The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  The next morning, Elodie arrives at Berto Zampieri’s art studio, and Brigitte answers the door.

  She does not greet Elodie by name, but rather gives a faint smile and ushers her into a large room where several sculptures are on display. In the corner is an abstract rendering of a woman reclining. Elodie looks at the figure’s sharp hip and hollow pelvis and senses immediately that it’s Brigitte.

  She is standing alone with the smell of damp clay and plaster dust on the floor when Berto walks out to greet her.

  “This is for you,” he tells her. She glances at his hands grasping a canvas bag. His hands are clean and without traces of clay.

  “No, I’m not sculpting,” he says with a laugh. “No time for that right now . . . I have more pressing things to attend to.”

  Elodie smiles, embarrassed that he’s read her mind so easily.

  “Luca will meet you at the intersection where the two roads meet at the base of the Monte Comune. There, you will hike the roads together until you get to the camp. Take this package with you.”

  Elodie takes the bag from Berto’s hand.

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Your work has not gone unnoticed, Elodie . . .” He squeezes her arm. “And Luca told me about your father’s recent passing . . . I’m so sorry.”

  She stiffens slightly at the mention of her father. The grief is still raw inside her. “Yes, thank you. This is a good way to channel my energies.”

  Berto nods.

  Elodie takes the bag and looks down at its contents. On the top is fabric for sewing, but it is so heavy that Elodie knows something more important lies beneath.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not anything that can explode.” He looks at Brigitte in the corner and smiles. “It’s only some fresh food. If anyone stops you, just tell them you’re going to a picnic.”

  Elodie places the parcel in her basket and begins pedaling. She travels through Verona’s narrow alleys, past the Porta San Giorgio until the city streets become country roads and the farms and olive groves overtake the landscape. She stops midway, hot and sweaty from the day’s unseasonably warm weather, to peel off her sweater. Beneath the layers, she has on a linen sundress. She places her sweater on top of the package in her basket and resumes pedaling. After nearly an hour, she comes to the intersection at the base of the mountain. Luca is already there.

  He does not say her name, but merely watches her silently as she gets off her bicycle and hits the kickstand with her foot. She takes the package from her basket and walks over to him.

  He reaches into his pocket to find a cigarette and lights it, blowing the smoke into the air.

  When she approaches him, he feels the air escape from him. The white sundress and crisscross back reveal Elodie’s smooth, round shoulders and slender arms. He has never seen so much of her skin before. Every time she comes to the bookstore, she always wears clothes that befit a serious music student: prim blouses and long skirts that cover her knees.

  He wonders to himself, how many times can she transform in front of him. He had seen her morph from one creature to another when she played the cello. He had seen her as recently as yesterday, with her red sweater and black trousers, her eyes fierce as a lion’s burning into his. And now, as she walks toward him carrying the package, she no longer seems like a lioness or an innocent young girl; she is something in between, and perhaps more dangerous. A beautiful, young woman.

  He takes the cigarette from his mouth and throws it on the ground. And when she leans over to give him the package, he does what he was instructed never to do with one of the group’s staffette: He pulls her into his arms and kisses her.

  His kiss takes her by surprise. Though she imagined it—hoped for it—nearly from the moment she first saw him months before. She had wondered what the texture of his lips might feel like, the taste of his tongue, the sound of his breath merging with her own, and all she wants is for him to keep kissing her, to feel the grasp of his hands on her naked arms. To feel his fingers clasp her neck and run through her hair.

  She places a hand on his chest, and the rhythm of his heart is a percussion that matches her own.

  After several minutes, he pulls back to look at her again.

  The straps of her sundress have fallen over her shoulders.

  “As much as I shouldn’t have done that, I had to . . .”

  Again, she lifts her head up to his. “I’m so glad you did.”

  “I don’t want to do anything else but kiss you again . . .”

  She laughs and kisses him again on the mouth. “But we do have work to do . . .”

  His fingers trace her breasts, the contours revealed to him through the sheath of white cotton.

  “I don’t want to work,” he whispers into her ear.

  Her eyes soften, communicating to him what she feels too embarrassed to say, that this is her wish as well.

  His arms wrap around her one more time, lifting her slightly, pulling her to him so that she is forced to balance on her toes.

  “Let’s hide my bicycle,” she whispers into his ear.

  They discover a place thick with bramble and wildflowers and hide it there, covering it with as much brush as they can find. Then, before beginning their walk up the mountain, they used the opportunity of natural camouflage to steal another kiss.

  The mountain paths were rough, and the sunlight flooded through the trees as Elodie walked behind Luca.

  “My brother and Jurika are up here with six other men,” Luca said. Elodie nodded, remembering the girl dressed in the men’s clothes.

  “They’re setting up a camp, but they still need a lot of supplies.

  Luca was carrying a large satchel of his own. Inside were more provisions for the men.

  “My brother took over my father’s blacksmith shop.” He laughed. “You’ll be surprised when you meet him.”

