Copyright © 2018 by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger / Inktreks
Dornbirn, Austria
www.inktreks.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover photos by iStock.com/Olezzo and Ursula Hechenberger-Schwärzler
Cover model: Angelina Stella Berger
Bolzano, a Reschen Valley Novel (3)/ Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger. –1st ed.
ISBN-13: 978-1725061927
ISBN-10: 1725061929
ASIN: B07DMJHWK3
Thank you for choosing to read this book. The Reschen Valley series has been a project very near and dear to me over the last ten years. When I first drove over the Reschen Pass between Austria and Italy, The first thing you see is Reschen Lake, which stretches four miles into the alpine horizon. And then, suddenly, there it is: a 15th-century church tower, sticking straight out of the water along the Graun lakeshore. It is a disturbing sight; one that makes a person really pause and that is probably why there is now a huge parking lot, which allows tourists to pause and examine the indestructible bell tower of St. Katharina of Graun. After many trips to the Oberer Vinschgau Valley (here, called the Reschen Valley), pieces of the puzzle and the fictional account fell together.
This story, part 3, is written as a stand-alone. There are five parts to the series. Follow me on inktreks.com, on Twitter, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn for updates and “behind-the-scenes” details about the little-known history of 20th-century South Tyrol.
TO MY MOTHER, LESYA PUNDYK LUCYK—
For encouraging me to do what I must in finding my own way and never letting me forget where I came from.
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
—Robert Lee Frost, “The Flood”
Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?
—Jean Renoir (1894–1979)
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Prologue
Bolzano, February 1937
W alther’s head was still missing, and anyone who was not already familiar with the sight would most likely find it disconcerting.
Angelo stopped on the edge of the piazza to further assess the beheaded statue of the medieval German poet. Dirty mounds of snow were heaped up around the six-metre-tall pedestal. Tinged greyish-green from exposure, the statue’s marble cape was chipped and cracked at the neck from angry blows. The way the sculpted hands were folded over the robe—the left one clasping the neck of a lute—and how the right foot was set slightly forward, lent the statue an air of indignation. Walther von der Vogelweide was forever demanding someone return his missing boccaletto, his noggin. It had been quite some time since the Fascist mob had lobbed it off. That the city’s politicians were still arguing over where to relocate the ruins spoke volumes about the condition the city was in.
As Angelo continued walking to the Bolzano train station, he imagined what Stefano Accosi would see and react to first. Turning the corner, the pale-yellow walls of the Laurin Hotel rose ahead and, with them, Angelo’s anxiety about meeting his former chief engineer. Twelve years had gone by with little more than Angelo’s letter of apology and the plea for Stefano to return—and a curt but polite reply from Stefano that he would.
As Angelo passed the art nouveau hotel, he noted the mildew streaks on the foundation, how sun bleached the ruffle of the yellow-and-white-striped awning was. Neglect. Stefano would see neglect. But Angelo could not imagine things were much different in any other Italian city these days, except that Bolzano was still filled with Tyroleans. Tyroleans who believed the province was still rightfully theirs.
They were wrong.
The train from Verona was to arrive at Platform 1. Angelo considered again the various ways Stefano might greet him. If Stefano behaved indifferently, closed off even, Angelo would have reason to worry about being able to accomplish what he had in mind. It had taken all this time for Angelo to appreciate the former chief engineer, not only as a loyal ally within the ministry but as quite possibly one of the few friends he’d ever had. Allowing Stefano to be his scapegoat so that Angelo could keep his position had probably been one of the worst of many bad decisions in his career. He needed Stefano now more than ever, needed the intelligent, insightful, and considerate man. Most of all, he needed a forgiving man.
He checked the clock. The train was ten minutes late. Across the track and beyond the fence was a landscape of factories. It contained the plane engines manufacturer, a flour mill, a cotton mill, the quarry’s factory, the aluminium factory—at least twenty-five buildings had cropped up in the last few years, all fashioned to Mussolini’s architectural standards: slick, symmetrical, Roman. The stink of dust, grease, tar, and soot had become commonplace. Where once the valley had drawn migrant workers to its vibrant vineyards and apple orchards, now the attraction was the billowing chimneys. Sulphur-yellow veils drifted up and over the massif the locals called the Rose Garden.
In the middle of the squat factories rose a six-story pillar of modernism. Monte Fulmini Electrical—MFE. The Colonel’s new company. Windows on every floor kept watch over
