The Woman Who Rode the Wind

  “Harding!” she called, angry at both herself and at him for seeing her undressed.

  He came in, put his knee against her back and matter-of-factly tightened the corset, a little more roughly than necessary.

  She slipped into the gown and found out that she needed him again; a hundred little satin buttons went down the side and back. She had heard women say that their lovers enjoyed playing with these buttons, but all she needed was to make sure that they were fastened.

  Harding helped out again.

  Then she tried to walk. Parisian fashion was famous for its tight slippers, unstable coiffures and hazardous headgear. The theory was that the more useless and hemmed in the wearer, the more genteel she must be. Mary Ann was wearing a dress that tightened to a sheath in mid-calf, then spread out at the feet.

  “Where did you get this thing?” she asked Harding as he lay on the bed with his arms folded, watching her struggle with it. She suspected he was enjoying himself.

  “It’s a copy of a design by a famous Paris couturier who boasted ‘I liberate the bust but I hobble the legs,’” he said in a fake French accent. “You’re looking very décolleté this evening.”

  She knew what he meant. Mary Ann had only a small bust to liberate and her legs were short, so the dress didn’t fit well at either end. She tripped over the hem while going down the gangplank to the cab and nearly splashed into the Seine. Her stocking snagged at the same place on the planking where the French captain had fallen in, an unlucky omen.

  “Damn dress,” she thought. She dreaded the ball. She wished that she was back on the mountaintop in Tennessee...wearing trousers.

  As they got out of the cab at the opera house, Mary Ann gasped in surprise. Every window was lit, and it looked like a great gaudy sugar cube. Below the winged figures and gold crown, she could see the swirl of taffeta and bare sensuous shoulders in the huge second floor windows, and hear the pop of champagne corks.

  “What dress shop did you get this in?” she asked.

  “Monsieur Mouftard,” said Harding. “He’s right up the block.”

  “But isn’t he the undertaker who gave us the ride?” asked Mary Ann. “My God, who was wearing this before me?”

  "Someone who ended up in a closed casket," said Harding. He took her arm and propelled her through the doors, where Henri Meurthe and his daughter Yvette were waiting to greet their guests.

  Yvette had no problem with clothes, as Mary Ann saw immediately. Meurthe’s daughter was delighted to show off her new Fortuny gown, a slate gray velvet and brocade dress with a silver lace collar, V-neck and sweeping satin train in back. She wore a tiara on her high-set hair, one of the many gifts that she had received from a “secret” admirer. But her lovely face seemed troubled.

  As they approached, she asked, “Have either of you seen Alain Chevrier?”

  “No,” said Mary Ann, “but I’m looking for him too.”

  “Alain seems to be in demand tonight,” she heard Harding say dryly.

  Then President Pouchet came in. He asked the same question.

  Meurthe grimaced. “He is supposed to be here. He promised that he would come.”

  “Is he prepared to fly?”

  “I understand that he is.”

  “Excellent, because I am told that the Germans are ready,” warned Pouchet. “We had better be ready as well.” He shook his head ominously and moved on.

  “Tell me,” Harding asked Meurthe, “why did you pick Chevrier for this contest? After all he’s said about you? He even mispronounces your name as “merde.”

  Meurthe gave a short laugh, as if this was a question he’d asked himself many times. “So he refers to me as `shit,’ does he? I don’t deny that Alain Chevrier is impetuous, arrogant, insensitive, in short, a true Frenchman. I too am a son of France. In the end we will forget our differences in victory. For us, country is more important than pride.”

  “And the two of you, locked in this embrace? The practical capitalist and the socialist fanatic?”

  “This lazy, self-indulgent nation needs a fanatic,” said Meurthe grimly. “Soon we will be facing a far greater threat than socialists...”

  He paused and glared as Maximilian von Hohenstauffen walked by. “And we’ll need brave men to defend us, braver than the flâneurs that you see strutting around at this ball as if they had peacock feathers stuck up their rears.”

  Maximilian was under no illusion that Meurthe liked him. He had been invited only because he was a contestant. Fortunate for him because he had a second mission tonight. To make himself inconspicuous he wore elegant dark evening clothes with a black cravat and white gloves, rather than his gray German uniform. Decadent, he thought, but necessary.

