The Golden Hour (34 page)

“That’s when it began to get tough. That next day, the eleventh, I think it was, our division of the buffalo soldiers must have taken a hundred rounds of mortar artillery. They fought like hell, with a terrific spirit, but they were pounded hard on the advance. Men were falling everywhere. We had to run around them, stepping over bodies. It was…” Mario stopped and swallowed hard.

“Did you actually fight with them?” The marchesa had read my mind.

“No. That wasn’t our role at that point. We weren’t equipped or armed for battle like they were. We stayed on the edges, relaying messages forward and back as to the movement of troops, both ours and theirs. That had always been our mission throughout the war, but by then so many wires were down that they had to rely completely on radio and runners for communication. They really needed us to time attacks and anticipate the enemy’s movement. The good news is that we were gaining ground, and the Germans were clearly in retreat. There was so much gunfire and blood, I
just—” He broke off, lost in the memories, staring out the window. It was so quiet you could hear the wind pick up outside the door.

After a few minutes, Mario ran his fingers back through his dark curls and took a deep breath. “When I think of those guys, all so far from home, left on the battlefield, it’s just so pitiful. We did what we could, rounding up villagers to dig them decent graves. God, it was awful.” But then he looked at me, suddenly remembering where this was headed.

“So, now, what happened to Giorgio?” Leonardo gently reminded him.

“Giorgio was single-minded, completely dedicated to the cause. His energy was incredible. He never tired, never got discouraged. He would just plunge into any task that confronted us, encouraging the rest of us, pushing forward, never thinking of himself.”

I closed my eyes, lulled into a kind of dream state by Mario’s voice.
As long as he keeps talking, keeps us all in the “before,” it is as if nothing has happened at all, as if Giorgio is still alive and can walk in the door any minute.

“By the twenty-second we were fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Americans. We’d taken guns and ammunition off the fallen buffalo soldiers, and we joined in, backing up their attacks on the Germans.”

I shuddered and looked at the marchesa, who glanced quickly my way, but trained her eyes back onto Mario’s face.

“Giorgio, it turns out, was unbelievably accurate, taking deliberate aim at one retreating German after another and firing carefully. He was a good shot. He really was.”

An image flashed into my mind of Giorgio, Papa’s shotgun pulled up to his shoulder, firing at a flock of migrating geese and watching one spiral down like a maple seedling, twirling, drifting sideways in the wind, while another—its mate?—broke out of formation
and flew back honking. Then another single shot, and Giorgio had put that one out of its misery.

“We made it as far north as Aulla on the twenty-fourth. The enemy soldiers were confused and desperate, surrendering to us personally, begging for mercy, herded together in the pouring rain in the middle of town, surrounded on all sides by the likes of us.” Mario sat there in silence, his hands folded, staring at the floor.

“The twenty-fourth…” Leonardo gently encouraged him.

“We heard they converged on Genoa and Turin a couple of days later and found both of them in partisan control. Then the massive surrenders came, thousands of them—men, horses, vehicles, all of it. We stayed on in Aulla, doing all we could to prevent their escape. But the fighting was over by then. They were beaten and they knew it.”

“So…Giorgio was still with you when the official surrender was signed?” the marchesa asked. “You must have been ecstatic that you all had made it through.”

He nodded slowly. “Right. We stayed on a couple more days, hung around until it was all over and the locals could take over managing the prisoners. We helped clear some mines, learning how to do that, what to watch for. Then we started home, the lot of us.

“We were feeling great as we moved back down the river. There was a true sense of jubilation and camaraderie. Everyone we met was celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking up a storm. So we joined right in. People fed us, uncorked their best wine….” At that his eyes suddenly dulled, and he stopped, looking as if he might be sick. There was silence for a moment or two; then, as he leaned against his chair back, his voice became thick and monotone.

“We were almost home, holed up for the night in Diecimo, just up the river. Giorgio had a friend there, someone he knew, who’d taken us in for the night. We’d even had a chance to wash up a little before sitting down to a big home-cooked meal.

“After supper, we headed into town looking for action. Everyone said the place to go was Vino Piccolo, a small
osteria
on the main square. Giorgio knew it well from visiting his friend over the years. The place was only recently back in the hands of the owners. They were thrilled, said it had been monopolized by Nazi construction crews for months last year.”

Nazi construction crews,
I thought…Had Klaus been among them?

“So we found a bar table by the window. There were four of us—Giorgio, his buddy Fidelio, ‘Bean’—the driver you met—and me. The place was hopping, just bursting with good cheer. Giorgio asked for red wine, and they came back with a big carafe of
vino da tavola
and four glasses.

