The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  “You are probably tired from your journey,” he tells her. “I have a spare room, where you can get some rest.”

  He walks her to a small room with white walls, painted tiles on the floor, and a window that overlooks the sea. The air billows through the translucent curtains, and the image reminds her of her skirt lifting in the ocean breeze.

  “Yes, I need to sleep,” she says.

  He closes the door behind him, and she waits until she hears his footsteps down the hall. She notices the key in the door and turns it, hearing the lock click. Then, knowing she is finally safe, at least for the moment, she lifts up her rucksack to the bed and unpacks it.

  The contents are both what one would expect and what one would not.

  She takes out the first layer. The spare blue dress, her slip, and her underclothes. Then, the sweater from Luca, which she brings to her face and inhales.

  Her heart pounds as she removes the second layer. A small toiletry bag that contains her toothbrush, a bar of soap, and her comb.

  She next comes to her nightgown, then the small pouch with the amulet on a leather cord, which she cups in her hands. But then on the bottom of her rucksack, she withdraws a book, so slender it could be a journal. For a moment, she pauses. She rests her hand on its well-worn cover. Then, slowly and with great reverence, she opens it. Inside this book is another folded piece of paper. But it’s not something written in a code that she doesn’t understand. Nor is she meant to deliver it as she did during her days as a messenger for the Resistance. Instead, she unfolds it to reveal a sheet of musical score.

  She closes her eyes and hears the song imprinted on it.

  How does one hear music? Is it the rhythm of an unspoken language? An untranslatable code?

  Elodie hears the notes inside her head like the movement of water. It begins in soft ripples. She also hears the notes in color. An ink wash of pale blue, or the glimmer of white stone. Soothing at times, then escalating. Long, interconnected strokes that enter her in a wholly different channel. Not through her mind, but in the deepest cavity of her belly.

  She closes her eyes and remembers her cello back in Verona. The prestigious music school where she carried her instrument every morning, in the black case nearly the same size as she.

  She remembers holding the cello between her legs. Her knees two bookends against the lowest curve, one arm embracing the neck, while the other held the bow. With each stroke of her bow, her body coaxed the instrument into song.

  But now, she merely takes the sheet of music to the bed and folds her hands over the top. She relaxes as the notes float through her. Sleep finally takes over her, until there is nothing but the melody of the notes inside her head.

  Her parents had given her that first instrument when she was seven. For several months prior, she had gone to sleep hearing them discuss which instrument she would study. Her mother had wanted the flute, but her father had pushed for the violin. But Elodie had begged for a cello. She had first become enamored by the instrument’s beautiful sound while at a concert at her father’s school. The students had played the cello concerto, and she sat there mesmerized.

  On that walk home, she pierced the air with her own imaginary bow. She still heard the music in her head, every note lingering inside her. The dance of that cellist imprinted on every fiber of muscle and piece of bone.

  The day she was finally given her first cello, and the sight of her father placing the dark leather case on their dining room table, were memories that Elodie stored inside her mind, each image like a single note connected to the next. She would never forget the sight as her father unsnapped the case. The instrument had been wrapped in a beautiful red scarf to protect the bow from scratching the varnish, and when her father removed it, Elodie gasped.

  “It’s a three-quarter size,” her father told her as he handed the cello for her to hold. “When you get a little older, you’ll play on a full size.”

  She took the instrument from him and, immediately, Elodie felt her heart begin to race. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever held.

  “And the bow, Elodie . . .” Her father took out the bow and handed that to her as well.

  “She is her father’s daughter,” Orsina said, sensing that her daughter would have no problem once she learned the necessary techniques. “I can’t wait to hear her play.”

  Elodie began her studies slowly, her father adamant that whatever she learned, she would learn correctly. The first thing he taught her was to caress her cello.

  The ideal, he told his young daughter, was not to distort oneself. Instead, one needed to find a natural way to embrace the instrument. “You need to become one with it,” he told her.

  He took her hands and placed them on the top of the shoulders of the instrument. Then, slowly, he moved Elodie’s hands alongside the cello’s edges, allowing her to feel every curve.

  The sensation of the wood beneath her palms was soothing. Each part of the instrument’s construction evoked its own tactile response: the varnish of the wood, the length of the fingerboard, and the ridges within the scrolled neck.

  Elodie’s father showed her how to use her knees to secure the cello’s tail into the floor to prevent slipping. He lifted her bow from the table. “A cellist holds the bow naturally, not like a violinist,” he told her. And then he laughed and did a small pantomime, mimicking the awkward way a violinist gripped his bow, the left fingers rolling slightly, a technique that was used to increase the volume.

  Over the next few weeks, she learned to make notes emerge from her cello. She began to feel her arms transform. No longer did they seem like two unremarkable appendages, but a part of her that had their own unique power. Like a bird’s wings, they could lift and stretch. Her wrist, too, she learned to curl and extend, lending grace and beauty to her playing. She learned to wait. To take breaths. To hover her bow just above the bridge and then finally strike. She absorbed her father’s instructions with an understanding beyond her years.

