My Trust Fund Husband

By Luciana Contin

Laura, a female version of Fieldings Tom Jones did what she had to do with feisty, unquenchable determination to attain her happy ending. Be warned! It is not a tale of virtue rewarded! Its rather an honest faithfully detailed, picturesque odyssey of a long walk on the wild side. Thats what fascinated me. This is how a woman walked her road following her instincts and wits! There are women who live their lives outside the lines who seem to be the stuff of mens fantasies. If you have wondered what their motivations are and whats in their hearts, Lauras most intimate revelations will enable you to walk miles in her shoes. That gorgeous woman vivaciously tossing her hair over a luscious meal in an outrageously expensive restaurant, her slightly mismatched date devouring her with his eyes in anticipation: Whats up there? Find out for yourself!

The fast pace of the story and the quotes from familiar classics like Jane Ayre and the Doll House that precede each chapter hinting whats next work well! There are lots of travel stories and people anecdotes, and the sense of a vivid acquaintance with a lively Italian family over decades. And theres a great how it ended closure chapter about the men in her past.

If you can suspend yourself from judging Enough to appreciate this tales frankness there are many insights to be had here. It seems to me this book could get some good discussions going, especially between men and women or across generations!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9781463463915

Book preview

© 2007 Luciana Contin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/26/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4343-0885-6 (sc)

ISBN: 9781463463915 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

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To my husband, sisters, relatives, and friends, with love!

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

O time is still a flying:

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

—Robert Herrick

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

I am a part of all that I have met.

—Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my husband, David, my mother-in-law, Sylvia, my sisters, Adriana, Severina, and Iolanda, my niece, Barbara, my girlfriends, Leonarda, Marina, Licia, Luana, Rita, May, and my deceased girlfriend, Nicoletta, for their support, encouragement, and valuable comments.

Special Thanks to Mrs. Gail Hewitt

After two frustrated years of having my revised manuscript typed by mercenary transcribers who never read what they type, by chance I met Mrs. Gail Hewitt. From the moment I turned my work over to her, My Trust Fund Husband started to take form.

Her intelligence and ability in transcribing my numerous chapters and tapes full of revisions into a professional manuscript revitalized my creativity. None of my revisions were too complicated for her. She never complained at my frequent changes and always understood their place in the context of the story.

Her incredible speed in typing accurately drew me to write intensively for six months until I completed the story. I am indebted to her for having shared with me the joys and frustrations of making the book.

In my darkest moments, her reassuring words were my guiding light leading me to my concluding chapters.

I would never have succeeded in finishing my book without her precious encouragement and collaboration!

Introduction

Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the

universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind.

—Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

My Trust Fund Husband is the story of Laura, a girl from Trieste, Italy, who grows up during Fascism, World War Two, and the Anglo-American administration of the Free Territory of Trieste. From her poverty-stricken childhood to her present, affluent life in Westport, Connecticut, United States of America, she tries to control the harsh, shaping influences of her social environments with indomitable spirit.

Throughout her life she progressively tutors herself to satisfy her needs as situations evolve. She believes that the tutored part of her life has been within her control. She agrees with Theodore Dreiser who states untutored man is but a wisp in the wind of determinism.

Her free will is so resilient that nothing deters her from her schemes to achieve her ends. To avoid the snare of poverty, she employs all of her wits. Although penniless, she travels extensively through Italy, Europe, and the United States. She kept roaming with a hungry heart. (Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Despite many harsh vicissitudes, her spirit is not negatively affected. She kept searching for a better life. She ultimately emerges as a language professor and a prosperous wife of a sugar magnate’s son, who gives her the love and the permanent financial security she has so craved since childhood.

My Trust Fund Husband

1 Growing Up in Trieste, Italy

1

Growing Up in Trieste, Italy

Untutored man is...a wisp in the wind, moved by every

breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his

instincts...She followed wither her cravings led.

—Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

My name is Laura Speranza. I was born in Padua, Italy, in 1936. I grew up during fascism, World War II, and the Anglo-American Administration of the Free Territory of Trieste, Italy. My indomitable spirit challenged the shaping influences of my environment from my poverty stricken childhood to my affluent life in Westport, Connecticut, United States of America.

