The Golden Hour (2 page)

A
s I lay there, the years of the war began to come together, coalescing from fragments of childhood at first: the scarcity of food, the ubiquitous men in uniform, the insistent drone of bombers overhead, the shuttered schools. It was fall, probably October of 1943. I was crossing the square on a routine errand for Mother, trying to buy staples like flour and salt for the kitchen, when I saw my favorite teacher coming out of the market. Sister Graziella was a large woman, and in her flowing habit with a basket on her arm, she nearly filled the doorway.

“Oh, my stars—darling Giovanna!” She folded her arms around me and pressed me to her ample bosom. “This is my lucky day, to cross paths with you like this. I was just thinking of you, dear, wondering how I might find you. Here, let’s find a place to talk.”

She ushered me out into the square and rested her basket on a bench. Then she placed her hands on both my shoulders. “I’m looking for someone to help out at the School of Santa Maria. The building has been standing empty, and I want to do something for
the young children around here who are so neglected. There are refugees from the bombing in Turin living near here, and—heavens—our own local children as well, just wasting their precious time. I have talked the town council into letting us open it for several hours a day. Nothing official, you understand, just to tutor a few of them on the side.”

I took a couple of steps back and looked past her across the square. I was dying to do something, but…“I don’t know a thing about teaching,” I said. “How can I possibly be of any help?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t have to teach at all. Just be there in the mornings to help us keep order. Then, in the afternoons, after the children leave, you could go over their papers. You are so bright, such a free spirit. I miss your energy and your smile.”

I studied Sister Graziella’s moon face, her soft cheeks framed by the stiff white headdress. I had always loved and admired her. Sister Graziella was completely benign, a spirit who radiated pure love. There was no one I trusted like this woman, and true, I’d been missing her as well since I graduated in June. There were even days—what I called my life planning days, imagining my future—when I had toyed with the idea of joining the convent, just to be like her, to dedicate my own life to such a pure vision of service.

“And Sister Elena. She’ll be working with me. She’s all for it, Giovanna.”

Oh, God
. I groaned inside. Sister Elena was another matter. I couldn’t stand that woman: bony and brittle, with a jutting chin and eyes that burned into you like a hawk’s. I looked away. Could I bear to be with her all day? But it was tempting. I was getting bored. The war stretched out ahead with no end in sight. Real life seemed to involve finding a husband, making my place in the world, and it all felt remote, indefinitely postponed. I had just been thinking it was time to contribute in some way to this war, to be part of it.

“Well…” I drew a slow line with my toe in the gravel. “Why
not. Okay, why not? I’m too idle lately. And just to work alongside you would make me happy.” I hugged her and smiled. “When do we start?”

We began meeting quietly with twenty young children a couple of weeks later. I reveled in Sister Graziella’s proximity, and I did my best to stay out of Sister Elena’s way. The children were, well, children, but they were gone in the afternoons. Then one morning in January, I saw a lorry pull up noisily in front of the school. A dozen or so German soldiers piled out and began milling around the sidewalk, while one of them walked boldly up and hammered his fist on the school entrance.

Sister Graziella and I stood next to each other in the hall, blockading the children behind us, while Sister Elena, her stiff back held erect, slowly drew back the bolt and opened the door. There stood a sandy-haired officer who looked to be in his mid-twenties. He was slender, and—if it weren’t for the Nazi uniform—he looked approachable, almost kind. Elena fixed her icy stare on him. “Yes?”

“I am Lieutenant Klaus Eisenmann, officer in charge of preparing this area for defense against the Allies,” he said in surprisingly fluent Italian. “My fellow officers and I will direct the construction of tunnels and bunkers, the work on bridges, and the storage for ammunition. We claim this school as our administrative headquarters, and now we are planning to occupy this building.”

Sister Elena drew herself up to her full height. “Well, I have news for you, Lieutenant.” The words grated like metal on stones. “My colleagues and I are busy constructing young minds here, and we have no intention of moving.”

