Chapter Six

It was l’heure bleu—the blue hour, when one couldn’t tell if it was afternoon or evening—when Maggie and Chanel arrived at the Palais Garnier. Signs outside the theater proclaimed the Paris Opéra Ballet’s opening night performance of La Belle au bois dormant was sold out.

Once inside, Chanel gestured toward the monumental marble staircase. “Shall we?” Lights blazed, and golden reflections danced along the marble and gilt as if the theater were a palace in a Belle Époque fairy tale. Graceful female torchères, created by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, held candelabra aloft. Don’t their arms get tired after all this time? Maggie wondered, trying to distract herself. The ceiling above the sweeping staircase had been painted by Isidore Pils with a number of murals, including Minerva Fighting Brutality Watched by the Gods of Olympus.

Both women were exquisitely dressed: Coco, of course, in one of her own creations, a gossamer black tulle gown with a ruby Maltese cross brooch, Maggie in a clinging, pale blue silk, bias-cut gown by Vionnet with a black embroidered net overdress. She caught Chanel eyeing it with a look of both envy and approbation. Together, they made their way up the marble steps. The crowd, recognizing the iconic couturiere, parted before them.

It was clear to Maggie that Paris, like London, had turned to ballet to ameliorate the grim misery of war. From the German-inflected French she could hear, it seemed that the occupiers were great balletomanes—although whether it was because ballet had no language barrier or because it was a superb opportunity to see pretty girls in skimpy clothing, she couldn’t say.

As they reached the top step, Chanel pulled Maggie aside to one of the balconies to watch the continuing procession on the wide staircase, her eyes wandering over the crowd. Maggie could smell cigarette smoke, perfume, and hair tonic; all around them rose birdlike chatter.

“This is my stage,” the designer announced as they looked down over the people making their entrances. “The most important runway in all of France, perhaps in all the world. You know, Hitler adores the architecture of the Palais. It was the first thing he went to see when he came to visit.”

On the grand stairway, Parisian socialites flirted with handsome Luftwaffe officers. Frenchmen in evening dress—powerful industrialists, designers, and politicians—held out their arms to be clasped by women clad in silk and satin gowns covered by ostrich-feather capes. In their gloved hands, they carried beaded evening bags, hanging by fragile gold chains.

Maggie looked up and around warily. The theater’s interior was a bit ornate for her taste, but that was part of its charm. Looking down over the milling French and Germans, she realized that the Occupation was re-creating in real life the predemocratic era they’d craved. Like royalty of the good old days, these die-hard noblemen and noblewomen were enjoying outrageous privilege, while misery lay just outside the palace gates: the Jewish quarter was only minutes away.

Chanel leaned in, and Maggie realized that the designer was wearing Chanel No. 5. The same perfume Clara Hess—Maggie and Elise’s mother—wore. Stop it, Hope. No time for that. “That one’s mine”—Chanel was saying, pointing to a gown—“and that one—and that one—and that—”

Finally satisfied, Chanel led the way to their seats, the first box near the stage, a grand red-velvet jewelry box completed by a formal antechamber with wide fauteuil en Bergère chairs, coat hooks, and a large girandole mirror for last-minute primping. It’s almost as if we’re the performers, Maggie thought as she took one last look to make sure she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth before making her entrance.

As they took their seats in the box’s front row, Maggie felt a bit like the girl with the pink roses in Renoir’s La Loge. She looked around the theater, an otherworldly place of storybook glamour. The walls were gold and gleaming, and the seats upholstered in scarlet. Every inch of the high coffered ceiling was painted with cherubs and flowers or carved with scrolls and garlands of roses, illuminated by the infamous glowing crystal chandelier from Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’opéra. There was no question that Parisian cultural life was glittering under the Occupation—obviously, the Germans had money and wanted to be entertained. “It must be wonderful to see so many women wearing your fashions,” Maggie murmured to Chanel.

“Darling, I don’t do fashion—I am fashion.”

To avoid rolling her eyes, Maggie opened her program. There was Sabine Severin in the long list of attendants, and Hubert Taillier in the orchestra listing. She looked down from the box at a perfect view of the orchestra members drifting in and taking out their music, adjusting their stands, rosining their bows. She saw Hugh taking his cello from its case and blinked. When did he start wearing glasses? Then she realized her hostess was once again speaking to her.

“Feminine Paris in the arms of masculine Berlin,” Chanel noted, taking in the French women with German officers. “Do you know,” she added, “that in the twenties and thirties, I was known as Mademoiselle Ballet?”

“Really?” Maggie responded. Hugh was now seated behind his cello, tightening the strings of his bow. The new glasses suit him.