  “A good musician must cultivate the art of interpreting,” he instructed her. “The staves of the score are a road map. You read the notes, you play them as the composer dictates, but the emotion . . . that is what makes the music your own.”

  She looked at him wide-eyed and rested her bow on her knee.

  “You must always listen to what your teacher tells you, then interpret it . . . demonstrate that you’ve understood far beyond just the playing. Do you understand, Elodie?”

  Elodie nodded. “Even though you’re young, I can tell you are gifted already by the way you sense what’s hidden beneath the music.” He walked over to her and took the bow from her hand, placing it on the music stand that was in front of her. Then, he took his daughter’s hands into his own.

  “When you were only a few months old, I held you in my arms. I looked at that beautiful face of yours and saw your mother’s almond-shaped eyes, her perfect mouth. But I saw you had my hands.” He opened her palm. “You have the same long fingers, the same wide expansion.” He closed her hand again and brought the fingers up to his lips and kissed them. “You’re destined to be a great cellist, because I can sense you want to bring your cello to life.”

  Just as her father anticipated, a special magic developed between Elodie and her cello. The instrument slowly became her, and she became the instrument. A unique bond that grew increasingly intense as her studies progressed. Sometimes when she held her cello, Elodie thought she could sense a pulse beating within its wooden cavity. It never occurred to her that it was her own heart she was hearing.

  As she grew older, she was given a full-sized cello that her father had bought from a retired teacher at the conservatory. Made of walnut wood with a honey-colored finish, she practiced on it daily and her repertoire soon blossomed. She played the Brahms Cello Sonata in E major and the Vivaldi Sonata No. 5 with increasing emotion. She mastered the Tarantella, a piece that challen
ged her stamina, but she practiced it for hours until the notes were as clean and as bright as sunlight.

  But just before her seventeenth birthday, only four months before her auditions to become a full-time student at Verona’s music school, her father came home with an early birthday gift.

  “It’s a Venetian cello,” he told Elodie. This time when the case was opened, the cello was wrapped in an enormous yellow scarf. Her father seemed to meditate over the instrument for a brief moment, as if he were offering a small prayer. Then, with a grand gesture of his wrist, he withdrew the material to reveal his daughter’s newly gifted cello.

  “It’s extraordinary!” Elodie couldn’t contain her excitement. She had thought the two cellos she had played on previously had been beautiful, but this one was truly magnificent. The instrument was unlike any cello Elodie had seen before. The varnish was not brown, but a striking red. A topaz-colored light glowed below its glossy coat, so that the cello appeared as though it possessed its own internal fire.

  Elodie’s hands fidgeted. She was desperate to touch it.

  “In honor of your mother, it had to be Venetian.”

  Her father handed her the instrument and by instinct, Elodie began to caress it. Her hands moved across the edges and every curve, just as she had done with her first cello years before. Almost immediately, she could tell the proportion of this particular cello was slightly different. The bottom part swelled slightly, thus creating a more voluptuous shape. Even the carving of the decorative scrolls seemed wholly different. As if the luthier responsible had been motivated more by whimsy then tradition when creating its flourishes.

  “Papa,” she said, still touching every part of the instrument, as though she could not quite believe her eyes. “This must have cost you a fortune!”

  “Its journey into our living room is a long and complicated story,” he said softly. “But I assured the former owner that you would care for the instrument as if it were an extension of your own body.”

  Her father returned to the case. He pushed aside the yards of bright yellow silk and retrieved a long, slender bow made of dark, exotic wood.

  “The owner said it had to be played with this bow in order to bring out the cello’s full beauty.” As soon as her fingers took hold of it, she remarked at its lightness.

  “It feels almost weightless,” she said.

  She pulled herself to the edge of her chair and began to prepare the bow. She first tightened the hair, and then applied the rosin.

  Her father took out his violin and gave her an A note so she could tune the instrument.

  She craned her ear to her string and plucked. She closed her eyes and checked the note again. Only when she had tuned the cello to precision did Elodie begin to play.

  Over the next several months, Elodie’s playing became even more inspired with her new cello. She played with such intensity, such passion, that the mere trill of her vibrato caused her listeners to sense that they were in the company of a prodigy. Now nearly seventeen, her limbs had lengthened and her body had transformed into a woman, both lean and strong. Her father often invited his friends from the Liceo Musicale to listen to his daughter play, hoping to prepare her for larger audiences in the future.

  She had both an acoustical and physically charming presence. When her arms drew the bow across the bridge of her cello and then pulled backward to sustain a single, long note, Elodie looked like a dancer. Professor Moretti remarked one evening that she resembled a swan, one capable of gliding across even the most difficult channel of music.

  Every afternoon after school, Elodie opened up the case and pulled out her cello. “It doesn’t sing until it’s in your hands,” her mother said one day, as Elodie began to play. She watched as her daughter rested her temple against the cello’s long, brown neck. The amber waves of the instrument’s varnish rippled in the sunlight, and the long shadow of the instrument’s body stretched across the apartment’s floor.

