by M. J. Rose
“Your grandmother,” my father explained, “is an independent businesswoman with a razor-sharp mind who has made a career for herself in the art of giving pleasure. Not everyone in America finds it a respectable profession, but in France, in Paris, she’s something of a celebrity.”
He didn’t use the word “courtesan” to describe her, but over time I came to understand that Grand-mère was a high-ranking member of France’s famous demimonde, one of the great grand horizontales. Thanks to certain wealthy gentlemen, these women lived in opulent apartments, wore the most stylish clothes and mesmerizing jewels, attended and turned heads at the theater, the ballet, and the opera, and frequented the finest restaurants and nightclubs. Even their names evoked fantasy: La Belle Otero, La Paiva, and the Countess di Castiglione.
Like my grandmother, some of these women had been brought up by mothers who were in the profession and trained their daughters to follow in their silk-slippered footsteps. Others started out as singers, dancers, or actresses.
Courtesans were not prostitutes who sold their bodies for money to buy a meal, but freethinking intellectuals who spun cocoons of sensuality and created an oasis of pleasure and escape for wealthy, powerful men. They seduced not just with their bodies but also with their wit and charm, and in return were paid handsomely for their companionship. Many had longstanding arrangements with their benefactors. My grandmother had been with my father’s father for more than fifteen years, until his death, and since then had been the companion to an Italian count for more than two decades.
My father was not ashamed of his mother, but when he left Paris at eighteen to go to college in America, she had insisted he keep her a secret. To all the world he was the son of a French banker and his wife. It was true that Papa’s father had been a well-respected financier. But Albert Salome had never married my grandmother. Men like Salome never married courtesans.
The banking scion had loved his illegitimate son and given him his name. He not only mentored him and sent him to Harvard University, but after my father graduated, Albert opened a branch of the Salome bank in New York City for his son to run.
Shortly after that, my father met and fell in love with my mother. Even though she was Jewish and her father was also in banking, I think my French father fell in love with her because she was so different from him. Born in Manhattan, Henrietta was part of a big boisterous family, was light and lovely and my father said, had absolutely no secrets at all.
But he had many, the most grievous being my grandmother’s identity. Philippe Salome’s mother, so the story went, died when the boy was only ten years old. Who was the femme fatale with the burning eyes and orange hair who came to visit our family in New York every few years? An eccentric and distant cousin. If she caused tongues to wag and gossip to fly, so be it. After all, one couldn’t be responsible for everyone in one’s family.
“We lost someone so special, didn’t we, mon ange?” my grandmother said sadly, bringing my thoughts back to the more recent past.
My eyes filled. I had not really wept yet, not let out the full range of my grief. While the tears had come often in those long, lonely hours after my father’s death, then during the service and after in my cabin on the boat, I always fought them back. I needed to be vigilant and protect myself, not give in to my sorrow, until I was safe.
And now that I was, I couldn’t hold back.
My grandmother sat beside me on the settee, took me in her arms, held me to her chest, and let me shed my tears. Only when I was spent and finished did I realize she’d been crying along with me and that her tears had wet the curls on my forehead.
“You’ll let me stay here, won’t you?” I asked.
“With me, yes, of course, mon ange, for a time. But I wish you hadn’t come . . . I would have traveled to New York.” After a moment she disentangled herself. “Now tell me, why didn’t you ask me to come to be with you? That’s always been the way we’ve visited.”
“I’ll explain all that, but first, did Mr. Lissauer say anything about me in the telegram? Did he ask if I was here?”
“No, why should he?”
“So you didn’t tell him I was coming?”
“How could I? I didn’t know you were coming.”
“You can’t tell him. Not him and not anyone.”
She looked at me with some confusion. “The Ferres know you are here, mon ange. What is this about?”
“Do the Ferres know my married name? They have always known me as Sandrine Verlaine. Did you tell them I married?”
Growing up in New York, I had been Sandrine Salome, but when I’d spent time with my grandmother in Paris when I was fifteen, I’d been Sandrine Verlaine. She’d had me use her last name, instead of my father’s, to protect the secret and the Salome family out of respect to her lover.
“I’m sure I mentioned that you’d married, but I doubt I would have mentioned your husband’s last name.”
“Then don’t. Not to them or anyone. I want to go back to being Sandrine Verlaine. That is the name I booked passage under.”
“But this makes no sense. Why?”
“I don’t want anyone to be able to find me. And no one in New York looking for me would know that name.”
“To find you? Are you hiding? Won’t your husband try to find you? Doesn’t he know where I live?”
I took a breath. “My husband,” I said, “is the reason I’ve left. It’s my husband who I don’t want to find me. ”
“What do you mean, Sandrine? Surely there’s nothing wrong with your marriage?”
I could see worry mixed with the sadness in her eyes. The time had come to tell my grandmother about the terrible thing that had happened to her family.
Chapter 3
We’d all had dinner together. It was a cold and silent affair. My father and Benjamin had been fighting before we dined and had brought their chilliness to the table. Any semblance of civility was, I guessed, for my behalf. As soon as dinner was done, my father told Benjamin he wanted to talk to him in the library.