I agree with Theodore Dreiser, who states that untutored man, a man unaware of the corrupted ways of the world, is but a wisp in the wind of determinism. Such an individual has little choice regarding his fate. I firmly believe that the tutored part of my life has been within my control.

I only remember certain scenes from my early childhood. When I was three years old, my parents, my sisters, Silvana and Irma, and I lived with my mother’s oldest sister, who owned a small house in Voltabarozzo, a village in the northern outskirts of Padua.

Irma was nine years old when she became ill with scarlet fever. For two weeks, Mother stayed by her bedside, administering medicine to her, feeding her, and taking care of all of her needs until the fever subsided. During my sister’s illness, I felt very jealous of her for receiving so much attention from my mother!

When Irma fully recovered, my father resumed on Sundays bringing the family to visit his brother. He lived on a farm next to the River Brenta in Terranegra, a section in the southern outskirts of Padua. I loved running in my uncle’s open fields and along the river-bank with Nevio and Guido, my male cousins, who were a couple of years older than I. While we stopped to catch our breath, I would watch with fascination as the eels jumped out of the water. After playing the whole morning, we rushed back to the farm to get ready in time to go to noon mass with our respective families. I hated to go to mass, because I did not understand the religious ceremony. I used to yawn until I fell asleep.

At the end of 1939, my father was offered a better job in Trieste, a harbor city spread out on the hills bordering the former Yugoslavia. My mother was able to find a furnished apartment in a two-story house in a section of the city halfway up the hills. The only undesirable feature of the apartment was the bathroom located on the roof-top terrace.

When I was four, one cold winter night, I felt so restless that I wandered around the new apartment while I thought everybody was asleep. I suddenly heard a trickling sound. I saw my father urinating in the kitchen sink! It was such a windy, rainy, cold night that he did not use the toilet on the roof-top. I was stunned at the sight of his penis. It was the first time I saw that he urinated from an organ different from mine. He did not see me because I was hiding behind the kitchen door.

After he went back to bed, a few minutes later, I heard him snoring. I went into our living room. Standing in the dark, I faced the two street-level windows. Shadows of various shapes appeared intermittently on the walls and ceiling; as cars and people came closer to the windows, the shapes progressively elongated into gigantic, bizarre forms. The rapidly changing projections entertained me like a captivating movie.

One night, while my father was asleep, I stole some money from his wallet to buy candy. The following morning, he questioned me about the missing money while I was squatting over the roof terrace’s seat-less toilet with footrests. He asked me, Did you steal money from my wallet? If you did and admit it, I will forgive you!

Pulling up my panties, I said, Yes, I took it.

He slapped me violently and I lost my balance. As one of my feet fell into the toilet hole, I screamed so loudly that my mother came running to my rescue.

My mother was gentler with me than my father. When I was four, I complained of a toothache. She took me for a check-up at the dentist. Although I was a robust child, she carried me in her arms from our apartment on the hilly outskirts, down the long steeply declining road, all the way to his office in the center of town. I refused to walk because I wanted to feel my mother’s arms around me. To convince me to go to the dentist, she even bought me cookies, which I ate on the way.

When the dentist put one of his instruments into my mouth, I pushed it out, using my tongue with all my might. It took him a while to find out that I did not need any work done on my teeth at all! I had lied about my toothache because I wanted my mother to spoil me and have her undivided attention for the whole morning!

One cold winter day, my mother and I were standing in our neighborhood bakery when suddenly everyone’s attention turned to the news on the shop radio. In those days, most people did not own a radio. Therefore, wherever they found one, they avidly listened to the news about the progress of Hitler’s war.

My mother repeatedly told me, Please be quiet! I want to listen to the news.

I kept demanding, Buy me some candy!

Annoyed, she replied, You cannot always get what you want! I don’t have enough money.

Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator, announced on the radio, Today, June 10, 1940, Italy has joined Germany in the war!

When I was five years old, my family moved to a project building in the industrial part of the city. Our building was part of a six-building complex. It was the farthest one up the hill. In front of each building was a large courtyard in which I loved to play with the kids of the block.

During the Second World War, my sisters and I had no wardrobes. Each one of us had only a single outfit to wear, consisting of a skirt and a sweater. Panties were scarce in our home. Whenever we needed to change our panties, we would look for clean ones throughout the apartment.

