Bridal Chair (38 page)

“I thought you beautiful when I first saw you,” he murmured. “But now that I have come to know you, you are even more beautiful to me.”

“Dear Franz. My dear good Franz.” Her words, so softly spoken, were lost in the insistent revving of the small plane’s motor.

He cupped his face in his large hands and, for the very first time, his lips brushed hers, lightly, tenderly. Her heart turned. Holding the photograph close, she walked very slowly up the tarmac and boarded the waiting aircraft.

“Israel is ablaze with sunlight and my heart is ablaze with joy at being here,” Ida wrote in her first letter to Franz. “I feel as though I have come home.”

She was certain that he would understand her passionate reaction to Israel just as he understood the impact Judaism had on her father’s work. She had told him once, as they sat in their favorite café on the banks of the Limmat, sipping the hot chocolate they both favored, that it seemed to her that he had a Jewish heart.

It would not surprise him that from the moment of her arrival, from her first inhalation of the air so sweetly scented by orange blossoms, from the first touch of her foot on the friable earth, she had felt an intimate connection to the country. She was invigorated by the optimism and excitement of the people she encountered. They soared on the wings of history. Their war for independence and survival had been fought and won; they were in a new era of creativity and nation building. Their spirit, their hope for the future, their determination to seize each day, was contagious. Enthused by their enthusiasm, energized by their energy, she plunged into her own work, leaving from her bed each day at first light. She was in Israel on a mission. There was much that had to be accomplished in a very short time.

The Tel Aviv Museum, small and poorly lit, was the venue for her father’s exhibition. Her heart sank when she first wandered through its narrow and badly lit galleries, but she struggled to hide her dismay and set to work.

“I know that the museum is not up to standard,” the curator said apologetically.

“Do not worry,” she said reassuringly. “We will manage.”

Swiftly and decisively, she arranged for new lighting to be installed and for furnishings to be moved to accommodate the larger canvases. She charmed workmen and electricians alike, hoisting paintings herself, infusing those around her with her own energy.

“My father’s work is very much at home on these walls,” she said when the exhibition was in place.

In Jerusalem, she worked with the curators of the Israel Museum.

“We look forward to welcoming your father to Jerusalem,” Moshe Sharett, the foreign minister, said. “Our president, Chaim Weizmann, will open the exhibition.”

“And my father looks forward to being here,” she replied, although she knew that Marc’s presence was unlikely.

She traveled north to Kibbutz Ein Harod in the foothills of the lower Galilee where several paintings would be exhibited. She was entranced by the beauty of the sylvan glades and the soaring mountains that surrounded the settlement. It was the landscape that had so intrigued her father when he visited Palestine all those years ago, informing the biblical themes that he turned to again and again.

Hillel, the kibbutz secretary, a tall, sun-bronzed young man, welcomed her and proudly guided her through the orchards and the fields, the row of neat bungalows, and the airy dining hall. Her heart soared when she watched the kibbutz children, the sturdy boys and girls who raced among the flowers in the garden of the children’s house. Toddlers tumbled about in the playground and plump infants crawled beneath a canopy of eucalyptus trees, smiled up at her. A little girl tugged at her skirt and Ida lifted her and briefly held her close, the child’s breath warm and sweet against her face.

Kibbutz members returning from the fields nodded and whispered her name to each other.
Ida
Chagall. The famous artist’s daughter. Ida Chagall. How beautiful she is
.

She smiled at them, her color high, her eyes bright with a pleasure that matched their own.

“We are all excited by your visit. It is a great honor for us to exhibit your father’s paintings here,” Hillel said.

“My father and I feel that the honor is ours,” she replied. “The very existence of Israel gives us comfort.”

She looked up at the Jewish flag on the rough-hewn wooden pole outside the communal library that fluttered in the gentle mountain breeze and was briefly overcome with sorrow for all that might have been, for the tragic vagaries of history. Had there been a Jewish state before the war, her family would have had a place of sanctuary. If Israel had existed then, countless lives would have been saved. Small Shayna, whose hair was the color of the lemons that grew on the trees of Ein Harod, would not have been buried in the icy waters of the Atlantic. Bella Chagall would not have died among strangers.

“Comfort?” Hillel repeated. The word puzzled him.

“Yes. It comforts me to know that you are here, in this land, because there is an Israel. It comforts me to know that no child of mine will ever be a stateless person.”

“How many children do you have?” he asked.

“None. I have not yet been blessed with children,” she replied.

