Bridal Chair (47 page)

At the Leicester Gallery, she forced herself to smile as, with her usual grace, she swept into the crowded room, her head held high, aware of the murmurs of admiration and the whispered utterances of her name.

“Ida Chagall. The daughter of the artist.” “Isn’t she beautiful?” “Isn’t she lovely?”

She was introduced to the Princess Royal and curtsied, wondering all the while when she could next call home, whether Piet would forgive her for her absence at the hour of his terror, and worried that Franz’s understated anger would endure.

The week in London passed swiftly. The critiques of the exhibition were laudatory. Ida was, as always, an authoritative presence in the gallery. She smiled and granted interviews.

The art editor of the
Sunday
Times
asked about Picasso, whose work was being exhibited in Paris, Hamburg, and Munich.

“Your father and Pablo Picasso are now the most famous living artists in Europe,” he said. “Are they competitive with each other?”

“Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso have long been close friends. They live near each other on the Riviera and they enjoy each other’s success,” she said smoothly.

She smiled at the audacity of her own dissimulation. The two artists haunted each other’s exhibitions, read critiques of each other’s works, always searching for the stray negative observation intimating that Chagall’s work was too kitschy, Picasso’s too obscure. Picasso’s pleasure in Virginia’s betrayal had been matched by Marc’s own unconcealed satisfaction when Françoise Gilot in turn abandoned Picasso. The
Sunday
Times
would manage without that information.

She posed for photographs, always arranging to stand beneath
The
Red
Roofs
because a photographer who worked with color film had told her that her auburn hair provided a subdued contrast to her father’s brilliant carmine impasto.

Each evening, she called home and began to be reassured. Piet was almost fully recovered. The girls had not been infected. Franz was conciliatory. He was pleased that she was enjoying success in London. Her father would also be pleased. They agreed that it would be best if she went to Vence before returning to Switzerland. There were contracts for Marc to sign, checks that had to be deposited.

On her last night in London, Piet himself spoke to her on the phone.

“I am much better,
Maman
,” he said cheerfully. “Sister Marie Grace has left, but she was a very nice woman, after all. She took good care of me. What have you bought for us in London?”

She laughed aloud. He was fine. She was forgiven. No harm had been done after all.

“I have many presents for you and your sisters,” she said. She looked across the room where gift-wrapped parcels from Selfridges and Harrods formed a colorful hillock and wondered how she would manage to get all the toys and clothing she had purchased back to Switzerland.

“You will not be disappointed,” she promised him. “I will be home soon. I must spend one or two days in Vence with your
grandpère
and then we will be together.”

“You are going to France before you come home?” he asked, the disappointment clear in his voice.

“But I must, Piet,” she said. “Your father will explain. It is only a day or two. And then we will be together for months and months.”

“Promise?” he asked petulantly.

“Don’t be a silly boy,” she chided.

She was wary of promises. In the Jewish tradition, a promise was a covenant. A promise broken was an oath betrayed. She marveled that she was still hostage to the superstitions of her childhood, but she was relieved when Piet offered no argument.

“All right,
Maman
,” he said. “I won’t be silly. Come home soon and don’t forget our presents.”

Franz came to the phone then.

“Be careful, Ida,” he said.

“No need to worry,” she protested. “I am only going to my father’s home.”

“Do not let Vava upset you,” he warned.

“She will not upset me,” she assured him, but already she felt the all-too-familiar cramp always triggered by the very mention of Vava’s name.

* * *

It was late afternoon when her plane landed in Nice. Although she had sent her father a telegram with her flight information, he was not at the airport nor had he sent a driver. She shrugged and arranged for a cab to take her to Vence. She kept the window open and welcomed the touch of the soft sea-scented breeze on her face. The familiar aroma of Riviera roses mingled with the sweetness of orange blossoms drifted into the car. She fell into a light sleep and awakened only when the driver ascended the incline that led to Les Collines and braked a bit too suddenly. Eager to see her father and report on the London success, she hurtled out of the cab and dashed up the slate steps to the terrace.

“
Papochka
,” she called excitedly.

