Bridal Chair (31 page)

Ida began a search for answers. Concentrating on her own work, spending long hours at the studio and in front of her own easel, she was intent on an honest exploration of the parameters of her own talent. She explored the city, keenly aware that it was permeated by a new volatility. She darted out of Le Bar Vert one evening when communists and Gaullists came to blows, knocking over fragile tables and dueling with wicker bar stools.

On another evening, as she sat with Picasso and his acolytes in Le Catalan, she listened to a variety of rumors. It was variously reported that the Soviet Union was planning to invade Paris, that communist cells planned a new regime, that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were weighing their options and perhaps planning to leave France and return to Bermuda.

“Who cares what those parasites do?” Picasso asked. He smiled slyly at Ida. “Perhaps your father was wise to retreat once more to America. It is said that your people can sense danger and know how to avoid it. Is that not so?”

Ida stared him down. “Indeed, if our sense of danger is so acute, how is it that six million of our people were killed?” she snapped, pushing her chair back and stalking away from his table. She sailed across the room, her head held high, regal in her fury, and took a seat at the far end of the smoke-filled room. Admiring glances followed her. It was agreed that Chagall’s daughter was brave as well as beautiful. It took courage to defy Pablo Picasso.

She looked up in annoyance as a fair-haired young man slid into the seat opposite her. She did not know his name, but she had seen him more than once in cafés and at the galleries she frequented, his sketchbook in hand, studying the paintings with the critical eye of an artist.

“May I join you, mademoiselle?” he asked. His voice was soft, his French oddly accented.

“It seems that you already have,” she answered coldly.

“I presume,” he acknowledged. “But I thought you might welcome a sympathetic companion. My name is Géa Augsbourg, and I promise not to discuss politics or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. You see, I am Swiss and we are notoriously apolitical.”

“It was very wise of you to be born in a neutral nation,” she said teasingly.

“Indeed.” He smiled. “After all, decades of peace have resulted in my country’s perfecting the cuckoo clock.”

His smile was contagious and irresistible to Ida. She marveled at his tone, so light and untroubled, and how his long body coiled gracefully into the narrow, wrought iron chair. Perhaps it was because he was the citizen of a country that had never known the ravages of war that lightness and grace came so easily to him.

They spoke easily as they sipped their drinks and nibbled at bits of cheese. He was a painter, but he was interested in ceramics and had visited Picasso’s workshop in Vallauris. Like Ida, he loved the city and spent hours wandering its streets and boulevards.

“Paris is wonderful,” he said. “Although I must confess that it is really the onion soup that keeps me here.”

He grinned and she smiled. They left Le Catalan together, had dinner at a small bistro, and decided to go to a film.

“An American comedy,” he insisted. “I want to laugh.”

She nodded. She too wanted to laugh, inspired by his optimistic presence. Perhaps there would soon be gaiety. Hope was reawakened. The Soviet Union would not invade France. The fruit and vegetable bins in the Paris markets overflowed with newly harvested produce. Children wore new shoes. The privations of wartime were receding.

They smiled over dinner, laughed companionably at the cinema, wandered through Les Halles in search of a stall that Géa claimed offered the very best onion soup in all of Paris, and then walked back to Saint-Germain hand in hand through the lilac-scented darkness. They made no declarations but slipped easily into a new and relaxed togetherness.

The months passed swiftly. Ida worked on the retrospective and painted during the long, golden summer afternoons. Géa studied her work and suggested that she work principally with pastel chalk and watercolors, that she use thinner brushes because her touch was so light. He ordered a set of such brushes from Zurich and left them with a rose on her bed. He set up an easel beside her own and they often painted together. He worked in heavy oils, a vivid impasto of colors, while she experimented with gentler hues.

Mischievously, they undressed one afternoon and painted side by side, both of them naked. Playfully she daubed his shoulders blue. He scowled in mock annoyance and slashed streaks of madder red across her breasts. They showered together and soaped away the paint, his hands gentle, hers insistent. Their skin shimmered, his body pale, hers rose-gold.

She thought it magical to be with a lover who radiated good humor and amusement, who made love to her with exuberance, unburdened by either sadness or obligation. He knew and admired Marc’s work, but he was indifferent to the fact that Ida was her father’s daughter, the first person she had met who saw her as her own person. He was not a man who thought in terms of opportunity and connections.

Spring drifted into summer and the date of the autumn retrospective approached. It was important that Marc come to Paris for the opening. Ida wrote insistent letters emphasizing that his presence was vital to the success of the exhibition. Patrons and critics, curators and gallery owners eagerly awaited him.

Again he resisted. He was working well in the High Falls studio where Virginia saw to his every need. He did not want to leave his small son. He wanted only to paint.

“Do not pressure me, Idotchka,” he pleaded plaintively.

She sighed and responded with cajoling letters, telling him that receptions in his honor were being planned, that interviews were sought by journals and magazines. He would be crowned the cultural king of all of France.

