The Golden Hour (28 page)

As we heard daily reports about the reversal from our own resident officers, I watched Papa with disgust. I could see his doubt flaring again, the resurgence of his old Fascist loyalties as he imagined a definitive Axis takeover. Father had befriended Bernardo, the young Roman translator who had traveled up the coast with the Americans. The officers who lived with us were white, mostly Southern Americans from Virginia or North Carolina, for the most part of English and Irish extraction, commanding the all-Negro unit. As the Germans began pushing back and the casualties mounted, Father could not help himself. “Bernardo,” he would say, “just ask these guys how they thought they could take on Hitler’s army with this pathetic excuse for a fighting band. What did they expect?”

They, in turn, would nod, then shake their heads and complain about the colored enlisted men’s laziness, dullness, and tendency to fold under pressure. “But, Papa,” I would argue, overhearing these exchanges, “Violetta’s family has invited lots of them to dinner, and she says they are the warmest, kindest bunch of men they have ever seen.”

“Well, since when have warmth and kindness won anyone any wars?” Father would sneer, and retreat upstairs to hunch over his radio.

The irony of all this was eating away at me: The American military, so much the “white horse” for all of us in this war, felt to me like a weak echo of the Nazis’ own prejudices and hostilities.

W
hen I close my eyes and try to live those months again, it is the marchesa who frames the memories with light. She was the link between my two personal worlds, the person I depended upon both to guard my secret and to keep Mario alive.

I hadn’t made a particularly good first impression when I fainted in the aisle on my first day at the clinic as I followed Violetta on her rounds. But by the time Mario was in residence, she had begun to see me with new eyes. It was my constant presence on the property that prompted the marchesa, shortly after Mario arrived, to take me back into the clinic one morning. She led me between the beds and kept up a steady patter about this soldier or that, where he was from, how he had come to sustain his particular set of injuries.

At one point, I think she could feel me turn away to avoid looking at the weeping flesh of a young American’s cheek wound. She cupped my elbow in her hand and led me over to a private corner of the space. “I know how you felt back there, Giovanna, but think of it this way. David is all alone here. He has no family,
no parents to care about him. Imagine that he is your own son—or, in your case, maybe your brother. Just make that real. Look into his eyes and find there something to
love
. Feel that first. Then just do what needs to be done.” She smiled encouragingly. “You’ll be amazed what you can do, once you get the hang of it.”

She was right. I began working in the clinic that day, and then nearly all mornings after that, assisting with surgeries, cleaning wounds, comforting feverish and frightened men. To this day I’m the image of calm in an emergency and unafraid to offer help in any situation. It’s something people never expect of me, and I delight in surprising them.

The marchesa was proud of my progress, and I am sure that her approval and affection were a big part of what motivated me to do the work on a daily basis. But I was amazed to find that her interest in me extended beyond the rudiments of health care. She began inviting me, maybe once a week or so, to accompany her on the long walk from the ancient chapel to their private quarters in the main house. There she would call for a light lunch and some tea, and we would settle in the library, where she began slowly introducing me to her favorite authors.

She really loved to read and to write, and she cherished her books as if they were her children. Her library was something to behold: Lined with shelves, it was totally full of books—some leather-bound and gilded, some well-worn paperbacks—in Italian, English, even some in French and Spanish. Piles of books leaned next to the desk on the floor, covered the smaller pieces of furniture.

I loved the space, and I think it was partly because she
expected
me to. She seemed just to assume that I too loved literature and would want to discover new writers. Why should I disappoint her in any way? We would settle down in that room with our tea or after a lunch on the terrace, and she would begin pulling books from the shelves or off the piles and showing them to me one by one.

I remember one afternoon in particular. I know it was still winter, because there was a fire crackling in the fireplace in the library. We were absorbed in our conversation, sitting side by side, a book opened between us, when we heard the sound of a motor approaching. The library’s big doors faced the front of the house and the garden, but the circular driveway was visible, so we both looked out the window to see who it would be. It grew louder until it was clear it was a truck or a large vehicle, and then a German transport van rounded the curve and came to a stop in front of the villa. We looked at each other, expressionless, the terror and the implications of it all as obvious to each other as if we had shouted it all out loud.

There was a loud knocking—a pounding, really—on the front door. The marchesa rose to answer it, and I followed. A hulking German officer clicked his heels together and made a short, polite bow of the head. “You are the marchesa, the owner here, no?”

“I am.” She stood tall and motionless. “What brings you here?”

“I have a very sick officer lying in the truck, and it is rumored that you have medical services, a clinic or some such.” I couldn’t look at the marchesa, but stared straight ahead at the man’s shiny metal belt buckle. It was engraved with,
Gott mit uns
.

She pulled herself up straighter and folded her arms against the chill that pushed in at us from behind his looming frame. “I am sorry, but you are very much mistaken. We are a farming operation here. We have no such thing.”

The officer stamped his heavy tall boots and exhaled loudly. “Please. I have no time to waste. He is very, very ill, signora.”

