Anio Szado (27 page)

I spent the rest of Monday afternoon working silently on the alterations I had basted earlier. Then, with Madame’s curt approval, I headed home for a quick supper before my nine o’clock appointment with Consuelo.

It was a different Consuelo who answered the door. Her eyes were puffy and pink-rimmed as though she had been crying. She was wearing seersucker pajamas and grey high-heeled slippers with ostrich-feather tendrils that oscillated as she walked.

“I’ve just been across the hall speaking with Tonio,” she said. She sat on the sofa, and I took the same chair as before.

Consuelo pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wrung it in her hands. “My husband doesn’t want me here. He doesn’t want me to take care of him and try to keep him safe. He won’t let me. All he wants is to leave. He would rather die than be anywhere close to me!”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is! Look how he treats me. He puts me in a separate apartment, like a dog in a cage to be thrown a scrap once in a while.”

“You have a very lovely and large apartment.”

“Tonio gave me the nicest and biggest one so that I wouldn’t complain. He wants me to have no possible excuse to insist that I have to move in with him. The superintendent colludes with him, too. Every time I have something wrong here, the man comes and tells me there’s no problem. Just today I had him checking the temperature. Tonio’s apartment is always comfortable. Feel how stifling it is in here. Tonio must be bribing the man to pretend that everything is fine in my apartment. That’s
where his money goes! It doesn’t matter how much it costs, Tonio will do anything to keep me in my overheated, gilded cage.”

“Maybe he thinks it’s best for you to have room for your own projects.”

“And why should he get to make that decision for me? Am I not a human being? He says his apartment is too small for me, that he would have no space to write, and he refuses to join me in mine. I need to find us a larger place where we can be together. This isn’t the only building in Manhattan!”

But this one was extremely attractive: modern, thoughtfully designed, with pleasing proportions. The parlor was spacious and had high ceilings—and those big windows overlooking Central Park. “You have a view that is very difficult to come by.”

“A bunch of trees. What do I care about trees? I grew up in the jungle. Trees don’t give me what I need. Only one person can do that. And he wants nothing more than to torment me. He wouldn’t even have let me come to New York if I hadn’t forced him. He would have had me stay at the commune in Oppède while he enjoyed all the parties and celebrations here. I knew when
Wind, Sand and Stars
became a Book-of-the-Month Club pick that it was my ticket to America. My friend Robert said to me, ‘Your husband writes of responsibility; if people only knew he has a wife, abandoned across the ocean, just waiting for his word!’ I knew that Tonio couldn’t deny me my passage then. His reputation would be ruined.” She tugged at her pajama top. “But he just hides me away. He doesn’t take me to anything. He goes to see his famous friends without me. They probably don’t even know he has a wife! He makes me ill with his cruelty. Look how thin I am. I could die at any moment! He doesn’t want to admit I exist, even here under his nose in Manhattan.” She sniffled.

Then she ran her fingers through her hair and asked, her voice suddenly clear, “You weren’t at the big fête in Montreal a few months ago? There was an enormous party in honor of Tonio.
I wore a stunning red dress, to the floor. Everyone was agog over it. They all wanted to tell me how much they admired me and my husband. It was a terrific evening.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “The people have a right to celebrate having a count
and
his countess in their midst. Most of the time he doesn’t even want to go out to these things himself!”

“Maybe it’s just that he needs solitude and space to write.”

“An artist needs to be seen and to promote himself, too. You know this. Coming here, that first time, presenting yourself in a dress almost worthy of Valentina at her best.” She smiled. “Then your naughty little fashion show this afternoon.”

“I brought the skirt. I made the changes I tacked earlier. If they’re fine, we just need to mark the hem. I assume you want to keep it at evening length? If we shorten it, we’ll also have to narrow it. Shorter dresses are categorized differently in the regulations.”

“Whatever you decide. Just make it whatever length you think is best. I don’t care. Fashion doesn’t mean anything to me.”

What ridiculous things Consuelo said.

I pulled out the skirt and stood up, holding it in front of me enticingly—a matador with a cape tempting a capricious bull. “Just wait until you see how well it will look on you now. No one will be able to take his eyes off you. I would love to see it for myself. You should really put it on.”

Consuelo pulled on the skirt over her pajama bottoms, then maneuvered the bottoms off. Hoisting the skirt to the height of her knees, she stepped onto the coffee table. “Hem me.”

First I had to check the fit of the alterations at the waist, back, and hips, assessing with eyes and hands. Consuelo lifted her pajama top high above the waistband to give me a clear view of the top section of the skirt. I tried to ignore the span of smooth olive skin, but Consuelo repeatedly glided her fingertips across her ribs, and it took a concentration of will to keep my focus where it should be.

“So we’re agreed that the skirt stays long,” I said, kneeling on the floor.

“Such a clean, simple design,” said Consuelo. “It sets off the jacket perfectly.”

I nodded. “After designing the butterfly dress, I realized that—”

“No, Mignonne.” Consuelo put her hand on my head. “One wears Fiche. Not Lachapelle. You will ensure that the labels in this ensemble say Atelier Fiche.”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Fiche has a name, a presence in the industry. Good things are expected from her. You have a lot of nerve, trying to promote yourself to me. Loyalty is a virtue; you should learn it.”

“Of course.” Loyalty like Consuelo’s to Antoine? Or to her paramour?

Consuelo crooked her fingers into my mane. “Keep doing what you do, darling, and one day you will rise above your mentor. One day you will be my designer.”

It troubled me to feel the hope rise in my blood.

“I will be your muse,” said Consuelo. “The Garbo to your Valentina. They are inseparable, you know.” She hooked a lock of hair and coiled it around her fingers in a slow, lazy twirl. “They are at each other’s side through the day, every day. And all through the night.”

