The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  The months passed, and Angelo and Nasai became more like father and son. Angelo taught him to read, and to eat with a fork and knife. To brush his teeth with baking soda, and to sing Italian songs.

  He imagined his own child back at home, growing larger every week in Dalia’s womb. He continued to write her long letters and he tried to imagine how beautiful she must look, so ripe and full of life.

  She wrote him letters on scented paper, sometimes tucking lemon blossoms into the envelopes so that even if it was only in scent, she could travel and be next to him.

  At night, he would close his eyes and imagine his time in Africa as a distant memory, his world instead filled with Dalia and their many children scampering around the Portofino terrace. The surgeries in a dusty tent in the desert would be replaced by house calls to families he had known all his life. And at night, he would sleep deeply with his limonina curled by his side.

  Dalia had tried not to think too much about the birth, but as the date drew nearer, her body seemed seized by a desire to prepare the nursery. Suddenly, nothing seemed clean enough, and the linen napkins for diapers all seemed like they needed to be refolded. As did the small dressing gowns her mother- and sisters-in-law had embroidered with her over the past several months.

  She had been walking toward her mother-in-law’s house, which was close to her and Angelo’s, when she was suddenly struck with a terrible pain. She felt her entire torso besieged by a contraction.

  Doubled over in agony, she somehow managed to get to the doorstep. Angelo’s mother quickly ushered her inside.

  “You’re in labor,” she told her. “We need to call the midwife.” She placed one hand on Dalia’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s frightening the first time, I know . . .” She wrapped a shawl around Dalia, who was shivering. “The first time is always the hardest. Next time, you won’t even blink.”

  She helped Dalia to sit and did her best to keep her calm. “I feel terrible to have to leave you, if even for a moment. But I need to get one of the girls to fetch the midwife. Vanna’s house is closest. I’ll run to her and come straight back.”

  Dalia whimpered that she understood.

  “But don’t worry, the baby won’t come right away. It could take hours . . .”

  Dalia let out another groan. The pain was excruciating. Moments after Angelo’s mother left, she felt another sharp pain, so intense, she cradled her belly in her arms and begged for it to stop.

  Just as she wondered how all the women before her had handled such pain, the contraction abated. The moment of reprieve was short-lived, though, and she felt the familiar sensation of her baby swimming inside her. The small fist of the child, pushing outward slightly from the corner of her abdomen. All of a sudden she felt another contraction, but now when she looked down, a flood of wine-colored fluid was pouring out of her.

  When Angelo’s mother returned, she found Dalia on the floor, white as a gull.

  In a vain attempt to stop what she thought was bleeding, the old woman grabbed the first towels she could find, then lifted poor Dalia in her arms and tried to keep her warm.

  Vanna, the sister closest to Angelo, arrived, ushering the midwife through the doorway. Each of them knew immediately that something had gone terribly wrong. The midwife, a wizened gray woman who had delivered hundreds of babies before, saw the pool of port-wine fluid beneath Dalia and felt her heart sink.

  Vanna gasped upon seeing her sister-in-law laid out like a pale and suffering pieta over her mother’s lap.

  “Oh my God!” she cried.

  Marina turned to Vanna and snapped into action. “This is not good. Start boiling the water, Vanna. Then get me a stack of clean sheets. We have to try and deliver the baby now.”

  With the water on the stove, the women draped a cloth on the long dining room table and lifted a semi-conscious Dalia on top, as this was the custom to prevent ruining the bed.

  “Marina delivered all three of my babies. You’re in good hands,” Vanna whispered into Dalia’s ear, in an attempt to soothe her. But she knew that when her water broke it had been cloudy like sea water, certainly not like diluted blood. She went to the bathroom and found a washcloth, soaked it in some water, and retuned to the dining room and brought it to Dalia’s forehead.

  Dalia looked like a frightened fawn. “Please, please tell me that the baby will be all right.” Her voice was desperate.

  Marina took her brown, papery hands and cupped Dalia’s abdomen and went quiet. She looked at the young girl and saw her white pallor, her teeth clenched with pain. She did what she thought would bring the girl comfort without making a false promise; she took the girl’s hand and gripped it in her own.

  The blood continued to seep from between Dalia’s legs, and Vanna tried to maintain a fresh supply of towels. Her two sisters had appeared, bringing every towel they had in their own pantries. Their mother was now wailing and calling out to God, Jesus, and the Madonna. To whoever might hear her supplication. Her fingers were wrapped over her rosary, her knuckles white from gripping the beads. From Dalia’s lips there was a faint murmuring, for she was too weak to cry out. The only word she uttered was Angelo’s name.

  “When will this baby come?” Angelo’s mother beseeched Marina.

  “It’s in God’s hands. All we can do is wait.”

  Dalia slipped into unconsciousness, just as the baby was pulled from between her legs, pale and lifeless. Marina worked swiftly, cutting the umbilical cord and gave Vanna the dead infant to clean and swaddle, so that it could be prepared later for its wake and burial.

  After Dalia’s placenta was expelled she began to hemorrhage, and Marina looked for any tears that might be causing the bleeding, hoping she might be able to sew them shut. But there was nothing she could repair.

