Bridal Chair (12 page)

She steeled herself to action. She would help him to overcome it. He needed sleep, food, and reassurance. He would be fine.

She led him to a chair and spoke to him with a calm that she did not feel.

“I see that you are frightened. This has been a difficult time. I understand that. Of course we will make other arrangements. I will find us a new place to stay and I will get rid of Katya. I should have done that a long time ago.”

She would not tell him that the maid had been seen at pro-Nazi rallies. Such knowledge would only feed his paranoia.

“It will be all right. We are not in any danger,” she continued, her voice very soft.

She poured him a large glass of vodka, sliced the baguette, and covered it with the chèvre cheese he favored. This she cut into small pieces as though preparing a snack for a child. She offered him one bite at a time, encouraging him to eat slowly, to chew carefully. Obediently, he ate and drank. His hands stopped trembling and he nodded, willing himself to believe her. She smiled encouragingly and patted his shoulder as she handed him the food in the manner of a mother feeding a hungry but reluctant toddler.

“Eat,
Papochka
, eat,” she coaxed.

She turned as her mother entered the room and rushed to her side.

“Oh, Idotchka. We have been so upset.”

Bella’s voice quivered, and her breath came in small gasps. She had rouged her very pale cheeks and circled her eyes with kohl. She wore her rainbow-colored robe, and her jet-black pomaded hair was a glistening helmet, giving her the look of the emaciated gypsy women who wandered the streets of Paris. Ida embraced her and imagined that she could feel her mother’s heart flutter beneath the flimsy fabric.

“Everything will be all right,
Maman
. I promise,” she said softly.

She had, she realized, assumed Bella’s own tone, parroted the words her mother had so often uttered, copied the patient cadence of maternal reassurance, the daughter now the mother.

The next morning, she found lodgings for her parents at a pension in Saint-Dyé-sur-Loire. The proprietor, Madame Duval, was a widow whose husband had been killed in the First World War. She wore only the black serge dresses of the perpetual mourner. Day after day, she nourished her grief with hatred.

“Les Boches.”

She spat out her detestation of the Germans and showed Ida the gold-framed photograph of her very young husband in uniform. He had been twenty-five years old at his death. How old was Ida’s soldier husband, she asked, and her eyes filled with tears when Ida told her that Michel had not yet celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. Ida told her that she was Jewish and she wept again. She was proud to welcome Jews into her home.

“Ah, the poor Jews.
Les
pauvres
juifs.
” She sighed. “
Jésus
, poor
Jésus
, was himself a Jew.” She fingered her crucifix.

Madame Duval kept the lights very dim. The rooms were cold, the kitchen small and crowded, but Ida was undeterred. Here there would be no fascist landlord, no slovenly, Jew-hating serving girl.

She returned to the farmhouse, paid the farmer more rent than was due him, and gave Katya two months’ wages. She did not give them Madame Duval’s address. Katya looked at her scornfully.

“You cannot buy my good will, Madame Rapaport,” she said. “You and I recognize each other for what we are.”

Ida did not reply. Katya’s enmity, her hostile intimacy, was no longer of any importance.

“I wish you
bonne
chance
,” she said curtly and continued her packing.

* * *

Summer ended, and on the first day of September, a somber newscaster interrupted a radio broadcast of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the announcement that Hitler had invaded Poland. The Chagalls stared at each other in stunned silence.

“What does this mean?” Bella asked fearfully.

Ida looked out the window at the clear sky, the shaded pathways ribbed with sunlight, at the children skipping beside their kerchiefed mothers who carried string bags laden with vegetables through the streets of the village. It was a scene of sylvan peace. If Michel was with her on such a day, they might have walked along the river, reveling in the brilliant sunlight, the cool breeze. But Michel was a soldier in an army that was surely preparing for battle. France, like England, was a signatory to the pact that promised to protect Poland and would therefore soon be at war with Germany.

“We don’t yet know what it means,
Maman
,” she said, struggling for a straw of reassurance, but her father shook his head wearily. His narrow face was frozen into the death mask of hopelessness. He switched the radio off. There was no need for additional news.

Two days later, Madame Duval knocked urgently on their door. Her face was flushed and she clutched her crucifix as though desperate for whatever comfort it might offer.

“
Mesdames, monsieur, c’est la guerre, la guerre
,” she told them, her voice so soft that they strained to hear her. “
La
guerre, la guerre
,” she repeated and swayed from side to side.

