Moonlight Over Paris (18 page)

“Of course,” he said, and they shook hands. “I'm Ernest Hemingway.”

“I'm Helena Parr. I came in to look for a present for Sam, though I'm not sure how I'll make up my mind. It's like Aladdin's cave in here.”

“What were you thinking of getting him?”

“A novel, I thought. Or some short stories. You have a book of stories published, don't you? Sam told me about them. He said he thought you are a very fine writer. Perhaps I ought to buy him your book.”

“That's a fine idea,” Mr. Hemingway said, evidently delighted by the compliment. “I've two books out. Let me talk to Sylvia.”

He was back a few minutes later, shaking his head. “She's sold all her copies of
Three Stories and Ten Poems,
and Howard already has the first two volumes of
in our time
. Sorry about that.”

“Don't apologize. It's grand that you're such a success.”

He looked back at Sylvia, who had prepared a parcel of books for him. “I'm sorry, but I must go. I'm taking my wife and son to Austria until the new year.”

“Good-bye, then. Do wish Mrs. Hemingway a happy Christmas.”

“I will, and the same to you.”

She resumed her search, never quite finding the right thing, and then, standing slightly proud of its fellows, she spied a slim volume with the words
Al Que Quiere!
on its spine. Some instinct urged her to pull it from the shelf, though she didn't speak or read Spanish, and when she did the book fell open to a short poem titled “Danse Russe.”

She read it through, and it was unlike any other poem she'd ever seen, and so she lingered over it, all but memorizing the lines where she stood.
“I was born to be lonely. I am best so!”

She could buy it for herself, but it was the only copy in the shop, and she felt, somehow, that Sam would like it. She took the book over to Miss Beach, feeling apprehensive as she held it out. What did she know, after all, of poetry and fine literature?

“Ah—William Carlos Williams. I do love his work. He's been overshadowed by Eliot in recent years, but these earlier poems are striking.”

“Do you think that Sam will like them?”

“There's no way to tell. He won't find them boring, though, and that's the most important thing.”

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
D
AY,
Étienne and Sam arrived at one o'clock, each bearing gifts: Sam had a bouquet of hothouse lilies for Agnes and a sweet little posy of violets for Helena, while Étienne had brought a bottle of Russian vodka for them all to share. This latter offering pleased her aunt to no end, and she ordered it put on ice immediately so they might enjoy it with their first course.

In the dining room the table had been set for four, and though it had been reduced to manageable dimensions there
was still a baronial gap between each of them when they sat down for lunch.

They began with oysters, which Helena secretly detested, though she managed to gulp down two with the help of some champagne; she had thought it prudent to refuse the vodka. Foie gras on toast, smoked salmon on tiny buckwheat pancakes, and grilled herring with mushrooms followed; the latter, according to Agnes, had been Dimitri's favorite dish.

For the main course, Agnes's cook had managed to find a turkey, which was served with chestnut dressing, haricots verts, and pommes de terres soufflés.

“Helena told me how you miss your American foods from home, so I thought it would be pleasant if we had one of your roast turkeys. Is it prepared properly?”

“It's delicious,” Sam said. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

For pudding they had a choice of Russian honey cake, English fruitcake, or
bûche de Noël
. The men ate heartily—Étienne in particular was able to consume vast amounts of food, to no ill effect—but Helena accepted only a wafer-thin slice of honey cake.

Most of the conversation over lunch revolved around Agnes's memories of grand Christmases past with Dimitri, for he had insisted on celebrating twice—once at the end of December, and again in early January, when the Orthodox feast was held. It all seemed terribly grand, a parade of caviar and royalty and Fabergé jewels, and Helena was still trying to wrap her head around the notion of Christmas breakfast in full court dress when her aunt turned to Sam.

“How did your family celebrate Christmas?” she asked. “Are there any odd American customs I need to know about?”

