Bridal Chair (33 page)

The celebratory dance ended. Géa, perched on the arm of Ida’s chair, played with her hair, lifting the shining copper coil and brushing his lips across the pale nape of her neck. Virginia tried to remember when Marc had last kissed her, when, in fact, he had last touched her. With David in her arms, she left the salon. Smiling bitterly, she pressed her cheek against her son’s silken hair and closed the door behind her.

“Venice,
Venezia
.” Ida uttered the name of the city in awe as though to convince herself that the wonderland that surrounded her was real, that she was not lost in a dream.

Géa smiled, amused at how childlike she was in her astonishment at the explosion of beauty that was Venice.

“I told you that it was the most beautiful city in the world,” he said. “And we have arrived at its most beautiful season.”

Marc and Virginia nodded. They too were entranced by the city. Together, they strolled through its narrow
calli
. Ida and Géa rushed ahead of them and then paused and waited, the pace of their shared vacation established. They formed an odd yet amiable quartet, the Jewish father and his daughter, each with a gentile lover, each armed with an open sketchbook, passing soft pencils and stubs of graphite from hand to hand.

The bright autumn sun splayed dancing ribs of light across the dark waters of the canals and turned the city’s spires and rooftops the color of molten honey. As day drifted into evening, the light of the nascent moon silvered their faces, and together, the two couples cruised the tranquil lagoons in gondolas and vaporettos.

They wandered across ancient bridges, drifted in and out of the shops along the Rialto, and spent hours in the small museums they all agreed were more interesting than the elaborate pavilions of the Biennale.

Marc was the guest of honor at receptions and dinners. Ida, as always proud and exuberant, stood beside him as he patiently answered questions posed by interviewers. He occasionally turned to her so that she might provide him with an elusive word or clarify a statement he had phrased too awkwardly. When he accepted the Grand Prix, Ida, elegant in her gown of rust-colored taffeta, leaned forward and almost rose from her seat. For the briefest moment, it seemed that she might ascend the podium with her father, that his triumph was her own. Géa and Virginia remained at a distance.

“It’s as though Marc is a performer and Ida is both his prompter and his director,” Virginia observed, and Géa did not disagree.

Late one morning, they sat at on the terrace of a café on the Piazza San Marco. They sipped their bitter espressos in silence, as though fearful that a single word might shatter the enchantment of the beauty that surrounded them.

Ida tossed crumbs to the pigeons and laughed as they took wing and flew in formation to the center of the piazza. Géa stroked her cheek absently and looked eastward toward the Cathedral of St. Mark.

“I should like to see the interior of the cathedral,” he said. “Will you join me?”

“It is of no interest to me,” Marc replied curtly.

“Nor to me,” Ida added.

The Chagalls might not attend synagogues, but they did not enter churches.

“I will go with you,” Virginia interjected and rose from the table.

“We won’t be long,” Géa assured them, and he and Virginia walked too swiftly up the broad marble steps as the bells of the campanile tolled the noon hour.

“Do you think they went inside to pray, our two goyim?” Marc asked sardonically.

“Does it matter?” Ida replied irritably. “They are Christian and we are Jewish. I suppose it is just as well that we do not trespass into each other’s worlds.”

“Could you marry your Géa, your Christian lover?” Marc asked.

“Could you marry Virginia, your Christian mistress?” Ida countered.

“The years have passed and I have not yet done so, have I?” he replied as Géa and Virginia emerged from the cathedral.

“The interior is quite beautiful,” Géa said. “Especially the nave.”

“Is it?” Marc asked without interest, his eyes turned away from the cathedral. He stared across the piazza to the Grand Canal, awash in sunlight.

They followed his gaze and watched a solitary gondola glide across the tranquil waters. Its passengers, a young couple, leaned toward each other, their bodies pressed close as they swayed in rhythm to the oar strokes of the gondolier.

“The gondolas of Venice are made for lovers,” Ida murmured.

“May I invite you to sail away with me to Lido?” Géa asked Ida. “We too, after all, are lovers.”

“I accept,” Ida said. “You will excuse us, Papa, Virginia?”

“Of course,” they replied in unison.

Géa and Ida, arm in arm, strolled toward the canal, pausing briefly in a circlet of sunlight where Géa adjusted Ida’s stole and kissed her, first on each cheek and then on her lips. Virginia and Marc watched them in silence and sipped their coffee, grown tepid and bitter.

Their remaining days in Venice sped by in a haze of pleasurable excitement.

On the very last day of their stay, Marc reluctantly agreed to go shopping with Virginia for gifts for the children. Géa and Ida reveled in the luxury of an uninterrupted stretch of hours to be spent alone, wandering through the city without program or purpose.

Walking hand in hand, they explored unfamiliar neighborhoods and crossed arched bridges to emerge onto colorful piazzas crowded with busy stalls. Géa bargained expertly with a gold-toothed woman for a stole of royal blue iridescent silk that he draped about Ida’s shoulders.

