Bridal Chair (44 page)

“Has it been many years since your dear mother passed away?” she asked.

Ida nodded. “Yes. Many years.”

It occurred to her suddenly that this seemingly fragile woman with her dark hair and dark eyes bore an odd resemblance to Bella. But she dismissed the thought at once. No one could be compared to her mother.

“And you were your parents’ only child?” Vava continued.

“Yes. But I do have a half brother,” she added. “Much younger than myself. His name is David.”

She realized, almost at once, that Ida Bourdet had surely mentioned David. Vava, it seemed, asked questions to which she already knew the answers. She would not tell Vava that her father refused to see David. He had irrationally projected his fury with Virginia onto his son.

“And you, I understand, have a brother. What are his future plans? What is his profession?” Ida asked, entering into Vava’s interrogatory game.

“Michel,” Vava replied stiffly. “My brother’s name is Michel. I do not know his plans. Do you often travel from Switzerland to your father’s home, Madame Meyer?”

Ida nodded. Skilled strategists both, thrust into an uneasy intimacy, they engaged in an intricate conversational chess match, moving each carefully plotted revelation across an increasingly hazardous board as they traveled down the sun-spangled road that led to Vence. Marc met them there, and Ida’s heart turned with pity to see how diminished he had become even in the short while since she had last seen him. Loneliness had withered him. His pale face was mottled, his blue eyes faded, and his creased, paint-stained clothing hung too loosely on his gaunt body. He acknowledged Vava with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Mademoiselle Brodsky has come all the way from England to help you at Les Collines,” Ida said too brightly.

“Do I need help?” he asked disconsolately.

It was Vava Brodsky who replied.

“But of course, everyone needs help,” she said gently in Russian.

He sat up straighter and turned to her. “You speak Russian?”

“I do. I was born in Kiev.”

“Ah, Kiev. I know about Kiev,” he said dreamily. “A city of cafés,
n’est-ce pas
? They say that Kiev became a refuge for those who left Petrograd after the revolution. Refugees have a great need of cafés, of course. I heard that in Kiev, after the revolution, there was ‘a department of the arts’ that launched a steamboat that floated down the Dnieper flying the banner of the revolution. Did you ever see that steamboat, Mademoiselle Brodsky?”

“I left Kiev in 1918. I was only thirteen years old. I never sat in a café. I never saw such a steamboat,” she said. “And I have, of course, never returned. I am unwelcome in Russia.”

“As I am,” Marc said, and his eyes filled with tears. “I left Mother Russia in 1922. Never to return. Never to return to the land of my birth.” His voice broke.

“But Russia has never left you,” Vava responded. “You have captured our motherland in your wonderful work.”

She took his hand in her own, a gesture of understanding and reassurance. Ida looked at her in surprise, startled and unnerved by the sudden intimacy between her father and this woman he barely knew.

“We really must go to Les Collines,” she said. “It is getting late.”

During the short ride, Ida worried that her father would once again collapse beneath the weight of his memories. She parked the car, took his arm, and slowly walked him up to the veranda, littered with fallen twigs and branches, the remnants of the winter’s wrath. The staff had been negligent, she thought angrily. Vava trailed behind them. Ida turned the key in the lock, opened the heavy door, and breathed deeply before entering.

Les Collines had the desolate, musty ambience of an abandoned home. Marc stood hesitantly in his own doorway, his head bent forward, as though listening for voices that had been stilled for so many weeks, perhaps anticipating Virginia’s too soft and placating tones or David’s mischievous laughter.

Vava looked around and wandered into the rear of the house as Ida rushed about lighting lamps, thrusting open windows, settling her father into a comfortable chair in the salon. She sorted swiftly through the mail and parcels that had accumulated during their absence, angry that the staff had ignored her instruction to send them on to her.

Exhausted by her own efforts, she sank onto the sofa as Vava entered the room carrying a tray laden with three tall glasses set in silver holders, filled to the brim with steaming tea, a bowl of sugar cubes, and a small platter of golden brown apple strudel studded with walnuts. She had discovered the kitchen. There had been no need for her to ask how Marc liked his tea. She had known. She watched him place a cube of sugar beneath his tongue and lift the fragrant hot brew to his lips. She smiled as he bit into the cake.