“Giorgio was feeling good. ‘Hell, you can do better than that,’ he said with a laugh, ribbing the waiter a little. ‘I know this place like the back of my hand. I know what you’ve got down there in the cellar. What’s the matter? Who’re you saving the good stuff for, anyway? Hold on, guys. Wait here. I’m going to get us some decent wine.’ He pushed his chair back and stood up. On the way by, he cupped his hand around the back of my neck, leaned down, and whispered in my ear, ‘Wait till you see this….’”

Mario stopped and closed his eyes. No one said a word. My heart fluttered in my throat. That was the golden hour, the interlude of pure innocence, when victory was still fresh and I had yet to receive the weight of responsibility I have carried ever since.

“It sounded like thunder at first, a low rumble from behind and below the bar. Then we knew something had exploded—the sound of crashing, glass breaking, smoke and dust filling the air. Everyone got up and pushed and shoved out the door into the street, people falling all over one another. Then someone shouted, ‘A mine…The fucking krauts must have mined the wine cellar….’”

G
iorgio was the only one who died. They finally got to him later that night, picking their way through a slippery avalanche of racks and broken bottles, to find his body soaking in a pool of red wine. They say he died instantly, most likely by a direct hit from the explosive material of the mine itself, not crushed or suffocated by the falling debris.

There were mines everywhere in those weeks after the Germans surrendered: in the roads, under bridges, in open fields. They had left plenty of surprises in their wake. Who am I to presume that the one that killed my brother was my own idea? Was it Klaus who actually laid it? Or had he just tossed the idea out for a laugh with his beer-drinking buddies?

We all left for Villa Farfalla that afternoon, riding in a slow caravan—Mario and Bean in their car following the marchesa and the marchese, and me in theirs. The marchesa had telephoned ahead to make sure my parents would be there, saying only that they were bringing me home and we had something important to discuss. I was envisioning a quiet gathering, a deliberate unfolding
of events, but when we drove up, my parents were rigidly standing outside the house, side by side. They must have sensed something.

At the sight of them, I threw open the back door of the car and ran to them. “Mama. Papa. Giorgio is dead.” Mother felt so frail as I wrapped her in my arms, a little bird whose bones could be crushed if I held her any tighter. I wasn’t sure at that moment whether I was looking for comfort from Mama in the warmth of that embrace or trying desperately to give it to her.

Then Papa too. He seemed smaller and suddenly old. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Is it true,
piccola,
what you say? Our Giorgio has died?”

I turned then, loosening my hold on Mother and burying my face in his shirt. “It’s true, Papa; it’s true. I’m afraid it’s true.”

He shook his head back and forth, holding me in a death grip of his own. “No, no. This cannot be, not my Giorgio. Not my son.” Then he began to weep as I had never heard or seen him do before—loud, shaking sobs, his shoulders heaving, his face crumpled, tears coursing down his cheeks.

Later that evening, as we gathered in the living room, Papa tried desperately to find someone to blame. Mario became the obvious scapegoat. He fired questions at him as the story came out, pressing him over and over as to his own role. “You were there, weren’t you? Why did you let him go to the cellar? Why didn’t you tell him the wine you had was fine? Why did you go out so late in the first place?”

Mario was patient, understanding. His own grief came spilling out as he went over and over the night at the
osteria
, telling us that he wished he had done those very things Papa suggested. In the end, it was clear that nothing could change what had happened. Nothing could bring Giorgio back.

I suffered in silence, swallowing down my hideous truth, a
bubbling black cauldron of guilt that made my own grief so much harder to bear.

I moved back home for good that night. In the days that followed, as we planned the funeral and readied the house for the inevitable onslaught of condolence visitors, Mario became a kind of fixture. He came every day and pitched in to help Mother, bringing all the heavy boxes out of storage, staying by her side, examining each piece with her. “What a lovely platter,” he would exclaim. “It reminds me of one my grandmother kept on the sideboard in Turin.” Poring over each photograph in its silver frame, he let Mother point out her grandparents, her parents, sisters, and brothers, listening patiently to the stories they evoked, and he showed that he’d been listening. “Oh, here’s another of your mother,” he’d say. “Now I recognize her. She must have been in her forties then.” Mama would smile happily and nod.

Papa kept his distance. He was polite but cool, so absorbed in wrestling with his own loss that he had barely a shred of energy to spare. Once, Mario approached him gingerly. It was, I remember, one of those late-spring evenings of lingering light and gentle breezes. Mario was about to leave, to return to Villa Falconieri, where he had taken the bedroom I had occupied.

“Giorgio always told me how you two used to walk the vineyard rows on evenings like this,” he said, “waiting for the vines to flower. I’d love to do that with you sometime. It might be a nice way to remember him.”

Father’s back was turned at the time, and he hesitated just a second or two longer than was natural. He did not turn around, but spoke to the wall. “But our Giorgio knew grapes.” That’s all he said. Then he lifted his glasses from the table, picked up a book that had been lying there, and left the room without a further word to anyone.