Her own words startled her.
Not
yet
, she had said. A question invaded.
Then
when?
It was not a question she had ever asked herself before, nor was it a question that she could answer.

Then
when?
That strange mental query lingered and teased as she read the letter from Franz Meyer that the concierge handed her on her return to Tel Aviv.

He wrote in his elegant script that he missed her, missed her laughter, missed the sound of her voice. It was very cold in Bern. How he envied her the sunlight and warmth of Israel and how he longed for the warmth and light she exuded wherever she went. “Are my words too daring?” he wrote. “Will you come to Bern when you return from Israel or shall I come to the Riviera?”

She understood that his question was not a question. It was a statement, a declaration.

She read and reread his letter, then stared at the photograph on her bedside table. How grave was his narrow face, how gentle his eyes behind those large rimless spectacles. How calm she felt when she was with him. How loved she felt when she read his letters, when she remembered the softness of his voice.
Franz.
She spoke his name softly and took up her pen.

“Franz, dear Franz. Come to the Riviera,” she wrote. “Come to Les Collines, my father’s home. We will meet there.”

She would welcome this serious and careful man, her Franz, her dear Franz, into her father’s home and into her life. She read his letter again. She had asked herself a question and mysteriously, an answer had come.

She opened the window and looked out at the sea, at the waves brushed silver by the newborn moon. Her sleep that night was deep and dreamless, suffused as she was with a new contentment, a new certainty.

She returned to France and to her surprise, Franz awaited her at the Orly Airport, holding a bouquet of yellow roses. She melted into his arms, scattering fragrant petals at their feet.

“I know we were to have met in Nice, but there you would have been surrounded by your family,” he explained. “I wanted to have you all to myself for a few days first. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I’m delighted,” she said honestly and rested her head on his shoulder.

He had made the right decision. There would be too many claims on her at Les Collines. Her father would insist on a full report of the exhibitions in Israel, the children would clamor for her attention, and Virginia would pelt her with complaints. In Paris, she and Franz had the luxury of privacy, a respite from invasive demands and obligations.

At her home on the Quai de l’Horloge, they toasted each other with the champagne he had brought, both of them flushed with the simple pleasure of being together. Their words collided, their laughter melded. They spoke of the past and planned their future. His voice, as always, was very soft and hers throbbed with excitement. She could scarcely believe her good fortune.

It occurred to them that they were hungry. Her housekeeper had left meager provisions and she bustled about in her kitchen, still in her traveling clothes, tossing together a mushroom omelet and a salad, moving with her usual swift efficiency, aware of his admiring gaze. Her every gesture seemed wondrous to him. Growing up in a household staffed by servants, he found this new domestic intimacy endearing. But then he found everything about Ida endearing.

“Your father and I met briefly in Bern, when he visited the exhibition,” he told her as they ate, occasionally replenishing their flutes of champagne. “We had much in common.”

“And now you have even more in common,” she said teasingly.
“Moi. Moi même.”

“You are certain that he will accept me into his family?” he asked apprehensively.

“It will not matter to me if he does not,” she replied, matching his seriousness with her own. “I am a grown woman in charge of my own life, my own future. But you must not worry. He will accept you without reservation. He will recognize your goodness, your talent, your love of art, and the happiness you have given me. You will see that when you come to Les Collines.”

“I will be there soon,” he promised and caressed her face, tracing each feature with his long fingers, lightly touching her full lips and stroking her thick eyebrows.

“Very soon,” she commanded sternly, removing his spectacles, twirling them playfully as she leaned forward and kissed him.

“Very soon,” he agreed, retrieving the spectacles and holding her close.

Her beauty stopped his heart. Her gaiety intrigued; her vivacity delighted. She had penetrated the walls of a somber seriousness that had so long encircled him. He felt himself liberated. His scholarship, his dedication to art, would be enhanced by her talent and insight. He reached into his pocket and removed a small velvet box that contained an antique ring, an emerald set in filigreed gold. He slipped it onto her finger.

“My grandmother’s,” he said. “And my great-grandmother’s before her. An emerald to match your eyes.”

She looked at him, joyous and amazed. She understood what the ring meant. It was his formal commitment to the shared destiny they had already embraced. They were engaged. They would marry. Tears stood in her eyes. Tears of ecstasy, tears of hope and tenderness. She touched the verdant stone, amazed by its smoothness.

“An emerald,” she said and recalled the tales her mother had told her of her grandparents’ jewelry store in Vitebsk.

“I played with emeralds,” Bella had said. “I wore a crown of real sapphires, real emeralds on Purim. Where are those emeralds and sapphires now, Idotchka? Where?”

