Bridal Chair (16 page)

“I hope so. But how do I make certain of that? Should I try to speak to this Varian Fry?” Michel asked. He deferred to Alma’s expertise. She clearly knew how to charm her way through a diplomatic maze. But it was Franz Werfel who answered him.

“To make direct contact with Varian Fry will endanger him. You must wait. And hope. That is all any of us can do. We are prisoners of the
pagaille
, this terrible chaos in which we live. But I am optimistic. I am certain that your family will soon hear either from Mr. Fry or Mr. Bingham,” he said. “They will know when and how to contact you when the time is ripe. You must rely on them as Alma and I do.”

He drained his glass, licked his lips, and helped his wife rise from her seat.

“
Bonne
chance
, Michel. Our good wishes to your loved ones. Perhaps we will meet in happier times, in a happier place.”

Michel lowered his head respectfully, gratefully. “I hope so,” he said.

Supporting each other, the world-famous writer and his wife, whose beauty had entranced geniuses, made their way slowly out of the café.

He glanced at the table where Varian Fry had been seated. The American had left. His carefully folded newspaper remained on the table next to his empty glass.

Michel too left the café, aware of the waiter who watched him as he crossed the road. He bought a bottle of Pernod for Marc and then impulsively entered a small boutique on the boulevard d’Athènes where he purchased a delicate, sea-green silk scarf for Ida. It was pointless, he knew, to return to Mont-Redon and stand in the line of the desperate.

He was more lighthearted than he had been for months as he traveled home to Gordes. Ida had been right. His journey had not been futile. Nothing had been lost and, however serendipitously, there had been a gain. The meeting with the Werfels had offered him a modicum of hope. “
Toujour
l’espérance
,” the weary young mother on the bus had murmured. He appropriated the word that sustained her.
Tivkah. Espérance.
He smiled. Hope. That was the gift he would bring to his Ida, that and the beautiful sea-green scarf. He imagined the gossamer fabric draped about her graceful shoulders, capped by her thick and radiant hair.

Michel told Ida about Varian Fry, and she spoke of him to Marc.

“Varian Fry? I do not know the name. Who is this Varian Fry?” Marc asked dismissively as he sat in the garden sipping the Pernod, which he had accepted only after glancing contemptuously at the label.

“He is a man who may help us get to the United States,” Ida said. “Michel told you what the Werfels said. And my friend Elsa has written me about him.”

“Ah yes, Elsa. Your doctor friend in New York whose advice was sadly lacking when you needed it,” Marc replied sullenly and refilled his glass.

“Her advice was, in fact, excellent then,” Ida replied coldly.

It infuriated her that Marc blamed the blameless Elsa but never expressed regret for his own arbitrary behavior, nor did he acknowledge any error. Other men made mistakes, but Marc Chagall was never wrong.

“And it is excellent now,” she continued. “She told me what she knew about this Mr. Fry. He is a gentile, the son of a very distinguished family, a graduate of Harvard University. He was a journalist, and when an assignment took him to Germany, he became aware of the situation there.”

“The situation?” Marc asked sarcastically. “Is that what your friend Elsa, so safe in America, calls the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe? A ‘situation’?”

He snorted derisively. His mouth leaked a milky driblet of Pernod, and Bella, who sat between them, wiped it away, patting his lips as though he were a small boy.

Ida ignored him.

“Elsa writes that he is an idealist, impelled to do what he can to help certain individuals escape Nazi Europe and reach America. Elsa’s husband, André, is the physician at a private girls’ school where Mr. Fry’s wife teaches, and he was able to speak to her about our family. Mrs. Fry promised to write to her husband about us. Given that connection and the intervention of Mr. Barr at the Museum of Modern Art, I think Varian Fry will do what he can to help us.”

“We do not trust idealistic gentiles,” Marc retorted. “Bella, do you believe that an American goy really wants to help a Jewish artist?”

Bella shrugged indifferently. “Goy, Jew, trust him, trust him not,” she said, her voice so faint that Ida could barely hear her. “It is of no importance to me. This Mr. Fry may say what he will, do what he will. I will never leave France. I will never leave Europe. I know that if I go to the United States, I will die.” She lowered her head and lifted her arms in despair; the long, loose sleeves of her white gown fluttered like the wings of a pale and wounded bird.

“Do not trouble yourself,
Mamochka
,” Ida said. “We have not yet heard from Mr. Varian Fry. There is no need for you to come to a decision.”

“I doubt that we will ever hear from your too-righteous gentile,” Marc added sourly.

Ida did not argue. She understood that her parents had been conditioned to suspect and distrust strangers. They were prisoners of their own chronicle of despair, always anticipating betrayal. She poured her father another drink and draped a shawl about her mother’s shoulders, grateful that she had avoided the contagion of the fear and pessimism that haunted and enfeebled them. She would not abandon the last vestiges of trust and hope.

