Bridal Chair (36 page)

“Do you know that everyone speaks the name of Henri Matisse with awe?” she said.

The artist’s companion, Lydia Delectorskaya, listened with amusement.

Ida visited Picasso’s home in Vallauris, where he showed her his most recent work and accepted her effusive praise. All previous tension between them had evaporated.

“My father says that you are the preeminent artist of our time,” she enthused.

“And I am a great admirer of your father,” he countered.

Later that week, Françoise Gilot, the artist’s mistress, smiled sardonically at the polite exchange of lies.

Françoise Gilot and Lydia Delectorskaya met for coffee in Nice.

“Has the daughter of Chagall paid Henri a visit?” Lydia asked.

“Of course. Quite a seductive visit. I think she is in urgent need of a lover,” Françoise said.

“No,” Lydia disagreed and smiled benignly. “She is in urgent need of a husband.”

The two women, who had no desire to marry their own elderly lovers, laughed, and arm in arm, they made their way down the sun-swept rue d’Angleterre.

Summer came to an end and the Riviera was draped in an autumnal melancholy. Marc, always unsettled by a change of seasons, decided to master the art of printmaking. He arranged to work at Fernand Mourlot’s Paris studio.

“Why should I not have the same skills as the Spaniard?” he asked Virginia.

“Fine. Develop those skills,” she said without interest.

They were increasingly reticent with each other, their discussions etched with irritation. He complained that Jean, who had returned from England, was sullen, David was undisciplined. She complained that he gave her too little money for household expenses. They ate their meals in silence.

“Ida will be delighted to have her Papa all to herself in Paris,” Virginia added slyly.

“And I am sure your friends at Roquefort will be delighted to see you more frequently during my absence,” he countered. He did not like Virginia’s new friends at Roquefort-les-Pins who shared her nascent interest in holistic medicine.

Ida was delighted to welcome him to his own apartment in her home. He arrived just as she was planning a retrospective at the Kunsthaus in Zurich and an exhibition of his work in Israel. They worked together each evening, deciding on the disposition of his paintings.

“We must be careful,” he cautioned her. “Israel is not Switzerland.”

“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I will curate both exhibitions.”

Ida cooked the Russian foods that he loved and occasionally hosted parties where Marc was lionized by her coterie of friends, artists, and writers. Yet more and more often, she and her father preferred to be alone, wrapped in the cocoon of their shared memories and their mutual commitment to his work. Ida was once again the wise daughter nurturing her needy father.

Virginia did not join them in the city, claiming that a change of scene would be too disruptive for David and Jean. She insisted that she was not lonely without Marc. She and the children were always welcomed by her friends in Roquefort-les-Pins. It was said that the community there was dangerously radical, and Ida was concerned about the influence on Jean and David. On a brief visit to Les Collines, Ida decided to accompany Virginia there.

Her concern was warranted, she decided, after a visit to the communal house where Virginia’s friends lived. Ida was repulsed by their self-righteous edicts and their strange domestic arrangements. The sink overflowed with unwashed dishes, the toilets were clogged, and naked children ran through the house. Nude couples wandered about and swam in a murky pond.

“How can you bring the children there, Virginia?” she asked as they drove back to Les Collines. “They’re naïfs, pseudo-intellectuals who should have outgrown their foolish bohemianism years ago.”

“As you did, Ida?” Virginia asked drily. “In one of your many past lives?”

Ida gripped the steering wheel, angered and startled. Virginia, she knew, was often quietly resentful but never confrontational. She had changed, and the change was profound. She doubted that her father had taken note of it. He reacted only if he was inconvenienced or if he was disturbed when he was working. Virginia, Ida imagined, was wise enough to observe the parameters. She understood that she was hostage to the Chagall largesse.

“Do you bring David and Jean there often?” Ida continued, struggling to keep her tone even. “Do you allow them to watch your friends swim naked?”

“How strange that you who posed naked for your father when you were still a girl should be ill at ease with nudity,” Virginia retorted. “Why should David and Jean be shielded from the beauty of the human body? For your information, the children and I occasionally stay at the house when your father is with you in Paris. Which seems to happen more and more often.”

“Let me assure you that I never posed nude in front of strangers. My father would not have allowed that then, nor would he allow it now. And he is in Paris because he is concentrating on printmaking and on arrangements for the exhibitions,” Ida replied coldly.