“Oh yes.” Chanel didn’t seem to notice Maggie’s distraction. “I worked with Picasso, Stravinsky, Dalí—designed costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes—Le Train bleu, Orphée, Oedipe roi—I adore androgyny. ‘Avant-garde perversity’ is what one critic called it. We were all delighted by that sort of review, of course.”

Maggie realized that for the privileged few, like Chanel and her entourage, wartime Paris was really no different from peacetime; high society danced on much as before, just with a different partner. As Chanel pontificated, needing only the occasional nod or mmm-hmm, Maggie’s eyes wandered around the spectacle.

It was the Palais Garnier, but in her mind’s eye she saw occupied London reflected in a nightmarish image. Would the Sadler’s Wells Ballet still be dancing under Nazi rule? Maggie had once met Ninette de Valois and thought no—at least not with Madame in charge.

But if the Nazis had invaded, Lord Halifax most likely would have been made Prime Minister and put in charge of some sort of shadow government. The Duke of Windsor would have been crowned King, Wallis Simpson made Queen…Maggie shuddered, suddenly seeing it clearly: Nazi banners flying from Buckingham Palace, the Luftwaffe put up at Claridge’s, Hermann Goering taking his pick of art from the National Gallery. Germans in gray-green uniforms and jackboots marching past Nelson’s column, as the clock of Big Ben chimed on Berlin time…

We shall fight on the beaches…she remembered typing for newly named Prime Minister Churchill in those fateful days of the summer of ’40, but she knew it was true. If it had come to that, the Brits would have fought, with bottles and pickaxes if they had them, and stones and handfuls of sand if they didn’t. Churchill’s speeches, the indomitable will of the people, all those young RAF pilots defending Britain with their Spitfires like knights of yore. Maggie knew, in her very bones, that even if some of the anti-Semitic Fascist-leaning British aristocracy might have been wooed, the rest of London would not, like Paris, have gone so gently into the glittering night.

She heard a pause in Chanel’s monologue and sensed an opportunity. “Do you know the conductor?” she asked, glancing down at her program. “Hugo Boulez?” Surely Coco Chanel, who seemed to know everyone, would know him—and he might know the famous German Maestro Miles Hess, and might even know where his Parisian flat was located. Which might lead her to Elise. So many mights.

“Why, yes. Yes, of course.”

Maggie smiled. “I’d love to meet him, after the ballet—if you wouldn’t mind introducing us.”

“You’re a music aficionado?” Chanel arched a penciled eyebrow. “Certainly you’re not interested in taking him as a lover—Boulez is old as Methuselah.”

Spycraft 101: Don’t lie if you don’t have to. “I’m not interested in him personally—but I do love music. And meeting conductors.”

As the houselights dimmed and the low roar of conversations quieted, Maestro Boulez, a rotund, white-haired man in his seventies, entered to warm applause. He made his way to the podium, bowed to the audience, and then turned to the orchestra and lifted his baton. The overture began.

The gold-tasseled velvet curtains opened onto the interior of a Versailles-inspired palace, the courtiers wearing elaborately coiffed white powdered wigs. It was a ballet of pomp and ceremony, with decorous formations of royals and fairies. Even with the wigs, Maggie spotted Sarah immediately as a bejeweled noblewoman in blue silk. She should be Aurora, Maggie decided loyally. Or the Lilac Fairy. She loved her friend’s dancing and thought she was better than Margot Fonteyn.

As the dancers spun and soared, Maggie watched, entranced. Perhaps this is a different sort of resistance. A French, not a British, one. Wasn’t the very choice of performing The Sleeping Beauty a battle cry in and of itself? The ballet was wholly French in spirit, with French technique, the story based on a French fairy tale, the architecture, décor, and costumes undeniably classically French. Wasn’t this a reminder of France eternal, a vision and defense of nobility and court life, of chivalry and etiquette with high ideals and formal principles, symmetry and order?

Maggie started when the evil fairy, Carabosse, entered, costumed in black and red. An allusion to SS uniforms? Maggie looked over the faces of the audience below. No one seemed in the least perturbed. She smiled. Resistance comes in all forms. With that in mind, she enjoyed the performance much more than she’d expected. It was as beautiful and delicate as a butterfly, and a precious balm for her soul.

When the curtains finally closed, there was a standing ovation, and then endless bows and curtsies, with Maggie clapping especially hard for Sarah’s group. As the velvet curtains at last closed, and the houselights came up, Chanel looked to Maggie. “We will meet everyone at Maxim’s,” she announced as the audience began to disperse, smiling and laughing.

“Will Maestro Boulez be there?”

“Of course, my dear—anyone who’s anyone these days goes to Maxim’s.”

