Bridal Chair (10 page)

Ida did not think Katya was either foolish or stupid, but she knew that it was pointless to argue with her parents. Katya would be tolerated because she knew exactly how long to boil Marc’s morning egg and when to bring Bella her specially brewed tisane.

“Your father will be very angry,” Katya said. “You know that he does not like to be disturbed when he is working,”

“
N’importe
,” Ida replied dismissively. “Go and tell him we are here.
Va
.”

Katya wiped her hands on her apron, shrugged, and left the room. They listened as she knocked too loudly on the studio door. They heard her speak to Marc in a flat indifferent monotone. They heard his angry response and then the heavy door slammed. Minutes later, he stamped into the room and stood before them, his eyes narrowed, his face ablaze with indignation. Katya had been right. He was angry, very angry. Any interruption of his work was a violation, a sin against his talent. He had not removed his smock, and he carried a paintbrush wetly shimmering with vermilion that spattered on the polished floor. Katya trailed after him, wiped up the drops of paint, and smirked smugly before disappearing into the kitchen.

“What is so important that it could not wait?” Marc asked.

He brandished his paintbrush at Ida. As always, he ignored Michel. His daughter’s husband did not interest him. He seldom spoke to him and rarely addressed him by name.

“This is what could not wait,
Papochka
,” Ida said.

She thrust the evening newspaper at him, opened to the article on the German art show. Similar articles appeared in the morning editions of
Le
Monde
and
L’Express
that Michel had bought that morning.

Marc seized the paper. His face contorted in pain as he looked at the black-bordered photo of the work he had painted so many years ago. It was a painting that he especially loved because it was his second rendition of the portrait of the bearded rabbi. The first one had been among the many canvases he had completed before the outbreak of the Great War, abandoned when he was forced to race back to Russia, and never reclaimed. He had re-created the portrait, calling it
The
Yellow
Rabbi
, because of the phosphine tone that defined the tortured face. The color symbolized his own vanished world, which he had rescued from oblivion by the power of his brush and the intensity of his imagination.

“It would seem that this poor painting, my unfortunate rabbi, is ill-fated. I am told that the first portrait hangs in the dining room of a Nazi financial adviser. I wonder that it does not disturb him to eat his dinner beneath the gaze of a rabbinic sage. But then I suppose he never bothers to look up at it. It is enough that he owns it. And now my
Yellow
Rabbi
has been kidnapped from the Mannheim Museum and vilified by that vicious little Austrian who thinks he will rule the world. It is said that he, Hitler, that fascist devil, is himself a failed painter, and yet that evil mediocrity dares to call the work of Marc Chagall degenerate?”

His voice thundered into fury. He sliced the air with his paintbrush as though it were a rapier with which he could pierce hatred and ignorance. Blood-colored drops spackled the floor.

“History will judge who is the degenerate, Adolf Hitler or Marc Chagall. Adolf Hitler or Pablo Picasso. Adolf Hitler or Henri Matisse. It will be no contest,” he shouted. “But meanwhile, we suffer.”

“It is only a painting,” Ida said. “And perhaps it is fortunate that it should receive such attention. It is a sign to us, a warning. We know that you are in great danger, that you will surely be a target when the Nazis invade France. Your life, our lives, are more important than any painting. We must leave Europe, Papa. Our departure must be arranged as soon as possible.”

She held the morning papers out to him, open to the descriptions of the Munich art show. Marc sat down heavily and read each article, a bitter smile playing at his lips as he turned the pages.

“I see that I am in excellent company. The Spaniard is also a degenerate. Also Mondrian. And Grosz. Grosz and I share a special distinction. We are both Jewish and degenerate. We are indeed blessed. I must call and congratulate him,” he murmured. He shrugged and tossed the newspapers aside.

“Papa, don’t make light of this. The situation is urgent. We must try to get visas to the United States, to Cuba, to Argentina, to Palestine. Anywhere.”

Her voice trembled. It was her father who had monitored Hitler’s rise to power, yet he refused to understand his terrible vulnerability and their own.

Marc strode to the window and pulled back the draperies. Sunlight flooded the room, and he leaned forward and looked out at the broad plaza. At its center, the French tricolor, hoisted on a tall white flagpole, fluttered in a gentle wind.

“I do not see a swastika flying there,” he said.

“Not yet,” Michel said grimly. “Give the Nazis a few weeks, a few months. They are only biding their time, and then the swastika will fly over the Arc de Triomphe itself.”

“And you, of course, have a crystal ball, Michel,” Marc retorted caustically. He turned to his daughter. “You know, Ida, if I were to actually consider leaving France, I would not choose to go to America. No. I would return to my motherland, to Russia.”

