What Disappears, page 21
She folds her cloak into a pillow and leans her head against the window. It will be wonderful to be in Monte Carlo again. To see that aquamarine stripe where the sea meets the sands of the Côte d’Azur, and the royal blue of the Mediterranean beyond. What a relief it will be to fill her eyes with those colors again! Magenta flowers tumbling over terracotta walls. The wind-swept pale-blue skies and the cries of gulls when rehearsal’s done as she walks on the boardwalk along the beach. Jeannette is glad to leave the grayness of Paris behind her.
It was a mad idea, anyway, thinking she’d be able to attend the rehearsals and learn the choreography while looking after the child, and on the scant pay Diaghilev’s company was offering the lowest rung of dancers. René Blum had promised—or threatened—to meet her in Monte Carlo, and wine and dine her a bit, which was a pleasant prospect. Twice now, he’d sent bouquets to their apartment above the shop—ostensibly for both her and Sonya, but Jeannette could tell he was angling to go to bed with her. Sonya seemed determined not to encourage him, at least not too much. Jeannette took it as a signal that the way was clear for her. She didn’t want him now—but she knew she might want him later. For now, she simply wanted to go on dancing as long as she could.
The child had actually seemed to be entertaining the idea of spending two weeks in Monaco under her aunt’s supervision. Slowly, over the past months, Baila had become more and more engaged with her ballet lessons, sometimes even asking Jeannette to carry on with her beyond the two hours Sonya approved for their practice sessions every day.
It hadn’t been apparent at first—but Baila was, as every real dancer has to be, extremely competitive. Every day, she was determined to do better than she had the day before. She was good at recreating the movements Jeannette showed her—and explained to her, using the language that had been most helpful to Jeannette when she was a child, just starting out. The trick was always in finding the right turn of phrase, the right comparison, that would make the movement, so abstract by itself, make perfect sense.
Jeannette had never taught before. She was pleased to find that she was good at it—or, at least, seemed good at it when it came to teaching her niece.
Baila had perfect feet for ballet, with high arches and insteps, without her mother and aunt’s overly long first toe. She was more or less the same age Jeannette had been, when her aunt first took her to the École de Danse Classique in Nantes, just months after her mother’s death. In Baila’s case, she started lessons just after her mother didn’t die—but Sonya’s death, or the possibility of Sonya’s death, was no doubt a factor in the way all of them were thinking about their lives these days.
Nothing felt stable or safe. Anything could happen—torrential rains and floods, epidemics that slaughtered thousands. Riots. Revolutions. Perhaps even a war, given all the ominous news from the Balkans. After the Great Flood of 1910, the possibility of disaster seemed to lurk around every corner. It made everyone giddy, in a way—more willing to take risks, as when Jeannette finally allowed herself to be talked into the idea of living with Sonya and her daughters. She wonders now if she hasn’t done herself, and her career, irreparable harm by softening her earlier resolve—and giving in, at least in part, to what Sonya wanted.
It was pretty odd, she admits to herself, having a sister, after all these years of thinking of herself as an only child. Not only having a sister, but having an identical twin. Well, the two of them couldn’t be more different, if one looked beyond the superficial similarities. And yet there were some qualities—some turns of mind—that seemed a mirror image of her worst fears and deepest pain.
It makes some sense to her that flesh and blood can be imprinted with truths that go far beyond anything describable in words. It was the truth of dance, after all—of all great art, except the work of writers.
Stepping down from her third-class car onto the platform at the Gare de Monaco Monte-Carlo, gripping her suitcase with one hand and holding her hatbox with the other, Jeannette sees a cluster of posh-looking people meeting some passengers from first class. Here, on the same train she was on, is Tamara Karsavina, along with another woman Jeannette has never seen before. Unlike her, they are unencumbered by luggage. Jeannette watches as the two women are handed down from the train with the sort of pomp usually reserved for royalty.
