“Sculptures? Why would the duchess buy them now?”
Madame Couture laughed. “Not buy. We are the proud protectors of the sculptures of the Louvre. You wouldn’t believe the convoy of trucks that delivered them. They are giant, and we got so many that the gallery is full and more are set on the stairwell landings.” She glanced about as if someone might hear their conversation. “Before you arrived, in 1939, the duchess hid hundreds of Louvre paintings in a sealed cave of the winery.” She straightened. “But these sculptures are so visible!”
If Raphaël had been right about the paintings, Claudette wondered, had he also been right about the aggression against the Jews? And if the duchess was trying to safeguard a collection of sculptures, why put them in plain sight? The Nazis had surely heard about this transport from their spies in Paris or collaborators who spotted the convoy along the way.
That meant that Madame Galvin was no longer living in the château. The duchess wouldn’t risk attracting attention with such a public display.
Madame Couture continued to chat about the goings-on at the château’s grounds. Children were now hired to fill odd jobs. Food shortages were felt more keenly because outsiders routinely broke through the fences and stole from the orchards and vegetable gardens. The henhouse and barns were now padlocked, and the few men still remaining at the château slept there, armed.
“What a nightmare.” Madame Couture sighed. “The Nazis are coming, and there’s no one to stop them.”
“What about Jean Moulin getting the underground organized?” Claudette asked, recalling what Silvain Auguste had said of de Gaulle’s emissary.
“That’s our only hope.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve been told in the utmost confidence that shipments of arms are being delivered by planes. There’s going to be a big battle right here.”
A battle right here. Claudette’s hand tightened around the sleeping baby. “I saw the planes. They’ve been landing at night since last year.”
“Since last year? And you never said a word!” Madame Couture tilted her head. “Is that how you got pregnant? By one of those visitors?”
Claudette hid a little smile that Madame Couture interpreted as a confession because she knelt next to Claudette’s bed. “Let’s pray for the brave men, for the duchess, and for France.”
Jesus, please don’t let the Nazis come here, Claudette prayed silently. Mary, please watch over my Raphaël and Isaac Baume. Please make my milk plentiful.
Chapter Eighteen
Claudette
Valençay Village, France
October 1942
Madame Duchamp came to check on Claudette’s recovery, and while she palpated her stomach, Claudette mustered the courage to ask the question that had been on her mind since her conversation with Madame Galvin. “What’s that cutting for Jewish boys?”
The midwife stared at her. “What in the world does it have to do with you?”
Claudette burst out crying. “Benjamin’s father is—”
Madame Duchamp rested her palm on Claudette’s middle. “There were many Jews in my neighborhood in Lyon. I loved one of them once too.” When Claudette didn’t stop crying, she said, “Claudette, chérie, please understand that Jews don’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Benjamin was baptized so that he will. Anyway, a baby’s soul is innocent.” She sniffled. “I must secure for him a Jewish covenant with God so that when his father returns, he’ll know that I’ve respected who he is.”
“I don’t know what you imagine about your lover, but Jews stick together. With their own kind. My Jew’s family wouldn’t let him marry me.”
Raphaël and I are the same kind. Claudette would forever remember how he had clung to her before departing. His lanky figure had wrapped around her short, plump one, drawing strength from their love. “We’re both cripples.”
“Even if I knew how to cut—and I have never even seen it done—the ritual requires a rabbi,” the midwife said.
Tears continued to stream down Claudette’s face. “I can’t nurse my baby to keep him healthy in body, and I can’t nurture his soul with the benefit of two religions. What a no-good mother I am.”
“Motherhood takes sacrifice and patience. You’re only at the beginning of a long road. By letting Léonie nurse him, you’re thinking of what’s best for your baby.”
“He has to be Jewish too!” Bastard. Father Sauveterre had said that about her baby. That’s what he was in the eyes of the church. A sin.
“This is an awful time for Jews. My niece in Lyon wrote that they were all taken away. What a catastrophe. It’s a desecration of God’s image to treat people like this.” Madame Duchamp crossed herself. Then she blinked once, twice. “There’s one thing I know how to do. I don’t like it, though.”
Claudette held her baby down on a folded blanket and placed a few drops of red wine in his mouth. Madame Duchamp clamped down on his feet and dabbed mint essence on one to numb the skin.
Benjamin screamed at the first prick of the ink-dipped needle. Madame Duchamp made six tiny dots to mark the design. Blood spread quickly.
“He’s bleeding!” Claudette cried.
Madame Duchamp dabbed cotton on the foot and continued to work. “I’m marking the six outlining dots.”
Claudette bent to take a peek. “It’s too big!” she said. “You said you tattooed beauty marks on women’s faces!” Benjamin was supposed to have a tiny, jewel-like blue star, the kind of ornament Claudette might have embroidered discreetly on the duchess’s handkerchief.
“The blood is only natural. It will heal fast.”
“This star is too big!”
But more dots, intersecting with the first six, were already there.
Her heart breaking at Benjamin’s cries, Claudette dipped her finger into the wine and placed it in the baby’s mouth time and again. It’s for you, Raphaël, my love, she said silently. Cutting the tip of their baby’s penis would have been worse.
Benjamin continued to scream as Madame Duchamp worked quickly, connecting the dots with lines.
Claudette could take his pain no more. “Please stop,” she cried. “I didn’t think it would take this long.” Nor be larger than her pinkie nail.
