Bridal Chair (41 page)

She smiled up at Franz. What a wonderful father he would be, this gentle serious man who was now her husband.

The wedding cake was carried in to cries of admiration. The Vence baker had fulfilled his promise, producing a masterpiece of sweet marzipan and varicolored icings adorned with chocolate hearts and flowers formed by blueberries and pecans. It was placed in front of Ida who took one last sip of champagne, laughed merrily, and seized the cake knife. Deftly, she sliced off the creamy top layer, transferred it to a plate, and laughing wildly, she crowned Franz with it as the crowd exploded with laughter. He looked at her in astonishment, matched her laughter with his own, and mischievously placed a hand on his head, covered it with cream, and fed it to his bride.

His sister turned to Arnold Rüdlinger. “It seems that Ida has turned our Franz into a new man,” she said disapprovingly.

“It seems that Ida has brought laughter and joy into his life,” Arnold countered.

Charles Leirens glided into a seat beside Ida. “I hope you and Franz like my photographs,” he said.

“I am sure we will. It seems that you were everywhere. I don’t think your camera missed anything. Thank you so much.”

“I leave for Italy tomorrow,” he said. “I will develop the prints when I return and we will arrange a time to study them. It was a privilege for me to photograph your wedding celebration. Of course you know that I wish you and your husband every happiness.
Au
revoir
, Madame Meyer.”

He kissed her hand and she smiled. He was, after all, a very charming man, she thought, and he had been the first to call her Madame Meyer.

“Madame Meyer.” She uttered her new name softly, smiled, and shook her head. In her heart of hearts, she knew, she was and always would be Ida Chagall. But on this, her wedding day, she was happy to add an equally important name. Yes, it was sheer happiness to be Ida Chagall
Meyer
.

Franz and Ida, arms linked, stood on the deck of the ferry that carried them to Corsica and lifted their faces to the soft Mediterranean breeze. Ida relaxed into an unfamiliar serenity.
This
is
what
it
means
to
be
content
, she thought. They leaned against the rail, their companionable silence occasionally broken by sudden bursts of shared laughter as they recalled the more comical moments of their wedding celebration.

They were complicit confederates, mutually aware that they were making the first deposits in the memory bank of their marriage.

When they disembarked at Ajaccio, she knew at once that Corsica, with its untamed rustic landscape, had been a perfect choice for their brief honeymoon. Here, on this wild island, there were no museums or galleries, no libraries or sculpture gardens, no one who might recognize their names. They were reliant solely, and wonderfully, on each other.

They wandered along the wharf of Ajaccio and created fanciful stories about the fishermen whose graceful sailboats lined the harbor. They decided that young sailor was a prospective bridegroom, saving for his wedding. Two small boys nearby were planning to stow away on a passenger ship. Franz claimed that the rotund bearded man with the broken nose hauling in a net of silver-gilled small fish had surely been a resistance fighter during the island’s occupation by German and Italian troops.

“How many Nazis do you think he killed?” he asked, inviting Ida into his fantasy.

“You know, Franz, I cannot joke about the Nazis. I still fear them,” she replied. “You must remember that you have married a Jew who might have ended her life in a Nazi death camp.”

“I’m sorry.” He held her close. “You have no need to be afraid. I will protect you.”

Her mood lifted.

“Of course, I am safe,” she said. “I am married to a gallant citizen of Switzerland.” She spoke with a forced gaiety, but there was an underlying seriousness to her words. “Our children must be born in Switzerland,” she added.

“Yes. All dozen of them will be born in Zurich,” he assured her, smiling fondly. It was the first time they had spoken of children.

They followed a trail up Monte Cinto and leaned against an escarpment that overlooked a small torrential stream that rocketed below them.

“Amazing how nature changes from one moment to another,” Franz murmured.

“Like life itself,” Ida said.

She felt the chill of an inexplicable sadness, an odd presentiment of lurking danger. When they returned to the hotel, she called her father. He was fine, he assured her, working very hard on the ceramics he would display at the Riviera and Paris exhibitions.

“I need your help, Idotchka,” he said. “There are so many arrangements to be made, and Virginia is going to London for her divorce proceedings.”

The familiar whine in his voice irritated her.

“I can’t worry about your exhibitions. I’m on my honeymoon,” she replied firmly.

“I know. Enjoy. Enjoy,” he muttered.

She hung up, struggling to contain her annoyance. She did not mention the conversation to Franz.

