Chagall: 12-Sided Hallway
Page 9
Marevna: You didn’t come… You should have come… you promised…
Diego: I couldn’t get away. The baby, painting… a series I’m working on for the Salon, Madame S. and Angelina, she’s become incompetent, both her and Marie… can’t even take care of the baby.*
They make me sick! Angelina wants to send him off to a children’s home in Chaville.* So she can “devote more time to me and my work”*. I don’t know why, I don’t even work well when she’s there…
Marevna: [Whining, and nearly crying. You should have come. I don’t want to die here to gratify your wife!* I didn’t want to go there… didn’t want to see Angelina.. with, with little Diego, your son. I’d never send him away… [cries and weeps.
Please help me.
Diego: I’m going out. You need poulticing and cupping. You little savage!* [Diego exits.
Time Change: 10 pm. - Half Hour Later.
[Diego re-enters the room with a bag full of medicine.
Diego: I’ve been to see the chemist.
[He takes out his knife, pours some from a bottle into a cup and cuts Marevna’s finger. He puts her finger in the medicine. She gasps. He dresses it with gauze. He daubs cotton in the medicine and touches it to her sores. ‘When she has been daubed with medicine and wrapped in cotton-wool’, he sits on the edge of the bed and fondles her.*
Devilish! I love you like that.* The doctor is coming. Valentine is with him.
[He kisses her, then leaves her alone.
[Marevna lays in the silence. Her eyes roll back. She sleeps a while.
[A knock at the door wakens her. Valentine, Segonzac, Max Jacob and the doctor enter. The doctor sits on the bed. He gives her a spoonful of medicine from another bottle – like the one Picasso gave her. He takes out of his medicine bag a bottle of ointment or lotion. Valentine stands near the bed watching. Max Jacob paces nervously in a corner, apparently fussing or praying quietly. Segonzac looks at Marevna’s recent paintings.
Doctor: Oh, the little wild girl! Little wild one nobody could get close to… we’ll be able to profit off you now!*
[The doctor kisses Marevna on the lips. Marevna pulls away, looking shocked.
Valentine: This is our doctor. He cares for sick artists. This is Marevna, she’s quite a painter. Started out Impressionist, hasn’t moved to Cubism, yet.
[Looks around the room.
It’s rather unlucky, your shanty.*
Doctor: “Now, now. I know that she’s already repenting of many things, and as soon as she’s well, everything will be different, won’t it?”*
Marevna: [Tears begin again. It’s true. I swear… I’ll be good, from now on.*
Doctor: I’ll be back tomorrow… to kiss you on the mouth.*
[Valentine opens the door for him.
Segonzac: Diego asked us to get Renee until you’re healed, to keep you company.
Valentine: We’ll have a party, to celebrate, as soon as you’re well. For now, just recover. See you soon.
[Max follows her out the door still appearing worried and agitated or praying some sort of incomprehensible prayer.
Act VII, Scene 1: The Wedding of Chagall’s
Setting: Interior. Vitebsk, Russia, Synagogue
Time: Daytime. 1914.
The Rabbi and couple: Mazaltov! [The couple smash their champagne glasses. They begin to dance. Other couples watch them and then, two by two, they also begin to dance. No words, only music plays, a string quartet.
Chagall’s Voice [over the dancing and people mingling at the wedding:
It was 1915, I was 28. “I woke up at the altar of my wedding union. I painted, I painted and finally, though I protested a bit, I found myself, one rainy night, standing under a wedding crown, of the most authentic sort, just as in my pictures.*
I had found my love for Bella was still strong, even after 4 years at La Ruche. We honeymooned in the country. All Summer. Until autumn. But the War rumbled over us. And Europe was closed to me.*
Act VII, Scene 2: War Becomes WWI.
Setting: Exterior. Champagne, France. Battlefield.
Time: Daytime.
Everything is grey and brown. Smoke looms like a mist over dug out, muddy trenches. Cendrars lies in a trench. A dead man lays near him. He is trying to load his gun. A shot sounds and Blaise grabs his right arm, screaming. Blood spills. His arm nearly completely shot off.
Setting Change: Interior. Champagne, France. Wartime Hospital. Surgery Room. Night. Surgery Table.
A doctor puts an ether mask over Blaise’s mouth. Blaise sees himself in a blurry battlefield alone.
Cendrars: [Blaise cries: “J’ai tue.” I have killed. I have killed.
Act VII, Scene 3: The Kiss of New Beginning
Setting: Interior. Marevna’s Studio.
Time: Daytime.
Renee spoons soup into Marevna’s mouth.
Marevna: You have a heart of gold… to match your hair. [Smiles.
Renee: You don’t need to flatter me, it’s no trouble to help out.
