The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  Instead, her hands begin mapping her body in private. She has missed her second cycle, and Elodie is now sure that a part of Luca grows inside her. She cups her breasts and feels their new fullness, the nipples so tender that even a graze from her blouse makes her flicker with discomfort. She has become used to the daily nausea in the morning, but the fatigue she feels is crushing. She has never felt so exhausted, even when she was running through the streets of Verona delivering weapons. Then her body felt strong and full of energy, not bone tired like it does now. All she wants to do is close her eyes, sleep, and awaken with everything from the past six months having been a bad dream.

  Angelo returns home an hour later. Elodie can hear the sound of his medical bag dropping on the table, his footsteps walking toward the kitchen, and the strike of a match against the stove’s gas stream. The sounds of his return are strangely comforting to her. She interprets them as a man who has come to terms with how to survive on his own.

  She slides her hand away from her abdomen and straightens her blouse. She gets up and readjusts the waistband of her skirt and tries to smooth down her hair.

  She walks toward the living room. She does not want to appear ungrateful to her host. She needs his shelter, his quiet oasis of calm; it’s a place she’ll accept with gratitude before her pregnancy begins to show. But when her body can no longer hide this particular secret, Elodie wonders if he’ll ask her to leave.

  The first week she stays with him, she refrains from asking too many questions. She is a guest in a house that contains stories, a history that she hasn’t yet deciphered. So she tries to find clues in what she can glean around her. She studies him, trying to make sense of what she sees in his features and expressions, or his rhythms around his home.

  What she knows for sure is that he is gentle. He walks softly. He touches things lightly. Even the way he stirs the sauce on the burner, he does with a gentleness that is surprising to find in a man.

  They have quickly established their way of filling the space between them. In the morning when she walks out of her room for breakfast, he has already anticipated her preference for nothing more than dry toast and a coffee with so much warm milk it looks white when he stirs it.

  She also strikes him as less restless than the others he has taken in, though he is unsure if this is merely a mask she wears to cloak something deeper he cannot yet see.

  Angelo can tell she loves books almost as much as he does. When she thinks he isn’t looking, he can see her out of the corner of his eye picking up the novels he has lying around the house. He has not read aloud to anyone since Dalia died, and the ability to now share a good book with someone gives his heart sustenance and breaks it at the same time. For years he has tried to lose himself in his books, to bury his pain by reading another person’s story. Now when he picks up the pages of a novel, he finds he is no longer reading just to become lost, but to connect to this strange, new woman who sits across from him. The words, the sentences, weaving together not just one story, but a new one. One between him and Elodie.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Verona, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1943

  Elodie does not see Lena and Beppe being dragged into the Nazis’ truck. She hears the news from Luca later on.

  At the art studio, Maffini is lying on a wooden table. His trousers have been cut below the knee to reveal his bullet wound. Berto watches as Brigitte wraps strips of cut-up linen around his best friend’s leg. He looks at her with amazement. At first, Brigitte does not want any of the other women to help her, even Martha and Giulia, who have both trained as nurses. She washes her hands in the basin and returns to Maffini’s side.

  “You need to get the bullet out,” Martha tells her.

  “Can you do it?” Brigitte asks her. Her voice is serious—calm and unflinching. Elodie struggles to reconcile her memory of Brigitte in a silk blouse and pearls with this warrior in front of her, who hours ago had strapped on a rifle, but who now is tending to battle wounds.

  “No,” Martha says shaking her head. “I have no surgical experience. We need to find a doctor right away. You don’t want an infection to set in. If he gets gangrene, you’re going to have to amputate.”

  Elodie can hear Maffini groaning. Berto and Brigitte are desperate to find ways to ease their friend’s pain. Berto tries to offer him a sip of grappa, while Brigitte tightens the bandages to try and stanch the bleeding.

  It had been Luca who carried Maffini, bleeding, up the stairs to the studio and ripped open his trouser leg to reveal where the bullet had entered. He had also been the one to tell Elodie that Lena and Beppe had been captured.

