The Last Nude (28 page)

The crowd watched in reverent silence as Tamara fought to neutralize the effects of the strong spirits, first stepping out of her high heels, then bracing herself against the base of the easel with the fingertips of both hands. This was the second time I had faced a roomful of people, but this time my eyes were open, so it was worse. I could not summon back the cool glaze that had left me. When Tamara’s eyes met mine, I realized she had never drawn in front of a crowd like this: she had accepted Kuffner’s absinthe because she, too, was afraid. But then, with a long look at me and a bold sweep of charcoal, Tamara plunged into the familiar ritual of looking and drawing, and even despite my anger, watching her made me relax, too.

After a long silent minute, whispered words and phrases began to twinkle up into the room:
Aphrodite. La Belle Rafaela. Salon d’Automne. Agence Binard. Dix milles francs. Belle. Belle.
As I listened, I discovered Tamara was right: I could see into their eyes, but they couldn’t see into mine. Their eyes were a wave and I did not let it flatten me: I began to ride it like a little ship. They did not want to drown me; they wanted to float me; they wanted feathers and glitter and dazzle. They wanted me to be their dream. I forced myself to breathe and I gazed back through my mask, inhaling steadiness, even if I exhaled fear.

“Comme c’est beau,”
said the Duchesse de la Salle at full voice, looking over Tamara’s shoulder.

“Merci,”
replied Tamara, and kept drawing.

After this, the crowd eased, as if deciding they’d been silly to whisper. The twinkling explanations rose to a gossipy murmur, while below it I could hear the rustle of certain less public information:
Elles sont amantes. Deux copies. En Rouge et en Vert. Boucard. Kuffner.
Similarly, the exchange between Tamara and the Duchesse de la Salle seemed to lift the ban—implied by the red velvet curtain, the stagey setting—on speaking directly to the performer. “Another drink, Madame de Lempicka?” Baron Kuffner offered.

“Not while I’m working,” Tamara said, in what I thought of as her painting voice: the quiet one she used to keep herself from fully registering an interruption.

“Oh, please, let me get it.” Boucard jumped in, not hearing her. The way he spoke was controlled and smooth, but I could tell Kuffner’s offer of
another
drink irked him, as if Kuffner were claiming what was rightfully his. “I have something special for us to toast,” he said, raising two flutes from the bar beside him.

Tamara, still in a charcoal trance, set the champagne on the floor by the easel without bringing it to her lips. Boucard, unaware, faced the crowd, but his eyes addressed Kuffner alone. “For my beautiful wife, Hélène, on her birthday,” he said, champagne aloft. Mme. Boucard smiled at her husband indulgently, embarrassed by the attention. “I am commissioning a portrait by the esteemed artist you see before you, Tamara de Lempicka.”

A polite murmur suffused the crowd and a scattering of friendly glasses rose in the air. A few necks craned around for a better look at Hélène Boucard, modestly grand in her long gown, her marcelled hair shot with bands of steel. She would look noble in Tamara’s portrait, statuesque. Given Dr. Boucard’s predilections, I was interested to note that his wife was one of the least Jewish-looking Frenchwomen I had ever seen. I wondered which birthday it was for her. Though she carried a little heaviness under her eyes and chin, her long body was enviably firm for its age, her skin as smooth as fondant. “Happy twenty-ninth,” called Kuffner, so jovially that I was for a moment surprised he didn’t know she had a nineteen-year-old daughter, then stung on her behalf.

Nana de Herrera was among those who stared at the older woman hardest. Though I knew a crowd that planned to end the night smoking opium on the roof was not a prudish lot, Nana was unusual in pressing her head to Kuffner’s chest so early in the evening. She laid a large expressive hand on the baron’s shoulder and sighed dramatically. “She does portraits, too?”

“She certainly does,
Mademoiselle,
” said Tamara. Her hand had stopped moving, but she didn’t take her eyes off me.

“Would you like her to do
your
portrait?” Kuffner offered, loudly enough for Boucard to hear.

“
Would
you,
mi amor
?” Nana cooed.