Diaghilev is there in full evening dress, flanked by his mustachioed valet. None other than Vaslav Nijinsky is standing by with two huge bouquets, along with some other Russians Jeannette doesn’t recognize. They are all kissing cheeks and blathering on in that language Sonya’s children use whenever they want to say something they don’t want Jeannette to understand. She thinks, grimly, that she’d better learn at least a little Russian if she’s to have any chance of holding on to her all-too-precarious place as an on-demand extra in Diaghilev’s newly formed company.
She walks as close to the group as she dares, hoping they might break into French, at some point—thinking she might even hitch a ride with them to the theater.
Karsavina catches sight of her. “Oh, it’s you!” she coos, grabbing Jeannette’s elbows and kissing her cheeks, right, left, right. Not letting go, she says, “I heard it all turned out well!”
“Well enough, Madame Karsavina.” Still lugging her suitcase and the hatbox, Jeannette smiles in what she hopes is a winning manner. She wishes now that she’d bothered to fix her makeup on the train.
“Sergei, here’s one of your new dancers for the corps, Jeannette—”
Without letting her finish the introduction, Diaghilev snaps his fingers at the valet. “Vassily! Put the lady in a cab for the Palais du Soleil, won’t you?” Consulting his pocketwatch, he looks at Jeannette through his monocle and says, “You’re late.”
She realizes that it’s hopeless to try to explain about the problem at the station in Paris. The very person she didn’t want to notice has had her infraction put right before his nose.
Diaghilev turns his back on her, exerting the full force of his charm in welcoming Karsavina and her colleague, another Russian. Nijinsky had greeted both of them with a regal bow—then laughs as he embraces each of the dancers in turn. “Karsavina! Preobrajenskaya!” he says, calling both of them, in that odd way that Russians have, by their family names. The one who is not Karsavina, Jeannette notes before being led off by the valet, has a decidedly plain face and rather short legs—and looks at least ten years older than Jeannette. Maybe, she thinks—taking comfort in the fact—there’s some hope for her, after all.
Paris
1911
Olga fumes with frustration, furious at society’s blindness to the truths that she can so clearly see. Everywhere, adults engage in willful stupidity. Most people, the majority of people, it seems to Olga, are incapable of recognizing the truth, even when it’s right before their eyes.
After allowing Marie Curie’s candidacy for membership in the Academy of Sciences, the French Institute has just rejected her in favor of a man. On what basis, Olga demands to know from every member of her family, can the Academy decide that a female scientist, no matter that she was awarded the Nobel Prize, is yet unworthy of France’s highest scientific honor?
And now Jeannette has returned from Monte Carlo, and thrown their lives into chaos once again.
How can her aunt be so idiotic in the lengths she’s going to in her attempt to appear well-connected and fashionable? Doesn’t she know that working at a party is altogether different from attending that party as a guest?
Olga has tried again and again to explain to Jeannette, in the simplest terms, some of the rudimentary concepts of women’s rights. But how can one explain such things to a woman whose work makes her nothing more than a glorified plaything for wealthy men?
When Olga asks her aunt one day, point-blank, to define the difference between herself and a prostitute, Jeannette slaps her so hard that Olga, briefly, loses consciousness. Sonya is not at home—and no one tells her what happened, all of them loath to provoke another display of Jeannette’s temper and their mother’s tears.
Naomi has told Olga that she understands how she feels—and is sympathetic to her views about the need to allow the female gender—finally, once and for all—under the umbrella of human rights. But she has cautioned her repeatedly about expressing those views in ways that are bound to give offense to their elders. Theirs is a delicate situation requiring both tact and diplomacy, both of which Olga has in short supply.
Given her passionate interest in fashion and design, Naomi is just as stupidly enthusiastic as their aunt about being present at Monsieur Poiret’s upcoming extravaganza, which is sure to be the most memorable event of the season, with invitations sought by le Tout-Paris.