When I stepped from the elevator into the lobby, the concierge said, “Miss Lachapelle? Mr. Saint-Exupéry asked that I ring him if I see you. Would you mind waiting?”

In a few minutes, Antoine appeared, smiling broadly. He led me outside to stroll along the sidewalk. “Consuelo told me you were expected. I’m glad the concierge caught you. I wanted to ask: May we work together tonight?”

I needed to hem Consuelo’s skirt. More importantly, I had to
get the silk dress done and I didn’t want Antoine to see it before our dinner at Le Pavillon tomorrow night. I was heading straight back to get started, and needed to have the space to myself. “I can’t have you come to the studio tonight.”

“You are going home? Then may I borrow your key so I can write? The book refuses to come to life in my apartment. I keep writing about the prince’s disappointing encounters with men who are as stuck as I am. I cannot seem to transcend it, to make it go anywhere.”

“I can’t give you my key. I’ll need to get into the studio in the morning.”

“True.” He rubbed his jaw. “I will slide it under your apartment door at home after I lock up.”

“No. Leo gets up early. He’ll be all over me with questions.”

“You have not told him about me?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sure you have your reasons.”

“Leo would go crazy. You’re married and twice my age.”

“These are trivial things! One an inconvenience and one irrelevant.”

“Maybe if you’re French. They aren’t trivial to Americans.”

“You can’t live your life on the basis of what America thinks.”

“You do. You told me you would never send for Consuelo. But the minute your reputation was at stake, you had her come to New York. Better to pretend you’re a devoted husband, even if you’re both miserable, than to have people think you deserted your wife.”

He walked silently for a while. It was not easy to match his long strides when we were not arm in arm. Finally he said, “It is like that, then? She tells you her side of the story, and you forget everything I confided to you? Our marriage may be little more than paper, but I have signed my name to it. I do not entirely abdicate my responsibilities.”

“But you don’t even want her here.”

“Of course not. We were estranged already in France. Try to understand, I didn’t tire of her as a boy tires of licorice. She exhausted me in every way. It kills us both to be together, not just me. It is only when we are apart that we understand each other and long for each other. Everything is better when we are apart. It has always been this way.”

We stopped to wait for a traffic light to change. I said, “So the more time you spend in my studio, the better for your marriage.”

Antoine only lifted his head stiffly to look at the sky, his expression growing cold.

I continued, “No wonder you’re trying so hard to go away. Back to having heroic adventures and writing romantic letters to each other.”

“Mignonne.”

“And
longing
for each other.”

“Listen to yourself! War is not an adventure; it is a disease. My people are starving in the streets.”

I was silent.

Antoine said, “A man does not go to war for the purpose of reviving his marriage.”

“Nevertheless.”

He stood with me until the light turned green. “Good night.” He bowed slightly and began to walk away.

“Antoine!”

He paused.

“Will I see you tomorrow night for dinner?”

“I would not wish to disappoint Yannick.”

Along the way to the studio, I used a pay phone to inform Leo that I would be working late into the night.

Finishing Consuelo’s skirt was a straightforward matter. I ran a long length of thread through a block of beeswax to prevent it from catching and curling into knots, then I bound and blindstitched
the hem, taking care to pick up only one or two threads of the fabric at a time with the needle, and not to draw the thread too tightly. When I was done stitching, the hem lay flat without rippling. I checked the heat of my iron and tested the steam, nerves speeding the blood through my veins. Maybe one never became inured to velvet’s demanding, sensitive idiosyncrasies. I concentrated as I aligned the hem on the prickly needle board that would protect its pile, then steamed the fabric lightly, tapping the hem with the bristles of a brush to get a good, clean edge without bruising the gleaming nap.

With Consuelo’s garment done and carefully put away, I turned finally to the white silk. I bent to scoop it up from the floor. As I straightened, a flurry of wisps detached themselves. They wafted to the floorboards and caught in the dark, splintered cracks.

I froze. In my arms, flimsy bits of fabric began to disassemble, skimming over each other in all directions at once. With a cry, I spun toward the table and let the yardage spill onto it.

It was a snake’s nest of twisting, tortured planes. Slender swatches curled around my fingers as I spread the fabric across the tabletop. The bodice pieces had been cut and hacked. The long shapes of the arms had been pierced, and bore slashes. The broad swath that was to have swept along my shoulders and drape unbroken down my back had been hewn to barely connected panels of indiscriminate lengths and widths.

The cuts had been made without symmetry or pity. It was as though Madame had simply dipped the points of her shears into the fallen fabric, again and again, closing the long blades on the silk, reducing it to shreds, fraying swaths, and long, jagged strips.

I woke late on Tuesday morning, took a bath, and didn’t hurry over breakfast. I had brought home all evidence of Madame Fiche’s silk chiffon.

One o’clock: Madame would have arrived hours ago, and registered the absence of the fabric, and would be sitting unsettled at her desk wondering what would happen next. She would have noted my drinking glasses still on the ledge, and my cardigan still hung on the back of my chair, and—most of all—my thread snips and bent-handle shears, and would know that I would return. No seamstress, no designer, would abandon her favorite shears.

It was midafternoon when I entered the studio, taking care to smile as though I was not only untroubled but well rested, too.

Madame Fiche was indeed at her desk, her mouth an unbent line. She shifted her jaw as if to loosen a deadening grip. “You’re late.” Her voice was dry and choppy. I wondered if she had spoken since yesterday afternoon.

I asked, “Are you having a nice day?”

Madame watched warily as I continued to my table.

“Glad to hear it,” I said, though she hadn’t replied. “You need a break, after all the work you did last night.”