Mademoiselle Chanel (38 page)

I braced for the worst. It first arrived in the form of my friend Serge Lifar. For weeks as the Allies neared, the Germans had been helping anyone with the means to escape, but leaving behind everyone who did not. His latest German admirer had offered Lifar passage to Zurich, prompting him to rush to me instead. He carried a bag crammed with his resin-soiled ballet slippers, frantic as the impact of what he’d danced his way through came crashing upon him.

“They arrested Arletty,” he said, huddled in my room. “They took her into custody. Marie-Louise has gone into hiding, as has Cocteau. They’re coming for all of us, Coco.”

“You can stay here,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I wondered at my own resolve. From Jojo Sert’s apartment overlooking the place de la Concorde, we watched freedom enter under General de Gaulle. The soldiers marched in procession to the Arc de Triomphe, welcomed with ecstatic cries, with caps flung in the air even as down the side streets, agents of the Free French rounded up suspected collaborators. We got a taste of what was in store when a burst of sniper fire shattered the apartment windows, sending us diving to the floor or behind doors as glass sprayed in every direction. When we emerged warily, Jojo was still on the balcony, shaking his fist at the unseen attacker and bellowing, “Try it again. You did not hit me,
hijos de puta
!” Then he turned to us with his irrepressible grin and said, “I apologize for the inconvenience,” making me laugh aloud at his bravura.

By the end of August 1944, Paris was free. To celebrate our liberation, I put a placard in my shop window, offering my perfume free to GIs. The Americans, British, and Canadians queued up for hours, like the vanquished Germans before them, to partake of my generosity and secure proof that they had been in Paris on this historic occasion. My staff worked until they were faint on their feet; I myself doled out hundreds of bottles to men whose youth took me aback. They were incorrigible in their zeal, cavorting in the bistros and cabarets, seducing every woman in sight, and quite a few men. They seized whatever joy they could because Berlin still lay ahead, unrepetant even as the Nazis cowered in the detritus of their own horrors.

“They murdered thousands,” Misia wept. “Millions.”

I did not comment. What was there to say? What could we have done without ending up dead ourselves? How could we, a handful, have saved millions?

This was what I kept telling myself, over and over.

Even it gave me no comfort.

P
ersistent knocking on my door woke me. As I struggled to rise, fumbling for my robe, Lifar, who slept downstairs, came to the staircase and hissed, “Coco! Coco, they’re here!” I staggered down the steps in my robe, pressed my hand to his lips. “Hush!” We froze, waiting. When the knocking resumed, rattling the door on its hinges, I pushed Lifar toward the far closet. “Hide in there! Quickly.”

He threw himself into the large closet built into the wall, shutting the door as I fastened my robe, shook out my tousled hair, and undid the latch.

Two men in shirtsleeves and sandals, with berets shading their stony faces, stood outside. They were without doubt members of the Free French, or the Fifis, as we had dubbed them in mockery of their brutal tactics. They had overseen the arrest of hundreds of women in Paris and throughout Vichy-ruled territories. Branded as collaborators, they were shorn of their hair, beaten, and paraded in the streets in their undergarments to sometimes lethal reprisal by mobs.

“Mademoiselle Chanel?” said the larger one, a brute with eyes like flints. Before I could respond, he added, “We are here to escort you.”

“Oh?” I set a hand on my pajama-clad hip. “It’s rather early in the day for visits.”

“You can come nicely. Or we can arrest you and drag you there, mademoiselle.”

I did not fail to notice his sarcastic enunciation of my preferred form of address. “Very well,” I said. “Only allow me a few minutes to make myself more presentable, yes?”

They shouldered their way inside, compelling me to open the closet door, only far enough to grab the first items of clothing I could without revealing Lifar, crouched behind my coats. Going into the bathroom, I dressed, ran a brush through my hair, applied lipstick, and emerged in time to catch one of them idling near the closet. I had left the door ajar. If he opened it, he would find Lifar.

“Shall we, gentlemen?” I asked brightly, striding to the suite door.

I almost sagged in relief when they followed me like sullen hounds. But wherever they were taking me, relief, I feared, was the last thing I would find.

THEY DID NOT TAKE ME
to the notorious prison of Fresnes, where the Free French had locked up many of the so-called “horizontal collaborators.” Instead, they took me to a nearby police office that still bore the mangled outline of the swastika on its walls. There they left me in a windowless room, seated before a scarred table with an ashtray on it.

I waited for over an hour before my interrogator arrived. He did not introduce himself, instead setting an alarmingly thick dossier on the table before he took his place across from me.

“Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, also known as Coco or mademoiselle,” he said, flipping open the dossier. I did not crane my neck to see what he was reading; I felt sick as he adjusted his spectacles and cleared his throat. “Is that whom I am addressing?”