The two of them argued, and I have to admit I admired Sister Elena’s courage, her staying power. In the end, they negotiated a compromise. The officers would take over most of the school
except for a classroom off the courtyard and one small office in the rear of the building, so that the tutoring program could continue. We would use the playground in back and have some access to the kitchen.

“And naturally we will expect you to keep your distance from the children,” Elena stated finally.

After they left, when the three of us were alone again, Elena grabbed my wrist and hissed into my ear, “And I know I don’t have to remind you, young lady, that I expect you to keep your distance from those soldiers.” Where did that come from? It made me burn with shame, and I had no idea why.

The Germans were running the country, driving confiscated cars and motor scooters. I heard that they were even living in Italian homes. I wished I could understand their language, that scratchy, angry sound that had become so much a part of our lives. I was getting tired of being careful, of easing my way around my own life like a cat sneaking past a sleeping dog. I was getting impatient, too, with the politeness that was expected of me all the time, the effort it took to make room for so many brash foreigners in our midst, and it had begun to have an odd effect on me. Their presence secretly emboldened me. Instead of seeing them as a vast, uniformed mass of occupiers, I had begun to see them as equals.

All that winter and into the spring, we worked next to those soldiers, and the walls of the school began to encase me in a separate world, one that was part of the war but at the same time a kind of refuge from it. We began to get used to the comings and goings of the specific officers who worked there,
our
soldiers. There was Lieutenant Eisenmann, Klaus, of course, the one who had first come to the door. Then there was big Otto and the German shepherd. I have always loved dogs—and Panzer became a sort of a mascot. There was Heinz, who whistled incessantly, and
Willem, whose allergies acted up in the Tuscan air, making him wheeze and spit with abandon. They were rough and loud. They were angry and impatient. But within the school, our two factions had worked out a kind of peaceful routine that allowed each of us to attend to the tasks of the day. At noon every day, for example, the officers gathered in the cafeteria while the children and I walked home for the midday meal and the sisters returned to their convent for a couple of hours during the heat of the day.

One morning Hans, a stocky blond officer with wire-rimmed glasses and a pronounced limp, showed up in our office, where I was meeting with the sisters while they planned the next day’s lessons. “We have extra sausage here,” he offered. “If you’d like to take it home, be our guests, please.”

We took the meat, knowing that it was highly unusual, a complete turnaround from how the Germans habitually helped themselves to whatever produce or supplies they found in the stores, in the fields, even in people’s homes.

What began to happen then, as spring settled in, really took me by surprise. I started watching the officer Klaus all the time. I was fascinated, trying to decide why he seemed nicer than the others. The corners of his blue eyes had deep smile lines, and in his casual way of looking off to one side, there was an openness that made me want to penetrate his inner shell. I learned to recognize his voice at a distance, and when I heard him nearby, I found any excuse—“the little black-and-white cat needs a bowl of milk,” or, “I must get some water to moisten the bougainvillea next to the door”—to leave my worktable.

I could feel his eyes on my back and knew he was following my every move. I noticed little things, too, like the way he lifted his jacket to put his left hand in his pocket, and the habit he had of hitching up his pants, which emphasized how slim he was compared
with the others. I wanted to know more about him, whether he had a family and how he ended up assigned to the School of Santa Maria.

It was new to me, this thinking all the time about the officer Klaus. I knew boys my own age, of course, but I was self-conscious. I was short, big breasted, and a little heavy around the hips; my hair stood out in a wiry halo around my head, even when I tied it in a ponytail. I was never one of the girls the boys tended to flirt with or tease in a friendly way, and I pretended I didn’t care.

One afternoon, I was sitting alone at a long table in our classroom with a pile of papers in front of me. It was warm and humid, and a hummingbird buzzed beneath the open window behind me. I could see straight through the open door into the courtyard as the soldiers crossed, going in and out of their offices. Klaus passed by, laughing loudly, his heavy boots clunking along the wooden porch until he reached the sand.