What Disappears, page 9
Was there no end to his self-regard? “I leave it to your intuition, Monsieur Poiret. Without doubt, you will choose just the right colors for Anna Pavlova.”
Standing in front of Sonya, with an appraising eye and the expertise of his trade, the designer resettled her coat to make it hang just perfectly from her shoulders. “But the gift will be so much better chosen if the choice is made by both of us.” In a voice that was suddenly hoarse, he added, “Together.”
“Please call me a cab.”
“We’ll share one,” he insisted.
Sonya realized that she had no idea how far they were from her hotel, or even in which direction it lay. With instructions from the concierge, she’d walked a few blocks, then taken the omnibus to the restaurant, or very near it. A kind old man, after scratching his whiskers for a moment, had pointed out the way. She’d arrived early enough to freshen up a bit beforehand. She actually didn’t know if the omnibuses continued to run late at night. Was it late? Just then, as if in answer to her question, a church bell started tolling.
“Taxi!” Paul called out to a passing carriage. “Come, come,” he said, handing her up as if the question were already settled.
Seating herself in the opposite corner from the couturier, as far away from him as possible, Sonya counted as the bell tolled, eleven times in all. She gazed out the window at the lights of Paris. At least he was keeping his hands to himself.
The horses’ hooves clip-clopped on the cobblestones. Sonya pressed her forehead against the cold window, to keep herself awake.
When the carriage stopped, she saw that they weren’t at her hotel, but just in front of Maison Worth. Did he live there? The street looked very different now than it had during the day. “Thank you so much for the delicious dinner, Monsieur Poiret,” she said. “I’ll come by early tomorrow to look at the fabric.”
He got out of the carriage—but then extended his hand to her. “If you please, it will take but a moment to show you the fabric I have in mind. I’ll tell the driver to wait.”
Paul Poiret’s eyes were shining in the dark like those of a hungry cat.
Sonya weighed the alternatives. She could refuse his request—but then she might well miss out on the chance to win the ongoing patronage of Anna Pavlova and who knew how many of her friends and rivals in the ballet world. And then there was the issue of Sonya’s chance now, perhaps her one chance, to make Poiret give up what he knew about her twin.
After all, she’d profited from her good looks, in everyday and insignificant ways, to get what she wanted throughout her life. It didn’t make her a woman of easy virtue, or anything like it. She’d learned the art, through the years, of letting men appreciate what they saw in her, without behaving improperly.
Sonya answered the designer with a sideways glance at him. “I’m curious about those work-lights you mentioned. What are they called again?”
“Mercury. Vapor. Lamps. Another boon brought to us by the Americans.” His face broke into a genial smile. “I’ll be happy to give you a demonstration. They’ll need a few minutes to warm up.”
She extended her hand and he helped her down from the carriage.
There was something electric in his touch.
Sonya could still conjure up the feeling of Jascha’s fingers when they had brushed up against her hands and wrists, so long ago, at his father’s pharmacy in Kishinev. Her innocent hands. She could still, after all these years, remember how her body felt when he’d kissed her.
Poiret unlocked the large double doors of the fashion house and then led her upstairs through the darkness. At the press of a button, an array of lamps hanging down from the ceiling began to flicker. A long worktable glimmered into view as the light grew and glowed with the strength of four little suns.
All sorts of decorations hung from the edges of the table—silk ribbons and embroidered tassels, pieces of fur and fringes of leather, primitive-looking clay beads, seashells, semi-precious stones and feathers of every texture and hue—items that might be used to lend the finishing touches to one of the couturier’s fanciful designs.
Serious and solemn, Paul unrolled several meters of three different bolts of patterned silk, one after the other, walking down the length of the table as he did so.
Perhaps, after all, Sonya mused as she watched him, she had no cause to feel guilty about letting herself be lured, so late at night, into the designer’s lair. Pavlova would be so impressed when Sonya returned with a garment custom-made by Paul Poiret himself!
Sonya had never used such fabrics before in her own shop. She had never even seen such fabrics. She wondered where he bought them—or if he commissioned their manufacture.
“That one,” she said, touching the cloth that was the color of pomegranates and sunrise streaks shot through with light, the darkest tones of which were an urgent, intimate magenta. Of course, she chose that one! She wasn’t thinking about Pavlova’s complexion when she chose it, although the shade would suit her well. The hue matched the dried flower Jascha had given her, the one Sonya kept enclosed within the silk pouch her mother had stitched for her so many years ago, long before Asher had come into her life. Long before Naomi and Olga were born.
Suddenly remembering her husband and her daughters—realizing she’d quite forgotten about them—Sonya put her face in her hands. “I’m afraid I’m going to be ill,” she said. “I drank too much wine.”
“Here, sit down!” Paul led her to a fainting couch upholstered in sapphire-colored velvet and festooned with a red pillow. He brought her a glass of water. And then, after she leant her head back and closed her eyes, he unlaced and slipped off her boots.
He took her feet in his hands, one at a time. “I learned this from a Chinaman,” he said. “A remedy for nausea.”