She stared at him in disbelief.

“You cannot mean that. You know what happened to your friend Gorky when he returned to that so-called Mother Russia. He was murdered. And so was your teacher, Yuri Pen. You yourself read André Gide’s report of his trip to Moscow. Although he is a communist, he warned against the evil of Stalin’s regime. How could you even contemplate returning to such a country?” Her eyes blazed with indignation.

“Gide, André Gide,” he said dismissively. “How can a Frenchman, a writer, understand the Russian mind, the Russian heart? Ah, my Ida, I have such longings, such yearnings. If only I could see the Western Dvina River again. When we were in Vilna two years ago, your mother and I, we were so very close to Vitebsk. I felt like the Moshe, the Moses of our Torah. I was so close to my promised land and yet I could not enter it.”

Ida laughed harshly. “But of course you know that although your parents named you Moshe, you chose to be Marc. Vitebsk is gone. You live in Paris. Today’s Russia, the Russia of Stalin and his thugs, is not your promised land. The only land that can offer you any promise of survival is the United States. You must stop denying what is happening in the world you live in. You are neither Russian nor French. Paris is not Mount Nebo from which Moses looked down on the promised land. You and
Mamochka
are stateless Jews, without passports, without
cartes
d’identité
. You know how dangerous that is, especially now. We have to act at once. There are letters to be written, people to be contacted. Do not waste any more time with your fantasies.
Assez
. Enough.”

He stared at her in shocked disbelief. How dare she speak to him in such a tone? He stood immobile, his anger matching her own, his face frozen, his eyes narrowed into slits of glacial blue.

“Do you really think that they will dare to threaten Marc Chagall?” he asked arrogantly.

Ida stared at him, her face flushed with rage. Michel placed a restraining hand on her shoulder, but her fury would not be contained. She seized the scattered newspapers, ripped them into shreds, and flung them at her father. The ribbons of newsprint fell to the floor, but the black-bordered photograph of
The
Yellow
Rabbi
remained intact and rested at his feet.

“Your question should be ‘When will they threaten Marc Chagall?’ And then ‘Will they kill Marc Chagall or send him to a concentration camp?’” she hissed. “Wake up,
Papochka
. Wake up before it is too late.”

Michel took her arm, and together, they left the room.

One season followed another. Paris rested beneath blankets of snow, then awakened to the fragrance of spring and the budding blossoms of the trees that lined the broad avenues. The air glowed golden in the summer sunlight and then, too swiftly, the autumn sky was darkened by the moody cobalt of
l’heure bleue
, the twilight hour. Ida barely took note of the changing clime. She sat at her desk hour after hour, day after day, and wrote letters, always meticulous in her phrasing. She was careful. She wrote and rewrote. She knew she must not appear to be desperate, that she must not appear to be pleading. But she was desperate. And she was pleading. The letters went to the friends she had made in England, to influential art critics, to Lord and Lady Clerk, to the English Rothschilds who had enthused over her father’s work at the Leicester Galleries, and to the French Rothschilds who had purchased more than one canvas from the Ambroise Vollard gallery in Paris.

She sent an urgent letter to the Reinhardt Galleries in New York, which had hosted Marc’s first American exhibition. She wrote to Solomon Guggenheim, who had purchased her father’s work and for whom she had arranged generous reductions in price. Might she expect such generosity to be reciprocated for the family of the artist whose work hung in his home? Mr. Guggenheim, of course, had read accounts of the Nazi Degenerate Art Show in Munich and knew how vulnerable her father would be in the event of a German invasion of France. Surely he would help an artist he admired who was also his coreligionist? She was careful not to use the word “Jew.”

She wrote to Eric Cohen, the owner of the Goodman’s Matzo Company, because she knew he was a collector with great interest in her father’s paintings as well as a committed Jew. She complimented him on his taste in art. His collection was receiving recognition. How wonderful it would be if the Chagalls could come to America and Mr. Cohen could meet her father. This could happen if he somehow might manage to expedite their entry into the United States.

Her letters received polite replies. Lord and Lady Clerk, writing separately, assured her that her anxiety was unfounded. The ambassador wrote that Mr. Chamberlain himself, their astute prime minister, had assured them that he had met with Mr. Hitler, who had promised that the Sudetenland would be his last territorial claim in Europe. Lady Clerk wrote in her delicate hand, on notepaper embossed with the family’s crest, that the prime minister was absolutely certain there would be peace. “We have complete faith in Mr. Chamberlain. Do not fret, dear Ida,” she added.

