Bridal Chair (13 page)

“This is the Fontaine Basse quarter,” he muttered at last, driving more slowly and coming to a halt before a large, rectangular-shaped stone building. He consulted the address she had given him and turned to look at her.

“There must be a mistake, madame. Surely your parents would not live here. It was once a school run by the nuns. My own sister studied there. It’s been deserted for many years. The rooms are huge and very difficult to heat. My poor sister shivered throughout her lessons. And the windows are large and there are many of them. The holy sisters spent hours and hours cleaning them. Who would want such rooms, such windows? You must have mistaken the address.”

“My father may rent it for a short time,” Ida replied. “He is an artist and needed room for his paintings until we make other arrangements.”

The words soured her mouth. What other arrangements could they make? She paid the fare and added a very large tip.

“You see, monsieur,” she said as he looked at the generous franc notes in surprise, “we are a generous people,
les
juifs
.”

He cringed and helped her remove her bags. “Of course. I meant no harm, madame.”

“I understand. No one means any harm,” she said wearily.

She did not knock but thrust the heavy door wide open so that sunlight flooded the room. Bella and Marc, startled by the sudden radiance, wheeled about and rushed to greet her. Their faces were aglow, their voices strong.

“Idotchka. How wonderful that you are here. Isn’t this marvelous? So much room, such magnificent light. It is a miracle that we found such a wonderful place,” Marc said excitedly.

He embraced her with new strength.

Bella, all lassitude banished, kissed her on both cheeks. She wore the uniform of their many moves. Ida recognized the familiar coverall she always wore to unpack, the faded scarf that covered her dark hair.

“
Ma
chérie
. My darling. Such a surprise we have prepared for you. Come to the window. Look at what a view we have,” she exclaimed, pulling Ida across the room.

She brandished a feather duster as though it were a scepter, waving it about the huge, many-windowed room; she was the queen of her newly claimed domestic kingdom. No longer a lodger, she once again had a home. Ida knew that her mother was happiest when she created an attractive and welcoming domestic fortress over which she had dominance. The world around her might fall into chaos, but her home would be orderly and filled with beauty.

She led Ida to a wide open window, its panes glinting in the afternoon sunlight. Ida stared out at fields covered with lavender, the fragrance of the delicate blossoms suffusing the room. She looked up and saw the dramatic outcroppings of mica-silvered rocks that jutted from the sky-hugging hills of the Vaucluse range.

“Yes. The space is wonderful,” she agreed. “And the view is marvelous. I can see why you rented it.”

Her father looked at her in surprise. “But we didn’t rent it. It was not available to lease. We bought it.”

“You bought it?”

She was incredulous. How could her parents buy property in a country they would soon be forced to flee? This was a time to buy jewels and diamonds, portable and concealable, baubles that could be traded for currency, used for bribes, offered to counterfeiters in exchange for false papers. Jews did not buy houses they might have to leave, clutching keys to doors they would never again open. Her parents, like Michel’s mother, had keys to abandoned homes and studios in Vitebsk and Berlin, in Paris and Montchauvet. And now there would be keys to a convent school in Gordes. She stared at them, flushed with anger.

“Yes, of course, we bought it,” Marc said dismissively. “Why not? We both loved this building. There is room to store all my paintings and I have a wonderful studio. And you haven’t seen all the rooms. There is a suite for you and Michel. We thought you would be pleased.”

Ida struggled to keep her voice calm, to contain her fury. “What did you pay for it?” she asked, already fearing the answer.

He walked over to a cluttered desk and rummaged through a pile of papers. “I have it right here. One moment. Ah, this is the deed. Do you want to see the deed?”

“No. I want to know how much you paid for it,” she repeated.

“Wait. I will find it. The receipt.” He fumbled through the papers, ignoring those that fluttered to the floor. Invoices were mingled with correspondence, newspaper clippings with scrawled shopping lists. He would, as always, rely on her to put them in order, she thought bitterly. She was, after all, both secretary and bookkeeper.

“All right,” he muttered, “I can’t find the bill of sale. But I entered the payment in the register of the checkbook just as you always ask me to do.”

He beamed at her like a small boy anticipating congratulations for doing the right thing and flourished a leather-bound checkbook. Her heart sank as she recognized the scarlet insignia of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Of course, she had left both the bankbook and the checkbook with him. It had never occurred to her that he would look at it, and certainly she had never imagined that he would write a check against their account. She paid their bills and balanced their accounts. Marc claimed indifference to money. His art consumed him. He had no time to deal with financial trivia.

Ida was a skilled bookkeeper. She kept careful records, studied and calculated bank statements. She knew exactly the amount that had been on deposit in Edinburgh, which included the receipts from the Leicester Gallery exhibition, the Guggenheim purchase, and remittances from the Vollard sales. She knew that there was enough sterling on deposit to cover their passage and the three-thousand-dollar bond each of them would need to obtain American visas. That money was their only insurance, their guarantee of survival.

