The Gown(6)

“I’m sure I can sort something out for you, Miss Dassin.” Dass’n, he said, swallowing half her name. She suppressed an instinctive shudder and renewed her smile.

“May I have the use of them this evening? I have an important appointment tomorrow, you see, and I will not sleep well if I am not ready.”

“Of course,” he said, his face flushing a little. “I’ll bring them to your room. Do you need me to carry up your bags?”

“Oh, no—they are not heavy at all. Simply the iron and the board. Thank you so much. You are very kind.”

She rather missed having the lift, for her cases, light as they were, weighed heavily on her arms by the time she reached the hotel’s top floor. Her room was at the end of the hallway, as he had said, and she hoped it would be quiet. If it were quiet enough she might be able to sleep.

She unlocked the door, switched on the light, and set her cases down where she stood. And then she waited, her eyes shut tight, letting herself rest. Catching her breath and letting the pain fade from her arms. It had been almost two years since her liberation, and still she was weak. What had the American doctor said? Good food and rest and careful exercise, and above all patience, and she would one day be herself again.

He had been a kind man, shaken to his core by the suffering he had seen, and he had done his best to help. But he had been wrong, for no amount of fresh air or nourishing food or pleasant walks in the sunshine could ever restore what had been taken from her.

The day she had made her decision, she had written to the one friend who knew her well enough to understand. Catherine had sent a reply the next day.

20 February 1947

My dear Miriam,

Can you spare the time to see me before you leave? Not because I hope to change your mind—I assure you I understand your reasons—but only so we may say a proper farewell. Shall we say Thursday evening at six o’clock? I am staying with Tian at his new premises. I will tell the staff to expect you. If this time does not suit, do let me know.

With my warm regards,

Catherine

Tian was none other than Christian Dior, the Christian Dior whose first collection had astonished the world only weeks before. She had embroidered some of those gowns, for Maison Rébé was Monsieur Dior’s preferred atelier de broderie, but she had never met the man, nor would she have ever presumed upon her friendship with Catherine to try to engineer such a meeting.

It had felt very strange to walk through the front door of Maison Dior, as if she were a great lady arriving to be fitted for a gown, but Catherine would have known had she tried to creep in through the staff entrance. Miriam was escorted to an exquisitely furnished room, shown every courtesy, offered any refreshment she desired, and after protesting she was in need of nothing, she had been left alone. Only for a moment, though, before the door had opened and Catherine had rushed in.

“My dear, my dear—such a joy to see you again. Come and let us sit together. Would you like anything? Some coffee? A tisane?”

“No, thank you, Mademoiselle Dior,” Miriam said, suddenly cowed. Friend or not, she was the sister of the greatest couturier in the world.

But her friend shook her head and took hold of Miriam’s hands. “To you I am Catherine. I insist. Now, tell me—what has happened?”

“The trial began last week. I am sure I told you about it.”

“Your parents’ neighbor? The gendarme?”

Miriam nodded. She had gone to the courthouse on the first day of the trial, believing it would mean something if she were present to see justice done. Adolphe Leblanc had lived down the street from her parents for as long as she could remember, the local policeman with his big, tight-knit, and devoutly Catholic family, and in all those years he’d never once said hello, never once asked after their health, never once allowed Miriam to play with his children. “Dirty Jew,” they had called her, and she had learned to fear them and their red-faced, loudmouthed father.

He had helped to round up her family, an eager cog in a human machinery of death that had spread over nearly an entire continent. Yet he had been acquitted before the trial had even properly begun.

“They set him free, along with half of the other men who were on trial,” she now told Catherine. “The judges said they had atoned for their crimes by helping the resistance.”

“The wretch. He probably didn’t lift a finger until the writing was on the wall,” Catherine huffed.

“He brushed past me when he left. He was so close our sleeves were touching. I know he recognized me.”

“He wasn’t so foolish as to say anything to you, was he?”

“No.”

She had hoped to discern some slight evidence of guilt, of shame, in his gaze. What she had seen instead was hatred. Corrosive, incendiary hatred, and she had looked around the courtroom and recognized it in the eyes of others there, too.

“He did something to upset you. I can see that he did.”

Miriam shut tight her eyes, trying to wipe the memory from her mind. “He smiled. He smiled, and he nodded, and I knew that if it were in his power he would do it again. Maman, Papa, Grand-Père. He would send them to their deaths a second time if he could.”

“Not all of us hate,” Catherine whispered, her voice pleading.

“I know. But now I am afraid. He has reminded me of my fear.”