The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  Berto Zampieri had just returned to Verona from a secret mission in Paris, where he met with members of the French Resistance. During a meeting in Luca’s bookstore, he informed everyone that the Germans had already started deploying troops into Italy.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” Beppe told the group. “We need to get organized. Establish our men in the mountains. Get the provisions ready. Make our connections with the villagers up there who will help us.”

  There was a rumbling through the room. “Quiet!” Luca bellowed. “Let Beppe speak!”

  “Every one of you is valuable to our mission. We will be talking with you all individually over the next few days about how to best use your assets and connections to our advantage.”

  Lena looked at Elodie and raised an eyebrow. Her eyes were ablaze.

  Elodie could see that Lena didn’t seem nervous at all. On the contrary, Lena looked as though it was the night before Christmas. She was radiant and smiling.

  Two days later, Lena met with Beppe in a café nearby. She came alone. “The men who have already gone to the mountains now need ammunition and grenades,” he told her. He asked Lena if she’d be willing to undertake a mission.

  He told her she could tell no one. They would give her a small shopping basket of vegetables with grenades hidden underneath. She would have to carry it several miles, past Fascist police who might ask to look inside her basket.

  “You will not only risk death if you’re discovered,” Beppe told her. “Before they shoot you, they could do things to you that are worse than death.” He looked at her with grave seriousness, never once blinking his eyes. “It is essential that you understand the risk before you take this on.”

  Lena looked squarely back at him. “I’ll do it. Just tell me when and where.”

  A few days later, she was given the basket. On top, someone had put a head of lettuce, a cluster of tomatoes, and a loaf of bread. Underneath were eight hand grenades. The weight of the basket was substantial.

  “Lena, you cannot let on that the basket is so heavy,” Beppe instructed her. “You don’t want some man to offer to carry it for you. I want to see that you can lift it now, without showing any physical strain.”

  Lena walked over to the basket and raised it. She was used to carrying her viola everywhere, so this delivery seemed quite manageable.

  “I can do this,” she said. “Just tell me where I have to go.”

  “You need to pass the amphitheater, cross the Piazza Bra, then take Via Roma to reach Castelvecchio. There you will cross the bridge, walk for several meters through the Campagnola area, until you find a park. Someone will meet you there. He will be sitting on a park bench reading a copy of the Inferno. You are to sit on the bench and place the shopping basket on the ground. After a few moments, he will get up and take your basket. You are to distract yourself by looking at the children playing in the playground. Do not look in his direction until he has walked away.

  “He will leave the copy of the Inferno on the bench. You are to take that home with you and give it to me.” Beppe cleared his throat. “Is that clear?”

  Lena nodded. “Yes. I understand what I have to do.”

  “One other thing,” Beppe said. His hand reached out to touch her shoulder, but she moved, and his fingers accidentally touched the skin below the short sleeve of her blouse. She shivered.

  “Yes . . .”

  “If they arrest you, they will interrogate you. And they will use brutal measures . . .” He didn’t need to elaborate any further; she knew very well what they could do to her. It was beyond words.

  “But no matter what they do to you, it’s essential you don’t give any information about who you are working for. Do you understand?”

  “I will tell them the truth, Beppe.” She looked him straight in the eyes and he felt heat pouring out from her, as though her gaze had the capacity to scorch his skin. “That I did this completely and wholly by myself and for Italy.”

  She walked with the bag for what seemed like over an hour. In agony from the weight, she did her best not to show the strain. Through the streets, past the amphitheater, along Via Roma, and across the Adige River. When she got to the third crossing, Fascist police were there checking people’s papers.

  She stood on line with her basket. The lettuce was beginning to wilt, and the tomatoes were sun-ripened and fragrant from the heat. Below, the grenades were getting heavier.

  She was wearing a light blue dress and her hair looked even blonder from the sun.

  “Where are you going?” one of the police asked. He took a rifle and pointed it at her bag. He looked at her and smiled again. “And what do you have there?”

  She smiled coquettishly. “What does it look like, Officer? Bombs, of course!”

  He laughed and made a lewd gesture. Bombe, he said, the Italian slang for breasts.

  But Lena didn’t reprimand him. She gave him her heartiest laugh, which delighted him even more.

  “You’re a spunky one. I like that! Would you want to go to a movie with me sometime?”

  Inside Lena was shaking, but she kept her arm straight with her dangerous package and her smile firmly on her face.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I have to get this to my grandmother before lunch. You’ll have to catch me another time.”

  “I’ll be here waiting,” he said. She noticed that he winked at her as he waved her through.

  Lena was unable to keep her latest mission a secret from Elodie. The story was too good not to relay to someone.

  “When I told him I was carrying bombs, he just laughed!”

  “Oh my god, you’re just lucky he didn’t take a look inside your basket!” Elodie gasped. She was shocked by her friend’s brazenness. She could never have pulled off something like that.

