Coco at the Ritz, page 21
“I’m planning a new film project,” said Cocteau. “A retelling of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.
Coco closed her eyes. “Already I see how Beauty should look.”
Cocteau told Coco that the talented young actress Josette Day had been cast as Belle. “Perfect,” said Coco. “Who’s the Beast?”
“Me,” said Marais.
“Jean wants to hide under a fur suit, as if that’ll fool his fans,” said Cocteau.
“I got mobbed in Saint-Benoît yesterday. It’s as bad as Paris.”
“You were in Saint-Benoît?”
“Visiting Max.”
Coco sat up and lit a cigarette. “How is he?”
“Mourning his family,” said Cocteau.
“They’re all gone now,” said Marais. “The ones who aren’t dead have been arrested or deported. Max is sure he’ll never see any of them again.”
The handsome actor looked sternly at Coco. Though he would never criticize her to her face, Coco knew he deplored her relationship with Spatz. Cocteau had confided that Marais thought it unconscionable for her to be sleeping with a German when so many Frenchmen were suffering. “Well, you shouldn’t be sleeping with him. You’re way too old for him,” Coco had shot back.
Marais had seen the suffering firsthand. He had volunteered for the army in September 1939 and fought the Germans on the Maginot Line before being demobilized after the armistice ten months later. As soon as Marais returned to Paris, he tried to join the Resistance. But the leader of the Parisian cells turned him down. “You live with Jean Cocteau, and Cocteau talks too much,” the leader had said.
“There was a German captain billeted in Saint-Benoît who admired Max’s poetry,” Marais continued. “This gave Max a protector for a while. But the man has been transferred out of town. Max still has the priests on his side, and they’re probably the reason he hasn’t yet been picked up in one of the round-ups.”
“We took him out to dinner,” added Cocteau. “I don’t think he’d had a decent meal in weeks.”
“He has enough money?” Coco asked.
“He had to sell your bracelet,” said Cocteau. “We gave him some cash.”
“I can send him more.”
“What he’d most like from you, Coco, is a visit.”
“Perhaps on my way back to Paris.”
Coco knew, though, that she would not be visiting Max again. Since Fraulein Lichten had told Spatz about seeing Coco with Max, Coco knew it was too risky. Lichten would probably suspect Coco, too, of working for the Resistance.
Céline set out a buffet of black-market food—lettuces, roast beef, shrimp in aspic, and fruit tarts—on the long table in the dining room. Only Marais ate heartily. Afterward, the friends played cards for a couple of hours in front of the fire. At ten, they went to bed.
Cocteau and Marais slept in the guest wing far from Coco’s room. In the middle of the night, she was astounded to find herself standing in the hall with them outside their room. The men wore blue terrycloth robes and slippers. Coco was in white silk pajamas with black stripes and bare feet. In her right hand she held a large pair of scissors like a dagger. “What happened? How’d I get here?” she asked.
“You were sleepwalking,” said Cocteau.
“What did I say?” Coco looked at the scissors she held, as if she’d never seen a pair. “Did I say anything embarrassing?”
“Nothing more than usual,” said Cocteau.
“Tell me what I said,” Coco pressed.
“You woke us up with a fugue-like monologue,” said Marais. “You were standing by our bed waving your scissors and repeating, ‘I closed my house! I never did business with the Germans! The others did—Fath, Lelong. They are the true collaborators!’ ”
“Oh God,” Coco moaned.
“What did you take before bed?” asked Cocteau, his tone turning solicitous.
Coco stared at the carpet.
“The morphine is making you sleepwalk,” said Marais.
The actor hated drugs. He’d been urging Cocteau for years to give up opium, and he hoped that finally Cocteau had kicked the habit for good. He had not smoked a pipe in two months. “If Jean can quit, anyone can.”
“Come on, Coco Macbeth, time to go back to bed,” said Cocteau, gently taking Coco by the elbow.
Coco let the men escort her to her bedroom. They watched from the doorway as she slipped under the beige satin quilt and pulled the sheet up to her chin. “With luck, I’ll stay asleep now,” she said.
