Bridal Chair (20 page)

“Lady Liberty,” Michel said. “We’re in America.” His voice broke. “Idotchka, we are in America.”

She pressed her face against his chest and wept, moistening his shirt with her tears. He held her close, his hand resting on her shining hair. She leaned against him, too faint to support herself, her cheeks burning, her head spinning.

They disembarked and plunged into the turmoil of immigration, answering questions, extending their documents for official scrutiny. The customs officer examined the crates that contained Marc’s paintings and vigorously stamped the import forms.

“Lucky for you this stuff was on deck,” he told her. “Everything that was stored in the hold of that floating coffin they call a ship was waterlogged and rotted. We had to toss it all out.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I was lucky. I was indeed fortunate.”

She marveled at her use of the words. It had been a long time since she had felt herself to be either lucky or fortunate. Her spirits soared.

“Lucky,” she repeated. “Fortunate.”

Michel took her arm and they walked slowly through the gates and plunged into the tumultuous crowd in the arrivals area. Michel’s eyes raked the anxious throng, searching for his in-laws, overcome with bewilderment by the clamor of competing sounds, the sea of faces, the incessant honking of horns, and the shrilling of sirens. He looked frantically about and suddenly heard their tremulous voices, miraculously soaring above the deafening cacophony.

“Ida! Michel!” Marc and Bella were shouting in unison.

Michel waved his hat in the air and called their names again and again. They caught sight of him and battled their way forward, thrusting themselves through one group and then another, as always skillful maneuverers. Marc’s gray curls bobbed up and down.

“See there they are, your mother and father,” Michel told Ida reassuringly.

She turned and trembled with excitement.

“
Mamochka
,
Papochka
!” She rushed toward them and fell into her father’s outstretched arms.

Bella clung to Michel, her face wet with tears. Her hand rested briefly on her daughter’s brow.

“My child, my
zeis
,” she whispered.

Ida smiled wanly, but she did not open her eyes and Marc didn’t release her from his embrace.

Bella gripped Michel’s arm.

“Michel, we are so happy that you are here at last. Was the voyage very difficult? Our Ida looks so tired. You should have seen that she rested more. And what of the paintings, Marc’s paintings? Are they safe? Oh, you don’t know how anxious he has been.”

She spoke breathlessly, punctuating each question with a fierce pinch of his arm that caused Michel to recoil and wrench himself free.

“Yes, Ida is tired,” he replied curtly. “She’s exhausted. We’re both exhausted. But the paintings, the damn paintings are safe.” He willed himself to patience as they organized their baggage and arranged for the storage of the crates and then took a cab that drove through the city.

The Chagalls had established themselves in an apartment on Riverside Drive that overlooked the Hudson River. Ida marveled at how her mother had managed to re-create the ambience of the world she had left behind. The heavy dark furniture and the upholstery of the sofa and chairs, the flower-filled Chinese vases, were reminiscent of the textures and scents of her Parisian homes.

Ida looked down at the traffic that streamed down the drive. She marveled that the pedestrians who hurried across the wide thoroughfare never slowed their pace to look down at the gleaming water or paused to notice the small craft that drifted so gracefully across the gentle waves.

“Why is everyone in New York in such a hurry?” she asked Michel.

“They have places to go, things to do,” he replied and smiled bitterly. He himself had nowhere to go, nothing to do.

The apartment was a magnetic destination for the Chagalls’ small community of friends and acquaintances. Refugees from France and Germany, Yiddishists from eastern Europe, artists and writers, the famous and the unknown, sat at Bella’s dining room table, sipped tall glasses of tea, sucked on sugar cubes, and traded questions.

When
would
the
United
States
enter
the
war?

When
would
Roosevelt
come
to
the
aid
of
the
allies?

They sighed over battles being fought in the meadowlands of their childhoods; they wept when the towns and cities of their birth were mentioned. Their continent was ablaze; fires incinerated their friends and relations, their homes and their books, the Torah scrolls and prayer shawls of vanished worshippers. The women wept. The men grew red-faced with anger.

Michel listened to them impatiently.