Chanel and Maggie were taken to the famed restaurant in the same long black Benz that had brought them to the ballet. Maggie didn’t ask how Chanel managed a car and driver in the midst of such deprivation. Most likely thanks to the same someone who got her papers to be out past curfew, Maggie decided. A high-ranking Nazi lover?

“Your jewelry’s beautiful,” she told Chanel, when the silence felt strained.

“Can you tell if it’s real or faux?” the couturiere challenged, fingering a necklace. Maggie shook her head. “It’s best that way. A woman should mix fake and real, I feel. I adore fakes because I find such jewelry provocative, and I find it disgraceful to walk around with millions adorning your neck simply because you’re rich. The point of jewelry isn’t to make a woman look rich but to enhance her own beauty. It’s not the same thing.”

Maggie had no idea what the designer was talking about, but she smiled and nodded all the same. The streets between the Palais Garnier and Place de la Concorde, lit by moonlight, were nearly empty. A few people hurried by to make it to the Métro before curfew as the occasional vélo-taxi pedaled swiftly along. Maggie could see the anxiety and fear on the faces of those people they did pass. The Germans are clever, she realized. The curfew wasn’t only a security measure; it was a form of psychological control.

As they were helped from the car by the fawning doorman at 3 Rue Royal, Maggie saw the distinctive golden font of Maxim’s on the silk awning by the glow of the headlights, while tacked onto a streetlight was a government poster warning that cat meat was unsafe to use in stews. Across the street, in the shadows, a prostitute with a heavily made-up face and pushed-up décolletage posed against a wall.

Inside, the restaurant was a smoky scene from Franz Léhar’s operetta The Merry Widow. The main dining room was a flamboyant Art Nouveau salon in gold and scarlet and jewel-like stained glass, where all lines curved, and lamps with red silk shades flattered every complexion.

Everywhere were huge and fragrant displays of burgundy roses, creamy carnations, and sheaves of gladioli in every color from mauve to canary. The waiters were dressed for French formal service in white coats, towels over their forearms. And in a dim corner, a balding pianist with half-moon glasses played “C’est mon gigolo.”

“Coco!” came a man’s cry over the chattering of the crowd. He was lean and taut, with striking dark looks and almost feline grace.

“Serge!” Chanel replied as she made her way over, offering both rouged cheeks to be kissed. “This is Mademoiselle Paige Kelly, here from Ireland by way of Lisbon. And this, my dear, is Serge Lifar.” The designer’s smile broadened. “The Serge Lifar.”

“Enchanté, Mademoiselle Kelly,” Lifar purred, bending low to kiss Maggie’s gloved hand. She almost let out a hysterical giggle despite her omnipresent fear; the charismatic premier danseur and choreographer bowed to her so theatrically that she actually felt, for an instant, like a prima ballerina herself. At his table, Maggie recognized famous faces: the artist Jean Cocteau, the actress Arletty, and the playwright Sacha Guitry. Like Boccaccio’s Florentine youths and maidens, who fled to the hills and spent their days playing the lute and telling stories while plague ravaged their city, Maggie thought.

Arletty, a dark-haired beauty and film star was saying, “My heart is French, but my ass is international!” The actress wore a low-cut Chanel design with a black velvet bow and diamonds—real or fake, Maggie couldn’t say—and a flirty birdcage veil.

“My dear!” interjected Guitry, whose good looks and elegant ease gave him the air of a boulevardier. “Naughty, naughty!”

Arletty smiled, her lips moist and scarlet against gleaming teeth. “Well, if you Frenchmen hadn’t let the Germans in…” She pushed a piece of baguette around her empty plate to soak up every last drop of buttery sauce. “I wouldn’t be sleeping with them!” She popped the bite in her mouth with a satisfied look.

Her voice had carried. “Paris welcomed us with her legs open!” crowed a passing Nazi officer, drinking straight from a bottle of beer, despite the horrified looks of some of the French diners. He staggered. “It’s not as if we burned the city, the way Napoleon did to Moscow,” he added by way of an apology.

One of the German officers at the table rose and went to Chanel. “I’m so glad you could come, darling,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks.

“Ah, here he is, our gracious conqueror,” she murmured in reply. Maggie watched their body language and guessed the officer and the designer were lovers. It occurred to her that, for some of the society ladies, the Occupation offered a certain kind of excitement that far exceeded any enjoyments or luxuries from before the war, as the “Nordic heroes” arrived.

Chanel turned to Maggie. “Let me introduce Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage—but feel free to call him Spatz. We all do.”

“How do you do?” they each said in turn. Dincklage was in his mid- to late forties, with blond hair, steady eyes, and a suave manner.

