“It doesn’t feel right.” Katharina frowned. “And I can’t shake that conversation with the prefect.”
“Captain Rioba?” Jutta looked up. “What did he say?”
A shadow passed over Katharina’s face. She shrugged. “Something about buying and selling, and it made Florian think that things are really getting serious about raising the lakes. Otherwise, why would the Italians be interested in purchasing land?”
Lisl dipped the slotted spoon into the pot of dumplings. “Or pushing them off. But, Jutta, they would be talking to you first, and the church, don’t you think? Those are the two most important properties for them.”
Jutta shook her head. “I wanted to believe that the Italians would honour our appeals. Forget our little frontier. But that’s too much to ask, isn’t it?”
Lisl put her spoon down and leaned on the counter. “It is, Jutta. Every time the water runs over the Etsch, we look to the lakes. Every time a new machine or new technology appears in the valley, we look to the lakes. Every time the lights go out, we all look to the lakes. Georg says they will build a reservoir here whether we want it or not. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Nothing?” Jutta remembered the letter then, the one she’d never asked about again—the one Katharina had sent to the Ministry of Civil Engineering some months ago. She scolded herself for forgetting, but she would not address it in front of Lisl.
“Either way,” Katharina was saying, “until we get the deed, the farm is in what Florian calls no-man’s-land.”
Over her shoulder, Jutta scoffed. “That’s what they’re calling us in general. People without a country.”
She dumped the potato skins into a bowl with the other vegetable and fruit peels just as Alois came in with an empty tray. “Alois, take these to the compost pile and dump it clean.” She turned to the women. “Speaking of threats to our land, you must keep this to yourselves, but Hans has real troubles.”
Katharina sighed. “I know he was looking to borrow more money, but—”
“Federspiel denied his application and warned him of foreclosure. He told him the bank would like to continue working with him, was very sympathetic, but said the Italian bank owners are getting very pushy.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t do to help him out.”
Lisl hopped behind the counter like a small child at Christmas. “Jutta? Are you going to marry him?”
“Heaven’s no, woman.” She axed a potato. “I just want to help a friend.” Behind her back, she could feel their questioning gazes, but she looked out the window. He still had not asked her. Fritz had been dead two years, and Hans still had not asked her. What was stopping him now was the threat to his farm. What was stopping him was his foolish shame.
The blossoms on the apple tree were not quite yet open, and she could see the tops of people’s heads over the cemetery wall. At the compost pile, Alois was playing with the peelings, dropping them from the bowl by the finger-full.
“What is that child doing now?” She shouted through the window, “Alois, hurry up now. Stop playing with that garbage. Girls, they’ll all be here soon.”
Lisl was just draining the Knödel, and Katharina brought her the sliced apples for filling the strudel and left for the Stube. It was not for several minutes that Jutta realised Alois had still not come back. When she looked outside, she saw Rioba leaning against her gate, talking—yes, talking—with her son.
She went out the back door. “Alois, time to get inside. Annamarie’s waiting for you.”
The prefect waved at her nonchalantly, and Alois half skipped, half ran on his thick legs back to the house. She gave her son a cursory glance and then shoved him inside. “What did he want with you?”
“To practice his German.” Alois sniffed.
Rioba always put on a show about how important it was for everyone to understand him. Why would he be practising German with her “mentally retarded” son?
From the window, she saw the mourners filing out of the cemetery. “They’re coming,” she announced. For another moment she watched the prefect leaning against the fence. He was holding something, but she could not make out what it was.
When Katharina came in from the Stube, she told them that Henri had arrived and she had delegated the bar to him.
Jutta nodded, grateful. Lisl’s sons were doing fairly well for themselves. Paul was reading the law and would soon be an attorney. David was interested in agriculture. Only Henri, the middle one, seemed to have not yet found a purpose.
“Lisl,” she said on impulse, “if Henri wants it, I have a job for him, right here at this inn. With Sara gone, he can have it now. The people like him, he’s good at it, and it suits him.”
Lisl smiled. “Why, Jutta. That’s very generous.”
“It’s settled then. I’ll talk to him about it later today. Will you serve the soup?”
As soon as she put the pastry into the oven, she could hear the people coming into the front hall and sent the women out to meet them while she quickly cleaned up the kitchen. The sound of raised voices in the yard drew her to the back door once more.
Near the oak tree between her inn and the church, Hans and Florian were facing off with two carabinieri, Hans pounding a fist into his other hand, and Florian waving an arm at the mountains behind him. Rioba also looked serious as he talked with Father Wilhelm.
“Jesus and Mary. Now what?” Jutta stripped off her apron and was swiftly outdoors and at their side. She saw that one carabinieri was holding an Italian flag.
“What’s going on here?” she demanded.
Pointing a finger at Captain Rioba, Hans said, “He wanted Father Wilhelm to consecrate their flag, but Father Wilhelm refuses. And