“They do not realize how fortunate they are,” he told Elsa, who visited them on afternoons when she was not on call at the hospital. “They are alive in the land of the free.”

“It is difficult for them to recognize how much their world has changed,” she said.

“Everything has changed,” he agreed. “We are not as we were when you first knew us, Elsa. Ida has changed. I have changed.”

He glanced across the room to where Ida sat, half listening to an old man whose name he did not know. She nodded occasionally, but her eyes were glazed and her face was very pale.

“She is still very tired,” Elsa said. “She has not yet recovered from the voyage.”

“Neither of us have,” he admitted.

Only that morning, he had stood before the mirror and stared at his own face as though he were looking at a stranger. When had he become so gaunt? Why did his eyes seem so dull, his skin so ashen?

“You must take care of her.” Elsa spoke very softly. “I say that as a doctor and as a friend.”

“I will take care of her, of course I will, but I must find a life for myself, a way to survive, a way to help my parents.”

Melancholy thickened his voice and Elsa placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. The import of his words had not escaped her. He had spoken in the singular. He had not spoken of finding a life that they would share. She knew that they no longer shared a room. It was, Ida had explained, because her nights were restless and dream-haunted. She did not want to disturb Michel. She slept alone in a high white bed beneath her father’s painting of
The
Bridal
Chair
. Elsa recalled Ida as a joyless bride sitting motionless on that white-sheeted chair, clutching her bridal bouquet. Perhaps the sadness of that wedding day had been a prequel to this marriage that now seemed drained of all vitality.

“Things will get better, Michel,” she assured him.

“Will they?” he asked and smiled wistfully.

“I am sure of it,” she said. “You must visit us soon. André looks forward to seeing you. And we want to introduce you to our son.”

“I will visit. Of course I will.”

He helped her on with her coat. She crossed the room to embrace Ida and nodded to Marc and Bella, who had barely acknowledged her presence. Elsa noted their clothing with some amusement. Marc was debonair in a purple velvet jacket, and Bella wore a loose, jade-green kimono of shimmering silk. Elsa understood that these were the costumes of their new roles. They dressed as a couple to be admired and courted as much for their tragic lives as for their talents. Elsa kissed Michel on the cheek and closed the heavy door very quietly behind her.

Elsa, always wisely stoic, was right. Things did get better. Ida’s strength was restored. Newly energized, she began to explore the city. Her parents thought New York ugly, inhospitable. Their English was limited. Marc was comfortable only on the Lower East Side where he spoke Yiddish to the shopkeepers and bought the staples of his Russian childhood. But the rushing and bustling city excited Ida, and she trawled it with great eagerness. She accompanied Marc to the Garden Cafeteria on East Broadway where they shared a table with Yiddish writers and poets and traded stories of their vanished worlds. She smiled as he bought herring plucked from barrels, cucumbers pickled in brine, black bread, and pot cheese. Her father, she realized, was capable of re-creating his world anywhere. She, however, would have to forge a new life in this new land.

She fashioned her hair into a single long braid and bought dark skirts and wide, colored blouses.

“You look like a schoolgirl,” Michel said.

“Do I? I never was a schoolgirl, you know,” she replied.

It occurred to him that she was trying to reclaim the girlhood that had been denied her, but he said nothing. He had not returned to her bed. She did not visit his room. They did not speak of their nocturnal separation. Silence served them well. Unuttered words could not be regretted.

Ida wandered through the room Marc used as his studio. It was flooded with sunlight throughout the day, but his new works were dark, unaffected by the optimism of America and the energy of New York. War-torn Europe haunted his imagination, invaded his canvases and sketch books. He painted scenes of suffering; his landscapes were moonlit and misty. He depicted Vitebsk trapped in dancing flames.

“Sad paintings,” she said.

“These are sad times,” he replied. “But Pierre Matisse manages to sell much of my work.”

“His gallery here in New York is successful then?” Ida asked too quickly. As always, the business dimension of the art world engaged and excited her.

