Rioba clicked his tongue and cocked his head. “And the postcards?”
“These just came in. You blackened the old ones last time, and they were all sold.”
“Sold or thrown away?”
She gritted her teeth. “Sold.”
Enrico was behind this. He must have ratted her out to Rioba about the new cards. She looked at the shattered dishes and the mess the police had made.
“Do you know how much these things cost me?” she demanded. “There was not a single German word on those plates and platters. Nothing is marked on my crockery.”
Rioba clucked his tongue and gestured to Ghirardelli, who was holding a lone, whole porcelain plate. When he had it in his hands, Rioba turned it over and pointed to the blue inscription. Augarten. Wien. Österreich.
“Tedesco,” he said. “This is German writing. German language.”
“This is outrageous. You’re destroying all of my porcelain because of a stamp on the bottom of the plate?”
The prefect scanned the kitchen floor and shrugged before handing her the last plate, undamaged. “Signora Hanny, I send you a catalogue for porcelain from Capodimonte. They are Napoli’s finest. Cosa molto belle.” Rioba smiled, “Va bene?”
“How dare you!”
He made a slight hand gesture, and his two dogs abandoned the kitchen through the back door. “Rules are rules; orders are orders,” he said. “In italiano we have a saying—I said it when we started—the melody has changed, but the song remains the same. Signora Hanny, it is time you learn that song.”
He straightened his fez and followed his men out.
***
“W hat on earth happened?”
Kneeling amidst the debris, Jutta looked up to see Katharina shift Bernd in her arms and Florian leading Annamarie away from the shards.
“Rioba” was all Jutta managed.
Wordlessly, Katharina and Florian helped her sweep and pick up the shattered crockery and porcelain, the noise as grating as fingernails on a blackboard. Jutta put her mother’s water pitcher into an empty apple crate. Three chunks formed a good half of the pitcher with “Cold Water” painted in her mother’s hand whilst the rest was a shattered garden of yellow, blue, and red flowers. Katharina kneeled next to her, and Jutta kept her head down, raising her hand to wipe her brow so as to catch the tears.
Sometime later, Florian said, “We’re finished here.”
Jutta had barely moved from the spot where they had found her. When she looked around, the kitchen looked in good order save for the empty dish racks.
Katharina led her into the Stube, where Florian was now opening a bottle of wine. She dropped her face into her hands. Annamarie whined about something to her mother.
“Is she hungry?” Jutta asked behind her palms. “There are some rolls in the kitchen.”
When she heard a glass placed before her, she took her hands away from her face to drink. “I’m glad you came.”
“This is worse than what they did to you in the summer,” Florian said.
Her voice shook as she told them the details. “They’re hounding me. They think they can suppress me, but they’re wrong. I’ve survived a lot worse than them.”
“What will you do about the dishes?” Katharina asked. “There isn’t a single plate left for tomorrow.”
Jutta shrugged. “I’ll borrow some from the Adler’s guesthouse or hang a sign on the door for everyone to bring their own.” She was the only one who smiled. “Forget about me. How’s Hans? You’ll be bringing the livestock down from the Vorsäß soon?”
Florian nodded. “Next week, we think. The weather’s been holding up fine.”
“And he’ll be living with you then?”
“It will take some adjusting for Hans, more than for us,” he said.
Katharina nodded. “He’s grieving. It’s only natural.”
“It’s a shame,” Jutta said. “A horrible, horrible shame. I should have been more insistent about taking the money.” She had never told anyone about Hans’s marriage proposal in exchange, that marrying her would have been the only way he’d have accepted her savings.
Katharina patted her hand. “Don’t blame yourself. You did what was right for you, and there is nothing to regret there. You helped Father Wilhelm when he needed it. If you hadn’t paid that fine, he may have been taken to the prison in Bolzano.”
“But the bishop repaid me, you know that. The church would have taken care of him. Hans was the one who could have used that money to save his farm.” She should have accepted his terms.
“God has his ways,” Katharina insisted. “You were saving it for Alois, and now you have it back for Alois. Hans will be fine with us. We extended the barn for the animals he’s got left. He’ll just start over. Like we have.”
Katharina glanced at Florian. “Besides, it’s good timing to have Hans with us. The little that he can pay us in rent and the rent we’re getting from Florian’s mother’s house will help us to pay off the bank. And then we can get the deed. Right, Florian?”
He nodded, but his mouth was drawn.
“So you have decided not to sell the house in Nuremberg,” Jutta said.
“I can’t. With Germany’s inflation, I’d lose money. Besides, we might need the house someday.”
Katharina frowned and picked at something on Annamarie’s dress.
It was the thorn in Katharina’s side, Florian’s talk about moving to Germany. “It’s better than losing the Thalerhof,” Jutta said.
Florian shrugged. “That’s relative.”
“For you,” Katharina said sharply. “Tell her, Florian. Tell them what the bank offered for the farm.”
Jutta stared at both of them in turn. “You wouldn’t sell the Thalerhof, would you? What would Hans do then?”
“No,” Florian said. “I won’t. The offer was low, and Dr Hanny warned me not to do anything rash.”
“Now you don’t have to,” Jutta scoffed. “With Hans’s help, you should be fine.” Her anger towards Rioba and the two carabinieri flared again. “Whatever these Italians try next, I’m done being agreeable with them. It’s time