Ida reached out to steady her, and Marc turned on the radio. Together they listened to the melancholic voice of the BBC announcer who informed his listeners that at eleven o’clock that morning, Prime Minister Chamberlain, who had promised Lady Clerk that there would be peace in their time, had informed the citizens of Great Britain that their country was at war with Germany.

“May God bless you all. May he defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail,” Chamberlain concluded.

Riveted to the radio, they listened to Prime Minister Édouard Daladier reveal in sad and muted tones that he had called on the Chamber of Deputies to authorize the declaration of war on Germany.

“The peace has been lost,” the announcer said sadly.

“As though it had ever been found,” Marc muttered and impatiently switched the dial to another station as though another broadcast might be more optimistic. They heard an even more sober report, and then there was a brief silence as a recording of “La Marseillaise” filled the airwaves.

In their small room in Saint-Dyé-sur-Loire, the Chagalls and Madame Duval stood and sang the anthem of their beloved country. The landlady’s voice was frail but touchingly lovely. She held Ida’s hand tightly as they lifted their voices in defiance of the grim news. “
Le
jour
de
gloire
est
arrivé
,” they sang, and Ida wondered how many months, how many years, would have to pass before the day of glory would indeed arrive.

Marc switched the radio off, and Bella sank into the easy chair.

“Oh, not again,” she said softly, and tears streaked her cheeks.

She had been only twenty-five years old when the guns of August sounded in 1914, and now, in her fiftieth year, Europe was at war yet again. Would every quarter century of her life launch another catastrophe? She wept in silence, and Marc and Ida looked at her helplessly. It was Madame Duval who sat beside Bella and took her hands in her own.

“
C’est la vie, madame
,” she said softly. “
C’est la vie
.”

“
C’est la vie
,” Bella repeated, her broken voice so soft that they could barely hear her.

“
Ma
chérie
, how strange this war is,” Michel wrote to Ida. “My lieutenant calls it the
drôle de guerre
, a war of falsity. No shots are fired. No bombs fall. I do not even bother to refill the magazine of my rifle, and I probably would not know how to fire it. The army has given us no training at all. Our officers seem to rely on their well-tailored uniforms and their smart berets for protection. They continue to assure us that the Maginot Line is impenetrable, and I hope that they are right, although I doubt it. Ida, they say that Paris is still quite peaceful, but be vigilant. I know that your father will have an exhibition at Galerie Mai, and while this is good news, it worries me that you will be traveling so often from the Loire to the city. I confess to being pessimistic, but I fear that the
drôle de guerre
will become
une
guerre
actuelle
, a real war. Please do what you can for my parents. You are in my thoughts,
ma
chérie
.”

Ida read and reread his letter, recalling the loving notes he had written her during the days of their courtship. Always he had ended with the tender assurance, “
Tu
es
dans
mes
rêves, dans mon coeur.
You are in my dreams. You are in my heart.” Those words had vanished. She placed the letter in her drawer. At least she was in his thoughts if not in his dreams. She wondered if they were still in each other’s hearts.

She followed his advice. She was vigilant as she and her father journeyed to Paris to prepare for the exhibition. A driver recommended by Madame Duval drove them to the city and back, their passports and identity cards within easy reach.

Paris was a joyless city. Christmas was approaching, but there was no appetite for festivity. No
Père Noëls
stood on street corners in scarlet costumes. Few wreaths were hung in shop windows or on front doors.

Everyone was suspect in a city gripped by fear. The cafés were empty, the restaurants deserted. Distrust contaminated friendships. Neighbors looked askance at each other. Accents were remarked upon and questioned. Marc, with his shock of wild curls, Russian peasant shirts, and loose linen suits, and Ida, with her red-gold hair, close-fitting, gem-colored dresses, and determined stride, attracted attention. Twice they were stopped by gendarmes and asked to produce their papers. A clerk in a patisserie ignored them. When Ida complained to the owner, she was told that his shop did not welcome foreigners.

“But I am French,” she protested.

He stared at her in stony silence, and she left without purchasing anything. Rumors abounded. Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas had left the city for unknown precincts. No one feared for their safety. It was known that they had a great deal of money as well as contacts among fascist sympathizers. But there was great concern about Chaim Soutine, George Grosz, and other Jewish painters and writers who had vanished. All Jews were in danger.