I would say, Who took my panties? Who’s wearing my panties? Since none of my sisters would answer, I would scream and cry, creating a terrible commotion.

My mother would plead, Please, daughters, tell the truth! Who took Laura’s panties? Please give them back to her before our neighbor knocks on our door!

An eighty-year-old Austrian lady who lived on the floor above ours would bang her broom on the floor, which was our ceiling, trying to keep us quiet. When it did not work, she yelled from her window, door or terrace, Shut up, all of you! Who cares about your damned panties? I want to take a nap. If you don’t stop screaming, I will come downstairs and hit all of you with my broom!

To make me shut up, my mother would take a broom and try to hit me. I would run to her bedroom and hide underneath the springs of her high matrimonial bed. I used to cling with my feet and hands on the springs. She would swing her broom under the bed, but she could not hit me because I held my body straight against the wires.

During the German Occupation, I attended elementary school. I was the best student in the class because I had an excellent female teacher who inspired me to study. After class, I used to dictate to my classmates the answers of our grammar homework sitting on the grass in the schoolyard.

In 1944, I missed the third year of elementary school because of the heavy bombing by the Allied Air Force on the German strongholds in Trieste. Each time the piercing air-raid sirens went off, my parents, sisters, and I fled to the tunnel shelter in our neighborhood.

While the adults would talk about the war, I would play with the children in the refuge. During the night, although my sisters and I were wrapped in woolen blankets, we shivered, since we were sleeping on cold cement.

I felt happy each time we returned home because I could amuse myself again with my block friends on our neighborhood streets. One morning, an SS officer came by on foot while we were playing. He suddenly stopped a truck driver carrying a full load of grapes. Looking at us, the German soldier asked us, Kids, do you want some grapes?

Really? May we have some?

Of course! Truck driver, let them have as many grapes as they want!

Thank you very much, officer!

While we were happily eating grapes under the resentful look of the driver, the young German soldier who probably did not want to be in the war had a good time watching us.

A month later, while I was playing with the usual neighborhood kids in the street in front of our project building, two pretty young women with their hair shaved off passed by us. I asked Ezio, the oldest boy of our group, who was ten, Why do they shave their heads that way?

Ezio explained, The Italian men do that to all the women who go out with the occupying enemies. Suddenly a group of Italian men passed them. Noticing their shaven heads, they spit on them saying, You treacherous whores! The girls quickly ran away.

The following week, we wandered around the walls surrounding the Nazi barracks in our neighborhood. We took turns in climbing up one of the menacing high walls by placing our feet on each other’s shoulders until we reached the top. We saw a firing squad in the courtyard lining up a group of prisoners against a wall. In front of our astonished eyes, the Germans shot them! We were speechless at the carnage. Afraid for our own lives, we quickly helped each other down from the top of the high wall, careful not to make a sound. I felt so upset by this horrible event that it took me months to recover from it.

The next week, due to a fierce bombing, my family and I were back in the tunnel shelter. After two days, we finally heard the all-clear siren signal. On the way home, I was so hungry, I almost fainted! Quickly, my father carried me in his arms, wrapped in a blanket, all the way to our apartment, while the entire family followed him. As we entered our home, we found our window panes shattered by the explosions of the bombs. When I heard my sisters and mother cry at the sight of such destruction, I did not feel like fainting anymore. We started to shiver because the cold was coming through the broken panes. While Father was putting cardboard on the windows, Mother prepared food for us. As soon as she finished cooking a bean soup, I voraciously gulped own three plates of it. Then, I vomited all of it because my stomach had been empty for so long.

When I was eight, during a bombing raid, my mother did not have enough time to take Irma, Silvana, and me to the tunnel shelter. She quickly stuffed a blanket in a suitcase before she made us run in the direction of the forest on the hill nearest our apartment. On the way, bombs exploded over our heads. Instinctively, our mother put her suitcase over our heads praying, Please, God! Save my children! Please, don’t let the bombs kill my precious daughters!

The German artillery was trying to hit the Allied planes that were bombing their ammunition depots, located in the outskirts of our neighborhood. I was too young to understand the evils of war. To me, the spectacle seemed an impressive display of fireworks!

