The Fragment, page 2
“That is correct. And you speak French. That is good, for I have no time for the English language. What is your name?”
“M-Muriel Ross, Madame Chanel.”
“And this gentleman, why is he here?”
“S-Senator Bryan is my employer.”
“Ah. So that is what such men are called in America.” She slipped a hand into an unseen pocket and drew out a pack of Turkish cigarettes. Muriel watched, fascinated as Coco Chanel extracted one, for she had never seen a woman smoke. Coco Chanel flicked open a gold embossed lighter, then paused when the senator offered his hand.
“Allow me.”
Coco Chanel handed over the lighter and studied the senator with intense dark eyes as he lit her cigarette. She breathed out the smoke, “Not without finesse, this one. You should keep him.”
Senator Bryan said, “Please tell Madame Chanel that you need three outfits. One for travel, one for day wear, and one for the reception this evening.”
Muriel was midway through the translation when it hit her. “Where is this reception?”
“At the Élysée Palace.”
The name caught Coco Chanel’s attention. “You go to the palace? When?”
“In four hours.”
“Then we must begin, yes?” She inspected Muriel’s form with a clinical eye. “Tell me, Miss…”
“Muriel.”
“Yes. Tell me, Muriel. What is it you do? Are you occupied with a professional life?”
“I serve as a historical researcher for the Smithsonian.”
“This is what, exactly?”
“It is both a museum and a research institute, run by the government.” Muriel tried to follow the designer tracking slowly around where she stood. “You could say it’s a combination of your National Gallery and the Louvre.”
“No, no, don’t move. Stand straight. Shoulders back. Good. It is strange. I thought perhaps you had an artist’s air about you.”
“I love to photograph.”
“Just as I suspected. Very well. Tell your gentleman friend that I have a new line that I am in the process of designing. It is called ready-to-wear. I will allow you to be one of the first to present this to the world.”
“He’s not…” Muriel gave a silent sigh and decided the woman would not hear her if she protested. She translated for Thomas Bryan.
“Excellent,” the senator plucked out his pocket watch. “How long until you are ready?”
“Tell this gentleman not to pop his watch at me. I am well aware of the time. You may also inform that he is free to go about his affairs.”
Muriel did so and then asked the senator, “Don’t you want to know how much it costs?”
“No, and neither do you. Is that clear? You are not to worry about the expense.”
Muriel suspected that Madame Chanel understood far more than she let on, for the designer smiled slightly as she began taking measurements.
She listened to the designer’s rapid-fire French, then translated, “Madame Chanel says I am to meet you at the palace. She will arrange for transport.” Muriel blushed in the process of continuing her translation of Chanel’s words. “She says I need instructions in cosmetics, which she will arrange. And my hair…”
Senator Bryan saved her the need to translate that Chanel thought her hairstyle was better suited as a forest haven for baby birds. Or squirrels, perhaps. “Tell Madame Chanel that I appreciate all she does to make you ready to meet the prime minister.”
Whatever else the senator was about to say was halted by Chanel touching Muriel’s waist and demanding, “What is this I feel here?”
“A corset.”
“And what does a lady of your age need with whalebone and shoestrings? You have no waist to hold in. You will take it off.”
“But…” Muriel had not been seen in public without a corset since she turned fourteen.
“Do not give me your buts. You are not here to buy a frock. You are here to be dressed by Madame Chanel. And I say the days of corsets are over. Pffft. Finished. Now tell this man to depart so we can get to work.”
Senator Bryan did not wait for a translation. He bowed a farewell to them both. “Until later, my dear.”
: CHAPTER 3 ::
The Élysée Palace, the official residence of the French president, was only five blocks from the Chanel boutique on Rue Cambon. But Coco Chanel insisted that Muriel take a carriage. A lady of substance, she declared, did not arrive for any rendezvous on foot.
The carriage entered a cobblestone forecourt through massive double gates. Muriel knew the style of structure, of course. She had studied them in books. Many city palaces from the pre-Napoleon eras copied the style of country estates called manses, from which came the English word mansion. The servants’ quarters were in the building fronting the street, with the formal entrance carved from its center. The side buildings housed stables and chambers for the military guard. The carriage halted before two soldiers whose breastplates and helmets shone in the dusky light. One saluted as he opened her door, asked her name, and repeated it to a footman, who checked it in a leather-bound book.
She was passed to a second footman stationed just inside the main portal. He bowed as he ushered her inside, beckoning with white-gloved hands for her to follow him. She walked down a hall lit by ranks of crystal chandeliers to where a lean gentleman with the manner of an impatient general watched her with a cold eye. Muriel knew this man had to be the palace’s majordomo. She had read of such men. She knew he would be a retired officer with a distinguished career, most likely from a noble family who had fallen on hard times. He would have become accustomed to being invisible to most of the people who paraded through these elegant chambers. From his frigid manner, Muriel sensed he accepted the repeated insult in silence but disliked it intensely. Muriel did the first thing that came to mind, which was to gather up the hem of her frock and curtsy.
