The Golden Hour - Margaret Wurtele

by The Golden Hour (epub)

  “No, I…”

  He turned to look quickly behind him, then kissed me full on the mouth. I was surprised, but then…his lips were so soft. I reached up to clasp my hands behind his neck, when suddenly he pulled back, breaking my grasp, and walked away.

  The truth is, I didn’t really like working with children. I liked going to the school every day, because it made me feel useful and gave structure to my life. But in the mornings, dealing with screaming six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds made me want to scream myself. I marveled at Sister Graziella’s patience, at Sister Elena’s ability to maintain discipline, but I just couldn’t emulate them. I got bored within minutes of each day’s beginning.

  Ironically it was my job to entertain the children who weren’t working on reading or writing with the sisters. I had to oversee their games and mediate their squabbles. They annoyed me with dull questions: “Why is dust brown?” or “What is war?” or “Can I hold one of the soldiers’ guns?” I got so sick of chasing after them on the playground, tired of having to listen to them all the time, of keeping them amused, and, most of all, of having to be an example of dignity and restraint.

  While the children made me feel bored and juvenile, the lieutenant made me feel like an adult. He showed me an empty, windowless office down the hall from his, one whose door was normally kept shut. He took me in there once, and gradually we began to steal off for longer and longer sessions in each other’s company, especially in the afternoons, when the children were gone. No one was the wiser when the two of us occasionally stole inside that office and closed the door behind us.

  I was enthralled by his stories—of his school days in Germany, of his best friends who joined him at engineering school, of training for the army. I was flattered that he took the time to tell me so much. We spoke in low voices so no one would hear, and now and then—at the sound of footsteps outside in the hall—we would hold our breath and look away from each other, at the floor. Sometimes, in the interludes between stories, we would kiss, gently—long, soft kisses, holding hands and sometimes embracing. At times, I was filled with such warm feelings of closeness and intimacy that I could forget he was a German soldier.

  “I think I’m falling a little in love with you,” he said one day between kisses.

  “Why?” I asked. “You’re married to Mathilde. You’re so much older than I am.”

  He thought for a moment. “I love your dark hair and dark eyes. They are warm and exotic to me,” he said. “You are so young, so innocent, so undiscovered, like buried treasure. I know you have a fire inside of you, and I want to see it come out.”

  I began to feel I could trust him, so I started to tell him how I was dreaming of a better role for myself in the war. I described my best friend, Violetta, who had been receiving training as a nurse. I added that I thought work dealing with injured and dying soldiers seemed more important than correcting children’s papers. But he suddenly turned to me with the flash of a new, rough, frightening look. “Where exactly is she working with these soldiers? A clinic? Tell me, Giovanna. Is it near to here?”

  I looked away. “I have no idea where she is going to work.” Luckily, he let it drop.

  The nearby farmhouse where Tonino and his wife, Catarina, lived provided a welcome escape from our family’s cramped quarters. The scent of fresh bread filled the air when I stopped by one morning in early June to visit Catarina. She was doing her weekly baking and had just pulled back the flat iron cover of the deep wood oven. “I was hoping you’d stop by today. I have something for you.” She placed four loaves on the table to cool and then felt behind the rusty tin of salt on a high shelf and took out a tightly folded piece of paper. I slowly unfolded a lined sheet that looked like it had been torn from a school tablet. Scrawled across it was a message—in Giorgio’s handwriting: Giovanna—come after church on Sunday to the old gazebo.

  I stared at the words. “Where did you get this, Catarina? We haven’t heard from my brother in months. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

  “The wheat farmer’s son gave it to me earlier this week. He said he had seen Giorgio,” Catarina said.

  “Did he say where he saw him? Is he nearby? Were there others with him?”

  Catarina looked away, embarrassed. “I…guess I never asked.” She turned her back to me. “He was such a good friend of Pietro’s. Ever since my son died, it’s been so hard for me to be with his friends. I guess I just wanted to get away. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, Catarina, I understand. I really do. It doesn’t matter. I can ask him myself now.” I smiled and gave her a hug. “Thank you so much for this.”