The wartime conditions in Italy led to widespread food shortages. Consequently, my father would bicycle to the countryside of Friuli, a region next to Trieste, in search of food. He would pedal back and forth great distances to bring home potatoes, beans, flour, sugar, butter, coffee, soap, or whatever supplies he could find. The Italian government food stamps were not enough to sustain us!

On account of fuel shortages, my father would cut down trees in the forests on the hills close to our home. He would drag long logs from the hilltop all the way down to our apartment.

Unexpectedly one morning, two SS officers, having heard of my father’s skill as a carpenter, came to our home to offer him a job in their barracks, located in Opicina, a village on the highland surrounding Trieste. A month later, my father did not show up for work. Two SS officers came to look for him. Father did not want to work for them anymore because he had heard that many of his co-workers had been sent on trucks to concentration camps or incinerated in the Risiera, a Nazi extermination camp, located in our neighborhood. Afraid for his life, he hid in a neighbor’s top-floor apartment of our project building. The Nazis first looked for him at home. Not finding him there, they looked for him in each apartment. When they arrived where father had been hiding, he had already climbed onto the roof. Not finding him, the SS soldiers gave up their search.

The next week, I played with children of our block outside the tall cement walls of the Risiera. We saw dark clouds of smoke coming out of the installation not knowing what was going on. Our clothes, hands, and hair became full of black soot. We continued to play there anyway because it was fun to watch the Nazi military vehicles going in and out of the ominous walls.

When my mother discovered my playing area, she screamed at me, Stay away from the Risiera! One of these days, the Nazis will imprison you! I will not be able to get you out! Stay away from the Nazis!

Yes, Mother, I promise!

While the war was at its last stage, the Piccolo, the local newspaper, published many horrifying stories about the cruelty of the Nazis and their collaborators. It reported that inside the walls of the Risiera, the only Nazi extermination camp in Italy and Western Europe, called the Adriatisches Kunsten Land, thousands of Slovanians, Croatians, Italians, and Jews lost their lives from October 1943 to April 1945.

The victims who arrived in the Risiera were in good health, but in tears because they knew they were going to die. They cried until they were executed the following morning.

The Nazis also exterminated people by putting them in a bunker as big as a coffin. The ones that were resilient to die were killed by a blow to the nape of the neck. To cover the victims’ cries, they turned up the volume of radios very high, choosing merry music, left on the engines of huge military trucks, and made the guard dogs bark very loudly.

One woman came home one day from work, found her apartment sealed, and her family missing. A collaborator had squealed on them. The Nazis arrested her mother and father, her twenty-two and twenty-four-year-old sister, and eighteen-year-old brother without giving them time to put on their undergarments. Her mother was only fifty-four years old.

A tailor hid a Jewish family, but his wife, who was a collaborator, sold them for 10,000 lire each (approximately $50 in today’s currency). The Jewish family was sent to die in a concentration camp. A few days later, people saw the tailor’s wife wearing the Jewish woman’s clothes without a twinge of conscience.

A man was turned over to the Germans by his ex-classmate, who had become a Nazi collaborator. The victim was sent to a Czechoslovakian concentration camp because he was not Jewish, otherwise he would have been cremated right there in Trieste.

In 1945, a few days before the Allied troops arrived in Trieste, I saw Yugoslavian troops arriving on horseback in our neighborhood. They were armed with machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, and other types of weapons. They claimed they came to liberate us from the German occupation.

One morning, a group of Yugoslavian soldiers on horseback rode into my apartment building courtyard while I was playing with my friends. They knocked on each apartment door, commanding the tenants to share their home with them. Whoever had room to take them in had to wash their smelly clothes and feed them.

Since our five-member family had only one matrimonial bed and two single collapsible beds, no Yugoslav soldier forced us to give him room and board. Those soldiers who did not find anyone to accommodate them made their beds with blankets in the courtyard next to their horses. The whole area started to stink because the horses were defecating everywhere. We stopped playing because the stench became unbearable and the soldiers took up most of the space in the courtyard.

The Yugoslavs put signs around Trieste saying, Trieste je mas (Trieste is ours). Viva Tito! They added a big red star to the Italian green, white, and red flag to indicate that Trieste was now part of Yugoslavia.

