Bridal Chair (39 page)

“You are visiting the country when it is at its most beautiful,” Ida effused to Virginia. “Everything is in blossom in June. It will be a wonderful trip.”

Her words were sincere. Her own happiness allowed for generosity.

“You and my father will share so much,” she added.

“I hope so,” Virginia said dubiously. “I want us to be happy with each other again.”

“You will be. You will be,” Ida promised. “Israel will restore you to each other.”

Israel did not restore them to each other. It seemed to Ida that they were even more at odds when they returned. Marc was in high spirits, his blue eyes gimlet-sharp in his sun-bronzed face. In contrast, Virginia was pale and painfully thin. She had found the heat difficult to cope with and she could barely eat the food.

“All that herring, olives, salt cheese,” she complained.

“What is wrong with herring?” Marc retorted jovially. “My father made his living carting herring barrels.”

“Yes, I know. You’ve told me that often enough,” she responded drily.

Marc ignored her and enthused about Israel. Its beauty and history engaged him and filled him with pride.

“Ah, how I love our country,” he told Ida.

“It is hardly your country,” Virginia murmured.

“I carried my sketchpad everywhere,” Marc said, ignoring her yet again.

He flipped it open, showing Ida and Franz his depictions of the streets of Nazareth, the valleys and hills of the Galilee, the stately cypresses and ancient buildings of Jerusalem.

“They will guide me when I work on my illustrations for the Torah,” he said.

Virginia sat in morose silence as he boasted of the reception he had been given. He described the state dinners with Chaim Weizmann, the president, and David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister. He had visited the army headquarters of General Moshe Dayan.

“Moshe Dayan asked me why Marc does not settle in Israel,” Virginia said drily.

“And what did you tell him?” Ida asked.

“I told him it was because Israel is too hot,” she replied and laughed harshly.

Marc shrugged, indifferent to the irony of her words. He described the crowds of Israelis who had flocked to the opening of his exhibition at the museum in Tel Aviv.

“You see,
Papochka
,” Ida said. “I told you that the people of Israel would love Marc Chagall.”

“Of course. Everyone loved Marc Chagall,” he said merrily. “Even Golda Myerson, that ugly American woman who was born in Russia and is now a member of Ben-Gurion’s cabinet. She is said to love no one, but she loved Marc Chagall. We went with her to the Habima Theater and saw
The
Dybbuk
. Wasn’t it a wonderful show, Virginia?”

“How could I tell? The performance was in Yiddish. I might have asked you to translate, but you and your ugly Golda were too engrossed in your own Yiddish conversation,” Virginia replied.

Her tone was indifferent rather than accusatory. It occurred to Ida that Virginia no longer resented Marc’s usage of Russian and Yiddish, languages that she did not understand. Conditioned to exclusion, she no longer cared.

“It was a beautiful production,” Marc continued. “The klezmer musicians played the tunes that your mother loved, Idotchka. You must remember them.” He hummed the joyous music, seized Ida’s hands, and danced her around the room. Franz clapped appreciatively, but Virginia frowned and led Jean and David into the garden.

* * *

Summer drifted into autumn. Marc worked in ceramics and insisted that Virginia drive him each day to a pottery in Vence. She complained that the journeys intruded on her own work.

“Your little drawings?” he responded dismissively. “That is what you call your work? Can you compare it with what I am now doing? Ceramics opens a new world for me.”

“Yes. Picasso’s world,” she retorted.

“Do not mention the Spaniard to me!” he shouted angrily.

His work progressed. The potters of Vence were intrigued by his designs and gathered to admire the newly fired works he removed from the kiln, his face aglow with the heat, his long fingers coated with clay. The Jewish artist, they marveled, was becoming a master ceramist.

“I have created this especially for you,” he told Ida one afternoon and presented her with a package wrapped in coarse brown paper.

It was a white enamel tile on which he had painted a shy, seminude young woman, a yellow necklace encircling her slender neck, leaning into the embrace of her lover. He, in turn, was a beautiful young man, wearing a crown of delicate blue flowers. She turned it over and read the inscription.
“Les Fiancés,”
it read.

“An engagement gift,” Marc said, beaming proudly.

“It’s wonderful. Thank you, Papa,” she said and studied it closely.