Sonya turned her face away from him, resting her cheek against the soft nap of the velvet. She tried not to think—to shut off the stream of shaming, disapproving voices that played in her head. Concentrating on the touch of Poiret’s hands on her feet, she kept her eyes closed, biting her lip to prevent herself from moaning with pleasure.
What deliciousness! You have gone completely mad, she told herself. A sensation of tingling warmth crept from the soles of her feet and up the inside of her legs. She pretended not to notice when he unhooked her stockings and removed them, all the while caressing and massaging her feet with an expertise that made it seem as if he knew exactly what she felt, at every point of contact between them. A little moan escaped her—and his hands, his wonderfully skillful hands, crept higher.
She bit harder on her lower lip, determined not to make another sound.
He was holding her now. Cradling her. And when his deft fingers worked their way up to that most secret place, as if arriving there by accident, she felt herself yield to him—not so much to him, but to the exquisite pleasure wrought by his touch. Rubbing, just there, where her own body, as if in defiance of her, grew moist. He rubbed her there with increasing urgency, echoed by her own fast-beating heart and ragged breathing.
And then she shuddered, and it was over. And before she could collect herself enough to push him away, he was inside her.
Paul didn’t rush to move his hands up Sonya’s legs but stayed focused on her feet, knowing each place that would please her most—rolling his fists in her arches, rubbing the secret little tunnel beneath her toes and in between them, stretching out the tops of her feet with both thumbs moving in opposite directions just as he’d learned to do, over the years, guided by Jeannette’s delighted and helpless moans. How different were the feet of these two women who had started life as mirror images, each of the other!
His heart was beating fast and he felt a little faint, thinking about all the discoveries that awaited him, hidden in the mind and flesh of Jeannette’s identical twin.
How wonderful and rich was this life of his, offering up at every turn such rare and delightful treasures. In just a few weeks, Denise Boulet would achieve the age of eighteen and her parents would permit their marriage. How pleasant it would be, he thought, to have a little wife at home. Someone docile, sweet, slim, and unspoiled who could serve as his mannequin. Who would give him children—and was sufficiently unformed that he could make her into anyone he wished her to be.
His genius, Poiret knew, lay in honoring a woman’s sensuality, whether he was designing her clothes or making love to her. What a fool Sonya’s husband must be, to ignore the bud of this rare flower that slept every night beside him, just waiting to burst into blossom. How shortsighted were those men who thought only about their own gratification!
Just after he entered her, a vision appeared in his mind—a mantle of black tulle, draped over a gown of black taffeta hand-painted with a floral design. Yes, irises! He held on to this vision until the glorious moment of release.
Gently, decorously, he arranged the fabric of Sonya’s skirt around her and gave her a handkerchief to dry her tears and whatever else needed drying. She wept like a virgin, although, of course, she hadn’t been. He felt a pleasant sense of satisfaction that she had, despite her tears, enjoyed herself.
As soon as he’d put her into a carriage and came back inside, he began sketching out the black taffeta dress. It would be the garment that would launch his career.
Paris
1909
Pavlova turns to her maid, demanding to know where she found this doppelgänger of her seamstress.
“In the big dressing-room, Anna Mateyevna!” Crossing herself again, Zlata adds, “What can it mean?”
Vassily Zuikov, Diaghilev’s valet, speaks up from the hallway. “She is Jeannette Dupres, one of the coryphées for the Paris Opera. We hired her as an extra dancer for Les Sylphides.
“You’re well informed,” Diaghilev mutters.
“She’s uncommonly pretty!” the valet mutters back at him, caressing the waxed tips of his black moustache and raising his eyebrows behind Sonya’s back.
Little Baila, holding her mother’s skirts around her like a curtain, waits till she has the valet’s attention and then sticks her tongue out at him.
“Well, never mind,” Diaghilev says. “Come, come,” he adds in his public voice, clapping his hands at everyone as if shooing chickens.
Taking note of the tunic with its double row of straight pins, Pavlova looks with horror at Sonya. “It’s not done yet?” When Sonya doesn’t answer but only stands there in a daze, Pavlova shouts, “Have you gone deaf?”
Diaghilev seems to notice Sonya for the first time since she got up off the floor. He takes a closer look at her through his monocle, as if to check for signs of disease before approaching her. “There, there, courage, my dear,” he says, leading her, with her little girl in tow, to one of four chairs ranged around a table littered with playing cards, cigarettes, and coins. “You’ll be able to get this done in no time, won’t you?”
Sitting, holding her daughter close, Sonya looks up at the impresario, his jet-black hair sporting a stripe of pure white, his waist cinched in and his clothing perfectly elegant and in style.
From her lower vantage point, Baila notices that one of his shoes has a little gap at the front, where the stitching attaching it to the sole has started to come undone. She wonders if his socks get wet when he walks through puddles. Because she knows this secret about the big tall man, she feels rather sorry for him. She wonders if it would be all right for her to give him some of the coins that are scattered across the little table. She wonders if anyone would notice if she picked up one or two of them for herself. She is thinking about the darling little puppy she saw for sale on the rue des Rosiers.
“Do you have a sewing basket here?” the big tall man says to her mother, speaking as if he were speaking to a child.
Baila, at the right level to notice, retrieves what she recognizes as one of her mother’s sewing baskets from underneath the dancer’s dressing table.