  She smiled and lifted her face to the sun. Halfway through their journey, she reached into her bag and found a small kerchief and tied it over her head, knotting it in the back, to keep the hair off her face.

  “Now, I get the chance to see you in the role of a staffetta,” he said. “The Wolf had told us you were unique. He was impressed with you.”

  “He said that? I had the impression my cello left more of a mark on him than my playing of the code did.”

  “You should never assume anything, Elodie. You should know that by now.”

  She nodded. “I assumed you were never going to kiss me. I’m happy I was wrong.”

  Luca smiled and let out a small laugh. Elodie was panting from the hike and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She was beginning to tire.

  “It’s not much longer,” he said.

  “I just need a second. I’ve never been up this high before.”

  He nodded and readjusted the bag on his shoulders. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t the mountain air that had made her feel faint. It was his kiss.

  But she said nothing, preferring to remain silent. They both turned to look down at the valley beneath them, the walls of Verona now mere specks in the distance.

  At the camp, they discovered a house and several shirtless men nailing new boards onto the structure. Jurika was with two other men, stocking guns in an arsenal hidden beneath a shed.

  At least a dozen muskets were stacked in a low pile and there were several rounds of ammunition nearby as well.

  “Luca,” a man yelled out to him. He walked toward them. He was much larger than Luca and was wearing green trousers and no shirt. His skin was a dark chestnut color from the sun.

  “Brother,” he said and embraced Luca. “Thank you for coming. We’re making great progress . . .”

  “Yes,” Luca answered, appraising the grounds. “I can see that.”

  “And who is this sweet thing you’ve brought with you? Clearly she’s too delicate f
or the mountains.”

  “Dragonfly, meet Raffaele.”

  “Dragonfly?” Luca’s brother grinned. “I like that . . . I like that a lot.”

  He appeared a wholly different animal than Luca. She could see the blacksmith in him even without the smock and iron in his hand.

  “We brought you some things you said you needed . . . You know what’s in my package . . . And underneath the sewing supplies in Dragonfly’s bag are tins of food.”

  Raffaele’s large hand squeezed Luca’s shoulder. “You’ll be coming up here in the winter with me, right? We’re in for a hard fight.”

  “I will do whatever is needed. Right now, Zampieri and Maffini are planning our strategy. They tell me the Germans are already in the mountains burying their weapons.”

  Raffaele nodded. “We’ve heard that as well . . .”

  “I’ll try and come back in a few days. Do you have another list for me?”

  Raffaele reached into his pocket and handed a folded piece of paper over to Luca.

  “Read it and memorize it. Don’t carry it with you, brother.”

  “I’ll leave that to someone better equipped.”

  He gave the paper over to Elodie, who briefly looked it over before tearing it up into little pieces.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to get,” she said with a small smile. “As soon as we reach home.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Verona, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1943

  When they arrive home, it’s almost dusk. They stop just outside the Porta San Giorgio, knowing that when they enter the gates to Verona, the day’s activities and the kiss between them must be another set of secrets packed away.

  She stands with her toes braced to the pavement and her legs balancing the bicycle, the idle pedals pushing against her skin.

  Her mind is ablaze with images: impressions that have their own flame and smoke.

  She can still feel his hands on her shoulders; every one of their shared touches a haunting deep within her.

  She does not want to go home, to the silence and to her mother now so strange in her widow’s black. No, she just wants to go somewhere alone with Luca. She wants to stand naked and feel his touch traveling over her skin, a finely tuned bow moving across quivering strings.

  Whether he is thinking the same things, he doesn’t say. They stay perched on their bicycles, the arches of Verona in front of them, the warm day suddenly cooling and reminding them it’s not summer at all, but fall.

  She sees him reach into his pocket to find a cigarette, but he realizes he has smoked them all.

  “Good thing you don’t smoke,” he says, smiling.

  “I tried once, but I spent the next day coughing over my cello. It didn’t sit well with me.”

  She can see him looking at her, trying to gauge what they are saying both with words and without them. The truth lay somewhere in the space between their words and in their eyes. It glimmered pale and radiant, like moonlight striking through ice.

  He looks down at his handlebars, then back again briefly into her eyes.

  “We’ll need to meet tomorrow so I can put together the things for my brother . . .”

  “Yes,” she says. “I can come by after class.”

  “And we can discuss the concert then, too.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Then, until tomorrow.” There is a softness to his voice, a thread of honey running through his words, and Elodie smiles.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, returning the sweet melody between them. They exchange one last look before placing their feet on the pedals and moving past the gates of the city as the blue-gray light swallows their figures whole.

  That night, Elodie has no use for sleep. She plays deep into the night. She presses her chest against the red wood of her cello and plays with a newly mined passion for her music, for the strengthening Resistance, and for everything that she has become over the past four months.