  “You can trust me not to say a word.”

  All I could think about was seeing Giorgio the next day, but Saturday-afternoon confession intruded. Visiting Don Federico was getting complicated. I had made my confession to him for years, reciting my sins of the week. He was an old friend of our family—a gentle, kind man whose hair had turned all white and who had to wear thick glasses to see the scripture and words of the mass on Sunday mornings. I knew he couldn’t hear too well either, but still, I had to be careful of what I said.

  As I entered the narrow booth, I remembered a previous Saturday. I had mentioned taking a walk with “someone Papa didn’t approve of,” but I hadn’t added that he was a German soldier.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” I kept my eyes on the floor, avoiding the grille behind which I could picture the piercing, inquisitive eyes of Don Federico. “I was impatient with the children at the School of Santa Maria, where I work.” I paused, took a full breath to lend conviction to my voice. “I…felt almost like kissing someone—a man—at the school.” I rushed to add, “But he is a German soldier, so I know I must not think of such things.”

  Don Federico’s absolution had been unusually fervent, my penance unusually stiff.

  These little transgressions seemed to me back then to be tiny things, insignificant in the face of the havoc that surrounded us all. There was the nearly constant sound of Allied planes overhead en route to their bombing raids; canvas-covered jeeps and lorries carving deep ruts in the country roads; uniformed soldiers in khaki or camouflage with rifles slung over their shoulders standing in every crowd, on every corner. People were dying every day, and the nearby forests teemed with partisans who sabotaged the German occupiers. Surely these, the killers and pillagers, were the ones who should be whispering in Don Federico’s ear on Saturday afternoons. Why waste his time with the minor attentions that passed between Lieutenant Klaus Eisenmann and me?

  How naive I was, and how easily I rationalized a schoolgirl crush that put everyone around me at risk.

  The next day was Sunday, the day I was to meet Giorgio. I sat through our noon meal on the edge of my chair, cutting my meat extra slowly and setting my knife on the rim of the plate so it wouldn’t make a sound. Papa was going on about how the olive crop looked like it might be large, so he didn’t notice anything unusual, but Mother glanced over at me now and then and smiled. That’s more like it, I knew she was thinking.

  Before mass, I had put on a full skirt and a pair of comfortable sandals in anticipation of the long walk to the gazebo. Mother had taken one look at me and shaken her head. “No. You will not go to church looking like one of the farmer’s daughters. Now go back to your room and come back out as a member of the Bellini family.”

  “Mother,” I said, “I’m too old for you to be telling me what to wear.”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t care, Giovanna. How can I get you to see yourself as others see you?”

  I did as I was told, because I couldn’t risk a big confrontation. Not today.

  Now I was seated in a shirtwaist that Rosa had ironed stiff, buttoned all the way up the front. Perfect for Mother’s picture of the Bellini family.

  When we finished I took my napkin and pressed it to my lips. “May I be excused?” I asked. “Violetta is meeting me for a walk in just a few minutes.”

  Back in my comf
ortable clothes, I set out down the front path as if I were going to meet Violetta on the road. Then I cut through the lower gardens and around the back of the tennis court. I increased my pace, tapping the trunks of the linden, then the horse chestnut as I passed. At the back of our property, I hopped over the low wooden fence and pushed into the thick underbrush. I found the old path without too much trouble—it had been sifted over with leaves. Long, thorny branches reached out to touch one another at eye level, but I continued to push my way through until I came out at the border of the Santinis’ vineyard. I followed one of the rows out to the end. Then I stopped to see whether the coast was clear.

  A jeep full of German soldiers rumbled up the road from the left. I wanted them to think I was just a young woman out for a stroll, so I walked extra slowly. One of them whistled as they drove by, but I just kept my eyes on the ground straight ahead. Luckily they drove on.