Tito’s communist troops occupied Trieste only for forty-three days, from May 1 to June 12, 1945. During their occupation they threw into the Foibe, natural, deep crevices on the rocky highland surrounding Trieste, fascists, Slovenians collaborating with the Germans, anti-fascists, and Italian communists who were deemed guilty for proclaiming Trieste and its surroundings Italian. We still do not know how many people were thrown alive into these common natural graves.

The Piccolo, the local newspaper, reported that on April 30, 1945, the war practically finished. The last remaining Germans, about 2,500, barricaded themselves in the courthouse building and in S. Giusto Castle, waiting to surrender to the Anglo-American troops who would save them from the savage wrath of the Yugoslavs.

After the Nazis fled, the railroad, the radio station, the Prefecture, and the other public buildings previously occupied by the Nazis were taken over by the men of Trieste belonging to the National Liberation Committee. But Tito’s army made them surrender their arms and proclaimed Trieste part of the Yugoslav Federation on May 1, 1945.

On June 12, 1945 the Yugoslav troops finally left Trieste. The non-communist people rejoiced! This event had many complex political turns. The strong Italian Communist Party, in early May, still did not know which solution the big Western powers and the Soviet Union would adopt. It was Stalin who asked Tito to withdraw his troops from Trieste. Not wanting any problems with the Allied powers, Tito obeyed.

Although the Red Army left Trieste, Tito did not stop trying to annex Trieste to Yugoslavia. For protection against Tito’s claim, for nine years Trieste was ruled by an Anglo-American Administration. Only in 1954, following a direct Italian-Yugoslav accord, Trieste finally returned to Italy. But in exchange, we had to surrender our entire peninsula of Istria to Tito.

The Piccolo published that the New Zealanders were the first troops to arrive in Trieste, but remained passive spectators of the Yugoslav slaughter for forty-three days. They were not welcomed by Tito’s occupying troops and the Italian communists, but they were welcomed with a warm applause by the democratic people. The New Zealanders witnessed shortage of food. Long lines of people stood in front of food shops waiting to buy rationed groceries, which were scarce.

There are still today different interpretations why the New Zealand troops did not fight the Red Army. Some people say they were awaiting orders from the Allied powers. While waiting, they distributed food to the hungry Italians.

Papal trucks distributed food items on the streets of Trieste until the Red Army left, on June 12, 1945. The people of Trieste rejoiced in Piazza Unitá at the withdrawal of the Yugoslavian troops. The citizens quickly erased pro-Tito writings on the buildings and walls of our city.

In 1945, when the allies arrived in Trieste to liberate us, I was nine years old. I climbed the courtyard walls of my apartment building to see American and English troops arriving by trucks. Crowds of people lined the road singing and throwing flowers to the liberating allies. The young girls ran parallel to the slowly moving military trucks, sending kisses with their hands to the young soldiers. Everyone rejoiced. The war was finally over!

The Welcome Allied Occupation had begun. Trieste became the Free Territory of Trieste. We did not belong to Italy anymore. We remained an Independent Free Territory governed by the Anglo-American Administration for the next nine years.

2 My Adolescence during the Anglo-American Administration in Trieste

2

My Adolescence during the Anglo-American Administration in Trieste

She was eighteen years old, bright, timid,

and full of illusions of ignorance and youth.

—Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

My sisters and I grew up during the British and the American Administration of Trieste. In 1947, my sister, Irma, was seventeen. Silvana was sixteen, and I was eleven. They started to go dancing at the American Enlisted Men’s Recreation Club, located in the city as well as at the ones inside the military camps in the highlands surrounding Trieste. Military buses would take the girls from downtown to the American barracks. The girls were called Hamburger Bandits, because they enjoyed eating meat, which was scarce in Italy at that time.

While I was spending a week at a summer camp in Sistiana, a small coastal village, by chance, I saw Irma and Silvana, my two sisters, strolling hand-in-hand with American soldiers. I pretended not to see them. I did not want my campmates and teacher to know that my sisters preferred dating Americans to Italians. Trieste’s society frowned upon Italian women socializing with the Allied troops.

While my sisters dated GIs, I was attending the last year of elementary school. I loved going to school, because I had an excellent teacher. She appreciated my eagerness and ability to learn. She was so proud of my efforts and achievements that she used to praise me in front of the class as her best student. On the other hand, my junior high school teacher did not take an interest in me. Consequently I did not try my best to learn! I was no longer the best student, but among the best ones.