  Maximilian walked casually into the long bar called “Le Buffet” that ran down the right side of the opera house and strolled past Fabian Bouchard.

  Bouchard gave no sign that he recognized Maximilian, but the German heard him whisper, “He’s at the end.”

  Maximilian knew who “he” was.

  * * *

  Guillaume LeRond had a whole bottle of Veuve Clicquot in front of him and was gulping it, glass after glass. The bartender was eyeing him with disgust, but LeRond didn’t care. He had convinced himself that he was invited only as an afterthought, in case the great Chevrier did not show. So the invitation was just another insult. To hell with it. He leaned over and dribbled saliva into a brass spittoon.

  Maximilian walked up to join him. First, he thought, I’ll give him one more barb to hook the fish. “So is Captain Chevrier here yet?” he asked the Frenchman cheerfully.

  “Chevrier!” spat LeRond as if it was a curse. “The man has it all, and he pisses away what others would give their life’s blood to get!”

  The bartender and several people heard him.

  Maximilian realized that he’d gone too far. He took LeRond’s elbow and guided him like a rudderless ship around the corner to the Rotonde de Glacier. Its circular ceiling and tapestry-covered walls muffled sound. There he found a quiet, glass-enclosed alcove overlooking the street.

  “It may soon be time to do something about Chevrier,” said Maximilian. “You remember me, don’t you?”

  Guillaume struggled to recognize Maximilian. Then it came to him. “You were with Bouchard that day on the Canal Saint-Martin. But who are you?”

  Maximilian gave LeRond his card. The Frenchman looked at it for a moment, blinking. “But you are German...”

  “I am a patriot, like yourself. And someone who can offer you opportunities that you will never have anywhere else. Aren’t you the man who has done most of the work on the dirigible?”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Then let’s meet tomorrow,” he patted Guillaume on the shoulder, “when you are sober and you can decide if your future lies with Chevrier or...somewhere else.”

  * * *

  Mary Ann wandered away from the ballroom. She didn’t understand the dances, with strange names like the Consuelo and the Varsovienne. And the young mesdemoiselles who had been practicing them for weeks with a glass of water on their heads and could dance them like ballerinas intimidated her.

  She joined a group of older women and tried to remain in the background, feeling more comfortable when the conversation turned to motorcars.

  “I am upset about my automobile,” said a woman in a stately black dress who proved to be a Comtesse.

  “You have a car?” asked Mary Ann.

  “Of course. Doesn’t everyone? Anyway...before I was interrupted...my chauffeur just killed a cyclist.”

  “Were you in the car at the time?” asked one of the other women. “It must have been dreadful!”

  “Fortunately not, but I don’t understand what happened. My chauffeur said the rear wheel barely touched him!”

  “He was probably only waiting for a good chance to die,” said a third woman.

  “Moreover, my insurance company had to pay his family 25,000 francs,” said the Comtesse.

  “That??
?s a great deal for a man who only rode a bicycle,” a fourth woman sympathized.

  “My dear, are you American?” asked the Comtesse.

  “Yes, I am,” said Mary Ann.

  “You see them all over these days,” said the Comtesse. “Our country is Americanizing.”

  “Politics particularly,” said another. “It has become the province of tawdry men who can do nothing else.”

  “Pouchet, for example. Why that fat pretentious little man looks almost American.”

  “Do I detect the odor of cheap perfume?” said another woman, looking at Mary Ann. “It smells like shop girl around here.”

  Mary Ann wanted to move away, but felt herself frozen to the floor, as if she were a butterfly pinned to a wall. She didn’t want to turn her back on these women. Fortunately they chose another victim for their venom.

  “Do you see the dress that Mademoiselle Meurthe is wearing? asked the same woman.

  “Whose design is it, a Worth...or a Paquin?” asked the second.

  “Whatever it is, one has to admit it’s beautiful, although rather daring,” said a third. "How does she keep her bosom so high?"

  “But one can be too chic!” said the Comtesse.

  There were titters of laughter, except for Mary Ann, whose blank stare betrayed her ignorance.

