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.
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.
Chapter 2
Graun, April 1937
A nnamarie sneaked into Jutta Hanny’s inn through the back door of the kitchen to find Alois there. “Hi,” she whispered, and put a finger to her lips. “Where’s your mother?”
Alois squinted at her from behind his spectacles. His eyes were always a little slanted, but the way he looked now reminded Annamarie of a Chinaman in a white apron.
He giggled. “What are you doing here, Annamarie? Your father is here and asked if we’ve seen you.”
“Please keep your voice down,” Annamarie pleaded. “Nobody is to know I’m here, all right? It’s a game.”
Alois was over twenty, but he was slow, so everyone spoke to him as if he were still a child of five. He shifted from one foot to the other, his stocky body a stunted combination of man and child, and the long apron made him look even shorter than he was.
He smiled and put a finger to his lips too. “I won’t tell.” He picked up a board of sliced smoked bacon and ham garnished with pickled vegetables. In his other hand he balanced a basket of bread. With his back to the door,