“It is of my own baking,” she said. “I brought it with me from London.”

“It is delicious,” he said. “My mother baked such a cake.”

“I learned the recipe from our cook in Kiev,” she said.

They spoke softly in Russian. He smiled. She smiled. They were cocooned for the moment in a mutuality of remembrance.

Ida sipped her own tea, but she did not eat the cake. Vava rose to retrieve a blanket from the sofa, and she placed it across Marc’s knees.

“The house is a bit chilly,” she said, and she closed a window that Ida had opened.

Ida rose. “I think I will start to drive to Paris,” she said. “If I get tired, I can stop in Toulon.”

“Of course,” Marc agreed.

“Shall I show you through the rest of the house before I leave?” she asked Vava.

“There is no need. I think I can manage,” Vava said.

“Yes. I am sure that you can,” Ida replied drily.

She understood instinctively that Vava was a woman with impeccable survival skills. She had been conditioned to assess new and challenging situations and manipulate them to her advantage. It was a role that history had thrust upon her and one that she had carefully cultivated. In accepting the position at Les Collines, she surely had her own agenda. Ida supposed that she should consider herself fortunate that Vava’s agenda matched her own.

She bent over her father and kissed him on both cheeks, pleased to see that his color had been restored, that his eyes had regained their luster.

“
Au
revoir
,
Papochka
,” she said.

She held her hand out to Vava who had finally removed her leather gloves. She noted with satisfaction that she had not been wrong. Vava’s palms were rough, her fingers punctured by the pricks of many needles. They were not the hands of a rabbi’s daughter.

“
À bientôt
,” they said in unison.

Ida left and closed the door softly behind her. She heard Vava secure the bolt and, with that simple action, establish her dominion over Les Collines.

* * *

Spring burst onto the Riviera in all its glory. The flower beds of Les Collines exploded into a riot of color. Dark-hearted pansies nestled beside tender carpets of lavender; the air was heavy with the sweet scent of orange blossoms, and the silver branches of the olive trees were already laden with small ovoids of pale green fruit. Virginia had loved a wild garden, but Vava mandated that borders be trimmed, the bushes pruned, the fallen fruit removed from the ground before it could rot. She arranged flowers for the house in discreet bouquets. Girls from Vence were hired to scour the kitchen, to beat the carpets, to polish and wax the hardwood floors. They were instructed to arrive when Marc was already in his studio and to leave when he emerged.

“Nothing must disturb
le
maître
,” Vava told them sternly.

She moved through the rooms, rearranging furniture, altering the placement of paintings. The children’s bedrooms became guest rooms. Their toys and books were placed in cartons and sent to the church as donations to the crèche. Within weeks of Vava’s arrival, there was no hint that a small boy and girl had ever lived at Les Collines. Only Ida’s suite remained untouched. Vava was too wise to intrude on Ida’s precinct.

Ida, during a brief visit, appraised the changes, approval and disapproval commingled.

“I bought David a wonderful train set,” she said. “It was in the nursery. Surely you did not give that away. He will want to play with it when he visits.”

“I understand that he has been sent to a boarding school in England, and your father has said that even when he returns to France, he does not want to see him,” Vava replied. “He finds all reminders of the boy to be painful, so of course I discarded the toys.”

“Indeed.” Ida’s voice was laced with annoyance, but she said nothing more. She would not discuss her brother with Vava. Instead she went into Marc’s studio, carrying an envelope of notes and drawings that David had sent to her, asking that she give them to their father.

“
Papochka
, these are from your son, David,” she said, holding the envelope out to him.

“I do not have a son,” he said angrily. “He is the son of the Englishwoman. She has taken him from me. His name is McNeil, not Chagall. That is what the law says, and I am a man who obeys the law. If the law says he is not my son, why should I answer his letters? Why should I support him?”

“Because you know that he is your son. You raised him. He is named for your brother. Of course he is your son, your Jewish son,” Ida insisted.