That trust and hope did not betray her. A week later, a letter arrived from Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, offering to host an exhibition of Marc’s work.

Marc tossed it aside. “How does Mr. Barr imagine that I might arrive at such an exhibition? How does he imagine that my paintings will be transported to New York? This is a foolish letter, a foolish invitation.”

“No, Papa,” Ida said firmly. “Mr. Barr is not naive. He knows that you are in danger. This is a letter that you can show to the French authorities. It gives them an excuse to offer you a visa.” She took the letter from him and placed it in a clean white folder on which she carefully printed the words “Exit Documents.”

“You are being unduly optimistic,” Marc said. “A letter of invitation to an exhibition that will never take place is certainly not a document of any value.”

Ida did not reply. Weeks later, as a balmy autumn drifted into the first chilly days of winter, there was another letter to be added to her folder. It was from Varian Fry, who wrote that he was anxious to be of assistance to the Chagalls. His phrasing was circumspect.

“Mr. Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, is anxious to welcome you to New York,” he wrote. “Perhaps you have already received a letter of invitation from him.”

Ida recognized that this was his way of telling Marc that there was a coordinated effort in progress, a confederacy of individuals committed to helping the Chagalls escape from France. She was newly optimistic.

“Papa, Varian Fry can be of great help to us. He can arrange visas to the United States and exit visas from France,” she said urgently, gripping the precious letter. “He has already assisted many of our friends. Max Ernst and Jacques Lipchitz have accepted his help.”

Letters had arrived from friends in Paris, telling her as much in the cryptic language of the endangered.

Marc stared at her impassively. “And I know that André Gide and Henri Matisse have refused it,” he retorted. “My friends in Paris also keep me well informed.”

“Gide and Matisse are not Jewish,” Michel reminded him. “They are not in the same danger as you and Bella, as Ernst and Lipchitz.”

Marc spat out his rebuttal, his face flushed with anger. “Jacques Lipchitz and Max Ernst are not Marc Chagall. They do not have my fame or prestige to protect them,” he insisted. “I am safe here in Gordes. No one has threatened me. If I leave now, the canvases I have been working on will remain unfinished.”

“And if you do not leave, the Vichy police arrest you, and you will not live to finish them,” Ida said harshly. “Even the great Marc Chagall will be unable to paint in a concentration camp, and certainly he will not be able to paint from beyond the grave. There are no studios in the world to come.”

“Ida, how dare you speak to your father like that?” Bella asked, her voice quivering, but Ida strode out of the room, Michel trailing after her.

Marc wrote to Varian Fry, curtly thanking him for his efforts.

“But I am not ready to leave France. It is, you know, my adopted country,” he added. “I am a citizen of the Republic.”

Ida grimaced as she showed his note to Michel. “He may think that he is a son of France,” she said bitterly. “He does not realize that the Vichy government of his France has disowned him.”

“He is not alone,” Michel replied. “All the Jews of Europe are orphans now. Our adoptions have been rescinded by the order of Adolf Hitler and Marshal Pétain.”

Ida copied her father’s reply to Varian Fry and added it to her file.

Weeks passed. The news grew more and more ominous. The Vichy government declared Jews “a foreign people” and passed anti-Semitic legislation. As had happened in Germany, Jews were dismissed from government service and had to register with local authorities. Jewish-owned businesses were to be placed in the hands of trustees. Gentiles were forbidden to accept employment from Jews. Jeanne, the buxom village girl who had worked in the Chagall household for months, sent her small brother to collect the wages that were due her. The boy explained that her parents had forbidden her to work for Jews. It would be breaking the law.

“
Whose
law?” Ida asked harshly, but the boy dashed away, clutching the handful of francs she had given him without bothering to count them.

There were rumors of impending deportations and even darker rumors that the concentration camps were actually death camps. Marc read the papers with trembling hands. Bella awakened in the night, her face wet with tears. They could no longer deny the danger that threatened them.

Ida’s file of exit documents grew. In January she added a letter from Varian Fry confirming that he had obtained visas to the United States for both Marc and Bella using the invitation from the Museum of Modern Art as a pretext.

“Wonderful news,
Maman
,” Ida exulted, disguising her disappointment that there was no mention of herself and Michel.

“It is not wonderful,” Bella replied morosely. “And we will not leave France unless we have reentry visas. France is our home.”

Marc nodded in agreement.

Michel glared as they swept out of the room.

“They are mad, both of them,” he said angrily. “My own parents cannot even hope for American visas, and King Marc and Queen Bella, like spoiled children, dare to negotiate, to make demands. Do they really think that they can get their way in all things? They cannot rule governments as they ruled us.”