Her mother’s plaintive question lingered in memory. She marveled that she was marrying a man whose legacy was intact, whose inheritance had not been forfeit to war and hatred. She had entered a safe harbor.

She left for Nice and Franz accompanied her to the Gare de Lyon. They had agreed that it would be best for her to have some time alone with her family. She and Marc had a great deal to talk about. She wanted to tell him that Franz, who was so very important to her, would be coming to Les Collines. Marc did not enjoy surprises.

“I will be with you very soon,” Franz promised as she boarded the train.

She waved to him from her carriage window and continued to wave until the train gathered speed and she could no longer see him. She held her hand up to the light. The emerald ring turned sea green at the touch of a vagrant sunbeam. Her father would delight in its protean hue, she knew, and he would surely delight in her new happiness. Of course he would accept Franz. He wanted her to have children. He would welcome grandchildren. She smiled at the extravagance of her own imaginings.

She swept into Les Collines, radiant and effervescent. She had bought a brightly colored high Bukharan skullcap for Marc. She planted it on his tangle of gray curls.

“You must wear it when you go to Israel for the Jerusalem opening,” she said. “They are waiting for you,
Papochka
. They plan a grand reception. For you and for Virginia.”

“For me?” Virginia asked sardonically. “They are waiting for Virginia McNeil in Israel? Are the rabbis of Jerusalem eager to greet Marc Chagall’s
shiksa
?” She smiled wanly and opened and closed the elegant purse Ida had bought for her. It was not a gift that pleased her.

“You speak foolishly, Virginia,” Marc said harshly.

“Do I?” The purse slid to the floor as she sprang to her feet and stared down at him, her cheeks mottled with anger. “Have you thought about the children? Who will care for them if I am trailing after you through synagogues and ruins? What about my own work, my friends?”

“Your work? Your friends?” he asked contemptuously, his voice rising dangerously. “Your work? Is the world waiting for your drawings, your poems? Did your friends at Roquefort rescue you from poverty as I did? It is your duty to accompany me.”

Virginia glared at him and stalked out of the room.

He sank back into his chair, depleted by his own fury. The colorful Bukharan hat was askew, his cheeks rouged by a dangerous rise of blood pressure. Ida thought that he looked like a pathetic, aged clown. The disloyalty of the thought shamed her.

“How can I go to Israel alone?” he asked.

“Virginia will go with you,” Ida assured him. “She needs time to think things through.”

She understood that Virginia was an expert player in the game of survival. She might defy Marc by acting like a resentful and petulant schoolgirl, but she was actually biding her time. In the end, she would accompany Marc to Israel because she was not prepared for a final breach. She had not left John McNeil until she had found refuge with Marc. She would not leave Marc until another man offered her comfort and sanctuary. But such an offer had not presented itself. Not yet.

Ida was not wrong. In the end, Virginia agreed to go to Israel with Marc. The children would be cared for by her friends at Roquefort.

“A sensible decision,” Ida said as they drove home from the spice market in Nice one afternoon. “The children will be fine.”

“I see that you have abandoned your objections to my Bohemian friends now that it is convenient,” Virginia replied coldly.

Ida hesitated. The time for honesty had come. She chose her words carefully.

“My opinion of your friends is unimportant. You do not need my approval. But what I do ask of you is that you care for my father, that you try once again to offer him some measure of contentment. He deserves that after all that he has done for you,” she said at last.

Virginia swerved off the road and parked the car in the shade of an olive grove. She was very pale; her hands trembled.

“I do care for Marc,” she said quietly. “He is David’s father, and our son was born out of our love. Or what I thought was our love. But our relationship is greatly changed. He seems to feel no tenderness for me. I must ask him for the smallest amounts of money, and even that he seems to begrudge me. He turns to you to check the household accounts. I think he considers me a servant. He sees me as David’s nursemaid, not his mother. I am his housekeeper, his chauffeur. I drive him to visit Matisse, to visit Picasso, but he often forgets to invite me to enter their homes with him. He summons me to be his model. I pose for him. He paints my body, but he no longer touches it. And I am young, Ida. I have needs. I want even a fraction of the passion he reserves for his paintings.” Her voice broke. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I do,” Ida replied.

How could she not understand? She and Virginia were almost the same age, their feelings similar, their needs and impulses shared. She thought of her own yearning for Franz’s tenderness, the surge of joy that caused her to tremble at his touch. Virginia surely had similar yearnings; she too sought tenderness and joy. She sympathized with Virginia, but her loyalty to Marc was inviolate.

