Moonlight Over Paris (21 page)

    
28 March 1925

    
Dearest Mama,

                    
Thank you for your letter, and for the recent photograph of you and Papa. I think it is the first one I've seen of him in which he's smiling. Usually he looks rather fierce, as if he is only just restraining himself from shouting at the photographer or complaining that the room is too hot and someone needs to open a window.

                    
I do apologize for not writing as often as I did in the autumn. You mustn't fret—I assure you that I am happy, and healthy, and still enjoying my stay here in Paris. If I haven't written it's only because I am so terribly busy. I am still attending classes during the week, and then, in the evenings and on Saturdays, I spend every spare moment at the studio I share with my friends from school. We are all working frantically to finish off our paintings for the Salon des Indépendants—the exhibition at the end of April I mentioned in my last letter—although Mathilde and Étienne are rather farther along than I.

                    
I really must get back to work on my painting—it's a large canvas
depicting the Blue Train to Antibes, with everything in it looking as it ought to do (I am sure Papa will find this reassuring), without even a hint of abstraction or any puzzling motifs. I am feeling tremendously pleased with it and have high hopes that it will be received well by visitors to the exhibition. Once it is finished I shall take a photograph so you can see what it looks like, and I'll describe all the colors, too, as they are such an important part of the piece.

                    
I do hope you and Papa are well, and enjoying the spring weather.

With much love from your devoted daughter,

Helena

Another chore accomplished, and done well in spite of everything. It was an assortment of half-truths and outright lies, for she was the farthest thing from happy. She hadn't seen or spoken to Sam in weeks; she was worried to death about Daisy; and she was anything but confident about her work.

It was Saturday evening, the end of another long day in the studio, and she had dashed off the letter to her mother while Étienne washed his brushes and swept the studio floor. Mathilde had gone home early, leaving just the two of them to continue on to dinner at Rosalie's.

“A good day?” Étienne asked as they strolled along the boulevard du Montparnasse.

“I suppose. Every time I stand in front of the canvas, though, I feel there's more I need to add. More I need to say, if that makes any sense.”

“It does.”

“Which of your paintings will you submit to Maître Czerny?” she asked, weary of fretting about her own work.

“I'm not certain, not yet.”

She thought of the paintings he'd finished, hanging on the back wall of the salon, all of them superb; any one might become the talk of that year's Salon des Indépendants. “What about the—”

“It is tiresome of me to persist in asking,” he interrupted, “but I cannot help myself. In my mind I can see it, see
you,
so clearly.”

“See . . . ?”

“Your portrait.”

Not again. He had asked her a half-dozen times at least, and she had always been very firm in her refusal. “Étienne, you know how I feel.”

“I do, but I cannot help how
I
feel.”

“Is there no one else you wish to paint? We could find you a model. The young woman from our life class the other week—she was lovely.”

“She was, but she didn't inspire me as you do. Why do you refuse me, Hélène?”

“I told you already—I don't like being the center of attention. I never have.”

At some point in the last few minutes they had stopped walking and stood facing one another as passersby brushed past them impatiently. The silence between them grew and grew, so tangible she could nearly taste it.

And then it came to her. This was her year to live, but yet again she was allowing fear to rule her. Did she truly care what strangers thought of her? No. Would it help a dear and cherished friend if she were to say yes? It would.

“I've changed my mind,” she told him. “I'll sit for you.”

They began late on Monday afternoon. The sun had already begun to set, so Étienne turned up the lanterns until
they hissed and sparked, bathing the entire studio in warm, enveloping light.

Étienne had set the least battered of their chairs a few feet away from the little coal stove; the light was soft and kind, and she felt less exposed, there in the corner of the studio, than she'd have done in the middle of the room or next to the windows. Not certain of what pose he wished her to adopt, she sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap.

She was wearing her golden Vionnet gown, as Étienne had asked her to do; not only was it the loveliest of all her frocks, but it was also the most comfortable. Her feet were bare, also at his direction; she had done nothing to her hair, she wore no jewelry, and her face was entirely bare of cosmetics.

Helena perched on the uncomfortable chair, the tips of her toes just touching the floor, and without moving her head she allowed her gaze to drift over the studio, the paintings on the walls, the calm and studied movements of her friend, and she thought of all that she had done, and all that had happened to her, in the space of a year.

Last spring, she had promised her parents she would return to London, but so much had changed since then.
She
had changed. And she wasn't certain, now, that she could ever go back.

