The Golden Hour - Margaret Wurtele

by The Golden Hour (epub)

  Wednesday, October 4

  I’m shocked to think how rarely I wash myself—I who was the family hog in the bathroom. G has found me an enamel bowl, and she fills two liter bottles with freshwater every few days. I have to drink from that supply, so I hoard just enough in the bottom of the basin to wet a thin rag and give myself a sponge bath maybe once a week. I start with my face and work my way down to my toes, but by the time I get there, the little puddle is the color of wet cement, and I’m really just dampening the dust into a pasty coating that sticks to my skin. Lately there’s been so much rain that G can leave the bowl outside, hidden in some bushes. Those are my best days. I love how Giovanna smells. She glows with the sweat of all her activity, but I still catch the scent of lavender soap beneath it. I know I’m falling for her. It’s a kind of ache that lives in my lower body—hard to tell from hunger sometimes.

  Tuesday, October 10

  I’m exhausted. G and I spent two hours today talking about religion, trying to understand Hitler and the whole thing. Without admitting it to each other, I think we are exploring what this might mean for the two of us when the war is over. It started when she arrived this afternoon with my supper. I was so hungry I thought I would pass out before she finally came. I opened the bundle, working the tight knot in the cotton scarf with such eagerness, only to find that it held a heel of bread spread with lard. Lard! Fat of the hog. I know butter is rationed and that’s all there is, but I sat there for the longest time. That was one of the only Jewish laws we observed at home—not eating pork. I felt Nonna’s spirit, knew I should not eat it. I told G my dilemma, and she seemed truly touched. “If I were you, I don’t think I would eat it,” she said gravely. That was so sweet, but I was famished. In the end, I wolfed it down. I would do it again, and I probably will.

  But it got us talking about religion. We are so different, not just because we are Christian and Jewish, but because she is so devout, and I am so secular. To me, these ultimate questions she’s posing are about science: evolution, causality, the likelihood of an afterlife. “What is the purpose of your life?” she kept asking. “Why are you here?”

  I told her I don’t need a “purpose.” I’m just planning to lead the best, most ethical life I can. I don’t think God gets into the details, that there is some kind of plan for each of us. But she thinks maybe she was drawn to me in some mysterious way, that it was “meant to be” that she help save me, to make a difference in the war.

  “You’re a good person,” I told her. “You’re brave and full of energy. You saw a wrong and wanted to make it right. What’s that got to do with religion?”

  It went on and on like that. G loves liturgy: the cadence of the mass, the music, the candles, the feeling of opening to something bigger than herself. I don’t feel the need to pray or even meditate. But this has nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism. I told her she reminds me of my nonna, who felt just as she does, going to synagogue every week, throwing herself into the Passover seder, lighting candles during Hanukkah. We ended with a kind of mutual respect, neither of us trying really to convert or change the other. But what does it mean for the future? I don’t know. I do know I could spend every day like this one, just talking with her.

  Monday, October 30

  It’s getting chilly, and that’s putting me on edge. Fall used to make me feel energetic and productive, but there’s nothing to do here, nothing but read. It’s really getting to me. Giovanna is so lucky. I don’t think she appreciates what it means just to be able to come and go as freely as she does.

  Friday, November 10

  What a day…I was so frustrated this morning, brooding about being stuck in here, that I took one of my blankets and just tore it to shreds. It felt so good, but when G arrived, she started desperately scooping up the scraps and pieces of wool. “You can’t do this, Mario,” she said. “There aren’t enough of these to go around as it is. Winter’s coming.”

  That pissed me off, so I told her she was a pampered little principessa and that she could just bring me one of her own precious blankets from home. “You have no idea what it’s like, staring at these four walls day after day. I feel like a criminal or an escaped convict, when I haven’t done a goddamned thing wrong!” I clenched my jaw and just glowered at her.

  She stared at me, looking shocked. Then she said, “Okay, fine. Then get your own food and water. See if I care.” She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and headed for the door.

  I felt like a hot branding iron had been shoved into my gut. All that anger turned instantly into grief and fear, and I let out a groan that must have sounded like the bleat of a wounded calf. G dropped her bag and ran back, putting her arms around me. I started crying and blubbering on her shoulder like a bambino. I told her I was sorry, that I didn’t mean to take it all out on her, but she was the only person around. “I know. I know,” she soothed, and she started rubbing the back of my head and neck. “Someday this will all be over.”

  We stood like that for a long time. Finally I pulled back, cupped her face in my hands, and stared right into her eyes. “You mean so much to me. I want to show you how I really feel.” It felt like a dream. I took her hand and led her over to the corner where the other blankets were piled. I pulled her down to the floor with me and wrapped her in my arms. It was chilly, too cold to even think about undressing, but we held each other and started kissing. Oh, my God, it was as if all the time we’d spent together and our growing friendship started exploding between us in this new way. We were so absorbed in each other that we didn’t hear the footsteps on the second flight of stairs.

  The door opened, scraping along the uneven floor. We pulled quickly apart at the sound and sat up to see Leonardo’s lanky frame stooping to enter the space. He stopped short at the sight of us and laughed out loud. “And here I thought you needed something to relieve the boredom, Mario,” he said, setting down a pile of books.