She took the checkbook from him with trembling hands and studied the entry of the check he had written to an estate agent in Avignon to cover the purchase of the abandoned Catholic school. It was in the amount of six thousand, seven hundred English pounds. Her breath came in tortured gasps, and vomit soured her mouth. She sat down and gripped the arms of the chair, a new chair, she realized, upholstered in red velvet. More money had gone for the purchase of furnishings. She smiled bitterly and stroked the fabric. What would her father do with this red velvet chair when he had to flee Gordes? She knew the answer. He would, of course, leave it behind. He had the habit of leaving things behind. Things and people. Furniture languished in storage in Paris, in Passy, and in Berlin. There were his sisters in Vitebsk, his teachers and friends in St. Petersburg and Berlin, all left behind, their addresses unknown.

She sighed deeply. She should not have left the checkbook with him. She knew that despite his professed indifference to money, he always bought what he wanted, spending lavishly on his own wardrobe and on Bella’s, on furnishings and travel. His money was not limited to material purchases. And money was his weapon, his emotional cudgel. She remembered how he had bought her compliance to the abortion and to her marriage by threatening to deny her financial support.

She handled the sales of his paintings, but although he did not question her judgment, he always quizzed her with studied disinterest about the prices she had agreed to and the amount of her own commission.

“I am making you a rich woman, Idotchka,” he had said more than once with wry affection.

She saw with new clarity that his self-proclaimed indifference to money was a feint. He had always been aware of the exact amount on deposit in Scotland and had not hesitated to use it to buy the property in Gordes and to furnish it with his usual extravagance.

Ida stared hard at him, as though seeing him for the first time. He averted his eyes from her penetrating gaze, and Bella hurried to his side and placed her hand protectively on his shoulder.

“Why are you so upset, Ida?” he asked impatiently. “You see how much this house has meant to your mother. And it was my money, after all.”

“Of course it was your money,” she replied. “I should have thought that you would want to use your money to protect
Mamochka
, to protect me, to protect Michel and perhaps his parents. Now we are without funds for bonds if our visas to America are, by some miracle, granted, no money to pay our passage. You have wasted it all on this house, on this abandoned school.”

She waved her arms and looked around the room, dimly lit because a storm was gathering in the Vaucluse hills.

“We don’t need visas,” he retorted. “No one will arrest Marc Chagall. No one will dare. We will not have to leave France. We will be protected here. We are citizens of France.”

“Other so-called citizens of France, artists and writers as famous as you believe yourself to be, have already left or are making plans to leave or to find hiding places. Chaim Soutine has left Paris. Picasso told me that Gertrude Stein and her friend Alice are gone. Max Ernst, Franz and Alma Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, even Golo Mann, Thomas Mann’s own son—all of them are seeking refuge, all of them understand the danger. If Golo, the son of a Nobel Laureate, doesn’t believe that his family’s fame will protect him, you think we will be safe because you are the great Marc Chagall? How could you have gambled away our survival?” she asked bitterly.

“There is still money,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Your own account is still intact.”

“The funds from what you call ‘my own account’ have been sustaining us for all these months.” Her voice dripped sarcasm, then rose in anger. “I never thought of that money as ‘mine.’ I thought of it as a family account and I spent it on our family.”

Ida crossed the room and stood before an open window. Rain was already beginning to fall, and she leaned out and allowed the droplets to cool her face, moisten her hair. Her anger dissipated into resignation. She breathed in the sweetened air.

All was not lost. Time was still on their side. The Germans had invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, but France would continue the fight for freedom. Hadn’t Prime Minister Paul Reynaud assured the nation that Paris would not fall? She had memorized the words with which he had charged his people “to be worthy of the grandeur of the hour…to rise to the misfortunes of our country.” Help might yet come from the United States where a committee to assist artists had formed. She had written to Lord Clerk about obtaining British visas. Palestine was a possibility. She turned to her mother and forced a smile. She nodded to her father, a reluctant gesture of forgiveness.

Bella breathed a sigh of relief. She had feared that Marc’s temper and Ida’s fury would strike against each other, like flint against a rock, creating an irrepressible conflagration. That, at least, had been avoided. She kissed Ida and smoothed away the tendrils of damp hair.

“Come, Idotchka. Let me show you the lovely room I have prepared for you,” she said. “It’s so wonderful to think that we own a place of our own, that we are safe in this lovely house.”

Ida followed her into the airy bedroom. She dutifully admired the woven purple coverlet and brightly patterned cushions Bella had placed on her bed.
The
Bridal
Chair
was in place on the whitewashed wall. She stared up at it and then bent to sniff the white roses Bella had placed in a black ceramic vase that rested on the bedside table. The fresh wide-petaled blossoms might have been plucked from the beribboned bridal bouquet of snow-colored roses in her father’s painting of the monochromatic bridal chair that lacked a bride. Bella had placed a silver-framed photograph of Michel on the bureau. Ida studied his thin face, his sad dark eyes.

Where
was
he?
she wondered.
Where
was
her
alpine
lover, her weary husband?

“Thank you,
Mamochka
. The room is beautiful,” she said at last.

There would be no more recriminations. What was done was done. She would find a way; she would contrive a new agenda for survival.

The days in Gordes passed slowly. Ida resumed her letter-writing blitz, focusing on the escalating peril the Chagalls faced. Elsa answered Ida’s letters, although the help she could offer was limited. She and André had a small son and they were both working double shifts at the hospital.