S
HE SAT FOR
Étienne three more times that week. He didn't show her his preliminary sketches, nor the painting as he worked on it, and she didn't ask. The composition was on a grand scale, larger than life-size, and while she was curious to see what he had created she was also a trifle apprehensive.

After Helena had finished posing for Étienne, he worked steadily on the portrait for another week, and only then was he ready to share it with her and Mathilde. He made a great
ceremony of the moment, insisting that they close their eyes until he had arranged the canvas on an easel and unveiled it properly.

At last the command came. “Open your eyes,” he called out.

Helena had thought she would know what to expect. She had assumed the painting would be of a woman, dressed in gold, seated on a chair. The painting did depict one woman; but it also, astonishingly, encompassed two portraits.

An invisible line ran vertically through the middle of the canvas, and while the left half of the woman was depicted in a neoclassical and entirely realist manner, her right half was an entirely abstract exercise in Cubist forms and shapes. It was at once a technical tour de force and an exposition of the strengths and limitations of two vastly different schools of expression.

“Well? What do you think?” Étienne looked so nervous, so uncertain. Did he truly not see the brilliance of his creation?

“With this painting, you will set this world on fire,” she said, willing him to believe. “It will be the talk of the Salon.”

“Mathilde?” he asked.

“I agree with Helena. This painting will change everything for you. It is
magnifique
.”

He smiled shyly, then shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that Helena was sure he didn't feel. “Nothing is certain until Czerny agrees to submit it to the Salon. Until then, all we can do is hope. And drink champagne.”

“But it's only three in the afternoon,” Helena protested.

“You English and your rules. In Paris, dear girl, it's
never
too early for champagne.”

“Y
ou look awful,
ma belle
. Have you eaten anything this morning?” Etienne asked.

Helena shook her head. It was nine o'clock in the morning, she had been awake for at least five hours, and her insides were as hollow as a drum. But hungry was better than nauseous, and if she'd tried to eat even a scrap of breakfast she would have been sick to her stomach.

Any minute now, Maître Czerny would enter the academy's
grand salon
, and he would begin to select the paintings for submission to the Salon des Indépendants. All her work, everything she had done over the past year—it had all led to this moment. Before the hour was out, the maître would see
Le train bleu
, would pass judgment on it, and she would know, once and for all, if she was an artist.

Etienne had already set
La femme dorée
on his easel, and their fellow students had gathered around, shaking his hand and congratulating him, a few looking to Helena as they recognized her features from the painting. It was past time that she removed her own canvas from its fabric wrapping and set it on her easel, but she couldn't bring herself to reveal it to the
rest of the class. It would look so amateurish next to Étienne's masterpiece. It would look wrong.

“Good morning,” came the maître's booming voice from the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Étienne whispered frantically. “Put
Le train bleu
on your easel. He's about to begin.”

She nodded. Swallowed back the tide of fear that threatened to choke her.

Crouching down, she drew out the canvas she sought, unwrapped it carefully, and then she set her portrait of the farmer's wife upon the easel.

“Hélène,
no
. What are you thinking? Change it while you—”

“
Eh bien
, Monsieur Moreau. I knew you would not disappoint me.” The maître stood between her and Étienne, and he was smiling, something he did so rarely that it looked quite wrong on his face. “How have you titled this work?”

“
La femme dorée
.”

“It is exceptional. Painted in haste, I see, but that adds a certain charm. A boldness that I like very much.”

“Thank you, Maître Czerny.”

“On to Mademoiselle Parr. The subject of
La femme dorée
, I believe?”

“Yes, maître,” she answered.

“He has immortalized you,” he said, his eyes flickering over the painting on her easel. “What do you call this?”

“I, ah . . .
Femme de fermier
, maître.”

“Very well. If that is all you can manage. A sentimental pastiche, but I suppose it will look well enough in some bourgeois sitting room. Ah—Monsieur Goodwin. What do you have for me?”

She stood there and waited for her pulse to slow and the
tightness in her chest to loosen, and when she could breathe again she turned and tried to smile at Étienne.

“Why?” her friend asked, and he sounded nearly as heartbroken as she felt.

“Not now,” she whispered. Pleaded.

“I will go to him. I will explain there has been a mistake.”

“No. No, it's fine. I wasn't ready, that's all.”

He reached out and grasped her near hand. “
Courage
. One day you will show
Le train bleu
to the world, and the world will take notice. Of this I am certain.”

