Paris

  1906

  The ateliers and fitting rooms in Paul Poiret’s fashion house on rue Pasquier were so crowded with seamstresses and customers that Sonya was relegated to working on the stairway as she confected the hats, scarves, evening bags, and muffs to go with all the ensembles flying out the door as fast as the money was flying in.

  Paul had promised Sonya, when he sent the telegram to Saint Petersburg this time, that he wouldn’t keep her away from her children for more than two weeks. And yet now, after three weeks had passed, he was begging her to give him another few days. The orders, following the publication of his catalog—featuring the lavish full-color illustrations of the young artist from Angoulême, Paul Iribe—had been overwhelming.

  Sonya was glad of the money she was making, and grateful for the opportunity to continue her search for Zaneta while she worked and learned about the highlights of the upcoming season. On each visit, Sonya’s suspicions were confirmed anew in the way Paul looked at her, or in something he’d say. But she had yet to find anything tangible to prove that he was lying to her.

  Paul’s generosity as an employer allowed Sonya to travel to Paris twice a year and yet return home with her pockets full. She told Daniel and Klara about him, although not, of course, how she’d met him or anything of his deeper connections to their family.

  Daniel, as a social reformer, approved of what he heard from his sister. Poiret not only complied with the recent law, which gave all employees and workers in France the right to a day of rest on Sundays, but he also retained three chefs to provide all 350 employees of Maison Paul Poiret with a delicious midday meal six times a week. Whenever Paul returned from a hunting or fishing expedition, he would parade through the showroom with whatever game he’d bagged, announcing above the squeals of half-dressed women that his workers would dine like royalty that day.

  Sonya was convinced that if she persisted long enough and never gave up hope, Paul would eventually lead her to Zaneta.

  During her stays in Paris, Sonya boarded with one or another of Paul’s midinettes, who all feared him and revealed little information about where he went and who he knew. When she inquired, as discretely as she could, about the name and whereabouts of Monsieur Poiret’s petite amie, the universal answer was always, “Which one?” When she replied, “The one who looks like me,” the women shook their heads and either smiled or frowned, amazed that the Russian seamstress had the temerity to boast about her liaison with the boss. It was clear enough, to all of them, how he favored her.

  Sonya told herself that her patience would eventually be rewarded. All the beautiful women of Paris—and every woman of means visiting Paris from abroad—eventually walked through the doors of Maison Paul Poiret. She would outwit or out-wait Paul. Every day she was in Paris, she woke convinced this was the day when she would meet Zaneta, face to face.

  Paul was forever thinking of ways to get her alone—and she was ever vigilant about making sure he only saw her when others were around. She suspected he kept asking her to come back to Paris in hopes that, one day, she would change her mind—just as she hoped that, one day, he would change his. He certainly never left off sending longing looks her way. He didn’t dare take the liberties with her that she saw him take with so many others, workers and customers alike—and she sometimes questioned the source of this bit of power she had over him.

  On this latest visit, she began to wonder whether he’d broken things off with Zaneta—or else had figured out some way to ensure that she and her twin would never cross paths. He was suddenly less skittish about Sonya’s presence in his workshop, even to the point of having her do her work, in plain view of all, on the stairway. Had he sent Zaneta abroad? Had he quarreled with her? Had she left him for someone else?

  Sonya sat at her makeshift workstation on the landing, watching everyone who came in and listening to all that was said.

  Paul had the physique and the vocal power of an opera singer, and his booming voice could be heard everywhere in his establishment. “Madame,” she once heard him thunder from a fitting room where he was ensconced with no less than a personage than the Comtesse de Chevigné. “You have come to Poiret’s because it is the leading house in the world. Well, I am Poiret, and I am telling you that the gown is perfectly made, it is beautiful, and it is becoming to you. If you don’t like it, take it off—but I will never make another one for you!” The countess, who inspired fear in everyone else, had actually begged him, in her deep-throated, raspy voice, to forgive her. “Madame la Comtesse,” he said in a more confidential tone that Sonya could nonetheless hear quite clearly. “You know the rules here—no cigarettes!”

