Anio Szado (24 page)

On the sofa behind him, pencil poised over my sketchbook, I hesitated longer yet. What could I design that would appeal to Consuelo? Beautiful, rude, sensual, hypnotic, fashionable, proud Consuelo: what would make her feel good?

Antoine began crossing out sentences. His pen stopped. He wrote again. He ripped out the page, crumpled and dropped it, and dove directly into fresh writing as though nothing had disturbed his flow.

“Antoine?”

“Mmm?”

“How would you characterize your wife?”

He barely paused, and didn’t look up. “In large things, frail and humble; in small things, mean and vain.” He crossed out a paragraph with a furious stroke.

The intensity and mystery of his actions made it impossible to concentrate on my own work. I couldn’t stop watching him. He worked like a man unaware he was being observed, like a man unable to see anything but the world that was in his mind—springing to life in words, being obliterated with absolute conviction, rising again in a different skin—sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and page by page, what pages still remained.

When yet another balled sheet of paper had skittered across the floor, I forced my focus back to my sketchbook. Frail, vain … “You didn’t say Consuelo is passionate.”

“That is a given.”

“Is it what attracted you to her?”

“Mignonne,” Antoine said in warning.

“Sorry. I’ll let you work.”

“Don’t bother me with questions you might just as well ask of yourself.”

Long after I had exhausted my shallow store of inspiration, Antoine still wrote, oblivious to his setting, to the hard floor under him, to me. I felt I was watching a man possessed by a zealous ghost, so unearthly was his silent intensity.

Then, without warning, an invading imp dislodged the zealot from his head. He turned around to grab at my legs, pulling me onto him as I fought and squealed.

“What have you drawn?” he asked, laughing, when I’d made my escape.

I blushed. “I’ve designed a coat. For your prince.”

“Really? Have you sketched a whole wardrobe for the Little Prince? I will ask my publishers to offer him for sale as a paper doll.”

At first I thought he was serious. Imagine if my work could be produced on the scale of Antoine’s—and with his blessing, too! But he had made a sound, a truncated laugh that was almost a grunt. He was joking … or he wasn’t amused at all.

I said, “Better ask your prince what he thinks of the idea. He’s the one who told me to make him a coat.”

Now Antoine did laugh. He joined me on the sofa. “It’s true that princes can be somewhat demanding.”

“He’s right, though. He’ll be flying very high. Think how cold the air will be up there.”

Antoine nodded. “You have designed for him a very regal coat.”

“It’s not too much like a dressing gown?”

“Not at all.”

“I could put some ermine on the collar.”

“He’s just a child. Ermine is for kings.” He pointed to the prince’s shoulders. “You might add a little something here. Boys like a bit of glittery metal.”

I gave him my pencil, and he added a few quick lines.

I asked, “How about giving him a scepter?”

“What for?”

“To show his royal authority.”

Antoine thought for a moment. “I will write of authority, but not the prince’s. He has so much to learn.” He gestured for me to show him more sketches. “What else?”

“Nothing worth showing. I was trying to concentrate on ideas for Consuelo, but I couldn’t get your story out of my mind.”

“Is that so? Shall I read to you what I have written so far?”

“I would love it.” I put my sketchbook on the table and leaned against him, studying the drawings that illustrated the text.

He began reading from his manuscript. “ ‘Once, when I was six years old …’ ”

Antoine read, his voice swelling like a springtime stream brought forth by the life he had created. And what a boy he had made. Antoine’s unruly charm, my blond hair; so curious and touching; so vexing. So lonely and far from home.

Antoine’s child. Yearning grew in me like thirst.

I was so taken with the story that when he broke off, I said, “Don’t stop! It’s not done.”

“I told you so, Mignonne; that is why I came here. I still have much work to do.”

“But I want to hear the rest.”

He chuckled. “Then perhaps you should greet me more warmly next time I show up to write.”

“You’ll come back? You feel productive here?”

“It went very well, compared to my last couple of nights. When I try to work in my apartment, even when Consuelo isn’t pestering me, the voice of the city through the windows has a
distressing sound. There’s no sense of that here. It is so empty and still.”

“But not entirely quiet.”