I went into the parlor and was reading some book or other when I heard their raised voices. I could only pick up an occasional phrase, but from the tenor of his voice, it was clear my father was furious. Benjamin and I had been married for four years and had always lived with my father in his Fifth Avenue mansion. In all that time, I’d never heard my father talk to my husband, his protégé and junior partner, in that tone of voice.
At one point I heard him accuse Benjamin of being a thief. At another of dishonoring his name.
“But you were my partner, you were like a son to me,” I heard my father scream. My father never screamed. What was going on?
After more than thirty minutes, I heard my father shout out my own name. Thinking he was calling me, I went running. I came to the threshold of the library. The door had never been properly shut and remained open a bit. I stepped inside the shadowed antechamber lined with books. Neither man noticed me as I stood in the shadowed alcove and stared.
My father was holding a pistol pointed at Benjamin.
“I trusted you with my daughter!”
“Go ahead and shoot me. How will that protect Sandrine? What kind of life will she have then? Spending her days visiting her broken old father in prison? Embarrassed and humiliated. Ostracized. Is that the life you envisioned for her?” Benjamin said. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the smile in his voice. He was taunting my father. “Every loan and transfer form has your name on it, not mine, Philippe. I’ve left instructions that in case of my death the whole packet of incriminating evidence will be sent to the police. You will be the villain of this piece.”
“But they are forgeries.”
“No one will be able to prove that. You’ve let me sign too many legitimate contracts with your name over the years.”
“You organized this whole deceit behind my back while livin
g in my house, with my daughter? You gambled like a fool and then borrowed against reserves to pay off your own debts? You stole from me? You used my trust and largesse to put our bank in jeopardy? How could I have been so blind?”
My father noticed me then. He looked right at me. I’d never seen my father embarrassed before. Never in my life. In that moment he was so ashamed that he could barely hold my gaze. I stepped farther into the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked. When my father didn’t answer, I turned to my husband. “Benjamin? What is going on? What is this? What is Papa talking about?”
Benjamin took me by the arm. “This isn’t something you need to be part of, Sandrine.”
“He’s right,” my father echoed in a broken voice. “Please go, Sandrine.”
Benjamin led me out of the room, and like a fool I went. I shouldn’t have. Had I stayed and demanded to be told all the details of the crisis, I might have made my father see there was another way. Some other solution. Hadn’t he taught me there’s always another way? But I didn’t stay. I went off with Benjamin, leaving my father to suffer his long night alone.
The next morning Papa didn’t come down to breakfast. I asked his valet to see if he was all right.
Sometime during the night, my father, who was so fastidious, who was so impeccable, had shot himself in the mouth and left behind a bloody mess so horrific that even when I demanded to see his body, I couldn’t stand to be in the room for more than a few moments.
Before I left, I picked up his pistol. It was cold, and I shivered as I slipped it into my pocket. Of all my father’s personal effects, this was the only one I took from his bedroom. I was still married to Benjamin, and I now knew I might need to protect myself one day.
The note his valet found next to his body, when they moved him, had my name on it.
My dearest Sandrine,
There was no other way but this cowardly exit. Leaving you is the hardest thing I have ever done, but this is the best solution. I am not guilty of what Benjamin would have claimed, but I would never be able to prove it. The shame of what you would have to live with is more than I can bear. At least this way, you are protected. Say I was ill and could not bear the pain. Even though the illness is of my soul, not my body, it is true.
With all of my love to you forever,
Your devoted Papa
By the time I finished telling my grandmother the story, I was standing by the fireplace, and she was still seated on the settee. Across the room, our eyes met and held.
Hers sparkled with unshed tears.
“Mon ange,” she said in a hoarse, whispery voice that reminded me of burnt sugar. She held out her arms. I went to her and, for the second time that evening, took refuge there, smelling her fiery, spicy perfume and face powder and feeling no less sad but much safer.
It was only after a few moments that I noticed she was shaking.
“What is it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My poor Philippe.”
Now I was not the one taking solace but giving it.
Chapter 4
My life in my grandmother’s apartments on the rue de la Chaise took on a routine that was rather comforting in its sameness. We both needed to mourn before we could begin the process of healing, and we mourned together. Our days moved slowly and with less social interaction than was typical of life in Paris. Especially for a woman of my grandmother’s ilk.
In the mornings we would breakfast in our separate bedrooms on trays and then attend to our toilettes. At ten we met in the sitting room, where Grand-mère would write letters, go over the household matters with her housekeeper, receive the seamstress or the milliner, and make arrangements for upcoming assignations, dinners, and salons. Regardless of the recent tragedy, Grand-mère could not afford to ignore her business.
While she saw to running her household, I read the morning papers. At home, my father and I had read them together, stopping often to discuss this article or that. The world was still reeling from the 1893 financial crisis, and there were often items about failed banking institutions in the press. Indeed, at the end of my second week in Paris, there was an article about the Salome Bank of New York. Since it had ties to one of France’s greatest financial institutions, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see it, but it startled me nonetheless.