  His customers were among the most powerful women of Paris, and yet he exercised the authority of a despot over them all. Sonya overheard him say in withering tones to another grande dame, “You probably made a mistake when you ordered that gown. You are not satisfied with it. I won’t have you upsetting yourself over such a trifle. I’ll do it into a pretty cushion—and you can find some other couturier to clothe you for Madame Arman de Caillavet’s salon this Sunday.” The woman started weeping, paid for her dress, and hurried away.

  Paul clearly valued Sonya’s skills. But he seemed to value the novelty of her presence just as highly, registering a surprised sense of delight every time he saw her. Whenever she finished one of the accessories he dubbed chichis, he demanded to know, “Have you affixed the Poiret label?”

  He had a terror of other people creating copies of his designs. He barred the door to his own sister when she opened a dressmaking business not far from the rue de la Paix, convinced she wouldn’t hesitate to steal his ideas. In a practice completely unknown before, he had a label designed by one of his artist friends—and had this affixed to all his creations as soon as they were made.

  Perhaps because her own shop was so far away—and so little did Paul consider Saint Petersburg as a center of fashion—Sonya seemed immune to his suspicion. So cynical and so self-confident was he, that he once asked her, at the end of a long day, “Have you had any luck, my dear, finding your sister?”

  Sonya looked at him for a full five seconds in silence before she answered, “Not yet, Monsieur Poiret.”

  “Oh, Sonya, won’t you call me Paul?”

  “No, Monsieur Poiret. It would not be proper.”

  Saint Petersburg

  1908

  A dressmaker is not only the creator of one’s wardrobe, but also the keeper of one’s secrets. All the layers of artifice and protection are stripped away, till only the naked, unadorned, uncorsetted self remains, with all its imperfections on display. There can be no hint of judgment lurking in the dressmaker’s eyes, which must see as a visionary sees the world, beyond what is to the realm of what can be. Every new gown or coat offers the possibility of a dream fulfilled: a new self with formidable powers to charm.

  It’s what Paul Poiret gave to his customers. An ensemble from his maison de couture conferred power on every client able and willing to pay the price—and woe betide any woman who failed to see his value.

  Sonya knew how to make her customers feel at ease as readily as she knew how to finish a seam, through training with roots so deep in her childhood that both came as second nature to her. Like her mother, Sonya offered herself as a friend to her customers—a confidante. She listened sympathetically to all they said. She labored to flatter each woman’s figure, both in her designs and in the words she chose in those moments when accounting for their less-than-ideal bodily attributes was unavoidable. “This color will bring out your beautiful eyes,” she would say to a woman whose waistline was a distant memory. Or, “These higher hemlines, all the rage in Paris now, are so flattering to women, such as yourself, with such nice small feet.”

  It was a one-way intimacy—and Sonya preferred it that way. Her own secrets were unexposed and even irrelevant in the pleasant interactions she orchestrated. She tried not to think overmuch about her own secrets—to focus instead on whatever lay before her. And yet she was always filled, especially in the hours when she couldn’t sleep, with a nagging sense of dread.

  Life trains us to expect what it has given us already, so much so that we may fail to see a new and better pathway, even when it’s there before our eyes. So harshly schooled in loss, Sonya was cautious in the way she loved her children. She knew they felt it—and that they wanted something she simply felt incapable of giving them. Of course, she wanted everything good for them. But she was ever braced for the sudden act of God or Nature—or whatever flaw it was, hidden deep within her—that might cause them to be taken away from her.