Marevna: Do you ever want a baby?
Renee: Sure. You?
Marevna: Yes. And I’d like to see little Diego. Take care of him. Diego says he’s ill and not getting any better. I don’t think it helps that they go out at night and leave him… alone. He works the bed clothes off*, and it’s so cold at night sometimes, especially since it’s so hard to get coal, because of the war.
Renee: Yes. That’s a shame… “Having a child requires attentions. Perhaps an artist’s child has sometimes, sacrificed [sic attentions out of thoughtlessness.”* I won’t be the same. Won’t be that selfish. Marevna, I haven’t told you...
Marevna: What? Are you pregnant?
Renee: No! I’m getting married.
Marevna: What?! When?
Renee: Next Sunday night. Moise and I.
Marevna: Kisling? He’s always had a thing for you.
Renee: While he was gone, in the war, he wrote me, nearly every day... about his feelings for me; and then, when he got wounded, I just fell apart. I couldn’t imagine my life without him – all of a sudden. It’s been so strange – so fast. I want you to be there. Leger’s being sent home, now too. Turns out he was wounded at the same battle; battle of Somme.
Moise just found out. It’ll be like old times, all of us, well most, of us together again. Can you come?
Marevna: Yes. Of course. I’ll be there.
Renee: Good.
Marevna: Has anyone heard from Lhote?
Renee: No. I haven’t. I’m sure Valentine has heard from him, though. You didn’t ask her?
Marevna: No.
[Diego enters the room. He is sad, dark, sullen. He sits and does not speak.
Marevna: Diego? Come and eat. You look pale, exhausted. What’s wrong? Renee: I have hot croissants and milk…
Diego: It’s over.* [He is silent.
Marevna: You and me?
Renee: I’ll leave you both alone.
[Touches Marevna’s arm and leaves.
Diego: The… baby… he…
Diego: [Diego goes to the bed and weeps. Marevna holds his head in her arms.
Act VII, Scene 4: The Saddest Truth
Setting: Exterior. Montrouge Cemetery.
Time: Daytime. Winter. 1915.
Marevna walks among the trees on L’Avenue du Maine, watching the funeral procession of Little Diego arrive. Grey skies. She watches as a hearse and 3 carriages pull up. She keeps at a distance, watching the funeral from among the trees. Diego helps Angelina out of a carriage. “Angelina is swathed in veils”*, teetering on new high heels.* Diego wears a coat with raglan sleeves. They both look somewhat odd. Marevna’s eyes fill with tears. The rest of the groups file out of the carriages.
Vantage viewpoint grows closer than Marevna’s view to reveal Angelina’s pale face and bright, red lips, flushed and swollen cheeks.
She seems agitated, pushing at her veils that rustle and flutter in the wind. She tries to keep them back while
walking. Teetering, again, on the high, heeled, new shoes. She nearly spits as one veil blows against her lips. Diego helps her walk.
Madame S. to Beatrice: I can’t help but think they both look a little ridiculous.*
Beatrice: Oh, you’re terrible. Shh-h!
[Madame S. smirks and covers her lips with her fingers, exposing long, red, painted fingernails.
The funeral party is: Diego, Angelina, Jeanne and Fernand Leger, Max Jacob, Cendrars, Kisling, Modi, Zobrowski, Beatrice, Jeanne Cocteau, Renee, Marie and Madame S.
[The funeral is seen from the trees, from Marevna’s viewpoint.
The words spoken by the Priest are heard through the sound of leaves that rustle in a gentle wind.
Priest:
…and I ask you all to remember, in this most sorrowful time, that god works in mysterious ways, and though this loss is more than painful, he lies with god, in the kingdom of heaven. Let us bow our heads and pray, for the…
[After the group has piled back into the carriages and gone, Marevna walks up to the coffin and throws one of the flowers she has brought on top of the coffin. The grave digger is already working to cover the coffin. Marevna sees the inscription on the small cross, ‘Diego Rivera’*. She touches it, then leaves her flowers at the altar with the others. Her tears fall slowly down her cheeks.
Act VII, Scene 4: Life Cycle: One Ends, Another Begins
Setting: Interior. Hospital Room. Vitebsk, Russia.
Time: Midnight. 1916.
A baby cries. A doctor wraps the baby, tightly in a blanket. He carries the baby to the bedside of Bella Chagall and hands her the newborn baby. She kisses her head.
Bella: Baby…Shhh… [To the doctor:
Will you please bring Marc in? To see little Ida?
Act VII, Scene 5: War Is Over!
Setting: Interior. Marevna’s Studio.
Time: Daytime. The Very Day of the End of WWI.
There is music. Marevna throws open her shutters. It is sunny outside. Music flows into the room. A marching band is playing in the street. The street is filled with people cheering and dancing.