  Saturday, November 25

  It’s not that G and I feel guilty about what happened the other day, but it has sobered us, and we’ve put a kind of mutually acknowledged damper on things. It’s getting colder and colder, both outside and inside the tower. We’re so grateful to the marchese and marchesa that we don’t want them to feel awkward about coming and going at will.

  They are friends of G’s parents, after all. So we’ve backed off, and we treat each other with a kind of friendly restraint. We hold hands, even kiss now and then when we’re sure to be alone, but we’ve decided that anything more is just taboo for the moment. Not easy.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Radios crackled day and night, bringing narrative and cohesion to all the noise and rumors, while the Germans and their Allied pursuers traded fire, made progress, were pushed back, and rallied again, until at last it all cleared away, preparing the stage—for me—for war of a different kind.

  My life became fragmented as I existed in three worlds: the mill, where Mario and I had the time and isolation to discover each other slowly and grow together like a new vine grafting onto foreign rootstock; the clinic, where the marchesa reigned over everything and shone like a beacon of hope; and home, where the delicate fabric of my life as a daughter frayed to the breaking point.

  Mother continued to obsess over Giorgio. She grew so thin that her clothes—once elegantly tailored—hung on her diminishing frame like laundry on a line. Her face, religiously protected from the sun, began to be creased with worry and concern. She developed nervous tics, drumming her nails incessantly on a chair arm or table, and staring into space, twirling a loose strand of hair idly around and around her index finger. There was a distracted air about her, as if she were lost in an inner labyrinth.

  Who knows? Maybe I was even a little jealous of Giorgio. I was amazed at the wrenching sadness and worry my brother’s absence inspired. If I were missing, would Mother let me rule her life to that extent?

  “Mother, won’t you finish your pasta?” I might say. “You are getting so thin—isn’t she, Papa? You
need more flesh on your bones. You’re beginning to look like a prisoner of war.”

  Or, in another vein: “Why don’t you volunteer to tutor some of the refugee children? You so wanted me to do that, and the need is still there. It would get you out of here, take your mind off Giorgio, and make you feel better about using your time in a productive way.”

  Papa was as mercurial as Mother was predictable. I often found him hunched over the radio in the little sitting room, his ear straining to distill the announcer’s voice out of the underlying static. The Germans would surely have confiscated it had they known it was there, so he kept the volume very low.

  His spirits rose and fell with every incursion, every gain or loss of territory. The amazing thing to watch was how his base loyalties shifted with the likelihood of victory. Early on, when he was convinced that the German Axis would triumph, Giorgio’s treachery caused him no end of consternation. “We’ll be shot on sight, every damn one of us,” he would mutter, pacing back and forth in the tiny space. “The loyal Fascists are the only ones with a prayer of a future—in the government, in business, in anything at all.”

  But then, over the summer and into the fall of ’forty-four, when the Allies began making steady progress, pushing the Germans northward, and reports of the partisan participation poured in, his heart changed. “By God, Giorgio, my boy! I’ll be damned if you aren’t going to turn this thing around after all.” He would learn of a German setback and pump his fist in a victory salute over the radio, grabbing Mother or me by the back of the neck. “Did you hear that? They’ve liberated Massa Carrara! It won’t be long now, by God.”

  Then the action moved closer to home. Steady reports from Violetta’s family and others hiding in the mountains filtered back to us by word of mouth. They watched the Germans drilling holes in the piers of bridges and inserting explosives, ready to slow the Allies’ progress. In mid- to late September, occasionally during the day, an Allied reconnaissance plane called la cicogna (shaped like a stork) would fly at low altitude over the valley. We could hear Allied planes in the distance bombing the coastal cities of Pisa or La Spezia. Heavy artillery fire pockmarked the roads up and down the valley, and shells exploded on the slopes of the mountains. We were certain that the Allies were getting close and that liberation was imminent. Father was ecstatic, pacing back and forth, talking excitedly. “I’m going to put Giorgio in charge of selling the wine, once we get the vineyards back in shape. I’m going to bud over half the vines to merlot and use it for blending. You wait. You’ll see a big difference around here.”

  Nearer the river, Violetta’s family and fellow villagers stayed in their retreats, terrified that the Germans—in their last moments of power—would unleash punishing waves of violence and retribution. We tuned our ears to our own piano nobile, listening for signs of departure.

  The flow of Nazis through our villa was constant, the numbers rising and falling with the level of local action. As the fighting moved up the valley, there were more soldiers—combat officers of a louder and rougher sort—who clomped about, shouted, and kept us awake at night. Trucks crunched along the gravel driveway, squeaking to a halt near the front door. I could see them from my window, lumpy figures in the evening dusk with packs on their backs and rifles on their shoulders, pulling duffel bags from the luggage rack and heading inside. How long any particular group stayed was a mystery to us, but inevitably the sound of morning departures would raise our spirits and dangle the hope that this time, all would be completely quiet in their wake.

