The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  This was when Angelo first started to read people’s faces. To see hidden emotions in their eyes.

  Happiness, sadness, anger, and frustration were easy to read in people’s eyes. But he had been trained to look at what lay beneath the skin. Diagnosing a patient was made through a series of observations, each one connected to the next. So what intrigued Angelo was being able to recognize someone who was carrying secrets, struggling not to reveal their fear.

  Angelo woke up early the next morning. He knew if he timed things correctly, he could see his father arriving at the docks and coordinate with one of the men to take him over to San Fruttuoso.

  “Papa!” he yelled, as he saw his father’s boat saddling up to the port. He waved his hands above his head to catch his father’s attention.

  His father looked up and returned a wave. As Angelo walked closer to the boat, his father called out his name.

  Angelo smiled. “It looks like your trip was a success!” He pointed to the full nets, which were leaping with life.

  “Non male,” he said with a smile. His teeth were like a piano of chipped and missing keys.

  He reached over to embrace Angelo, who was dressed in his best blue shirt and crisp trousers. The salty smell of his father’s skin returned Angelo immediately back to his childhood.

  “How is my doctor?”

  “Not a doctor, yet, Papa.”

  His father shook his head. “Well, it’s good enough for me! What a surprise to see you.”

  “Yes.” Angelo smiled. “I wanted to surprise Mamma. I’ll be home later tonight.”

  “Your sisters will be so happy to see you looking so well. . . .” He patted his son on his back.

  “Tonight, Mamma is making dinner. But this morning I need to go to San Fruttuoso.”

  “Leaving, eh? You’re home less than a night and already going someplace else.”

  “Yes. Just for a few hours. I was going to ask someone to take me over.”

  “What about your father? I have a boat.”

  “But you’re tired, Papa. Let me ask someone who hasn’t been out all night.”

  “I am never too tired for my son the doctor . . . What’s in San Fruttuoso?”

  “I have to meet someone, Papa.” Angelo tried to remain vague.

  His father shook his head, but then looked at his son more closely, a faint smile crossing his face.

  “Meet someone?” His father smiled again. “Let me guess: It’s a girl!”

  Angelo nodded.

  “Well, then,” his father said. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” He motioned for Angelo to hop into his boat. Angelo stepped into the center, making sure to avoid becoming tangled in the nets, which were piled high.

  “Papa,” he said, “I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting all this enthusiasm!”

  His father grinned; the missing spaces of his teeth only enhanced his look of mischief. “Angelo,” he said, laughing. “We should go . . . You don’t want to keep her waiting!”

  TWELVE

  Portofino, Italy

  APRIL 1934

  The week Angelo was off from medical school, he traveled every day from Portofino to San Fruttuoso. Either his father or his father’s fisherman friends became his ferrymen, dropping him off at sunrise and picking him up late at night. He always met Dalia in front of the café, bringing her flowers from his mother’s garden. And she always carried a new basket of lemons.

  He never told her he was aware that one of her brothers was always watching them. He knew he would have done the same in any similar situation involving one of his sisters. So he courted her as best he could under the circumstances: telling her stories and making her laugh. Buying her an espresso and a sfogliatella. But trying nothing more than to hold her hand.

  When the week came to an end and he had to return to school, he promised to write her every day.

  “Might I have your address to write to you when I’m back at school?”

  She pushed her hands into her skirt, showing him that she had no paper or pencil with her.

  “I have!” he said resiliently. He put down his basket and reached into his satchel.

  “Tell me,” he said lifting the pen to the air.

  “It’s simple,” she said. “Dalia Orembelli. We have our home and lemon grove just behind the Piazzetta Doria Pamphili. Just put my name on the envelope and write that address, and the letter will get to me.”

  “I’m a good writer,” he told her. “You will see.”

  Her face did not have the reaction he anticipated. He saw her eyes begin to moisten, and a slight tremor rippled across her chin.

  Without her having to say another word, he immediately knew what pained her: She couldn’t read.

  “Stop your worrying, Dalia,” he said, taking a finger to gently move away her falling tears.

  He could see the flush in her face, like a rose that deepened in color before him.

  He took her into his arms to soothe her embarrassment.

  “My limonina . . . You are not just beautiful. You are smart, too.”

  She lifted her face from his chest to look at him, and he saw his reflection in her watery eyes.

  He placed a finger beneath her chin, whispering, “It isn’t hard to learn. When I come back for Christmas, I will teach you. You’ll learn to read through my letters.”

  And then he kissed her for the first time. Her brothers be damned if they tried to stop him.

  She saved every one of his letters. And just as he had promised, one arrived daily. And although she could not read them, she did as he had instructed: She put every one in a box and waited for his return.

  The box was simple, almost crude. A wooden one that, as a child, she had reserved for her most precious things. When the letters began arriving, to make room, she took out the small things she had once deemed so special: the glass button, the small sterling silver pin, and the tortoiseshell comb, and tucked the letters inside.

