Page 49 of The Velvet Hours
I could sense he wanted me to be the first to touch it. So I reached delicately for the far left corner of the old book and opened it again.
The vellum had yellowed to the color of wheat. I could almost hear the whisk of the scribe’s feather quill against the parchment as I looked at the care with which each letter was applied.
“It’s difficult to imagine how painstaking this all was before the printing press,” Alex said softly. “We are so spoiled now.”
He touched the edge of the page as if connecting with something he knew had a soul.
“Back then, the vellum had to be lightly ruled and the layout ensured before the quill nib ever touched the parchment. Any mistake was costly because the materials could only be procured at considerable expense.”
“I can imagine,” I said softly.
“But whereas Rabbi Avram’s skill inscribing the prayers took time and patience, truly it’s his wife’s talent that makes this so unique.”
He turned a few pages until he found one of the illuminated paintings.
“She not only knew how to paint. Even more incredible, she knew how to work with gold. Very few people possessed that skill then, much less a woman.”
“Really?” I had noticed that a few of the pages had gold applied sparingly, but I had never thought much about it.
“Yes. A person had to not only have access to gold leaf, they also had to know how to prepare it for application. There were two ways to do that back then: either to apply gold specks very, very carefully with a brush, or to hammer the leaf and burnish it, dusting it onto the page after first applying glue. Rabbi Avram’s wife was able to do both.”
The book now took on yet another layer of interest for me.
“How would she have mastered this?” I couldn’t even begin to fathom where she might have learned to use gold like this.
“Funny you should ask that, Solange. That was exactly what I asked my father after you left that first afternoon.”
“Did he know the answer?”
“Yes. He said it was believed that her own father was a master illuminator and in private, he taught her everything he knew.”
“It makes the book that much more meaningful.” I took a deep breath. “To think how many relationships needed to be nurtured just for this book to exist and eventually make its way to Paris.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Even your mother’s relationship with her father.”
I felt a shiver pass through me.
“And now your own connection with your mother.”
What he said was true. What I chose to keep to myself was that the book had also brought Alex into my life. I felt my mother in the room as we spoke. And I had never been more thankful that she had kept it safely tucked away on her shelves.
It had been quite a few days since I had the chance to go see my grandmother. I had to reschedule my last visit, on two separate occasions. For over a year, I had tried to see her at least twice a week, so this amount of time passing was something I knew would not go unnoticed by either of us.
While by now I considered myself to be quite close to her, it was still difficult to gauge her emotional connection to me. We existed as storyteller and audience. Even though she knew I was working on a novel based on her life, she never asked to see what I had written or expressed much interest in what I did outside our meetings. It was easy for me to see how she created a world for her and Charles that had no connection with the outside. And I could also understand how someone like her could have little interest in the fact that another war was raging throughout Europe.
I knew I would find her as I last saw her. A tall, slender woman who hennaed her hair and powdered her face. A strand of pearls around her throat. Sitting down to tell me about her dying lover and the painter who did not see her only as a commission, but also as a muse.
***
To soften what I suspected would be a chastisement, I brought her an extra-large bouquet of flowers. It was impossible to find good chocolate or coffee anymore, but one could always find flowers in Paris. I had spent the last two nights sleeping with the combined scents of the roses and violets, and it had made me think of Marthe. It was her apartment’s perfume.
I buzzed the main doorbell and walked inside the marble interior. To my left, the door to the apartment of the concierge who lived on the ground floor was open. I had never noticed anyone there before, as that door was always closed. But today, I could see a young gentleman and his family bringing in their groceries. A few bags were left outside by the threshold, waiting for a pair of hands to carry them inside.
As I stood there with my bouquet waiting for the elevator to land, the young man came outside to retrieve the last remaining bags.
“Hello,” he said, looking up at me kindly. “Who are those beautiful flowers for?”
“My grandmother on the eighth floor.”
