Bridal Chair (32 page)

The passenger ship
De
Grasse
docked in Le Havre as France simmered in the punishing heat of the last days of summer. Small Jean, overcome with exhaustion, shielded her eyes against the golden light and wept as they walked onto the pier. Virginia, holding David in her arms, bent to comfort her, but Marc stared straight ahead. His heart was weighted with the memory of how he and Bella had left Europe, full of sorrow at having left Ida and Michel behind. And now Bella was dead, Michel and Ida were divorced, and he was a disoriented traveler, returning to a new life in a city grown unfamiliar to him. He sighed heavily.

“What’s wrong?” Virginia asked.

“Nothing,” he replied irritably. “I am looking for Ida. Do you see my Ida?”

And then suddenly she was upon them, her bright hair in wild disarray, her face flushed with excitement, her arms laden with a bouquet of irises and roses.

“Oh, you are here! At last, you are here,” she shouted exuberantly, thrusting the flowers at Virginia. She plucked David from her arms, held him close, and covered him with kisses. “He’s so beautiful. Such eyes, such golden skin,” she exulted. “And, Jean, how you’ve grown. You’re such a big girl. But why is such a big girl crying? Don’t you know that it is forbidden to cry in France?” She laughed, coaxing forth Jean’s laughter. Ida’s exuberance was contagious.

“No words of welcome for your father, Idotchka?” Marc asked, and she laughed again and, still holding David, she embraced him.

“Not only the warmest of welcomes but surprise after surprise for my
papochka
,” she said. “But let us collect your luggage and get out of this heat.”

She reclaimed her familiar role of managing her father’s life, relieving him of all practical arrangements. Swiftly and efficiently, she arranged for the collection of their baggage and assembled their customs documents. She smiled engagingly at the immigration officials and informed them that it was France’s greatest artist whose documents they were processing. They nodded and each document was duly stamped.

“Welcome home, Monsieur Chagall,” the customs supervisor said deferentially, and Marc rewarded him with a regal wave as he stepped onto French soil.

Géa strode toward them. He shook hands with Marc and kissed Virginia’s hand as Ida surveyed the trunks and cartons, the scarred cases and oddly shaped bags, and briskly dictated what should be placed in their car and what should be sent on to the house.

“What house?” Marc asked impatiently.

“You will see. I told you there would be surprise after surprise.”

“In what arrondissement is this house?” Marc asked. “You should have consulted me. I know Paris as well as you do, better, in fact.”

“But the house is not in Paris,” Ida replied teasingly. “You could not find such a house in Paris. You will be happy there, I promise.”

“I am sure you will like it, Marc,” Virginia said soothingly.

“I am certain that you will,” Géa added. He flashed a complicit smile at Virginia. They would be the arbiters for their lovers, she for the father, he for the daughter.

They arrived at the house in the village of Orgeval at the twilight hour. Marc stared at the chalet, bathed in the gentle light of the dying sun.

“You have done well, Ida,” he acknowledged. “Yes. I am pleased.”

She smiled, and arm in arm, they walked about the property. He was enchanted by its charm, its wild garden, and the mysterious woodlands that surrounded it.

“Ah Virginia, look at what Ida has done for us. I can always depend on my Ida. She knows exactly what I want.”

Ida frowned. She was too quickly being thrust into a role she no longer wanted.

Virginia trailed after them as they explored the house. Marc marveled at the drawing room whose French windows opened onto a terrace and a garden. Ida had carefully arranged framed photographs of her parents in Russia, in Berlin, and in Paris on the mantel. A sepia-toned portrait of Ida as a child in Bella’s arms had pride of place on an ornate table. Virginia stared at them. She had sent Ida prints of Charles Leirens’s studies of Marc and herself with David. Why were they not on display? She would find a place for them in this house that was to be her home.

Marc’s paintings on the newly whitewashed walls were a montage, a visual record of his life from his days in St. Petersburg to his years in Paris. A portrait of Bella dominated the room, and Virginia, holding Jean’s hand with David in her arms, stared up at it and too swiftly averted her eyes.

“Who is that lady?” Jean asked.

“She was your Aunt Ida’s mother,” Virginia replied softly.

“Is she dead?”

