Bridal Chair (8 page)

Only a small group of friends had been invited to the wedding. Ida was relieved and grateful that Elsa and André had made the journey. Elsa smiled at her encouragingly, and she smiled back. Theirs was a friendship soldered in affection and complicity.

Henri Matisse stroked his silver goatee and kissed Ida’s hand. She had long been his favorite, a laughing mischievous child grown into a beautiful and vibrant young woman. He studied Marc’s painting and nodded approvingly.

“A wonderful work,” he said. “A pity you did not pose for it, Ida. Perhaps that would have been considered bad luck in your religion. It’s true, isn’t it, that Jews are prohibited from creating images?”

“But you must realize,
cher
maître
, that my father has never observed that prohibition,” Ida replied with a sweetness she did not feel. It irritated her that Matisse, so long a friend of their family, still saw them as the “other.” In his eyes, Marc would always be a Jew, born into an alien tradition.

Other friends approached to offer their good wishes and then to study the painting of the bridal chair before claiming the seats that faced the marriage canopy. They sat in expectant silence, an attentive audience, anticipating an interesting and unfamiliar performance. Edmond Fleg, the Yiddish poet, watched them resentfully.

“Judaism as theater,” he murmured to Joseph Opatoshu, the novelist who was Marc’s closest friend.

The klezmer musicians altered the tempo of the music and played the wild joyous tune that signaled the bridegroom’s approach. Bella swiftly drew the veil over Ida’s face, and then Michel stood before her, tall and grave-eyed, his thick dark hair brushed back from his high forehead. Unlike Ida, he was pale, but that pallor faded when he smiled. Ida’s smile beneath her veil matched his own. He bent and lifted the veil so that he might see her face. He nodded, signifying that this indeed was the bride that had been promised to him. He stared down at his Ida, who had danced barefoot beside him on an alpine hillside, the fiery-haired, laughing girl with whom he had fallen in love in the season of sunlight. Tenderly, he lowered the veil and accompanied his parents to await her beneath the wedding canopy. The musicians played even louder, and the guests clapped their hands excitedly.

Then once again, the music was muted. Only the flautist played a haunting melody as Ida rose from her seat and, supported on either side by her parents, glided toward her groom.

The ceremony was swift. The bearded rabbi had been warned not to prolong it, and he intoned the benedictions, proffered the sacramental wine, and lifted the plain gold wedding band high, so that the witnesses might examine it for any break in the metal. A marriage ring had to be as unflawed as the match itself. A smile wreathed Michel’s face as he held Ida’s hand in his own and repeated the ancient vow.

“Behold, with this ring, you are consecrated unto me according to the laws of Moses and of Israel.” His voice rang loud and clear. There was an outbreak of applause and excited shouts of
“Bonne chance!”
and
“Mazel tov!”

The musicians played a fiercely joyous tune as Michel’s foot stamped heavily on the glass, which shattered into glittering shards. Still playing, exhilarated by their own music, flautist and violinist danced away, preceding the newly married couple who threaded their way through the excited guests.

The music resonated throughout the reception. Marc and Bella danced an elegant waltz and, surprisingly, Michel’s parents joined them, moving across the floor with dignified grace. Michel and Ida linked hands with Elsa and André in a lively dabke and were soon joined by other dancers. The joy was contagious. Even Katya was pulled into a wild hora as stomping men and light-footed women circled the room. Marc seized his daughter’s hands and they whirled about in rhythmic abandonment, Ida’s bright hair spilling loose and whipping tongues of flame about her shoulders. Michel thrust forward and rescued his bride from her father. They danced with abandon, bride and groom, now husband and wife, as the musicians played feverishly, their faces damp with perspiration, their eyes bright with excitement.

Bella stood beside her brother Yaakov, who handed her a flute of champagne. They watched the dancing couple.

“Oh, Yaakov,” she murmured. “Did we do the right thing?”

“What’s done is done,” he replied. “Your daughter is married.
Mazel
tov
, Berthe.”

She smiled. He had called her by the name of their shared childhood, the name given to her by their absent parents. It reminded her that she was and forever would be a daughter of her people, submissive to the values and traditions of that vanished world.