“I once had a cape of that same blue and a beret to match,” Ida recalled dreamily as she fingered the delicate fabric.

“It must have suited you wonderfully,” Géa said.

“Yes. But that was in another country, and the girl who wore it is no more.”

They strolled through the leather market and the straw market. Géa bought a bouquet of fall flowers from an urchin who scurried away, laughing aloud at his good fortune.

Ida looked down at the bouquet as though to memorize the colors and scent of the fragile blossoms. She understood the futility of the effort. Flowers died, possessions were lost or abandoned; only the memory of a face, a gesture, a fleeting expression of love, endured. She had learned as much from Bella who, in her memoir, had written of the candlelight that flickered across her mother’s face each Sabbath eve, of her father’s grave expression as he bent over a Talmudic text. It was the softness of her mother’s eyes, the wistfulness of her fleeting smile, that Ida herself remembered, just as it was Géa’s smile she would recall when she thought of this golden day in Venice.

In the glass market, she purchased a child’s tea set crafted of golden Murano glass.

“For Jean,” she said.

She had a special fondness for Virginia’s daughter, who often seemed as lonely as Ida herself had been throughout her sequestered childhood.

They walked on, crossing the Rio di San Girolamo and continuing on through the Rio del Battello, charmed by the frenetic vitality of the pedestrians who rushed past them. Mothers called to their scampering children. Men in business suits clutched briefcases and perused documents as they hurried by. The dwellings that lined the streets were built in such close proximity that they resembled an impenetrable fortress.

Géa and Ida walked slowly through an alleyway where clotheslines weighted down by colorful garments fluttered in the gentle breeze. She paused in front of a dilapidated building.

“Look, Géa,” she said.

A Jewish star was carved into its cornerstone.

Géa stopped a woman who was hurrying by, laden with a basket of vegetables.

“Excuse me,” he asked in his stilted Swiss Italian. “Can you tell me the name of this neighborhood?”

“You are in the Ghetto Nuovo, signor,” she replied without pausing. “Giudecca
.
The home of the Jews.”

Ida fingered her flowers. “It appears that without a compass, I have managed to come home,” she said.

She looked up at the windows of the surrounding houses and then glanced at two dark-haired, dark-eyed small girls playing a game of skipping stones in the narrow passageway.

“
Dov’è la sinagoga
? Where is the synagogue?” she asked.

They looked at each other, hesitated, and then scrambled to their feet.
It
was
not
so
long
ago
, Ida thought,
that
such
a
question
would
have
filled
them
with
fear.
But they smiled and ran ahead. Ida and Géa followed them around corners and across streets until they stopped in front of an ancient, perfectly proportioned stone building, its architecture similar to that of the ancient churches of Venice.

“
La
Scuola
Spagnola
,” they said proudly in unison. “
Sinagoga
.”

They pushed open the heavy door, and Géa and Ida followed them into the dimly lit vestibule. A white-bearded man, bent with age, wearing a black skullcap, ritual fringes dangling from his worn dark jacket, came forward.

“
Ebrei
?” he asked.

“
Si
,” Ida said very softly.

He nodded and led them into the beautiful sanctuary where tall white candles in ornate chandeliers kept ghostly vigil, waiting for long-absent congregants to arrive and take their seats on the faded red velvet cushions of the serried pews. The stained glass windows were aglow in the afternoon sunlight. Here and there, a prayer shawl hung across a railing as though the worshipper had been interrupted in the middle of a service and departed in great haste. The dark wooden ark that contained the Torah scrolls was beautifully carved, and above it, a hanging lamp flickered weakly.

“The eternal light,” Ida whispered to Géa.

“I see,” he said, although he did not.

The old man led them back to the vestibule and pointed to a brass plaque engraved in both Italian and English. The little girls enunciated the Italian inscription aloud, their high sweet voices echoing through the empty space. Ida read the English, her voice muted by sadness.

“1939 to 1945. Two hundred Jews of Venice, eight thousand Jews of Italy, six million Jews of Europe were barbarously massacred and died as martyrs.”

“Two hundred,” Ida said, her voice breaking. “Eight thousand. Six million. There but for the grace of God…” The words trailed off as memory overcame her. She thought of the streets of Marseilles crowded with refugees; she remembered the stench of fear and her fierce and frantic struggle for her parents’ survival and her own.

Géa watched as she covered her bright hair with the blue silk scarf. She lifted her hands to her eyes and he saw the lucent tears that trickled between her fingers.

Her lips moved.

“
Yitgadal
v’yitkadash
,” she intoned, and he knew that it was a Hebrew prayer that she murmured. The Kaddish, he thought it was called.