“Mademoiselle Paige Kelly,” the couturiere continued, introducing Maggie with a petulant look at odds with her age. Maggie noticed how Dincklage stroked the small of Chanel’s back and whispered something in her ear that made the older woman smile.

“See, another Frenchwoman who’s taken up with a German,” called Arletty from the table, pointing at Chanel and confirming Maggie’s suspicion.

As the designer peeled off her gloves, revealing nicotine-stained fingers, she quipped, “Really—a woman of my age who has the chance of a lover cannot be expected to review his passport.”

Arletty raised her glass of wine. “War is no time to be alone.”

“Sit, sit!” Lifar urged, as gilt chairs were brought over and more places set. “Any friend of Coco’s is a friend of ours.” The table was already covered with food—caviar on ice with mother-of pearl spoons, pâté de foie gras, escargot swimming in butter and fresh parsley, rack of lamb, red lobsters, eel in aspic, roast chicken and crispy skinned duck, coupes of sparkling Champagne. After months of watery soup and hard bread, Maggie was nearly dizzy from hunger.

“Waiter!” Lifar snapped his fingers. “Menus for the ladies!”

The leather-bound menu looked as if it were the one from prewar days, offering oysters, different sorts of fish, bouillabaisse, rabbit, and chicken. Everyone, including the Germans, was speaking in French. A hedgehog-like Nazi officer with beady, dark eyes urged Maggie to try one of his oysters: “In times like these, my dear, to eat well and to eat often gives you a tremendous feeling of power.”

Maggie demurred. Then he offered one to Chanel; she declined as well, but for other reasons: “I only eat oysters during months with the letter r in them.”

“Well then, more for me!” he crowed, slurping one greedily, washing it down with gulps of Champagne. Maggie forced a smile.

“Mademoiselle?” A waiter appeared at Chanel’s elbow, a starched white linen cloth draped over his forearm. “What may I bring you?”

“Soup,” she stated. “Clear. A plate of white asparagus with no butter, if it’s still in season. And a glass of Bordeaux—Château Lafite Rothschild, ’twenty-eight, if you have it.”

“And you, mademoiselle?”

Maggie was in no mood to feast when the rest of Paris was getting by on stewed cat. “Nothing for me, thank you.” The waiter bowed and took their menus.

“I eat lightly,” Chanel said by way of explanation. Maggie didn’t respond, as she’d caught a glimpse of Hugh and Sarah arrive arm in arm, with a large, fat German in uniform, his face like marzipan. They didn’t notice her.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, my dear.”

Maggie took a sip of Champagne to cover her distress.

“I recently got a gorgeous fur coat—belonged to a Jew,” Arletty was saying. “Long. Pure sable.”

“I hear many of the Jews have gone into hiding,” added Cocteau, as he lit a cigarette with long, tapering fingers.

“Ah, they may hide,” said the hedgehog-like German, slurping at another oyster, “but we’ll find them. You can count on it.”

“Not many of them made it out of the country before the surrender, so there must be lots of them still around,” Chanel observed.

The German lifted his glass. “There’s another big roundup to come.”

“Now we real French can control our businesses and economy,” Chanel said. To Maggie, she explained, “The Wertheimers, my so-called business partners, tried to take over my perfume business. Swindled me out of every penny, the dirty Jewish swine. But I’ll use my new status as an Aryan French citizen to get back what they stole.” She looked to Dincklage with a smile. “Occupation has some advantages, after all.”

Maggie blinked, stunned at the venom spewing from Chanel’s red-painted lips and at the enthusiastic reception by the others at the table. “I really had no idea the Jews were as bad as all that, mademoiselle.”

“You look shocked, my dear,” said the dark-haired German. “But you, thank heavens, have few Jews in Ireland. You don’t know them the way we do. And whether one hates the Jews for the Dreyfus affair and betraying France, or for killing Christ, or for cheating you in a business deal”—he looked to Chanel, who nodded with approval—“all Frenchmen—and women—are anti-Semites in one way or another.”

“France even now doesn’t know what’s hit her,” Chanel agreed, her wineglass smeared with the crimson print of her lipstick, a half kiss on glittering crystal. “She’s still in a daze, but has already come to sufficiently move her eyes and see what is going on around her. Soon she’ll recover the use of her limbs, and then the trouble will start. I want to get my business back from those dirty Jews and under my control now, while I still can.”

“Ah,” Maggie said, rising, wanting with all her heart to leave the table and escape these monsters. “I see the conductor—and must go and congratulate him. Please excuse me.”

Chanel looked up with a gimlet eye. “Enjoy, ma chérie.”