Marc wheeled about, flushed with anger. “Put the children to sleep,” he ordered harshly, looking up at Bella’s portrait, his narrow face a mask of sadness.

It was Géa who led Virginia and the children to the bedroom Ida had transformed into a nursery. She had placed a doll on Jean’s bed, a stuffed teddy bear in David’s crib, and filled the shelves with toys and picture books.

“How good of Ida to do all this for us,” Virginia murmured as she placed her sleeping son in the crib.

“Ida is very good and very generous,” Géa replied gently. “She very much wants you to be happy here at L’Aulnette.”

“Is that the name of this house?” Virginia asked as she undressed her exhausted daughter. “I am pleased to know where I will be living.”

“Yes, your home is called L’Aulnette,” Géa repeated.

“Yes. My home. I must find a place here for my photographs, my paintings.” She spoke calmly and without bitterness. Géa looked at her as she stood at the window and gazed down at the garden. In her simple white blouse and dark skirt, her dark hair falling to her shoulders, her finely featured face pale and sad, she reminded him of a graceful, willowy school girl. But, he decided, for all the simplicity of her appearance and demeanor, Virginia was infinitely more complex than either Ida or Marc realized. She was clearly a woman who knew her own mind. It would be well for Ida to consider that.

He left the room, closing the door softly behind him because Jean was already asleep.

* * *

Life at L’Aulnette began happily. The village of Orgeval, with its ancient church and narrow streets, charmed them. Marc delighted in the light and landscape of the Seine and Oise region. They explored its fruit orchards and picnicked beneath the canopies of elms whose leaves were slowly drifting into the golden and scarlet hues of autumn. There was a pond in the heart of the forest, and they stared down at their reflections in its mysterious waters.

“We are in fairy land,” Jean pronounced, and Virginia smiled at the truth of her daughter’s words. They had sailed a vast and threatening ocean and arrived on an enchanted coast.

The house itself, with its turret and graceful gables, was comfortable during the mild months of early autumn. Its wide-windowed bedrooms were flooded with light throughout the day, and Marc converted two of them into studios. Ida had already claimed one bedroom as her own. Her clothes were in the closet; her own paintings and Géa’s were on the walls. The painting of
The
Bridal
Chair
hung above her bed.

She and Géa lived in Paris, but she arrived each weekend laden with bottles of vodka and wine and packages of food, crowding the kitchen counters with jams and jellies, jars of caviar and foie gras. Ida was a talented and generous giver of gifts. She distributed whimsical toys to the children, draped a beautiful purple stole about Virginia’s shoulders, helped Marc shrug into a blue velvet jacket that she had bought because it so closely matched his eyes.

Her enthusiasm electrified the household. She rushed from room to room, filling the vases with the bright branches of fall foliage, tossing colorful cushions onto sofas and chairs. She raced through the garden playing hide-and-seek with Jean and David and fed them bowls of ice cream, ignoring Virginia’s disapproving frown. She invited her friends, a joyous coterie of young artists and writers, moody poets and beautiful girls who smiled a great deal and said very little. They were vested with a lightness and gaiety defiantly reclaimed after the dark years of war. Michel, newly married to his Marina, visited. Ida embraced them both and introduced them as her
plus
chers
amis
, her dearest friends. They smiled, but they never came again.

Marc’s friends, dealers and publishers, writers and critics, gathered around the large dining room table and vigorously discussed new trends in art and literature, the symbolism in Jean Anouilh’s new play and the merits of Camus’s novels. There were teasing and occasionally malicious references to Picasso because they were all aware of Marc’s jealousy of the Spanish artist.

Virginia wandered uneasily from group to group, neither hostess nor guest, feeling herself a displaced person in the house that was supposedly her home. She knew Ida’s reason for renting such a huge house. It offered Marc an appropriate and attractive locale in which to host the intellectual and influential elite of Paris. She had rightly predicted that such generous hospitality would ease his acceptance into the art world of Paris after his long absence in America.
Clever
Ida
, Virginia thought. Clever, clever Ida who had not thought to ask Virginia where she might prefer to live.