“
L’chaim
,” Yaakov said. “To life.

“
L’chaim
,” she repeated.

“To Ida.”

“To Ida. To Ida and Michel.”

Bella sipped the wine, relishing its sweetness and the comforting pressure of her brother’s arm upon her shoulder.

Ida, wrapped in the white cape borrowed from her mother, stood on London Bridge, hypnotized by the blazing lights that streaked across the steel-gray sky and rocketed down onto the dark waters of the Thames. The radiance of the descending fireworks danced across the river in a confluence of brightness. Flashes of flaming orange mingled with the golden hue of the imperial crown of the United Kingdom. Brilliant blues collided with ribbons of scarlet and glittering white stars, the colors of the Union Jack, as they jetted across the gentle waves. The crowd cheered wildly, waved paper flags, and tooted their tin horns as they celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their king’s reign.

“I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” she said breathlessly, her face bright with excitement.

Her hostess in London, Lady Clerk (pronounced Clark), smiled benevolently and twirled her lorgnette. The aristocratic Englishwoman, who had become an intimate of the Chagall family when her husband served as ambassador in Paris, was amused by Ida’s naive excitement. Chagall’s daughter was so young, actually, an adolescent although she had been married for a year. But then perhaps Jews were accustomed to such young marriages, although the Chagalls were not typical Jews.

Lady Clerk, an aspiring artist, was grateful to Marc Chagall, who had so generously allowed her to work in his studio and study his techniques. She had argued against his decision to send Ida to represent him at his first London exhibition at the prestigious Leicester Gallery. Ida, she had predicted, would have difficulty coping with the ingrained snobbery of the London art world. It was understood that she was talking about anti-Semitism, but by tacit agreement, that inference remained unspoken.

“Won’t Ida miss her young husband?” Lady Clerk had asked. “And is she experienced enough to negotiate with the collectors and curators interested in purchasing your paintings?”

Marc Chagall remained impervious to her arguments. “Her husband is involved in his studies. And I do not worry about Ida’s lack of experience. She is a capable young woman,” Marc had replied. “I can rely on her. My wife’s frailty at this time prevents me from going to London myself, but I will trust everything to Ida and, of course, to your kind self.”

He had smiled his seductive impish smile, and Lady Clerk, who was both his painting student and his acolyte, had at last assented. Few people could resist his charm. And it was well known that Bella Chagall’s health was fragile. There were those who said she had grown despondent when her daughter married, and her frequent illnesses, headaches, and mysterious intestinal disorders were symptoms of that depression. It was rumored that she remained at home, wandering aimlessly from room to room, often remaining in peignoir and negligee throughout the day.

Depression
was a new word in the lexicon of Left Bank artists and writers. They spoke knowingly of the new theories being promulgated by the Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, who claimed that physical illness often sublimated emotional distress.
Sublimation
, they repeated and speculated about the efficacy of psychoanalysis, the new talking cure.

“Bella Chagall is a
malade
imaginaire
,” Dora Maar, Picasso’s mistress, maliciously repeated to Lady Clerk. Dora Maar herself suffered a nervous breakdown only weeks later.

There were those who speculated that Bella’s melancholy was a result of the frightening news emanating from Germany and Russia where she had friends and family who were almost certainly in danger. Stalin had launched his reign of terror, and Hitler’s threats had escalated into ominous reality. The Chagalls’ friends were already leaving Paris. The Opatoshus were in New York, and they wrote urging Marc and Bella to join them.

“I could never leave Europe,” Bella wrote in reply. “If I leave Paris, I will die.”

She surrendered to her sadness and no longer dealt with either the management of the household or the sales of Marc’s paintings, passing those obligations to Ida. The acrimony that had preceded Ida’s marriage was forgotten. She was, once again, regnant in her parents’ household, a role that Michel accepted in silent resignation.

Ida was happy to be swept up into her parents’ orbit, to return to the exciting world from which she had been exiled when she married. She loved Michel (
of
course
I
do
, she told herself repeatedly), but she was bored with her life as the wife of a student, impatient with her own efforts at drawing and painting. Her studio classes were uninspiring, her domestic chores boring. Cooking alone in her cramped kitchen, without her mother’s daring experiments with spices and exotic ingredients, was a desultory affair.

