height of the net as José practices a few overhead serves. Coco and Misia still linger inside.
“Catherine, of course, is still sick,” Coco says. “She’s had Marie up and down the stairs all day.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And the kids just create havoc around the place.”
“Does Igor say anything?”
She laughs. “I’m not sure he even notices. He spends all his time at the piano.”
“Ah, yes.”
“He says he has a new symphony on the go.”
“Exciting.”
Sincere for the moment: “Yes. It is.”
“I liked his Scherzo Fantastique.”
“What was that about?”
“Bees, I think,” Misia says, tying her laces. Dressed, she picks up her racquet and bangs the strings against the heel of her hand. The air around the racquet rings. Small white squares are printed on her palm. “If I remember the scenario correctly, the queen kills off the male once he’s outlived his sexual usefulness.”
Coco laughs. “If only . . .” She copies the gesture of rapping the racquet smartly against her hand.
Outdoors, Igor, a little skinny next to the plumper José, swings his arms gawkily in preparation for the game. Mixed doubles. He is to partner with Misia, while José is paired with Coco across the net.
The women come out wearing white cotton dresses and broad cream hats. They both look swanky in contrast to the men.
After knocking up for a couple of minutes, the match begins in earnest. José is sluggish around the court and rarely comes to the net. But when he connects, his shots are strong. He has an impressive forehand, which fizzes if he hits it right. Igor is quicker and nimbler around the court; his anticipation is good, and while he may lack José’s power, he enjoys a surer touch.
Coco, he notices, holds the racquet oddly, and sometimes it is all she can do to volley his serves back over the net. Yet she manages a few deft dabs and perky volleys, and her timing is generally sweet. He’s more lenient in his returns to her than he is with José. And twice when, with fat backhands, she hits the ball long, he knowingly calls them in. Seeing this, Misia—to his consternation—winks at him. He pretends not to notice. But she’s wrong if she thinks him a pushover. Ever competitive, he’s out to win. And as the match proceeds, he scampers after every point until something swells within him and seems ready to burst. He begins to hit the ball harder and harder as if he wants to punish it.
The weather is hot and he sweats profusely. The handle on his racquet grows humid. His grip begins to slip. Released into a life of higher energy, he chases everything, exerting himself beyond measure. The others seem ponderous by contrast. As the match goes on, he ruthlessly exploits José’s slowness. A series of exquisite dink shots played into space are perfectly calculated to leave him for dead.
“What’s the matter with him?” asks José. “Does he always play like this?”
Then with the score at one set all, and in the middle of a tense final set, he reaches for one of José’s whippy, unanswerable, chalk-flirting serves. The ball hits Igor’s racquet with a melancholy twang. In the following overheated exchange of shots, Igor feels the “give” of the racquet along with its tautness soften. His shots lose their crispness. The song goes out of them. An inspection of the racquet head reveals a broken string, which crimps miserably as he pulls it out. He raises the frame to show his opponents.
The match is abandoned and declared a draw.
“Well, what do you think?” Coco asks. Exhausted, she slumps down in the changing room next to Misia.
Misia idly straightens the strings on her racquet. “He makes a good tennis partner, that’s for sure.”
“Come on,” Coco urges.
“He certainly puts his all into it.”
“He never gives up on a point, does he?”
“He likes to chase the things he wants.”
Coco looks across at her. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Misia’s waist may have thickened over the years but she still possesses the aura and frank energy of the sexually voracious. “Nothing,” she responds in a singsong voice. “But none of us is getting any younger, dear. You’ve got to chase what you want, too.”
“That’s part of the problem.” Coco looks despondent. “I don’t know what I want.” She’s finding it hard to resist the instinct that keeps telling her there is something about him that is right. He is talented and sophisticated. He has intellectual weight and the kind of profoundly artistic sympathy that appeals to her. Rather than infatuation, a deep sense of affinity draws her toward him. And the call is becoming stronger with each passing day. �
�I keep changing my mind. I need to be sure.”
“About him, or you?”
“What I don’t understand is . . .” She hesitates.
“Go on.”
“How can he be so musical, yet so lacking in emotion?”
“He wants people to love him, don’t you see?”
“I’m sure he’d prefer them to love his work. Everything else is secondary. He says so.”
“He’s just shy.”