* * *
At eleven the next morning, Coco burst into the dining room where Cocteau and Marais were drinking coffee. She opened a drawer in the sideboard, peered in, then slammed the drawer shut. “Where are all the scissors?”
“We gathered them up this morning and hid them,” said Cocteau.
“I need a pair to cut flowers in the greenhouse.”
“You’ll have to ask Céline, or whatever you’re calling your maid these days.”
“You’ll get rid of your drugs, too, I hope,” said Marais.
Coco frowned at the actor. “I don’t sleep without drugs.”
“It’s making you sleepwalk, which is dangerous. You could hurt yourself,” said Marais.
“Or worse, one of us,” said Cocteau.
“I only do it when I’m without Spatz.”
He had promised to join her at La Pausa on Sunday, now four days away. Until then, she couldn’t risk another sleepwalking episode with gossipy Cocteau in the house. Then she got an idea.
That night, after Cocteau and Marais had retired to their room, Coco went to her bedroom. She padded across the plush brown carpet and drew the satin drapes closed. She undressed, slipped on her pajamas, got into bed, and as Céline looked on, she injected herself with morphine. “I’m ready,” Coco said.
Céline pulled two long pieces of rope from her pocket. First, she tied Coco’s right ankle to a wrought iron spike in the footboard, then her left ankle. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked the maid.
“Yes,” said Coco, not adding that it was what the nuns did when she sleepwalked as a child. She laid her head against the pillow and closed her eyes. “Stay with me, please.”
Céline sat on a wood chair by Coco’s bed, holding her employer’s hand. Beyond the windows, a gentle rain had begun to fall, glistening the olive trees and the bricked courtyard. Coco thought she heard a nightingale, but it couldn’t be—the nightingales had flown south for the winter and not yet returned. Maybe she already was asleep and dreaming of a long-ago time at La Pausa, a warm summer night, when she had a houseful of friends, laughing and drinking on the terrace. There were no Nazis in France then, and none now in her dreams.
FIFTEEN
The letter from Max was waiting for Coco when she returned to Paris. She sat on the settee by the window in her suite at the Ritz and tore open the envelope. The Gestapo had arrested him on February 24, and he was in prison at Drancy, awaiting deportation to a German concentration camp. A sympathetic guard had mailed the letter, which Max had written on a piece of notebook paper:
How ironic that I was at my desk writing my daily thoughts on Christ when the Germans came for me at eleven in the morning. I stuffed my rosary in my pocket, but when I turned to gather some of my books and other possessions, a German in a trench coat stopped me with a meaty hand on my arm. Outside, a little crowd, alerted by my landlady, had gathered on the sidewalk. An elderly doctor, who’d once treated me for shingles, handed me a bottle of scotch and a pair of wool long johns. I knew this day was inevitable. Though my neighbors might have closed their eyes to the horror unfolding around them, I could not. I had already lost my family to the evil unleashed in the world. I thought the priests could save me, but I’d been wrong. No collective expression of strength and courage could have stopped my arrest, no protestation from my landlady, from the doctor or the students I noticed lingering at the back of the crowd.
At the intake office at Drancy, the clerk asked me to empty my pockets. I had 5,520 francs, which I placed on the counter. He took them, then pointed to my wrist. I removed my grandfather’s gold watch and gave that to him, too. They put me in a dank cell with two coughing, wheezing old men, and soon I was also coughing and wheezing. The doctor’s scotch, which I shared with my cellmates, offered some relief, but the long johns little defense against the wet, bone-chilling cold.
This is my darkest hour, and I need your help. Isn’t there something you can do?
Coco sat with a cigarette burning in her fingers and Max’s letter in her lap. She stared out the window at the rooftops and windows that suddenly looked unfamiliar, like rooftops and windows in a foreign land. She imagined Max in a cell crammed with old men, a yellow star hastily sewn to his monk’s cassock. Coco herself had taught him how to sew one rainy Sunday afternoon, when she was still living on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Max said he wanted to be able to mend his own shirts, so Coco showed him how to make small, even stitches in a square of linen. Only Max’s stitches weren’t very small or even. “You’ll never be a tailor,” she’d told him. “And you’ll never be a teacher!” he’d shot back.
