by Tessa Lunney
“Or my tuxedo manners.”
“But you might need your aristocratic nose for family. You’ve been worried about Felix, the company he keeps… at this party, there will be some Russian artists, exiles, Whites. I need you to see if any of them have been going to political meetings with Felix.”
“They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“But they might tell me. Just introduce me, I’ll do the rest.” I swigged the last of the coffee in my cup to avoid his gaze. “By the way, what did Lazarev want the other morning?”
“Lazarev? You mean Arkady Nikolaievitch?”
“Yes, him. I saw him at your apartment, the morning after the ball.”
“Do you know everyone?”
“By reputation at least. I thought Lazarev was an art dealer. Early morning is an odd time to negotiate a sale, isn’t it?”
“Felix brought some art with him from Russia, to much fanfare—two paintings by Rembrandt. He sold them last year, to an American, I believe. They’re the only people still with money! Arkady Nikolaievitch wanted to know what else Felix had to sell… but I haven’t seen him since, well, not for a long time.”
“Can you ask and tell me tonight?”
“As you wish, mademoiselle.” He gave a mock bow. The trees on the boulevard stroked the pale stone.
“Drink up, Theo. You’ve got a shift to get through before we meet again.”
Under the table, he flicked up the hem of my skirt to stroke my thigh. “Do I?”
He finally left to get ready for the party, giving me just enough time to post my write-up of the Chanel ball to the Star. I felt strangely proud that I had managed, after much swearing and crumpled paper, to type it up without mistakes and strangely sad that it wouldn’t be Bertie who’d open it and giggle first. I checked my letter box multiple times but there were no telegrams announcing Bertie’s or Tom’s arrival, and the note for Fox was still there.
33
“that da da strain”
I watched Maisie as she ascended the Metro stairs. Her look had changed so much in the past year. Her clothes were a better cut and she wore them with more confidence. Her dress was black and plum and she wore a black velvet coat over it, without ostentation or excessive ornament. Her outfit drew attention to her graceful neck, her bright eyes, and her height. When those bright eyes saw mine, she grinned; that hadn’t changed. I thought she might laugh where she stood.
“Katie King, you’re like a syncopated ghost.”
“I’m not too waifish today then?”
“Not more than I expected. I like this jazzy red number you have on. You look like a neon nightclub sign.”
“Or a brothel lantern.”
She laughed. “You’re too discerning. But you can be a sailor’s delight if you like.”
“I wouldn’t mind a sailor, if you have one handy.”
“You should leave that to your Soho friend.” She kissed me on both cheeks like a proper Parisienne. “But really, Katie, I think you must have been eating.”
“People are feeding me.”
“It’s good to know some things don’t change.”
“This way.” I linked my arm in hers and pulled her toward a quiet café. “We have a couple of things to discuss before the party.”
“Political things? Or gossipy things?”
“No difference in my world. Or yours either, I guess.” We took a seat at a terrasse table and I ordered us some food.
“Chips with champagne? Katie, are you mad?”
“It’s my favorite! Bubbles and salt: what could be better?”
“Ray would have a fit.”
“Ray’s French.” I shrugged. “Sydney would think I’m sophisticated.”
“You’ve spent too long away.” She gulped her drink. “Now, tell me everything.”
I went over all the clues I had so far. Maisie nodded, taking everything in. She behaved differently to last year, just subtly, she was more focused, more used to using her intelligence to take in ideas, remembering names, filing away important details. When we were discussing fascism last year, she kept forgetting the names of the Brownshirts and other factions. Now she remembered everything and brought information of her own.
“This might help you, Katie. I asked Ray to gather any gossip about the Fascists for me—here, in Italy, in Germany, anything that came his way.”
“Ray… supports you working with me?”
“Of course! He wants Hausmann out of Paris and preferably out of France. But he hasn’t heard much about fascism. It’s too small, compared with how much everyone is looking east to the Bolsheviks with a shudder. They suspect Paris is full of Cheka spies, Russian exiles who are being blackmailed, that sort of thing.”