“You think?”
“Maybe he just needs someone to bring him out a bit.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Then less cheerfully: “But I want someone who’s mad about me, who can’t live without me.”
Misia looks at her. “You think I don’t?”
Coco clamps her racquet back in its press.
“Here.” Misia tosses two tennis balls to her in quick succession. Coco catches them, opening her hands and closing them over like a mouth.
Misia burlesques the flight of a bee, flapping her arms about rapidly. “Zzzz.”
“Oh, stop it!” Coco says. Then, fitting the balls into the bottom of her bag, she pulls the buckles tight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It is the lifeless middle of the afternoon. Houses across the region are sealed against the heat.
The shutters in Igor’s study are half closed. Light filters through them, fashioning shadows against the walls. He is running through a melody by Pergolesi. He neither hears nor sees Coco enter the room.
Stirred by the faint strains of the piano, she has been drawn like a somnambulist toward their source. She stands in a corner of the room, watching him. A white linen suit sets off her deep bronze tan. The skirt is cinched by a dark belt. Light from the shutters stripes one side of her face. Her bare feet feel the coolness of the floor.
Seeing Igor’s hands ripple across the piano, she experiences a slow inflammation of her senses. Her mind made up, she shuffles silently out of her skirt, which falls in a wrinkly heap at her feet.
Igor becomes abruptly aware of her presence, sensing her nearness like an animal. He stops playing, but does not turn around, remaining frozen in midgesture, his fingers tense and arrested above the keys. Coco moves like heat behind him. Two deft hands steal over his eyes.
She whispers thrillingly in his ear.
He does not answer, but with supreme self-control he closes the lid of the piano. He turns slowly as she backs off. A line of sweat appears on his forehead. His throat is parched, and his tongue feels like a bone. The sound of a bird outside scrapes across the floor of his mind. He sits facing her, astonished, his hands placed chastely on his knees. They look at one another trustingly for some moments. Then jubilantly she pulls off her top. The fabric snags on the cloud of her hair. Static adheres to a few stray wisps so that they stick out witchily. She lets the top drop with startling casualness the short distance from her hand to the floor. Then, without visible hurry, she peels off her underclothes. The sight of her naked stuns him.
Straightening her hair, she turns around. She knows she’s taking a risk, but it’s what she wants. She’s thought about it, and the only way to succeed, she decides, is to be as open and honest as possible. Despite her frankness, she feels vulnerable and fights a natural shyness.
She lies upon her stomach across the chaise longue, her legs bent at an angle to her body. Slats of light from the shutters extend in bars across her body, improvising a keyboard the length of her naked back. Her face tilts up toward him, her chin cupped in her hand. “Well?” she says. There’s a sense of challenge in her voice. She sounds almost cross.
A faint hum hangs in the air, sustained from the ghostly notes of the piano. Igor hesitates, half puzzled, half afraid.
He feels all at sea and moves heavily as through water toward her. He halts for a moment, his shadow occluding the stripes across her back. His glasses sit with a desperate attempt at equilibrium on his nose. A fly fizzes and crackles in a corner of the room.
His fingers tingle as though recovering from numbness. His limbs are no longer solid. Something catches in his throat. It’s insane, he thinks. But his chest seems suddenly full with blood. Then, like a piece of elastic that has stretched and stretched and finally snapped back, frenziedly he undresses, abandoning his garments like bad debts. She watches him struggle with the buckle of his trousers, smiles to see him rip off his shoes. His eyes reveal a raw need, a desperate longing.
Desire undoes him. He kisses her hungrily on the stomach. A delicious salinity films her skin. He absorbs the scent of her hair and inhales the odor of her breasts like damp roses, feeling their smearing pressure against his chest. He feels her tongue flutter in his mouth. Quick, oysterish kisses.
“Hey, slow down a little!” she says, sensing his impatience.
He looks up, stunned to hear her voice. Now that it is happening, it seems unreal. He loses any sensation of weight in his body. Appalled at himself, yet unrepentant, he is overwhelmed by the sheer carnality of the act.
Coco smiles at him. “Slowly,” she urges. He smiles back, disarmed.