She wished he’d stopped wearing the cassock and cross, wished she’d pushed him harder to give them up. Everyone knew Max was a Jew. His pose as a monk only drew more attention to himself, made him stand out. He should have left France long ago, escaped to Switzerland when he had the chance. Now it was too late.
* * *
In the next hour Coco’s phone rang twice—first it was Misia, then Cocteau on the other end. They’d received letters from Max, too, and Cocteau had started a petition that he hoped would persuade the Nazis to release their friend. Spatz urged Coco not to sign it. “Don’t do it!” he’d told her. “The Germans are desperate, lashing out at anyone they think isn’t with them 100 percent. Who knows what they’ll do to you.”
“Or you,” said Coco. “This is Max. We have to act! Cocteau is coming by tomorrow.”
The following afternoon, as a storm pounded Paris, Cocteau showed up at the Ritz with the petition for Coco to sign. He stood in the salon, rain dripping from his coat and puddling on the carpet. Coco had not asked him to remove the wet garment because she didn’t want him to stay. Spatz was in the next room, and he’d be listening to every word of their conversation. She had to get Cocteau out of there fast so she could hide the petition and sign it when Spatz was out.
“You’re not looking well,” Cocteau said in a snide tone. His hair was freshly dyed an artificial auburn color, and white powder covered his face like a Kabuki mask.
“Neither are you.” Coco stepped closer to Cocteau and peered at his chalky face. “What are you covering up with that powder?”
“This dreadful rash. I’ve got it on my back and legs, too.”
“A guilty conscience reveals itself on the skin.”
“Like your lines. And the circles under your eyes. And what became of your flesh? You’ve become an old bag of bones, Coco.”
“I don’t have a guilty conscience.”
Cocteau removed a document from a pocket inside his jacket, unfolded it, and handed it to Coco. “You know why I’m here,” he said somberly.
Coco read quickly:
Max Jacob invented a language of poetic images that expresses the depths of our French language. He is revered by all admirers of literature and most especially by the youth of France, who respect him as a great teacher.
He has been a Catholic for twenty years and long ago renounced the world to live for God. The priests of the abbey of Saint-Benoît will attest to his regular attendance at church. They are among the many who salute his nobility, his wisdom, his inimitable grace.
Our love for this dignified old man commands us with all our hearts and our minds to do all we can to free him. We urge the authorities to release him immediately.
“Poor dear Max,” said Coco, as she laid the petition on the coffee table.
“Someone must have given him up to the Gestapo,” said Cocteau. “He’s been sick for a week now, and he grows weaker by the hour. I had extra blankets sent, but I doubt the guards delivered them. Before I came here, I stopped at the embassy and offered to take Max’s place, but Abetz refused me.”
Coco shook her head. “You knew he would. They only want Jewish inverts.”
“I’m grateful I’ll never be as cynical as you,” said Cocteau.
“Did you really see Abetz?” asked Coco.
“I saw Von Rose, the Nazi in charge of pardons at the embassy. He’s a reader of poetry, and he’s assured me he can put pressure on Abetz.”
Coco turned away and stared out the window. A raging rain splashed against the glass, clamoring to get in and drown her, wash her away with her carpets and antiques.
Coco’s eyes scanned the twenty-five signatures at the bottom. They included Misia and José Maria Sert, Michel and Amélie Pelissier, and several French celebrities, including the popular actor Sacha Guitry, whose name had appeared on Life’s blacklist of collaborators.
“I don’t see Picasso here,” she said.
“He’s not. I went to his studio earlier, but he was working and wouldn’t see me.” Cocteau stared hard at Coco, trying to catch her eye. “I haven’t given up on Picasso, but your signature is more important. It would carry more weight with the Nazis. The Germans think Picasso is a degenerate. They’d love to get rid of him. But you have highly placed German friends. Won’t Spatz help?”
“He isn’t here,” Coco lied.