“Would
she
?” Tamara corrected through gritted teeth, so quietly that only I could hear.

Kuffner’s arm tightened around Nana’s waist. “I give you my word.”

“Immortality on the side of a Gitanes packet isn’t enough for you,
Señorita
?” d’Afflitto asked, sidling in to join them. As the men spoke, half the crowd seemed to lose focus, wandering off to other rooms or talking among themselves. The other half—including the Duchesse de la Salle—leaned in closer, enjoying the spectacle brewing between the baron and the scientist as much as they had enjoyed the live drawing and the feathered girl.

“I didn’t know she made portraits,” Nana continued, oblivious to the tightening faces on either side of her. “I thought she only made, you know,
Rafaela
s.”

“The
Rafaela
s are only the most famous of her paintings, my dear,” Boucard said, annoying both his wife and Kuffner by addressing Nana directly.

“De Lempicka excels in portraits of lovely young girls,” Kuffner volleyed back. “Now, any painter who is paid for a portrait tries to show his subject off to best advantage,” he said with a cutting glance at Mme. Boucard, “but painting
you,
Nana, would be as much a pleasure as it would be a commission.”

At this, Tamara ducked behind her champagne, charcoal clenched between two fingers like a cigarette. She drank the whole glass. Boucard, watching, offered Kuffner a thin-lipped smile and raised his flute again. “Indeed. You do love de Lempicka’s work, Baron. Let’s toast your new painting now. To
Nude with Dove.
A gift for your wife, perhaps?”

As Kuffner’s wife, Sara, was known to be bedridden with cancer in a Swiss hospital, Boucard’s comment was, in its way, as insulting as Kuffner’s.

“Doctor Boucard, how gracious of you,” Kuffner replied. “I’d like to toast
your
acquisition of
Full Summer.
”

“Ah, yes, now we each have, as Miss de Herrera put it so charmingly, a
Rafaela.
Too bad yours doesn’t look like Rafaela.”

“Too bad yours is wearing clothes.”

At this, d’Afflitto gasped. Romana
tsk
ed. Tamara turned away from me to look at both men. I held the pose, mortified. Was
that
why Tamara had given me a mask? Would she, like Kuffner, rather look at my body than my face?

“Actually,” Boucard said, brushing Kuffner off, “according to the terms of my contract with the artist, not only have I commissioned
four
portraits over the next year—”

At this, Nana looked up at Kuffner, as if planning to ask for another three portraits. Tamara, feeling the crowd watching her, turned back to the easel, stony.

Boucard continued. “I furthermore have first rights to purchase any other work de Lempicka cares to sell in the next two years. So if she chooses to sell the drawing she’s making right now, Baron, I’ll have
two Rafaela
s
,
and where will you be? And maybe Tamara will come to her senses and then I’ll have three, won’t I?”

The hand in which Tamara held her charcoal hung limply at her side. Kuffner’s face was red and curdled. “Well, it’s too bad Madame de Lempicka has no interest in selling her copy of
La Belle Rafaela
to anyone, isn’t it?” he said. At this, though I knew all he could see of my eyes through the mask was an infrequent wet flash, Kuffner looked over at me, and winked.

I had made a terrible mistake. If I weren’t, literally, pinned in place, I would have stood up right there onstage and run all the way back to Tamara’s, to lock both doors. I didn’t care about Ira Perrot. All I cared about was the look on Tamara’s face, as fierce and vulnerable as a wild bird in a trap. She hadn’t seen Kuffner’s wink. She hadn’t seen my throat tighten with horror at myself, at how badly I’d betrayed her. She only saw me.
“Just two more hours,”
she mouthed. All she wanted was to survive and leave and get on that train with me. And all I wanted was to be worthy of her.

“You both have to stop,” I said quietly, still holding the pose. “You’re distracting her.”

The look Tamara gave me in response was so grateful, so trusting, I almost cried. The two men didn’t hear me, but Romana did. “That’s right!” the redhead snapped. “Mother, get these gentlemen out of here so the artist can work in peace.”