“And you, of course, are concentrating on your papa,” Virginia retorted daringly. “It must be wonderful to have him all to yourself. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Ida stared straight ahead and remained silent. She returned to Paris carrying a string bag of citrons and the last pale yellow roses of summer from the garden of Les Collines.

“Gifts from Virginia,” she told Marc, although David and Jean had gathered the fragrant citrus and she herself had plucked the roses. She did not mention her visit to the commune to him, assuring him only that Virginia was managing well, that the children were in good health, nor did he press her for details. He was totally absorbed in working with her on the catalogs for both the Swiss and the Israeli exhibitions.

On the evening when the catalogs were at last completed, Ida and Marc sat opposite each other in her salon, bonded by their shared fatigue and the satisfaction of their accomplishment. She switched on the radio and they sipped small glasses of cognac as the strains of Mussorgsky’s
Pictures
at
an
Exhibition
swirled through the room. It was his favorite piece, Ida knew, igniting as it did memories of his vanished Russia. She herself would have preferred Debussy, but if he was content, she was content. His long, paint-stained fingers strummed the arm of his chair, and his eyes were closed. He was the willing prisoner of the passionate, resonant music that transported him back to the land of his birth.

She stared up at
The
Bridal
Chair
hanging above her fireplace. It occurred to her for the first time that the empty chair was a promise of a kind; she might yet occupy such a seat one day, as a more knowing and certain bride, and the bouquet she would hold then would be bursting with color. Her father would paint her a new and happier picture, a fitting gift for her new and happy life.

She smiled sadly at the absurdity of the thought and went to the window. The first snowflakes of winter danced in the glow of the street lamps that lined the Quai de l’Horloge and fell gently into the wind-tossed waters of the Seine. She drew the green velvet drapes and returned to her chair.

The Mussorgsky drifted into a new movement and Marc opened his eyes and looked at her. “Don’t you ever grow lonely, living alone in this large house, Idotchka?” he asked softly.

“But you are here with me,” she replied.

“But I am not always here.”

“I don’t have time to be lonely,
Papochka
. I have my work, my friends. And I travel so much. Soon I will leave to organize the exhibitions in Switzerland and in Israel. I live in a whirlwind. You must not worry about me.”

But even as she reassured him, she was overtaken by a strange and inexplicable conviction that something momentous was about to occur, something that would sweep her into the dangerous vortex of that wild whirlwind she spoke of so casually.

Marc stared at her, aware of the sudden shift of her mood. He crossed the room, knelt beside her, and lifted her hand to his lips.

“I do not worry about you. I know how strong you are. But you must take very good care of yourself, my Ida. I need you more than I can say.”

His words both surprised and unsettled her. He was, more often than not, an emotional miser, a hoarder of sentiment. He reserved his passion for his work, portioning out only scattered remnants to those who loved him.

“I know. We need each other,” she said softly. She stroked his cheek, passed a finger across the arch of his eyebrow, so thick and gray in odd contrast to the glinting brightness of his blue eyes.

He stood abruptly, gripping his upper thigh, his face contorted with pain, his breath coming in small gasps.

“What is it,
Papochka
? Are you all right?” Her heart pounded with fear.

“A twinge. Just a twinge. It happens now and again. It is nothing, I am sure. But just to be certain, I asked Virginia to arrange for me to see Dr. Le Strange in Nice. There is nothing to worry about. I’m sure I’m all right.”

“Of course you are,” she said, but she gripped his hand and held it tightly as the Mussorgsky soared to its finale in a cacophonous crescendo.

* * *

He was not all right.

“Cancer,” Virginia told Ida. Her voice, impeded by the static of the phone line, was eerily calm.

Ida clutched the back of her chair for support, dizzied and faint. Cancer. A word always whispered as though to pronounce it in full voice would be an invitation to the Angel of Death. Cancer, the crab of the zodiac, squeezing life to an end between cruel claws. Its very utterance filled her with terror.

“But I am not worried,” Virginia continued. “It is prostate cancer, which is usually contained. My friends in Roquefort tell me that it can be cured by a healthy diet.”

“Are your friends at Roquefort qualified physicians?” Ida asked contemptuously. Virginia’s casualness, her ridiculous reference to her ridiculous friends, infuriated her. “I do not want to hear their opinions,” she continued. “What does Dr. Le Strange say?”

“He advocates an operation. But it is not necessary, I assure you. My friends know a great deal about holistic medicine. They recommend natural cures. I am brewing herbal teas for your father.”

