It had been a stressful time for her, with evaluations and things.

Felix himself had been grouchy, full of doubts and aversions to the training at the Gendarmerieschule, and the future he could imagine in the job. The bottles of wine hadn’t helped. Maybe he’d brought it on unconsciously. Maybe she had?

He winced as he sat into the patrol car, remembering.

“Can you commit to anything?” she had yelled. “Anyone?”

Commitment: did the word haunt everyone these days?

It was true: he had been whining, and he had been whining because he was covering up something, even from himself. She sure had hit a nerve when she yelled that he was faking it.

Faking? All his moaning: how this had all been rigged by his mother, and that he should have known it; how he’d signed up at a time of guilt and bad judgment, when he was broke and unsure, and the dates had gone by for readmission to repeat the year; that many others in his class were stand-offish because he’d gone beyond a Matura. Others in the class hadn’t even finished that far in school.

Felix had never found out, and never tried to find out, for sure if some of the trainees had heard about his father. And he had to admit that he too would have wondered about this Kimmel guy and if someone hadn’t greased the way for the poor widow Kimmel’s young lad to join up the Gendarmerie.

Faking, most definitely. The simple fact was that he didn’t mind the training at all. The complex fact however was something that Giuliana had latched onto right away in that rousing, bitter fight. It was that he complained because he was beginning to enjoy the demands made of him, its impositions and schedules, its rules and habits. He just couldn’t admit it to himself.

He checked his walkie-talkie and then the car radio. Korschak okayed him and reminded him to speak slowly. Ha ha. He pulled out of the yard, mentally plotting his way to the school again, and scanned the platz and the corner by Gasthaus Weber as he coasted by. He returned a small wave from the geezer who usually hung around on the bench there.