  “My dear,” said the Comtesse, laying a hand on her shoulder. “It is well known that the best-dressed women in Paris are the courtesans and women of the night.

  “And speaking of dresses,” she added, “tell me, my little one. Where did you get that rag you’re wearing?”

  They might have continued to insult her, except one of them saw Alain Chevrier.

  Chevrier had come in quietly through the servants’ entrance, and escaped everyone’s attention. He paused to clean his boots at one of the marble benches, leaving the mud where it lay. Then he saw Mary Ann across the room and started to walk toward her when she burst suddenly into tears and ran from the room.

  “What happened to that lady?” he asked.

  The Comtesse recognized him. “Ah, Monsieur Chevrier,” she said. “Let me introduce you to my friends. This is Alain Chevrier, the aeronaut. They call him the Wild Man of Borneo because he was raised in Borneo, weren’t you?”

  “It was New Caledonia,” Alain corrected. “And the natives, I assure you, were more civilized than the French.”

  “But didn’t they have shrunken heads?” asked one of the women.

  “Yes, and for that reason alone they would feel at home in your company. Let me ask you again, what did you do to that lady?”

  “We got rid of her,” said the Comtesse defensively. “She was a nobody. It is a shame the kind of people that they’re letting in here these days.”

  “But what is an even bigger shame,” said Alain, “is how many well-born women of Paris—like yourself—have taken to sleeping with their goats.”

  He turned to walk away, and almost bumped into Yvette Meurthe.

  “Hello, my secret admirer,” she said. Her eyes were dancing as she flashed her famous smile at him.

  Alain was puzzled. “Do we know each other?”

  “Why, Monsieur Chevrier, how coy you are,” said Yvette.

  Alain started to look away, and then was caught and dragged back again by those measuring, challenging green eyes. “You’re Meurthe’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “And you are the soon-to-be hero of France and giver of beautiful gifts,” she said, touching her tiara.

  Alain started to speak when Henri Meurthe rushed up.

  “Father,” she said proudly, “I have found Alain Chevrier.”

  “But now we have lost Mary Ann Pitman. Try to find her,” he pleaded. “The occasion demands that she be present.”

  * * *

  Mary Ann didn’t remember leaving the four women who had been ridiculing her. She didn’t recall whether she ran or walked or simply stumbled away. Somehow she found the bathroom.

  She didn’t realize it at first. It was bigger than any room like it that she had ever seen. In the center was a gigantic pink marble urn with roses in it. Blue hydrangeas filled every corner. There were women’s knickknacks spread all over the white marble countertop: powder, rouge, lipstick that anyone could use.

  Then she saw the stalls, and ran inside the first one. They were Crappers, the new flush toilets named after their inventor, Sir Thomas Crapper. Each one had a box of water on the wall above, and a pull chain to flush it into the bowl.

  “I will not cry anymore,” she told herself, and she didn’t. But the effort cost her. She began to hiccup—loud ones that echoed off the marble walls. To drown out the noise she reached up and pulled the metal chain attached to the box. A noisy geyser of water appeared in the porcelain bowl below. She kept hiccuping and flushing.

  Then someone flung open the door. She turned and saw Yvette.

  * * *

  Yvette had never known anyone to do herself more damage than Mary Ann. White spots of powder had settled into her cheeks and red streaks ran down the sides of her nose. She was gasping for breath. She looked consumptive.

  “Come,” said Yvette, taking her hand. “Let us make you pretty again.” She pulled harder.

  Mary Ann was still holding onto the metal ring of the chain with her other hand and the toilet flushed once more.

  “Come out,” urged Yvette again. “There is no one here to see you.”

  Yvette led her to the sink. She found a handkerchief in her silver handbag, wet it and wiped Mary Ann’s face clean. It was like taking care of a child.

  Yvette shook her head: “The things I do for my father,” she said to herself. She took what she needed from her silver réticule, and the rest from the counter. To Mary Ann, they might have been instruments on an operating table, but Yvette was on intimate terms with them.

  “Now tilt your head back,” she ordered.