  Her small, quick hands found the uterus, and she discovered what she feared the most. The uterus was lax and boggy. She desperately tried to massage it, but it refused to contract, and Dalia became blue underneath Marina’s desperate fingertips.

  After twenty frantic minutes, the girl was so cold to the touch that Marina knew the only decent thing to do was stop.

  “She is with the baby now,” she said, her eyes lowered and her heart heavy. Marina had delivered Angelo and had been looking forward to ushering his child into the world. But now there would be two funerals instead.

  Angelo’s mother began to wail and pounded her fists into her heart. Vanna, out of a maternal instinct, began rocking the lifeless baby in her arms. With her mother’s cries in the background, Vanna found herself making a shushing sound, as she brought the porcelain-perfect infant up to her face. Even though she knew her nephew’s cheek was cold and his skin china white, Vanna believed that the rocking in her arms and gentle humming could somehow ensure the infant a more blessed and peaceful sleep.

  No one could believe the room that Dalia had kept hidden all these months. When they began to prepare the burial for her and the baby, it was Vanna who first discovered the room with all of Angelo’s letters pasted inside.

  “Mamma!” she screamed, running next door where her mother and Vanna’s other sisters had already begun preparing Dalia’s body for the wake.

  Her mother was bent over Dalia’s limbs, a soft washcloth in her hand.

  “What is it, Vanna?” Angelo’s mother had been weeping since the tragedy. Her grandson, swaddled and pale, looked like a frozen ghost. He was placed in a wicker basket on a table. Tall candles were already lit beside him.

  “You must come! Immediately, Mamma. To Dalia’s bedroom!”

  Angelo’s mother was trapped in a deep fog of sorrow and could not understand why her youngest daughter would be so disrespectful. The ritual of cleaning the body before burial was a sacred one.

  “Vanna! Please stop this,” she reprimanded her daughter. “We need to make sure that Dalia is ready to be received by God.”

  “No,
Mamma. Please come. Please.”

  Her mother put down her cloth and washed her hands.

  Then, with great fatigue and a grief-stricken heart, the old woman walked to Angelo and Dalia’s house.

  Just before he married Dalia, Angelo had taken over a small cottage walking distance from his parents. It had been the home of his grandmother, and was only a few steps away from where his parents lived. He had such wonderful memories of visiting his grandmother there. The house was always filled with the smell of fresh garlic and simmering tomatoes. After her death, it had fallen into disrepair. The vines of roses that she used to cultivate on the trellis near her patio had become wild and overgrown. The white walls of the living room were now a cloudy sepia. The whole house reminded Angelo of a faded postcard from a summer holiday long ago.

  But in anticipation of bringing his new bride home, he had spent nearly two weeks throwing himself into every aspect of its repair.

  He had brought Dalia home to a place where he believed they would make their own little family, and in which she would find comfort and beauty. The rooms faced out to the sea, their marital bed was made with crisp white linen edged in blue, and every wall in the house he had personally covered with several coats of fresh, white paint.

  Now when the women walked into the house, a hush fell upon them. Dalia had maintained perfect order. The kitchen was spotless. The living room had one sofa and a small table with a few ornaments. There were several neat piles of books scattered throughout.

  “Come,” Vanna said. She spoke in a whisper to her mother and took her by the hand.

  The two women walked toward the archway of the bedroom.

  Vanna pushed the door slightly and led her mother inside.

  Not a single word or a single breath passed between the two women for several seconds. Just as Vanna’s had done minutes before, Angelo’s mother’s eyes widened with both wonder and disbelief. In between pockets of pale blue paint and bursts of shimmering white clouds, the wall and ceiling was papered with her son Angelo’s words.

  She turned to Vanna, her wrinkled fingers covered her mouth. “My God,” she said. “How she loved him.”

  “And he her . . .”

  The two women stood there looking at every corner, every crevice of the room, with their mouths half open. Neither of them could believe that Dalia could have undertaken such an enormous project during the months of her pregnancy. But right beneath their noses, she had created a room that was both a sky and a garden of letters. A place that was now frozen in time, the letters pressed to the walls like dried flowers. The plaster itself reinforced, by words from a heart that beat thousands of miles away.

  They laid Dalia out in her wedding dress, with a garland of lemon blossoms in her thick, black hair. Her eyelids had been weighted so they would remain shut, giving the appearance that she was sleeping. Beside her slept the swaddled infant. His white face had started to become mottled, so that even in death it looked like a sculpture. But now instead of white porcelain, the infant looked as though it had been chiseled from blue-veined marble.

  The crying in the house went on for days. An express telegram was sent to Ethiopia, telling Angelo the tragic news.

  Angelo, however, did not receive the telegram until two weeks later. A week before, on an emergency trip to another camp several miles from his own, his jeep was ambushed. The driver was shot and lost control of the vehicle. It crashed and turned over on itself, pinning Angelo’s leg under the chassis. Now, days later, he was in recovery from the surgery, his leg bandaged, one of his toes amputated, and his head in a fog of morphine.