“Apart from eating turkey instead of goose? Not really. Most
years we stayed in the city. It was just the four of us for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, but the entire family would always come for dinner. Aunts and uncles and cousins, and any waifs and strays my mother had invited. Friends without family of their own, or people who were traveling and had nowhere else to go.”

“Rather like our little group today,” Agnes agreed. “Is it hard to be so far from home for Christmas?”

He swallowed, his gaze fixed on the table, and nodded slowly. “It is, I guess. But it's easier to stay away. My brother . . . he was killed in the war. My parents try, but it isn't the same.”

“I quite understand, and I do beg your pardon if I've upset you at all.”

“No,” he said, and the smile he directed at Agnes was genuine. “This is the nicest Christmas I've had in years.”

They repaired to the
petit salon
after lunch, and as Helena and Agnes had exchanged gifts the night before it remained only for her to give Étienne and Sam the presents she'd chosen so carefully. Étienne was very pleased with his brushes, and came over to embrace her heartily right away; Sam, however, reacted in an altogether different fashion, and simply stared at his book, his brow furrowed.

“Is anything the matter? I pulled it off the shelf, and one of the poems in it was so strange and lovely, and I had hoped . . .”

Sam cleared his throat, and then he looked up, his eyes bright. “I met Williams last January. He was at the shop, visiting Miss Beach, and we talked for a few minutes. He must have signed the book then.” He held up the book, open to the title page, where a scrawling signature had been inscribed.

“I didn't know—I mean, I bought the book from Miss Beach, but I didn't look at the title page. You like it, then?”

“I do. I like it very much. Thank you.”

She couldn't have said, afterward, what they talked of that afternoon. Étienne and Agnes worked their way through most of the vodka, and Helena and Sam polished off the rest of the champagne, and by the time her friends got up to leave her head was spinning.

She said good-bye to both men with a chaste kiss on the cheek, for she knew better than to expect a passionate farewell from Sam while Étienne stood nearby. As soon as the door closed behind them she returned to the
petit salon
to thank her aunt, and to ask if she might return to her room for a nap.

“Of course, but first come and sit with me awhile,” said Agnes, who had the look of a cat sated with cream.

“Is anything the matter?”

“Not at all. You realize, of course, that he's halfway to falling in love with you.”

For a moment Helena thought she might be ill. She pressed her fingers to her temples and took several deep, steadying breaths. “What? No, he can't be. I mean . . . we're only friends. I'm sure that's all we are.”

“The man is smitten with you. It's as plain as the freckles on his nose.”

“No, no . . . you're wrong. He can't be. It's impossible.”

Sam was fond of her, and he certainly was attracted to her, but she felt certain that was all. If anything, he was feeling just as she did: confused about the path their friendship should take but reluctant to do anything that might threaten the bond between them.

No matter how he felt, he certainly wasn't smitten with her. That sort of thing happened in romantic novels, but not in real life.

Agnes patted Helena's hand, her shrewd gaze missing nothing. “Surely he's given you some notion of how he feels. Has he kissed you?”

Helena's hands flew up to cover her face. She wasn't having this conversation with Agnes. She wasn't. She'd had too much champagne and rich food; that was all. She would go upstairs and rest and the world would make sense again very soon.

“I'm not your mother, my dear. I won't have the vapors if you've shared a kiss with a man who cares for you.”

“The night . . . the morning he took me to Les Halles,” Helena mumbled, still hiding behind her hands. “He kissed me then. And then, the night of my birthday, I thought he might. But he didn't. Which was probably for the best, I suppose.”

“Why would you say that? He's a terribly attractive man, and you're evidently fond of him.”

“I am, and there have been, well, a few moments when I've wondered if there might be something between us, but I can't let myself hope for anything more. That life . . . it isn't for me.”

“You mean marriage and babies and all of that?”

“Yes. Once I wanted it, or at least I told myself I did, but now . . . I'm not so sure.”

“And what's to stop you from becoming his lover?”

Helena was so stunned she could only stare, openmouthed, at her aunt. Surely Agnes wasn't suggesting—

“Don't look at me like that. I'm not your mother. I won't condemn you for doing as I did at your age.”