Marc was seated opposite Vava at the small wrought iron table. He turned and looked at Ida, his expression puzzled as though mystified by her arrival.

Ida stared at them, startled by their appearance. Marc wore the elegant blue velvet jacket he reserved for special occasions, a paisley ascot knotted around his neck. Vava was elegant in a white silk dress, the white lace shawl, Ida’s gift once dismissed as “not her sort of thing,” draped around her shoulders. Her smooth black hair was pulled back into a chignon threaded with sprigs of baby’s breath. She was surprised to see that they were drinking champagne, using the flutes of amber glass that Bella had discovered in a Paris flea market. Her father rarely drank; since his illness, he had never had a drink in the middle of the afternoon. Vava, she knew, considered herself an oenophile, but she was too frugal to indulge in champagne.

Ida hesitated for a moment and then hurried to her father and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Didn’t you remember that I was coming today?” she asked.

“But how would I have known that?”

“I did send a telegram from London,” she said and turned to Vava who shrugged.

“Telegrams are often misdirected,” she murmured.

“Are they?” Her question was tinged with ironic disbelief. But this was no time to launch a quarrel. “How splendid you look, Vava, absolutely bridal.”

The slightest of blushes tinged Vava’s pale cheeks.

“Yes. Bridal,” she murmured as Marc rose and paid the driver who deposited Ida’s luggage and stood awkwardly twirling his cap, awaiting further instructions.

“Please wait in the kitchen,” Ida said.

“Of course, madame.” He hurried away as though anxious to distance himself from the odd trio clustered on the terrace.

They were silent until he vanished into the house.

“Your daughter is so clever, Marc,” Vava said then. “She has said that I look bridal.”

“Of course Vava looks bridal.” Marc spoke too loudly, injecting a forced gaiety into his voice. “She became a bride today. We have just returned from the office of the mairie of Vence where we took our marriage vows. Here, Ida, drink to our happiness, to our good fortune.”

He held a flute of champagne out to her, his hands trembling.

She took it from him and set it down on the table.

“Marriage vows? But you have been married for years now. I don’t understand,” she protested.

“It’s very simple,” Vava said, enunciating each word carefully as though explaining a difficult concept to a student who might be slow to understand. “We were divorced some weeks ago on the advice of my attorney. The agreement we entered into when we first married at the Bourdet home did not offer me sufficient protection. My brother felt that I needed more security, greater legal assurances. He was right, of course, and your father agreed. So a new settlement was drawn up that is fairer to me, and we remarried this very day under the new agreement.” She smiled. “How fortunate that you should be here to celebrate with us.”

Dizzy and light-headed, Ida clutched the arms of her chair. She bit her lips, fearful of uttering words that she would regret. She turned Vava’s words over and over in her mind as her father looked at her nervously. At last she lifted the glass of champagne and took a sip. The amber flute was warm in her hand and she remembered suddenly how proud Bella had been of that purchase. She had discovered them in a stall as she wandered through the
marché aux puces
and bought them because their color matched Ida’s hair.

Ida sighed. Her hair was no longer a match for the amber shade of those fragile glasses. It had darkened and was lightly threaded with tendrils of silver. But then everything had changed. Her mother’s tender treasures now belonged to Vava. Her father’s house, the house she had discovered for him, was closed against her, and his allegiance was vested in the woman he had married not once but twice. The wine was sour on her tongue, but she took yet another sip.

“I take it that this new arrangement is legal?” she asked.

“Why should it not be legal?” Vava moved closer to Marc, covered his trembling hand with her own as though to calm him.

It was obvious, Ida realized, that Vava had not shown him her telegram because she wanted the new marriage to be accomplished before Ida reached Vence. Vava had anticipated her objections, had anticipated Marc’s fear of her reaction. How swiftly and cleverly she had moved, this woman, but then her entire life had depended on swiftness and cleverness.

“It is my understanding that relations who may be affected by a revised settlement must be informed of it,” Ida said.

