The Breach

by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

  The boy grabbed the bucket—a happy child—and ran to the pit, dumping the water and then running back to the sea to get more.

  Angelo turned away, but Marco called after him.

  “Don’t you want to watch, Papa?”

  The Colonel raised his palms. “It’s just a game, Angelo.”

  Angelo walked away before Marco could pour his third pail over the model reservoir, the soft splash of water on sand trailing him as he walked back to Chiara, dreading what he had to do.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked from behind her sunglasses.

  “My father. I have to keep an eye on him, Chiara.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you go down to the beach, you’ll see. He will go after that Reschen Valley reservoir as soon as possible, and it will be much too easy for him to succeed if I am no longer minister.”

  “But you’ve put an end to that project.”

  “Temporarily, Chiara. Mussolini is still very interested. I’ve only managed to buy some time.”

  She sat up straight and faced him. “I want peace in my family, Angelo. I cannot and will not deal with your lies and your betrayals. What you did to my father is unforgivable.”

  “Your father knew what was coming. I never intended to lie to you.”

  She threw herself back into the chair.

  He tried again. “My position requires being a member of the party. I didn’t have a choice, and I still don’t.” He could feel her glare even from behind her shades.

  “We always have a choice. You have decided that gaining power over your father is more important than we are. If you want us to be close again, Angelo, then you will have to make a different decision. Either a life with me, or you can leave me—and your son—and go to war against the Colonel. But as long as your father has Mussolini’s ear, you can—”

  “I have Mussolini’s ear, Chiara. The directives were initiated by me.”

  He pointed to where the Colonel and Marco were still busy with their sand reservoir. He forced himself to speak gently. “You see that over there? He’s teaching Marco how to build dams. I have this reoccurring nightmare, Chiara. Ever since I left the Reschen Valley, it keeps coming to me.”

  “And?”

  “I remember it every time I wake up: I’m standing on a hill above the two lakes. I watch the valley flooding, the water sweeping the villages away, and I feel as if I am losing someone, that there is someone I need to help.” He realised he was in danger of revealing too much, and not just to her. It would change everything.

  “Your conscience is a funny thing, Angelo. Maybe that someone is me. Have you ever thought of that?”

  He had not.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this nightmare of yours?”

  He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. “I don’t know. Can we let it be for now?” He squeezed her hand. “I need to stay on as minister, Chiara. And when the hearings are over, I promise everything will be different.”

  She turned away from him, her hand slipping from his. “So you’ll do what the Colonel says and have Stefano take the blame?”

  “Maybe I can manage something else.” He smiled at her.

  Hers, in return, was still cautious but gave him some assurance.

  “Let’s just leave it now.”

  When he looked over to where the Colonel and his son were, he was surprised to see that Gina and the general were standing with them. She wasn’t looking in their direction, and he wished she would, for Angelo felt a sudden urge to tell Gina how he was succeeding at reconciling with his wife. And maybe Gina would have some ideas about the hearings, about Stefano. About his own political future. He could see that was where things would have to go now.

  “Shall we turn in early tonight, Angelo?” Chiara asked. She had her eyes closed next to him.

  He glanced back at Gina, who was moving towards the hotel. “I would, darling, but I thought we’d go to the casino again. I’ve arranged to play poker tonight.” It wasn’t quite a lie. He still had time to arrange it.

  “I don’t care to go to the casino again.”

  “Then wait for me? I won’t be long. Promise.” He stood up and kissed her cheek just as Gina disappeared from view. “I’ll get us some refreshments from the bar.”

  Chiara’s eyes were still closed. “Fetch your sisters out of the sun before you go.”

  In the hotel lobby, he looked for Gina but did not find her. He asked the clerk for a pen and paper and wrote, Must see you. Can you get away? He put it into an envelope and addressed it, his pulse unsteady.

  That evening, before dinner, the concierge delivered a note to him. Hotel’s boathouse. 11 p.m. Putting in an appearance at the casino first.

  As would he.

  ***

  A ngelo exchanged his money for chips and jogged up the steps to the hall. Near the second roulette table, his eyes landed on a short dark-haired woman in a black-and-white gown, but it was not Gina. At the invitation of a politician, Angelo went to a poker table in one of the rooms behind the mirrors and made sure to lose the first few hands. After politely taking his leave, he looked for Gina again, but could not find her. She must be already waiting for him at the boathouse.

  He hurried back to the Hotel Astoria and out onto the veranda, where he slipped off his Oxfords, then the garters and socks, and stuffed the latter two into the shoes. He carried them down to the boathouse. The wet sand was cool on his soles, though he did not enjoy the murky sponginess of it.

  At the door, he knocked, ridiculous as it was, as if Gina might have arranged an earlier meeting with someone else. But nobody was there. Inside, and blinded by the dark, the only relief from the slats in the walls, he felt even more embarrassed. What did he want from Gina? It was Chiara that he was trying to win back.