  Angelo’s superior officer made the decision to wait to tell Angelo the telegram’s contents until he had recovered from the immediate trauma of his accident, afraid that the news would affect his recovery.

  Letting a few more days pass, the colonel eventually made his way into Angelo’s tent. Angelo was sitting with his foot propped up and a book between his hands.

  “Reading, as usual?” the colonel asked him.

  Angelo put the book down and looked at his superior officer. “Yes. It’s hard to concentrate on the words, though. My mind is still groggy.” He pointed to his foot. “It’s also hard to get around. I imagine I’m going to drag it around like a club, even once I’m off the crutches.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to manage it in no time. We need you in the medical tent . . .”

  Angelo smiled.

  The colonel hesitated for a second and Angelo, sensing something was wrong, suddenly grew serious as well.

  “You’ve had a telegram from back home,” he said, taking it from his breast pocket. The yellow paper shook slightly as he placed it in Angelo’s hands.

  Angelo looked at him for more information. But the colonel only lowered his eyes and said, “I will let you read the contents in private . . . but please know we are doing our best to make arrangements for you to go home as soon as possible.”

  The colonel quietly left the tent as Angelo took his finger and opened up the telegram.

  “Come home for emergency. Terrible tragedy. Wife and baby lost in delivery.”

  Angelo’s body began to shake. He tried to get up to reach his crutches, but he fell onto the tent’s dirt floor, his body too weakened to get to the crutches. The men in the camp heard his wails, and everyone stopped what they were doing, their hearts breaking to hear their comrade in so much pain. But it was Nasai who reached him first, who picked him up and held him. Who brought him his crutches so that Angelo could eventually stand.

  Angelo staggered out into the sunlight, the dunes of Ethiopia stretching into the horizon, and openly wept without shame.

  From the moment he received the telegram, Angelo felt as though his heart had been torn from his body. Every motion he performed was done without reason or emotion, but by a primitive instinct that kept his body moving toward the sole task at hand: to get back home.

  “Three weeks and you can go back,” the head of the camp told him. “We’re sorry for your loss, but we need to get a replacement here first before you can return.”

  “They can’t wait that long to bury . . .” His voice choked in his throat. “Sir . . . please . . .”

  “I’m so sorry, Angelo. We feel terrible about what’s happened. But I have my orders. There is nothing I can do.”

  When the replacement finally arrived, it was Nasai who helped Angelo pack his bags and organize his things.

  They moved between themselves, without speaking. Nasai the fatherless boy, Angelo the widower and childless doctor.

  Angelo still couldn’t comprehend the contents of the telegram; the reality was too much for him. And now he would be leaving this boy who felt more like family than friend.

  He had wanted to tell Nasai that he wished he could take him home with him. But he knew how unkind the villagers would be to this gentle boy from the desert plain, just because of the color of his skin.

  Still, in the midst of his grief, Angelo looked straight into Nasai’s eyes and told him: “I’m so sorry to have to leave you here.” He knew this would be the last time he saw Nasai, as his foot injury had rendered him technically disabled and he would almost certainly remain in Italy once he returned.

  Nasai smiled. “You are needed back home. You will save others just like you saved me.”

  Angelo fought back his tears.

  “I will see you again soon,” he told the boy. “You’re my only son now.”

  But Nasai simply smiled, his eyes shining with tears. “You are here,” he said, clutching his heart. “And at night, I will look up into the sky and know we are both looking at the same stars.”

  Angelo embraced the boy.

  “I’ve left you all my books,” Angelo told him. “You will find them near my cot.” He struggled to remain composed. “And I have given Amara extra money to ensure you always have enough
to eat. She didn’t even want the money. She promised me she would always look out for you, that you can even come live with her family, if you like.”

  Nasai smiled. “Thank you, Dottore. You have given me so much already. I do not want you to worry.”

  Nasai stood there for a second, looking one more time at the doctor who had saved his life.

  “I’ve made you something to remember me by . . .” Nasai opened up his palm and revealed a small wooden carving of a lion.

  “To protect you, while I’m not there.”

  Angelo took the small piece of wood, which had been carefully carved, oiled, and smoothed by this young boy’s hands.

  “Thank you, Nasai.” And he embraced him one more time.

  “Dottore, we must get going!” the driver called out to him.

  Angelo nodded. He went toward the truck, threw his crutches into the back, slid onto the seat, and took one last look toward the camp, where all the men had lined up to see him off.

  And as Angelo’s jeep began its way down the road, the last image he saw was Nasai running as fast as he could just to stay with him a bit longer.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Portofino, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1936

  It took Angelo another ten days to finally reach home. His foot was still shrouded in bandages and he walked with crutches.

  It was his father who met him at the port. The old man looked ancient. His face like driftwood, his eyes cloudy as fog.

  His father embraced him without speaking. Then he pulled back to look at his son, who appeared completely ravaged by the tragedy. Angelo was rail thin, his face unshaven, and he was bent over on crutches with what looked like a club foot bandaged in a ball of linen strips.

  “My son,” his father finally said, the words escaping from parched, lined lips. “I am so, so sorry.”