  Bees buzzed around my ankles, but otherwise the Sunday afternoon was quiet, with not a single farmer in sight. I came to the old stone wall bordered by purple irises, turned, and followed it deep into the woods. The brambles were thick and scratchy, but at last I saw the clearing up ahead and the old gazebo. The white of its marble pillars glowed where it peeked through the dark moss and lichen, like camouflage. The old statue of Prometheus, holding a torch missing its flame, stood in the middle of the structure. The round roof was half destroyed. I could see someone sitting there, leaning against one of the columns. At the sound of my footsteps, he got up. “Giovanna? Is that you?”

  Oh, that voice! I ran to Giorgio and hugged him tight. He smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in months, but I didn’t mind. He felt so good I didn’t want to let him go.

  “God, it’s good to see you. Did anyone notice you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Catarina gave me the note. She probably read it, so she might know I’m here. But no one else.”

  We sat down on the platform and dangled our feet the way we used to do down by the bridge over the river. Giorgio’s pants were torn, and one of his boots was missing its laces. I leaned against him hard. “I’ve been so worried about you, Giorgio. Six months—why have you waited so long to contact us? It’s been torture.”

  “I just couldn’t risk it before now. I needed to learn the ropes, meet people and get them to trust me. I’ve been all over Tuscany—too far even to send a message.”

  “Trust you for what?”

  “Enough to give me assignments—I’ll tell you more later—but now, you’ve got to help us. We need food, boots, and more clothes. You said you wanted to help. Did you mean it?”

  Did I? Was he kidding? But I wanted him to take me seriously, so I didn’t show too much excitement.

  “I think I can find some things for you,” I said. “But Mother put all your clothes away in boxes somewhere.” I told him then about the German soldiers living in the villa, about the boxes walled up in the attic, the three of us living upstairs in the five small rooms. “It’s so lonely without you. I just wish I could tell Mama you’re safe.”

  “You know better than that. She’d tell Papa for sure. And then he wouldn’t rest until he got you to tell him where we are. You just can’t—promise me you won’t.”

  I told him he looked thin and I listened to his stories: how he and the other partisans were relying on certain trusted farmers to give them food; how little there was to share among all the Italian runaway soldiers as well as the escaped prisoners of war—Canadians, English, some French; how he and some others were sleeping now in a well-hidden cave not far away.

  I took a deep breath. “There is something that might help. I’m just not sure whether to tell you about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, there’s this German soldier who works at Santa Maria, where I am helping with the children. He and I are sort of friends. He’s nicer than the others, softer, in a way. I was thinking maybe there was some way he could—”

  He grabbed me by the shoulders, so hard it hurt. “No. No. No. You don’t get it. You are talking about a bastard who would send me to a labor camp in Germany without batting an eye. If you so much as mention me to him…Have you?”

  I stared at Giorgio. He was right. I had become so used to seeing Klaus every day that I had somehow lost touch with who he was. “No, honestly, he doesn’t even know I have a brother.”

  “Well, don’t. And stay as far away from him as you can. I am serious, Giovanna.”

  I turned my back. “I promise I won’t mention you to him, not ever.” I turned to face him. “And I really, really want to help. I’ll come back, right here, at the same time next week. I’ll bring as much as I can carry.”

  Then he looked at me, raising his eyebrow the way he always did when he thought he’d won a fight. It made me mad. I was the one helping, wasn’t I?

  Now my days were too short. I spent all my time thinking about whom I could trust, where I could find clothes and food without endangering Giorgio or me. At the school I went through the motions, but I couldn’t concentrate on playing with the children or on reading their compositions. I even forgot now and then to think about the officer Klaus.

  I went back to Catarina’s on Monday afternoon. I had expected to find her out in the garden, but instead she was sitting in a wooden rocker in the kitchen, staring dully at the floor. Ever since Pietro’s death, she had had moments like this. She seemed to close up, to curl in upon herself like a bulb in winter. There was a sheen on her cheeks where tears had recently dried. She looked up slowly and nodded a greeting.