“I assume you would know,” I replied, lighting a cigarette. “You did arrest me.”

“Oh, no.” He glanced sharply at me. “You have not been arrested. This is only an informal questioning for now, if you please.”

“I see,” I said. Informal meant off the record—which, of course, could change at any moment if I proved uncooperative.

He returned to the dossier, turning its pages without any discernible expression, while I smoked impatiently and feigned a carelessness I did not feel. At length he said, “Were you ever acquainted with a Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, commonly known as Spatz?”

It would not do to commence with a bold-faced lie.

“Yes. I knew him.”

“And did he assist in the release of one André Palasse from a German internment camp?”

I nodded. “He offered his help, so I accepted. André is my nephew.”

“Indeed.” He looked back at the dossier, a frown creasing his brow. “Did you ever go to Berlin yourself, to meet with Colonel Schellenberg?”

He caught me by surprise, though I did my best to conceal it. Again, I pondered the advantage of truth over lies; it was evident that as secret as I had thought my trip was, someone from the Free French had indeed been watching me.

“Yes. I went to see my nephew after he was released. He was ill.”

“Yet you did not bring him back with you. You stayed only one day and returned without him, after which you embarked on a trip to Madrid. Can you please explain what you and Colonel Schellenberg discussed during your time in Berlin?”

“My nephew, of course,” I replied, speaking slowly to curb the anxiety twisting my stomach. “He is ill. He contracted tuberculosis. I . . . I wished to see him.”

“That is all? You met with the director of Hitler’s Foreign Intelligence, the highest-ranking officer in the Abwehr, to discuss your nephew’s health?”

“Yes.” I met his stare. “He was very ill, as I have said.”

The man flattened his hands on the dossier. “Mademoiselle, why did you go to Spain?”

“To see if I might open a boutique there.”

“And did you?”

“No. The circumstances were not conducive.”

“I can imagine they would not be.” He stuck out his chin. “Were you ever part of a German intelligence operation?”

I froze on my chair. “No.”

“Really?” He did not glance at the dossier again. “Because we have information that implies you were in fact a participant in a secret operation whose objective was to safeguard German interests and carry out the elimination of Hitler. Are you still unaware of it?”

My mind raced, recalling the mysterious events surrounding my mission to Madrid and Spatz’s deliberate omission of what he and his friends plotted. Had they been seeking Churchill’s permission to kill the führer? Had I unwittingly been thrust into a conspiracy to save Germany?

“Of course, I am unaware,” I managed to say, pulling my voice out of my throat. “Surely I would know if I had taken part in such an endeavor.”

“Mademoiselle.” He directed the weight of his icy regard at me. “Cooperation with the enemy, regardless of the goal, is now a criminal offense. We have several of your friends in custody; we are searching for several more. I suggest you think carefully before you answer.”

“Are you asking me to betray my friends?” I retorted.

“I am suggesting you tell us the truth. We know you have not been forthcoming.”

I crossed my legs, fumbling for the cigarette case in my purse. “Then you should arrest me,” I said, unable to contain a hint of defiance. “For I have told you everything I know.”

He pushed back his chair. “A moment please.” Taking up the dossier, he left.

The moment I was alone, I let out a choked sound, half gasp, half sob. I was trapped. I could not escape this time. They would arrest me as they had Arletty, toss me into a jail, and see me hauled before their makeshift court, where they would condemn me as a collaborator, shave my head, and take me through the streets to be pelted with filth—

He came back into the room. “Mademoiselle,” he said tersely. “You are free to go.”

For a terrifying moment, I could not rise. My legs felt boneless, so that I had to hold on to the table to bring myself upright. Grabbing my handbag, I started to the door, passing so close to him that I smelled his distinct tang of cheap cologne.

He said quietly, “You are fortunate to have friends in high places as well as low, mademoiselle. But if you will accept a word of advice, you should consider whether or not staying in Paris would be wise for you.”

I glared at him. “I am French. This is my city, my country.”

He slid his gaze to me. “Not anymore.”

I HAILED A TAXI
to rue Cambon. My fear was peeling off me, exposing the fury that had been building since those thugs had banged on my door. Ignoring my staff’s bleated inquiries, I barged upstairs to my apartment and with shaking fingers dialed my lawyer’s number. René answered after several rings, by which time I was nearly apoplectic, exploding over the line about the outrageous insult done to me, dragged in for questioning by a menial of de Gaulle’s new government, accused of abetting German interests and then advised that I, France’s foremost
couturière,
should leave my own—

“Mademoiselle,” he said, breaking into my tirade. “I think you should heed his advice.”

I could hear my own labored breathing in my ears. “You
what
?”

