Just as Angelo passed the building, he heard the backstage door behind him fly open and the excited chatter of young men and women. Students and pioneers from the GUF. He took the right onto Via Vintler, where his thoughts turned to Katharina’s letter.
Katharina. He could not remember any details of the night they had been together. He had no feelings at all for her save maybe gratitude for finding him in the mountains and saving him. Memories of the unintentional affair were dull, something he’d let go and forgotten. Until now. Now it was clear how grave the situation was. What would Annamarie’s life have been like had he known about her earlier?
Angelo pictured Annamarie in that photograph, a farmer’s daughter from the Thalerhof—no, now it was called Katharinahof. That very farm was going to be completely submerged. Wasn’t that what his reoccurring nightmare had always been about?
He hurried towards the Laurin but stopped at the fountain where graffiti covered the statue of the Dwarf King and the Giant. Just as Walther von der Vogelweide, the faces of the sculpture had also been hacked away at, and now workers were dismantling the grisly sight. The Tyroleans were trapped in a classic pincer manoeuvre. Katharina and her family? He had to make certain that he worked together with the Colonel on the reparations. To create as soft an impact on that valley as possible, that was the goal. It was too late to get the Tyroleans to trust him up there, to get them to work together with him against MFE. Stefano had made that clear.
And now this daughter of hers, of theirs, this Annamarie… Katharina had said she was with the fascisti? He whirled around to where he’d come from. The GUF. It was free, if you were a member of the party. In Graun, Katharina had said the girl had wished to study.
“Damn it,” he whispered. A passing man frowned, and Angelo muttered an apology. He had to find her. Fast. But how? And what would he do when he did?
From the piazza, the bell tolled quarter to twelve. The Colonel was waiting. Angelo had to manage that first.
***
A ngelo was a few minutes early. The dining room in the Laurin—with the palm trees reaching for the glass-domed ceiling, the art nouveau columns discreetly separating the sections of tables—was practically empty. When Angelo walked in, at least three waiters pushed themselves away from the bar, straightened their tuxedos, and hurried off in the direction of the kitchen. The bartender picked up a glass and held it to the light. Something greasy was burning in the kitchen.
Angelo was shown to a table in the corner against the windows and asked to be seated towards the back, where people walking by the streets would not be able to chance upon the minister and his father dining. Angelo’s life had taken on enough of a fish-tank quality as it was. The waiter obliged him with just the slightest hint of annoyance.
Next to Angelo’s table was a discarded copy of that day’s La Coriera. He picked it up and read the headline—Senator Tolomei Declares Economy “Spectacularly Weak”—just as the waiter brought Angelo’s Martini Bianco on ice. The article quoted Tolomei’s claim that although one-third of the government expenditure had been directed to the Italian armed services, the military investments were notably obsolete. Even Angelo knew there was not much left in the stockpiles, and the nation was already committed to helping Franco in Spain.
It was time for Senator Tolomei to step down, Angelo thought. The greatest nationalist and enemy of the South Tyroleans was losing his effectivity. He could imagine his father jumping at the opportunity. The Colonel’s greatest dream was to stand beside Mussolini as his right-hand man. Minister of the Interior, for example. Minister Nicolo Grimani, head of all things great and small. An idea began to form in Angelo’s head—something Chiara’s father had once said about him going into politics—but the unmistakable presence of the Colonel pulled his attention away. Angelo watched his father stride towards him, the receding hairline serving to make him look more formidable than ever. Angelo pushed the paper underneath the rim of his bread plate and stood up.
“Angelo.” The Colonel nodded stiffly before turning to the hovering waiter. “I’ll have the same as what he’s having.”
The drink arrived almost right away, and the Colonel took out a pillbox, tapped a tablet into his hand, and took a sip of his martini. “Don’t tell your mother. And no, Angelo, it’s nothing, so you may hold back that question you want to ask.”
“How is my mother, then?” Angelo said and wondered whether the pill was for his father’s heart.
“She reads a lot, gets her headaches, goes to bed, but not before telling Christina and Francesca how to raise their children.” The Colonel put the pillbox back into his pocket. “You know how your mother is.”
Angelo nodded. He certainly did. Christina might not provoke his mother at all, but Francesca had a knack for it. The result had usually been his mother throwing both girls into the same pot. If one offended her, she refused to speak to either of them. Sometimes he was included.
“She finds your older sister is more concerned about which salons and which shops to visit rather than attend to her children, and your mother does not subscribe to her modern ideas, doesn’t even try to understand.”
Angelo knew the criticisms, was bored with them. He beckoned the waiter for the menus and opened his.
“Marco, however…”
Angelo looked up. The Colonel held an old-fashioned monocle to read his menu, as if unaware that Angelo was waiting for him to finish his thought.
Instead of replying, Angelo scanned his specials and pretended to be engrossed in them.
The Colonel