In Corte, a charming hilltop town, they rented a spacious villa and slept each night on a high white bed, the windows open so that the cool mountain wind wafted across their entwined bodies. They took long walks and paused one afternoon to stare into a meadow where a nanny goat suckled her newborn kid. They watched as the white, long-haired animal tenderly licked the residue of her milk from her spindly offspring’s lip. The rush of emotion Ida felt as she watched the two animals surprised her.

“How beautiful,” Ida said. “Motherhood is a miracle, isn’t it, Franz?”

“I think so,” he replied and kissed her forehead. “You will make a beautiful mother, Ida.”

She smiled. “All in good time,” she said. “For now I want to be a good wife.”

“And you are my good wife, my wonderful wife,” he assured her, and they walked on.

The days passed too swiftly and they treasured every hour, every sunrise, every velvet dark night. As they sat on their balcony at the twilight hour of their very last day in Corsica, she turned to Franz.

“Will we always be this happy?” she asked.

“Even happier,” he assured her and pressed his cheek to hers as the sun turned a fiery red and drifted into the sea.

* * *

Franz had pressing business in Bern and Ida returned to Les Collines, oddly grateful for the rare opportunity to be alone with her father, although she knew she would have to deal with his petulance, his feelings of neglect and abandonment.

Virginia was still in London although she had phoned with the welcome news that her divorce had been granted and she would soon return.

“What good news,
Papochka
,” Ida said. “Now you are free to marry and give David your name.”

“We will see,” he said noncommittally and tried on the rough woven smock Ida had bought for him. She had chosen it because the blue fabric matched his eyes, something she knew he was sure to notice. He was a man who never passed a mirror without glancing at his own reflection.

Jean and David seized upon their gifts with delight and danced about the garden in their oversized Corsican shirts, the fisherman caps perched jauntily on their heads.

“Ida, you’re the most wonderful sister,” David proclaimed, hugging her knees. “You always know exactly what to buy for us.” He had grown into a handsome, smiling child, his small, sculpted features similar to Marc’s, his hair dark and silken, his eyebrows thick and jet-colored.

“My David looks like my brother, Dovidl. He has a real Jewish face,” Marc often told Ida, although never in Virginia’s hearing.

On the morning of Virginia’s return from London, he and Ida stood on the doorstep to welcome her, but there was an odd formality, an absence of sensual intimacy, to their exchanged greetings. He did not embrace her but kissed her on both cheeks, and she in turn simply touched his face with her gloved hand as though shielding his flesh from her own.

Ida embraced Virginia, peppered her with questions about London, asked after her parents, and carried her portmanteau into the house where she presented her with the handsome leather suitcase she had bought for her in Corsica. Virginia opened it, examined the cream-colored satin lining, and passed her hand across the soft pigskin.

“Thank you, Ida,” she said at last. “It’s very beautiful. But when am I to use it?”

“Surely you and my father will take a holiday after you marry,” Ida replied.

“Yes. After we marry,” Virginia repeated wearily. “If we marry,” she added.

“Of course you’ll marry. It is possible now that you have your divorce.”

“Has your father said as much?” Virginia asked. She knew that there was nothing that Marc kept from Ida.

“There has been no time to talk. This is such a busy time for us,” Ida equivocated.

* * *

It was a busy time. There were frenetic preparations for the vernissage at the Galerie des Ponchettes in Nice. In Paris, the completed etchings for La Fontaine’s
Fables
as well as Marc’s new ceramics had to be arranged. Virginia was soon dashing from the house to the studio, obeying Marc’s instructions as to the handling and crating of his work as Ida prepared to travel to Paris to deal with the logistics there.

“Managing the Nice exhibition will be very difficult for Virginia,” Ida said worriedly before she left.

“It will be all right,” Marc said dismissively. “Leirens wrote to me. He is back in France. I asked him to return to Les Collines so that he can photograph the pictures at the Nice gallery. He will help Virginia.”

“Is that wise,
Papochka
?” Ida asked.

“Why is it not wise?” he asked irritably.

She said no more. Her concern was irrational and without substance, she told herself.

* * *

Charles Leirens was pleased to be back at Les Collines. He had been lonely in Italy, he told Virginia.

“It is difficult to be always on my own,” he said sadly. “You live in the heart of a family. I suppose you cannot understand the desolation of constant loneliness.”

“One can live with others and still feel a terrible loneliness,” she replied, her eyes downcast.

They stared at each other and fell silent. But as they drove to Nice later that morning, he reached for her hand. She did not pull away. Day after day, he photographed Marc’s work, and during each journey, she drew closer to him, their thighs touching, his breath warm upon her cheek, her leg pressed against his. They did not speak. At the gallery, they worked together, their movements synchronized, their silence eloquent.