Marevna throws out a handful of rose petals. Renee flings open her door.
Renee: The war is over! Come out!
Setting Change: Exterior. Moments later, in the street near Marevna’s Studio.
The girls run outside with everyone else to celebrate.
Suddenly in the street, Marevna and Renee kiss each other, they kiss neighbors and soldiers. They cheer!
Chagall’s Voice [over the celebration in the streets:
“And so it went… this Bohemian Hive of artistic talent called La Ruche. We were young, deeply committed to art, confident in our talents and our powers, united in our desires to spurn what we saw.
Marevna’s voice [over the same scene: “To be sure we had our share of difficulties and disasters. A number of artists… who turned to drugs…for oblivion or illusiatory effect, perished through their inability to break themselves of the habit. But most of us still had the youthful energy to surmount our tribulations = to survive, to live, to work, and, of course, to love!”*
Act VIII, Scene 1: Lead Out = Continuation of the Lead In at the Beginning of the Play
Setting: From Exterior to Interior. The Paris Opera.
Time: Daytime. 11:45 am.
[The same music plays as in the beginning, Lead In, scene. He is wearing a the same clothing as in the Lead In beginning scene.
Chagall, again at 83 years of age, walks into the Paris Opera with his 'sack lunch' from the deli.
Several dancers run past, he smiles, they wave. He walks over to a paint drop clothed off area. A younger man is there, he smiles, says something (no words are heard). He sets his sack lunch on a table cluttered with paints and brushes, little jars of mineral spirits and linseed oils. He puts a white coat over his clothes. Cut to him sitting in a chair, amid large, life-like dancers that seem to actually swirl around him as he paints - on the wall - of the Paris Opera.
The Very End.
The Painters:
Chagall, Kisling, Leger, Marevna, Picasso, Rivera, Lhote, Delauney
Diego Rivera “left Cubism”, Angelina, and Marevna; and moved to Mexico, in 1918, where he taught and met Frida Kahlo. Not known if he actually had to divorce Angelina, or if their ‘marriage’ was not a real marriage, documented in any way. Angelina moved in with Madame S. and then possibly returned to Russia.
Marevna stayed at painting, although she was not famous at the Salons, she started a studio in Nice, France, and made a good living with her art. She had one daughter, the father unknown.
Picasso, of course, became a world renowned master of Cubism; but also worked in ceramics, and other kinds of paintings and sculpture. He had a studio in Barcelona, Spain, among other places.
Modigliani’s successful career as a painter was cut short by early death due to alcoholism. He did not live past early, middle age.
The model, Renee, does marry Delauney and they continued to live in Paris for many happy years.
The Writers: Cendrars, Beatrice, Appollinaire, Max Jacob, Bella Chagall, Sonia Delauney
Max Jacob was captured by the Nazis in WWII. He died at Drancy.
Bella Chagall became a writer, as well as the mother of Ida Chagall. She wrote Lamps Lit and another book.
Bella and Chagall escaped German encampment in WWII and were able to refuge in New York. They arrived on American soil with 1 small suitcase and two paintings: White Crucifix, and a painting of Bella.
Blaise Cendrars, though suffering the loss of one arm during his tour in Champagne, France, continued writing and authored over twenty books. Writing up through the 1960s and 70s. He did finish his book with Sonia Delauney.
Marc Chagall remarries after Bella dies. His second wife and he lived in both New York and Paris, until he retires to a studio in Nice, France = near Marevna’s studio = along the shore. His second wife is nicknamed Vivian and they are ‘the New York cousins’ to Ed. The Chagall couple was Ed’s wife’s very favorite couple from Ed’s ‘side’. She never forgot them, though she only met them once. They were larger-than-life to her. And this, I guess, is for you, Margie. R.I.P.
And now you know, the New York cousins.
= Smirkus McGirkus
Many thanks and Much Love to Bella Meyer Chagall. I hope you like it.
The * and quotes marks are either quotations or paraphrases from:
Ma Vie, by Marc Chagall, himself.
The Painters of La Ruche, by the painter, Marevna.
Lamps Lit, Bella Chagall.
Nineteen Elastic Poems, by Blaise Cendrars and actual letters found to have been sent to Marc Chagall.
The publishers of these books were written to acknowledging the quote and paraphrases notated here in this biographical, theatrical play. Production is possible after contacting the author either by mail, email, or by phone.
More information about this author, Kara Skye Smith, can be found on her website: http://karaskyesmith.blogspot.com, or http://fae=talitypublishing.blogspot.com
Email: karaskyesmith@gmail.com
This play is for sale as an e=book @Kindle: http://amazon.com/author/karaskyesmith