A
LTHOUGH
H
ELENA WANTED
nothing more than to hide away and lick her wounds in peace, there was no time, for she and Mathilde still hadn't finished their costumes for the ball everyone was attending that Saturday night. And there was no question of not going, for Auntie A and the Murphys and nearly everyone else in her circle of friends would expect to see her there. Everyone apart from Sam, of course. She had no idea if he was going, though it seemed unlikely. Sam wasn't the sort of man who would feel at home in an outlandish costume.

As she and Mathilde hadn't felt inclined to spend much on outfits they would only wear once, they'd gone in search of inexpensive frocks that might be easily transformed. The sale racks at Printemps had yielded a pair of sleeveless shifts in an inky blue artificial silk, and with only a little effort over the course of several days they had turned the plain garments into quite inventive costumes.

The theme of the ball was “Soleil et Lune,” and with that in mind Mathilde decorated her frock with starbursts of sewn-on silver and gold sequins, since she planned to remove them and use the garment for Sunday best thereafter. Helena, who could
afford to be a little more cavalier with her clothing, painted hers to resemble Van Gogh's
The Starry Night
. Though the cheap fabric of her frock had gone a little stiff and scratchy once the paint had dried, the overall effect was very striking.

It was a little lonely getting ready on her own, but Mathilde and Étienne had balked at the expense of a restaurant meal that cost more than two francs, the going rate for dinner at Rosalie's, and had said they would meet her at the ball around ten o'clock. Instead, she and Auntie A were dining with the Murphys, who never passed on the chance to attend a costume ball.

So Helena borrowed her aunt's gramophone and listened to Bessie Smith as she made up her face, put on her frock, buttoned up her new dancing shoes, and decorated her chin-length hair with diamanté hairpins. By the time she was ready to join her aunt downstairs, her mood was more buoyant than it had been for weeks.

Although it had been Agnes's idea to go to the ball, her aunt had refused to wear an actual costume. Instead she had unearthed a gunmetal-gray ball gown from before the war, which looked marvelous on her, and draped enough jewels about her person to make Cartier himself weak at the knees. In her hair was a towering diamond tiara in the Russian style, a wedding gift from Dimitri, and about her neck she'd hung ropes of baroque pearls, cabochon sapphires, and diamonds, some of the jewels as big as a gooseberry. Her wrists were covered with stacks of bracelets, too, and she'd pinned an enormous stomacher-style brooch to her bodice.

“You'll be the belle of the ball,” Helena told her aunt, “but aren't you worried about thieves?”

“Not in the least. My real jewels are in the safe at my London
bank—these are paste. Not inexpensive, mind you, but nothing like as valuable as the real thing. Shall we be on our way?”

The Murphys were staying the night at their pied-à-terre on the quai des Grands Augustins, only yards away from the restaurant where Helena had spent that dreadful evening with Jean-François d'Albret in January. Fortunately both Sara and Gerald had suggested another restaurant for dinner, one across the river on the avenue des Champs-Élysées, and Helena had been spared the ordeal of a second visit to Lapérouse.

The exterior of Fouquet's was that of a perfectly ordinary Right Bank café, its masses of tables and chairs crowding the pavement outside. It would be a pleasant place to pass an hour or so, not least because of its excellent view of the Arc de Triomphe only a quarter mile away.

Inside, the restaurant was true to its Belle Époque origins, with starched white tablecloths, polished brass fittings, chairs upholstered in oxblood-red leather, and waiters who looked to have been working there since the dawn of the Third Republic. The Murphys had already arrived and were seated at a large, round table in the center of the dining room.

Cheeks were kissed, they took their seats, and Helena belatedly realized that her friends were dressed in a perfectly conventional fashion. But Sara, always observant, reached across the table and patted her hand reassuringly.

“Gerald designed our costumes, and as you can imagine they're a little too outré to wear to dinner. We'll dash home and change after dinner.”

“Are we expecting anyone else?” she asked, noticing there were two empty places at the table.

“We, ah . . . we ran into the Fitzgeralds earlier today,” Sara explained. “And they asked if they might come to dinner.”

“It's already half past eight,” Gerald said. “Let's not wait for them. Waiter? We're ready to order.”

Helena had a difficult time choosing from the menu, for reading through the list of first and second courses and
plats principaux
was enough to set her stomach growling. After dithering for several minutes she finally settled on terrine de campagne to start, with turbot in béarnaise sauce to follow and coq au vin for her main course.

As their various choices for a first course were being served, a commotion started on the street outside and quickly moved to the foyer of the restaurant.

“That must be Scott and Zelda,” Gerald said, not even looking up from his foie gras.