  Mary Ann started to protest, but Yvette simply put her index finger under Mary Ann’s jaw and raised it.

  “I use charcoal to line the eyes, powder to whiten the face,” she explained as she went.

  She made Mary Ann smile when she applied the rouge and pucker up for the lipstick. Soon she stopped fighting. It was pleasant to be fussed over for the first time in years, and to have another woman around.

  “What’s that?” asked Mary Ann, caught off guard as Yvette misted her hair with fragrance.

  “An atomizer,” Yvette answered, “Now look up! No blinking. I am doing your eyes.”

  Finally she finished. “There,” she said with a smile, “look at yourself. My work of art.”

  Mary Ann looked, grudgingly at first, then again.

  “You see,” said Yvette, “you are pretty. You are what we French call a gamine.”

  In the mirror, for the first time in her life, Mary Ann caught a flash of her own beauty. Yvette had arranged her hair so it gave her an off-balance elegance, with nuances of face and form that had not existed a few moments ago: wide-set almost oriental brown eyes with subtle highlights, long lashes, high cheekbones. The little girl running her stick along the picket fence was suddenly transformed into a woman that men would kill—or die—for.

  It scared her. It was like seeing a different person inside her skin taking possession of her. How could she handle this? She didn’t want to. Gradually as she stared, the old Mary Ann came back, and it reassured her.

  “See, life is full of tricks,” said Yvette. “A small thing like rearranging your hair, and you are beautiful. Your eyes, for example. It is not with your body that you attract men, but with your eyes.

  “When I was a little girl, I studied La Joconde...” she saw puzzlement on Mary Ann’s face...“The Smiling One—you call her the Mona Lisa. I wondered: Why all the fuss? She was simply the wife of an upstart peasant who had gotten rich. But those eyes...those eyes that follow you everywhere. A woman is all in her eyes. They are her most powerful weapon.”

  “You talk as if men were the enemy,” said Mary Ann.

/>   “Aren’t they? Our law, the Napoleonic code, gives them the right to buy and sell us.”

  “No!”

  “I saw it happen in the village where Papa has his summer home. A farmer put his wife on the auction block. But she was fat and blubbering and no one would pay a sou for her. They just laughed. Do you have a man here in Paris?”

  “I have someone that I love...like,” said Mary Ann. “His name is Alain Chevrier.”

  “Really,” Yvette smiled as if she didn’t believe it. How could this dolt of a child even know Chevrier? “And did he give you any sign of his affection?”

  “He gave me his ring,” said Mary Ann. She fumbled in the pocket of her dress and pulled out the heavy St. Cyr ring.

  If Mary Ann had looked up in that second, she would have seen a shadow pass between Yvette’s face and the mirror.

  “So what is this Chevrier like?” asked Yvette with cool nonchalance.

  “Well,” said Mary Ann, grateful for the chance to talk to a woman, “you can feel his presence across a room even before you see him. And when he’s close you feel he’s touching you even though he’s not.” She winced. Her whalebone corset—pulled too tight by Harding—was pinching her across the back.

  “What do you do about these contraptions?” she asked.

  “Do?” said Yvette. “I don’t wear one.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It is as stupid as wearing a bustle. Most women wear the old-fashioned corset because they are fat. They lie in bed until noon, then drink tea and eat cookies all day with their friends. They think corsets make them beautiful by taking all their belly fat and rolling it up into their bosoms. Bound up in a corset, a woman cannot even button her own shoes.

  “I wear a new garment called a brassière,” said Yvette with just a hint of a smile. “It supports you from straps at the back of your arms. “Here, I will show you...” She dexterously reached around, unbuttoned herself and the front of her gown fell forward. Then she reached back and took off the brassière. She was nude to the waist.

  In truth, Yvette hardly needed a brassière. The white V of her throat continued down her chest like an avenue that many men would love to travel. At symmetrical distances on both sides were two perfect hemispheres topped with apricot-colored nipples, breasts so firm that there was no perceptible line at the bottom to indicate where they stopped. Yvette wasn’t just well endowed; she was perfect. Her body looked sculpted, rising from the folds of her dress like one of those statues of goddesses and nymphs that decorated the opera house.