  She knew there was no holding on to anyone or anything. The tsar’s police had stolen her father away, consigning her family to poverty and desperation, spitting him out again a broken man, without the strength to survive. Strangers from France stole the twin who would have been Sonya’s comfort and companion, not only through the trauma of their time in the orphanage, but ever after, as life dealt out blow after blow. Anti-Semitism drove her favorite brother into exile, and stole Jascha away from her, along with any illusions she had about romantic love. Her own country’s hatred of the Jews had left her a widow and destroyed her home, making her into an exile as well.

  Paul Poiret had given her a taste of sensual pleasure that she would pay for, she knew, for the rest of her days. That part of herself that felt guilty and filled with shame was something she tried to keep secret from everyone. How could her children love her if they saw her as she really was? Her pretty face and figure, so attractive to others, seemed a cosmic joke to her.

  Out of caution for everyone who came near her, Sonya held her deepest self—her most authentic and secret self—apart.

  

  For several hours every day, Sonya sat in the window of the tiny shop Daniel rented for her on Zagorodny Prospekt. Sitting before her sewing machine, or sewing by hand, she would wait for the dancers of the Mariinsky School to walk by in the late afternoon. The very way they walked reflected their training as dancers, setting them apart. Often hand in hand or floating away from one another and then coming together again as they laughed and joked, their every movement and gesture filled Sonya with admiration and a wistful tinge of envy.

  They seemed so young to her—and so carefree.

  Most of Sonya’s customers were older ladies, although, increasingly, she received orders for hats, coats, and gowns for their daughters and nieces. Her twice-a-year trips to Paris—and her continued work for Paul Poiret—allowed her to introduce innovations that made her clients feel fashionable, despite being unable to afford Parisian designs.

  Sonya thought of herself as a canny observer who could translate details of Parisian fashion into garments that made sense for the wives and daughters of Saint Petersburg’s professional class. Anna Pavlova ordered all her dresses from Paris now. But she would occasionally come to Sonya begging her to create a copy of a designer dress whose price was simply out of reach. Sonya always demurred unless the original design bore the Paul Poiret label. She knew enough about Pavlova’s secrets to feel sure the dancer wouldn’t dare expose Sonya’s professional perfidy. Her wellspring of righteous anger toward Paul compelled her to cheat him whenever the opportunity arose, although she would never think about cheating anyone else.

  The Mariinksy School students mostly ignored her where she sat in her window, watching them while she sewed. But one of the dancers—the prettiest one, she thought, with beautiful large dark eyes—always smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  A lady who was in the shop consulting with Sonya, one late afternoon, caught the exchange of smiles between Sonya and the pretty ballerina. “Tamara Karsavina knows you?” she asked in a tone of disbelief.

  “Only to greet me,” said Sonya. “Is she a student—or part of the company?”

  “I can see that you are no balletomane! Karsavina was promoted to soloist last month—and no one can get enough of her. Mathilde Kschessinska is fit to burst with jealousy!”

  The next time Tamara Karsavina walked by, Sonya smiled and bowed at her. This became a daily tradition for both of them, looked forward to by Sonya, although they never spoke.

  And then, shortly after Sonya returned from one of her trips to Paris, the young ballerina walked inside the shop and blurted out, “I can’t afford high fashion—but I do, so do, love to hear about it!”

  “You’ve come to the right place then, Mademoiselle Karsavina.” Sonya offered a chair to the ballerina, marveling at her beauty and grace close-up. No wonder the prima ballerina assoluta of the Mariinsky felt threatened by her! “I can show you some drawings of the latest Parisian styles.”

  The young dancer began to browse through the album, lingering over the sketch of a dress whose accessories Sonya had created during her last episode of work for Maison Paul Poiret.

  “Believe me,” said Sonya, “there are ways to dress as fashionably as a Parisienne, even here in Saint Petersburg—even if you don’t have a great deal of money—if you know the right dressmaker.”

  Paris

  1908

  Sonya looked at Paul with disbelief that seemed to begin to waver in the intensity of his gaze. He was standing very close to her—closer than she’d let him be for a very long time.