“The sounds are different, and the feel. This place was built for hard, honest work. One doesn’t sense the piling up of people in their skyscrapers. There’s dignity in this building’s bones. You must feel the energy put out by buildings; I am sure your father did.”

“I felt it when we went to Bernard Lamotte’s.”

“Le Bocal. Yes. It is a very good place. It is like a little piece of France.”

“Is it? I’ve never been to France.”

The contentment in his expression fell away. “And now you can never see France as it has always been. Soon there may be no France at all. Oh, Mignonne, it breaks my heart to think of what you will never see or feel.”

I rubbed his shoulders. “You’re so tense. Lie down for a while.”

He stretched out, and I eased his head to my lap.

He closed his eyes as though to stop tears from escaping into the crow’s-feet wrinkles that radiated toward his temples. “You are kind to me. And I am so alone. There is no one who shares my memories, not a single man left on earth. The men I have flown with, friends I have lived with … Guillaumet, Mermoz … the entire Casablanca-Dakar team with Aéropostale, every man on the South American route … they are all gone, every one of them. Disappeared with the mail, crushed, some of them melted with their machines. I am the only one still alive, the last who can still give his life to some greater good.” His tone grew ashamed. “And I lie here in your arms, held to your breasts as soft as doves. I do nothing; I lie weeping. France is imprisoned and I am of no use.”

“Don’t say that. The tide will turn. You’ll go back to France and see it free.”

“I want nothing more than to believe you. All I need is one
signature. But I am shackled by spineless imbeciles who think I am too old to fly. At least I can believe that you feel there is hope. I knew from when I first met you: you are honest. You are not afraid to tell the truth.”

The truth was, I had told him what he wanted to believe. As I touched his lined brow and traced the scar at the edge of his mouth, I prayed he would see his beloved France liberated—but also that he would never fly again. I had never known so abused a body, so anguished a spirit, so vital a mind. So many times he had been flung into the ground. He would rather be dropped by the hand of God than be banished from the skies.

In my lap, Antoine said, “Once, I was lost for four days in the Libyan desert, with my mechanic Prévot. We were desperate for water. One night, I spread out my parachute to try to catch the dew. In the morning, there was nothing; not a single drop. I just stared. I could not even make tears. I remember thinking that even my heart was dried out.”

Moisture beaded on his lashes. They gathered in points like black stars. I touched them gently. “But look: your heart isn’t dry anymore.”

“But it is cold, like the heart of this city is cold. Talk to me, Mignonne. Make me love life.”

In the darkness of the studio, I told him about my childhood, my brother’s struggles, the death of Papa. He listened in silence, smoking on the sofa. I told him about my year in Montreal, what it had been like to live with Mother there, and to drink in the cafés, and to be reminded every day that the populace, unlike that of my home country, was fighting a war. I spoke of school, successes and stumbles, fashion and sewing, my trials with Madame Fiche.

Antoine blew a long, slow course of smoke toward the ceiling. “Raising a fashion protégé is perhaps not so different from
training a pilot to be single-minded in delivering the mail. She pushes and kneads you to almost a breaking point, tempering you like steel. It’s ‘Those are the orders,’ always and only,” he said, quoting
Night Flight
’s high-minded aviation chief.

“Madame Fiche is not the Garment District Rivière!”

He chortled. “True. Her morals are firm enough but of questionable value. And her ethics are highly suspect. Still, she has you working hard for the success of her enterprise.”

“It’s for my own success, too. I need her, and though she doesn’t realize it, she needs me.”

“And you both place your fate in the hands of Consuelo?”

“And in those of all the expats. Madame Fiche has given up on American women; she says they dress to disguise themselves as nothing, but Frenchwomen still dress to be French. She thinks if we can get Consuelo to wear us, the whole community will notice.”

“You agree?”

“Consuelo’s our best hope to get our designs out there. I’ve been working on all sorts of ideas, but Madame doesn’t want to take a risk. She wants to sell her an ensemble from our Butterfly Collection, the one I designed at school. I showed you my sketches, way back when.”

“They were very dramatic and skillfully done—but I admit I am not fond of the ornate. For me, perfection comes not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. There is far less beauty in clothing than in the body’s naked state.”

