The Golden Hour (7 page)

“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 comfortable 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 teach 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.

“Off to the market, dear?” she asked, eyeing the basket.

“Oh, you know supplies are short everywhere…” I answered, leaning into the sentence, trailing my unspoken need before this woman’s abundance.

“I’m sure your garden at the villa is overflowing.” There was no sign of comprehension.

“How is Andrea?” I thought maybe this reference to her son might jog her memory if she knew about Giorgio.

“His wounded arm is healing well, thank you,” she said. Then she moved closer. “Not too fast, we hope, because you know what that would mean. They’d be after him again.” She adjusted her dark head scarf and rolled her eyes. “Such a nasty business, this war.”

The conversation petered out with no mention of Giorgio, no sign that she knew what I was after. “I’ll see you soon,” I called to her, and hurried off, my mind churning. I wished I knew more about everyone’s politics, that I had a better feel for our neighbors. But in the face of my ignorance, I had to opt for silence and utter discretion.