“I honestly don't know what to say.”

“Would you consider it?” Agnes pressed.

“No! I don't know . . . perhaps? But what if he doesn't want
me? He's only ever kissed me the one time, and that was weeks ago.”

“Perhaps he is waiting for you, hmm? In any event, you don't have to decide anything today. Remain his friend, or become his lover—the only thing that truly matters is your own happiness. That, my dear, is the mark of a modern woman.”

J
anuary was a miserable month, cold and perpetually rainy, and Helena began to think she might never be warm again. It felt like months since she'd seen the sun, and with the dawn of each gray day she found her spirits wilting, inch by inch, their only prop the satisfaction she found in her work and the company of her friends.

Nearly every Saturday she, Étienne, and Mathilde went to dinner at Chez Rosalie. Helena always invited Sam, but his editor had been keeping him busy with writing assignments, and he'd only been able to join them once in the weeks following Christmas.

Her aunt was absent, having departed for a long stay in Antibes, and without her animating presence the great house on the quai de Bourbon felt awfully cold and lonely. Agnes had taken Hamish with her, and Helena was surprised by how much she missed her walks along the Seine with the little terrier. There really was nothing like a dog to make one feel as if one mattered to the world.

It was as well that she had precious few distractions, since
her preparations for the Salon des Indépendants consumed her waking hours. Although there was no guarantee that the Salon organizers would accept her or any other student's work, Maître Czerny was a member of the placement committee, and this, Étienne assured her, was a virtual guarantee of their each having at least one piece admitted.

The maître had instructed them to prepare no more than three works of art, in any medium, for his inspection, and he would make the final decision on which to submit for consideration. This had kept Helena awake for more hours than was good for her: how to guess what would appeal most to her teacher, and thereby win a place in the Salon? Whether she cared for a given piece was immaterial; what Maître Czerny liked was key. And he was a difficult man to please, even on those rare days when he was in a tolerably amiable mood and didn't shout himself hoarse before lunchtime.

Since Christmas she'd been occupied with a series of paintings based on her drawings from Les Halles, and she'd begun to believe she might, one day, be capable of producing a grander piece—a painting that incorporated all the clamor, noise, filth, beauty, misery, and despair that she'd witnessed in her few hours at the market. But she was a slow painter, especially when working in oils, and she would never be able to finish such a painting in time for the Salon.

So instead she was focusing on a character study of the farmer's wife, but there was something missing, some animating spirit, from the preparatory drawings she had executed so painstakingly. In her mind's eye she could see the woman so clearly, see the way she'd brimmed over with life
and joy despite her hardships, but time and again Helena wasn't able to capture her memories with charcoal and paper. The drawings were flat, hopelessly so, and she was running out of time. The opening reception, or vernissage, for the Salon des Indépendants was set for April 25, little more than three months away, and her other completed works were simply not good enough.

There was also the matter of Jean-François d'Albret, who had not forgotten her promise to dine with him. Just after Christmas he'd sent her a letter, which she had rather shamefully ignored; but it was followed by another, then another, and on two separate instances he had also sent her flowers. Each posed the same question: when will you be free for an evening of dinner and dancing?

Yesterday she'd received a
petit bleu
from Sam with the news that he was busy working on a story and once again couldn't come to dinner at Rosalie's on Saturday night. She had sat on the end of her bed for a good half hour, simply staring at his untidy handwriting that she now deciphered so easily. And then her gaze had fallen on her dressing table and the pile of messages from Mr. d'Albret, all unanswered, and she had decided she might as well give in and go to dinner with him.

She'd written out a response, posted it straightaway—and had immediately regretted it. The man, after all, had been a complete bore at her aunt's party the month before. What did she expect? That he would magically be transformed into an agreeable and interesting person?

His response arrived first thing the next morning, the expensive stationery smelling faintly of eau de cologne.