  “You believed what you wanted to believe, my precious darling.” He could barely restrain himself from reaching out to touch her face. He closed his eyes momentarily, remembering the silken texture of her skin.

  He wanted more, each time she was near him. He wanted to feel the sensation again of the flats of his fingers on her naked back, which was as smooth as the petals of some tropical flower. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the contours of her body as he measured them with his hands and touched all those places that he knew gave pleasure to her. And even as he had these thoughts, he wondered whether he would have been just as fascinated if there weren’t that frisson of recognition, that knowledge of Jeannette’s body, Jeannette’s skin.

  The allure of any particular woman was such a puzzle. And yet it was Poiret’s business—no, it was his duty—to analyze the inner workings of that certain something that operates directly upon the senses, bypassing one’s conscious mind. To recreate this allure, again and again, in ever novel forms, in the sensuous charm that is the very expression of a dress or a perfume.

  What was it about Sonya, if it was indeed anything beyond the phenomenon of her endlessly intriguing resemblance to Jeannette? She was beautiful, without doubt. But she was twenty-

  eight now and the mother of two—or was it three? Childbirth had, nonetheless, done nothing to diminish her appeal. He always wanted her when he saw her. The more she resisted him, the more he longed to possess her again.

  Denise, his marvelous wife—his muse and mannequin—was, for all her charms, merely herself. She was as unique, as inimitable, as any other one of his creations.

  But both Sonya and Jeannette were, for him, like the taste of a mysterious and fascinating wine. Each sip evoking a hint of some indescribably precious, delicious memory from his deepest reaches—and a desire for more. A memory of what it felt like, as a child, to gather and crush flower petals from his grandmother’s garden, imagining himself a chemist in his laboratory. Combining colors and scents with that joyous feeling of discovery—and conviction of the greatness of his destiny. He used to create fountains in that garden out of whatever he could find, coloring the water with his flower petal concoctions. Creating magic, still innocent of the putrid messes that he’d come upon weeks later, of rotted vegetable matter and foul-smelling sludge—his failures.

  The flood of sensations he felt refreshed his belief in himself as someone endowed with extraordinary abilities—a mortal singled out by the gods as an artist. He created magic and the universe always rewarded him with magic in return.

  Like every good-hearted father, he felt that magic power whenever his little Rosine threw her chubby arms around him and declared her love for him above all others. Denise was, he sometimes thought, a tad bit jealous of their child’s preference. But, then, the child was so often with her mother, and so little with Poiret, given all his travels and all his projects and the huge success of all his ventures.

  Denise, despite her relative youth, sometimes seemed to him less like a muse these days, and more like a nagging mother, always worried about what she characterized as the extravagance of his spending. She recognized his genius for bringing his work to the attention of the world—for making his creations into objects of desire for which the world would spend its gold. But, for her, it was just that: a genius for making money. His empire, over which he allowed her to rule by his side as queen, was all about amassing wealth and making their future secure. As if anyone’s future could ever be made secure!

  Paul didn’t care at all about wealth—not really. What he wanted was another taste of that wine—another dose of the magic it conferred. The magic of endless possibility and a world that welcomed and rewarded every one of his magnificent ideas. That delicious dulling of every care, every doubt. The need to taste again—to drink more deeply. To be transported again to that timeless place of innocence and belief in his own limitless powers.

  “My little bird,” he said to Sonya, aware that he was acting, but also strangely moved by every word. “I can’t bear to let you fly from me again—to be deprived of your presence for another six months.”

  

  Sonya found herself wanting to believe him. She was stirred, rather to her own surprise, by his arguments and promises, so logically and passionately delivered.

  Could she have imagined all along that he knew Zaneta? Had Paul Poiret fallen in love with Sonya, and remained in love with her, all these years? Was Zaneta—grown-up Zaneta—something that Sonya had confected from thin air, like the imaginary playmates conjured to life by lonely children?