“Consuelo said she liked the butterfly idea because it reminded her of an adventure in her childhood.” Antoine nodded as though he knew the story well. “But that’s all we have. I think I need to come up with something else that reminds her of better days. She won’t wear just anything. It has to speak to her. It needs to reflect who she is. As you said: frail and humble, mean and vain.”

“Did I say this? I’m not sure if I hinder you or help you. I give you the thoughts of a man who is fed up with the ways of his wife.”

“Then think back to the young Consuelo. When you fell in love. What was she like then?”

He smiled. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Of course I wasn’t, but I was sure that what Consuelo wanted more than anything else was to return to those times. And the most important thing, for a designer, is to understand a client’s heart.

Antoine asked, “Are you not afraid that if I conjure it all up, I will fall in love with her all over again?”

“Do you really think you’ve stopped loving her? Because I don’t believe you’re capable of falling out of love.”

He pulled out his wallet and removed a photograph. The young woman in the picture was an extraordinary creature, asleep, her dark hair tumbling down the side of a satin-sheeted bed. The peaks of her breasts were covered by a sheet, her face turned slightly away from the camera. She was elegant and tranquil, a pure and naked beauty whose complete serenity surely came of being well used and fully satisfied by her Tonio—by my Antoine.

I turned the photo over. In Antoine’s writing, “Consuelo
chez
Greta Garbo, New York”; in what must have been Consuelo’s hand, “Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose me.”

He said, “When I met Consuelo, she was twice widowed already, at your age. She had an air of tragedy. Her face was delicate and precise. Her eyes were so large and expressive, one couldn’t look away.”

They were still like that.

Antoine said, “I noticed them immediately, along with her wrists.”

As had I.

“Once when our money ran out, as it often did, she claimed
she would go to work scrubbing floors. I said, ‘With your thin wrists!’ and she said, ‘Jesus Christ had thin wrists, too!’ ” He laughed. “She was not made for work. She has always been fragile. She would cling to me as though only I could save her from some terrible end. Early on, we were walking in the square in her homeland. We hardly knew each other then. There was a demonstration and gunfire, and she pressed herself against me. She was trembling like a flower that is about to be picked. I imagined her this way, too, when she was living with the refugees in Oppède and I was flying for France. Always, I worried about her. I wanted only to ensure that she was safe from harm. I would fly overhead and feel the pull of her heart on mine, calling me to her defense.”

I made myself listen. I had to hear it. Let him say it; let me use it; then we would put it all away.

“But whenever she was angry—and anything could set her off—she would insist that she didn’t need me, that she could take care of herself. And with what?” He shook his head. “She acted so fierce.”

“She still does.”

“And yet her weapons against the sorrows and demands of the world amount to nothing. No more than three or four thorns on the most breakable of stems.”

“Thorns?”

“Just so. A few feeble little thorns.”

Deep inside me, a hollow feeling grew. Thorns … of a rose.

The rose is Consuelo. Not me. Consuelo.

How could he have drawn the flower for me, the rose that was his wife, on our most intimate of nights?

I pushed him from my lap and got to my feet. “Thorns of a rose.”

He looked perplexed. “Just so.”

“My rose!”

“What?”

“You drew a rose for me. And now you tell me that you were thinking of Consuelo.”

“No, no.” Antoine stood up. “It was not like this. There is not only one rose in the world.”

“There is on the planet you’re writing about.”

“But Mignonne, you’ve heard only the beginning of the story! There may be other roses to come. You will see.”

“I’ve seen enough!”

“It isn’t fair that you ask me to speak of my love for Consuelo, then attack me for it.”

“You think you know what’s fair?”

“I do not mind being held to task for things I do wrong, but do not berate me for things I do well and at your bidding.”

I bent my head into my hands, my fingers digging into my scalp.

Antoine continued. “You asked me to tell you how I saw my wife in the beginning. Yes, it was as the Little Prince saw his rose. She appeared like the sole representative of her species, a rare flower in a land of dangerous volcanoes and voracious trees—where a blade of grass sprouting from a crack in a sidewalk could become a rainforest that obliterates an entire village.”