The small girls and the old man moved forward to join her, their voices joining hers in quiet and mournful chorus. The prayer continued, beautiful and heartbreaking in its rhythmic brevity. It ended. They stood together, wrapped in their silent sorrow. Ida kissed each small girl on the cheek. She opened her purse and pressed whatever notes she had into the old man’s hand despite his weary protest. She bent and gently placed the bouquet of autumn flowers beneath the plaque.

They left the ghetto, walking too swiftly. Géa took Ida’s hand, but they did not speak. He understood that he had no words to offer her. He was an alien in the wilderness of her grief. He was in her world but not of it. It had not occurred to him that the Judaism that neither she nor her father practiced could create such an abyss between them. He was inexplicably relieved that they would soon be returning to France.

Their enchanted days in Venice swiftly receded into wistful memory. Ida was once again caught up in the maelstrom of her frenetic life. She raced through her days, struggling to scavenge time for her own painting and drawing as she dashed from meetings with gallery owners to formal dinners with collectors.

The new postwar millionaires now saw art as an investment. A Chagall masterpiece was not just a painting; it was a financial asset. Ida was contemptuous of such businessmen buyers, but she was too shrewd to disregard them. She bargained vigorously, turning away with feigned indifference if her demands were resisted.

“I speak for my father. You must understand that when Ida Chagall, the daughter of the artist, says five thousand dollars, she means five thousand dollars,” she told a pompous American collector. “I am not selling herrings, monsieur.”

Obediently, he wrote her a check for five thousand dollars. She knew that he would never guess that she was, in fact, the granddaughter of a man who had hauled herring barrels and a woman who had probably bargained as vigorously in her tiny grocery store for a few kopeks as she now bargained for thousands of dollars.

Her days were punctuated by Marc’s peevish phone calls, which were an insistent litany of complaints. The house was too cold, drafts of wind drifted in through windows that were improperly sealed, his studios were so overcrowded with his canvases and supplies that he could not work properly.

“How can I work like this, Ida?” he whined.

“I will take care of everything,” she promised, but Marc’s annoyances compounded. A cabinet collapsed. The children bothered him when he was working. He called Ida at all hours, angrily spewing his discontent.

“Does he expect you to become a babysitter?” Géa asked angrily. “Let Virginia control her children. Let him call a carpenter. Why are you responsible for all the trivia of his life?”

“Because I have always been responsible,” she replied wearily.

She breathed a disloyal sigh of relief. Marc and Virginia had decided to spend the spring months in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat where Tériade’s home would be open to them. There was a pleasant, modest
pensione
nearby.

“Can we afford to do that?” Marc asked Ida worriedly. “It will be expensive to spend so many weeks at a
pensione
.”

“You can afford to do whatever you like,
Papochka
,” she replied, smiling indulgently. “Haven’t you heard? Marc Chagall is a wealthy man.”

He shrugged. “What does wealth mean?” he asked with feigned indifference. “It comes. It goes.”

Ida was not deceived. “Wealth means freedom,” she replied carefully. “It means that you have the freedom to spend the spring in the south of France. Am I right, Virginia?”

Virginia shrugged. She considered any discussion of money vulgar.

“Virginia sees me as a coarse cosmopolitan, overly concerned with money and material things,” Ida observed to Géa.

“Has it never occurred to you that Virginia may be jealous of you?” Géa asked.

“Why should she be jealous of me? I am my father’s daughter, not his lover,” Ida replied, but his words troubled her.

She was relieved when Marc, Virginia, and the children left for the south of France.

Marc’s absence afforded her relief from the frantic journeys to Orgeval and the many errands he imposed upon her. She was free to enjoy the soft spring sunlight of Paris, to walk with Géa at the twilight hour, to sit with friends at sidewalk cafés where she smiled with pleasure at the touch of her lover’s hand light upon her thick auburn hair. She chose to ignore the intermittent discomfort of abdominal pains. She would not allow them to spoil her pleasant days and pleasanter evenings.

Marc wrote regularly from Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. He was so enraptured by the Mediterranean that he placed his easel on the shore to better capture the hues of the magical sea. He worked his gouaches on sheets of chiffon paper, an involved and exciting process that had been greatly admired by Aimé Maeght, the influential dealer who represented Miró, Giacometti, and Braque.

“There are wonderful flowers here and Virginia arranges them beautifully,” he wrote.

Ida wondered if he remembered that Bella had woven garlands of wildflowers and filled copper bowls with golden daffodils. She banished the thought. It was foolish and disloyal.

Virginia wrote that she and Marc were searching for property to buy. They were considering a charming house with a large garden, shaded by citrus trees.

Ida read the letter to Géa.

“Apparently, your father’s Paris days are over. The Riviera has claimed him,” he said.

She thought of Marc’s impulsive purchases of property in Gordes and in High Falls and decided that she would travel south and visit the house he was considering.

