The Golden Hour - Margaret Wurtele

by The Golden Hour (epub)

  He stopped me by reaching over me from behind and putting his hand over my mouth. “Now, now, fraulein, now, now.” He gently rocked against my hips from behind. “I’m not going to hurt you; I promise.”

  By now the heat had left me altogether, and I was myself again, thinking of only one thing: leaving. I pulled away—hard—and sat up. Suddenly I was aware of a rustling noise behind us. I got to my hands and knees and looked up. The long black folds of a nun’s habit were blocking the open doorway to the kitchen.

  I clutched at my open blouse in horror and stood up. “Sister Graziella!” Without another glance at Klaus, I pushed past her, down the hall, and out the door of the school.

  Chapter Seven

  “What’s the matter with you?” With one look, Violetta knew there was trouble. “Is there a plane down near here? Has something happened to Giorgio?” Violetta pulled me quickly into her room.

  I sat down on one of her twin beds and leaned forward, arms folded over my stomach. “No, no, nothing like that.” I shook my head. “I just had a picnic with one of the Nazi soldiers at the school, and…and Sister Graziella…” I leaned over my lap and began to cry.

  “You what? I thought you were having dinner with your parents.”

  “No, my parents think I had dinner here. We wanted to have some time together.”

  “We? What do you mean, we? Giovanna, what’s going on?”

  “It’s been sort of going on for a while. I just haven’t wanted to tell you about it. It’s so crazy. Until now it’s just been a kiss here or there, but tonight…”

  “Oh, my God, Giovanna. What have you done?”

  “No, no—I ran out when Graziella saw us. Nothing really happened, but I just…Violetta, he could have…” I took her hand and squeezed it tight. “I almost…what if I had let him make love to me? Can you imagine? The first time with a Nazi soldier?”

  She looked at me with a face that registered not only horror but a kind of awe. “You really might have? Is he married? How did you get this far?”

  So I recounted the whole thing from the beginning, how we had met. As I heard myself talking, I realized how crazy it must sound to her, how it made no sense at all. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you until now. But you have to believe me. He can be a thoughtful, kind, attractive man.”

  “Listen to yourself! He’s a German occupier. They are the ones who kill us, who wound us, Giovanna. I see it every day at the clinic.”

  “I know. But not Klaus. He’s so gentle, almost gallant.”

  “Gallant! Why, because he removed his gun at dinner?”

  “No, you should have seen the table he set up for our picnic. It was so sweet! We drank a whole bottle of wine together, and we got so tipsy I told him that the best way to defeat the Italians was to mine our wine cellars. Don’t you love it?” At the memory of my clever remark, I started to giggle.

  Violetta did not laugh. “Giovanna, what are you talking about? You are giving them ideas like that? What’s happened to you? Listen to me: He’s a lonely married man. He wants some romance, sure, and then it will lead to sex, Giovanna. This is going on all over town, and I can’t bear to see you used like a common serving girl. Just think about yourself, your reputation, your future. And Sister Graziella saw you?”

  “Oh, that part was horrible; I know. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Later, after we turned out the lights, I went over it all again. The dinner scene was now suffused with a kind of hazy romance: the table, the wine, the look of longing in Klaus’s blue eyes, the silky feel of his hand stroking the inside of my thigh. But then I remembered my clutch of fear as he unbuckled his belt. And Graziella’s face…

  I didn’t get home until midafternoon on Saturday, and the minute I reached the top of the stairs, I could feel tension in the air. Father had been sitting in the parlor reading, because at the sound of my footsteps, he came to the door, holding his place in the book with a finger. “Giovanna? Is that you?” His face was fixed in a deep frown, and he didn’t look me in the eye. “Come in here.”

  I set down my bag and lowered myself onto the edge of the small sofa. A sudden wave of heat passed through my body, followed by a clammy dampness that settled on my neck and shoulders. I folded my hands in my lap. “What is it, Father? Is something wrong?”