Traveling back to the Loire Valley, their hired car moved slowly down traffic-clogged roads. Trucks and cars, loaded with valises and trunks, and clumsy moving vans crammed with furniture formed a grim cortege. The faces of the drivers were wreathed in anger. Sullen children stared out of the grimy windows of crowded vehicles. Weeping women held their infants close. Ida dreaded yet another journey to Paris to prepare the catalog for the exhibition. She did not want to leave her parents during the holiday season, but she had no choice.

Alone in Paris, Ida worked on the exhibition, careful to avoid contact with anyone she did not trust. There were whispered rumors about suspected collaborators, speculations about when Paris itself would be invaded.

She visited Michel’s parents and stood between them as they lit their Hanukkah menorah and sang the blessings very softly. The potato pancakes that Masha Rapaport prepared were overly salted, and Ida thought that she could taste her mother-in-law’s tears in the crisp edges. Walking home, she stared up at the windows of strangers and glimpsed the soft lights of Christmas trees. Her own apartment was dark. She turned on the radio. Bach’s “B Minor Mass,” long her favorite, was being aired. She switched the radio off. She could not bear to hear the choir sweetly singing in German, the language of a nation that threatened her very life. She stared up at the painting of
The
Bridal
Chair
and wondered where Michel was on this cold starlit night.

The new year brought a brutal winter. Marc’s exhibition at the Galerie Mai was sparsely attended as rumors as thick as the falling snow flew across Paris.

The
Maginot
Line
would
not
hold.

German
forces
were
moving
west.

Paris
was
in
danger.

Paris
was
safe.

The
French
military
would
take
no
action
until
they
could
count
on
British
intervention.

The
French
military
would
launch
an
offensive
regardless
of
British
support.

In Saint-Dyé, the Chagalls read the papers obsessively and listened to the hourly newscasts.

They sat at Madame Duval’s scrubbed wooden table and struggled to separate rumor from fact, to formulate a plan. Where should they go? What should they do? Their options were limited. There was no place to go. There was nothing to do. Ida continued to write her pleading letters. She no longer bothered to mask her desperation. Someone had to help them. If the Germans invaded, their death warrants, hers and her parents’, would be sealed.

She haunted the Saint-Dyé telegraph office, sending urgent wires, and awaited replies that never came. Bella, ghostly pale, remained in bed throughout the day and wandered barefoot from room to room during the night. A spectral figure in her white nightgown, she paused occasionally at a window to stare into the darkness, her lips moving soundlessly until either Marc or Ida, sleepless themselves, walked her back to bed.

The Daladier government fell. The new prime minister, Paul Reynaud, seemed weak and ambivalent to Ida, strong and determined to Marc. Nothing was certain. Nothing was predictable. Food was being hoarded and money withdrawn from banks. Ida and Marc studied maps and train schedules as Bella grew weaker and more morose. Madame Duval planned to move to the home of relatives in the south.

“The war will come to the Loire,” she said. “I do not want to see blood on the streets of my Saint-Dyé. I do not want to see Nazis sleeping in my beds, drinking my wine.”

One night she carried the bottles stored in her cellar into the garden and emptied them one by one onto the frost-hardened earth. Ida helped her, gagging at the acrid odor and the finality of the gesture.

The landlady’s decision resolved their own uncertainty. They too would move further south. They hired a driver who took them to Avignon and registered in a small hotel. Ida chose rooms that overlooked the boulevard and then she herself traveled to Paris, promising to return as soon as possible.

“I’m worried about Michel’s parents,” she said. “And I want to visit the American embassy. They may have news for us.”

“Surely your in-laws can manage. Your mother and I need you,” Marc objected sullenly. “And the Americans worry only about themselves. They will not help us.”

She ignored his protest. He no longer had power over her. She was not the vulnerable adolescent girl he had forced into marriage. She had control of her own life and of theirs.

The United States Embassy in Paris was in a state of chaos. Crates filled the reception area and the air was heavy with the odor of burning documents. It was clear that the Americans were planning to evacuate immediately if the city fell to the Germans. A marine reluctantly admitted her and a harried cultural attaché barely looked up from his mountain of files to listen to her request for visas for her parents.

“Persons of note,” she said. “My father is an artist of international distinction.”

“Of course I know of your father. I know his reputation. But he is a Russian. The quota for Russian immigrants has been filled,” he replied.

“My father now has French citizenship.”

“The quota for France has also been filled. But in the unlikely, the very unlikely, event that places are found, remember each of your parents will have to put up a three-thousand-dollar bond to ensure that they will be able to sustain themselves in the United States. And of course they will have to pay for their passage.”