She was relieved to be restored to her role as her mother’s comforter, her father’s charming consort. She accompanied him to the dealers’ galleries and the cafés of the Left Bank where she basked in the admiring gazes of the artists and poets who sat for hours over glasses of milky absinthe. Her marriage did not diminish her pleasure in their recognition of her vivacity, her tantalizing sensuality.

She charmed visitors to Marc’s studio, smiled enticingly at collectors, spoke knowingly of the value of each painting. When her father suggested the trip to London, she had agreed enthusiastically, and Lady Clerk had at last been seduced by her eagerness.

“We will be happy to host her, but does her young husband agree?” the Englishwoman had asked Marc.

“Michel has his studies and other obligations. He knows that Ida looks forward to visiting London. There is no need to worry about Michel Rapaport.”

The astute diplomat’s wife understood that his son-in-law’s reaction was of little interest to Marc Chagall. His only concerns were for his work, his wife, and his daughter. It was fortunate, Lady Clerk thought, as she drew up a guest list for the welcoming dinner at her Belgravia home, that auburn-haired, fair-complexioned Ida did not look especially Semitic. She was tolerant of Jews, but she knew that many of her set had ill-concealed prejudices. And, of course, Ida was extremely personable. It was possible, after all, that despite her youth and inexperience, she would manage.

And Ida not only managed but did so exceedingly well. She had swiftly conquered London society with her vibrancy and charm. Royals and artists alike, the intellectuals of Bloomsbury, and the curators of major museums admired the beautiful, stylish nineteen-year-old who smiled with engaging sweetness and conversed with ease in German and Russian, English and French.

She had, with authority, perception, and an eye to space and lighting, supervised the hanging of her father’s paintings in the Leicester Gallery. She negotiated with collectors with astonishing shrewdness and spoke knowledgeably with the art critic of the
Times
.

She enchanted London and London enchanted her. Lady Clerk was amused that in Covent Garden, Ida had clapped as enthusiastically as the smallest children at the jugglers and clowns who entertained the crowds, and so she was unsurprised that Ida viewed the fireworks display from London Bridge with childlike awe.

“It’s wonderful that King George’s Silver Jubilee coincided with your father’s exhibition,” Lady Clerk said. “This is a happy time for England.”

“I know. I can feel it,” Ida agreed. “It’s such a relief to be gay after all the gloom and doom one feels in Paris.”

“Oh, Paris never stays gloomy for long. After all, it is the City of Light,” Lady Clerk said dismissively as she linked her arm through Ida’s. They left the bridge and strolled along the embankment toward Guildhall, where the king himself would receive the invited guests.

“This has been a very difficult year for France,” Ida said carefully. “The Bourse has been so unstable. One day the prices of stocks are up, and the next day they are down. The failure of the American stock exchange should be a warning that the City of Light may go dark very quickly.”

“Ida,
ma
petite
, I’m surprised that you concern yourself with financial affairs,” Lady Clerk said reprovingly. She thought it unseemly for women to concern themselves with such matters. Why should women bother with the boring trivia of the marketplace? The fluctuations of sterling and dollars, francs and marks, the rise and fall of international exchanges, were the precincts of men. She had never understood the suffragettes’ struggle for the franchise. She herself never even bothered to vote.

“Ida, my dear,” she added gently, “why should you bother about interest rates and bank offerings?”

“Someone in my family must,” Ida replied. “My father paints and my mother is disinterested, so I must manage the sale of his work and our family’s finances. It is important that we be very careful. We are living in dangerous times. Germany is in the power of a dangerous man.”

“My husband assures me that things will soon get better,” Lady Clerk protested. “The world does not want another war. Our Anthony Eden and your own Pierre Laval are working hard to appease Mr. Hitler.”

Lady Clerk grimaced as she spoke the name of the odious Austrian. He was such a vile little man. But surely the nation of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, would not tolerate him much longer.

“Monsieur Laval has done nothing to censor the Croix de Feu,” Ida said carefully.