In those days, junior high school and high school were not mandatory. Most of the teenagers on my block were not going to school. Their parents tried to find them a job to help with the living expenses. I was proud that my father allowed me to go to school. I carried my books strapped by a leather belt because I wanted everybody to see them. To get the attention of the unemployed neighborhood teenagers, I would walk with my chin up and sing loudly on my way to school. They gave me the nickname, La Contessa (the countess), because only aristocratic, rich children went to higher grades. I felt rich and sophisticated carrying my books!

During the first year of junior high school, I was thirteen since I had lost a year during the bombings. I became infatuated with Pietro, a student of my own age. One day in school, I looked for him in the boys’ section (girls and boys were on separate floors) during the snack break when the students were allowed to walk up and down the corridor on their own floor.

The fascist school building had six stories supported in the lobby by four huge cylindrical marble columns. Their floors were connected by a wide marble stairway. In the middle of the interior of the building was a square opening from the entrance hall to the dome. Each story had a corridor with a marble railing along the square opening. The classrooms were located between the outer walls of the building and the corridor.

One day, I went downstairs to Pietro’s corridor. I saw him leaning on the marble railing looking up at the girls’ corridor. Before we had a chance to talk to each other, the principal caught me and said, If I ever catch you coming down to the boys’ corridor again, I will expel you from school! Pietro and I were so scared of the principal that we spoke together only on the way home.

During the summer break, I forgot about Pietro. I often went with my best girlfriend to an open-air cinema. My long, straight blond hair was tied by a big starched, well-folded brown ribbon of which I was very proud. One evening, two boys sitting in the row behind me untied it. Each time I retied it, they untied it again, giggling. It was a thrilling novelty to experience boys flirting with me for the first time. My brown ribbon helped to gain the boys’ attention in the cinema and in class to identify me as one of the excellent students.

At the end of my first year of high school, I was seventeen. I decided to leave school to get a job with the British and American Administration. I was hired as a waitress in a British barracks dining room. The young soldiers used to whistle at me as I carried trays full of dirty dishes. Once, during lunch, they whistled so hard that I lost my balance on my high-heeled shoes. I fell on the floor and the dishes flew in the air. Laughing and giggling, a young English soldier helped me to get up and asked me to go out with him.

Each time the young soldier and I met in Piazza Oberdan, if it rained, we would walk up and down under the fascist-styled huge porticos sustaining the buildings around the square.

The sexually inexperienced young English soldier would press his lips against mine, hurting me. Not feeling any pleasure, I thought, The English way of kissing is very peculiar!

A few weeks later, I got fired from my job because the young soldiers would whistle at me even from the dormitory windows while I was passing by on my way to the cafeteria.

I soon found work in the American PX located on a gigantic, long pier, where the military ships arrived, docked, and departed. I was offered a job as a salesclerk selling musical instruments for a concession inside the PX. I learned about accordions, guitars and all kinds of musical instruments.

The GIs would come to the music counter, because I was very pretty. Pretending to buy, they asked me for a date. There were so many handsome GIs asking me for dates that my head spun. I wanted to go out with all of them. Not being able to decide which one to go out with, I would make a date with as many GIs as there were exits. Since there were ten exits, I had a GI at every exit waiting for me. It took me all day long to make up my mind which one I preferred.

Whenever a young American soldier would ask me to marry him, I would say, You must be crazy! I am not ready yet to cook meals and wash dishes daily for one man! I still haven’t traveled! I want to experience so many things! I am so happy to be free because I can go out with as many young men as I want!

The GIs used to teach me American songs and I used to sing them on my way home after a date. The songs were, I’ll be loving you eternally, there will be no other one for me, Forever and ever, my heart will be true, Sweetheart, forever and ever I’ll be true. See the pyramids along the Nile, la la, la… There were many songs the GIs sang that I loved. I memorized them, learning English through songs.

While working at the PX, I introduced my older sister, Silvana, to Norbert, a sergeant major. He had first asked me to go out with him, but I told him, You are too old for me. I’m going to introduce you to my older sister. She’s just right for you because she is five years older than me. They fell in love at first sight and became engaged.