  “I had a backup plan, if he did that,” Lena said, laughing. She took a finger and with a quick flip was able to knock the button of her blouse out of its loop.

  “I would have leaned over and let him peek into something else instead of the basket.”

  Elodie shook her head. “I would never be as good as you under pressure . . . and I certainly don’t have those to fall back on!” She pointed to her friend’s generous cleavage.

  They both laughed, before Elodie suddenly grew serious.

  “We shouldn’t take this lightly, Lena. We both know that had he not fancied you, you could have been discovered and shot!”

  Lena looked at her friend and nodded. “Now that it’s over, it almost doesn’t seem real. It feels more like a dream. But you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right,” Elodie said. “I wonder if they’re going to ask me to deliver grenades, or if they think I’m not competent enough . . .”

  Lena looked at her friend. “Honestly, I think they realize you’re capable of carrying more important things. Your memory is an enormous asset to them, and they fully realize that. Think about how they’ve already been able to give you with so much coded information.”

  Elodie smiled. “Who knew the Venetian in me would be so helpful . . .”

  Lena raised an eyebrow. “What’s the Venetian connection?”

  Elodie shrugged. “I’m not sure. But my mother says if Venetians see something once, they never forget it.”

  SIXTEEN

  Verona, Italy

  JULY 1943

  Elodie busied herself with her family while waiting for Luca or Beppe to call on her. Finally, the cast on her father’s leg was removed and both Elodie and Orsina were shocked by the wrinkled flesh of his calf. The muscles had atrophied to such an extent that his leg was now as thin as one of Elodie’s arms.

  “You have to use those crutches . . . You must get around and move,” Doctor Tommasi told him. “You won’t ever be able to get back to the Liceo Musicale at this rate.”

  On the way out, the doctor chastise
d Orsina for not being more forceful with him. “You need to make him walk a little each day. He’ll lose all mobility if he doesn’t get out of the bed.”

  Orsina shook her head. “I’ve tried, Doctor, but . . .”

  “I know it’s hard, but try and help him. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  Orisna wiped her eyes. “I know you’re right. I will work on getting him moving around as soon as I can.”

  “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.” He kissed Orsina on both cheeks. “I’ll come by next week to check on him.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve always been so kind,” she said, walking him to the door. “I hope we’ll all be in better shape when you come for your next visit.”

  The next day, Pietro moved from the bed to the kitchen table. Even without the cast, he still needed crutches.

  To see her father in such a frail and weakened condition upset Elodie greatly.

  “I hate seeing you like this,” she said, coming over to where he now sat slowly reading the morning headlines. She began to rub her father’s shoulders.

  “Tell me, Papa, when do you think all this is going to end?”

  “When they shoot Mussolini, that’s when . . .” her father answered.

  “Pietro!” her mother whispered, but her tone was severe. “Use a lower voice. I’ll die if you’re arrested again!”

  “Let’s hope the partisans get him sooner rather than later,” he said as he placed the paper on the table. “Who knows what will happen in the next few weeks? There is talk they are going to close the Liceo Musicale.”

  “Is that true, Papa?” Elodie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “If it becomes too unsafe here, yes, it is possible.”

  Elodie was in shock. And for the first time in her life, Elodie wondered if there was a place for music in all this chaos and war.

  SEVENTEEN

  Verona, Italy

  JULY 1943

  It was Luca who assigned her next mission.

  “I don’t think I’m qualified to deliver hand grenades,” she said, looking straight into his eyes.

  “I would never ask you to do that, Elodie.”

  “But you and Beppe asked Lena to do that.”

  “That was different. And that was a test mission. We were trying to see how we might be able to get things past the controls. Maffini believes we have to start preparing for a German invasion. Lena was the right person for that job.”

  “And me? I’m the wrong person?”

  He looked at her and smiled. She thought she saw his fingers inch toward her and then pull back.

  “We have other ideas on how to best use your particular skills.”

  “How’s that?” she challenged him.

  “As you suggested, we’ve been trying to see if we could find a way to use music to hide coded messages. We are now working with someone who is an expert musician. Someone important. We want you to give him a message through a musical code.”

  “You want me to memorize it?”

  “We’ll actually need you to first help write it into the score—in the cadenza, like you said. You can visit him under the guise that you’re going for a private music lesson, and then play the coded message for him. Then, when you’re finished, he will comment on the cadenza, which you will say you yourself composed, and then you will hand him the encoded score.”

  Elodie felt her head rushing with blood.

  “I can do this, Luca, and I want to do this. My only limitation is my curfew time. After what happened to my father, I can’t travel too far. My mother would call the police if I didn’t return home on time.”

  “I am fully aware of your constraints, Elodie. But only you can do this.”

