Her hand had shook as she handed him the documents.
He’d been a disgruntled older man with deep-set eyes and red veins on his bulbous nose and cheeks, like the roots of easily pulled weeds. His tone, contemptuous. “Where do you plan to go?”
“Innsbruck. I have family there.” At the word family, she had hesitated. Her mother had family in Innsbruck. An aunt whom Annamarie had never met. To get out of Italy she had to have some point of contact.
The guard had grunted before stamping the papers. She had received permission to be in the country for just three months. It had seemed an awfully short time to try and reestablish herself. An awfully long time when one did not know what lay ahead. She had wanted to ask him about how she might get to Innsbruck, by train or by bus. Ahead of her, the first houses of the next village and a fort on a low hill. Nauders. Instead of getting information, she had hurried through the barrier, her steps faltering just across. On the other side, in Austria, in German-speaking territory, she had dared to look back.
Nothing had changed. She remembered that now. The snow-covered fields had run into one another on both sides of the imaginary line. The mountains she had grown up with were the same, save for the fact that their faces were turned away from her now. She had looked at the backs of them.
To her right, a creek had bubbled southwards. From Austria into Italy. Heading past her freely, unobstructed by politics, by languages, by borders. Free to join the Etsch River.
She lit another cigarette. Something niggled in the back of her brain. What was it? She inhaled. What was it? She quickly exhaled. Of course!
In Bolzano, her geography professor had said that the Etsch ran from south to north. From Italy to Austria. It had not crossed her mind to dispute that, though she must have known otherwise. She had grown up with those fields and peaks and those rivers and creeks. She knew damned well in which direction the Etsch ran. She’d grown up with its currents always heading south. From Austria to Italy. Why had she not questioned that?
Dante’s Italy. Mussolini’s Italy. That was why.
“Fräulein?” In her mind, the voice of the surly guard. “Do you want to go back?”
Beyond the two barriers—Austria, Italy—Sebastiano had been leaning on the passenger side of the sky-blue Fiat, one hand in his pocket. Even from where she had stood, she knew he was hoping she would come back.
Annamarie had shaken her head, said Nein, and had turned to the road heading north. A day later, she had arrived in Innsbruck.
She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and pushed the dingy lace curtain back from the window of the rented room. She was tired of being tired, tired of hiding. The world was out there whether she liked it or not, and she had no choice but to make the best of it. Besides, she was starving, and the money was running out. She cleaned the landlady’s house and did the dishes every night in exchange for a cheaper rate, but Annamarie had not come here to be a maid.
She put on her coat and hat, wrapped her black woollen scarf around her neck against the damp and chill, and jogged downstairs, then out onto the street. The sky over the city looked as if it had been scrubbed by steel wool. Opposite her was the front of the train station standing in rigid salute, draped in red and white and that compelling black symbol smack in the middle, like a stamp of finality.
***
T he Kneippe was called the Iron Rooster, located in the cellar of a stone building between Jahnpark and the armoury. Feeling lost and overly hungry, and with shoes whose cracked soles let the slush seep in, Annamarie descended the stairs to a heavy wood door with iron clasps and an iron handle.
Music came from within, lilting and rhythmic, fast with brass horns, drums, and sporadic and haphazard piano. Inside, the air was malty with beer, stagnant with cigarette smoke, with something sweet beneath all that. The pub was dark—dark wood, dark-red velvet and black leather upholstery, dark floors—oily and smooth from centuries of use. The bar was right near the door in the worst-lit section of the room. In the middle, between the stone columns and beneath the arched ceilings, from which industrial-looking lamps hung, was an island of smashed-together wood tables inhabited by beige-uniformed recruits.
The music was coming from the radio and a few small loudspeakers that had been mounted onto the columns around the pub. She asked the barkeep—a handsome man, midtwenties, tidy hair, spectacles, and a neat moustache—what kind of music this was.
“Jazz. And swing,” he said. “From America. I’ll play it for as long as I’m allowed to.”
Annamarie wondered why he wouldn’t be allowed to. It was growing on her, and when she sat on the barstool, her knee bounced to the rhythm.
Relieved that the food was so cheap, she ordered soup and a glass of water, got a basket of bread for free, and listened to the young men in uniform. They were revelling in their newfound power, celebrating Hitler’s potency. She liked it. Smiled every time she heard them laugh. They laughed a lot.
The barkeep brought her a bowl of broth with a Knödel in the middle. It was warm, filling.
“Don’t you want something stronger with that?”
She looked up, startled by the man who had come up behind her. He leaned on the bar, glanced at her soup, then raised three fingers to the barkeep, who nodded and turned to the tap.
“I’m fine,” Annamarie said. “Thank you.”
“Franz von Brandt,” he said, sticking out his hand.