    
17 January 1925

    
My dear Lady Helena,

                    
You cannot imagine the delight with which I opened your message. I had begun to fear that my pleas were falling on barren ground, so it is with the utmost pleasure that I accept your invitation to dinner this very evening. I will collect you at eight o'clock. Until then, please be assured of my sincere regard and heartfelt good wishes, for I remain,

Your devoted servant,

Jean-François d'Albret

It was a perfectly polite and proper response, although his choice of words was perhaps more flowery than she would have liked. She'd bristled at his suggestion that she had issued the invitation, but he was writing in a foreign language, after all, and it would be unfair to parse every word of the message.

All Saturday she worked alongside her friends and said nothing, not wishing to color her day with dread of the inevitable. It was also the case that she had a pretty good idea of how they would react.

Only when it was time to leave for dinner at Rosalie's, and they were putting on their coats and dousing the lanterns in the studio, did she admit the truth of her plans for the evening. Both Étienne and Mathilde were horrified; fortunately Daisy had already left, so she wasn't present to cast a third condemning vote.

“Are you mad?” Mathilde asked. “The man is
un cochon
. . . Étienne?”

“A swine.”

“Yes. And I do not say this as a
critique,
for you are a lovely girl, I hope you know it, but this d'Albret person is in search of a fortune. Remember what your Sam said at dinner that night—”

“He's not ‘my' Sam,” she protested. It had been one month since he had kissed her, so long that even her carefully tended memories of the moment had begun to fade.

“Pfft,” said Mathilde. “He said that these airplanes are very expensive, and d'Albret, he sees your aunt, he sees how she lives, and he thinks to use you to get some of it for himself.”

“I only said I'd have dinner with him,” Helena protested. “What harm can that do?”

“You know, Hélène, just because Sam is busy, that is no reason for you to look elsewhere,” Étienne added.

“I'm not! I only thought it might be nice to go dancing. That's all. And I don't see what Sam has to do with any of this. Really I don't.”

“
Eh bien
. I will be at the Dôme later, just in case. If you are bored, ask him to bring you there.”

She'd taken the tram home, not feeling up to a walk through the cold, and had spent the absolute minimum of time and effort in preparing for the evening. Her Vionnet gown was too fine for the occasion, so she put on a simple frock of plum-colored wool, touched up her face with some rouge and powder, and declared herself ready.

Mr. d'Albret rang the doorbell at five minutes before the hour, and if he was surprised when she answered it herself—Vincent was in Antibes with her aunt, and the other servants were busy belowstairs—he didn't show it. He was beautifully dressed, and indeed looked very handsome. Nor could she fault his manners as he helped her in and out of his enormous
black Daimler, then escorted her into one of the private dining rooms at Lapérouse on the quai des Grands Augustins.

It was rather alarming to be separated from the other diners and effectively left alone with a man who was little more than a stranger, but the restaurant's waiters were never far away, and the
chambre particulier
was very charming. It was small, less than half the size of her bedroom at home, and was extravagantly decorated with figured walnut paneling, very bad copies of Old Masters paintings, and mirrors in elaborate gilded frames.

The mirrors, she noticed, were covered in scratches, with scrawled initials here and there, which seemed rather odd given the luxury of their surroundings.

“I see you are wondering at the marks. They were left by courtesans. When their lovers gave them diamonds, they would test them on a mirror, for only a true diamond can cut the glass.”

“Ah,” she said, rather unnerved that he had brought her to an establishment known for assignations with courtesans. “Thank you for explaining, Monsieur d'Albret.”

“Oh, please—you must call me Jean-François.”

“Very well. I've, ah, never been here before,” she said, hoping to steer the conversation in a more conventional direction.

“Where do you dine, if not in the finest establishments?”

“Well, I dine at home. With my aunt. And I do go to several restaurants in Montparnasse with—”

“
Pah
. That ghetto. With my apologies to your aunt's excellent cook, I fear this means you have not yet experienced the wonders of French haute cuisine.” He snapped his fingers, and a waiter ran in from the corridor.