I immediately thought of Lazarev at the Communist Party meeting.
“But he has heard that Weimar has a headache about Munich. Munich is increasingly, what was his word, ‘agitated’—they declare themselves to be a Free State, their streets are crawling with Brownshirts, and fanatical newspapers and pamphlets crowd out the more temperate publications. It’s a slender link, but if there’s any way we can show Hausmann is German, Ray can have him quietly deported.”
“I think it might be easier to find Hausmann at this Rome event.”
“And you think that this is where the princes are headed? It sounds like a good place for Felix and company to show their allegiance to the forces that oppose Bolshevism.”
“I’ll bring my camera. We’ll gather evidence.” I played with the chips on the plate. “What else have you heard from Ray?”
“I haven’t heard anything about your mother, Katie.” She squeezed my hand across the table, a sleek movement that started with a loving look and ended with her finishing her champagne. “I move in the wrong circles.”
“I expect I’ll find out more tonight. It’s time, Maisie. Let’s go.”
“Wait! I haven’t finished the chips!”
* * *
Henri smiled broadly when he saw me and led me through the café to a private room upstairs. I heard the party from the bottom of the stairs, jazzy guitar and screeches of laughter, thumps and scrapes, and the jangle of bangles.
“Mademoiselle Kiki, I believe your party is just this way.”
“Henri… will I need whisky for this, or will champagne suffice?”
“I think champagne will suffice, mademoiselle,” he said as we climbed, “For now.”
Henri gathered some empty glasses and plates before heading back downstairs. The hostess caught sight of us and moved our way, her eyes obscured by a little veil from her hat.
“Kiki!” Her voice held harmonies. “So glad you could make it and at such short notice. Not that short notice matters very much around here, artists will go anywhere at the end of the day. Poets are even worse, I should know! But I don’t know whether I should ban you writing about this party in your column or encourage it.” Her silky black sleeves rippled with the rhythm of her bangles.
“You won’t have a choice. But my readers are mostly interested in film stars and princesses. Being a king in the art world won’t mean much to them.”
“And to you?” Nancy said in French, turning to Maisie, her blue-green eyes demanding and critical.
“This is Maisie Chevallier, my oldest friend from the war.” I returned us to English. “Maisie, this is Nancy Cunard, our poetess hostess.”
“It means the world to me,” said Maisie. “It’s one of the reasons I stayed in Paris after the war! That, and my husband.” She smiled and I had to hold in my laughter. I had never heard her talk about art or even seen her read more than the latest thriller as we relaxed after our shift.
“You’ll be overjoyed to hear, then, that later we’re having some readings from Eliot’s new poem, ‘The Waste Land.’ I’m trying to persuade Fujita not to join in. I don’t think it’d have the right gravity.”
“Why not?” asked Maisie. “I’ve never met him.”
“Fujita’s voice is like a Japanese lullaby,
soft and high. If he intoned ‘April is the cruellest month,’ everyone would think of their mistresses and leave the party.”
“Will you read?” I asked.
“That goes without saying.” She floated off in a swirl of silk and veil.
Maisie raised her eyebrows with her champagne.
“Since when do you like avant-garde art, Mrs. Chevallier?”
“Since I needed some cultural cache at our cocktail nights with Ray’s colleagues. Yes, cocktails; we have to show we’re modern and forward-thinking. Our walls were bare and it was remarked upon. When I wasn’t on shift, Ray and I spent a few Saturday nights at galleries. Here in Montparnasse, and a few on our side of the river too. We look for new French artists, of course, so even if we could afford a Picasso, we wouldn’t buy one because he’s Spanish. We would love a Matisse but he’s too expensive. We have—”
“Maisie, I had no idea!”
“I like it! Seeing the work, meeting the artist, seeing that odd mixture of arrogance and gratitude when we bring out the checkbook. My favorite is the Robert Delaunay we have. I like his wife’s work better, but of course, she’s not French. And all the Fauvists, they’re so colorful.”
“Well, yes, that’s the point. Maise, I have to admit, I’m impressed.”