  “Six dead and several of our group taken to the Edderle prison . . . And one of the men saw Beppe and Lena taken in a separate jeep headed toward Palazzo dell’INA near the Piazza Bra. We have to get them out of there.”

  Elodie is shaking.

  “We can plan that later,” Brigitte says above the chatter. “Right now we need to find a doctor. We can’t wait any longer.”

  Orsina approaches the dining room table and looks at Maffini. His face is as white as bleached cotton.

  “How about Doctor Tommasi?” she whispers to Elodie.

  Elodie knows that there was no one kinder or more trustworthy than Doctor Tommasi. He had delivered her, taken care of her own father after his beating by the Fascists, and been the one who told her of his death.

  “My mother can find someone to help,” she tells Brigitte.

  Brigitte looks up at her with firm eyes. “Get him here as soon as you can.”

  Elodie turns to walk out the door, but Brigitte stops her. “Not you, Elodie. Have your mother go. She’s less suspicious. We can’t afford to lose anyone else after today.”

  While Orsina leaves to find Doctor Tommasi, Brigitte tells Luca to change his clothes.

  “You’re covered in blood,” she says. Elodie stares at both of them. Brigitte does not weaken, even at the sight of so much blood.

  “Elodie,” she orders. “Go to the bedroom and give Luca some of Berto’s spare clothes. He can’t go outside like that.”

  He follows her into the back room, where the trunk has been emptied of its machine guns. Where the silver comb and brush belonging to Brigitte remain untouched on the side table.

  In the wardrobe, Elodie finds a pair of dark pants and a white shirt. She sees Luca standing next to the table, his reflection cast in the long mirror that has been positioned across from the bed.

  He is standing there shaking. His shirt is stained with Maffini’s blood. Dark patches of stubble darken his face; his skin is covered with dirt and sweat.

  “Come here,” Elodie says gently. But he cannot move. It seems that because he has finally been given a moment to breathe and not have to shoot, to save someone, or to run, his body has momentarily shut itself down. So Elodie walks over to him.

  She places Berto’s spare clothes on the bed and begins to unbutton Luca’s shirt. Her fingers move quickly and deftly. This is not the way she imagined undressing him for the first time, but the sight of his skin and the sculpture of his muscles sends a slight shiver through her all the same. She peels the shirt away from his shoulders, and he suddenly takes her hand and presses it to his heart.

  “They took Beppe . . . they took Lena. They killed Luigi and Franco . . .” She doesn’t know the men’s names he is saying. But as soon as he mentions Lena, Elodie begins to cry.

  “Lena . . . what will they do to her, Luca? I can’t bear the thought of them torturing her.”

  “We can’t think of that now, Elodie.” He touches her cheek in a gesture meant to soothe her. “Vincenzo is already plotting a way to get the men the Germans captured out of the prison. So we will work with him to then save Beppe and Lena as well.”

  She feels protected by his touch, the warmth of his skin against her own. Just outside the doorway, she can hear the others ta
lking and scrambling. Brigitte is telling them they all must scatter. Addresses where the men can hide are whispered to one another.

  “Clean yourselves up in the sink. Comb your hair and make yourself look like a good Italian Fascist. Then lose yourself somewhere.”

  Luca slips into his new clothes, takes Elodie into his arms, and kisses her one more time.

  “I have to go find Vincenzo,” he says. “We will figure out a way to get our men out of the prison—and Lena and Beppe away from the Gestapo . . . I promise you.”

  Luca leaves Berto’s studio just as night is falling. It is nearly curfew, and he knows the Germans will be patrolling even more heavily, searching for men who avoided being captured.

  Doctor Tommasi arrives, escorted by Orsina who, in her simple housedress and upswept hair, looks more alive than ever. Elodie thinks to herself how much her mother seems to have transformed over the past twenty-four hours.