I did not have a steady boyfriend because I was going out with so many GIs. I was not in love with anyone. But at the end of the British and American Administration, I frequently dated an American officer with thick, wavy, blonde hair, whom I liked very much. He was very handsome in his gold-buttoned uniform. He fell in love with me and asked me to marry him. When he found out during our courtship I had also been dating one of his privates, he got so upset, that although he had already written to his mother about wanting to marry me, sent her some wonderful pictures of us together, and talked about marriage to me earlier, he stopped seeing me.

It took many persuasive phone calls to convince him to meet me again. Feeling that I was winning him back and thinking that he would still marry me, I said to him, Why did you wait so many weeks before meeting me? What have I done wrong? I did not make out with your enlisted man. We were just friends! Anyway, I don’t see him anymore! It’s you I am in love with!

Nevertheless, my behavior had totally disaffected him. He stopped seeing me. I was too young to appreciate him or to understand how to keep him.

In 1954, nine years after the beginning of the Allied Administration, the Italian government and Yugoslavia finally reached an accord. The Italian peninsula of Istria was donated to Tito in exchange for Trieste which had belonged to Italy before the Allied occupation. The Americans and the British were asked to evacuate Trieste.

For nine years, all the shops, restaurants, bars, beer halls, discotheques, nightclubs, hotels, and taxis had been servicing British and American soldiers. The people of Trieste had made a lot of money from the Anglo-American troops. When the Americans and British were preparing to evacuate Trieste, they were devastated and broke into tears.

The girls were especially desperate because their British or American sweethearts were departing. Some of the girls were pregnant, and therefore many quick marriages were performed. The expectant mothers who did not succeed in marrying their sweethearts, blinded by copious tears, stood with their protruding bellies on the piers below the military ships.

Large crowds were standing below the ships docked at the piers ready to set sail. The people of Trieste were waving good-bye to the Americans packed against the ship railings, trying to get a glimpse of their sweethearts for the last time and wave good-bye. Some of the GIs were crying because they were leaving their pregnant girlfriends behind. It was a very moving scene! The inhabitants of Trieste had grown to love the generous and kind GIs, who had spent so much money and treated people so well! To lose their considerable economic input made people very distraught.

The officer, whom I had dishonored by going out with his private, stayed on among the last military personnel to direct the evacuation procedures. Although I made several attempts to see him again, he did not give in to my pleas. I had lost him forever.

3 Working in an American Military Camp in Italy

3

Working in an American Military Camp in Italy

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two

things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes

better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan

standard of virtue and becomes worse.

—Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

During the British and American exodus, Silvana’s sergeant major had been sent to a military camp in Leghorn, a town on the Tuscan coast. My sister followed her fiancé and married him there. I attended her wedding. Although they were soon transferred to another military camp in Linz, Austria, I decided to stay in Leghorn.

As I walked into the American Camp PX to apply for a job, I met Mr. and Mrs. Pane, the same couple I had worked for in Trieste. They had just opened their musical instrument concession in the PX. As soon as they saw me, they offered me my old job back and invited me to live with them in their flat.

The wife was a thirty-year-old beautiful brunette with long hair and green eyes while her husband was a short, bald, plain-looking man, twenty years older than she. The lady dressed elegantly. She even wore labeled house robes. In the morning and at night, she would put on expensive creams while her hair was rolled into curlers.

One morning, I knocked on Mr. and Mrs. Pane’s bedroom door. Receiving no response, I opened the door and saw them making love.

She said to me, Don’t you know you should knock on the door and wait for permission before barging into a couple’s bedroom? Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?

Embarrassed, I exclaimed, Please forgive me!

I stayed with them for a few months, until I grew tired of living with them.

When I met a woman from Leghorn, separated from her husband living with her two daughters, I asked her if I could live with them. Taking advantage of my situation, she charged me so much that she was able to pay her entire rent and grocery bills with my rent money. My cozy room near the entrance door of her spacious apartment and her delicious Tuscan dishes compensated for her overcharge. I learned from her which vegetables to chop to make delicious soups and Tuscan dishes.

In the meantime, working in the PX, I had met Bruce, a tall, black-haired, handsome GI from New York City who had been a professional singer in the States. He often sang in the camp recreational military club. After my working hours, he would sing popular American songs to me. I was beginning to fall in love with him. At eighteen, I had not yet had any sexual experience. I was afraid to make love with him all the way. Since I was a virgin, we exchanged only a few romantic embraces and kisses during our long car rides.