How different it was, she thought, from
The
Bridal
Chair
, that scheme of interior desolation, the seat draped in a shroud, the flowers starkly white. This new gift, in celebration of her new marriage, was crafted with love. It throbbed with color and life. She slid her hand across it, pleased by its cool smoothness. It was the first gift she had received for her new home.

“Do you like it?” she asked Virginia, who bent to look at it.

“I do,” Virginia replied. “But does my opinion really matter?”

It was not a question that required an answer.

* * *

Arriving home from Vence one afternoon, Virginia looked up to see Jean running toward her, holding an envelope in her outstretched hand.

“A letter for you, Mama,” the child called. “From Belgium. With such pretty stamps. May I have them?”

“Such excitement over a letter,” Virginia said wearily. “Of course you may have the stamps.”

The letter was from Charles Leirens, who had written some weeks earlier. He wrote that he had the time to shoot a sixteen-millimeter film of Marc at work. In his previous letter, he had described his interest in the emerging art of cinema verité, and he wanted to produce what he called a “fantasy a la Chagall.”

“I want the world to see how a great artist works,” he wrote. “I hope that I can obtain Monsieur Chagall’s permission and your own to film at Les Collines.”

She smiled. Her permission was gladly granted. She had enjoyed Charles Leirens’s visit to their High Falls home. The portraits he had taken then were treasured reminders of happier days. In one photograph, Leirens had captured her looking straight ahead, her large hands resting protectively on Marc’s shoulder while he leaned toward her, his cheek brushed by her hair, smiling whimsically. It was a bittersweet reminder of a time when Marc had smiled easily and she herself had been suffused with calm and optimism. That photograph of her and Marc was on her dressing table.

She shared Leirens’s letter with Marc that evening.

“It is an interesting proposal,” he agreed. “I like the title. ‘Fantasy a la Chagall.’ I should not mind being the subject of a fantasy. In fact, I prefer fantasy to reality. My paintings say as much. It will be amusing to see if Leirens can do with his camera what I can do with my paint brush. Tell him that he is welcome.”

Virginia wrote at once, urging the photographer to come as soon as possible. She was haunted by a dark fear that Marc, always unpredictable, might regret his decision and withdraw the invitation. For reasons that she did not quite understand, she felt it important that she see Charles Leirens again.

Within a week, on an autumn day when the leaves of the olive trees in the Les Collines orchard were newly silvered and a sea breeze stirred the sere fronds of the palm trees, Charles Leirens made his way up the pathway to Les Collines. He proceeded slowly, clutching his heavy pigskin case, his cameras slung over his shoulders. It was Jean who saw him first.

“Mama, Mama,” she shouted excitedly. “The man who takes pictures is here.”

Virginia hurried out to the terrace and watched as Ida, who had been gathering flowers, glided toward him, a bouquet of russet asters in her arms.

“Welcome to Les Collines, Monsieur Leirens,” she said, smiling. “It has been too many years since we last met. Do you remember me?”

“No one forgets the beautiful Ida Chagall,” he replied and returned her smile, his eyes trained on her face. It was a photographer’s gaze, anticipating planes and angles, shadows and light. He would ask her to pose for him in the olive grove, he decided, and he would use only natural light. Her own radiance would be sufficient.

Virginia joined them with Jean trailing after her, carrying a tall glass of water.

“Monsieur Leirens, I am happy to see you. But you should have told us when you were arriving. We would have arranged to meet you. You must be very thirsty.” She motioned to Jean, who offered him the glass, which he took with trembling hands.

“I did not want to disturb you,” he said. “And I quite enjoyed the walk. Thank you for the water,
ma
petite
,” he said to Jean, handing her the empty glass.

She curtsied. “My name is Jean,” she said. “Will you take my picture?”

“We shall see,” he said kindly.

Virginia smiled at him, struggling to mask the distress she felt at seeing how he had changed since she had last seen him at High Falls. He was handsome still, but his fine-featured face was thin, his complexion waxen. His well-tailored suit hung too loosely on his much-diminished body. She had forgotten that his eyes were of disparate colors, the left one green, the right one brown. How odd that she should forget such an endearing and unique feature.

“And I am very happy to be here with three beautiful young women,
les
demoiselles
Jean and Virginia and the lovely Ida Chagall,” he added.