  And although she wished she could read the words and understand what her love had written, just holding them in her hands gave her sustenance. She loved to look at his perfectly rounded letters, the curve of his script, the neatness of his lines. She thought she could sense the content even though she was incapable of reading a single word.

  And so Dalia waited, counting the days until he came back to her to fulfill his promise.

  When Angelo returned, they walked up to the top of the peninsula where the view was most beautiful, and there under the shade of a lemon grove he began to teach her to read.

  He wrote out the letters of the vowels and the consonants neatly, and then once she mastered their sound, they moved on to short, simple words.

  “Let’s now see if you can begin with my first letter,” he said, knowing that he had written it as simply but as purely as he could.

  She took the little box made from cypress wood and opened the lid. The first letter he had sent was right on top.

  She pulled out the paper from the envelope.

  He could see her forming the sounds in her mind before working up the courage to actually say them. Gazing at her expression, Angelo knew that she could read the three words. The meaning of their simple beauty was floating across her face.

  She smiled and turned to him, kissing him sweetly on the cheek.

  “‘I love you.’ But that’s too easy,” she said, gripping his hand in hers.

  “No, that’s not easy at all,” he said, staring straight into her eyes. “That’s beautiful and rare.”

  Within months, she was reading with ease. Now when his letters arrived, she opened them and devoured every single word. He also began to send her books. Her head was alive for the first time with the world and its possibilities around her, and her heart beat faster every time she saw the postman walking up the street.

  Her p
arents, now well aware of the courtship, were delighted that their daughter had charmed the heart of a soon-to-be doctor. They had so little money that a dowry was impossible, yet this young man seemed not to care.

  “Do not worry, limonina,” he wrote. “I only want a life and a family with you.”

  She counted the days until his next visit, throwing herself into her chores and reading the novels he had sent with little love notes tucked inside.

  Then, a week before he was to return for the summer break, his last letter arrived with another sealed envelope enclosed. The front read “Please wait to read this with me.”

  A few days later, he arrived in San Fruttuoso looking more serious then she had remembered him. His hair was shiny and neat; he wore a pale blue shirt and white linen trousers.

  In front of the café where they always met, she was dressed in a white peasant skirt and blouse. As always, she had tucked a blossom behind her ear, and her basket was full with fruit.

  “You look different,” she said as he went over and touched her arm. Inside she felt herself grow cold with worry.

  “Let’s go up to the lemon grove,” he said. “Where are your brothers?”

  “No brothers today,” she said. “They are all out on the boats.”

  The two of them walked up the rocky path to their secret place. There, in the midst of the canopy of branches and fragrant lemons, she pulled out the last letter he had sent, still sealed in the envelope as he had requested.

  It was written on heavy, handmade paper the color of natural linen. The edges were deckled and soft like a bird’s feather.

  “Now open it,” he said softly. He noticed her hands were trembling.

  She opened the small envelope, which had remained glued tight.

  He saw her eyes register the words written within, and the gentle wave that came over her face, transforming it within seconds from a canvas that initially wore an expression of trepidation to one full of sheer joy.

  She put down the paper, on which he had written, ever so simply, “Will you marry me?”

  “Oh yes!” she cried. “Oh yes!”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, then took her finger to his heart and traced the words into his shirt. “I love you.” Then she kissed him so deeply and pressed her body against him so tightly, he felt his very heart sealed onto hers.

  They married four months later in the abbey in San Fruttuoso, his family climbing up the weathered stone steps up to the church in a single file. The smell of lemon blossoms and jasmine clung heavy in the air.

  Dalia’s mother had made her a gown from simple white cotton, and wove a crown of verbena flowers through the bride’s long black hair.

  That night, Angelo took her into his arms, and as his head fell onto her breasts, he felt as though God had given him his own perfect cloud to forever rest his head on.

  He kissed every part of her. The pink raspberry of each nipple, the globe of each breast. Every part of her was a piece to be discovered. To be touched. To be tasted.

  He began to move down the length of her. His lips, his tongue, gently sliding the narrow line that divided her rib cage. He could feel her heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird, so rapid he thought she might take flight. As she quivered and moaned softly with his every touch, he continued along his path of discovering his bride.

  “Dalia,” he whispered, as he lifted one leg over his shoulder.

  “Where do you begin and where do you end?” he whispered into her skin. Her body was a map of hidden pathways each interconnected to make an exquisite whole. He took his fingers and traced the line from her ankle to her calf, circling behind her knee, then continuing up her thigh. He paused. He circled. He inhaled her, cradling her pelvis like a basket of fragrant blooms.

  “My love,” he said, and kissed her.

  She opened her mouth like an orchid.

  And he sealed her kiss with his lips.

  Angelo now knew the answer to a question his classmate had once challenged him with: “At what point is a woman most beautiful? When you first see her body? Her heart? Or her soul?”