  He took his time, inserting a bookmark between the pages, and then placing the book quietly on the table. He left his hand on its cover for moment or two, not moving. Then he took a seat, leaned forward, and stared at me expressionlessly. “You look the same.”

  “What is it, Papa?”

  “Sister Graziella left here about half an hour ago.”

  I felt a hot stab in my diaphragm. “What did she want?”

  He got up and began walking around the tiny room, his eyes darting back and forth, his hands gesturing wildly. “Giovanna, I just can’t believe what I heard. I don’t really know how to say this. I thought you were going to Violetta’s house last night.”

  “I did. I just came from there.”

  “Well, you didn’t go there directly from school, did you?”

  I thought about this a moment. I had, actually, gone directly from the school to Violetta’s. “Yes, I did.”

  “But not in time for dinner.”

  I stared at him. “Why, what did she say?”

  He resumed pacing the floor. “She said, Giovanna, that she returned to the school about six thirty last night in search of some book that she needed. She said that she noticed a light on in the kitchen. She said that she went in to turn it off, and she heard noises in the coat closet….” He stopped and paused, his back to me. Then he faced me again with a look of utter bewilderment. “Giovanna, I just could not believe my ears.”

  I was dumbstruck. The thought that Sister Graziella would come here like that and tell my father. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t move. My face burned, and I felt sick, dizzy. The silence was unbearable.

  “Father, it’s not what you think.”

  “She says she saw you with her own eyes.”

  “I know, I know. But it’s not…I left, Papa. He never…” This was so painful. How could I be talking to my own father about these things? “It was just…kissing.”

  I put my head in my hands, hiding my eyes.

  “Oh, Giovanna, please! I wasn’t born yesterday. He’s an adult, probably married.”

  “No, no! You have to believe me, Papa. I admit I was with him. We had a picnic. But nothing happened, Papa. Nothing bad. You can ask Violetta. I promise. He’s a…a gentleman.”

  Father turned toward me, his eyes wild and sarcastic. “Oh, well, he may be a gentleman, but you’re certainly no lady. My own daughter, writhing on the closet floor with a Nazi soldier. Now, there’s a picture worth remembering.”

  “We weren’t writhing, Papa. He’s a good man. You said yourself we should be nice—” The hand shot up out of nowhere, and my cheek stung with the heat of a thousand needles.

  “Giovanna!” his voice thundered. “You will never—ever—set foot in that school again or speak so much as a word to that Nazi animal. You will go to confession right now, then come home and think about what you have done. Do you hear me?”

  I stood there, stroking my cheek, as tears blurred the image of my father’s red, enraged face. I opened my mouth to scream back at him, to defend myself, but he was too mad, too strong.

  “Oh, Papa. You just don’t understand. It’s not what you think; I swear!” I turned away, broke into loud sobs, and clattered down the stairs and out the door. I wanted Father to hear the loud sobs, but once I was outside in the garden, I held them back, my eyes and nose erupting like bubbling springs. Tight pain knotted in my chest so that I could hardly breathe. I found a bench and sat down, leaning over my knees, hands over my eyes, letting the tears spill into my fingers and soak the front of my skirt. Waves of self-pity followed one upon another: first righteous outrage that my father had misunderstood me, that he didn’t trust me, didn’t believe
I had refused Klaus’s advances and preserved my innocence; then humiliation, agony at the thought of Sister Graziella watching us; and finally, there was Klaus and my confusion about him. I was indignant and determined to keep seeing him despite everything stacked against us. I was so attracted to him, and I really did respect his gentleness and restraint. Why should he—Nazi animal—be punished for something he didn’t do? But then—and here I cried the hardest, because the truth was so obvious—my father and Sister Graziella were right. Klaus was both an enemy soldier and a married man. Treachery had infused every aspect of this affair, and I needed to clear away the bilious green fog that had settled over me and clung like volcanic ash.

  I picked up the front of my skirt and wiped my hands and face on the inside of it, then smoothed my hair as best I could. With one last swipe of my hands on my clothes, I got up and set off in the direction of the church and Don Federico.

