Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky Read Online Free Page A

another man shouts, “Shut up, you bitches!” aiming his abuse at some of the most refined and beautiful women in France.
    â€œThat’s Florent Schmitt,” Caryathis whispers. “I’ve seen photographs he has of the composer—pictures of him in the nude!” In the dance teacher’s mind flashes the image of Stravinsky naked, hands on hips, on a small wooden jetty—wedding tackle in profile, buttocks pert and muscular—a scrawny white horse incurious in the background.
    Coco laughs, amazed that this kind of thing goes on in the upper echelons. The more one advances socially, it seems, the more depraved one is allowed—even expected—to be.
    The audience is becoming more restive, she notices. Chords clash, and the rhythms seem ugly, foreign. To the Parisian elite, an impression of crudeness persists: of Mongolian brutishness and Tartar savagery, of herrings and bad tobacco.
    And while Coco laughs along with the rest of them, something experimental and impulsive in the music chimes with her sense of novelty in being here. Like her, the rhythms seem driven. Her body feels beaten by the hammers of the piano, her skin abraded by the horsehair of the bows. The raw energy of it all feeds through her as if she’s a lightning rod in a storm.
    Amid the conflicting rhythms, she senses Charles looking at her from the side of her vision.
    Abruptly the pace of the choreography quickens. And so does the furious energy of the dancers, who twist themselves into all manner of agonized and erotic postures. The temperature rises detectably, setting fans flapping and generating an impression in Coco’s mind of trapped birds all over the theater.
    The demonstrations reach such a pitch that it becomes almost impossible to hear the music. Some women in front of her are so upset—or so moved to hilarity—that tears thicken their lashes, where they mix with mascara and run in black lines down their cheeks. Of course, Coco has seen much worse in the taverns of Moulins and Vichy, where she used to sing and dance. But that was entertainment for the troops. Here, instead, it’s the costive calm of the upper orders she sees being broken—spectacularly.
    Charles leans so close, his whiskers brush her cheek. He wears too much cologne, she notices. He whispers something, but she doesn’t quite catch it, such is the tumult of the music and the continuing uproar. She feels his hand take hers. Without looking at him, she extricates her fingers skillfully from his grip.
    Where there is standing room only, the more impecunious enthusiasts are creating their own din. There is chanting and clapping; obscenities are hurled. And still the ballet carries on. To her astonishment, it is not long before fights break out around her. A few dozen people even begin to strip. Coco delights in the anarchy. The house lights, which have been flickering intermittently, go up while arrests are made.
    Onstage, the prima ballerina enacts her sacrificial dance. Head tilted on her hands to begin with, soon her whole body is wracked with spasms. She jerks fiercely to the rhythms, ending in an ecstasy of trembling as she collapses on the floor.
    Distracted by police whistles and startled by the sudden illumination, the conductor—a plump man with a walrus mustache—glances around at the turbulent scene behind him. Having reassured himself that at least no one is about to invade the stage or storm the orchestra pit, he keeps going, aware that dancers in the wings are desperately clapping time.
    The lights go down again. Without warning, Coco feels Charles’s hand upon her knee. She looks across at him. He’s staring at her. Once she might have responded, but not now, not here. She recrosses her legs away from him, causing his hand to slide from her dress. Still, his touch sets off a tingle inside her, a tiny thrill.
    Then, just as the indignant protests and peals of laughter rise to their climax,