What Disappears, page 15
There was no evidence. There was nothing but Sonya’s headstrong sense of hope.
And here she was, alone for the first time in years—face to face—with Paul Poiret. She felt her heartbeat quickening in a way it hadn’t since that furtive hour in his workshop. Was he the one who was telling the truth—and was it she who’d been deluding herself, these past five years, with a lie? Justifying what she’d done, stealing his designs, out of her conviction that he’d wronged her so sorely?
Could it really be that she’d imagined it all—that she’d merely seen what she wanted to see, out of her desire to believe that Zaneta was somewhere close by, hidden just out of reach?
It was so hard in life to recognize what was true and what was merely a reaction born of self-doubt, shame, or wishful thinking. Had her yearning been so strong that she’d seen a conspiracy where there was none? Had Paul Poiret been merely flirting with her, on that day he’d first seen her at the Gare du Nord?
“If you reflect, my little chicken, you will see the advantages of my offer. I reward a première at Maison Paul Poiret with 60,000 francs a year precisely to allow her to live with a certain ease—to afford her the necessary understanding of the subtleties and refinements of my designs by transforming herself as well into an artist whose medium is luxury.”
Sonya couldn’t help but wonder what kind of apartment she might be able to rent in Paris for that salary—and how much there’d be left over to richly feed and clothe her little girls and even afford them lessons. Studies with a painter for Naomi. Private lessons for Olga with a scholar. And, for Baila, ballet lessons with one of the many Russian emigrees now making their home in the French capitol. She could finally pay off the last of her debt to Daniel!
And Paris itself was so very appealing, with everything and everyone seeming to operate under different, looser rules about what was and wasn’t permissible. Women were marching for the right to vote. Girls were allowed to pursue as much education as they wanted—they could dream of doing more than simply becoming someone’s wife.
Paul stared out one of the immaculate windows of his second-story atelier, his attention caught by the bright yellow wing-bars of a little bird he’d never seen before. It was hidden now in the lush foliage of the chestnut tree that looked so different than it had just a few weeks ago, when it was leafless and newly pollarded, as sad-looking as an amputee.
He turned to Sonya again, inching a little closer. He could smell the subtle perfume of her skin—a gorgeous smell, inimitably hers. He wished he could bottle it.
“I have been more and more impressed by your aesthetic intuition. How, with the instincts of an artist, you always seem to know the one point where it is possible to place a spot of color in one of my ensembles. It could not satisfy there, or there.” He demonstrated by touching a place at her neckline and then at her waist. And then he put his hands at a spot on her hip, at the side-seam of her skirt, at a place on her body he remembered as being particularly silky and smooth. “No, it is precisely here that it must be placed.”
She didn’t exactly yield to his touch—but it seemed to him that she registered pleasure, ever so slightly, when he touched her. She kept her expression neutral.
Poiret sighed. “It is so rare to find another who shares this need that can only be slaked by pinning on the particular detail of decoration at the precise place where it ought to be. Someone, like you, who has an inborn understanding of the secret geometry that is the key to all aesthetic satisfaction. Who knows that what is true of line and volume is also true of color and its values.”
Sonya also stared for a moment out the window. She wondered what her daughters were doing now, in Saint Petersburg, where the world was, no doubt, still covered in snow.
Paul was just talking, she was quite sure, because he so loved the sound of his own voice. He luxuriated in the cleverness of the phrases he used and the way he wove them together with the art and instinct for survival of a bird making its nest. She was surprised, really, that he was taking so much of his time to make his point. In a moment, she knew, he would be on to something else—and someone else. Still, it touched her that he carved out such a special place for her in his heart—and was offering her such a plum of a job.
“You were made for Paris, Sonya! This city is the center of fashion precisely because the life of the senses flowers most freely here. You and your children will flourish in France in ways you never would be able to in the snowy hinterlands of Russia, ruled by a despot, reviled as a people.”
Although Paul wasn’t at all sure that any of this was true, he wanted it to be so—and he felt how these words resonated in his very groin, in that place where the deepest and most patriotic truths about his manhood resided.
His sense of this truth was urgent, wonderful, and strong. He felt as seized by it as when he was possessed of a new creative idea—of a vision so beautiful that the world would be forever changed by it. The world of haut couture would be so amazed and compelled by the genius of his vision that it would yield up everything to Poiret and crown him king.
The air felt pure and new, as if there’d been a mighty thunderstorm and a mighty rain. There was a stillness now, a clarity and freshness that would make Sonya want to feel his hands on her again. He felt capable of reading her deepest desires and intuiting exactly how to satisfy them.
Paris
1909
The overture is long, the stage in darkness. Sonya looks down at Baila, not too distracted to notice that her youngest seems especially pretty tonight. They exchange a wide-eyed smile, both excited. The clash of the cymbals makes them start, looking away from each other toward the stage.
Sonya’s eyes can’t work fast enough to process all the movement of the dancers, twenty or so clouds of white tulle wafting through the altogether convincing illusion of a forest. Each fairy sports a pair of tiny wings just beneath the plunging back of the costume whose construction Sonya knows as intimately as the bodies of her children. She opens her eyes wider as she tries to pick out individual faces and features among the swiftly moving, identically costumed dancers balancing on tip-toe, rising and swaying like boughs in the wind.
