The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  “I wish he wouldn’t wear those overalls,” Lena whispered. “Otherwise, that’s a man whom even I could cook pasta for at night.”

  Elodie smiled. The thought of Lena cooking pasta for anyone seemed comical.

  “Maybe you should offer to play your viola for him. I think you’d have more luck winning his heart with your music than with your cooking.”

  Lena shot Elodie a bemused look. “And Luca? Are you going to offer to play your cello?”

  Elodie stared ahead, a thin ribbon of a smile crossing her lips. “I won’t offer anything. But I will do whatever I’m asked.”

  Elodie and Lena found themselves increasingly busy as summer began, even without their classes at the Liceo Musicale. They would go every Wednesday to Luca’s bookstore. Luca would always greet them at his front desk. If there were customers already in the store, he would wait until they had left before taking the girls to the back room.

  “My music girls,” he would say and smile. His smile lingered a bit longer on Elodie. “Too bad all your heart goes into your instruments . . .”

  Elodie raised her eyebrow.

  He laughed, drawing back the curtain of the storeroom that they knew so well from the meetings.

  Elodie had yet to see the room without anyone in it, and she was surprised to find it now so still and empty.

  They followed Luca to the shelves in the far corner, pushing past the chairs and leftover debris from the last meeting.

  “I’m glad the two of you have passed the first round of tests,” he said.

  “Tests? What tests?” Elodie seemed confused.

  “The last envelopes we asked you to deliver were actually blank . . . But you got them to where they needed to go, so now we know we can trust you with larger assignments.”

  Lena’s face curled.

  “Don’t act so insulted.” He laughed. “We do it with everyone.”

  “They just need to be cautious,” Elodie said, touching Lena’s arm. “It makes sense.”

  “I knew you’d understand the logic, Elodie. Thank you.”

  “Well, now that we’ve passed, what’s our next assignment?”

  Luca now stood on his tiptoes and pulled down two books from one of the shelves.

  “Beppe prepared these last night, so they’re all set.”

  He spoke first to Lena.

  “Take yours to the bar on the northeast corner of the Piazza San Zeno. There will be a man reading a book with a green cover at the table in the back. Sit down. Order a drink. Finish it. He will come over to you, place his book down on the counter, and pretend to flirt with you. You will get up, take his book seemingly by accident, and leave yours on the table.” He paused. “That’s it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Lena replied.

  “Repeat it back to me,” Luca said to her. “Slowly. I want to make sure you have everything right.”

  “I take this book to the bar on the northeast corner of Piazza Erbe . . .”

  “Stop!” Luca held up his hand to prevent Lena from going any further.

  “What’s the matter? Didn’t you say northeast corner of Piazza Erbe?”

  “I said the northeast corner of Piazza San Zeno!”

  “Oh.” Lena blushed. “I’m sorry. I must have heard you wrong.”

  Luca tried to hide his agitation. “Try again.”

  “I take this book to the northeast corner of Piazza San Zeno. I go to the back and look for a man reading a book with a green cover. I order a drink. Finish it, and then after a few minutes, I take the book he was reading, leaving mine on the table.”

  “Yes. Exactly.” He handed over a book with a red cover to Lena.

  “Now, you.” Luca looked Elodie straight in the eyes. She was mesmerized how his left one seemed to sparkle in the light and his right one seemed to absorb the shadow.

  “You will go to 7 Via Fogge. It’s a small tailor shop. The owner will be sitting in front of a sewing machine, making pillows. You go to him with the book in your hands, and tell him your mother sent you to ask how much it would cost to make three square pillows for her if she provides the fabric. He will tell you the price. He will then ask you the title of the book you are reading and whether it is any good. Tell him the title and mention that you wept during chapter thirty-three. After you finish your brief conversation, place the book down on the table next to him, pick up one of the pillows, and make some comment about its beauty. Then leave, pretending to have forgotten the book.

  “Now, let’s see if you got it right.”

  Elodie smiled.

  “I will go to 7 Via Fogge. There, I will find a tailor shop. The owner will be sitting at a sewing machine, making pillows. I go to him with the book in my hands, and tell him my mother would like to know the price for him to make three square pillows for her if she provides the fabric. He will tell me the price. He will then ask me the title of the book I’m reading and ask me if it’s any good. I will tell him the title”—Elodie lifted the book—“and mention that I wept on chapter thirty-three. After we finish our brief conversation, I will place the book down on the table next to him, pick up one of the pillows, and make some comment about their beauty. Then I will leave, pretending to have forgotten the book.”

  “Perfect!” Luca said exuberantly. “Perfect.”

  Lena reached over to touch her friend’s shoulder. “What did I say at that first meeting? Elodie’s memory is extraordinary.”

  The others in their group soon learned about her memory. The cellist. The slender girl with the black hair and green eyes. The girl who said very little but could recite anything back with razorlike precision. They marveled at Elodie’s capacity to recite entire passages of Dante’s Inferno, a whole chapter verbatim except for the three words that Beppe had changed for the sake of a code.