“Mademoiselle is twenty-seven minutes early.”
“Forgive me, sir. I completed my errands and had nowhere else to go.”
“It is certainly better to be early than late,” he allowed. He snapped his fingers at the hovering footman. “Show mademoiselle to the Sun Room and see to her needs.”
“Monsieur is too kind.” She accepted his cold nod with a smile, then turned away, thinking that her mother would be proud of how she had handled that one.
Muriel was ushered into a vast chamber whose tall windows with golden drapes captured the sunset and transformed it into a myriad of rose-tinted hues. The wall opposite the windows was dominated by a carved marble fireplace as large as a closet. To either side rose silver-backed mirrors, set strategically so that the afternoon light was magnified. The ceiling was adorned with gilded carvings that shone like veins of pure gold. Muriel refused the footman’s offer of a drink and waited as he bowed and shut the double doors. Then she turned to greet the stranger in the mirror.
In Washington, the style of women’s clothes was very much the same as it had been before the Great War. Layers of taffeta and crinoline formed broad skirts and clenched the body with starched fierceness. What Muriel wore now could not have been more different.
Her new dress was deceptively simple, with padded shoulders from which the dress descended in gentle waves around her body. The midnight blue Shantung silk captured the light in shimmering undulations. The fabric was caught at her ribcage and again upon her right hip. It formed suggestions of her femininity and yet remained utterly modest. Her hair had been cut and shaped by an impatient gentleman who had argued bitterly with Madame Chanel and refused to speak with Muriel at all. Her normally tight brown curls were opened up such that they tumbled in careful abandon about her shoulders. Her eyes were turned huge by the slightest hint of shadow and rouge. Her lips were…
Muriel had no choice but to turn away. The stranger in the mirror challenged her in a way she had never thought possible.
She walked to the western window. Her face was bathed by the setting sun. She felt captured by the light and the sudden wash of memories, all of them turned gold by the chamber where she stood. She recalled a certain day, just eleven weeks and a lifetime ago. She had been arguing with her mother over breakfast. Muriel had called it an argument then, and she still did now, though her mother would have described it as polite conversation. And on the surface that was all it had been, a mother enquiring and a daughter responding.
It had been the same conversation they had had many times before, only this had been the first time Muriel had actually recognized it as a trend. Her mother said she was just trying to understand. Why was her daughter leaving to take the train and go to work at the Smithsonian? Why did she hide herself away in the museum’s dank cellar, with only books and scrolls and dusty artifacts for company? Why did she not want to lunch with the son of their close friends, who was a dentist and had met Muriel at a tea dance and found her most attractive? What was so fascinating about this research of hers that she would sacrifice the chance for a husband and a proper future? In truth, her mother had no interest in understanding at all. They both knew this. What her mother wanted was for Muriel to put aside her foolishness and settle down.
Muriel had endured the discussion as she had the ones that had marked so many other mornings. They had started when Muriel had insisted upon studying at Georgetown College. That was the same month when Tennessee had become the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Muriel had thought it was a day to celebrate, a day she would never forget. Her mother, whom Muriel loved very much, could not understand what all the fuss was about.
They had another such conversation when she worked a summer as a research fellow. The discussions had become even more insistent when Muriel had been introduced by Senator Bryan to the Smithsonian’s chief archivist, who had offered her a job as a researcher. Every few months, her mother’s impatience bubbled over, and she punctuated her daughter’s morning with questions for which Muriel had no answer save one. She wanted more out of life.
That morning Muriel had left the house and taken the tram into the city. She had entered the Smithsonian’s main building, descended the stone stairs, and entered the chamber that housed the research staff. The cavernous room was lined with shelves of tractates and bound documents and books. Muriel occupied an alcove similar to a medieval scribe’s desk. Hers was the middle of a line of fourteen alcoves. The long table held all the researchers assigned to the era known as Late Antiquity.
Muriel’s alcove had walls like wooden wings so that when she drew in close to the table she could not see anyone else. She faced five shelves crammed with documents and tomes. Her specific area of study was reliquaries. She had been assigned this task when she had been hired. She might well spend the next thirty years doing nothing else.
Muriel had wasted the entire morning mentally arguing with her mother and with herself. The room where she had sat that day was whitewashed stone. There were a series of small wire-mesh windows set high up in just one wall. They were meant to let in light, but that morning the windows only accented the fact that she was destined to spend the next three decades trapped twenty feet below ground level.
Muriel was abruptly brought back to the present by a soft knock upon the main doors. A white-gloved attendant opened the gilded portals, and Senator Bryan strode in. In the background, Muriel heard musical conversation. Senator Bryan stopped dead in his tracks, studied her a long moment, then smiled and declared, “My dear, you look positively alluring.”
“I am dreaming,” Muriel replied. “None of this is real.”
“Take a long breath. Sip the air like vintage champagne,” he said. “Enjoy this to the fullest. For it is more than real. It is only the beginning.”
She felt a tremor take hold and rise through her. “Why am I here?”
He offered his arm. “Come and see.”