  Thinking about it as I walked, I looked forward this time to making a full confession. The reality of what I had done, after all, was so much more innocent than all the villainous accusations. In fact, I planned to weigh in heavily in telling of my own rebuff of Klaus’s advances and cast both my father and Sister Graziella as unjust in their leaps to a conclusion and their condemnation of me. Did I even hope that Don Federico would prove to be less than discreet? Maybe he could help dig me out of this hole.

  But Don Federico, a hazy, stooped figure on the other side of the grate, did not quite see it my way. “Your first sin, Giovanna, which you neglected to mention, was lying to your parents and to your friend Violetta.”

  “Oh, right, Father. That slipped my mind.”

  “And then your intentions were clearly to meet this man, this enemy soldier, in private, alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you deliberately led him into temptation, inviting him to stray from his marriage vows?”

  “No, Father. He is the one who invited me.”

  “We are talking about you today, Giovanna. You engaged with him in sinful behavior, leading you both dangerously close to disaster. It is you, my child, who are responsible for your own acts in the eyes of God.”

  “Well, but I was only—”

  He interrupted me, droning on with no interest in hearing my defense. “The good Lord chose to intervene and save you from even greater sin. For this you must be eternally grateful to Him. But you are gravely at fault and must do major penance nonetheless.”

  I was a bubbling well of spiritual zeal in those days—open, starry-eyed, and eager to receive its wisdom. But confession always seemed to end the same way: I wanted to come out sparkling like clear glass, ready for a new start, and instead I emerged feeling guilty, duplicitous, and fundamentally unclean. Why, in Don Federico’s version, was I—not Klaus—responsible for getting into this situation in the first place? Then, when it came to pulling back and drawing the boundaries, which I clearly did, God got all the credit?

  I stayed in the sanctuary for a long time and dutifully prayed all the Hail Marys and rosaries I had been assigned. But on the way home, I felt no closer to God or to my father. I knew reconciliation would be difficult and was entirely up to me. It would happen on my own timetable, not my father’s. I found Mother in the garden, taking notes on a pad of paper. Working on the landscape was her form of denial in this war. If she could focus on beauty, on somehow maintaining an illusion of peace and prosperity, maybe it would all simply disappear. The proper care and feeding of roses, the need for pruning rosemary bushes and lavender…if she could lose herself utterly in it all, she could momentarily forget her worries about Tuscany’s future, about Giorgio, and now, I presumed, about me. Did she know? Had Father talked with her? I wasn’t at all sure. In spite of living crammed together in such small spaces, they seemed to move as two separate spheres these days, barely touching, repelled from each other gently, not coming together even if they had wanted to—as two like ends of magnets.

  I knew, however, the minute I saw her face that, in this case, an exception had been made. Mother heard my approach and straightened her back and shoulders, sliding the pad and pencil into the pocket of her loose, shirt-style jacket. Her hair, as always, was perfectly coiffed, her blouse pressed, her slim figure neatly attired in creased trousers—the most casual thing she ever allowed herself to wear. She looked me up and down like a schoolteacher.

  “Mother, I really need to talk with you. I need to explain what happened. Can we go somewhere where we can be alone?” I felt a fluttering under my rib cage, like a trapped bird. Why was this so hard? She was my own mother, after all.

  There was a formal section of the gardens at the front and to the west side of the villa: a series of enclosures lined with low, clipped hedges separated by gravel paths. We set off in that direction and began walking slowly down the central path until we came to a tall urn at the far end planted with bright coral-colored geraniums. There we turned and headed for a small grouping of wrought-iron chairs that looked over a low balustrade out to the valley below.

  Not a word was said until we were seated. “Mother, I don’t know what Father told you, but he does not know the whole truth.” She sat still, back straight, her lips a thin line, her hands resting in her lap. Her reticence always had the same effect on me—eliciting a torrent of words like a flash flood rushing and swirling its way into the desert.