Franz had said as much six years earlier on the very day that Marc and Vava were first married. She had been concerned that her father’s marriage might impact on her eventual inheritance although he had assured her then that she would be adequately protected.
Protected
. The very word that Vava had used to explain the settlement. Vava’s new protection surely meant that Ida’s own was forfeit.

“And if you were so informed, would you go against your dear father’s wishes?” Vava asked.

“Of course she wouldn’t. Not my Ida. Now drink to our happiness, Idotchka.”

She recognized the plea in his voice, saw the terror in his eyes. She knew that Vava had threatened to leave him if he had not consented to the new settlement, the absurd divorce and the even more absurd remarriage. She had, after all, issued that threat after knowing him for only three months. Now, after all these years, with his dependence on her so reinforced, his life with her so calm and comfortable, he would surely have accepted such an ultimatum. Ida understood his self-protective rationales. He had, she supposed, told himself that Ida was strong; she would survive and forgive, but he could not survive Vava’s desertion.

She stared at him. His face crumbled. He pulled the ascot from his neck and toyed with it nervously. He dared not look at her. She raised her glass again.

“To your happiness,
Papochka
,” she said quietly.

“And to Vava’s, of course,” he insisted.

She said nothing but drank deeply, setting the empty flute on the table.

Suddenly eager to leave Les Collines, she opened her briefcase and removed the contracts that he had to sign, the checks that he had to endorse.

“As you will see, the London exhibition was a very successful undertaking for us,” she said. “It was exhausting but well worth it.”

It was Vava who reached for the sheaf of papers. She set the contracts aside and studied the checks.

“You look tired. It pains me to see you work so hard, Ida,” Marc said.

“I do it for you, Papa,” she replied.

“And for yourself,” Vava added. “But of course you will not be troubled with so much work on your father’s behalf again. Please tell her what we have decided, Marc.”

“Vava and I think it best if you no longer act at all on my behalf.”

He spoke so softly that Ida had to lean forward to catch his meaning, and even then, she could not believe that she had heard him correctly.

“Not act at all on your behalf?” she repeated.

He nodded, his expression pained.

“Are you saying that you no longer want me to represent you in any negotiation?” she asked in bewilderment.

“It is no longer necessary. You know of course that Vava is very capable. She has made more convenient arrangements.” He stumbled over his words, and his hands shook anew as he refilled his glass.

“Yes. I am sure she has.”

Ida stared at him in disbelief. Was this really her father, Marc Chagall, this trembling old man who sat before her looking like a frightened child? When had he morphed into a white-haired, blue-eyed marionette who spoke the words mandated by his wife, that pale, dark-haired puppeteer who would forever control his strings? But then she had always known that his life was bifurcated. In his art, he was suffused with power, the magnitude of his talent, his genius, unmatched. But in his life, even in his beliefs, he was weak and vulnerable, a man so insecure that he could not be alone, a Jew who plundered the symbols of his people but never entered a synagogue. He was a father who had, for a time, rejected his son out of anger. He was a father who now betrayed his daughter. She pitied him. She pitied herself. She had been blind. Blind and foolish.

She stood abruptly and called to her driver. He trudged out of the kitchen. She pointed to her bags. “Put them in the car,” she ordered. “I want you to drive me to Toulon.”

“But why are you leaving?” Marc gripped her hands. “You must stay. We will have dinner. We will celebrate.”

“I cannot celebrate with you, Papa. Not today. Perhaps not ever again.”

“Idotchka. Idotchka,” he moaned.

She held his face, his aged elfin face, in her hands and kissed him on both cheeks. “We will talk soon,” she promised. “Soon.”

She did not look at Vava but hurried into the car, grateful to the driver who drove speedily away from Les Collines, the house she would never again think of as her home.

Her tears came when she reached Toulon. She stretched out on her bed and submitted to the sobs that racked her body. They subsided at last, leaving her suffused with a new calm, an unexpected and incomprehensible lightness of heart. She was, she realized, disappointed and wounded, yet strangely relieved. Never again would she be compelled to leave a weeping child in favor of her father’s interests. She could reclaim her own life, return to her own neglected talent. She phoned Franz, heard her children laughing in the background. Briefly she told him that she would no longer be representing her father.