She raised an eyebrow archly, then grinned. “They’d be a bit taken aback on the mission, whaddaya reckon? I have to admit, I impress myself. More importantly, we impress Ray’s colleagues, who now think Ray is a man of the now, and with a future, because our artworks are avant-garde. Luckily I don’t give a fig for all that French subtle-is-elegant crap.”
“But that’s how you dress.”
“Clothing’s different. I leave the sartorial fireworks to you, Katie King.”
The night came in kaleidoscopic color. Maisie’s limbs loosened with the jazz and wine, she blew smoke rings from her cigarette and so attracted the red-headed artist next to us. Henri came up and down the stairs with plates of chips and sausage, oysters and smoked salmon, pâté on toast and tiny little pickles and even an entire wheel of cheese that the partygoers attacked with spoons. I met Fujita, dressed in a golden gown, chatting to a suited Man Ray. It turned out they’re my neighbors and they insisted I join their discussion about negative capability. Maisie found her Fauvist playing the banjo in a corner. More cheese and salami found their way into my mouth than would have been possible even a few weeks ago.
I saw Theo’s regal height in the doorway.
“Kiki, darling.” He kissed me on both cheeks and the lips.
“Welcome to our motley crew!” Nancy Cunard had come up behind us. “These are the aristocrats of art.”
“It’s a pleasure to be among such majesty.” Theo’s voice rumbled as he kissed Nancy’s hand. She smiled like a pixie.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a real Red here,” she said, “to have a proper political discussion. We only have champagne socialists.”
“Equal distribution of champagne is the only socialism I can toast,” said Theo, accepting a glass from Henri as he passed.
“We do have some of your fellow countrymen… over there, that’s Zadkine and that’s Vasilieff. Surely you know Marie, everyone does.”
“Even poor princes? It’s true,” said Theo. “Kiki, shall we?”
We followed Nancy over to a man and a woman deep in conversation in a mixture of Russian and French. The woman, short with curly hair, was explaining something about a studio and lessons and helping, but the amount of Russian in her sentences meant I couldn’t understand much. The man, skinny with a mop of dark hair, listened intently to the woman, until he saw Nancy and looked up, a bit dazed.
“Theo!” exclaimed the woman before Nancy could speak, grabbing Theo by the arms and pulling him down so she could kiss him on both cheeks. “How wonderful! I didn’t know you knew Nancy!”
“Oh, he doesn’t,” said Nancy, “but exiles are always welcome.”
Theo bowed and extended his hand to the dazed man. “We haven’t met. Theo Romanov.”
“Oh!” said the man, shaking hands, “Really? Sorry… Osip Zadkine. How funny!” He gave a nervous high-pitched laugh. “After never meeting anyone more noble than the local mayor, you’re the second prince I’ve met in a week. Though the other prince was German… Do they still count?”
“As princes or as people?” asked Nancy. “As princes, yes. As people, debatable.”
“Oh well, he was certainly a prince. Courteous but huffy with a very funny accent to his French. Worse than mine!”
“Yours isn’t nearly as bad as you think,” said Marie. “Really, we can understand you when you don’t pepper it with Russian.”
“I only use Russian when I speak to you, Masha!”
“Who was this prince?” I asked.
“Ah… Phillip? Someone else introduced him with a ‘von’ somewhere in the name and then everyone called him ‘sir.’ He was here from Italy, he’s an interior designer, of all things. Do princes need a job nowadays?”
“They do indeed,” said Theo with a theatrical sigh. “When revolutionary governments take your lands, houses, artwork, and career in the military, then we have to start using our university educations.”
“Sounds dreadful.” Nancy’s voice dripped with sarcasm and Theo laughed. “I’m sure I’ll never use all my lessons in embroidery.”
“Darlings, you should have run away to art school, like I did!” Marie gestured so that her sleeves threatened to empty glasses. “My father was a tyrant too, I simply defied him.”
“It wasn’t father who was the problem, it was mother,” said Nancy.
“Same,” I said. “I wonder if these princes have problematic mothers.”