Ida remained silent. Michel had never before spoken so harshly of her father’s imperious edicts, but for the first time, she did not argue with him. Did he regret that they had obeyed Marc and married? Did she? Of course, their years together had not been easy. Their marriage had been strangled by history, by the advent of the war, by their obligations to their parents. They had been separated and reunited. Resentments had mounted, hers and his, unarticulated and unreconciled. And yet they were together, husband and wife, and they cared for each other. They would sort it all out at another time, in another place. But of course, that no longer mattered. Not now, when it was their very survival that absorbed them.

She shook her head wearily, exhausted by the convergence of conflicting thoughts, conflicting feelings. That night, as though to atone for them, she draped the sea-green silk scarf over her naked shoulders, but Michel sat up late reading and she fell asleep at last, the scarf lost among the bedclothes.

The very next day, she accompanied Marc to Avignon where he delivered a letter to the prefect of Vaucluse, stating that since entering France in 1910, he had considered himself a French citizen and, even more importantly, a French painter. He wanted that citizenship legally affirmed so that if he left the country, he had the right to reentry. He added that his wife, also a lover of France, was his partner and had worked with him on his exhibitions, and she wanted similar reassurances.

It did not surprise Ida that his plea was received without comment. She had dressed carefully for the visit, brushed her hair so that it fell about her carefully made-up face in coppery folds. She wore a white sweater that hugged her breasts; she was prepared to seduce the prefect into compliance. Seated behind his ornate desk, pomade glinting on his carefully trained black mustache and his black hair, a tiny gold swastika pinned to the lapel of his dark jacket, he did not raise his eyes from the documents spread before him. He did not look at Ida. The prefect of Vaucluse could not and would not concern himself with the plight of the artist and his wife, whose French citizenship had already been rescinded. The daughter’s beauty did not interest him. They were Jews, and therefore “foreign people.”

“I regret that I cannot offer you any such assurances,” he said stiffly. “My government does not consider you and your wife to be citizens of France.”

Ida did not bother to glare at him as they left. She did, however, place a copy of Marc’s petition for the reentry visa in her exit file.

A week later, Varian Fry wrote of his intention to visit the Chagalls. Harry Bingham of the American consulate in Marseilles, who collected contemporary art and admired Marc’s work, would accompany him. Ida understood their hidden message, coded to deceive the Vichy censors. She wrote in reply that the Chagalls looked forward to the visit. Mr. Bingham might be particularly interested in her father’s series of crucifixion paintings.

* * *

Varian Fry and Harry Bingham arrived in a limousine on a brisk March day, and the streets of sleepy Gordes erupted in excitement. The villagers left their shops and workplaces and stood beside children on the rutted curbsides to stare at the enormous car. Housewives emerged holding brooms and dust mops and clustered in doorways, their hands shading their eyes against the pale sunlight as the driver negotiated the narrow roadways. Curiosity abounded.

“Who could be in the car?”

“Men of importance, probably Americans.”

“But they might be officials from Vichy. Possibly even Marshal Pétain himself.”

“
Non
. The car had the license plates awarded to
les
diplomates
.”

The car had passed, leaving clouds of dust in its wake, and finally a small boy reported that it had stopped at the former convent school where
l’artiste juif
lived with his family. The Americans had carried baskets of food and wine into the building.

“Meat, cheese, baguettes,” the child announced. “Fruits, wine.” His list grew longer as the afternoon wore on and his listeners drifted away.

The villagers shook their heads and muttered angrily to each other. Of course, the home of
les
juifs
would be the destination of the Americans. Jews had connections, contacts. It had been said that the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, was himself a Jew. Perhaps what the Germans and Pétain were saying was true. Jews wanted to control the entire world. It was the Rothschilds’ fault that the American stock market had failed, that the Bourse was unstable.

Ida greeted Varian Fry and Harry Bingham, and Michel showed them to the best bedroom in the house, a sunny room that overlooked the garden. Ida rushed into her father’s studio to tell him that their guests had arrived, but Marc did not move from his easel. He wiped his brush on his creased and faded pants, rolled up the sleeves of his tattered dark blue shirt, and concentrated on finishing the halo about the head of yet another crucified Jesus.

“My suffering Jew,” he muttered as he sprayed a fixative across the gleaming wet paint.

He shuffled back from the canvas and stared at it, then shrugged and followed Ida into the house.

“Perhaps you should put on a clean shirt, a jacket,” she suggested.

“I am who I am,” he retorted. “Marc Chagall has no need to impress American bureaucrats.” He did, however, thrust his fingers through his mass of graying curls, arranging them so that they fell becomingly above his ears. His vanity, as always, both amused and irritated Ida.