Page 89 of The Velvet Hours
“And you would look quite smart if you did...” I laughed. I was pleased she was considering their invitation.
She shook her head. “You might find this surprising, but I have a great affinity for the Jews. They’re a smart and cultured race...
“And when your mother came here that first time, when she and your father were announcing their engagement, I immediately sensed she was aJuive.”
I felt a little stab in my heart when she spoke and I stiffened, bracing myself to hear something that would shatter the warm and protective feelings I had recently come to have for my grandmother.
“She was beautiful. An oval face with almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was slightly olive. And her last name, Cohen... it was a telltale sign of her ancestry.” I could feel Marthe looking at me and contrasting the memory she still had in her mind of my then twentysomething-year-old mother.
“You have her eyes, her dark hair, and the same exotic beauty. And, of course, her intelligence...”
A sense of relief washed over me. I had been fearful Marthe might say something anti-Semitic in relation to my mother. Had she done so, the affection that had grown in my heart for her over the past year would have been tarnished.
“I feel guilty that I didn’t embrace your parents more fully when they arrived brimming with their young love. When I reflect on it now, I realize I was threatened by your mother. It was clear she possessed a great deal of wisdom behind those beautiful eyes of hers.” Marthe’s words sounded almost as if they were uttered as a confession.
“I was haughty and narcissistic that afternoon, Solange. And when they came a few months later to tell me about the pregnancy, I barely acknowledged it.”
She took a deep breath.
“It was an error on my part that I’ve come to regret...” Her eyes looked out toward the window, never once looking at her portrait as she normally did. For several minutes neither of us said a word. The quiet between us filled the room.
***
We spent the next two hours together. I sat beside Marthe on the gray sofa, looking at the pages of the book that Monsieur Armel had given her. Marveling at the illustrations, our fingers carefully turned the parchment pages together.
“Have I ever shown you the two books I have from my mother’s collection?” I asked, though I knew full well that I had never shared them with her.
“No,” she answered. “But I would love to see them.”
I excused myself and walked toward my new bedroom and pulled out my suitcase, where they were protected in layers of brown paper.
I returned, holding them protectively to my chest. Then I unwrapped them in front of her.
“These belonged to my mother’s father, Moishe Cohen,” I said.
I lifted the dark brown Haggadah and theZemirot Yisraelfrom the paper and brought them over to her.
I placed the Barcelona Haggadah in her hands, and set the slenderZemirotbook to the side. As Marthe touched the outer cover, I could see the collector in her come alive before me. She pored over every detail, appraising the outside before entering its inner pages.
“See how the book opens from left to right...” I reached over and lifted the left corner of the cover to open the first page. Her eyes widened and I watched as her finger delicately touched the vellum corner.
“Is this Hebrew?” she asked. I watched as her eyes scanned the calligraphic lines executed in dark black ink.
“Yes, the text is written by a rabbi and the illustrations were painted by his wife.”
“It’s extraordinary,” Marthe said in a hushed tone. I could see she was transfixed, just as I had first been upon seeing it.
“The slender volume is a book of poetry by Israel Najara, printed in Venice in the sixteenth century. But, this one,” I said, touching the heavy brown cover of the Barcelona Haggadah, “Monsieur Armel says is an extremely rare fourteenth-century Haggadah from Spain.”
My voice floated through the parlor. I was now the storyteller to Marthe. For well over a year I had listened to her tell the story of her life, of her ascent from the alleys of Montmartre to this treasure-filled apartment in the ninth arrondissement. But now we had switched places, and it was she who was listening to my every word. Under the hush of the room, in the comfort of the velvet furniture, I began to tell Marthe the story of my mother’s family and these two priceless books that now rested between us. The very books that had initially brought me to the Armels’ store.
I spoke slowly and in a carefully measured voice, just as Marthe had always done when she shared her stories with me.
“The book was in my grandfather’s collection, and it was one of the few Mother saved upon his death. According to Monsieur Armel, the Haggadah was written and illustrated by a rabbi and his wife. The rabbi’s wife possessed a rare gift that few people, let alone women, had at that time. She knew not only how to paint, but to work with gold leaf. Her collaboration on the Haggadah is one of the reasons it is so unique. It is one of the only prayer books known to have been illustrated by a female hand.”
Marthe listened quietly. I watched as she turned another page and marveled at the deep red and lapis blue design around the perimeter.
“It took them nearly twenty years to complete it.”