With the completion of the photographs, he was ready to return to Paris. Marc was lavish in his praise of the montages.

“Wonderful of you to give so much time to my work, Leirens,” he said and presented him with a small drawing of the Les Collines orchard. “Take good care of that. It will be worth a great deal one day,” he advised. “And of course Ida and I are looking forward to seeing the wedding photographs. Can we meet at her home at the Quai de l’Horloge?” He consulted his pocket calendar. “Let us say on the fifteenth of the month. Is that convenient for you?”

Charles nodded and jotted the date down in his notebook.

“Are you all packed, my friend?” Marc asked.

“Almost,” Charles said.

“But Virginia must help you. She is wonderful at packing. I must go to the studio now so I will bid you
au
revoir, mon ami
.”

Virginia and Charles stared after him and then went together to Charles’s bedroom. His suitcase lay open on the bed, and standing on either side of it, they leaned toward each other and kissed for the first time. Within moments, she was in his arms.

“What will we do?” she asked. “What can we do?”

“You must leave Chagall and come away with me,” he replied.

“How can I leave him? He is part of me. And there is David, our son. What of David?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I only know that we must be together. Somehow we will manage. I promise.”

She said nothing. It was a promise that could not be kept. She rested her head against his chest, her eyes closed, her heart pounding.

He left the next morning. Within hours of his departure, Ida phoned, insisting that Marc come to Paris immediately.

He protested that it was impossible. His new ceramics, the centerpieces of the Paris exhibition, had not yet been fired.

“It is important that you come now. We must decide on asking prices for the major pieces and I cannot make the decision alone. It is too much for me to manage. Franz is growing impatient and wants me to come to Bern as soon as possible. We have not been together since we returned from our honeymoon. My husband deserves some consideration.” She reminded him, not for the first time, of the shift in her priorities.

“Very well,” he agreed reluctantly. “I will take the train to Paris today. Virginia will wait until the new ceramics are completed and then drive with them to Paris.”

“Is that all right with you?” he asked Virginia belatedly.

She shrugged.

“Does it matter?” she asked. “Do you really care?”

She drove him to the train station and he turned to her as they waited on the platform.

“You see that I rely on you more and more, Virginia,” he said. “Ida has a new life, new responsibilities. But I am hopeful that you have learned from her, that you can perhaps take on her role, her responsibilities.”

“I see. You are hoping that I will become more like Ida and perhaps more like your Bella,” Virginia said daringly. It was the first time that she had ever spoken to him of Bella, although her spectral presence had hovered over them.

“Perhaps.” He did not meet her eyes as he answered.

“But I do not want to become like your charismatic Ida. I do not want to become more like your elegant Bella. I want you to accept me for who I am, for who I will always be, Virginia Haggard McNeil, the mother of your son.”

The roar of the approaching train muffled his reply, but she saw that his eyes had darkened in anger and his brow was creased in a frown. Briefly, his hand rested heavily on her shoulder, and he boarded without kissing her. Although she remained on the platform and saw him take his window seat in the first-class compartment, he did not turn to look at her. He did not wave but stared straight ahead.

* * *

Virginia was heavyhearted when she returned to Les Collines, but before she could remove her coat, Charles phoned from Paris, his voice desperate.

“I must see you,” he pleaded. “Let us have at least one night together.”

She trembled. Jean and David were playing in the garden. David’s lilting laughter drifted into the room. He saw her at the window and waved to her, her lovely, loving son. She could not risk losing him. But then Charles was not asking her to abandon her children. He spoke of one night. One night that would assuage her loneliness, affirm their love. Surely she deserved that. She would manage it.

“All right,” she agreed. “One last night.”

“I will fly to Nice,” he said.

She smiled. Their clandestine assignation had become a romantic adventure.

She called Marc at Ida’s Paris apartment.

“My friend Yvonne in Menton is ill, and she asked if I could stay with her for a day or so,” she said. “It is important that she not be alone. Jean and David will be with the housekeeper.”

“Do as you please,” he said harshly.

Ida’s voice came over the wire.

“Is there a number where you can be reached?” she asked.

“There will be no need to call me, but Marc does have Yvonne’s phone number,” she said curtly and slammed the receiver down.

She met Charles’s plane in Nice, and they spent a day and night at a small
pensione
in a hillside village, plunged into a whirlpool of wild intimacy. His desire ignited her own. He whispered her name, spoke of how he valued her gentleness, her loveliness, and her inner beauty.

“I love you because you are Virginia,” he said, the very words she yearned to hear.