“But, Ida, all your concerns seem to be only for your parents. You must worry about yourself and Michel,” she cautioned.

“Michel and I are young and strong,” Ida wrote in reply. “We will be able to manage. My parents are old and my mother is very fragile. Neither of them has as yet confronted the dangerous reality of their situation, so I must fight for them. I know that I can count on you to help.”

A cryptic letter from Elsa offered hope. André had a patient, a man of considerable wealth, who was active in a committee concerned with aiding artists and writers trapped in Nazi-dominated Europe. There was, Elsa wrote cautiously, reason to be optimistic.

Ida understood that Elsa could not be more specific. The rumors of censorship were well founded. Every envelope that reached the family in Gordes was opened and indifferently resealed. She continued her efforts, her pen tightly clutched, ink staining her cramped fingers.

Marc worked at a furious pace. In the wide-windowed studio, he alternated his tortured depictions of crucifixions with paintings of ripe peaches, jeweled clusters of grapes, plucked and dressed poultry. He countered martyrdom with nourishment, the cruelty of man with the enduring beauty of nature’s bounty.

Bella cooked. The fragrant aroma of simmering soups and stews drifted through the house. Food was still abundant. They ate well, seated at the long refectory table, a convent legacy. A vase of fresh flowers that Bella arranged each morning was always on the sideboard. They were actors on a stage of peaceful domesticity, clicking cutlery against china, filling their wineglasses, talking softly to each other. They did not speak of the war. They did not speak of Michel whose battalion had been posted to a distant garrison, probably along the Somme. Ida prayed for his safety each night and then wondered to whom she was praying. She envied her Uncle Yaakov his perfect faith.

“I am praying to Yaakov’s God,” she told herself.

Each morning, Bella wandered through the peaceful garden, filling her basket with sprigs of lavender that she distributed throughout the house, mingling them with the first roses of the season. The sweet scent wafted through every room, battling the stench of fear leaching through doors and windows.

On a glorious June afternoon, Bella called to Ida from the garden, her voice vibrant with delight. A lilac bush had burst into bloom.

“We have lilacs,” she called. “Wonderful white lilacs. Ida, come at once. You must see them.”

But Ida did not stir from her desk. She sat as though in a stupor, her hand resting on the dial of the radio. As always, she turned on the news hourly, resuming the habit her father had abandoned. On this morning, when lilacs burst into bloom, the broadcaster thundered disaster. German invasion! German assault! Paris, the City of Light, had fallen to the Nazis. Waves of nausea washed over her. She had anticipated the worst, and yet she was unprepared for it.

No,
she thought in despair.
Oh
no. It cannot be. It has not happened.

The news paralyzed her. The unthinkable was an actuality. Even with British support, the French army had surrendered, their resistance even briefer than that of Poland, whom they had so sanctimoniously mocked. Prime Minister Reynaud’s brave and beautiful words had fallen on deaf ears. His people had not, in fact, heeded his plea and risen to the grandeur of the hour. Neither lilacs nor lavender could insulate Marc and Bella Chagall from the dangers that they had refused to acknowledge.

“Ida,” Bella called yet again.

Ida went to the window. She looked up at the sunlit sky and glanced at the lilac bush heavy with alabaster blossoms. The beauty of the day broke her heart. She struggled for breath and then called to Bella, who cradled a bouquet of the lovely flowers.

“Get Papa. Get Papa and both of you come in at once.”

And so they sat together, Marc in the red velvet chair wearing his paint-spattered smock, a streak of carmine paint bloodying his cheek, Bella hugging her white lilacs, and Ida with her ink-stained fingers clasped. In silence, they listened to the terms of the armistice that was clearly not an armistice at all but a humiliating acceptance of defeat. The Nazis would occupy two-thirds of the country. The south-central region would be governed by Marshal Pétain, who was headquartered in Vichy.

“Vichy?” Bella asked in surprise. She knew the town. She had taken the curative waters at the spa there. A beautiful place, a landscape unsuited to war.

“Yes. Vichy,” Ida repeated.

The charade was over. Her parents could no longer ignore the danger of their situation. Picturesque Vichy was now the grim seat of fascism. Every French port except Marseilles was sealed. Ida’s own wary optimism had been misguided. They had, in fact, run out of time. Masha Rapaport had been right. Only a miracle could rescue them. She feared for Michel’s parents. Had they reached the Riviera, which might still provide a brief haven? And what of her Uncle Yaakov’s family trapped in a defeated, Nazi-dominated Paris? She went to the window and stared out at the lilac bush where the innocent blossoms trembled in a gentle breeze.

Hand in hand, Marc and Bella left, closing the door softly behind them.

In her room, Ida lifted the photograph of Michel from her bureau. Where was he now, her soldier husband, her Michel,
ami
and
amant
? Was he alive or dead, free or a prisoner? She glanced at the calendar. She would not soon forget the date. On June 14, 1940, her life as she had known it had ended.

“Michel,” she whispered, and she collapsed onto her bed, his framed portrait heavy upon her breast.