  He stood in the middle of the hut, his only company the smells of briny water and musty life jackets. He thought of all the fights he’d been having since the Gleno, and with it came the remorse for that night at the Laurin with Gina. He should never have taken his frustration out on her. Not like he had. He could have had an ally in her, a friend, and had ruined it with his lust, had revealed the worst of himself to her.

  How had it all gotten that far? He thought back to the beginning: meeting Chiara, marrying her, settling down with her family, gaining Pietro’s trust and then the job. The instructions and the journey to the Reschen Valley. The lakes. The attack on him by that maniac smuggler.

  The girl.

  That was where this had all started. She was at the root of all his problems: his reoccurring panic, that nightmare about the lake. She was a whole other world away, so what did she hold over him to make him care so much? He owed her for saving his life, certainly, and the project was probably morally wrong, but he was no longer convinced that the Reschen Valley was worth the greatest conflict between him and the Colonel. Or losing his wife over it.

  There was a hollow thud outside. He waited for the door to open, for Gina to call to him, and when that did not happen, listened for more clues. The thudding returned again, pounding with each wave. Someone had not pulled a tread boat far enough up shore.

  It had to be long past eleven by now. Maybe she had become distracted, more interested in someone else’s cause. He’d been a fool to come here.

  He opened the door to a solitary, moonlit beach. He let it fall closed behind him and walked to where he and his family had spent their day. It served Gina right if she arrived now, left to wonder if he’d come at all. Just past the rows of abandoned loungers, he turned and walked backwards, watching for movement near the boathouse. She would see him if she looked.

  He stumbled, and a sharp pain ripped through his heel. When he grabbed his foot, the right shoe fell into a shallow pool of water. Cursing, he retrieved it and shook it off, his foot still throbbing. Looking for what had hurt him, he recognised the pit. The Colonel’s dam.

  The waves had washed most of it away, but there was a dark object in the sand.
When he bent over it, Angelo saw the rock Marco had used as the church. St Katharina.

  Shame had prevented him from doing many of the right things. All the decisions he had taken since the Reschen Valley had shaped him into nothing he had imagined for himself. Redemption was too far to reach from where he now stood. When he remembered the offer the Colonel had made to relocate Stefano, Angelo laughed. At once he wished he could be one of those men his father was so good at making disappear. Or like that employee of his who’d gone off to America to be, he’d said, far from the eyes of his patriarchs.

  He turned to face the boathouse again, but he knew she was not there. Even if Gina had come, he could not have told her any of this. He’d already lied to her. She would only be another person he would disappoint.

  He picked up Marco’s rock, carried it far from the sea, and set it straight up in the sand. Beneath the hotel’s veranda again, he searched out the windows and balcony of his room. The lights were still on.

  Chiara, as promised, was waiting for him.

  EXTRACT from BOLZANO

  Chapter 1

  Reschen Valley, April 1937

  T he grasses were just ankle high as Annamarie ran through the meadow. Her mother’s last words, You’re a young woman—behave like one, dispersed on the spring wind.

  Being a young lady meant no longer playing house but keeping house. It meant everyone else had only one plan for her future, one wrought in tradition and old-fashioned beliefs. And a man. Another farmer.

  She imagined her family discovering that she’d fled the Hof again. Mother would smell the scorched milk, find the kitchen empty, and move to the doorway, the ends of her headscarf flapping like a frantic truce flag in the Föhn. She would ask Bernd, as he pitched manure, if he’d seen his older sister, and Bernd would complain that Annamarie had again shirked her chores to find escape in running. Manuel could look up from the garden and still see her.

  “Annamarie,” her baby brother might call. “Wait for me.”

  She waited for no one. She had no time to wait. Her father, cleaning out the milk pails, would hear of it, and he would be resigned. “She’s sixteen,” she imagined him saying, as if that should explain his position on things. That thought made her laugh, and every impact with the spongy ground created a gasp, a sound not unlike sobbing.

  Yes, she was sixteen, and she was running because she still could.

  ***

  D own the back road leading from Arlund to the valley below, she anticipated the tree roots, her arms outstretched with each hazardous leap. At the wayward crucifix, she stopped long enough to make the sign of the cross. Graun’s Head, the peak that marked where their summer alp was, was still covered with snow, and as she continued to run down the road, she felt the rest of the alpine mountains closing over her. On the valley floor, the lakes shimmered in the spring sun, still crusted with ice and snow on the shady sides. The air was warmer when she reached the bottom of the road, and she slowed as she passed the police quarters, where none of the carabinieri paid much attention to another milkmaid. As long as she did not run, they did not whistle or shout, “Where are you off to, fidanzata?”

  On the road between the two towns, she turned left towards Graun and slipped past the bank, then the seamstress, where Annamarie ought to later be for her home economics session. She ducked her head when she saw Podestà Rioba. He and the balding segretario nailed a banner onto the front of the town hall.

  She slowed down to read it: Mussolini ha sempre ragione. Mussolini is always right.

  Why did they have to hang up a sign to remind them? Il Duce, she’d learned in school, was not to be disputed in anything.