The dancers of the Opera Ballet, including Jeannette, have been hired to perform. Jeannette already has her costume—and she’s somehow wangled jobs at the party for her nieces in the cast of hundreds being assembled at the Poiret mansion to launch this latest venture of his fashion house, into the rarefied world of perfumes.
The party itself is to take the place of advertising for the scent he is calling Nuit Persane. The ballerinas have negotiated to receive, along with their pay, a bottle of the exquisitely packaged perfume distilled specially to evoke the memory of this latest soirée Monsieur Poiret has dubbed “The Thousand and Second Night.”
All the guests and members of the cast are to dress up in costumes inspired by the Arabian tales of One Thousand and One Nights. Anyone arriving without a costume will be sent home or escorted to a roomful of costumes and accessories provided by Monsieur Poiret and presided over by his dressmakers. Naomi, who met several of these women during the time her mother worked at Maison Poiret, will be paid a sum of francs larger than she’s ever earned for the privilege of assisting them. Even Baila has been given a little role, along with half a dozen other pretty children, who are to gambol, in Persian costumes, among the guests. Rumor has it that Isadora Duncan will appear during the revels in the garden, to dance a solo.
On their arrival, the girls are ushered in through a back entrance, along with Jeannette, and rushed off to the costume room, where Naomi is assigned to help make adjustments with safety pins, and Baila is transformed into an alluring little Persian princess. Olga is left standing there in her street clothes. She is still in Jeannette’s bad books—and wonders what sort of punishment her aunt has arranged for her this time.
Tired of waiting, she gives her name to the young woman who has been standing by the door, directing traffic. “Oh yes, here you are,” she says, tapping on her clipboard with her pencil. “You’re to go to the make-up station first. Strip down to your knickers, please.”
Olga wishes she hadn’t spoken up. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she’s taken in hand by two makeup artists, who cover her head to toe in sepia-colored greasepaint and then dress her as a Persian boy. They have a wig for her. But her curly hair is apparently deemed good enough as is. A long silken rag is wrapped around her forehead—and a large fake-pearl earring is clipped, a bit painfully, onto her earlobe. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she likes her outfit, which includes a broad silken sash and quite a convincing-looking scimitar.
“What am I supposed to be?” she says, cocking her head to one side and then another before a mirror.
“A eunuch,” says the girl with the clipboard. “Let’s see.” She finds Olga’s name again on her list. “You’re to be the assistant to the seller of marmosets in the bazaar.”
“Marmosets!” effuses Baila. “They’re those darling tiny little monkeys we saw in the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes with Mama!”
Olga takes the four-foot-long banana leaf the costume mistress hands her. “What am I supposed to do with this, mademoiselle?”
“It’s to help you catch monkeys—in case any of them escape.”
“Oh, you’re so lucky!” whispers Baila.
Olga rolls her eyes. “I’ll tell you what,” she says sotto voce to her little sister. “Let’s slip off, when no one’s looking—and switch costumes!”
Jeannette, just passing by the doorway, calls out, “Too late for that, monkey girl!”
Olga never thought she could hate anyone as much as she hates her aunt.
“Claudette!” says a fat, brown, turbaned man from the doorway. “See that she doesn’t wear the glasses! They spoil the effect.”
“But I can’t see without them, monsieur!”
The costume mistress nudges Olga, hard, between her shoulder blades. “We can put a little leash on her, Monsieur Poiret, and the monkey seller can keep her from coming to harm.”
“Capital idea!”
Olga had no idea the man was Poiret. He’s wearing brown makeup, all over his skin, and a convincing-looking false nose. He looks completely different from the other times she’s seen him, when he’s appeared a typical, stout Parisian businessman.
She smiles wanly at him, aware of her family’s debt to Maison Poiret—and slips her glasses into the sheath that holds her scimitar. For all the world like a would-be assassin, Claudette encircles Olga’s neck with her outstretched thumbs and forefingers—then finds a leather collar of the right size and fits her out with a leash, light-weight and bejeweled, that fashionable women attach to their little dogs.