“Well…” She looked at the floor as if studying it, as if weighing her options. “I have a bit of experience in that area. I used to do some work as a nurse’s aid when I was in school. Perhaps if I could just see him…”

We followed him around to the back of the waiting truck. There was another German soldier lying on the bench along one
side of the back section. The walls made of canvas strips let in enough light to see him clearly. His knees were drawn up, and he was clutching his midsection, moaning. Touched by his obvious agony, the marchesa jumped up into the truck and leaned over him. “Is it his stomach?” she said to the first officer.

“Yes, yes. All of a sudden this morning, this pain. It will not stop.”

She pressed here and there on the man’s abdomen, pushing down hard, then quickly letting go. When she pushed a particular place on his left side, he let out a sharp bellow, like a branded bull.

The marchesa climbed down and looked up at the intruder. “I suspect it is appendicitis, very acute. He needs medical attention.”

“We have nowhere to go with this today. Our medical facilities are too remote, set up near the river. I was told to come here.”

The marchesa looked back into the truck. “As I told you, we don’t have a clinic here. However, there is a doctor who lives not far away. If he can be found, perhaps he could be called to the villa.” She turned to me. “Giovanna, would you please take these men to the back bedroom off the kitchen? He’ll have to get his friend in there. I’ll see if I can find Leonardo.”

Terrified, I moved as if I were leading a pair of raging lions into their waiting cage at the zoo. Somehow the officer managed to help his friend—clutching his belly and howling—down from the truck; then, supporting him on his hip, he followed me through the entrance hall, into the kitchen, and back to Balbina the maid’s room, where he collapsed onto the narrow bed. Trying to keep my teeth from chattering, I was thinking only of Mario.

The marchesa returned and told us that her husband had taken their own car and driven out in search of the doctor and would be back as soon as he could. We both knew that the clinic was not far away, that the doctor was undoubtedly there, so we hovered together in the kitchen, outside the bedroom, listening with every pore for the sound of their return.

Leonardo returned with the doctor, who had been told it was probably appendicitis. He had brought all the necessary equipment, so—incredible as it sounds—he performed an appendectomy right there in that bedroom. With Balbina’s help, we boiled water, brought clean linens, and sterilized instruments, while the doctor made his incision, removed the organ, and stitched him up again. The fact that the doctor had been working so close to the villa meant that peritonitis had not had time to set in, so once the surgery was over, we had to wait only a few days to make sure he was out of danger.

Most of the time, the German officer stayed in the room with the sick man. Now and then, he would wander the downstairs rooms of the villa, smoking, his light blue eyes darting here and there among the antique sideboards, the Oriental rugs, the piano, and the books. Balbina and the rest of the household staff fed them three meals a day and watched carefully so that they never strayed or overheard any talk that might alert them to the presence of our cache of refugees. I went to and from home each day without ever going near the clinic or the mill.

At last the patient was recovered enough to leave. The two officers stood about in the entryway, laughing and gesturing with the marchese and marchesa, expressing their gratitude like a couple of guests at a cocktail party while I and the servants watched and waited, our breaths held. Finally, both of them climbed into the front seat of the truck, the driver fired up the engine, and they drove off, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. We have always wondered whether word of our good deed traveled widely enough among the occupying troops that—even in the days of most intense fighting—Villa Falconieri never became a battleground or a shelter for German troops. We never spoke about it—not to anyone—until well after peace had returned.

Spring began teasing us. Mario would fashion tiny origami-like flowers out of pages torn from his journal—that precious journal that was his most constant companion. He knotted cotton napkins saved from his meals into colorful posies. He would surprise me, presenting these “bouquets” with a great flourish and a low, sweeping bow. Once, he sneaked outside for a brief moment just after dusk and grabbed a fistful of grasses. He spent hours the next day weaving them into an extraordinary little ring. When I arrived with his dinner, he had a glint in his eye.

“I’m carrying something that will change your life,” he said, grinning, “but you’ll have to find it on me first.”

He dodged and ran around the room until I caught him and searched his pockets, his shoes, even his socks. Then I gave up. He lifted his leg and told me to feel inside the cuff of his pants. There I found the neat and deftly woven band. Amazingly, it fit my ring finger as if he had measured it. “Now you’re mine forever,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “Someday I promise I’ll give you a real one.”

A wave of sadness made me close my eyes.

“What is it?” he said, looking stricken. “You’re not having doubts, are you?”

“Not about us,” I said. “It’s my father. I can’t imagine us getting truly engaged without his blessing, and I’m just so afraid he’s going to be…I don’t know…stubborn.”

I was sure that once Papa met him, he would love him too, and all my fears would be put to rest, so I started thinking how to bring my father and Mario together. It occurred to me that Giorgio could be the key.

We were—at least for the moment—safely in Allied hands, enabling many of the local partisan soldiers to come home periodically for visits. Sometimes they brought one or two Americans on leave with them. They put them up, gave them a home-cooked meal, and introduced them to their families. I had an ear tuned at all
times to the possibility of Giorgio’s surprising us, but deep down I knew it was unlikely to happen. When he said good-bye that November of ’forty-three, it had been too horrible.

Giorgio’s twentieth birthday was a little more than two weeks away, on the seventeenth of March—something I knew would be weighing heavily, particularly on Mother. So one rainy afternoon, I sat down and wrote my brother a letter. I have it, creased and filthy, folded in its blue envelope in my box of family treasures.