After ten or fifteen minutes had passed, someone from the museum sidled up to Miriam and asked if she was still interested in addressing her guests. She nodded, and Daniel smiled at his grandmother and took her arm to escort her inside.
Miriam accepted a microphone from the museum employee and went to stand, alone, in the middle of the room, and by then everyone, even the children, had fallen silent.
“Good evening. I will not take long, for it is no secret that I much prefer to express myself through my work alone. It is also the case that an excess of silence may be interpreted as rudeness or ingratitude, and so I wish to tell you that I am very grateful for your friendship and love, and that I am deeply honored to have my work displayed here, in one of the world’s greatest museums of art.”
Miriam thanked those who had put together the exhibition, and she acknowledged her children and their families, and then she paused, her eyes shining.
“I have earnestly tried to never play favorites among my offspring, but if you will allow me, just this once, to single one of them out for special praise, I shall do so now. My grandson Daniel Friedman is the reason I stand before you now. No, my dear boy, do not shake your head. I shall praise you whether you like it or not.
“My Daniel is a seeker of truth, a historian, and in that regard he follows in the footsteps of my beloved Walter. He had to convince me to be interviewed, and I will admit it took some time for him to prevail”—at this everyone present began to laugh—“and then, once I had been persuaded, he held my hand as I spoke of long-lost friends and relatives. As I remembered.”
Miriam dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve and waited for the applause to end, and then she beckoned Heather forward.
“Yes, yes—you, ma belle. Come and stand next to me.” She took hold of Heather’s hand. “This is my friend Heather Mackenzie. Many years ago her grandmother, Ann Hughes, was also my friend. When I first came to England, in that dark winter of 1947, I knew no one. I had no friends here. So Ann decided to become my first friend. She befriended me, and she gave me a place to live, and when I first began to dream of the Vél d’Hiv embroideries she encouraged me. She believed I was an artist before I dared to believe it myself. She was a true friend, and it is a very great regret to me that we were separated, and that is why I wish to thank you, Heather, for coming to find me, and for standing at my side tonight. My heart is full.”
With that, Miriam handed the microphone back to the waiting museum employee, and she held out her arms so that little Hannah, who had been waiting impatiently, could run up and give her an enormous hug. Heather inched away, pleading the need for a glass of water to one well-wisher, then asking the location of the ladies’ room from another, and without too much trouble she was able to escape.
“Excuse me,” she asked a passing waiter. “What’s the best way to get to the exhibition? Can I take those stairs?”
“Certainly. Two floors down and then follow the signs.”
She hurried down to the third floor, urgency lending her speed, and walked straight to the gallery, at the very far end of the exhibition space, which held the Vél d’Hiv embroideries. It was darkened, quiet, and empty, apart from a single guard standing sentinel in the far corner.
Five embroidered panels ringed the room, each about six feet across and nine feet high. Lights were trained on the artworks, leaving the rest of the gallery in shadow, and apart from several introductory paragraphs on a printed stand, and a single line of text to the left of each embroidery, the surrounding walls were blank.
Heather moved to the first of the panels, Un d?ner de Chabbat. A Sabbath dinner. A group of people, a family, stood around a table laden with food, and the oldest of the men held high a silver cup. The colors of the embroidery were extraordinarily vibrant, as if it had been illuminated from within, and the delicately rendered faces were beautiful in their joy.
On to the second work, Le Rassemblement. The roundup. Some of the people from the first panel were being pushed down a narrow street, rifles at their backs. Their tormentors were in uniform, though they looked more like police officers than soldiers, and several wore the noxious emblems of Nazi Germany on their jackets and hats. At either side of the embroidery passersby looked on, men and women and children alike, their faces blank.
A figure at the center of the panel caught, and held, her attention. It was a woman from the Sabbath dinner, and she was turning back, reaching for someone, or perhaps she was warning them. The entire panel, Heather suddenly realized, was devoid of color, or rather so bleached of color, set against the first of the embroideries, that it appeared monochrome. The world had been reduced to brown and gray, black and white, and only the stark, sullen yellow of the Stars of David, neatly affixed to the family’s coats, broke free of the deadened palette.