  The next day, after school, she arrives at the bookstore. Luca is busy with a customer, who is thumbing through a catalog. She sees him look up for a moment, a thin ribbon of smile crossing his lips, a signal in his eyes. She warms inside, interpreting their silent communication.

  She walks to the back, where the new novels are displayed, and places her cello against the shelves. She scans the book spines before her eyes fall on one so tiny and slender, it seems almost invisible.

  She pulls it out and holds it in her hands, the cover immediately charming her. A small boy leaping off what looks like the moon, his hands clutching the strings of a parachute pulled by fluttering birds. Around him are bright yellow stars and a ringed planet in the distance.

  She begins to leaf through the pages, intrigued by the whimsical illustrations that are scattered throughout the text.

  She begins to read when she hears Luca’s footsteps approaching. Even before he speaks, she can feel his breath filling the air.

  He takes the book from her hand and smiles. “That’s a very special book.”

  “I can tell,” she says.

  “The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Just translated from the French.”

  “Il Piccolo Principe,” she says smiling.

  “Take it,” he tells her. “It’s my gift to you. I think you’ll love it . . . there is a lot of hidden meaning tucked within its pages.”

  “Really?” She can’t help but sound intrigued.

  “Yes.” He places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “Don’t be fooled by the childlike drawings. The story is a journey to discover one’s inner truth.”

  She is quiet, looking up at him. She holds the book tightly for a few seconds. “I will begin reading it tonight.”

  “You’ll finish it within an hour, then find yourself reading it all over again.” He motions her to follow him into the back.

  She follows, sliding the slender book into her bag.

  In the back room now, she senses intuitively that there can be no room for flirtation. They must accomplish all their tasks as efficiently as they can.

  She sits with her cello beside her, recalling every item on his brother’s list. The food supplies, munitions, pots for cooking, and waterproof tarps, along with the smaller but no less important things, including matches for fires, warm socks, and gloves.

  When they start to discuss the fall concert, she feels herself stiffening.

  “I’m nervous about this,” she says. “There are going to be a lot of people from Verona and Mantua inside the theater. People who know their music. People who knew my father.”

  She sees his eyes reading her in the light.

  “Carissima,” he says. “I do not want to sound harsh, but there is a hard reality to our work. You have a chance to perform an important task, sending information that could assist our men with the German’s imminent invasion. But only you can decide if you want to do this or not.”

  She does not answer him at first. In her mind, she is carrying on a conversation he will not hear. Nor will he be able to sense it in her eyes, her breath, or in the silence between them. What does she want?

  She wants her father back. She wants his face at the dinner table and his music in the living room. She wants her mother’s Venetian cooking and her singing floating from the bath.

  She wants another kiss from Luca. The chance to feel something other than wood against her chest, or strings against her finger pads. She wants to feel her age, not her responsibility. She wants to feel joy. She wants the pull of his hand and the sound of his voice saying her name. She wants to be able to play her music for the reasons she has always loved to play, not as a means to send a wartime code.

  So no, she wants to tell him, rewriting the cadenza of the Boccherini concerto to slip an important message in for the Wolf to hear is not at all what she wants. But she does not tell him any
of this.

  She closes her eyes and utters five simple words.

  “Yes, I will do it.”

  The program for the Teatro Bibiena is Marin Marais’s “Bells of Geneviève,” Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in B Flat, and Saint-Saëns’s “Dying Swan.” It has already been announced to the public.

  “Tell me how much information we need to reveal. I’m supposed to play the Grutzmacher cadenza in the Boccherini. It doesn’t have as much space as the Haydn that I played for the Wolf before . . . but I suppose there is some room for me to add a few extra notes.”

  He nods his head. “Apparently this code is simpler than the first one. So the Wolf will merely have to hear it, and there will be no need to see a written score. We’ve been told by one of our contacts with musical knowledge that the coded information should be inserted by adding a series of longer chords. First some half-note triple stops, followed by a few whole-note octaves. Does that make sense? I’m not a musician, only a humble bookseller,” he says, smiling at her.

  She feels her heart fluttering as he tries to make sense of the musical instructions. She wants to assure him that even if he doesn’t understand the use of chords, she does.

  “Well, the Grutzmacher cadenza is a fast one. And I can even accelerate the speed a little . . . so the new notes that we insert shouldn’t be too obtrusive.”

  Elodie pauses a bit to reflect. In her mind, she plays the Boccherini notes mentally and tries to insert the code as if performing.

  “You have my full confidence,” Luca says and his hand reaches out to touch hers.

  Finally, Elodie feels her tension evaporate. His simple gesture of affection makes her come alive.

  “It’s easy enough to remember.” She smiles.

  “The specific amount of each kind of the triple-stop and double- stop chords, which we will know right before the concert, will indicate something important, relating to what we’ve learned about the German regiments scouted.” He purposefully withholds the true meaning in order to protect her. “But can I hear you play the cadenza now, but just as it’s written, so we can figure out where to put in the chords?”