  It was at that rare moment when you hold the woman you love in your arms and you see all three at once.

  THIRTEEN

  Verona, Italy

  JUNE 1943

  Elodie was not so beautiful that the other girls were jealous of her. She dressed so modestly, and her body was so slender and without curves that her only striking feature was the intensity of her eyes. But this was a benefit to her work for the group—a cloak of plainness that enabled her to walk undetected through the streets of Verona, not a single man lifting his head in her direction. For Lena, it was far more difficult. She was harassed constantly. The soft, protruding pillow of her breasts, the roundness of her hips, and the elevated shelf of her buttocks, were all physical attributes that made her far more likely to draw attention. Aware of this, Lena tried to dress as modestly as possible, choosing primarily drab shirtdresses or the standard white blouse and navy skirt. But still she caught the eyes of the men who sat in the café calling out to girls as if it were a sport.

  Most of the other girls who volunteered were handed books that contained small coded messages, just as Elodie and Lena had first been given. The others, who traveled on bicycle, were able to carry their messages in other clever ways. The men removed the rubber stops at the end of each handlebar and inserted the scrolled paper. The girls pedaled through the streets, committed to their delivery. They were never told the content of the messages, even if they asked.

  “We’re doing you a favor, by maintaining your ignorance,” the men told them. “We can’t take the risk that you might divulge something if you are ever interrogated. It’s best to keep you in the dark.”

  The girls did not insist, and continued to do as they were told. They reveled in the excitement of having an assignment for the cause, which contrasted so sharply to the routine of their lives. At home, their mothers expected them to help with the laundry and do schoolwork. They felt a freedom, and even a sense of power, when ferrying secret information that needed to be delivered to help liberate Italy.

  A few weeks later, the girls entered the back of the bookstore to attend one of the meetings, but arrived in the middle of a heated discussion. “We’re hearing from our comrades that we should be expecting a German invasion by the fall and that we need to be prepared. Our men are starting to get ready in the mountains. We’re going to start organizing delivery of guns, ammunition, and more supplies to them,” a voice said from the crowd.

  Luca agreed. “My brother’s already scouting the mountains with Darno Maffini. Berto is arranging contacts in France. All of us here in the city need to be efficient and organized. They’re counting on us to get them what they need.”

  A large, stocky man in overalls was standing in the front, trying to get his point across. “Yes . . . Luca’s right. We need to start preparing before winter comes and access becomes too difficult.”

  “And what about men? There aren’t nearly enough of us . . .”

  “We need to think about getting more women involved . . .”

  “Too dangerous!” someone barked back. “Would you want your own sister in the line of fire? Think about what those pigs would do to one of them in a holding cell.”

  Beppe, one of the key organizers, tried to settle the crowd. “Listen, we can’t deny the danger. That is a fact. But we also know the women of Verona are fed up with war.”

  Someone in the background snickered. “They can gladly take their husbands, but not their sons!”

  Beppe smiled. “Well, that’s true. That’s why they’re getting angrier.” He leaned over the crowded table. “But let’s be serious. Our own mothers and sisters have been selfless for years in the name of Italy. But now they are becoming disillusioned. They see their conditions deteriorating. The milk and food for their childre
n being rationed, their shelves nearly bare. Mussolini promised them a strong, united Fatherland, and they are tired of receiving nothing but empty promises for their hardship.”

  “Our own partisan, Jurika, in the mountains now, enlisted with us because her brother was sent to Africa and came back with an amputated leg and no money to provide for his family. He shot himself in the head, just so his mother and sister could get his pension. And the state tried to refuse him even that on the grounds of his suicide.”

  “We have two other women in our room today who want to help!” a voice shouted.

  Elodie and Lena could feel all the eyes of the room suddenly turn to them. Brigitte Lowenthal wasn’t in attendance and the girls were the only females in the room. It was Luca’s voice that had pointed them out.

  “These young girls want to save Italy as much as we do!” His voice was so impassioned, it gave Elodie goose bumps.

  As everyone craned their necks to gain a view of Elodie and Lena, both girls blushed in embarrassment. Then Lena’s strong voice filled the air.

  “It’s true. I would die for Italy! And my friend here saw her own father dragged from his house and beaten by the Fascists.”

  Beppe stood up and clapped his hands to silence the room.

  “We will get the job done. We will get the guns to our men. We will sabotage the rails and intercept deliveries. We will find ways to be more cunning . . . one step ahead of them, even when we have less manpower. Let’s put our heads together, make full use of our talents, and figure out how to stop this bloody regime!”

  The room exploded with applause and cheer.

  “They better quiet themselves down.” Elodie looked at Lena, revealing her apparent alarm. “What if someone hears all the noise and reports it?”

  But Lena wasn’t listening. She appeared to have become completely enraptured by Beppe’s speech.