I begged my parents to let Mario sit with the family at Giorgio’s funeral. I needed him, and—no question—he needed us as well. Mama was willing, but Papa? He was clear. “He’s not a member of the family. Damn it, Giovanna, he’s not even a Christian. It would be an abomination.” So the three of us sat side by side in the pew, each of us as encased in our own grief as if we were sealed into caskets ourselves.

Afterward, the mourners gathered at Villa Farfalla. There were neighbors, friends from towns up and down the river, Father’s business associates from Lucca, Giorgio’s school friends, and other partisans who had fought with him.

Catarina and Tonino were there, of course. They knew too well this territory of loss and grief. “Thank you,” I said to Catarina. “I owe you so much. The time I had with Giorgio, the part I was able to play in his last year of life. Even Mario. I never would have met him if it hadn’t been for you.”

I watched Mario as he moved comfortably through the crowd, offering condolences, introducing himself, fetching extra drinks as if he were a kind of host. But all his self-confidence and ease was lost on my father. While most people were still there, drinking and talking, Papa slipped out quietly and climbed the stairs to his bedroom alone.

Two days later, Mario left for Turin to find his parents. Throughout the long month he was gone, I waited anxiously. He sent me a few quick notes to let me know he was all right, but he made no mention of what he found. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he had decided to live in Turin for good, whether he had decided that he didn’t want me in his life, or whether he would even be the same man I had known. Upon his return, we agreed to meet at Villa Falconieri, just the two of us, so that we could get reacquainted in private.

The marchesa and her husband had tactfully concocted some errand in town. The French doors of their living room were open to the hot June afternoon, but the thick walls and tiled floor maintained a pleasant coolness within. Mario rose when I entered the room and opened his arms to me. There was an aura of unspeakable sadness about him. He was thin, his cheeks hollow, the furrows between his brows etched more deeply than I remembered.

“I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and low. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

He put an arm around me and led me to the sofa, pulling me down next to him, never letting go of my hand. “You might,” he said simply, “be the only family I have.”

I could say nothing, only stare back at him and wait for him to go on.

“When I got to Turin, I went right to our country house. Do you remember…that’s where my family was living when Cecilio and I came home that day and found the house empty and everyone gone. The place was ransacked, completely in shambles. I’m sure the Germans had been living there.”

“Oh, God, Mario, it sounds just like Villa Farfalla.”

“Except no one had come to clean it up. I searched the whole house for any sign that someone had been back, for any vestige of my parents’ presence, but there was nothing. I went to my old room and found my favorite binoculars, a few books, and shirts and threw them into a bag.”

“I wonder if your parents took anything with them.”

“I really don’t know. I left it all just as it was and took off for the city. When I got there, our old neighborhood was barely recognizable. You wouldn’t have believed it—half rubble, the streets piled high with chunks of stone and glass. Everything was layered with months of dust. There were random apartment buildings still standing, scattered here and there. Amazingly enough, our building was one of them. At first, it looked so odd, all alone with none of
the old neighboring structures, but I recognized the wrought-iron balconies and knew the building could only have been ours.

“I picked my way up the front steps and found the door locked. Of course, I had no key—I have no idea when or where I lost it. Our name was still there on the list of residents, so I pressed the button. My hand was shaking. No one answered. So I waited and rang it again.”

I had been holding Mario’s hand through all of this, and now I squeezed it, hard, feeling the suspense with every ounce of my being.

“Then I heard someone come up the front steps behind me. It was Signora Milano, an old friend of my mother’s. She was grayer than I remembered and all stooped over. She was wearing one of her expensive silk suits, but it sagged on her like a sack.”

“Oh, my God—did she recognize you?”

“I wasn’t sure. She just stood there staring at me. I didn’t think she did, but all of a sudden she cried, ‘
Dio
, Mario, is that you?’ She reached out and ran her hands all over my face. ‘I never thought I would see any of you again, and here you are, all in one piece. It’s a miracle, it is.’ She shook her head and started crying.

“Her apartment was—I couldn’t believe it—as if it had been frozen in time. Everything was covered with thick dust. Dirty dishes were stacked next to the sink, piles of crumbs everywhere, and the smell of garbage…It was a nightmare.”

“What about her family? Does she have a husband?”

“I know I should have asked about her, about her husband, but I was too wound up to do any of that. I told her that I was looking for my parents and asked if she had heard from them.

“‘They could be alive,’ she said. ‘Of course, they could be…but they are both on the list. So is your grandmother.’”

“What list?” I asked him.

“There’s a list that’s been circulating since the liberation of the camps. It turns out the Nazis kept careful records, if you can believe
it. The Blackshirts who manned the staging camps and monitored the trains did it for them—names, addresses, all of it. Signora Milano had seen the one for our area. Mama and Papa and Nonna had been taken from our country house to the camp in Verona that January, then put on a train headed for Auschwitz.” His face had lost all expression.