Anio Szado (40 page)

When the lights had all been dimmed, and Philippe’s playing had softened to a low background accompaniment, I threw the switch on the microphone and started the audio disc turning. Its spooky rhythm hushed the audience to silence, and into this silence the machine delivered Antoine’s voice: “I had an accident in the Sahara Desert six years ago …” A bit of the tension left my shoulders. “… a thousand miles from any human habitation … You can imagine my surprise at sunrise when an odd little voice woke me up …”

Yannick’s oboe lifted into its mournful warble, and the first model emerged from the wings: the Little Prince.

The voice continued, sure and persuasive. The models passed between the curtained panels on either side of the stage, coming together to enact Antoine’s story in subtle gestures and evocative stances. When the text allowed, when the instruments held the audience captive and still like cupped hands can hold water long enough for a drink, the models held their poses—as motionless on their boxy heels as figures on a page, arms angled to showcase the clothing’s drapery and elegant lines. Then they slipped back into the world of motion and the music of anticipation and action. Every once in a while, a spattering of applause greeted a design, but for the most part the audience was silent—whether in disdain for the creations or out of respect for the storytelling, I couldn’t tell.

Philippe’s piano played in the background all along, rising to take center stage whenever I needed to stop the machine and
find the next usable segment, and Yannick’s oboe pulled the listeners’ emotions along the strains of every note. The story was not strictly in line with Antoine’s tale: I had left out the prince’s visits with the men who were so stuck in their ways: a money counter, a lamplighter, a king, and others. In tonight’s story, a boy arrived and demanded drawings from a fallen pilot. He spoke of passion, love, and responsibility, and being bound by them to a rose. He would meet a fox and a poisonous snake, and choose his homeland over his new friends in the barren desert—gracefully giving his life for the choice.

In this story, the snake was a lean, tall young woman with icy blue eyes, the natural rosiness of her lips blotted and dulled with matte pastel lipstick. She writhed in a shimmering sheath that I had covered with transparent sequins over painted metallic scales. The model’s long fingers reached for the girl with the messy blond bob who was the scene’s prince. I pictured the cold hunger of the serpent eyes, the chilling elegance of the angular arms, and felt a pang of fright for the prince—not the one who turned beguilingly at center stage, but the young child who lived in Antoine’s pages and in his heart.

The narrator spoke to the audience as openly as one does to a friend: Antoine did, his disembodied voice melancholy as the pilot who crashed in the desert, plaintive and innocent as the prince, cunning as the snake, and, as the fox, both charmingly exasperated and patient. As I watched the disc spin, I marveled that so intimate an aspect of a man could be captured in such a way, packaged for calling up whenever the desire arose. In a hundred years, I thought, science will replicate sight in a similar parcel, and perhaps imagination as well.

The rising of the oboe drew me out of my reverie. I put a hand on the machine and stopped its whirling. My heart was beating quickly. On the stage, as Philippe’s notes clashed and peaked,
as Yannick’s oboe sounded its low warning, the snake returned. The model spun, and her cape of gun-grey imitation silk flared around her—its generous proportions an affront to the fabric restrictions—then she moved slowly toward the Little Prince, who sat unmoving and quiet on the wooden wall.

In Antoine’s book, the boy gave himself willingly to death, his anxiety focused only on the pain it would cause the pilot. In Studio Saint-Ex’s little fashion story, the child hesitated. Sensing the approach of the snake, he lifted his feet off the ground, one after the other in turn, then he climbed high onto the wall. He swayed as he questioned his decision, measuring the costs of first one and then the other action—to embrace his life here in the desert, with his new friends, or to sacrifice his new life to carry out his duty to the rose. The little model danced atop the wall, her gestures an homage to the land the prince had come to visit, and then, lifting her arms, to the planet that was suddenly lit overhead within a canopy of twinkling lights. As the planet stayed fixed in the sky, the blanket of star-lights grew, expanding lower to the stage, and the Little Prince’s movements slowed and stilled.

The snake came close. As it lifted its cape, the stars trembled for a moment and the child slipped down off the sheltering wall. With a burst of light and a cry from the stage, the snake struck. The light flashed acid yellow. Immediately, all went black. Then, slowly, the spotlight was raised on the Little Prince, who was crumpled lifeless at the base of the wall.

A gasp escaped my throat—and I realized that all was quiet in the house. Where was the accompaniment? I couldn’t find the closing lines without the music to cover my search. I moved to catch the attention of the musicians across the stage, where they hid in the opposite wings.

Philippe had covered his eyes; Yannick was staring at the fallen figure. As Yannick lifted his hand to wipe his cheek, his eyes met mine and he started—his hand now darting to his oboe.

But before the instrument reached his lips, a voice rose into the silence: Antoine’s—not the recording, but Antoine himself, projecting from the very back of the audience.

“Now my sorrow is comforted a little. That is to say—not entirely. But I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak.”