“What a lovely little girl you are,” Pavlova says. “Come here, dear.”
Baila watches her mother start to thread a needle. Then doing what she’s seen countless ballerinas do, both in Paris and Saint Petersburg, she walks up to Pavlova and drops a little curtsey.
“Charming,” says the dancer, taking a chocolate bon-bon from a lacquer box and dropping it into the child’s hand. “Perhaps you’ll be a ballerina one day.”
Baila retreats behind her mother’s skirt again to savor her prize. She is a little afraid of Madame Pavlova. But she likes the big man with the stripe in his hair and the broken shoe. The chocolate is the most delicious thing she has ever tasted.
Sewing and pulling out pins as she goes, Sonya says to the impresario, “Can’t someone please go after her, sir? I’ve been waiting for this moment for such a long time!” She uses the back of her hand to wipe away the tears that are welling up in her eyes. She wishes someone had offered her a chocolate.
“There is no need, Madame,” says Diaghilev. “Your sister will be keenly aware of the honor she’s won in getting this job, dancing on the same stage with the great Pavlova.”
The ballerina steals a look at herself in the mirror and raises her chin just a little, which makes her neck look even longer.
“But if she doesn’t come back—” says Sonya, gazing out into the twilight of the corridor.
“She would not think of missing the dress rehearsal,” Diaghilev assures her, “any more than she would think of failing to show up on pay-day—which isn’t, by the way, till next Friday. You’ll have ample opportunity to speak with her.”
The dancer turns away from the mirror. “Shall we get you a ticket for one of the performances, Sonya? And one for your little girl?” Baila peeks her head out again. “Hello, darling,” Pavlova says to her. “Do you speak French?” she asks her in Russian. Baila nods.
Using her best and smallest invisible stitch, Sonya is making short work of attaching the bias-cut patch she cut out, ironed, and pinned, earlier in the day. Looking up, she says, “I would love to attend a performance!” When Baila tugs at her sleeve, she adds, “Both of us would.”
“Excellent,” Diaghilev says. “Vassily, see that it is done.”
Just then, the regisseur, reeking of cigarettes, pokes his bald head in at the door. “Good evening, Madame Pavlova,” he says, exhaling two serpentine trails of smoke from his nostrils as he bows. Squinting one eye, he scans the dressing room for any possible projectiles within the star’s reach. “Mr. Fokine would like to respectfully request—” He puts his hand on the doorknob and says over his shoulder, “that you allow Madame Karsavina adequate time for her bow, at the end of Cléopâtre.”
Pavlova stamps her foot and swears, first in Russian, then in French. The regisseur shuts the door behind him just in time to avoid getting beaned by one of the ballerina’s toe-shoes.
As soon as Sonya is finished with the repairs to Pavlova’s costume, she hurries home with Baila, barely paying attention to the child as they make their way through the welter of carriages and pedestrians—ignoring the headache that has blossomed since her collapse in Pavlova’s dressing-room.
Yes, she keeps telling herself—I was right all along! She lives. She lives here! And then, My God, she’s a dancer! How amazed Mother would have been!
In the same instant, she realizes that she must have also been right, that day when she’d first seen Paul Poiret at the train station—when he’d first seen her. It’s too awful to contemplate all the lies he’s told her since then—and how willing she was, in the end, to believe him.
Zaneta, in the flesh. How beautiful she was! How glamorous.
Bursting through their door with Baila, Sonya sets about putting together an omelet for the children’s supper. She doesn’t fix anything for herself but retreats to her room with some hot water and a sponge. What to wear? She puts on her best dress, another sample that Paul had given her. She finds a very old pot of lip rouge—and sticks her head out the door to ask Naomi if she can use her paints.
“My paints, Mama?”
“Your paints, child. Hurry up, please. Some brushes too.”
It’s much harder work than she might have thought. But when she’s done, at least by candlelight the effect is just about what Sonya hoped it would be. She finds a length of silk and, just as Paul had done when designing on a model, she wraps it turban-style around her head. She puts on the pair of gold earrings Klara lent her for Daniel’s big soirée and then gave to her again, for keeps, when she left them to live in Paris.
Really, the resemblance now is astonishing. Sonya waits till the bell tower chimes eight—and then opens the door just enough to call out, “To bed now, you three!”
“But what about our story?” Olga wants to know.
“Aren’t you going to kiss us goodnight?” cries Baila.
“Tonight you must kiss each other goodnight. Olga, tell your sisters a story.”
“Can’t we see you?” asks Naomi with a hint of mischief in her voice.
“I need to go out briefly. I’ll come in and kiss you as soon as I return. But,” she adds, “you had better be asleep by then.”
All three girls run to the window and look out after Sonya leaves, trying to catch a glimpse of her on the street below. All they see is an elegant lady, clutching at her turban and running as fast as she can in high-heeled shoes in the direction of the Saint-Paul Metro station.
“Is that Mama?” asks Baila.
Naomi clucks her tongue instead of answering no. In just a year, she has come to sound and look exactly like a French girl. She wonders what her mother is up to. She shoots a look at Olga, warning her to say nothing.