The Salome Bank of New York, I read, had merged with another institution and was now to be called the Salome and Tarcher Bank of New York.
So Benjamin had found the backing he’d gone to California to secure. Now he would have the funds he needed to replenish those he’d stolen to pay off his debts. Desperate, he’d left the day after my father’s funeral, and the lack of respect his haste showed astounded me. But the money markets never stop for any one man, Benjamin said, and his business was urgent. I’d argued until I realized his being gone would give me an opportunity to take a trip of my own.
It had not been a love match. Benjamin had been dashing and smart and was my father’s protégé. My father regarded him as a young man of substance. And I, who had somehow grown into womanhood eschewing the idea of romantic love, certain I would be better off avoiding it, was relieved to have the matter of my marital status over with.
Had my father not died, I could have accepted and stayed in a marriage without passion. But I could not remain with a brute who had my father’s blood on his hands.
The day after Benjamin left for San Francisco, I ran away in the opposite direction.
Most afternoons, after lunching together, Grand-mère and I would take a walk regardless of the temperature. She believed in braving the chilly air and moving briskly through the Luxembourg Gardens or the Tuileries or just walking by the Seine. Exercise, she told me, kept the body strong and the mind clear. Even rain didn’t keep us from our constitutional. On those days we took the carriage to the Louvre or Bon Marché, the extraordinary department store where Grand-mère was filling in my wardrobe. Not wanting to alert my household staff to the length of my planned stay, I’d taken only what I’d required for a short trip to Virginia. There were all kinds of clothes and accessories I needed that I didn’t have with me. After only two weeks, under my grandmother’s tutelage, I already looked more French than American.
Usually after our walk we’d stop at Angelina’s for hot chocolate if we were on the Rive Droite or at Café de Flore for coffee if we were on the Gauche. Often, as we sipped our beverages, Grand-mère reminisced about raising my father in a Paris that had changed so much since then. She talked easily with me about her past, even telling me about men she’d known and who had been in love with her. Listening to her and getting caught up in her stories, I understood where my father had gotten his tale-spinning talent.
The only subject that would make my grandmother grow quiet was when I tried to get her to talk about her beautiful house on rue des Saints-Pères. I dreamed about it almost every night . . . strange dreams that were dark and complicated. Visions of ghostlike women wandering through the halls, weeping. I wanted to tell my grandmother about them, but she was so uncomfortable when I raised the subject of the house. She’d always say the same thing—that old houses had many problems, and hers needed extensive renovations, so she’d shut it down to do the work.
Her rush to change the subject made me wonder why discussing the house unsettled her so, but she never gave me a clue.
On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and most Saturdays, our routine included a light supper together at seven, and then at eight I’d retire to my room when my grandmother’s business life began.
Her job required her to be coiffed, perfumed, and manicured, to dress in the height of fashion, to make her salons entertaining fantasy retreats serving up only the finest foods and wines, along with witty repartee and delightful music. All of this took time and effort. Visits with hairdressers, dressmakers, hatmakers, masseuses, and other purveyors took up hours every day. The salons usually
commenced around nine and ended by one or two in the morning, but my grandmother prepared all week. Other nights we dined later, sometimes with a friend or two of hers and sometimes by ourselves.
During her soirees, I was glad to remain upstairs, away from the men, the music, and the noise, hiding in the pale yellow bedroom where I would try to read. I was finally making headway through The Picture of Dorian Gray, a book I’d brought from home and tried but failed to read on the ship. I’d been too disturbed. I wasn’t sure if it was the novel’s foreboding tone that mirrored my mood or the fact that this was the last book my father had read before his death. Once I fell under its spell, Mr. Wilde’s story absorbed me and, for a short time, allowed me to stop thinking about everything that had happened to me and worry instead about what was happening to his characters. The novel was a dark, disturbing tale that excited me and made me afraid at the same time.
My father had left annotations and marginalia in the pages that were not always welcome. Sometimes they made me feel closer to him; other times they caused me great sorrow, especially when I found something of particular interest and grasped anew, with a fresh stab of grief, that I couldn’t just get up and go find him so we could discuss what he’d written.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was reported to be salacious, but my father said he thought I’d like it because it proposed some fascinating theories about the power of art.
My father and I both loved art; he’d nurtured that love in me. I could get lost in a painting, become mesmerized by a fine piece of sculpture. Like him, beauty astounded me. Talent awed me. The magic of art—the transformative powers, the luscious hues, textures, patterns—it all absorbed me. I was fascinated by the way an artist took something he saw and then turned it into a personal statement. I loved seeing the world translated by these great poets of color and line.
When I was thirteen, wanting to please my father, I’d taken up painting in school. But I could never put down on canvas what I saw so clearly in my mind and was always frustrated. My teacher said that I had real talent and showed great promise but needed to learn to be more patient.