  Elodie never forgot a single word she was told, even if it made no sense to her.

  One time she was asked to remember a Lord Byron poem, but with every third word changed to one that didn’t belong.

  She did it with ease. Beppe slapped Luca on the shoulder and said, “We really got lucky with this one.”

  “Indeed,” Luca said and smiled directly at her. His stare was both heavy and light.

  She felt a strange desire to impress him. As if what she had already accomplished in her missions for the group hadn’t been enough.

  “Have you ever thought about having messages sent through music?” she pondered one evening. “If there is someone in the group who can read music, we can send things through code, like in cadenzas.”

  A cadenza was typically part of a concerto, written either by the composer or the soloist, in order to show off the soloist’s musical virtuosity.

  “You should ask,” she said, looking at Luca. She wasn’t used to speaking up like this and could feel the fire and excitement rising in her and wondered if it was revealed in her own eyes.

  She saw something shift in Luca’s eyes, too. She saw he was intrigued.

  Elodie felt exhilarated to be living in two worlds. In the morning and early afternoon, she was Elodie, the dedicated music student and devoted daughter. But in the late afternoon, she emerged in a new, more complicated role: a staffetta for Italy’s early Resistance. Twice a week, she would leave the walls of the Liceo behind and attend a meeting with Lena. When she returned home, she would climb the stairs to her family’s apartment, her cello on her back and her head full of Luca’s ideas, but when she turned the doorknob and entered the threshold of the living room, she could hear the silence between her parents like a dart through her heart.

  Her father had not regained mobility since his beating and still had to eat his meals in bed. One evening, Elodie convinced him to pick up his violin and try to play a few pieces with her.

  The sight of him trying to play, only to find that his bruised and swollen fingers were unab
le to move across the strings as before, was devastating to watch.

  Elodie began filling the air in the apartment with double the energy, as if she were now playing for her father as well. The contact with Luca and the energy of the early Resistance meetings also brought a new fervor to her playing. She now only wanted to play music that mirrored her internal energy. No more melancholy etudes or sleepy romantic nocturnes. She yearned for powerful, bold scores that made her feel strong.

  She played with such passion that her mother often came into the room and just stared.

  “You’re like a match, Elodie. I’m afraid you might ignite your cello.” Orsina was worried. “I hear changes in your music, Elodie.” She paused. “It frightens me.”

  Elodie looked up from her instrument. Her eyebrows lifted and her gaze narrowed slightly. “I am changing. I feel that suddenly I’m seeing everything around me in a completely different way.”

  Orsina could feel the tension just beneath her daughter’s words.

  She studied the girl. She did look different. There was no longer that wide-eyed innocence in her eyes. She was reed thin. Angles where there should have been emerging curves.

  “Elodie, there will always be evil in the world. We can’t change that. We can only try and add a little more goodness. You are making us upset with this kind of talk.”

  “Am I? Because I have acknowledged that our country has succumbed to brutality? That thugs arrest and beat up my father for playing Verdi a little too loudly?”

  “I want you to concentrate on your music! Not politics!” Orsina was shaking. “Elodie, you have a gift! Don’t you know how special and rare that is! You mustn’t let yourself become distracted . . .”

  Elodie’s back stiffened as her mother spoke. She could feel rage just underneath her skin.

  Orsina took a step closer and as she placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, Elodie winced.

  “Elodie . . . ” Orsina’s voice was softer now. “Renata Santorelli said she saw you going into a bookshop the other day with your friend Lena . . . What were you doing there?”

  Elodie looked her mother straight in the eyes and did not flinch.

  “What do you think, Mamma? I went to look at some books.”

  Orsina shook her head.

  “What, Mamma?” Elodie said, surprising even herself how easy it was to lie. “I can’t believe it would upset you that I like to read.”

  FOURTEEN

  Portofino, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1935

  Angelo brought his new bride back home to Portofino and waited to hear from the government where he would be posted as a doctor. Portofino already had a physician in place, due to an early initiative of the Fascist regime that every village in Italy have one.

  In the meantime, Angelo spent his afternoons reading the books on ancient history or seafaring adventures that he had bought during his time as a medical student in Genoa with money he made from a part-time job cleaning laboratory jars after class.

  In the morning, he would wake beside Dalia and feel the need to pinch himself. He couldn’t believe that a perfect specimen of human beauty could also be blessed with a perfect soul. He would always try and wake before her, just to gaze at her, the soft brown limbs extending from the white of her nightgown, her long, black hair falling between the wings of her back.

  He always greeted her first with his mouth, then with his hands. He kissed her everywhere: her cheeks, her neck, and his favorite spot behind her ear. He kissed the top of her shoulder, down the length of her arm. He took her fingers and kissed each one. Then after she had awakened in his arms, he’d unbutton the top of her nightgown, and cup her breasts, kissing each one, then lift her nightdress, to feel every inch of her warm, moist skin.

  Dalia would smile like a kitten as Angelo cradled the back of her head with one hand while taking the other to caress the length of her long, tanned thigh.