The oboe breathed its deep bass sound.

“It was not such a heavy body … and at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells …”

In the theater, bells did not peal; instead, the response came in rustles and soft creaks—a delicate wave of sound that built up as one after another of the listeners turned around to watch Antoine speak. I had stepped from the wings to see it. Now Consuelo did the same. Bernard, too, stepped onto the stage. In any other production, it would be as though we were revealing ourselves in order to receive our praise—but all heads were turned away from us.

Applause had begun sporadically. It now joined note to note like a thread mending holes, until there were no discernable weaknesses in the fabric of the audience’s response. Here and there, people stood in ovation. Antoine himself stood beside the rear doors, his large hands clapping slowly and pointedly as he stared at the stage.

His expression was inscrutable, from this distance, but his gaze seemed to focus on me. I felt suddenly that I was laid bare, exposed as a usurper and a thief. I stopped applauding Antoine, my hands falling to my sides, as more and more of the crowd scrambled to its feet. I was relieved then that most of the audience found the presence of the author at the back of the room to be more interesting than that of the clan of imitators clustered at the front—with a confused gaggle of models elbowing for position behind.

I couldn’t convince Consuelo to change out of the dress. She wouldn’t even cover it with her coat outside the Alliance Française, not with photographers pointing lenses her way. She handed her sable to Philippe and demanded that he lock it up wherever he had locked the recording device. Snow was falling steadily. Fat, spiky snowflakes glistened like crystal armor on Consuelo’s shoulders and among the petals of the rose. I was shivering. My own coat had been left in the taxi to Antoine’s before the show. Philippe draped Consuelo’s fur over my shoulders and walked whistling down the street.

In the cab, as we raced to Le Pavillon, Consuelo fixed her makeup and kept patting Antoine’s knee. Bernard was in the jump seat, bracing himself against turns with a hand pressed to the car’s roof. In the front passenger seat, Yannick yelled joyously, “Left at the lights! Straight ahead! Step on it, my friend, we’ve been waiting long enough!”

It had taken ages to tear Consuelo away from the cameras and the fans. It was as though she thought all the kudos must be solely for her. I had watched some Alliance members approach her deferentially, shyly. They and Consuelo must have been aware of each other before, for they knew each other’s names, but it was as though they were meeting her for the very first time.

And in a sense they were: the Consuelo they had known had been a spurned woman. But this woman, this rose-adorned star, was her prince’s very lifeblood, a beauty worth the sacrifice of
life itself. And her husband … They had thought he’d grown so bullheaded, when here he had been working on such a thoughtful and humane tale, a love story that one couldn’t help but admire. Funny how such a small thing, a little story of a little prince, could put things in a different perspective. I read this all in their expressions, in their posture, and in their tone.

Audience members had approached me, too, to compliment my work. A publicist had given me a card. “I’m organizing something different for this summer—an extravaganza to introduce the press to all-American design. Everyone who ever reports on fashion will be there. Ring me tomorrow. Tell my secretary I invited you to show at Press Week.”

I had been grateful and excited but demurring for the moment; this was Antoine’s night. And look: there was warmth in his eyes. There was excitement in his voice.

The death of the Little Prince had returned Antoine to life.

Though the clamor outside the Alliance had been promising, Consuelo was not yet convinced. To impress that audience was something—but the real test would unfold at Le Pavillon, where every seat was reserved for the truly wealthy, the very rich, the moneyed elite, and those who were all three.

Arriving with the restaurant’s owner was a delightful start; no other guests tonight would have had the privilege of bypassing the hoity maître d’. And even before Yannick escorted Consuelo’s party to a table in the coveted center aisle, several patrons who had been in the audience turned in their seats to nod at Tonio with appreciative smiles. From here and there came delicate applause.

Yannick excused himself after seating Consuelo next to Tonio and across from Mignonne, who was sitting quietly next to Bernard.

Champagne appeared, and soon champagne appeared again. A number of bottles were uncorked; a good number of toasts went around. A toast for each patron who stopped by the table. A toast for each congratulation. A toast each time a glowing starlet or an aging socialite fawned over Consuelo’s dress.

And Consuelo’s silent private toasts, bubbly prayers of thanks for the much-proffered gift of that cherished word: “So nice to meet your
wife
” … “You and your
wife
” … “Your lovely
wife
” … “And of course this is your
wife
.”

Tonio beamed, and drank, and beamed, even as his admirers came with tremulous concerns: “Please tell me … did the Little
Prince make it back to his rose?” Each time, Tonio gave a charming, noncommittal shrug.

Charming had its charms, but tonight the truth would be unmasked. Consuelo spoke with confidence. “The prince has returned to his rose, for evermore.”

Tonio said only, “To the prince’s rose,” and drank. But when Consuelo lifted her fingers to her husband’s face, he took them. In full view at the center of Le Pavillon, he kissed the back of her hand.