Géa frowned when she read such a letter to him.

“You write to him as though he is a small child to be coaxed with promises of sweets and parties,” Géa said. “My mother would write me such letters when I was away at school. ‘Study hard and I will buy you a pony. Eat your vegetables and when I visit I will give you a pastry. Go to mass and I will take you on a boat ride.’ Mothers write such letters. But, Ida, surely you are not your father’s mother?”

He laughed at the absurdity of his own question, but she looked at him gravely and framed her answer carefully.

“Yes. Sometimes I do feel that I play the part of a mother. I care for him, I advise him, I make him feel safe and secure. Is that so wrong, Géa?”

“It is neither wrong nor right. It is simply not what a daughter should be doing.”

“But that is what this daughter does. You have not met my father. When you meet him, perhaps you will understand,” she replied.

“Perhaps,” he said, but the word was laced with doubt.

Marc finally agreed to return to France in the fall. He wrote that he would not abandon High Falls during the beautiful days of summer.

“It is wonderful here. Why do you expel me from such happiness?” he wrote petulantly. “I return to Paris only to please you.”

Ida was not deceived. She knew he returned because he had been persuaded by her descriptions of the triumph that awaited him.

“He is coming to reclaim his throne,” she told Géa. “I hope that you and he will like each other,” she added worriedly.

“And what will happen if we don’t?” he asked. “Is what he thinks really so important?”

She did not answer, ashamed to tell him exactly how important it was.

But there was no need to worry. Marc and Géa did like each other. Because Géa was indifferent to fame and recognition, Marc felt no tension, no need to impress. He saw that Géa made Ida happy and it pleased him to hear her laugh, to see the new softness in her eyes. Géa was admiring of Marc’s work, and when he visited Géa’s studio, he saw, with relief, that while the Swiss artist had talent, he would never achieve greatness.

“You see,
Papochka
,” Ida said shrewdly, “Géa will never compete with you.”

“Ah, but he already does,” Marc said. “I think you love him more than you love your little father.”

Ida laughed. “Do you think I could ever love anyone as much as I love you?” she asked. Her tone was light, but the gravity of her words hung heavily between them.

The exhibition succeeded even beyond their expectations. Paris fell in love with the brilliant and dramatic world of Marc Chagall. Crowds flocked to view his works and lines formed in front of the Musée d’Art from early morning until evening closing. The Jewish essence of the paintings, his daring vivid colors, were a redemptive triumph offering hope for a brighter future. Marc Chagall, the Jewish refugee artist, had returned, reclaimed, and celebrated. Such a reception was reparation of a kind to the many Jewish victims of Nazi-occupied Paris.

Ida encountered Picasso one evening as he left the exhibition.

“Your father is the only artist who understands colors,” he said and kissed her on both cheeks.

She understood that his words and the touch of his lips constituted an apology. She smiled, her much-practiced brilliant smile, and then carefully wiped her face with her handkerchief when he turned away.

The success of the retrospective resulted in a flurry of new invitations, but Marc was determined to return to New York and Ida did not dissuade him. She knew he would come back to Paris. She bought gifts for Virginia, a crocodile purse, a luxurious cloak of beige velvet, lined with ecru-colored satin.

She showed her purchases to Marc, who frowned.

“You have been too extravagant, Ida,” he said reprovingly.

“Not at all. Virginia deserves such gifts. She makes you happy. She has given you our little David,” she replied. “And she has had so little luxury in her life.”

Her feelings for her father’s lover were ambivalent. She both liked Virginia and resented her. She was grateful to her and she distrusted her. The soft-spoken Englishwoman remained an alien presence in their passionate, cacophonous world. Hired to darn Marc’s socks, it was his life that she now stitched together. Was Virginia in love with her demanding father, Ida wondered, or was she anchored to him by his terrible neediness and her own? There were no answers.

She was absorbed in arrangements for serial exhibitions. The curators of the Stedelijk in Amsterdam and the Tate in London approached her. There were urgent requests from the Kunsthaus in Zurich and the Kunsthalle in Bern. How honored they would be to host her father’s work!

She remembered the desperate, unanswered letters she had sent to some of those same curators during the war years. “The honor they offer is a decade late,” she said bitterly to Géa.

“That was then and this is now,” he replied calmly. “Forget and forgive.”

“I cannot forget and I don’t yet have the luxury of forgiveness,” she retorted angrily.

He could not understand; she could not expect him to understand. He was at a remove from all that they had endured.

She sent polite replies to London and Amsterdam, to Zurich and Bern, thanking them for their invitations that she would consider carefully. She explained that her father was returning to America, but she herself would soon visit and make arrangements for exhibitions. Hopefully, Marc himself would once again make his home in France and he would be pleased to visit their museums.

She and Géa saw Marc off on his return voyage to America.