  By early autumn, the Allies moved into the Serchio River valley, occupying the areas in which the residents and refugees from coastal cities were hiding. Violetta felt secure enough to move back home to join her family, who had recently returned from their own retreat. Her parents and their friends had watched patrols of liberating soldiers march into the remote mountainous village, smiling and shaking hands, led by local scouts. To their surprise, they were not Americans but Brazilian soldiers speaking Portuguese. Even though they were technically liberated, the Germans were just slightly farther up the valley, where explosions of artillery fire and rifle shots were a constant reminder of their menacing presence.

  Within two weeks, up and down the valley, the Americans—the black “buffalo soldiers”—of the 92nd Infantry Division replaced the Brazilians. They moved into homes in that area and immediately recruited partisans and local residents to begin the process of clearing land mines left by the Germans. Those mines, in the form of shallow square wooden boxes filled with dynamite, were placed—by Klaus’s unit, I presume—at regular intervals all across the valley, from the base of one mountain to the other. The Germans had forced some of the locals to help them lay the mines, so the buffalo soldiers were able to recruit those same farmers to help remove them. When I go back over those months, I yearn to have been among the searchers, dreaming that maybe my own instincts would have led us to find just one more, the one that would have made all the difference.

  The Nazi occupiers finally drove away from Villa Farfalla for good one early October morning. We hardly dared breathe for fear of their return. After a couple of days, at Rosa’s encouragement, for she could see that they had completely vacated the premises, we went downstairs and looked around. It was a sickening sight. The walls were covered with dirt and streak marks, the floors littered and encrusted with dust and mud. The upholstered furniture we had left behind was stained, torn, tipped over, and displaced, the wooden surfaces scratched and dented. A smell of dirty clothes, stale smoke, and beer lingered in the air. Without taking inventory, we knew there were dishes, flatware, and other objects missing, but for the moment we could not presume that it was over. And as if to confirm the volatility of the situation, a cadre of Allied soldiers drove up less than four days later.

  Whereas the German officers had been formal and correct, porcine pink, blue eyed and fresh faced, these American officers associated with the 92nd Infantry Division were more casual, open, and friendly. They were apologetic and appreciative, negotiating politely with Father through a young Italian interpreter who was traveling with them, to allow them to stay in the space recently vacated by the Germans. They would, they assured us, share with us some of the rations that they would receive from the central distribution area near the river.

  We welcomed them with open arms—they could hardly do any more damage. And if pressed, we had to admit that we felt much more secure and less afraid with them nearby. We could openly listen to the radio, and we enjoyed the canned meat—some fresh meat too now and then—their fried strips of bacon, coffee, and hot chocolate in milk to drink. They had large loaves of sliced white bread as soft as cake that they slathered with butter and jam at breakfast time. There were American cigarettes—Lucky Strikes, Camels, and Chesterfields—that the men freely shared with Papa.

  But even as our situation changed slightly for the better, fighting continued up and down the river valley throughout October, November, and into December. As Christmas approached, the officers negotiated with my parents, hoping that Rosa could cook us all a Christmas dinner if they provided most of the food. We agreed, and it was a Christmas I will never forget. We ate at our own dining room table downstairs, and—though we still hadn’t brought out from hiding the best china and silver—we managed to find enough dishes to set a table for about twelve. The Germans, in retreat, had blown up the power-generating plant near the river, so there was no electricity in the area. The flickering candlelight created an intimate, friendly atmosphere. The meat, the pasta, the vegetables were all delicious. I remember Papa, so relaxed. He had offered up wine from his cellar, and empty bottles littered the table. The men were telling stories in their broad (I now know Southern) American accents, and the translator would follow up with shorthand versions for us that never seemed quite as funny as the officers’ laughter had indicated.

  After dinner, the officers brought out a hand-cranked turntable and some American records of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller swing music. The
men were loose by then and had lost any air of military bearing. One of them coaxed Mother to dance with him in the nearly empty living room, and then another—a redhead with thinning hair combed over a balding head—grabbed my hand and pulled. I glanced at Father, but he didn’t seem to mind, so I let the soldier lead me to the floor and take my hand. He was a good dancer, and I followed him easily. We moved together; then he spun me out with bursts of energy into the give-and-take of a series of swings. We danced like that, trading partners through all nine of the men, until we were panting and steamy under our clothes. I had not seen Mother so relaxed for months. She was the consummate hostess, who had always felt that entertaining was, for her, a duty and an important part of her role. At last she could be making some sort of contribution to the war effort, and I could see the pride of it reflected in her flushed face and bright persona.

  The men learned that she played the piano and finally convinced her to sit down and accompany them for some Christmas carols. The piano was dusty and badly out of tune, but she was so happy to be playing again. We sang loudly, and I still remember the odd blend of English and Italian lyrics as each tried to drown the others out in drunken exuberance.

  Our joy and relief were short-lived. While we were celebrating, the Germans were planning a big counterattack upriver. In the early-morning hours of December 26, two German assault battalions suddenly pounced on the town of Sommocolonia, up the Serchio River, overwhelming American resistance along with their partisan supporters. So many of the buffalo soldiers lost their lives. Known as the Wintergewitter, “Winter Storm,” this Axis counteroffensive was demoralizing to all of us who had thought victory was a given.