On occasional evenings, Marc and Virginia joined Ida and her friends at fashionable Paris bistros. Always stylishly dressed, her bright hair swirling about her radiant face, Ida laughed and told amusing stories. Champagne corks were popped, and empty bottles of wine littered the table. On such evenings, Virginia ate very little and said even less. Ida ordered great bowls of strawberries and mounds of whipped cream, platters of gâteaux, brimming dishes of golden crème brûlée.

“My papa wants everyone to eat, drink, and be merry,” she insisted.

She was the generous hostess and Marc, despite his ingrained frugality, settled the bill, laboriously counting out great wads of francs. It was, he acknowledged, the price he paid for the attention and affection of Ida and her friends. It was an investment, Ida insisted. Her friends were critics and journalists. They had connections.

Géa watched Ida with amusement, bemused by her kinetic energy, her unabashed flamboyance, which he occasionally found exhausting. He said nothing. The happiness he and Ida shared sufficed for the present. He was too young to concern himself unduly with the future. For the moment, he was content with their life in Paris, and he waited patiently for Ida to extricate herself from her father’s orbit. He was reluctant to think beyond that.

The months rushed past. A brutally cold winter assaulted them. The house that had so charmed them now disappointed. It was difficult to heat. A fire burned in Marc’s studio, and although he wore layers of sweaters, he complained bitterly of the chill. They learned that during the war, L’Aulnette had been commandeered by the Gestapo and used as an interrogation center. The stable where they garaged their Peugeot was rumored to have been the site of more than one execution. Virginia avoided the building.

“It smells of blood and death,” she told Ida.

“What do you know of blood and death?” Ida asked dismissively.

“Do you think that Jews have a monopoly on suffering?” Virginia retorted. Her tone was even, but her eyes burned with anger. It was a new and uneasy exchange.

The inclement weather meant that the children were often indoors. Marc complained that David was restless and craved attention, that Jean was increasingly moody and given to tantrums. Even Virginia began to irritate him. He told Ida that she did not comprehend the complexity of his paintings, the Jewish symbolism that danced across his canvases.

“But think of how good she is. She takes wonderful care of you, wonderful care of our David,” Ida said soothingly. “It is only that you are tired,
Papochka
. The cold distresses you. Try to rest more.”

He closed his eyes as he listened to her. The cadence of her voice was so familiar that for a brief magic moment, he imagined that it was Bella who spoke to him. Ida was right. He was tired, so very tired. He could not blame Virginia for not sharing his lifetime of memories, for not understanding his Jewish world. She was so beautiful, so innocent. And she was David’s mother, his precious, annoying Dovidl.

Ida spoke to Virginia and advised her to arrange for the children to spend time away from the house, to make certain that they did not interfere with Marc’s work.

“You know how he is,” she said, and Virginia nodded. They both knew how he was.

Relief came with the warmth of spring and the exciting news that Marc was invited to the Biennale in Venice to accept an award for his graphic work.

Virginia snapped out of her winter lethargy. Venice had long been the city of her dreams, the vortex of her fantasies. She imagined traversing its canals with Marc seated beside her in a gondola. They would visit museums, walking hand in hand. It would be a time for them to be alone, to reclaim the intimacy of their early days together. Venice would be a honeymoon of a kind. Surely even those who lived together without marriage vows deserved a honeymoon.

Ida too was ecstatic. The award, one of the art world’s greatest honors, signified international recognition and would increase the value of Marc’s work. She and Géa would also travel to Venice for the Biennale.

“It will be wonderful,” she said excitedly. “How marvelous that we will be in Venice together, the four of us. It will be wonderful, wonderful.”

She hugged Géa and danced about the room with him. “Venice.
Venezia
,” she sang.

“Venice,
Venezia
,” Géa echoed, and Marc sprang up and joined them.

Ida’s eyes sparkled, her face aglow. She whirled about, linking arms now with her father, now with her lover.

“It will be so exciting, Virginia,” Ida called to her from across the room.

“Yes. Wonderfully exciting,” Virginia agreed, her voice barely audible.

There would be no intimate honeymoon. She had been foolish to imagine that Marc would journey to Venice without his daughter. Ida would forever choreograph every aspect of their lives. It was a dominance that Virginia could not yet fight, dependent as she was on Marc, but she was well schooled in patience; she would wait. Her turn would come.