  They shared breakfast on a small, tiled terrace. Beneath them, ropes of flowers were resplendent in magenta and gold. Like a decorated gypsy, each garden seemed to have more flowers than the next. And the village’s yellow church reflected against the hills like a second sun.

  Later, Dalia would join Angelo’s mother to prepare the family’s meals. She would help roll out the pasta dough into thin sheets and drape them on damp towels on the table. Then, as Angelo’s mother instructed, Dalia would take her basket and go to the family’s garden to harvest the zucchini, tomatoes, and other vegetables in season.

  If the seas had been generous that day, the two women would then sit on the terrace and scale the fish or clean the tiny squids. Angelo’s sisters, who spent most of their mornings undertaking similar culinary preparations with their own mothers-in-law, would still find a way to come and spend some time with their mother.

  Dalia seemed to blossom with each passing day. She continued to read the books Angelo handpicked for her. And at night, when the two of them were tucked into bed, he would take the novel from her dainty fingers and begin to read to her aloud.

  Sometimes they were the latest novels in translation from America or books of poetry. But whatever Dalia was reading, it always sounded infinitely better when Angelo read it to her in his sweet and melodic voice.

  “Mother told me today how you’ve budded like a flower in her heart,” Angelo told his wife as he put the book down and wrapped her in his arms.

  “She said she was skeptical a girl from San Fruttuoso could be happy in Portofino. She was sure you’d hate the tourists that fill the hotels in the summer. And how crowded the port becomes in the high season . . .”

  “I have my jar filled with stones and shells from San Fruttuoso to remind me of its beauty,” Dalia said, taking Angelo’s hand in her own. “And that’s all I need. I would be happy anywhere as long as I was with you.”

  “I know, my limonina. I know. Me, too,” he said as he caressed her with his free hand.

  “She also said you are both devoted and devout, two essential things in a wife.”

  “She took me to San Giorgio to pay my respect to the Madonna. She told me she had left an orange there three days before she learned she was pregnant with you.”

  Angelo smiled. He had heard this story many times before. His mother always retold it on his birthday. She loved to make him a cake with orange zest grated into the batter.

  “And so did you go and also bring an orange to the Madonna?”

  Dalia jumped on top of him and kissed him on the forehead.

  “No, my darling. I brought her what had first brought us together . . . I brought her a basket of lemons.”

  Three months later, two important things happened. First, Angelo received notice that he was to be deployed to Ethiopia. Second, Dalia learned she was pregnant.

  The letter instructing Angelo to report to duty for Africa had not been a complete shock. Many of his peers had been conscripted into the Italian army, as Mussolini declared his intentions of making a new colony in the desert to expand the Italian empire.

  Thousands of Italian men had been drafted to fight Il Duce’s war in Africa, and doctors were needed almost as much as soldiers.

  “Two years, and then I’ll be home,” Angelo had told her, trying to remain optimistic. “If I fulfill my duty, I’m more likely to then get a position here at home. Doctor Pignone is nearing seventy now. Hopefully he’ll retire by then, and I can take his place and we won’t need to move.”

  Dalia began to cry. “I don’t want you to go, Angelo. I won’t be able to stand the separation.”

  “You won’t be alone, darling.” He tried to soothe her though inside his heart was breaking, too.

  She was sobbing, her entire body shaking in his arms.

  “My family will take good care of you. I will write every day, just like I did when I was in medical school. Your parents are close by, too.”

  She pull
ed away from him and raised her eyes to his.

  “I’m late, Angelo.”

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  “I think I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What makes you think that? How many weeks late are you?”

  “Just three weeks. But I am pretty sure, now. Haven’t you noticed a change in me?” She cupped her breasts to show that she thought they had become larger.

  He smiled. He had thought they were a bit larger recently. But he had never given much thought to the reason why, only to the pleasure of the bounty.

  Angelo felt both the joy at the unexpected news and the sadness of his departure.

  “But you should have told me from the minute you suspected.”

  “I was afraid to put a curse on it. I was too happy. Everything seemed too wonderful in our lives. And now we’ve had someone put the evil eye on us.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Angelo waved away her concern. He had enough of this village superstition from his mother.

  “You are healthy and strong. The baby will be fine. I will return and bounce him in my arms.”

  Dalia let him embrace her again. But a wave of uncertainty flowed through her, as if she had suddenly been engulfed in a dark cloud.

  “Angelo,” she whispered. “I wish I could be as certain as you . . .”

  “Don’t worry, my limonina,” he again reassured her. But something inside Dalia haunted her. His words had failed to soothe her. She continued to remain unconvinced.

  FIFTEEN

  Verona, Italy

  JULY 1943

  Elodie and Lena were changing from girls to young women. Even Elodie, who had never seen herself as a siren, now felt she was being treated differently. The girls noticed that with the success of every mission, the men treated them with more respect. Lena now hoped they would help her get the necessary counterfeit papers for the Morettis.

  No longer did the importance of a resistance group seem abstract. On the streets, people were more anxious than ever. The fear that the German army may invade at any moment was ever more palpable.