Bridal Chair by Gloria Goldreich

Author:Gloria Goldreich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2014-12-31T17:05:16+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bella’s sadness deepened as the seasons drifted by and the war in Europe continued unabated. She remained indoors except when Ida persuaded her to leave the apartment for short walks. She worked for hours on the memoir, writing with a febrile verve, her pen racing across page after page as though she were in a race against time. She wrote and revised, wrote and revised, working until she was exhausted, and then fell onto her bed and turned her face to the wall, willing herself to an evasive sleep. She drank tonics in pursuit of strength, but weakness overcame her. Marc, once again painting furiously, paid her little attention.

Ida returned home on a May evening to find Bella in bed, still wearing her faded nightgown, her face parchment pale, dark circles beneath her eyes, her black hair oily and uncombed. Manuscript pages littered the night table; the cup that had contained her morning coffee remained half full and the single slice of toast that Ida had placed there in the morning was cold and stiff as cardboard.

“Have you been in bed all day?” Ida asked, her voice trembling with both fear and anger.

“I was too tired to get up,” Bella said. “Too tired to work. Too tired of life.”

She pointed to the scattered pages, words blotted, paragraphs crossed out.

“The words do not come, and when they do, they do not say what I want them to say,” she continued. “I am writing through a fog, struggling to write of that which is no longer. Vitebsk is gone. I see it only as a shadow.” Her voice lilted in the cadence of a sorrowful prayer.

“But Vitebsk has been liberated. The tide of the war has changed,” Ida said impatiently.

“Yes, I know. But what does that liberation mean to me, Idotchka? What is left of my father’s house, of the synagogue where your father and I were married? Is the Hotel Brozi still standing, do farmers still sell their produce in Padlo, our poor little market square? Last night I dreamed that brides, still in their wedding dresses, sat shivering around a fire. Their bodices were torn, a symbol of mourning, because they were widowed only minutes after they became wives. They sat amid the embers of the synagogue, the embers of the bridal chair. Why should I have dreamt such a dream? What does such a dream mean?”

Ida knelt beside the bed, took Bella’s hands in her own, and struggled to find words of comfort.

“It was only a dream. It means nothing. You are exhausted because you have been working too hard. You are doing your best, Mamochka, as you always do. And your best is wonderful. You are a good writer, a marvelous storyteller. I still remember the stories you told me when I was a little girl. Your book will be important. When you are rested, the writing will come easier. Give it time.” She spoke with a certainty she did not feel, but Bella grew calmer.

“But do I have time?” Bella asked.

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