  I pulled up another chair, sat knee to knee with her. “Catarina, I’m so sorry.” I offered my hand, and she took it with what looked like gratitude. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing, dear. I’ll be fine. I was just remembering that Pietro’s birthday is coming up next month. He would have been twenty-two, a true adult.”

  “Catarina, listen to me.” I leaned in close and lowered my voice. “Have you saved any of his clothes?”

  She sat there, rocked a few times slowly. “Of course I have. They’re so precious to me. I get them out sometimes and smell them, hoping just to catch a little of his scent. The soft shirts I think are especially good that way, but everything reminds me of him.”

  “Do you have any of his old uniforms?”

  “Well, I could look. I did keep a whole duffel bag of lighter-weight clothes he left here when he went to the Russian front.”

  I hesitated. I hated to risk letting anyone in on Giorgio’s and my secret, but Catarina could be an important ally, not to mention a source of critical supplies.

  I took a deep breath and then told her about my meeting with Giorgio. I spared no details, filling her in on the state of his clothes, his missing bootlace, his hollow cheeks. As I talked, I could see Catarina perk up. Her eyes sharpened, snapped back to the present. The old Catarina—bustling, practical, nurturing—was reemerging. She promised to go through Pietro’s things over the next few days, even to give me the duffel bag itself. She agreed to bake some extra loaves of bread on Saturday.

  “I think it’s better that we keep this from Tonino, don’t you?” Catarina asked. “I don’t want to widen the risk of Giorgio being discovered.”

  “Well, maybe…but I trust him totally.”

  On Tuesday, Violetta and I were on our way into town to buy some bread and cheese for a picnic lunch. When we stopped to admire the wildflowers, poppies, and blue flax that grew along the road, I asked her, trying to sound casual, “If one of the patients at the clinic dies, what happens to his clothes?”

  She looked at me oddly. “Where did that come from?”

  “Oh, I’ve just been thinking about things. I…I don’t know. I’ve been looking for something more to do, something for the war effort, and I thought maybe I could take the old clothes and make things for the children out of the fabric.”

  She laughed. “But you don’t even know how to sew.”

  “I’m sure Catarina would be willing to tea
ch me.”

  “Well, if the soldier is Italian, maybe lives near here, and if the clothes are in one piece, usually we send them to his family. They like to have them as a souvenir, you know, something to keep.”

  “And if they’re not? If they’re British, Canadian, or French?”

  “Well, then, I’m not sure. I can find out, though. Giovanna, I think it’s too funny you want to sew. You! It just doesn’t sound like you at all.”

  “I guess war is unpredictable that way,” I said. “It can change a person.”

  I was churning with the thrill of the hunt. I took longer and longer routes home in the late afternoons, darting in between the stone houses to see which ones had tiny vegetable gardens tucked into the backyards. I went out of my way through the countryside, scouting the fields, checking to see which kitchen gardens were surrounded by walls, which ones were guarded by dogs, which ones had unlocked gates.

  I made a beeline for the wheat farmer’s fenced-in garden, where—a few days before—I’d seen a row of large heads of lettuce and a parade of healthy carrot tops. I approached slowly, looking behind me and quickly to the left and right. I had my hand on the gate and was just working the rusty latch when I heard a high-pitched yell.

  “Giovanna, is that you?” I looked up and saw the lumpy silhouette of Teresa, the wheat farmer’s wife, hoe in hand, calling to me from the adjacent field. I drew back my hand and waved at her.

  “Your vegetables look so healthy!” I called, my hand cupping my mouth. “I was just admiring your crop!” I remembered then that it had been Teresa’s son who had delivered the note to Catarina last week, the one who had first reported seeing Giorgio. Could Teresa guess what I was doing? Had he told his mother about it?

  Teresa made her way slowly toward me, her long skirt dragging over the rows of low sprouted wheat, her laced leather brogues stepping awkwardly into the rutted furrows as she leaned on the hoe for support. I hurried in her direction, intending to put as large a distance as possible between me and the vegetable garden.