  Luca’s belief in her ignited Elodie’s spirit and her body. Her skin felt so hot, Elodie considered asking him for a glass of water. But the thought of him leaving, even briefly, made her decide against it.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so alive outside of a cello performance. She realized that Luca was telling her that she had been selected because of her talents. She heard his voice in the air:

  Your gifts have not gone unnoticed here. We want to utilize your memory and your musical skills. We can’t have our messages found or intercepted. The partisans in the mountains are relying on us to get their messages to their contacts in the city.

  When she was with Luca, every one of her senses was heightened, as if she were interpreting a new sheet of music. She waited for pauses in their conversation, a moment of breath, when he might lift his head and their eyes might meet.

  She wondered what it would be like to stare at his face at the different hours of the day. Would the colors of his eyes shift as the light changed, like in the ocean and sky?

  “Elodie . . .” He said her name aloud. And when he said it, she felt her spine soften; her limbs felt almost weightless. His words were slow, as if he were trying to warn her that she would need to exercise caution. In his voice, she sensed concern.

  “Yours will be a mission with a high level of danger. Part of me is hesitant to put you in harm’s way.”

  “Like Lena?” she said, sounding serious.

  “Lena’s mission was different. What she was carrying was itself the danger. She held nothing within her mind. They would have arrested her and had her shot on the spot if she was discovered.” Luca paused. “Your mission is different because you are different, Elodie.” He stopped speaking and looked at her. A momentary silence passed, but the air between them ricocheted with its own energy. One single breath held by two sets of lungs. Elodie interpreted it like a pause in the music, a suspension of words instead of notes.

  She could sense that he, too, was trying to remain focused. “You will not be physically carrying anything that could incriminate you. But you will possess essential information that we typically wouldn’t entrust to a staffetta.”

  Staffetta, the Italian word for messenger. She knew it well by now.

  “When you and I sit down to write this piece of original music . . . this cadenza, I will have to tell you things that the Fascist police would torture, even kill you for . . .”

  Elodie maintained her composure, interpreting his eyes like a musical score. Yet Luca was caught between his awareness of their need to deliver this message and his concern for her safety.

  “If this scares you, no one would blame you. No one expects beautiful, young women to die for their country . . .”

  “What about plain women?” She laughed.

  Luca smiled. “Elodie, you have a fantastic memory and musical talent. Two necessary things for this mission.”

  “You’ve never even heard me play.”

  “I will now,” he said. “You and I are going to spend as long as it takes to get this done right. And the reward for me will be your performance.”

  Luca placed a “Closed” sign in the shop window so that the two of them could work undisturbed. He confided in her the details of the mission.

  “We’re trying to coordinate parachute deliveries of ammunition into the mountains from England. Typically, we’d transmit this information in invisible ink, with lemon juice, that gets heated over a flame. But a few other people have been caught recently, so we need to use a new method.

  “You’ll deliver a new cadenza each week, two nights before the scheduled drop so that the partisans will have time to prepare for it.”

  Elodie nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Yes. I’m fully confident that you can,” he told her. “Yesterday, another staffetta delivered a book to me, which contains the key you will need to create the coded cadenza.” He went back to the main room of the store and returned with the book.

  “It’s here somewhere,” he said, leafing through the pages. He seemed to find what he was looking for midway through.

  “Here it
is,” he said, looking up to her. “It begins on page one hundred ten, and the instructions are written in over the length of every fifteenth page.” He took out a piece of paper and began transcribing instructions for her.

  “I obviously don’t understand anything of what this means, but from one musical person to another, here is what it says: ‘When the key signature of the cadenza changes from D major to D minor, that will signal that the coded information is about to begin. The first whole note trill after the key change will indicate where the drop will occur. If it’s on an A, the drop will be in Zevio. If it’s on an F sharp, it will happen at the top of Monte Comune. On a D, it will happen at Vigasio. Next, the number of sixteenth notes in a chromatic scale will indicate the time of the drop. For example, eleven such notes means the drop will occur at eleven P.M. Lastly, the amount of a series of triplets will indicate the number of ammunition boxes being delivered. Four triplets in a row will indicate four boxes and so on.”

  “Does this make any sense to you, Elodie?”

  She was staring at him, wide-eyed. She could hardly speak. The key for the code was sheer brilliance.

  “I understand completely,” she said. “Whoever thought of this is a genius.”

  “Well, when you meet our contact, don’t swell his head.”

  Elodie laughed.

  “So we have a great deal of work to do, Elodie. I need you to pick a concerto that typically has room for a cadenza. This will maintain our cover. The selection is up to you, Elodie. You’re the expert.”

  She was already ahead of him, trying to think of the next steps. She knew that even though this encoded cadenza would be nothing like composing a whole concerto or even a smaller étude, it would still require a tremendous amount of concentration.

  “Give me a few minutes to think about this, Luca.” Elodie closed her eyes and began to contemplate what would be the best choice. There were several she could pick from, but Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major seemed like the best choice. After all, several famous cadenzas had already been written for it over the years.