It’s as though his life thus far has been a sham. A door within him is flung open. He feels something monstrous in his performance, something utterly reckless released. At this moment, music seems a remote groping, a mealymouthed endeavor, an obscure project that can at best approximate the passion he feels. The compositions into which he has thrown himself seem as coldly abstract as mathematical proofs. The physicality of his love for Coco is what makes life urgent now.
He is permeated by the scent her flesh gives off. His lips cling to her skin and release themselves only to find new undiscovered points of her body. His fingers find with fierce ardor the flute stops of her vertebrae. Fumbling along the warm and tawny insides of her thighs, his hands are cold there and she shivers.
Minutes before it had seemed wholly improper to sleep with her. Now it seems the most natural thing in the world. He remembers the first time Catherine and he made love—a messy, painful defloration. He experiences nothing of that with Coco. It’s what he has been waiting for secretly all his life. He feels their limbs mingle as if they were made to.
Slowly Coco feels herself the center of a set of concentric circles, around which everything seems to ripple and blur. A glow spreads itself like an odor across her chest. The low flame on her cheeks spreads to a fire engulfing her whole body. She feels something well within her, quicken, achieve a brief vertiginous rhythm, and then explode. Her insides feel as if they’re falling. For a moment, her eyes have a stupid look, then her head snaps sideways violently.
A prolonged shudder runs through her. Her limbs stiffen, and pink spots appear where her fingers press into Igor’s arms.
They both rest on the floor. Gently she runs her fingers through his hair and traces the ripened line of his jaw. She strokes the muscles of his stomach and caresses the insides of his arms. He seems immobilized for a moment. But she relaxes him, kissing his head, eyelids, neck, and chest, before coaxing him into her with an ardor he finds almost immodest.
Astonishing how slim she is, he thinks, the hungry young look of her hips pulling him in. He eases deeper until he’s swallowed by her heat. A hot slippery softness that makes him think of licorice. With thrilling delicacy, her hands trail over his body, enjoying a series of wondrous contacts. Blindly she sucks his fingers. Lithely she arches her back. He realizes, a little awed, that he is being instructed. Slowly he senses a realignment taking place. He feels his whole life being redefined, his entire existence reshaped.
Drunkenly he loses himself inside her. Her breath is warm and fluttery against his chest. As his movements quicken, becoming more urgent, he feels their warm charged bodies move in synchrony like two melodic lines. His face becomes radiant, his lips stretched wide with desire. Then he trembles with fierce pleasure. A single hot charge stings his flesh. The delirium suffuses itself long-sufferingly through his body.
Motionless, they lie together for a few moments in a state of mutual dissolution. Sh
e rests her body against his. He sets his hand, limp as a leaf curl, on her stomach. Her fingertips pamper the hairs at the back of his neck. Eventually they both rise from the floor. Standing apart, she folds her arms in suddenly discovered modesty.
“Forgive me,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“I couldn’t help myself.”
She asks, “Did I shock you?”
As she turns to retrieve her top, he sees her shoulder blades flex symmetrically like a winged creature at rest.
He finds himself thinking bizarrely of Beethoven’s final string quartet. In that piece, the composer asks the violinist to play two notes together without separating them—only directing that the second should be played “with emotion,” with a kind of audible sob. All his life, Igor has wondered what that meant. Now, marvelously, he knows. He has felt that sob inside himself, in the movements their two bodies enjoyed in making love.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, stroking one of her eyelids with his thumb.
“No.”
“Very beautiful.”
“Stop.”
“I mean it.”
After a pause, she asks, “Have you ever slept with anyone except Catherine?” She sees him smile. “I mean apart from me.”
“It didn’t occur to me until I met you.” This is not quite true. It has occurred to him with increasing frequency of late. But he’s always feared the flat retributive hand of God smiting him in the act. He still does. “I’ve wanted it to happen ever since.”
“Me, too,” she says. This is also a lie. It is only in the last week or two that her admiration for him has developed into a powerful sexual attraction. What would have surprised her a week ago, however, seems inevitable and necessary now.
“Are you sure I’m rich enough for you?”
Enigmatically. “I’m used to having a good time.”
She sees he is about to say something else and puts a finger to his lips, hushing him. Down the corridor, they can hear the children finishing their lessons for the afternoon. “I must go,” she whispers and dresses quickly. She stops to blow him a kiss before slipping in silence out the door.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky Page 11