  Martha boils the water for the doctor, while Giulia places his instruments over a flame to sterilize them. Brigitte holds Maffini’s head and tries to give him grappa, but the pain of extracting the bullet is excruciating. Brigitte takes a small washcloth, pours more grappa on it, and gives it to Maffini to suck on, hoping it will help quell his urge to scream.

  After Doctor Tommasi has removed the bullet and stitched up the wound, he glances at Orsina and shakes his head.

  “Every time you call me, I risk my life caring for the patient . . . You are lucky I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for you, Orsina.”

  Orsina goes to him as the doctor washes his hands in the sink. “Thank you, Carlo,” she says, and kisses him on both cheeks to show her gratitude. “We won’t ever forget this kindness.”

  The next morning, Luca and Vincenzo lead a successful raid on the prison, where the remainder of the men are held. After they scale the walls, some scurry into the fields to be absorbed by peasants willing to hide them, while others head to the mountains to fight with the partisans.

  “Maffini needs to be moved. It is already a small miracle that the Germans haven’t knocked on the door searching for him here. They’ve probably already ransacked his apartment.”

  “We can’t move him in the streets. He can’t walk. His injury is obvious and will incriminate him and us right away.” Brigitte is now becoming frantic. Her cool reserve is melting after the intensity of the past two days, and Berto has left for a secret meeting.

  “I have an idea,” Orsina tells her. “We need to find the clothes of an old man. A cap, a cane, even an old overcoat. I’m sure he can walk a few blocks that way, to a more secure place.”

  As Orsina and Brigitte work on the details to move Maffini to a safehouse, Luca tells Elodie she must go home and show up for class at the Liceo to maintain the consistency in her routine.

  “It’s essential you still appear the innocent music student,” he tells her. “God knows what they’re doing to Lena and Beppe trying to get information out of them.” Elodie winces. Knowing Beppe and her friend are captured causes a pain to run through her. She knows from what happened to her father, the terrible measures they use on prisoners during interrogations, and it’s difficult to bear the thought of Beppe and Lena enduring such brutality. She closes her eyes and silently prays for them.

  At Palazzo dell’INA, Lena is brought into a cement-block room with nothing in it except a metal table, three chairs, and a lightbulb that dangles from the ceiling. They have tied her hands behind her and given her nothing to eat or drink since they captured her the evening before.

  After several minutes, two men appear. Both are dressed in Gestapo uniforms.

  “Lena Galvetto?” one of the men asks her. His Italian is thick with a German accent, and his face resembles a hawk.

  She doesn’t answer, but just lifts her head and stares at him. Her blue eyes are cold as ice.

  She notices he twitches slightly at the sight of her eyes.

  “Such blue eyes, such golden hair . . .” he says as he comes closer. “You look more German than Italian,” he says studying her.

  Again she doesn’t answer. She wants to spit in his face, but she is afraid of these two men. They could beat her, rape her. She has heard all of the terrible things they do to captured staffetta before they put a bullet to their heads.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Lena?” The German sits down on a chair and flips open a file. “So many things, Lena, we know about you, so many things . . .” He makes a small tsking sound against the roof of his mouth.

  “It’s too bad about the Morettis, Lena. You were such a good little girl to try and help them . . .”

  Lena’s eyes flicker. She feels her spine stiffen. Every hair on her body is standing on end.

  “Did you hear what happened to the Morettis? Such a shame . . .”

  She closes her eyes. She will not give them any shred of her pain. She will own her own grief.

  The Nazi pushes his chair inches away from where Lena sits, her hands still tied behind her back. His face is so close to hers that she can smell the beer on his breath. He ignores her closed eyes, her bowed head. He knows she cannot escape and so, slowly, as if to maximize the pain of his delivery, he begins to detail the Morettis’ fate:

  “Thanks to your false papers, Lena, they did manage to get to the Swiss border.”

  She continues to keep her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to listen to his words, but still they slice like a blade through the air.