  The story poured out, breathlessly, much as it had for Violetta, but I skipped over a few details. I lingered on the dinner scene. Even in my own mind it had taken on new, exquisite touches. A small vase of flowers had appeared. The silverware was carefully aligned; the cheese had been thinly sliced and artfully arranged.

  Then, when I got to the closet, what? I must have told her—she was a woman too, after all. I know I mentioned the duffel bags. I think I said we were “sitting” on them with our backs to the closet opening. I told her he had kissed me several times, that I truly was attracted to him, but that I put a stop to things and told him Violetta was waiting for me.

  “Enrico said Sister Graziella saw you lying on the floor.” Mother’s lips trembled and she looked away. “She said he wore no jacket and your skirt was up around your waist, Giovanna.”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned. “I didn’t want to mention that, but that was all! You have to believe me.” I stood up and put my hands on her shoulders, shaking them gently. Tears were running down my cheeks. “I’m not lying to you, Mama.”

  “But you lied to us about going to Violetta’s for dinner, so why should I believe you about this?”

  “I know, Mother. I am sorry about that. I did go right there, but just a little later.” She shook her head and gave me a look that silenced me. I thought of all the pain and anxiety she had had to endure with Giorgio’s absence, not even knowing whether he was alive. My own actions—at least this story of Klaus—suddenly seemed so ridiculous and shallow.

  Chapter Eight

  Mother and Father were already seated at the table when I arrived for dinner that night. The room, formerly a servant’s bedroom, left just enough space for us to sit at the round wooden table and for Rosa to serve. As usual, the table was covered with a simple white cotton cloth and set for three, the place nearest the door left empty.

  I noticed that Mother had changed from her gardening clothes into an immaculately pressed shirtwaist, every hair slicked back into a neat bun at the back of her neck. I could feel her cool eyes sizing me up: my hair crimped with humidity, loose tendrils glued to my forehead, and my old dusty pink blouse—a size too small, with a child’s puffed sleeves—clinging tightly to my breasts, its tails on one side not tucked into my skirt. Father glanced at me, then looked away as I took my place between them and whisked the napkin into my lap without unfolding it.

  No one spoke. I fixed my gaze on the small terra-cotta pitcher in the middle of the table that Rosa had filled with a fistful of herbs: spiky rosemary, leafy sprigs of oregano, and three stiff swords of lavender crowned with violet tufts. Then I slowly began running my f
inger down the curved handle of my fork, as if I were stroking the silky spine of Valentino, my favorite cat. The walls pressed in, squeezing the tension in the room, making the space seem more confining than it already was.

  Rosa broke the ice by coming in with a steaming platter of spaghetti con pollo e pomodori. The pungent smell of garlic and tomato sauce filled the room and forced us all to breathe a little easier. Mama lifted a birdlike portion onto her plate. “Oh, Rosa, this smells delicious,” she said. I piled a generous helping onto mine, and Papa emptied the platter. When Rosa had gone, Mother cleared her throat. She never launched into a conversation without delicately announcing herself first.

  “Now, Giovanna, I know this is difficult, but let’s talk about what’s next for you. Your father and I do not want you to continue at the School of Santa Maria.”

  I stiffened but said nothing.

  “I wonder, dear, if you’ve heard about the nursery school group that has been started at the Church of Santa Clara. I know they have a dozen or so children—just the very young ones.”

  I took a quick swallow of water from the thick tumbler and set it down so heavily a little sloshed on the table. “Mother, please.” My jaw was tense and barely moved. “I hate working with children. I really do.” I shook my head. “Frankly, I’ve been thinking anyway of not continuing at the school. They drove me crazy, if you really want to know.”

  Father laughed. “Well, now you tell us.” He looked at Mother and added sarcastically, “We thought you were enjoying your work all this time, but I guess it wasn’t the children that kept you interested, eh?”

  Mother shifted in her chair and concentrated on winding spaghetti around her fork.

  “So, now that you don’t like children,” he added, “I have just the solution. Harvest is coming up in the next few weeks, the grapes ready for crush. There’s plenty to do around here. How about if I put you to work helping me? No children in sight—guaranteed.”