Although she and Baila are seated in the last row of the orchestra section, Sonya recognizes Pavlova when she floats onstage from the wings, drifting over to her place center stage with the lightness and seeming spontaneity of a butterfly.
All the dancers of the corps de ballet look much the same—moving as if petals from a single flower buffeted by the wind, each sprite’s dark or blonde hair pulled back, encircled by an identical wreath of pink silk roses. They seem equally long-legged and lithe. Zaneta could be any one of them.
How did they move that way, running backwards on the very tips of their toes, as if weightless? Sonya’s eyes light on the male dancer, in a poet’s blouse and sporting long curling hair, dancing with Pavlova and, yes—there is Karsavina!
Both ballerinas seem equally glorious to her in the way they move, conveying volumes without uttering a single sound. They are both, in the story, in love with the poet, hungry to serve as his muse. And no wonder! He moves as if native to an atmosphere different than that breathed by other mortals—as if his veins and arteries were filled with something lighter than air. Sonya saw a helium balloon once, in Saint Petersburg, at a New Year’s Eve celebration. The dancer seems kin to that magical thing. He is somehow able to hover, weightlessly, mid-air. She knows his name is Nijinsky—and that people think he’s some kind of idiot genius. Regardless, a light seems to shine from inside him, glowing in the ghostly dimness of the stage.
Baila grips her hand. “There, Mama!” she points. “There she is! Oh, she looks so much like you!”
Someone shushes her.
Yes, Sonya thinks—that’s her. Zaneta—dancing in the corps, as beautiful and skillful as any of the other ballerinas.
Sonya’s other senses suddenly start working again: she hears the music—so wonderful! Chopin. His compositions were Sonya’s very favorites when Klara and Sonya’s nieces played the piano.
Did Zaneta have music lessons? Does she sing as well as dance? Does she charm everyone at parties with her brilliant conversation? What wealth of experience has Zaneta had that Sonya will forever lack?
She feels a twinge of envy again. Looking down, she sees that Baila is looking at her now, rather than at the dancers. Sonya bends down and kisses the top of her daughter’s head—then whispers in her ear. “That is your auntie, my darling.”
Not letting go of her mother’s hand, Baila turns her attention back to the spectacle unfolding there on the stage, clearly enraptured.
Sonya pulls Baila through the crowd, intent on getting backstage before Zaneta leaves the theater. Everyone wants to catch a glimpse of Nijinsky—the women crowd the hallways, pushing and shoving in their shimmering gowns and furbelows, their hats like tropical islands alive with bird wings and flowers. The scent of perfume competes with an animal smell of sweat and excitement. The men as well as the women are pushing and shoving. Sonya lifts Baila up to keep her from getting trampled—and barely manages to keep her own feet under her as the two of them are carried along up the stairs with the crowd, to the pass-door leading to the stage.
As soon as they reach the proscenium, Sonya sets Baila on the boards and pulls her through a parting in the heavy velour curtain, heading straight for the metal stairway that leads to the rats’ dressing-room. She’s in such a hurry to climb the stairs, and the stairs are so narrow, that she lets go of Baila’s hand. In the grip of anticipation and ardor—in her pounding fear that Zaneta will leave before Sonya catches up with her, maybe leave forever, never to be found again—Sonya forgets about Baila entirely.
The child, in a panic, just manages to grab hold of Sonya’s skirt with one hand, while holding on to the iron railing with the other. It feels like her mother is trying to run away from her—or certainly as if her mother has ceased to care about her. The metal stairs are steep and ladder-like, with the whole of the backstage area spread out far below them between the gaps. Afraid of falling, Baila tightens her grip on the fistful of fabric.
They’re both out of breath when they reach the open dressing-room door.
The air of the room is warm and moist and smells of sweat. The only dancer left there is a very Russian-looking woman who sits half-dressed in one of the rickety chairs before the bank of mirrors, poring over a letter she has clearly found to be upsetting. She looks up briefly, with tear-filled eyes, when they walk in. She seems to look right through them.
The forest fairy costumes are hanging on the garment rack. There’s a sullen-looking femme de ménage picking up detritus the dancers have left on the tabletops and floors. There’s no sign of Zaneta.
With a murmured apology in Russian, followed by another in French, Sonya goes out onto the landing, where she can lean over and look down at the scene below.
It seems as if the entire audience has migrated backstage. Champagne corks are popping. Diaghilev is making a speech.
Sonya feels a hand on her shoulder and whips around to find herself eye to eye with Tamara Karsavina, a plain cotton robe thrown over her costume, her stage makeup looking very garish up close.
“I spoke with her!” she gushes. The ballerina searches Sonya’s eyes, seeming to search for approval there—and then looks down at Baila. “Is this your little girl? She’s beautiful!”
“And?” says Sonya.
Karsavina smiles. “It’s all arranged.”
“Tonight?”