  When she moved on, she decided the banner was for the “others.” Just like the signs in every authority’s office: We speak Italian. Or the one above the classroom blackboard: It is forbidden to spit on the floor and to speak German. The other day, she saw Jutta Hanny get a two thousand lire fine because she’d written Welcome to South Tyrol on the front of her inn. And then, even worse, underneath: No Walscher, the derogatory name for the Italians. All this in German! Someone had really made her angry for her to have gone so far.

  Annamarie was just outside the Foglios’ butcher shop when Sebastiano Foglio came out with a loop of smoked sausage in his hand.

  “Where you going, Annamarie? To the Planggers’ tree?”

  “Maybe.” Where else was there to go but to the Planggers’ tree?

  “I’ll join you.”

  “I might just go for a walk.”

  “Suit yourself.” He went back inside but was untying his smeared apron. The smells of garlic and smoke drifted out behind him.

  The bakery was right down the street, and Annamarie went in, keeping her eye on the road through the window, watching for Sebastiano.

  Frau Prieth waddled out of the back and stood behind the baked-goods counter. “Griaß-di,” she said in the Tyrolean dialect. “Was hosch, Annamarie Steinhauser?” What have you got?

  She cast a look at Annamarie’s feet, and Annamarie wiped her boots on the mat.

  Annamarie had but one coin, and as Sebastiano passed the shop, she turned her back to the door and faced the glass case. The Gipfel, filled with hazelnut paste, were lined up in even rows. “I’ll take one of those, please.” Annamarie heavily accented her German to sound like an Italian.

  The baker’s wife wrapped the pastry in silence, her mouth turned down. With the Gipfel in her smock, Annamarie stepped outside again, guessing that Sebastiano had taken the direct way to the Planggers’ tree.

  ***

  I t was chilly in the crook of the branch, and they did not take off their boots to hang bare feet over the creek. A lone frog croaked in the nearby pond. Annamarie’s scalp itched from the tight braids her mother had made, but she could not unbraid them in front of Sebastiano, lest he believe she’d changed her mind about him.

  She unpacked the Gipfel and offered him a piece. He took it and looked encouraged, so she moved away before biting into hers.

  “Did she talk to you in dialect again?” he asked before tasting his.

  Annamarie shrugged. Frau Prieth always talked in their German dialect, just like all Tyrolean children were made to do at home. Most of them anyway. Sebastiano was one of those few who didn’t have to.

  “Go ahead. Talk like your father with his high German accent,” Sebastiano said. His tone was polite, not taunting like their other classmates’, who only wanted her to make them laugh.

  Annamarie cleared her throat before taking on her father’s crisp Nuremberg accent. She was good at mimicking people. “Guten Tag, Frau Prieth. I would very much like a Gipfel, if you would be so kind as to oblige me.”

  Sebastiano laughed and nodded, as if they shared much in common. They didn’t. She might sometimes be made fun of because her father spoke the high German, but Sebastiano’s family were worse off. The Foglios never spoke the local dialect, had even changed their Tyrolean names to Italian ones. On a bad day, both the Tyrolean and Italian classmates teased Sebastiano. The other day in the schoolyard, where they set up their own courthouse, they’d tried and punished Sebastiano for his father’s argument with a Tyrolean farmer, something about an unfair price for the farmer’s butchered steer. When the bigger boys dragged and dumped Sebastiano into a container of manure, nobody had helped him out.

  “I’m sorry about what happened the other day,” she said.

  Sebastiano looked cautious. “It was the others who started it.”

  “My father said I shouldn’t listen to what the parents say behind each other’s backs.”

  He finished his pastry and brushed his hands as if the matter was finished and looked towards the lake. Her confession seemed to have caused him to lose his courage. Like last time. When he’d tried to kiss her at the Christmas dance, she’d turned her head so that his mouth landed on her hair.

  “I don’t want to be a butcher’s wife,” she’d shouted over the music, though she’d wanted to be kissed.

&n
bsp; He’d taken a step back, so when he turned to her once more, she knew she would let him this time, but instead he shouted back, “What do you want to be then?”

  “Nothing that has to do with staying here,” she’d said.

  She told no one what she really wanted. It was her secret. But after Christmas she’d vowed to only unbraid her hair for an Italian boy, declare her love to one who lived far away from here. Then she’d leave with him and cut her hair short like the women in the cities did.

  Sebastiano said, “Look at all those cars,” breaking into her thoughts.

  He pointed across the fields and over Reschen Lake. Three black vehicles had arrived at the military post, and the carabinieri were already leaning in at the window of the first one.

  “More fortification for the border?” Annamarie asked.

  He shook his head. “Soldiers don’t arrive in cars. Father said something about electrical-company men coming.”

  She frowned. Were there problems with the generators?

  He swung down from the crook of the tree. “They’re from Bolzano, and some are staying at Jutta Hanny’s inn. There’s so many of them, the Il Dante is full.”

  Annamarie stared at the cars. From the city!

  Only when Sebastiano touched the toe of her boot did she notice him again. “Are you coming then?” he asked. “Father will tan my hide if I don’t get back to the shop.”

  She nodded. She was not going home though. Going by the inn was better than facing her affronted family.

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