“He works hard and he is fair. He represents Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Ernst, André Breton. So you see, I am in good company. We are a brigade of fortunate exiles.”

“Excellent company,” she agreed. “But perhaps, Papa, you might think of brightening your palette. Paintings with sharper colors, on lighter themes, are easier to sell.”

“Still the businesswoman, Idotchka,” he said wryly.

“My business sense has worked well for you, has it not?” she replied. “I think that I managed your affairs quite well in London. In Paris.”

She spoke daringly. She knew that he resented the reminder that she was partially responsible for his success. Michel had remarked that he had never thanked them for transporting his paintings to New York. Those very paintings that had claimed so much of her energy and enterprise were now part of Pierre Matisse’s inventory.

She would visit the Matisse gallery. Pierre, she knew, would welcome her. After all, she had been his father’s favorite. He surely knew how expertly she had negotiated sales and commissions for Marc in Europe. She could do as much in New York, working through the gallery. The very idea energized her. She was poised at a new beginning. She would explore every opportunity, use all her resources and talents. She had earned the right to lay claim to her own life, to be the architect of her own future.

She studied the drawings she had done aboard the
Navemare
and decided that they were better than she had thought. She could surely work as a portraitist. She would ask Pierre for his advice. Middle-aged, introspective men like Pierre Matisse were always pleased to offer advice to beautiful young women. She smiled at herself in the mirror. Yes, she was still a beautiful young woman.

Impulsively, she called James Johnson Sweeney, the curator of the Museum of Modern Art, with whom she had corresponded, and arranged to meet with him.

That appointment was scheduled for a day when she and Michel had been invited to visit Elsa and André.

“I am too tired to go,” she claimed plaintively. “I have a headache. They will understand.”

Michel frowned and offered to stay home with her, but she waved him away.

She wondered afterward why she had not simply told him the truth. She could have explained that Sweeney was an important contact for the Chagalls, for Marc as well as herself. But Michel would be disinterested and she resented his reluctance to enter the orbit of the art world that so engaged her. They did not speak of that reluctance. A discussion might prove dangerous. It would be a clear articulation that her world was not and never would be his.

Michel went alone to visit Elsa and André. He brought a small toy, a hand-carved wooden wagon, as a gift for their son Daniel, who delighted in rolling it across the kitchen floor.

“It’s charming,” Elsa said. “Where did you find it?”

“I made it,” Michel said. “It gave me something to do.” He smiled wanly. “The days are very long,” he added. “I look for work, but I know that my search is almost impossible. My English is terrible. I have no skills. Two years of studying law at the Sorbonne qualifies me for nothing in New York. I even applied for a job as a messenger and the man at the employment agency laughed at me. I don’t blame him. I could barely read the addresses on the packages he showed me, so how could I hope to deliver them? I walk through Times Square and I see the large poster of Uncle Sam with his finger pointing and saying ‘Uncle Sam Wants You.’ That much English I understand and then I think, ‘Uncle Sam does not want me. No one in this country, this promised land, wants Michel Rapaport.’ So to fill the hours of my day, I carve a toy for your sweet Daniel. I deliver my father-in-law’s paintings to the Matisse gallery. I go to the French consulate and to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and ask if there is any news of my parents, although, of course, I know that there will be none. Evenings I attend English classes at a public school where I sit at a very small desk with other refugees. We students do not look at each other when we arrive and we do not look at each other when we leave. We are ashamed, I think because we are grown men and women who sit in seats that are meant for children.”

“No need to be ashamed,” André said. “We sat in such seats, Elsa and I, when we first arrived in this country. And now we have our jobs, our little home, our magical son.” He hoisted small Daniel onto his lap and tickled him beneath the chin until the child laughed, slid down, and dashed back to his new toy.

“Ah, but you had something that I do not have,” Michel said quietly.

Elsa held her breath. She did not want to hear Michel say that she and André had had each other while he was trapped in a dying marriage. His answer relieved her.

“You had your medical degrees. You had credentials to offer an employer,” he said.

Elsa looked at him with new respect. He would not impose the deeper sorrows of his life on them. He was stronger than she had thought.