“I’ll see you later, when you get back from Vogue?” he asks. The look he gives her is mild; his lips curve up in what might be a smile.
Before she can even say yes, the door clicks closed behind him.
VIENNA
SEPTEMBER 1946
Lee names the kitten Warum, the German word for why, when she finds him in the gutter in Vienna. He fits snugly in her coat’s breast pocket, purrs against her chest like a motorbike engine while she waits in line to get her clearance to move on to Moscow. Everywhere she goes she needs triplicated permits, and every bureaucrat she talks to is disorganized and incompetent. Of all the former Nazi strongholds, it is Vienna Lee hates most of all.
The liberated city is a study in contrasts. At night, the Austrians gorge on music. Frothy harpsichords and lilting violins tinkle through the streets. Concert halls are packed with people, but the operas Lee used to love no longer move her. One night she goes to a marionette show and the loose bodies of the dancing puppets remind her so much of Dachau she has to run from the theater to keep from screaming.
She’s been trapped here for weeks, long enough for her mail to catch up to her, a stack of letters from Roland as thick as her thigh. She reads them in bed and laughs when Warum bats at the pages. Roland’s tone is worried and insistent. He wants her home. The war is over, Hitler is dead, he can think of no reason for Lee to still be gone.
In the light of day, all Lee sees are signs of privation. Austrian girls in dead men’s coats, begging for food in the rubble of their city. Malnourished babies dying in Viennese hospitals, their rib cages delicate as pick-up sticks, chests rising and falling as they struggle to keep their breath. If she were to write to Roland, she would say, This is why I’m still here, to shine a light on the suffering that didn’t end with the war. But instead she doesn’t write to him at all.
One afternoon, Lee is startled to find Warum missing from her pocket. She retraces her steps, stops at checkpoints she went through hours earlier to show the same permits the guards have already seen, each passing minute making her more convinced she’ll never find him. She looks until the sun is setting before she gives up and heads back to her room. Something in the road by the hotel’s door catches her eye. There he is, in another gutter: hind legs crushed, back arched like a fighter, his body already cold and stiffened. Why? Lee thinks. She picks him up, rocks back and forth. It is hours before she is ready to leave him. She uses her scarf as a shroud and buries the bundle in some nearby rubble. It is pointless to love things when in the end they’ll all be taken.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After Man leaves the apartment, Lee is alone with her betrayal. She goes through the motions of getting ready for work, walks to Vogue with her head down, focusing her full attention on her feet. The air is bitterly cold, but she doesn’t feel it. All her mind will do is replay scenes from the night before.
The deadline for the magazine’s next issue is the following week, and there is always a ramping up of activity and energy as the date approaches. The offices are in their usual chaos when Lee arrives, models and assistants and illustrators running around as if by moving quickly they’ll be able to get their work done on time. A few people say hello to Lee as she passes them in the hall, but she goes straight into one of the dressing rooms and sits in a chair. She can’t believe she has a shoot today—Lee hasn’t slept a minute, and she doubts even George is talented enough to obscure the bags she sees under her eyes when she looks in the mirror.
Man must know exactly where she was last night. He must know that for weeks when she was with him, it was Antonio’s hands she imagined touching her, Antonio’s body she pictured in the dark. Or maybe he doesn’t; maybe he has no idea. Lee seizes on this thought and then finds herself getting indignant—how can he not know? How foolish can he be?
The door creaks open and Horst strides into the room. He takes one look at Lee and says, “You look run over.”
Lee groans and drops her head, rubbing at her temples. Horst sits down in a chair across from her and stretches his legs in front of him, crosses them at the ankle. “Jesus. George isn’t going to be pleased. We’re shooting the hat spread today, I think.” He sits forward and peers at her more closely. “Have you been crying?”
“No.” Lee spits out the word. “And you don’t look so hot yourself.”
Horst looks at himself in the mirror and gives his reflection a toothy smile. “I look marvelous, and you know it.”
Lee is supposed to laugh, but she doesn’t, and Horst turns his attention back to her, a vague look of concern flashing across his pretty features.
“Let’s get this done,” she says.
The shoot goes fine—the makeup artist works what Lee feels is a minor miracle—but after it is over, and Lee realizes she has to go home again, she gets the same feeling she had earlier with Man, as if her tongue is swelling up and choking her.
Horst and George stand chatting in the hallway, flirting as always. Lee waits. Horst usually walks her home, and she wants his company even more than usual, so that she can stop her mind from its endless circling.
When they get outside, the afternoon air is milder than before. The wind has died down, and they walk along Boulevard Raspail, the cafés and bars thronged with people who, like her, Lee thinks, don’t want to go home. The laughter and street sounds set her on edge, and after a few blocks she turns onto a quieter side street, Horst following along behind her. They pass a men’s shop with a window display of wide silk neckties, and Horst pauses in front of it.
“Can you wait a minute? I love that blue one,” he says, and darts into the store. Lee stands on the sidewalk and uses the opportunity to try to slow her thumping heart. Horst is gone for five minutes, then ten. Lee peers through the shop’s murky glass door and sees him gesticulating in front of a mirror, four ties draped around his neck. She sits down on the shop’s stoop. In front of the store is a lamppost covered with a palimpsest of signs and posters. Lost cats, new bistros, advertisements for upcoming films. And there, glued among them, is a familiar face. Lee stands up and goes over to the lamppost. ILSE BING AND CLAUDE CAHUN: OBJECTS AND OBJECTIFICATIONS, it says, with photographs of both women printed beneath the title, and below that, one of Ilse’s photographs of a dancer and one of Claude’s self-portraits. PIERRE GALLERY, DECEMBER 1930–JANUARY 1931.
“Fuck,” Lee whispers. She rips the sign free and shakes it. They’ve actually done it—Ilse and Claude. At the Pierre, where not even Man has had a show. If she had handled things differently, befriended them months ago, perhaps Lee could be there with them. “Fuck,” she says again, louder, and repeating the oath makes her feel better, a valve released.
A few moments later, Horst comes out of the store, two tie boxes under one arm. Lee quickly balls up the paper and tosses it in a nearby bin, and then she puts a smile on her face and walks back to Horst, who shows her his ties and seems content to walk in silence next to her.
They take a shortcut through the Cimetière du Montparnasse, where stately elm trees make an archway over the wide paths. Lee can’t think of a day when she’s felt worse. She crosses her arms and rubs her hands up and down them, trying to warm up.
“You sure you’re all right?” Horst finally asks her.
Lee lifts her chin. “I’m fine.”
He nods. She glances over at him, at his guileless face, at the tie boxes held casually in the crook of his arm, at the little comb marks in his perfectly slicked-back hair, his whole figure radiating self-content and vigor, and she feels a sudden, powerful dislike for him.