Severine | Ruth
Afterward, I wander through crooked streets until I find myself in front of an elegant vintage clothing shop called La Petite Robe Noire. The place looks so forbiddingly chic that I hesitate to enter. Inside, a woman, her black hair cut into a Louise Brooks bob, caresses a small white dog. She looks up, catches my eye, and waves me imperiously in.
“I have the perfect dress for you.”
She lifts a cloud of black lace from a hanger.
“It is a wonder. It is from Saint Laurent’s second collection for Dior in 1959.”
Cradling the armful of froth, she leads me to a corner of the shop roped off in black velvet and waits as I remove my clothes. As she slowly lowers the dress over my head, I notice a label sewn inside:
“Severine.” “What does that mean?”
She produces a very Gallic shrug.
“Who can say? Perhaps it is the name of the woman who owned the dress.”
She tugs the bodice, patting it gently like a beloved pet. “Don’t look!” she commands.
As she meticulously closes each tiny hook, the dress enfolds me, until it is hugging my body like a lover. On her knees now, she finishes closing the dozens of hooks; this odd ritual seems to go on and on.
At last she stands, tugging at the skirt, fluffing it a bit. “This dress was meant for you. It is perfect.”
She leads me into the light and turns me, very slowly, to face the mirror. I have been transformed. The woman in the glass is voluptuous, with curves in places I have never had them. A dress can do this? This person is glamorous. Elegant. She is Maria Callas. Paloma Picasso. Severine.
“You’ll take it, of course.”
It is not a question. I have never wanted anything so much as to be the woman in the mirror. Of course I’ll take it.
“How much does it cost?”
She waves a hand as if this is of no moment.
“Let me negotiate with the proprietor of the shop.”
She goes to the desk, picks up the phone. “I assure you,” she says in French, “this dress was meant for her!” There is a silence. At last she gives an ecstatic cry. “Merci, Didier, merci, merci.”
Turning to me, she says, “He has agreed to take two thousand francs off the price! Your dress is only fifty thousand francs.”
I nod, too dazed to do the calculation. And then I comprehend what she has said. “Sixty-five hundred dollars?”
For one wild moment I actually consider how I might pull off such an acquisition. But it is, of course, absurd. The woman is so disappointed that she takes her time releasing me, clearly hoping I will glance into the mirror and change my mind. The minutes crawl silently by. Finally her fingers separate the last hook from its eye, and I can step out of this amazing and impossible dress.
I attempt an apology: “This dress belongs in a museum.”
“Oh, no!” She gathers the dress to her bosom as if trying to console it. “Clothes were meant to be worn. And this dress was meant to be worn by you! You must reconsider.” She presses her card into my hand. “You will”—she looks deeply in my eyes—“ forever regret it if you leave Paris without this dress. Think about it.”
I can’t stop thinking about the dress. And then I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I am thinking about it. If I don’t buy the dress, I give up the woman I was in the mirror. If I do buy it, I become a woman who spends thousands of dollars on a dress. There is no middle ground.
Suddenly I know exactly what I need to do. The night is damp, the streets misty and dreamlike. Rain has dappled the sidewalk with puddles that capture the lights of Paris in beautiful blurs of color. Nobody else is out, and I walk among the ancient buildings in a profound and satisfying silence until I reach the entrance of a small emporium.
I was seventeen the first time I came to Paris by myself. I rented a room in an austere pension near the Gare de Lyon run by the world’s most suspicious landlady. Cabbage boiled endlessly in her small kitchen, and the sour smell pervaded the halls. I spent my days wandering the fancy food shops of Paris, gazing wistfully into Fauchon, Maison de la Truffe, Ladurée, and Androuet.
But it was Caviar Kaspia that captured my imagination, and I began to save my francs. At lunch I limited myself to bread and cheese. Nights I dined at a student cafeteria.
When I had enough for a meal at Caviar Kaspia, I put on my one good dress and climbed the stairs to the small restaurant above the shop. Standing nervously on the threshold, I dared myself to enter. Then Yves Saint Laurent strolled past me, surrounded by an entourage of impossibly chic and beautiful people, and my confidence evaporated. I turned and fled.
Now I climb the stairs again, peering into the ageless restaurant with its wooden paneling, its fussy furniture, its tables swathed in cloth the color of sea foam. But when the maître d’ greets me, I smile and follow him to a banquette near the window, where I watch the moon rise over the Madeleine across the way. I order lobster bisque, and as the aroma swirls around me I can almost feel myself leaping into turquoise waters, imagine diaphanous anemones waving their translucent arms…
“Vous êtes seul?”
How long has the old gentleman at the next table been trying to attract my attention? His skin is porcelain white, his hair silver and just a little too long, his eyes pale blue. He has a long, disdainful nose contradicted by full, sensual lips. A good face. And, I notice, elegant, slightly threadbare clothes whose patina of age makes them distinguished rather than shabby.
“Yes.”
“You eat with such intensity! It has given me much pleasure to watch. You come to remember, yes?”
His speech is the stiff formal French of the past, when well-born people did not employ the casual tu, even within the family.
“Remember?”
He edges toward me on the banquette and inclines his head, a courtly gesture.
“I have been coming here since before the war. That was a time when sturgeon filled the Caspian Sea, caviar was cheap, and Russian émigrés came to lament their lost dachas.”
“I wish I had seen it then!”
“The room has not changed; only the clientele. Merci, François.”
The waiter is removing a warm flute from the table; the new one he sets before my neighbor is silvered with cool mist.
“Un autre verre pour Madame.”
The champagne is deep with the scent of honeyed almonds, the bubbles so lazy they barely make it to the surface. He smiles.
“An excellent vintage, this Krug ’66. My father put down many cases; he said it was the perfect wine for caviar. But wait…”
He scoops a great mound of glistening black roe from the bowl before him and hands me the plate.
“Il faut respecter le beluga. Eat it slowly. Hold it in your mouth for a moment before swallowing. The taste will change with the temperature.”
The shock of freshness. The tang of the sea. And then the primal richness of the roe. A phrase of Lawrence Durrell’s floats into my mind:
“A taste as old as cold water.”
He is watching me.
“My wife ate caviar as you do. Slowly. Avidly. You put me in mind of her.”
He takes my plate, scoops on more caviar.
“What was she like?”
He sits back on the banquette and steeples his hands.
“She was a mysterious creature. We were married more than fifty years, but I was never sure I knew what she was thinking. Never.”
“Did you mind?”
He looks at me gravely, speaking slowly.
“Not at all; it gave life flavor. Sometimes I look at this new generation, their casual ways, their easy familiarity, and I think how much they are missing. When I saw you sitting here, alone, I thought you were like a guest to yourself. And then I thought of my wife.” I try picturing his wife, but no image comes.
“What was she called?”
“Severine.”
The name reverberates through my whole body. Suddenly I am back in the shop and the dress is embracing me, turning me into someone I have never been.
My new friend motions for more champagne. The waiter arrives bearing two frosted glasses and we watch, wordlessly, as he fills them. Then my neighbor lifts his.
“Thank you, my dear. For me this was a fortunate encounter. I did not know what brought me here tonight, but now I see that I wanted to try, just for a moment, to become the person I used to be.”
“Fortunate for me too, Monsieur. For you have made me, just for the moment, into the person I might have been.”
I reach into my purse, remove the woman’s card, and tear it into pieces. I do not need her little black dress; it has already given me everything it can.
Severine | Save Me the Plums: Ruth Reichl
