The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

Author:Catherine Chung
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Liliane’s Story

“I didn’t find the baby naked in a field. She was given to me. The day I brought her in it is true, I’d been in trouble with the other nuns, because the night before I’d disappeared for several hours. They assumed I’d been visiting a man, and they’d told me if it happened again they’d expel me from the order. But I hadn’t been meeting a man at all, but my sister. She’d traveled to me in greatest secrecy and told me to tell no one she was coming. Imagine my surprise when I met her in the garden shed, and she had in her arms a tiny, newborn baby.

“‘Natalie!’ I cried.

“‘Hush,’ my sister said. ‘She isn’t mine. She’s the baby of a German Jew and a Chinese man, both scholars. Our uncle Romain rented them the apartment next door to mine and told me never to speak to them, but when I heard the baby crying, I took them diapers and food. They were so grateful. They spoke passable French and told me they were trying to get to China where the Jewish girl would be safe. They were from Germany and had been trying to get there by way of Bulgaria, but somehow they’d ended up in Paris and found some friends who told them our uncle Romain might be able to help hide them.

“‘So they lived next door for two weeks, but someone tipped off the Germans. When they came, the new family did not have enough time to hide. We all heard the heavy boots of the soldiers coming up the stairs, and I ran across the hall to warn the girl and her lover, but they had already heard, and there was no way out, no place to hide. The girl put her finger to her lips and showed me a metal toolbox in their kitchen. Inside it she’d hidden her baby, wrapped in blankets.

“‘When the Nazis took her away, a hand on either arm, she went quietly, no fussing. She went with almost no noise, so as not to end up waking the baby. Her lover—also quietly—but with a significant look at me followed by a glance at the toolbox, followed the girl and the soldiers.

“‘I bought goat’s milk and a bottle, and for two days, I cared for her as best I could. I wish I could raise her as my own, but who would believe me? Uncle Romain says the girl and her man are not coming back. He says if I do not get rid of this baby, he will take it to the authorities himself.

“‘Liliane,’ my sister said. ‘Please take this baby. Keep her safe. You must never tell anyone her mother was a Jew or it won’t be safe for her.’”

“‘SO YOU SEE why I could not tell the other nuns,’ Liliane finished, pressing one of her small hands against my bad arm, so hard that I winced. ‘If the Nazis ever come back, I know there will be some who would be all too eager to turn over a Jewish child.

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