  “They traveled all night through the cold and the dark. And when the smuggler got them to the border, he told them to cut a hole in the barbed wire and to climb through. Ahhh, once they took a small step onto the Swiss soil, they’d all be safe.” He walks around her, then begins circling around the room, smirking.

  “But those Jews were not so smart, Lena. Not so smart at all. Papa goes first to pull little Luigi through. Then Mamma to follow. But Luigi gets caught in the wire. Oh . . . can you just imagine! You travel through the cold and the dark to get to safe, green Switzerland, with its cows and sweet milk, and at the very end little Luigi gets stuck in the fence.”

  Lena is shaking now. The tears are just behind her lids, but she won’t open them. She refuses to let a single tear fall and give them the satisfaction.

  “Well, the little boy lets out a little cry, which is almost imperceptible to the human ear, but is heard by one of our big, smart German shepherds. The sounds of those barking dogs running toward Mamma and Papa, and Luigi in the darkness. Can you just imagine the symphony, Lena?”

  He begins to conduct in the air as if there is a full orchestra in front of him.

  “Come on . . . you’re a musician! Can you imagine the sound of the dogs barking, the boy crying, and the mother begging her husband to pull faster . . . to get the little boy through?”

  Lena feels her stomach twisting inside her. She thinks she might vomit all over the table. She squeezes her eyes tighter trying to shut out the pain.

  “Well, our dogs got there before the husband could get his son through. He was safely on Swiss soil, while his wife and son remained on Italy’s.” He pauses, contemplating the scene. Then, slowly he smiles revealing his gleaming white teeth.

  “Are you shocked, Lena, that when the officer gave Signor Moretti the choice to leave his wife and Luigi and save himself, he crawled back through the hole to be with his family . . . Can you believe the idiocy of that bastard?

  “We needed only three bullets to put them all out of their misery.”

  He turns to the second Gestapo officer and lets out a laugh. “Can you believe the stupidity of these Jews?”

  Lena’s interrogation lasts over three hours. The junior Gestapo officer leaves and soon another agent arrives—this one larger and stronger than the one already in the room. Within minutes of his arrival, he pulls Lena’s hair to try and make her open her eyes and throws water in her face. When her eyes
finally open, the senior Gestapo agent pushes photographs of the Morettis with bullets in their skulls under her nose, to prove to her they have told her the truth.

  “Tell us the names of every person who attended your meetings and we will spare you the bullet that should end your life.”

  He is smiling. “Come on little Fraulein . . .” He pushes a sheet of paper and a pen toward her.

  Lena does not flinch.

  The two men have all the time in the world. One tears off her blouse, while the other one takes off his belt. When the brass buckle hits her shoulder, Lena falls forward, her head hitting the table from the force of the lash. But her cry is almost imperceptible. She uses every bit of strength to try and mute herself. She will not give them the pleasure of seeing her in pain.

  After two hours of being berated and beaten, Lena begins to transcend the pain. After the last whipping, she looks up at her torturers. Her glassy eyes shine with a resistance all her own.

  “Those eyes of hers,” the senior agent says. “I can’t take the sight of them anymore.”

  “Tell us those names!” his cohort screams, pushing his face into hers. “Tell us now and we won’t destroy those beautiful blue eyes of yours.”

  Her face is almost unrecognizable. They have slapped her with such force that her cheeks are a patchwork of scarlet and blue. And on her back, where the officer’s belt had left her painful red welts, blood now leaked from the skin.

  “Tell us the names!” Again they shout at her and pound their fists on the table.

  “You have one more chance to save your eyes!”

  Lena looks up at the senior agent and widens her eyes even further, even though her face is swelling larger with each passing moment.

  She does not utter a single name as they bind her hands behind her back and bring another Nazi in with a bayonet that had been placed in fire. She fights with every ounce not to scream as they blind her, but the pain is too much, and the cry escapes her and shatters through the air.