“I am not interested in your assurances or your herbal teas,” Ida retorted. “I will come to Les Collines and we will decide on a course of action.”

“But I have already decided on a course of action,” Virginia said defiantly.

“You have no authority to make any decision on my father’s behalf. You are not his
wife
,” Ida retorted. She slammed the phone down. She had no time to reason with Virginia. She called Elsa in New York. She would rely on her friend’s advice.

Elsa listened carefully. “I will consult with our oncologist colleagues,” she said.

She called back the next day. “It is true that prostate cancer is often contained, but there is always the danger of metastasis. The oncologists here agree that surgery is definitely the best option. I am sure you can persuade Virginia to agree,” she said.

“I don’t need her agreement,” Ida retorted impatiently.

“But you do need her. At least your father needs her. Tread carefully, Ida.”

Ida smiled. “You have advised me to be careful since the day we met,” she reminded her friend.

“Advice you never took,” Elsa rejoined. “All right, with or without Virginia’s agreement, see that surgery is scheduled.”

“I will,” Ida promised. “When will I see you again, Elsa? You must come and stay at Les Collines with André and little Daniel.”

“André is very resistant to returning to Europe. The war is still very much with him. But I promise you this, Ida. When you marry again, we will come to your wedding.”

Ida laughed. “Are you so certain that I will marry again, Elsa?”

“Absolutely certain. Just look in the mirror, my dear friend. You are made for love. You will be a wife. You will be a mother,” she replied. “You will make your father a proud grandfather. But for now, see to his health. Arrange for the operation.”

“I will,” she promised.

She immediately called Dr. Le Strange and scheduled the surgery.

“Time is of the essence, of course,” he advised her gravely. “We must proceed as soon as possible.”

“I understand,” she assured him.

There would be no delay. She would travel south as soon all arrangements for the exhibitions in Israel and Switzerland were completed. Seized by a new sense of immediacy, she turned at once to the mountain of documents on her desk, intent on completing the remaining paperwork as swiftly as possible. Elsa had spoken of the danger of metastasis, and she understood what that meant. That would not happen. Her father could not die. She would not allow him to die.

That night, she was awakened by the same invasive dream in which she was, as always, racing hard, clutching her father’s hand, in desperate flight from a dark hooded figure. As the menacing pursuer drew closer, she opened her arms and enfolded Marc in a protective embrace, and they soared skyward together, his heart beating against her own. The whistling wind carried them into the clouds, beyond the grasp of the predator she knew to be the
Malach HaMavet
, the Angel of Death, the ruler over the nocturnal kingdom of nightmare and terror.

“He will not win,” she shouted into the darkness.

At last her work for the exhibitions was completed and she rushed to Marc’s favorite patisserie where she purchased an assortment of éclairs, gâteaux, and strawberries dipped in chocolate. At a market in Les Halles, she bought a basket of black truffles and the wild sorrel for the schav soup he so often craved. She held the delicacies on her lap throughout the journey, and when she reached Les Collines, she spread the delicacies across the dining room table.

“I have brought your favorite sweets, Papa,” she proclaimed, ripping open the stiff white boxes and displaying her treasures. “And tonight I shall make you a pasta with truffles in a wine sauce. And schav with sour cream.”

Marc’s face brightened, but Virginia glared at her.

“Your father must not have rich foods. He is on a strict diet that my friends designed especially for him,” she said icily even as he lunged toward the pastries and seized an éclair.

“Am I to be denied all sweetness in my life?” he asked plaintively.

“
Non, mon père. Non.
” Ida assured him. “You shall have sweetness.” She took the éclair he had selected, placed it on a plate, and handed him a fork. He ate greedily, the cream dripping down his chin, the chocolate staining his lips.

Ida wiped his mouth gently with her handkerchief, added an apple tart, and smiled as he ate. She and Virginia did not look at each other, nor did Virginia protest when small David popped a chocolate-covered strawberry into his mouth. The battle was over. Ida had prevailed yet again.

The next day, she accompanied Marc to the clinic in Nice and arrangements were made for the surgery.

“There will be two separate procedures,” Dr. Le Strange told them. “I am afraid it will consume two months of your life,
cher
maître
, but after that, you will be fully recovered.” He smiled benignly. Artists were his favorite patients. “They are like children,” he had told Madame Le Strange more than once. He reflected that Marc Chagall, whose work he so admired, behaved like a vulnerable child. The great artist’s lip trembled, and his fingers curled into fists.