But Ida did fret. The replies to her appeals were discouraging. Solomon Guggenheim was circumspect. He assumed that Ida knew that the American government would not relax its quota restrictions, that absolutely no exceptions would be made. He, as well as other influential American Jews, thought it was important that their community not be overly visible in their efforts on behalf of the Jews of Europe. Any hint of partiality might invoke an anti-Semitic reaction, and American Jews also had their problems.

“We don’t want the people of the United States to feel that the Jews have pushed them into war, which is something that Charles Lindbergh and his ‘America First’ movement are already saying,” he wrote. He added that he hoped the money he had paid for his Chagall acquisitions had been wisely invested.

Ida had, in fact, deposited his substantial check into her father’s account at the Royal Bank of Scotland. She did not share this information with Solomon Guggenheim but wrote a polite reply and asked him if he could think of any influential non-Jewish Americans to whom she might turn for help. She remembered then that Guggenheim, that respectable German Jewish millionaire, had a mistress, Hilla Rebay, an artist her parents had known when they lived in Berlin and who had once visited their family in Paris. The day had been warm and they had gathered in the garden, where Bella served tea from a samovar and Hilla Rebay had talked and laughed. It was her musical and generous laugh Ida remembered. She found Hilla Rebay’s address among her father’s papers and wrote her a letter, asking if she could use her influence with Guggenheim to help her parents. She expected no answer, and none arrived.

Eric Cohen, however, replied cryptically that there was a plan under consideration that would aid notable artists and intellectuals, her father among them. Unlike Lady Clerk, he did not advise her “not to fret.”

“We are working with the State Department and have organized a distinguished committee. We will be in touch,” he promised, and Ida understood that he feared to be more explicit lest his letter be intercepted.

She wrote to Pierre Matisse, Henri Matisse’s son who had opened a gallery in New York and offered to represent her father in that city. He was slightly more encouraging. He had heard there was an unofficial group charged with considering the plight of “special cases.” Given his talent and achievements, Marc Chagall would surely be considered such a special case. He wrote regretfully that it was not politic for him to be more specific. She assumed that he referred to the “committee” Eric Cohen had hinted at and that he too feared censorship.

Only slightly reassured, she intensified her efforts. Michel often returned home to find her still seated at her desk, her fingers stained with ink, her face pale, her bright hair flowing about her shoulders because she could not be bothered to put it up.

Michel himself spent long hours pounding the pavements of Paris, wandering from embassy to embassy, standing in one line after another. Masha, his mother, worried that his shoes would wear out. She glued cardboard to the leather soles, darned his socks, and patched the sleeves of his jackets.

Diminutive Masha Rapaport had, through the years, worried and worked her family into survival. She had worried their way out of Russia to Germany and then from Germany to Paris. She had worried Michel into law school. Masha worried her way through the present. She wrapped sandwiches for Michel and filled thermoses with hot tea to sustain him as he made his rounds.

His marriage had surprised her, but it had not disappointed. She recognized Ida’s energy and ingenuity. The Chagalls lived in a world apart from her own, and she wasted little time thinking about Bella and Marc. It was Ida who was important. She recognized her determination and saw her as a dependable accomplice in desperate times.

The Rapaports went to their little shop in Le Marais each day. There was little business. The shelves were depleted, and they did not order new stock. Their suitcases were packed, their small savings account closed, their few pieces of jewelry sewn into the hems of their winter coats. They would be ready to leave when the British issued their visas to Palestine. They were veterans of flight, cognoscenti of survival.

Michel was persistent. He visited and revisited the American embassy on the avenue Gabriel, veered off to the New Zealand embassy on rue Léonard de Vinci, turned the corner to the consulate of Costa Rica, and stood in line in front of the offices of the Dominican Republic.
Where
was
the
Dominican
Republic?
he wondered. South America? Central America? It made no difference. It was far from Germany. He filled out visa applications for Marc and Bella, for Ida and himself, and for his parents, although he knew they would not be dissuaded from their hopes for Palestine. He met with bored embassy bureaucrats who reviewed his papers and offered little hope. He confronted hostile clerks who barely looked up when he stood at their counters. There were days when he thought himself invisible and days when he wished that were true. But he was tenacious. Exhausted when he returned to their little apartment, he nevertheless insisted that Ida leave her desk, join him for an aperitif, and listen to the jokes he had heard in one line or another.

A Jew applied to the American embassy for a visa and was told that the quota was filled but there might be places in five years’ time. “Should I come in the morning or the afternoon?” the applicant asked.

Ida laughed obediently.

Another Jew went to a relief agency where an official spun a globe and advised that there were no visas for Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, or any South American country, then asked if the applicant had any other requests. “Yes,” was the answer. “Perhaps you can find another globe.”

Ida listened, but she had used up that day’s ration of laughter.