“It is,” Agnes said. “Making a grand entrance. As usual.”

Mr. Fitzgerald was arguing loudly with the restaurant's maître d'hôte. It was hard to make out what they were saying, as his half of the discussion was conducted in very bad French, but it seemed to have something to do with his automobile, the unacceptable location in which it had been left, and his unwillingness to have it moved.

By the time Mr. Fitzgerald had come to some sort of agreement with the beleaguered host, Helena was quite prepared to discount him as an insufferable boor, the sort of person one crossed the street to avoid. Her poor first impression was only bolstered by the unease she saw in everyone else's expression, Sara's most of all.

“I had
so
hoped . . .” whispered her friend.

“I know, my darling. Don't fret. I'm sure they'll behave,” Gerald reassured her.

As the Fitzgeralds approached, Helena couldn't help but stare, for there was something about them that simply invited
such attention. They were a good deal younger than the Murphys and radiated a confident sort of glamour that put her in mind of film stars. It was as if they expected to be admired, to be watched, and rather than shrink away from the limelight as she would do, they actually relished every moment.

“I'm ever so sorry we're late,” Mr. Fitzgerald announced once he and his wife had reached the table, kissed cheeks with Sara, said hello to Gerald, and been introduced to Helena and Agnes. “You know how it is.”

“Scott wrote like a madman today,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald. “He sat himself down at the dining room table and didn't get up for
hours
. I spent the whole day tiptoeing around like a little old mouse.” Finding this amusing, she began to laugh, and it was such a merry, infectious sound that Helena, and everyone else, began to laugh as well.

Mrs. Fitzgerald was young, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and had a round, sweet face, dark and expressive eyes, and a small mouth that she'd painted into a fashionable cupid's bow. She wasn't beautiful, not really, but there was something indelible about her, as if once seen she could never be unseen, and she fizzed with an energy that felt nearly kinetic in its intensity.

She also had a most unusual accent, her words all smoothly honeyed vowels. But it was charming, just as Zelda Fitzgerald herself was charming, and Helena found that she quite liked the woman. Mr. Fitzgerald, however, was more of a puzzle. He was older than his wife, perhaps in his early thirties, and was slight and fair with beautiful gray-green eyes. Yet there was an indistinct air to his expression, as if the better part of his thoughts were focused elsewhere, and his gaze never seemed to truly focus on her or anyone else at the table.

Gerald had ordered several bottles of fine Burgundy for the table, but to his evident consternation Mr. Fitzgerald ignored the wine, instead demanding round after round of American-style cocktails. It was rather shocking to Helena, accustomed as she was to a single aperitif before dinner and then one glass of wine, two at most, with her dinner. It certainly didn't seem to make him happier or more content with the company he kept. Like a child presented with a bowl of boiled sweets, he seemed interested only in the here and now, the delight of consumption, and was unconcerned by—or perhaps accustomed to—the inevitable aftereffects.

Talk at the table was strained, though Agnes and the Murphys did their best to carry things along. Discussion turned first to Mr. Fitzgerald's work, for his third novel had just been published.

“Scott's first two books were grand successes,” Sara explained to Helena and Agnes. “We're all quite certain
The Great Gatsby
will be, too.”

At this Mrs. Fitzgerald giggled, or perhaps it was only a hiccup. “Everything Scott touches turns to gold. Doesn't it, honey?” She drained the last of her cocktail and set the empty glass on the table. Her pretty face was shiny with perspiration, and she had begun to handle her cutlery and the stem of her cocktail glass with exaggerated care.

Mr. Fitzgerald's face reddened, but Sara spoke before he could answer. “How is your Scottie liking Paris? You would love the child, Helena. Such a dear little thing. Not even four and she knows her entire alphabet forwards and backwards. She's even learning to speak French.”

“I hate Nanny,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, her expression grim. “And she hates me, too—I know it. I hardly see Scottie anymore.
Whenever I pop into the nursery, that woman tells me they're busy with lessons, or playtime, or mealtime, or naptime.”

“Now, come on, Zelda,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “You know we agreed that a settled routine is best for Scottie.”

“Yes, and where does that leave me?”

“If you ever thought of anyone apart from yourself, for one single second of the day, you'd admit that Nanny is right. The world doesn't revolve around you—”

“So says the great man of letters. The saving grace of American literature.”

“Now, Zelda,” Sara interjected, “you haven't told us what you're wearing to the ball. Have you something fun planned?”

“We're not going,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered, his voice sharpening to a sneer. “Zelda's too
tired
.”