It was not her place to offer political instruction to her hostess, whose husband moved in the highest diplomatic circles. Still the headlines of that day’s London
Times
had frightened her. The Croix de Feu, an organization with blatant fascist sympathies, had had the temerity to hold a rally at the Eiffel Tower to celebrate the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, which placed draconian restrictions on Germany’s Jewish population. The French tricolor flag had been swathed in bunting adorned with swastikas. When she read of the rally in the
Times
, Ida resolved that she would vigorously insist that her parents apply for visas to the United States.

Lady Clerk dismissed her arguments with a patronizing smile.

“Ida, my dear, you don’t really believe that fascism can survive in the land of
liberté, égalité, et fraternité
?”

It was true that Lord Clerk himself had expressed concern about the formation of a political party that so closely resembled the Nazi regime in Germany, but she, a consummate Francophile, refused to be intimidated.

“Michel says that the French fascists are quite dangerous,” Ida replied and realized, with a pang of guilt, that it was the first time she had thought of Michel since her arrival in London.

She would write to him that very evening, perhaps even send him a telegram. “
Je
t’aime.
I love you. I miss you.” A simple message, reminiscent of the days of their clandestine courtship. And she did love him, she did miss him, she assured herself. Poor patient Michel, slogging away at his studies, working in his parents’ shop, and dashing through the city to care for her parents. He was relieved, she knew, that Marc and Bella had accepted an invitation to visit Vilna in the fall for the opening of a Museum of Jewish Art. Their absence would be a respite from their constant demands. Michel had not said as much, of course. He was so good, so understanding. She felt a surge of longing for her slender, dark-haired husband. She would buy him a jacket, the Norfolk jacket she had seen in that smart haberdashery on Oxford Street. And when she returned to Paris, they would share a candlelight dinner at La Tour d’Argent. He deserved a reward for tolerating her long absence.

“Shame on Michel for frightening you,” Lady Clerk said vigorously. “In any case, we are in London and we can forget about what may or may not be happening across the Channel. And tonight’s gala should be really wonderful. Just think, Ida. We are going to see the king himself! We must not be late.”

She increased her pace, and Ida hurried to keep up with her. Their excitement mounted as they approached the entry of Guildhall and saw the banner of Saint George waving gently in the evening breeze, signifying the presence of the beloved monarch who had ruled England for a quarter of a century.

Since
before
I
was
born
, Ida thought delightedly.

She surrendered her white cape to the butler, smoothed the skirt of her long green evening dress, and passed her fingers through her tangled curls.

Ambassador Clerk had waited for them, and she followed him through the reception line and curtsied deeply before the royal couple. Lifting her eyes shyly, she noted the king’s pallor, his terrible weariness, and the queen’s concerned expression. And then, as she had been instructed, she moved on into the ballroom.

Great banks of flowers from the royal gardens and the greenhouses of Kew lined the walls of the room, which was bathed in the dazzling lights of the low-hanging crystal chandeliers. Couples waltzed gracefully across the polished floor to the soft music of a very bored orchestra.

Ida was briefly alone, and she reveled in the luxury of her solitude, committing to memory the colors and styles of the women’s fashionable gowns so that she might describe them to her mother. Though she was enthusiastic about little these day, Bella retained her interest in haute couture. Ida made a mental note to tell her about the short, silver-fringed skirts and the feathery boas of the jazz age that seemed to be so popular. Bella would laugh, she knew, and think them amusing but vulgar, definitely inappropriate for a state occasion.

“Ah, here you are, Ida.”

Lady Clerk rushed toward her with a flute of champagne. “Isn’t this marvelous?” she asked. “Absolutely everyone is here.”

Lord Clerk joined them and they circled the room, smiling and nodding. Ida obediently curtsied when her hostess curtsied and nodded pleasantly when she was introduced to other guests, although she immediately forgot their names. She was pleasantly aware that more than one man stared after her as she moved from one group to another. She had not erred when she had decided to wear the closely fitted green silk gown that matched her eyes. As always, she was invigorated by the admiration of others. Suffused with warmth, conscious of the power of her beauty, she listened without interest as Lady Clerk scattered crumbs of gossip.