Ida loved and cherished her half brother. She remembered the sweet scent of his little body as she wiped him dry after a bath, the games they had played together and the books she had read to him. There was no need to lose him. Virginia, to her credit, was willing to share David with both Marc and Ida.

“If he is my son, he must live only with me. Virginia McNeil must be gone from his life as she is gone from my life. If David lives in my house, I will not allow her to see him,” Marc shouted.

“You cannot ask a mother to give up her son,” Ida said quietly. She placed the envelope with David’s letters and drawings on a table beside his easel and left the studio.

Later that week, she and Franz attended a performance of
Tosca
at the Paris Opera House. During the entr’acte, as they stood in the great hall sipping champagne, Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot approached them.

“Ah, the lovely daughter of Marc Chagall,” the artist said, kissing her on both cheeks, his breath sour with the mingled odors of garlic and wine.

“And now the wife of Franz Meyer,” Ida said. “May I introduce you?”

“Yes. Of course. The distinguished curator from Bern. I congratulate you both on your marriage.” He shook Franz’s hand and flashed them a wide smile, his teeth startlingly white against his earth-colored complexion. Françoise Gilot nodded an indifferent greeting. Ida, when she was single, had mildly amused her. Ida, as a married woman, interested her not at all.

“And how is your father bearing up since being deserted by the Englishwoman?” he asked and laughed harshly.

“He is fine,” Ida answered coldly.

“I am told that the Englishwoman married her photographer lover this very afternoon,” Picasso added.

“I had not heard that, and it is of little interest to us,” Ida retorted with a calm she did not feel. “Any love affair may come to an end.”

“Not mine,” he replied arrogantly. “My Françoise would never leave her Pablo. Isn’t that so, Françoise?”

She shrugged.

“Pablo thinks himself invincible,” Françoise said coldly.

The warning bell sounded, and they hurried to take their seats for the second act.

“He is a very unpleasant man, this Picasso,” Franz said.

“Unpleasantness is the prerogative of geniuses,” Ida replied and studied her program.

So
Virginia
and
Leirens
are
married
, she thought. Another chapter closed. She sighed and turned her attention to the music.

She did not mention Virginia’s marriage to Marc when she and Franz next visited Les Collines. They ate the Russian delicacies Vava prepared for their dinner. She was an excellent cook, and each dish that she offered arrived with a story. They praised the wild sorrel soup garnished with scallions that had been a staple of Marc’s childhood, and Vava told them that she traveled to the farmers’ market in Nice to find the freshest greens. Platters of blini and pirogen appeared. She explained that she foraged for the mushrooms herself, discovering them at the base of the eucalyptus trees, whose leaves she gathered for their curative properties. The chicken was stewed with root vegetables that she purchased from a farmer who set aside his best produce and poultry for her.

“No one can resist Vava,” Marc said proudly.

“I carry everything home from the farm myself,” she claimed.

“But isn’t that difficult for you?” Franz asked.

“I am used to difficulty,” she replied piously.

She ladled the stew onto their plates, selecting the choicest white meat for Marc.

“When I eat Vava’s food, I imagine that I am sitting in my mother’s kitchen,” he said appreciatively.

The dining room table groaned beneath Vava’s desserts, strudels and sponge cakes, tarts that sparkled with orange rind from the citrus that she plucked from their own trees, and pots of sweet plum jam, her own comfitures.

“I am partial to sugar,” Vava confessed. “My family owned a sugar brokerage. My father was called the Sugar Baron of Russia. But of course, that was long ago.” Her voice drifted into a soft sadness.

It occurred to Ida that Vava seemed to speak from a script. Her fluent words rang with a rehearsed theatricality. But then, she knew that Vava was an accomplished actress, aware of both her stage set and her costume. She wore an elegant black dress, covered with an impeccable starched white apron for the first act of her culinary tableau. She removed the apron as the meal progressed and she assumed different roles. She was at once chef and hostess, servant and mistress.

Ida also noted that while Marc helped himself to two slices of sponge cake and his lips were rimmed with the purple jam that he ate with a spoon, Vava, despite her proclaimed partiality for sugar, ate only an apple that she cut into elegant slices, playfully popping a sliver of fruit into Marc’s mouth.