“Did you even ask him?”
“No.”
“My God, Chanel! One word from Spatz, one phone call to the embassy, and Max is free.”
“You think it’s that easy? You know what’s going on. The Germans might shoot Spatz just for asking. Leave him out of this.” They might also shoot her. Schellenberg had certainly looked like he wanted to kill her over the Modellhut disaster.
“What are you afraid of? That he’ll leave you if you help a Jewish friend?” Cocteau pulled a pen from his pocket and held it out to Coco. “Spatz never has to know.”
“What am I—a love-sick adolescent? I make my own decisions.”
“Then sign!”
“It’s dangerous.” Oh, why hadn’t Cocteau come when Spatz was out?
“This is Max!” Cocteau began pacing nervously around the small salon. “Are you still thinking that the Germans will win? So, you want a clean record, no pesky petition signatures to suggest you weren’t on board with the Nazis?” His tone was brutal.
While Coco rummaged in a desk drawer for a new pack of cigarettes, Cocteau took a moment to compose himself. When he spoke again, his voice was low and humble. “I’m begging you. Do not turn your back on Max. This is your chance to stand against evil.”
Coco blew out a cloud of smoke. “In case you hadn’t noticed, evil is here to stay.”
“It’s redeemed by love and courage.”
“You sound like Max.”
“He used to say he was good at cheating God. Well, he no longer is. He needs you.” Cocteau stared at Coco with a harsh, unflinching gaze. “Think about it. You have to sign. I’ll come back in a few hours. For once, Chanel, don’t be selfish.”
A moment after the door closed behind Cocteau, Coco slipped the petition under a sofa seat cushion. Spatz entered wearing a silk dressing gown and slippers. “Where is it?” he asked. His eyes darted to the coffee table, to Coco’s tortoiseshell spectacles lying on top of a magazine, and a vase of faux camellias.
“Cocteau took it.” A cigarette dangled from Coco’s mouth as she fingered the strands of pearls looped around her neck.
“Usually, you’re a good liar,” said Spatz, upending the cushions on the chairs, then the sofa. When he found the petition, he ripped it up and tossed the pieces in the trash bin under the desk.
Turning her back on Spatz, Coco walked the length of the carpet to the hall and disappeared into the room beyond.
* * *
When Cocteau returned later that afternoon, the maid told him Coco was out. He asked for the petition, but the maid knew nothing about it. The next day, Spatz left for Berlin. He didn’t tell Coco the reason for his trip, only that he had “business” to attend to. He was gone a week.
Coco passed the time smoking and reading. She barely left her suite at the Ritz, ordering her meals in and seeing no one but Serge Lifar, whom she knew wouldn’t ask her about Max’s petition. One night she awoke at three a.m., certain she’d heard faint screams coming from somewhere deep in the Ritz. In the morning she questioned the night maid. The old woman had also heard the screams. “Oh yes, Mademoiselle,” the maid said. “The Nazis took away Madame de Kerdreor on the floor below. I saw them with my own eyes! She was in the Resistance and a communist, it turns out. Imagine, a communist at the Ritz!”
So, the Germans had been watching Madame de Kerdreor, the wealthy heiress of a family in Burgundy. They were watching Coco, too, she was sure. A chill shot through her as she recalled how Goering had showed up at her boutique the day after she failed to appear at one of Otto Abetz’s parties.
* * *
Misia sent Coco an icily formal note to tell her that Cocteau had circulated a new petition, which he didn’t even bother asking Coco to sign. He’d collected thirty signatures, five more than on the original document, and he’d submitted it to Ambassador Abetz that day, March 4.
Coco heard nothing more for a week. Then, on March 13, Misia called. She was sobbing so hard she could barely get the words out: Max was dead. He’d succumbed to pneumonia while the petition was still on Abetz’s desk. “I want to organize a memorial mass,” Misia said.
“I’ll help you,” said Coco.
“You’ll help, but you wouldn’t sign the petition.”
“I hid it under the sofa cushion to sign after Spatz left. But he found it and ripped it up.”