“It’s only going to get worse,” he said mournfully. “I myself have already been questioned at length about my connections to the Vichy regime; they tore my office apart and took away boxes of personal and professional documents, including,” he added, to my mounting horror, “the files pertaining to our case against the Wertheimers. You should consider it a warning. They do not have anything against you now, but they’ll keep looking until they do.”

“That worm said I had friends in high places,” I exclaimed, even as I felt a strange sense of disorientation, like falling endlessly into a void. “Someone is protecting me.”

“Yes, but for how long? They call it
l’épuration sauvage,
the savage purge. They intend to prosecute all those either identified or suspected of collaboration. It is de Gaulle’s sacrifice to the cause. He must assure the Allied forces that we intend to stand with them once Berlin falls. Our only choice is to leave.”

“But I—I did not collaborate! I only did what I had to, to protect my nephew and my business, to save my life and those of my friends.”

“Mademoiselle, you need not justify yourself to me. You must justify yourself to them, and I fear they will not care. Someone intervened for you today. But whoever it was may not be able to protect you tomorrow. Were it possible, I would leave, too, but I am the son-in-law of the Vichy minister who approved Jewish deportations. They revoked my passport. I cannot go. But you can—and should.”

After I hung up, I pressed a hand to my mouth to stifle my scream. Was I expected to flee from the country of my birth? Did I have no other recourse but to seek voluntary exile?

I turned in a haze into my apartment, seeing it all, the beautiful lacquered screens, the paintings and books, like a fragile mirage already fading from view. Stumbling to my desk, I wrenched open the drawer, searching for what I had left there. When I unfolded the handkerchief and held the watch to my ear, it was no longer ticking. The miniature gold hands were frozen at half past six. I frantically turned the winding mechanism on the side, my fingertips slipping over its tiny grooves.

Nothing moved. There was no sound. Boy’s watch had ceased to mark time.

I knew then, with unavoidable certainty, my own time had also run out.

ONCE I MADE THE DECISION,
it was simple. Not easy, never that. But simple nevertheless. I stored the belongings I would not take in my apartment at rue Cambon and oversaw the closure of my shop, paying my staff four months of salary in compensation, even as Madame Aubert and Hélène implored me to keep the doors open. They promised to oversee
everything and telephone me regularly in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I had decided to retire. I’d already sent André there by private car; Katharina was renting a house near the sanatorium where he would receive treatment.

I refused to heed my staff’s pleas. It was over. France was no place for me anymore.

Then, I did the one thing I had most dreaded: I went to Misia.

She greeted me at the door with a grief-stricken cry that made it obvious she knew why I had come. She and Sert were planning to remarry, she told me, pulling me onto the lumpy sofa where we had sat so many times before, to laugh and gossip, to skewer friends and foes, to argue and reconcile, more like sisters than any we had known.

“You must stay,” she said, enfolding my hands in hers, rubbing them as if she were seeking to banish my permanent chill. “Who will design my dress?”

“Someone will,” I replied.

“And Lifar? What of him? He is safe for now, but they dismissed him as director of the Opéra Ballet and called him to answer before the Fifi Purge Committee. And Cocteau, how will he manage without you? They need you here. All of us, we need you so very much.”

I had to bite the inside of my lip then, to stop myself from breaking apart. If I started crying, that would be the end of it. We would both dissolve. I pulled my hands from her, reached up to touch her wrinkled cheek. “Serge will survive. He is a treasure, one of the finest choreographers the world has ever known. They may make him atone, but in time he will dance again. It is all he knows. Cocteau, as well; he must write. What else can he do? And you, beloved friend, you will live. You have your Jojo again. He is all you ever loved.”

She was crying so hard, I had to give her my handkerchief. “I won’t,” she blubbered, blowing her nose. “I cannot.”

“That is only what you think,” I whispered, and I embraced her, holding her close, looking past her shoulder to where Sert stood in the living
room doorway, his grizzled features somber. “They don’t have decent bread in Switzerland,” he said. “You’ll hate it. You’ll be bored.”

“Yes,” I said, smiling through tears I could no longer hide. “I know.”

IT WAS STARTING TO SNOW
when I left Paris—a soft swirl undulating down over the carapace of the Eiffel Tower, drifting upon the gravel paths of the Tuileries and blinking marquees on the Champs-Élysées; dusting the artists’ garrets and cabarets of Montparnasse, and speckling the spiral molten-copper column in the place Vendôme. It settled into cracks on the pavement and in crevices of smoke-aged buildings, softening the serrated edges of a city that had seen so much anguish and terror, such joy and exuberance, there was no other in the world like it.

Gentle as a gloved hand, it caressed the awning over a shuttered storefront on rue Cambon, across from the Ritz. It paused there, its white hue only slightly paler than the awning itself, before it began to melt, dripping past a bold name that was once so coveted and famous, so extraordinary, it needed only one word:

Chanel.