“This Thursday, at the Café de la Paix. You’ll have plenty of time to prepare. One o’clock in the grand salon.”
Paris
1909
Sonya arrives at the Café de la Paix at the stroke of one o’clock, wearing her best dress and hat. She scans the terrace to make sure that Zaneta hasn’t already arrived, then holds up two black-gloved fingers for the maître d’. He leads her inside to the elegant, high-ceilinged, sunlit salon. She has been to the restaurant before, both times as part of Pavlova’s entourage after the ballerina won a pile of money at poker.
When the maître d’ seats her at a little table near the piano, she asks him whether her sister—her twin sister—hasn’t already arrived.
“I assure you, she has not, madame,” he says with an appreciative smile. “I would have noticed her.”
She pretends to study the menu card. Twice, she sends the waiter away, telling him that she will order when her other party arrives, repeating the word for twin sister: my gemelle. She loves saying it. She thinks she will never grow tired of saying it.
Finally she asks for a carafe of l’eau mineral and two glasses. She tells herself that it is all à propos, after all: at their very first appearance in the world, Sonya arrived promptly enough to greet her twin with open arms.
Time seems to grow slack and imprecise in the wash of sounds inside the café—the tinkle of glassware and cutlery. Snippets of conversation fading in and out of comprehension. Distant explosions of laughter as random and inexplicable as birdsong. The bittersweet melody of a concertina floating in from the street outside. The hiss of steam when the kitchen door swings open, and the soft footfalls of waiters. It is as if she were hovering above it all, disembodied, like one of the dead looking down on the living. Each breath she takes seems to occupy an eternity.
The slowness reminds her of the intervals of rest she learned to find in between the pains of childbirth. Each time, she found courage in knowing that she wouldn’t have to endure the pain forever. There would be another respite, however brief, after each contraction. Each episode of agony, she told herself, was finite. She learned to enjoy these oases of rest, as if time, like dough, were subject to stretching, pressed out on a floured surface by the flats of her fingers and the heels of her hands.
It was only in giving birth that she came to understand that time is an agreement we all make with each other, for simple convenience, as we go through our daily lives. A minute in the throes of agonizing pain is nothing like the minutes we live, so profligately, every day, all of those minutes flying by—indistinguishable, unremarkable—until we come to the end of our allotment and there are no more of them.
Resting in between the pains allowed her to step outside of time. She felt the world around her growing quieter and quieter until she was alone and peaceful in a place of imagined sunlight and serenity. And in the end, she knew—if she didn’t die in childbirth—her endurance would be rewarded with a beautiful new baby, the baby she’d harbored inside her for such a long time. The child she would finally have the chance to know and love and nurture. That unknown part of herself that would suddenly be manifest in the outside world as a new being: as someone else.
And then all the sounds of the café are in her ears again. Has she been waiting for minutes—or hours? What if, she thinks with panic, Jeannette has already come and gone, seen Sonya and fled? What if she collected her paycheck from Monsieur Diaghilev—or didn’t—and simply left Paris?
She wouldn’t, though! Of course, Sonya reassures herself, her sister will want, just as much as she does, to be reunited. How could she not, when Sonya has loved her so faithfully and ardently all these years?
And then, when she has almost given up, she sees her twin, in silhouette on the terrace, looking like part of a painting, in conversation with the maître d’.
“Monsieur, s’il vous plaît!” Sonya calls to the waiter, perhaps a little too loudly—but she doesn’t care. “Two glasses of champagne!”
Her hands are trembling. As Jeannette walks toward her, Sonya starts laughing and crying at once. Her sister is dressed in an ensemble so similar to hers that is as if they had consulted with one another beforehand.
Jeannette looks horrified. “Don’t get up. Please!” she says when Sonya begins to rise. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry for anything! I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Surely not,” Jeannette says, sitting down with what Sonya notices as conspicuous grace—far more grace than she has ever possessed. The way Jeannette moves, even off stage, marks her as a dancer.
They are both staring, one with joy and the other with what might appear to a stranger as loathing. Sonya doesn’t see it, though. She is too filled with her own joyous emotions to realize that Jeannette is scrutinizing her and her clothes with intense dislike.
“So,” she says, “he dressed you as well.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sonya murmurs, blinking a little dazedly.
Jeannette notices the glass of champagne before her—and drinks it down, one gulp after another without pause. “Garçon!” she calls. “Another!”
Sonya is struck by the sudden thought that she and her twin are two completely different people—that they may, in fact, have very little in common. “I thought,” she says, still smiling hopefully, “we could drink a toast to our reunion.” But Jeannette has already started drinking without her. This, she tells herself, is Zaneta—all grown up. A Frenchwoman. A beautiful and graceful ballerina. Her own long-lost twin!
“But how thoughtless I’ve been,” Sonya hastens to add. “You don’t know anything yet about our story.”
“I know that Paul Poiret gave you those clothes.”
His is the last name Sonya wants to hear just now. She fingers the magenta taffeta of her skirt. “I could never afford to buy one of his designs,” she says, with something halfway between a smile and a wince. “This was a sample—an experiment.”