: CHAPTER 4 ::
The reception took place in an audience hall that could have held three of Muriel’s entire home. Each arriving guest placed a calling card on a silver salver held by a footman. The majordomo accepted the card and announced them in a coldly sonorous voice. Muriel studied the people as the line snaked forward. Two of the receiving women were adorned with slender crowns. One of the gentlemen wore a general’s uniform and bristling sideburns. Another bore the marshal’s tricolor ribbon draped across his chest. Many women in the line ahead of Muriel had velvet gloves reaching almost to their elbows. A number of the guests inspected Muriel’s gown, the men approving, the women coldly assessing.
As they approached the start of the receiving line, a footman raced down the hall and addressed the senator in rapid-fire French.
Muriel translated, “There is a messenger from the American embassy.”
“What, here?”
“By the front portal. The footman says it is urgent.”
“My dear, forgive me, but I must see what this is about.”
“But what am I supposed…” Muriel watched him scurry away. All her calm vanished. She was surrounded by people with whom she had nothing in common. She had never felt more out of place in her entire life.
The majordomo cleared his throat. “Perhaps mademoiselle would allow me the honor?”
For an instant, Muriel had no idea what he was talking about. Then he cocked his elbow in her direction. “Oh, thank you.”
He motioned for the footman to set aside his salver and take over the announcements. “Forgive me, your name?”
“Muriel Ross. Of Alexandria. Might I ask yours?”
“Colonel Antoine, late of Lyon.” The majordomo was an inch shorter than she was, but he emanated such authority he might as well have been ten feet tall. “How shall I present you?”
“I am a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.”
“Most interesting work, I am sure.”
“Not really.” They took another step forward. It seemed to Muriel that every eye in the room was upon her now. “I spend my days inspecting and classifying articles almost two thousand years old.”
“Sometimes, mademoiselle, the only way to understand the present is through the lens of the past.” Another step. “A lesson too many of our leaders have forgotten.”
“You fought in the Great War?”
“From the very first day.” Another step. “To the final truce.”
She struggled to find a proper response and settled upon, “I thank you for your sacrifice.”
When he did not respond, Muriel feared she had said something wrong. But it was too late to apologize, for they arrived at the first hostess, a rather dumpy woman in a tiara. “The Countess Maria of Fontainebleau. May I have the pleasure of presenting Professor Mademoiselle Ross of the United States, guest of Senator Bryan.”
The woman cast a frosty eye over Muriel’s dress and demanded, “Does the lady speak French?”
The majordomo responded for her, “Most suitably, your highness.”
“Professor of what?”
Muriel started to protest that she held no such lofty position. But they were already moving on to the next person, the gentleman with the tricolor banner across his chest. Muriel was unable to correct the misunderstanding, as she scarcely had time to greet each person before being passed on to the next individual. Finally they arrived before the last man in the receiving line. He was slender to the point of emaciation, and his black suit was adorned with no decoration of any kind. Yet he radiated a sense of great force, tight and bleak and utterly focused. The majordomo bowed and said, “Prime Minister Poincaré. Your Excellency, may I introduce—”
“Mademoiselle Ross,” Muriel insisted and dropped into the deepest curtsy of her entire life. “A mere research fellow. It is such an honor, Your Excellency.”
“A most remarkable young lady, Excellency,” the majordomo murmured.
“Is she indeed?” The premier’s voice was no less imposing for his gentle tone. “Where are you a fellow and in what subject?”
“The Smithsonian, Excellency. In late antiquities.”
“What epoch precisely?”
“Late Roman and early Byzantine. I study reliquaries.”
“Do you indeed?” The reception line had come to a complete halt. The entire world seemed to have stopped. Everyone forced to wait while the newly appointed premier of France spoke with her. “How are you finding Paris, mademoiselle?”
She felt his gaze boring into her and knew this was what it meant to stand in the presence of power. “It is beyond my wildest dreams, Excellency.”
“What in particular has captured your fancy?”
She searched frantically for something suitable. “The people. They…they have been through so much. They have endured the impossible. And now they laugh. They live. They find joy in a beautiful spring day.” She took a shaky breath. “They are the bravest and most wonderful people in the entire world.”
His gaze softened momentarily. “I could not agree more. I wish you a pleasant evening. And mademoiselle.”
“Excellency?”
“Inform Senator Bryan that the request he made of me has met with my approval.”
• • •
As Muriel was escorted across the marble floor, a footman rushed forward and whispered urgently to the majordomo. The gentleman bowed and excused himself and rushed away, leaving Muriel very alone. The party swirled around her and left her untouched. The senator did not return.
Muriel felt isolated by the laughter and the talk that did not include her. She sensed that it would be wrong to leave, and yet she wanted desperately to go. She felt like an imposter, like she wore someone else’s clothes, like she stood in someone else’s life.
“Forgive me, Mademoiselle. You are the senator’s niece?”
She scarcely saw who spoke. “We are no relation, Monsieur.”
“Of course. I just…” He cleared his throat. “Colonel Antoine asked me to say that the senator has been forced to return to your embassy. He will join you directly.”