“My father is not a young man,” she said. “You have always known that.”

“It is not his age that has driven us apart. It is his attitude, his lack of sensitivity to me, to what I need,” Virginia protested. “You know how distant we have become to each other. He does not talk to me. He issues instructions, reprimands.”

“Perhaps you both need a vacation, a time to rebuild your closeness. Your time in Israel will give you that,” Ida said, but she recognized the futility of her own words. Marc would treat Virginia no differently in Israel than he treated her at Les Collines.

“Perhaps,” Virginia said, her voice heavy with doubt. She looked down at the ring on Ida’s finger. “It’s beautiful,” she said, touching the smooth stone. “I haven’t seen it before.”

“Yes. It’s a gift. A wonderful gift.”

“I would guess that it is from Franz Meyer. We met him when we visited the exhibition in Bern there. He spoke endlessly about you. And with great admiration. More than admiration. I told Marc that we would soon see Franz Meyer again.” Virginia smiled knowingly.

“Yes. The ring is a gift from Franz Meyer. It is a wonderful gift and he is a wonderful man. And you are right. You will see him again very soon. He will soon arrive at Les Collines.”

“In all the years we have been together, Marc has never given me a ring,” Virginia said wistfully.

“But he has given you a great deal, has he not?” Ida asked.

“Has he?” Virginia turned the key in the ignition, pressed down on the accelerator, and drove too swiftly back to Les Collines.

Franz, having arrived a day earlier than he was expected, ran toward them.

He embraced Ida and then turned to Virginia and kissed her on both cheeks.

“It is good to see you again,” he said. “Our meeting in Bern was so enjoyable.”

“We are glad you are here. And Ida, I think, is very glad.” Virginia nodded and left them.

Ida smiled. She was glad that she and Virginia had spoken so openly. At the very least, there was finally peace of a kind between them.

She looked up at Franz. “Have you seen my father?” she asked.

“I have,” he replied. “He welcomed me warmly. I told him of our feelings for each other and our plans for a future together. He was pleased. All he has ever wanted, he said, was your happiness. You were right. We do not have to fear his disapproval.”

“You see,” Ida said. “Of course I was right. I am always right. Remember that, Monsieur Meyer.”

She kissed him on the lips, snatched the white silk scarf from his neck, and dashed away, laughing as he raced after her down the long driveway lined with eucalyptus trees. They did not look up at the terrace where Virginia stood staring down at them, sadness in her eyes and a wistful smile on her lips.

* * *

Marc’s approval of Franz was enthusiastic. Ida, he proclaimed to Matisse as the two artists sat together on the balcony in Cimiez, could not have chosen better.

“He is a calm man. A serious man. And my Ida, you know, she is like a shooting star. This Franz Meyer will make certain that she remains anchored to earth. He earned his doctorate in art history and there is little that he does not know. Of course he was born into the art world. He comes from a family of collectors.”

“Then he must be quite wealthy,” Henri Matisse observed.

“Very wealthy,” Marc agreed.

Franz’s familial wealth pleased and reassured him. Ida’s marriage would catapult her into a world of advantage and prestige that would extend to Marc himself.

“My hope is that he will make your daughter happy,” Matisse said softly.

The renowned artist had always been fond of Ida. He had, through the years, sketched her as an enchanting child, then as a shy young girl, and most recently as a sensuous woman, aware of the power of her beauty. It saddened him that he would probably not live long enough to sketch her in the fullness of motherhood, perhaps holding an infant to her breast.

* * *

During Franz’s frequent visits to Les Collines, he and Marc spent long hours in earnest discussions.

“I think you prefer my father’s company to mine,” Ida said teasingly, but the rapport between her father and her fiancé pleased her. For the first time since her mother’s death, her family felt whole again.

Franz spoke easily of Picasso and Matisse, offered effortless insights on the impact of the Fauvists on the impressionists, of the ways in which religion influenced the nuances of artists of every generation. Marc, who was considering the decoration of the baptistery of a church in Haute-Savoie, asked him if he thought it necessary that an artist be of the religion of those who commissioned the work.

“But hasn’t Jacques Lipchitz, a believing Jew, sculpted a bronze Virgin Mary?” Franz said in reply. “He is no less a Jew for creating a work of art for a church and the church is not compromised by offering a venue to the work of a Jew. We all worship one God.”

Marc nodded. Franz’s answer pleased and reassured him. Franz himself pleased and reassured him.

Ida and Franz saw Marc and Virginia off as they left for Israel.