“Soon to be Ida Meyer,” she corrected him. “I will be married in January. I have an idea. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you would photograph my wedding?”

“If I am still in France, I should be happy to be of service,” he said.

“Then you must remain in France until January.” Ida spoke with the flirtatious assurance unique to beautiful women who have absolute faith that their slightest wish will be fulfilled.

Virginia frowned and reached for the photographer’s bag. “You must be very tired,” she said.

“No. I’m fine,” he protested even as he allowed her to take it. He smiled gratefully as Jean relieved him of his heavy camera, holding it as carefully as she had held the glass of water.

At dinner that night, he told them that he had, in fact, been very ill.

“Something to do with my heart. It was, I am told, very serious, particularly because I am, after all, not a young man. But to everyone’s surprise, including my own, I recovered.”

“I think we are of an age, Leirens,” Marc said. “And I do not consider myself an old man. Nor should you. We are artists, Leirens, and artists never grow old.”

“I should like to believe that you are right,
cher
maître
.” He smiled, a self-deprecating smile.

Marc shrugged. He opened a bottle of brandy, filled his glass, and passed it to Charles.

“Did I ever tell you,
mon
ami
, of my unhappy and very brief apprenticeship to a prosperous photographer in Vitebsk? It was arranged by my mother who worried, as all good Jewish mothers do, about my future. He was a large and ugly man, this photographer, with a large and ugly wife, and they lived in a large and ugly house. I was afraid that if I became a photographer, I too would become fat and ugly, but fortunately I was a terrible apprentice. I spilled chemicals and ruined every print he asked me to retouch. So I never became a village photographer doomed to photograph large and ugly families all the days of my life.”

He turned to his guest and laughed.

“But I meant no offense. You, of course, are a different kind of photographer. I recognize that,” he added hastily.

“And Charles is far from fat and ugly. In fact, he is too thin and quite handsome,” Virginia said daringly.

“And, of course, if Charles had a wife, she too would be thin and quite beautiful. She might perhaps look like you, Virginia,” Ida added mischievously.

An awkward silence followed. Too swiftly, they left the table. Marc returned to his studio and Charles and Virginia walked through the citrus orchard. Ida watched them from the terrace. Virginia’s expression, the softness in her eyes when she looked at Charles Leirens, reminded Ida of how she had looked at Marc when they first met. He had been vulnerable and weak then, depleted by Bella’s death, even as Charles was now vulnerable and weak, depleted by the long months of his illness.

“A stupid parallel,” she told herself. “I should return to Paris.”

But she had agreed to stay at Les Collines and continue to pose for her portrait that Marc wanted to present to Franz as a wedding gift. The sittings were not going well. After each session, they studied the canvas together and inevitably, he scraped it clean.

“I cannot capture your spirit, your vitality,” he complained. “Your energy, your strength, eludes my brush.”

Ida repeated his words to Virginia. “I cannot remember him ever before having such difficulty with a portrait,” she said.

“Perhaps he does not want to share his image of you with Franz,” Virginia suggested.

Ida glared at her, but lying awake that night, she reflected that Virginia had touched upon a kernel of truth. Her father had painted her throughout her life, but he jealously guarded those paintings, retaining them in his own collection, never offering them for sale, rarely lending them to exhibitions. He claimed her for his own. He did not want another man to own her visage, not even if that man was her husband.

She spoke to him the very next morning.

“I think it would be best if we abandoned the idea of a portrait. It interferes with your other work and you will have to devote a good deal of time to Leirens’s film. Let us forget it for now.”

“Perhaps you are right,” he agreed, and she heard the relief in his voice.

* * *

Charles Leirens’s cinematography soon dominated life at Les Collines. Marc reveled in his role as the star performer, prancing through his daily routine as the photographer trailed after him camera in hand, followed by Virginia, laden with ancillary equipment. Photography was now her passion. She learned how to focus a camera, how to use a light meter, and spoke knowingly of angles and exposures. She handed film and equipment to Charles, responding swiftly to his directives.

“It is as though he is a surgeon and she his nurse in an operating room,” Ida observed wryly to Franz.

“What is the harm in her helping Leirens if it gives her pleasure and if your father does not object?” Franz said mildly.