At that time, Nadia, the landlady, was forty-five and Bruce, twenty-five. They were very friendly with each other. After a delicious meal, they often lay dressed in bed on top of the bedspread. At times, I would place myself between them and pretend to rest. Actually, I was looking for some clues which would indicate to me that they were lovers.

When, two years later, Bruce went back to the States, he sent Nadia and her daughters lots of packages containing clothes. He wrote letters to her, but postcards to me. Nadia never allowed me to read his letters. Still, today, I am not quite sure how far their friendship had gone. I had not exactly understood what had been going on between them since I had not yet experienced sexual intercourse.

After Bruce left for the States, by chance, I met a Puerto Rican soldier, whom I had dated in Trieste. We started to date again. He would hold me in his arms, kiss me on my lips, and pet my vagina at the same time. One night, I felt my panties getting wet. A hot liquid was dripping down my legs so copiously that it dripped and dripped down the steps.

I moaned, My God! What is happening to me? I feel like I am fainting!

The young soldier started to laugh and said, You are simply having an orgasm.

I was so worried about what happened that the next day I went to see the pharmacist. May I please speak to you in the back room? I asked him with anxiety in my voice. While a young man was petting me, suddenly my pants became wet! What’s wrong with me? What’s happening to me? I asked him over and over.

He replied to me, You are a hot, passionate woman! You will enjoy sex the rest of your life!

Taking off my clothes, I hysterically uttered, Please give me a physical examination. I want to know what’s wrong with me! Tell me, why did so much liquid come out of my vagina?

He started to laugh. Before I knew it, he pushed me onto the small bed and began kissing me all over. Feeling a sudden pleasure, I became scared. I pushed him away, got dressed, and ran out of the pharmacy thinking, My God! I can feel sexual pleasure with any handsome man!

I did not tell anyone about my sexual awakening. I kept thinking about it while I was working behind my musical instrument counter in the American PX. I was dating many handsome GIs, just as I did in the PX in Trieste, except men had a new effect on me! I never took anyone seriously. I had a wonderful time going out for lunches, suppers, and car rides on the beautiful hills of Tuscany. I went to see Montecatini Thermal Baths, Viareggio, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I enjoyed dating handsome soldiers, but I did not have intercourse with any of them. I let them only pet me; I was afraid to go any further!

Becoming tired of my occupation at the musical instrument shop, I looked for a new job in the Military Vehicle Depot adjacent to the military camp. I found a job as a file clerk in one of the office buildings located in the middle of the depot grounds.

I was supposed to keep very accurate military files of all the Jeeps, trucks, and tanks lined up on the depot grounds, but my mind was elsewhere. I was nineteen years old and my main pre-occupation was to wear the sexiest clothes possible, showing off my twenty-two-inch waist and thirty-six-inch bust and hips. My eyes were always roving in search of handsome officers, captains, or enlisted men who happened to walk in and out, or whom I could see through the large office windows walking on the depot grounds. Being so easily distracted, I failed to file correctly the numbers of the vehicles alphabetically or numerically. I was always misplacing the file cards.

One summer a Miss Camp Beauty Contest was held. My commanding officer selected me to attend the contest because he thought I was the prettiest girl in the office. I had to line up with the girls from the other depot offices in front of judges. I came in as the second most beautiful girl in all the depot offices. I felt great!

During office hours, every time I went to the restroom, a handsome Italian employee of about thirty-five, who worked in my office, followed me. The men’s room was next to the ladies’ room and between them was a small hall with one washbasin. I often found him washing his hands at the same time as I was washing mine. He often made advances toward me by holding me in his arms and caressing me. He was always careful that no one observed him. He begged me to go out with him, but I had no interest in him.

Instead, my eyes were fastened on a corporal, a handsome, black-haired Spanish-American who worked in front of me, three desks to my left. Although he was wearing a thick gold wedding band and often spoke of his American wife back in the States, I was interested in him. I often spoke to him with a sexy voice, trying to seduce him. I would ask, Would you please help me? I have a problem. Where do I file this tank? Where do I file this Jeep? Where do I file all these spare parts?

He would respond,