“That will not be a problem,” she assured him.

Her father’s account in the Bank of Scotland would suffice.

But the attaché was no longer listening, his attention diverted by a shower of memos that a pale secretary dropped on his desk. Ida left the embassy without looking back.

She arrived at the Rapaports’ apartment where they were preparing to travel to the southern coast and helped them pack their meager possessions. Before leaving, Masha Rapaport looked around the barren flat and thrust the key into her worn black leather purse. Metal struck metal. She smiled bitterly.

“Key against key,” she said. “The keys of all the homes I have left. My house in Moscow. Our dacha in the Crimea. My flat in Berlin. And now our little shop and flat in Paris. How many more keys will I gather in this life of mine, Ida? Another and perhaps another, if we are fortunate. We pray for a miracle. Will there be a miracle, Idotchka?”

Ida shook her head. “We can hope. We can pray,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of hope, indifferent to prayer.

She kissed her in-laws good-bye. Her mother-in-law’s cheek was papery and her father-in-law’s unshaven skin bruised her lips.

“
Au
revoir
.”

They whispered the words in unison and she hurried away before they could see her tears.

Back in her own small apartment, she packed their few belongings, relieved that Michel, during a brief leave, had crated the painting of
The
Bridal
Chair
and shipped it to Saint-Dyé. She thrust her sketchbook and drawing pencils into her already bulky portmanteau. She paid the concierge the rent that was due and told her that she and Michel were leaving Paris.

“Will you be returning, Madame Rapaport?” the kindly woman asked.

“I think not,” Ida replied.

“Where will you be going?”

“That is uncertain.”

She trusted no one. Not even this pleasant woman with whom she had occasionally shared a glass of
vin
ordinaire
.

“I understand,” the concierge said sadly.

They shook hands solemnly and Ida hurried away, eager suddenly to catch the next autobus to Avignon.

During that long journey, she opened her sketchbook for the first time in months. She drew, in odd geometric design, an uneasily balanced tower composed of oddly shaped keys, at the apex of which a shawled woman stood, her arms outstretched. She stared at the completed drawing, surprised at her own skill. She had all but forgotten that she too was an artist.

Exhausted, she fell asleep, awakening only when the bus reached Avignon.

The church bells tolled as she made her way down the cobblestone paths of the ancient city, hurrying to the small hotel where her parents had lodging. The proprietor stared at her in surprise.

“But Monsieur and Madame Chagall are not here. They left some days ago. They have moved to their new home.”

“Their new home?”

She stared at him, stunned by his words.

“Yes, madame. They live in Gordes. It is beautiful, the little village of Gordes. Of course they made a strange choice of
maison
, very strange choice, but they were determined. Here is the letter they left for you with their new address. They are so kind, your parents, so charming. Look, your father gave me this drawing and I have framed it.”

He pointed to a framed charcoal drawing of his hotel that Ida knew her father had dashed off swiftly and thoughtlessly, remembering of course to scrawl his name in a corner.

“Yes. They are. Very kind. Very charming,” she agreed.

She took a taxi to Gordes. It was, the driver told her, an impoverished village with very little to recommend it.

“Here in Avignon, we have the Palace of the Popes and the Bridge of Saint-Bénézet. What do they have in Gordes? Poverty and more poverty. Madame, the streets there, the
calades
, are so narrow and so hilly that it is impossible to walk from one to another without stopping for breath.”

She read out her parents’ address.

“The Fontaine Basse quarter. Why should your parents choose to live there?” he asked disapprovingly. “Of course property there is cheap, very cheap. Your people like cheap,
n’est-ce pas
? And they know how to bargain.
Les
juifs
.”

He turned, looked at her slyly, and fingered the large Saint-Bénézet medallion he wore around his neck.

Ida flushed. How could he have known that the Chagalls were Jewish? But then, of course, how could he not have known? Marc Chagall was famous in France, celebrated throughout the country as
l’artiste juif,
the Jewish artist, despite his yearning to be known as
l’artiste français
. If a taxi driver in Avignon knew he was Jewish, then his religion was known to everyone in France. He would be a marked man in the event of a German invasion.

She stared out the window as the driver maneuvered his way upward from the
calades
past the narrow pink stone houses. He zigzagged through the meandering streets and alleyways, cursing under his breath as shadows obscured his vision.