Read Online Bridal Chair by Gloria Goldreich - Free Book Online Page A

refugees from Poland and Lithuania, who lived in the tenements of Le Marais, were an embarrassment to them. Marc even scorned Bella’s beloved brother, Yaakov Rosenfeld, wryly imitating his pronounced Yiddish accent.
    “What didn’t it occur to you to ask?” Marc asked, and they turned as he tossed his beret onto the hat rack and clapped in celebration of his own perfect aim.
    He had entered the house soundlessly, as he often did, and stood in the portico, an impish smile playing on his lips, his hair wind tousled. He had won his oft-repeated boyish game of stealing into his own dining room and surprising them with his presence. And he did look like a boy, Ida thought. An aging, graying boy.
    “Oh, I was just curious about Ida’s friend,” Bella said, and she hurried to pour him a cup of coffee. “Was Henri’s new work interesting?”
    “Very impressive,” Marc replied. “A real effort to integrate cubism and impressionism. I envy him his good fortune. He has the luxury to thrust himself into the future. He is not held hostage to a vanished world.”
    His tone was casual, but his words were laced with bitterness. His own art reflected his past; his imagination was ignited by the Jewish experience. Like his friend, Chaim Soutine, he painted houses without foundations, rootless trees, wandering animals, and floating lovers, the landscape of a stateless people. The Judaism he rejected hobbled and encumbered him. The village of his childhood demanded his brush. Matisse, a son of France, was not impeded by lingering imagery, nor was he haunted by sad memories. His landscapes were sylvan vistas of peace, his models strangers to sorrow.
    “Everyone at La Palette admires your work, Papa,” Ida said quickly. “They marvel at your themes, at your use of color. ‘Where does your father get such ideas?’ they ask me.”
    “Where indeed?” Marc parried. “I myself do not know. I lift my brush and lovers and cows, clowns and violinists, dance across my canvas.” He laughed. Ida’s words had banished his despondency. He was delighted anew by the mystery of his own talent.
    “But why are you not at La Palette this morning?” he asked.
    “I was tired and I wanted to talk to you. To you and Maman .”
    “I have no time to talk. I want to get to the studio. We will speak at dinner.”
    “No, Papa,” she said. “We will speak now. What I have to say is very important.”
    Ida’s spoon rattled against her cup and she set it down, unable to control her trembling fingers, but her voice was steady, her expression grave.
    “All right then.”
    He did not bother to mask his irritation as he pulled out a chair and sat beside Bella, who covered his hand with her own. Irritably, he brushed it aside. He resented this diversion from his daily routine. “Then speak,” he commanded. All playfulness had faded from his tone.
    “I must tell you that I believe, that I am almost certain, that I am enceinte. Pregnant.” Ida spoke calmly, but her hands were tightly clasped and her eyes were fixed on her parents’ shocked faces.
    “Enceinte?”
    They stared at their daughter and spoke the word in unison, their voices rising in disbelief, as though their very doubt would nullify what she had said. Marc stared at Bella and she looked pleadingly at Ida, her face blanched of all color.
    Bella gasped. “You must be mistaken. It cannot be.”
    Ida did not flinch. “I’m not mistaken. All signs point to it,” she said, her voice dangerously calm.
    They did not ask what the signs were. They sat opposite her, mute and immobile. A single tear pearled Bella’s pale cheek and fell unheeded into the corner of her mouth. Marc’s blue eyes glinted icily. His narrow face contorted into a mask that commingled sorrow and fury. He stared at his daughter, dressed this morning in the white he had always favored. How often he had painted her in ivory-colored dresses, frocks of snow-white silk, crowns of white lilies on her bright hair. When she