Olga tells herself, as she so often does, that this, too, will pass—although she can’t help muttering protests as she’s fitted with the collar. The whole experience makes her want to bite someone.
As soon as she and Baila are pushed out into the hall to make room for the next group needing costumes, Olga retrieves her glasses and puts them on again. Even so, it’s all she can do to keep herself from tripping on the flowing fabrics of other people’s costumes in the close press of bodies, or getting her bare feet trod upon by other people’s curly-toed Persian-style shoes. Baila holds her hand at first. But then she gives a squeeze and dances off when she catches sight of another little girl she knows, dressed in a costume identical to hers. Everyone already seems drunk as they make their giggling way, bangles and bracelets tinkling, down a grand staircase into the darkness.
The long, tunnel-like foyer of the house has been decorated with the skill of professional artists and set designers to look like Ali Baba’s cave. There is heaped-up treasure everywhere, gleaming in the half-light. Crystal carafes and etched-glass ewers, filled with a rainbow of poisonous-looking liqueurs, are ranged along the length of a shining ebony table presided over by a fleet of brown-skinned bartenders dressed in red caps, white Punjabi pants, and belted gold tunics. The glass vessels sit in holes and are lit from underneath, providing the room’s sole illumination.
Everyone stops for a moment at the base of the stairs to ooh and aah and get their bearings in the low light. Olga’s appetite is awakened by strange and delicious smells of food. Sounds of flutes and zithers, and the mournful cries of tropical birds, drift in from the open windows to the garden.
“May I present myself, mademoiselle?” says a deep and musical voice somewhere behind and above Olga. She turns and cranes her head to look up at a tall, broad-shouldered man whose skin, his own skin, is the color of black coffee and whose identity is immediately obvious.
The unexpectedly attractive seller of monkeys seems at home in his exotic Arabian costume, with its loose white trousers and caftan, embroidered vest, and sash. His shoulders and his turban are piled high with a clinging, staring, disorganized pile of white-eared, palm-sized monkeys with long ringed tails that drape over him like the fringe of a lampshade. Cocking their heads from side to side, and clutching at him with their tiny little hands, they look down at Olga with interest and just a touch of anxiety.
The man inclines his head slightly by way of a bow. “I am, for this evening’s festivities, mademoiselle, the seller of marmosets—and will be your colleague, with your permission, for the next several hours.”
He’s the loveliest man Olga has ever seen, exuding the dignified grace of a prelate and the glamour of a romantic hero, despite the scrabbling claws and perpetual motion of his cargo. Briefly, he smiles down at her with such warmth and brilliance that she thinks she might be in love.
“Do you live in Paris?” she asks him, immediately regretting her words and noticing that her voice is quavering. Couldn’t she have thought of something more interesting to say?
“But where else in the world would anyone choose to live?” he answers.
He speaks the most beautiful French she has ever heard, rich and warm and precise. She straightens her shoulders and takes a deep breath. “My name is Olga. What’s yours, please?”
“Gaston. Enchanté, Mademoiselle Olga.”
She takes off her glasses and looks up at him myopically to offer the looped end of her leash.
“Chère mademoiselle,” he says in a stern voice. “I am sure this is as unnecessary as it is undignified for both of us.” He lowers himself down on one knee, like a suitor about to propose marriage—and, with gentle fingers, unbuckles Olga’s collar. She has never felt so undone by the touch of anyone’s hands. She realizes, with a sense of surprise, that she can’t recall being touched by any man, other than the doctor who treated her sprained ankle and felt her neck and forehead during the course of her pneumonia, the year before.
Righting himself without spilling a single monkey, Gaston pitches the collar and leash away, out through an open window, into the darkness.
“Ouch! What the hell?” an invisible male voice yells from outside the window. The orchestra, instrument by instrument, crashes to a stop.