The Duchesse de la Salle, until that moment as rapt as a spectator at a cockfight, lurched into action and together with her daughter smoothly led the two men out of the room, each in a different direction.

Tamara looked down from me to her easel then. She drew quickly and badly, and the red curtain fell to unfocused applause. D’Afflitto and Tamara wheeled the pouf—with me on it—backstage. Through the half-open curtain, I could see a clutch of the Duchesse de la Salle’s friends at the bar, crushing hash pellets into their sloe-gin fizzes. Kuffner stood among them, obviously uncomfortable, while Nana swanned around the room saying her good-byes, off to work at the Paradis. As Romana joined us to help d’Afflitto unpin my train from the pouf, whispering with him over the scene that had just exploded, Tamara collapsed onto the backstage chaise
.
Once again Kuffner moved aside the curtain and entered, glass in hand. “Beautiful work, Madame de Lempicka,” said Kuffner. “We were all so impressed.”

“You and Boucard really stole the show, with your nonsense.”

“Let me give you a drink, to try to make it up to you.”

Tamara turned to him, large-eyed. I couldn’t tell if she was going to slap him or cry. Romana reappeared, noting the tension between Kuffner and Tamara with a glance. We watched Tamara take the proffered glass.

“It’s a shame Nana has to go before Violette’s performance,” I said to Kuffner in angry French. Romana looked down, abashed, and it occurred to me, as a raucous purr that could only have been Suzy Solidor’s filled the room, that after taking liberties with her hostess’s daughter, Violette might not be invited onstage at all.

“Oh, I think she’s seen plenty of sparring tonight,” said d’Afflitto. “Maybe she’ll even work it into her act,
mi amor,
” he said with a meow, and tapped at an imaginary punching bag.

“Oh, you are a card,” snapped Kuffner. “An absolute cutup.”

Tamara drank deeply, never taking her eyes off Kuffner. “You’re both so awful,” she sighed. Her eyes went heavy. She sprawled on the chaise
,
feet extended, one pump dangling off a big toe. Kuffner sat on a chair beside her, pitying attentiveness and impatience crossing his face by turns. Then I realized: on top of the absinthe and champagne Tamara had already consumed, he had given her one of the doctored sloe-gin fizzes—without drinking a drop of his own.

 

 

 

The moment my train was unpinned, I hiked it up by its straps and ran with my coat under my arm, dodging guests and caterers, sidestepping a woman in a man’s suit so narrowly that her monocle fell out. Rushing down the hall, I suddenly found myself eye-to-pearl-tiepin with Boucard. “Kuffner’s in the music room,” I told him.

“Oh?” he asked, his expression as mild and featureless as that single gray pearl.

“And he just called your daughter a name,” I said, rushing away.
That ought to buy me some time.

I lost my grip on the train on a long marble staircase and felt the peacock tail sweep behind me. I ran, the center of a pool of feathers and rage. You think you can drug her, leave her passed out at a party, and go help yourself to the painting, Baron? Hurtling pell-mell toward the taxi stand, I didn’t feel small and hurt anymore. My stupid jealousy over Ira was gone. All I wanted was to run, to protect the woman I loved.

19

I FELT LIKE A GHOST, letting myself in for the second time that evening. I slid into the building, up the stairs, and into Tamara’s apartment, locking the unlocked doors behind me. I wanted to turn on an electric light, but resisted.
Kuffner could turn up any moment,
I thought, reaching forward in the dark. When my hand met the hard edge of the painting, wrapped in paper and twine, my heart thudded in my temples: I had beaten him to it. I did not want to run into him by accident, so all I had to do was wait in the dark for him to arrive, find the doors locked, and leave. Then I could take the painting to the station.

Presently I heard a motorcar grumble up the street, and I stood by the balcony window so that I could see the lamplit street but not be seen. I was not surprised when the driver opened the door for Kuffner, though I did allow myself a quiet snort of laughter at his expense. He was a baron, not a professional thief: approaching the apartment quietly on foot clearly hadn’t occurred to him. I was surprised, however, when a second figure unfolded from the cab, a flash of gold. More than surprised, too surprised to breathe:
Tamara.