She swept into the
pensione
like a whirlwind. She lifted a laughing David into her arms and thrust herself into Marc’s embrace. She was, as always, laden with gifts, a huge red ball for David, a doll and games for Jean, a green velvet jacket for Marc, and a silk scarf patterned with pansies for Virginia. Marc shrugged into the jacket, found an ascot that matched it, and studied himself with satisfaction in the mirror. Virginia thanked Ida politely for the scarf that she did not remove from the box.

“Now tell me about this house,” Ida said, sitting back and gratefully sipping a glass of absinthe that soothed the stomach cramp that assaulted her. Stress from the journey, she decided, and, as always, she ignored it. The pain would pass. It always did.

They described the house with enthusiasm. The rooms were large, the garden charming.

“And it is exactly where we want to live,” Marc added. “The Riviera is now the center of the art world. Picasso has a home and a studio in Vallauris and Matisse is in Cimiez. It is so peaceful here, and I work so well. My illustrations for
The
Decameron
commission are almost completed. Virginia reads the tales to me, just as Bella read La Fontaine’s
Fables
.”

Virginia looked away. References to Bella, a constant spectral presence in her life with Marc, filled her with unease. She despaired of competing with a ghost.

“The house sounds wonderful,” Ida said pleasantly. “Let’s visit it tomorrow and see if it is really suitable, and then you can make an offer.”

“But we have already made an offer.” Marc smiled engagingly, the practiced smile of a small boy who has been mischievous but knows that he will be forgiven. “I signed a three-month option, and I have already paid for it.”

“Indeed,” Ida said coldly. “All right. Of course, an option is not a sale.”

“But I really love the house,” Virginia murmured. “I want Marc to buy it.”

“I look forward to seeing it,” Ida said.

“Of course,” Marc agreed. “I am certain you will like it, Idotchka.”

“Why does Ida have to like it? She’s not going to be living in it,” asked Jean, who had been dressing and undressing her new doll in a corner of the room.

The child’s unanswered question lingered in the uncomfortable silence. They went into the dining room and sat down to dinner. Ida, pleading fatigue, left the table before dessert. Her usual abdominal pains recurred with a new severity.

She felt better the next morning, and they drove to the house. It was, as Virginia and Marc had claimed, absolutely charming, but she saw at once that it was also absolutely unsuitable for her father. There were formidable flights of steps at every landing, and the antiquated plumbing was in disrepair. Little light penetrated the narrow windows.

“There is no light,
Papochka
,” Ida said. “Can you paint in a studio that has no light?”

Virginia swiftly lit a lamp. “It casts a beautiful glow,” she said. “I love to draw in lamp light.”

“You are not Marc Chagall,” Ida retorted. “My father needs natural light for his work.”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Marc agreed sadly.

Ida shook her head and turned to her father. “This house is impossible. How could you think of buying it?” she asked.

It was Virginia who replied.

“I love it. The children love it. Repairs can be made.”

“And it has a dignity,” Marc added. “At this time in my life, I must have a house that reflects my status. Matisse and Picasso have wonderful homes. Chagall must have a home that compares to theirs.”

“I am certain that Matisse and Picasso have toilets that flush. I am certain that they paint in light-filled studios. There are other houses on the Côte d’Azur that would surely be more suitable and perhaps even more elegant than those of Picasso and Matisse,” Ida replied.

She sank into an overstuffed chair, and a cloud of dust from the neglected upholstery filled the room.

“You see that I am right, don’t you,
Papochka
?”

Her tone turned coaxing, conciliatory, and Marc nodded.

“You are right. Of course you are right. Don’t you see that Ida is right, Virginia? She understands such things.”

“Of course. Ida is always right,” Virginia replied, turning away, her eyes dulled with disappointment.

Ida went to the estate agent that afternoon. Ever the skillful negotiator, she informed him that although the house was dilapidated, although he had failed to point out the disrepair as was his obligation, she would take no legal action.

“But, mademoiselle,” he protested. “I have your father’s signature on a contract.”

“And I have an excellent
avocat
,” she retorted. “But I do not wish to have a lawsuit. My father contracted for a three-month option. You may keep his deposit and repair and clean the house so that he and his family can live in it for the next three months. Are we in agreement?”

“I cannot afford to disagree,” he replied bitterly.

Satisfied, Ida reported the compromise to Marc, who smiled gratefully.

“I can always depend on you to work things out,” he said. “We can always depend on Ida, isn’t that true, Virginia?”

“Yes. You can always depend on Ida,” she agreed and turned away.

Ida returned to Paris the next day. Unpacking her bag, she found the scarf she had given Virginia concealed in the folds of a nightdress.

“Surely an error,” Géa said when she told him about it.

“Surely a statement of a kind,” she replied and, still holding the scarf, she reclined on the divan. The abdominal pain had returned with a new intensity and she wondered for how much longer she could safely ignore it.