“You will return to Paris soon,
Papochka
,” she said. “You and Virginia and David. Paris is the heart of the art world, your world, and you must live and work here. You owe it to your work, your reputation, to make this city your home. Isn’t that so, Géa?”

He nodded laconically. “If you say so, Ida. You understand these things better than I do. You have a clever daughter, Marc. A very clever daughter.”

Ida laughed, amused by the odd rapport between her father and her lover.

“You both know that I am right,” she said. “Promise me that you will make plans to leave High Falls and return to your real home, to Paris, to France.”

“Do I have a real home?” he asked. “Time and again, I have painted a man flying through air. It is myself whom I paint, Marc Chagall, a man without roots, without a home, without a place to rest.”

“France is your home,” she said. She thrust aside the thought that her father had painted her own sky-born dreams. “You have always said that. You have always claimed to be
un
artiste
français
, a French artist.”

The ship’s warning siren of departure sounded and she and Marc embraced. Ida felt the wild beat of his heart against her own and saw the mask of sadness darken his elfin face. She watched him walk onto the deck, his slender shoulders stooped, the sea mist pearling his gray curls. She saw him for the first time as an old man, fragile and vulnerable.

Lying beside Géa that night, she dreamed of Marc soaring effortlessly above pastel-colored clouds while she herself tried desperately to wing her way toward him. She awakened only when Géa held her close, his lips against her mouth, silencing the scream that shrilled from her haunted sleep.

A new era dawned for Paris. The city was energized. Damaged buildings were reconstructed; neglected parks were fragrant and verdant with young plantings. Lovers lingered at the repaired balustrades of graceful bridges, and fresh flowers were placed on the outdoor tables of crowded cafés. The art treasures of the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, and the Musée de l’Orangerie were retrieved from their wartime hiding places and proudly displayed on freshly painted walls.

Géa and Ida visited the museums and galleries. They attended welcoming parties for artists who had fled Paris during the occupation. Ida was embraced by Léger and Ernst, by Zadkine and Breton, all of them overjoyed to find themselves once again in their beloved city.

“When will your father return?” Each returning artist asked Ida the same question.

“Soon, very soon,” she assured them.

But Marc continued to delay his return to Paris. He wrote that his work was going well. He described David’s second birthday celebration at which he had danced a
chazatska
with the child in his arms. Ida tried to remember if he had ever danced holding her in his arms and immediately chastised herself for her foolish jealousy of the half brother she had yet to meet.

“Fame is no longer important to your father,” Virginia wrote in a rare letter.

Ida sighed. Virginia saw herself as a purist and wanted to believe that Marc shared her values. Ida, however, knew that fame and recognition would always be important to her father. He had sent detailed instructions about his exhibition at the Tate and asked how she was planning to publicize it.

“The words of a man who is no longer interested in fame,” Ida said wryly to Géa.

What he was not interested in, she knew, was her life. His needs took precedence; her aspirations were forfeit. She struggled against a nagging discontent, an unarticulated desire to break free of his demands.

She traveled to London to curate the exhibition there. The reviews in the English newspapers were enthusiastic and very different from the critiques of his prewar exhibition at the Leicester Gallery. There were repeated references to the Jewish content, to religious symbols, speculation about the Jewish dimension of the crucifixion paintings. Ida realized that the Holocaust had thrust the Jewish people into the consciousness and the conscience of the world. It had exposed the toxicity of anti-Semitism. Marc’s work was viewed and discussed with a new honesty.

She sent her father clippings of the London reviews and repeated her insistence that he return to France. Her pleas became commands that would not be denied.

He conceded at last, but not without resentment. He was sad to leave America, deeply grieved that he was abandoning his Bella to her lonely grave, breaking his promise to take her back to Europe.

“You have forced me to leave, Ida. Will my Bella, your
mamochka
, forgive me?” he wrote. The words were blotted as though a tear had smudged the ink.

He impressed upon her that it was a sacrifice, a great sacrifice, to leave his life in rural New York. Interesting people visited the High Falls house. He wrote that Ida might recall the Belgian photographer, Charles Leirens, who had visited them on Riverside Drive. He was now their guest and he thought that it was madness to leave their sylvan paradise for France. However he, Marc Chagall, recognized his obligations to Ida and would, with a heavy heart, make his home once again in France.

“This is what I do for you,” he wrote, underlining the words that were more accusatory than benevolent. “It is for you that I uproot myself and my little family and return to the continent that betrayed me.”

Ida recognized the falsity of his words. She knew that it was not his concern for her that informed his decision. He knew that Paris was the fulcrum of the art world, and he needed the excitement and the dramatic turmoil of that world. Europe remained the source of his inspiration. America had never ignited his creative imagination.

“My father arrives in August,” she told Géa and handed him Marc’s letter.

He scanned it and then held her close.

“Then we have a few weeks at least until our lives are changed forever,” he said.

“Our lives will not change,” she replied although her hands trembled and her heart beat too rapidly because she knew that he spoke the truth.