  Orsina waited all day to hear her daughter play. It was like a thirst inside her. Her daughter’s music brought beauty into her life. She still marveled that the child she created from her own womb had such a capacity to awaken things inside her. She had listened patiently as the girl first learned her scales, then graduated to arpeggios and more difficult études. Now she was playing full sonatas and concerti. Her daughter was on the cusp of adulthood, and Elodie’s playing became more nuanced and a certain sensuality infused her music. Her fingers now moved with confidence, a nimble precision as they danced up and down the strings. Her bow alternated from long, ribbonlike strokes to gentle caresses.

  Elodie grew her hair past her shoulders, and occasionally, when she was fully engaged in the drama of her playing, her hairpins would come undone and her face would become hidden in a curtain of hair. But when her hair was pinned high and in place, she was a striking presence. She had her mother’s china-white skin and Venetian green eyes. And when she performed, she appeared celestial.

  “She is not only a gifted player,” her father told her mother. “She also has a rarer gift in that she can hold the notes inside her head.”

  Her mother didn’t seem to understand at first. “What do you mean, Pietro?”

  “What I mean is that she has an extraordinary ability to memorize the musical score.” He shook his head. “She doesn’t get that from me, Orsina.”

  Elodie’s memory was something her mother had noticed quite early on. The girl rarely ever needed to write anything down. She could also remember with great clarity what she had been wearing on a particular day, even several years after. She could read a book once and remember with ease its entire content without having to refer back to a single page.

  “It’s the Venetian in her,” Orsina said. She knew that her daughter’s memory came from her bloodline. Venetians had spent centuries navigating a floating city of mazes. One needed to remember pathways, landmarks, or even anecdotes of particular places in order to find one’s way.

  Orsina couldn’t remember things that were written down like Elodie but she did have a strong visual memory, which she knew she had passed to her daughter. When the child was just four, she had directed Orsina home, telling her to turn left at the grocer, right at the park, and straight on the road with the gelato store in the front. She had smiled, knowing her daughter gave directions like her own mother had, and hers before her.

  But Elodie’s memory was even more astonishing than a typical Venetian’s, and Orsina was happy that it would serve her daughter well in her music.

  “This will set her apart from her peers,” Pietro told his wife. “She’ll be the one the professors want for their string quartets or for piano duets. It looks very impressive not to need to have the music in front of you when performing.”

  From the time she is ten years old, Elodie attends classes after school at Verona’s Liceo Musicale, on the corner of Via Roma and Via Manin. By eighteen, however, she studies there full-time. Her lithe frame carries her cello case to the school’s cloistered walls. Everything around her cast an impression. The blue-gray plaster walls, the stark practice rooms. The smell of dry leaves meeting moist air.

  Her memory is like soft, red clay. A face on the street. The pattern of a dress. All that she encounters remains fixed inside her mind, like a web of permanent fingerprints.

  She plays Vivaldi, Albinoni, Beethoven, Bach, and , the music flowing through her, her body soaking up each note. Her body is just another part of her instrument. Her legs are strong like a colt’s; her lean arms have the quiet strength of a dancer.

  When she plays, she closes her eyes. She hears the fire. She senses the water. Her bow is like lightning. Striking. Flashing. Touching down sometimes for just an instant, and other times moving back and forth like a saw. She does not play with any sense of fear.

  Outside, the world is blackening with the encroaching war. She senses it like a shadow as soon as she leaves the classr
ooms at the Liceo or her home. The women in line for food at the grocery store, their hands clutching ration cards; the striking factory workers protesting on the streets. The black, billowing shirts of the Fascist police on their motorcycles. The fear that doesn’t hang in a single note, but rather an intricate orchestration that is impossible for Elodie to decipher.

  She is chosen to play in an advanced string quartet with three other students. Lena, a violist, is chosen as well. The majority of girls attending the Liceo Musicale play the piano or the flute. But Elodie and Lena are among the few girls who play the strings.

  The two girls are opposites. Elodie, with her dark black hair, her sinewy body, and her green eyes. Her friend Lena looks more German. Her body is soft and curved. Her hair blonde, her eyes blue and round. There is a voluptuousness to the way she plays her viola as well.

  They quickly become friends and learn to complement each other’s playing. Lena laughs more easily and takes Elodie to the cafés to have espresso after class. She does not have Elodie’s memory, though. Lena is like the two boys in the quartet as she needs to read the musical score. But on several occasions, her beauty is responsible for distracting their classmates.

  “Franco was trying to look down your blouse today in rehearsal,” Elodie teases. “It’s a small marvel he didn’t lose his place . . .”

  “He’s an imbecile.” Lena snorts. “He wouldn’t be able to open my bra even if he had three hands.”

  Elodie is amazed by her friend’s quick tongue. It’s such a contrast to Lena’s angelic looks and the mask of demureness she wears through the halls.

  Lena is critical, too, of Mussolini’s alliance with the Germans. “Those swine,” she calls the Germans. “The lowest from the gutter. You just wait and see . . . if we’re not vigilant, we’ll be like Czechoslovakia and they’ll be steamrolling in here and ruling our country.”

  Elodie can feel the weight of eyes on them as her friend blurts out her feelings.