She was newly intent on obtaining French citizenship for her parents. She besieged every friend and acquaintance in Paris to assist her. Letters were written; calls were made. André Malraux interceded with various ministers, but reports drifted back to Ida that the French government was hesitant because Marc had served as a commissar of art in Vitebsk. It did not seem to matter that he had been ejected from that very dubious position and was now hated by the Soviets.

She decided on another tactic. Dousing herself in perfume, she dressed in a smart black suit and a white silk blouse that revealed her rosy cleavage. With her hair twisted into an elegant chignon, a single flame-colored curl kissing her neck, she made her way to the Ministry of the Interior and into the office of a senior deputy. She smiled her most brilliant smile, proffered her parents’ dossiers, and asked in the gentlest of tones how French citizenship could be denied to a Russian émigré who was persona non grata in the land of his birth. Her father had been stripped of his commission, and he was unwelcome in Russia.

“This is ridiculous,
n’est-ce pas
? You, who are so discerning, so sensitive, can see that such a position is ridiculous, monsieur,” she told the pale, weak-chinned bureaucrat, inviting his agreement, his complicity. She leaned forward, moved closer, and brushed his hand with her own. “How sad that you and I must meet in such a place,” she said. “I can feel that you are so simpatico. Perhaps we can meet for a tisane.”

He blushed. He nodded.

She smiled again; she would seduce him into compliance.

“I will see to it, madame,” he said. “Just leave your parents’ file with me.”

He did see to it. Marc and Bella became naturalized citizens. Marc showed Ida his passport.

“It is issued to Moise Chagall,” he said disconsolately.

“That should please you,” Ida teased. “You are Moshe once again, looking across into your promised land.”

She saw the displeasure that flickered across his face. He did not want to be known as Moshe or Moise, the Jewish artist whose surname, written in the Hebrew letters
sin, gimel, lamed
, could also be read as Siegel. He was not Moshe Siegel. He was, and always would be, Marc Chagall,
un
artiste
Parisien
.

But the names on the passports were unimportant. They were valid documents to be held in readiness as the news grew more and more ominous. On a cold November night, as Parisians sat in cafés blue with cigarette smoke, sipped their glasses of
vin
blanc
, and listened to the wistful voice of Edith Piaf, the war against the Jews exploded into violence in Germany.

Fires burned, glass was shattered, and pools of blood filled the streets. Parisians read the morning edition of
Le
Monde
in disbelief, unable to comprehend the brutality taking place in the land that bordered their own. The newspaper trembled in their hands and they whispered the dreaded words:
La
nuit
de
cristal
fracassant. The night of breaking glass. Kristallnacht.
The windows of Jewish shops, synagogues, and homes were shattered, Jewish-owned buildings were burned to the ground, and boys wearing the uniforms of Hitler Youth danced around bonfires, feeding the flames with Torah scrolls and holy texts snatched from synagogues.

Parisians, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, shuddered. The cafés and restaurants of Le Marais and Montmartre were empty that evening, and no one came to the Chagall home on the Trocadéro. The inevitable could no longer be denied. The citizens of the City of Light knew that darkness was imminent and that they would soon be confronted by their own nights of shattered windows and blazing fires. Marc slept with their passports and
cartes
d’identité
beneath his pillow. Ida sent telegrams, urgent pleas for help that fell soundlessly onto desks in London and New York. She received no replies.

Marc stopped reading the newspapers, stopped listening to the radio. He spent hours in his studio, painting feverishly.

“Your father is like Nero,” Michel said sarcastically as he and Ida left her parents’ home one night and walked through the dark and silent streets of the city. “He paints while Europe burns.”

“What would you have him do?” Ida asked angrily.

“Clearly he doesn’t have to do anything. You and I do everything for him,” Michel replied drily.

Ida stared at him. She knew Michel resented her involvement with her father, but she had not realized the toxicity of his resentment. She stood very still for a moment and then lifted her face to his and kissed him on the lips. He held her close and saw that her eyes were closed. He understood that her kiss was an apology of a kind.

“It’s all right, Ida,” he said, all bitterness drained from his voice.

He took her arm, and they continued on their way, their footsteps echoing down the deserted streets.

It was at last decided that Marc and Bella would leave Paris. Ida found a house in the Loire Valley offered for rent by a taciturn farmer named Jacques LaSalle. Within weeks, it was clear that Monsieur LaSalle resented their presence.

“It appears that in his book, I have committed two crimes,” Marc complained to Ida in a hastily scribbled letter. “I am both a Jew and an artist.
Tant
pis.
More’s the pity. He is more than happy to take my money. It seems that the francs I give him for the exorbitant rent he charges us have not been tainted by either my occupation or my religion.”

“Pay him no mind,” Ida wrote back. “Try not to alienate him.”