“They do,” said Theo. “But this Phillip…”
“Don’t tell us you’re related,” said Nancy.
“It’s not merely possible, it’s likely. The tsarina was German, after all, and the tsar was my uncle.”
A hush descended over us. Even the most revolutionary soul would have been hard-pressed to resist the simple sadness in Theo’s statement.
“Long faces are for horses.” A head popped up at Nancy’s elbow, with dark hair and pale skin punctuated by a monocle. “Neigh!”
“Tristan!” Nancy kissed him. “This is Tristan Tzara, Dadaist extraordinaire. We’re talking princes. Have you met a German one lately?”
“Oh, that Phillip fellow at the salon last week?”
“Yes, him!” Zadkine looked like he’d been saved from jail.
“Prince Flip-Flop von Lessen Messen Nessen. Thought he knew all about art because he’d spent a few months in Italy. Spoke about beauty like it existed. Idiota!”
“Prince Phillip von Hessen?” asked Theo. “I do know him. He’s in Paris, is he?”
“People appear in this city and then disappear and then reappear and then dance through your dreams,” said Tzara. “Flip-Flops are lower than the stars, they can never grace the gutter.”
Nancy laughed. “You’re wonderful.”
“For you, dearest dragon, I would sacrifice all garbage and lie with the fishes.” He kissed her wrist, to her obvious delight, and she grabbed a bottle and pulled him away to a quiet corner.
“We must ask Irène about Phillip,” Theo said. “She might know where to find him.”
“How is your dear sister?” asked Marie. “I haven’t seen her in an age! Or Felix.”
“Felix Yusupov?” asked Osip. “Oh, of course!”
Theo nodded, casually negotiating Zadkine’s starstruck awe. Marie and Theo quickly fell into a semi-private chat about who turned up at Marie Vassilieff’s studio, here in Montparnasse, for tea and blinis. I turned to Zadkine.
“It appears that Marie runs a community exchange for Russian exiles alongside her artist’s studio,” I said.
“I’ve certainly used it, when I needed a taste of home. Vodka with pickles and a sad song, that sort of thing. I’m not very Russian, to be honest. I’m a French citizen, I was a stretcher-bearer for
France in the war, and I spent my youth in England. But occasionally, I hear a note, feel a tendril of cold, and the need comes upon me. And Masha is wonderful company.”
“And others too, I imagine. Is that where you met Prince Phillip?”
“God no!” He laughed. “Though I wouldn’t know a prince unless he told me. I met my wife Valentine there and often my neighbors, Fujita and Leger… No, it was very strange meeting a prince, talking to me solicitously as though he thought I was a real person. They didn’t used to in Russia, you see, they sort of talked down or around or just pretended you weren’t there. Here, of course, they’ve all been pulled down to street level and have to acknowledge us ordinary folk.” Zadkine shrugged. “Princes: who needs them? Tell me, how did you get invited to this bacchanal? Do you know Nancy from England?”
That was clearly all I was going to find out about Prince Phillip von Flip-Flop and our conversation turned to chit-chat until Theo rejoined us. Theo leaned down to kiss my cheek and whispered, “I have more on that prince for you,” before he left to find us more champagne.
“Katie!” Maisie hooked my elbow and pulled me toward her banjo player in the corner. “You have to meet André. He reckons he knows a Cordelia King.”
A natty man with a pencil moustache sat tunelessly strumming a banjo. He smiled when he saw Maisie.
“Hello! It is delightful to be flattered by such a beautiful, knowledgeable woman,” he said, “though I think her knowledge is more flattering than her beauty.”
“I should hope so,” I said. “Beauty fades but knowledge can only increase.”
“True beauty never fades,” he said with a flirtatious smile at Maisie.
“This is my friend, Katie King Button. This is André Derain.”
This was the artist Harry said I should find; my handshake was too eager.
“Call me Kiki.”
“She’s the daughter of Cordelia King Button.”
“Aha!” André said. “Your friend is a tireless advocate. You want to know about her? First tell me: is she really dead?”