“I have decided that we shall both partake of the tasting
menu. To begin, I have ordered a bottle of their finest champagne.”

“Oh, really, there's no need—”

“But I insist.”

Dinner was endless, a parade of increasingly rich dishes that he devoured with great gusto, but which Helena barely touched. The tasting menu, disappointingly, included many of her least favorite foods, and she was simply unable to muster the appetite to eat more than a bite or two of each course. There were jellied langoustine, which looked disconcertingly insectlike, duckling in a viscous orange sauce, lamb's kidneys, and even frog's legs.

She had accepted only one glass of champagne at the beginning of dinner and had refused anything more; by the end of the meal, Jean-François had finished off the bottle, as well as an additional bottle of claret. He stumbled on the way out of the restaurant and had some difficulty in entering the car, but this in no way dampened his enthusiasm for the evening.

“Let us go to Le Grand Duc in Pigalle. It has the best American jazz music in Paris. After that, we shall go dancing at the Bal Bullier.”

Although she would much rather have gone home, the prospect of hearing jazz music played live did appeal to her. She'd only ever heard it on gramophone records, and if she were lucky the music would be so loud that she wouldn't have to make conversation with the man, her store of conversational topics having petered out well before the second course at dinner. Of course, if he'd even once asked about her interests, or work, or friends, they'd have had plenty to talk about.

At the Grand Duc, they were ushered to a table near the front and provided with yet another bottle of champagne on
ice. Helena ignored her glass, knowing it would only make her growing headache worse, and though she asked the waiter for a glass of water it never appeared.

None of that mattered once the music began. The musicians played without sheet music before them, often at dizzying speeds, and although she didn't know much about jazz it seemed that they were improvising some of the songs. It was the perfect music for dancing, though she'd no idea how one would dance to it. Perhaps Étienne might be able to show her.

Jean-François emptied the bottle of champagne at high speed, and thereafter he seemed to grow increasingly annoyed with the music, or perhaps the venue in general. Right in the middle of a song, and in front of the entire audience, he stood and beckoned for her to follow him out.

“We are going!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I've had enough of this degenerate Yankee music.”

“I thought the musicians were very accomplished,” she said as they got in the car.

“
Pah
. What would you know?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He giggled, a ridiculous sound coming from a grown man, and patted her arm in a way she did not appreciate, not one bit. “I do apologize. I meant only that a lady like yourself cannot possibly understand the vulgarity of such music.”

“I think I should like to go home now,” she said evenly.

“But the night is young! How can you even think of going to bed before midnight? And surely you do not wish to disappoint me, not after keeping me waiting for so long.” His smile widened into a leer, and a wisp of panic took up residence behind her sternum. In this car she was trapped, for she couldn't depend on the driver to come to her aid, and d'Albret—she no
longer wished to think of him in a friendly fashion—seemed to have abandoned his morals along with his sobriety.

An idea came to her then, for hadn't Étienne said he would be at Le Dôme? If she could persuade d'Albret to go there instead of the Bal Bullier, she might enlist her friend's aid in divesting herself of this disagreeable man. At the very least he could distract d'Albret while she got into a taxi and went home.

“Very well. But could we go to Le Dôme first? The barman makes the most divine cocktails.”

“I suppose,” he acceded. “But after that we must go dancing.”

The café-bar was packed, but Étienne, disappointingly, was nowhere to be seen. It was rather late; perhaps he had already gone home. She would have to sort things out on her own.

D'Albret led her to a table in the back corner, but rather than sit opposite he squeezed onto the banquette at her side. He pressed against her, his breath hot against her ear, and she had to remind herself that they were in public, in an establishment where she was known, and nothing bad could possibly happen to her so long as she refused to get in his car.

He was talking again, this time about his plans for a passenger service via airplane between Paris and London. She longed to tell him it was a ridiculous idea, for who on earth would risk their life on an airplane when they could get from one city to the other by ferry and train in less than a day, but she bit her tongue and nodded approvingly.