The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  In the reflection of one of the old cloudy windows, Elodie saw her face.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever looked this tired . . . this dirty,” she said as her fingers tried to adjust the strands of black hair that had fallen over her eyes.

  She then extended her arms and showed the smudges of dirt and soot that at first glance might have looked like a series of bruises.

  “What I would do for a warm bath right now . . .”

  Luca nodded. He, too, was covered in a thick veil of gray.

  He wanted to give her what she wanted, a beautiful bathtub like the English had in their manors. Deep, white porcelain, bear-claw feet, and steaming water up to her chin. The thought of her emerging from it was in itself a heady dream for him.

  Through one of the broken windows, he saw a large washing basin in the backyard, certainly deep enough for a girl Elodie’s size to bathe in. In the kitchen were several copper pots. Luca was sure he could make a fire, with sticks and the pieces of scattered wood around the house.

  “Do you see a water pump, Elodie?”

  Elodie shrugged. “No, but I’ll check outside.”

  They both found their way to the outer garden, where they discovered a pump buried in the tall grass.

  “You’re going to get your bath,” Luca said. He had begun to grow a beard over the past few days, and through the shadow of his stubble and dirt-smudged face, his eyes were shining. In the sunlight, they were the color of honey.

  “But how?”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “Just wait.”

  “Let me help,” she protested. She lifted her hand to move her hair from her eyes.

  “No, just go inside and rest until I call for you.”

  Luca looked up at the sun and saw it was midway in the skyline. They still had time before it got dark and cold. Still, he moved quickly and with great efficiency. He gathered small, dry twigs for the kindling and searched for larger pieces of dry wood, knowing they wouldn’t create any smoke.

  When he was satisfied, he took out his lighter and shoots of fire soon flickered in front of him.

  He took the copper pot to the water pump and washed it, then the larger, deeper washing bin as well. After each was clean, he filled the copper pot with water and brought it over to the fire, and fashioned some old rope over the makeshift harness, so that it could be heated from underneath. He lugged the large washing bin closer, so he could eventually pour the hot water into it.

  When he had finally heated enough water, he called to Elodie in the farmhouse.

  “Here is your bath, carissima!”

  She stood there shaking her head and lifted a single hand to cover her smile. “Luca, how did you manage such perfection?”

  “Come on, quickly now!” he said. “I want you to tell me that I got the temperature of the water just right, too!”

  She smiled coyly. “If you insist.”

  Elodie walked to the corner of the garden and, with her back toward Luca, slowly began to remove her clothes.

  She started with her blouse. Unbuttoning the row down her front, she slipped it off her shoulder. And although it was already quite dirty and not expensive at all, she couldn’t bear to put it on the ground. She found a tree branch and carefully draped it across. Then, she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of the material, placing that, too, on the branch.

  With her body sheathed in nothing but a simple cotton slip, Luca could feel his heart pounding. She seemed to wait an eternity, standing there with only the angles of her shoulder blades revealed above the backline of the slip, her lithe arms reaching to undo the already loose pinning of her hair.

  She then turned around to face him, walking over to the steaming basin of water he had prepared for her.

  When she had gotten so close that he could touch her, only then did she lift up her slip and reveal her nakedness in its entirety to him.

  He could not believe his eyes. This was the first time he had seen her naked. In the bookstore he had discovered her under the canopy of her clothes, his hands finding her underneath the curtain of her skirt and the cotton veil of her blouse. But now she stood in front of him, completely revealed.

  It was as if he had been given a gift; the rare glimpse of something that had never been exposed before. She was porcelain white, opaque and luminous at the same time. Her breasts were two small globes of perfection, her buttocks like the curve of a mandolin.

  He watched, transfixed, as she lifted a single leg and entered the makeshift bath.

  Elodie now stood knee-deep in the water, her arms crossed to cover her breasts. She turned her head, looking at him over her shoulder. A thin ribbon of hair fell over one of her eyes, and she smiled at him in a way that paralyzed him.

  “Did you see that pitcher by the old stove?” she asked. “If you bring that here, it would be helpful . . .” The small ribbons of muscle in her back sprung up in high relief.

  Again, he could barely breathe. She looked like a living sculpture.

  “Yes, of course . . .” he stammered. “I’ll get it right away.”

  Luca returned quickly with the pitcher and dipped it into the water. He stood up and poured it over her body, long, fluid streams reflecting off her glistening skin.

  Neither of them could remember who kissed the other one first. She knew he had placed the pitcher down. That he had stood up and taken a step closer to her so that the length of his body was parallel to hers. She, still naked in the tub, he standing just against her, his shirt becoming wet as he pressed into her. She felt herself shiver and reached to touch his chest. She sensed the rhythm of his heartbeat, the music just beneath his skin. She fingered the amulet and leather cord around his neck before he reached for her fingers, pulling her closer, bringing her mouth slightly upward toward his own. In her nakedness, she wanted him to cover her with his body, his touch. And so she waited for him to come to her fully.

  He took his hands first to her hair, then to the bell shape of her shoulders, and then up again to cup her face in his palms. When he held her cheeks in his hands and kissed her, he felt himself weaken as if there wasn’t an ounce of fight left in his heart or body.

  With every touch, she shook slightly in his arms, like a small bird that was trying to take flight in the cradle of his hands. His thumb felt the contrast between her breast and nipple, his fingers the narrow of her waist, then on to to the curve of her hips. She was now out from the tub and against him, drawing her with him to the ground, pulling himself so close into her that he heard her expel just the faintest, smallest cry.

  He looked into her eyes and they were shimmering with a light like he had never before seen. He felt himself traveling between time and space, where nothing mattered now but the pull between them.

  The fear, the exhaustion of war, and the threat of death dropped away. The only thing in Luca’s mind at that moment was that he loved Elodie.

  He inhaled every part of her as if she were his own breath. She was like air, fire, and water all at once—every element that he needed to exist in this world.

  They had used their clothes to dry themselves off. They kissed again, lovers who couldn’t get enough of the other’s touch. She remembered the sensation of being clean, the clear spike that ran from her head to the bottom of her feet, and of feeling alive.

  She remembered that once she had pulled on her skirt and buttoned her blouse, she had turned to Luca and looked at him deeply in the eyes, and thought that nothing else mattered in the world except him. And although they were no longer entwined, and their limbs now moved freely and separately, she still felt him as if his body was imprinted inside her. It was like music that penetrates and still moves within you, even after the melody has ceased playing.

  As they walked, she remembered him looking up at the sky, his neck stretching out from the collar of his shirt as he searched for the sun in order to learn the
direction they needed to go.

  They headed back to the camp holding each other’s hand. She saw her delight in his eyes; her happiness mirrored in his smile. Both of them felt as though their discovery of a new camp would make everyone cheer.

  She remembered the sight of the small bellflowers beneath her feet, how careful she had been not to step on them and crush their petals. That was her last memory before the sound of bullets ricocheted through the air. She had not wanted to harm the delicate blossoms. But then there was the sound of shouting, the chaos of the ambush. The sound of Luca turning to her and saying, “Not now! Jesus. Please not now!”

  They were steps away from the camp, but already Elodie could hear gunfire as though she were in the line of fire. Luca pulled her into a thicket and told her to make herself into a tight ball.

  “Stay here, Elodie,” he ordered. His face was the same as when he had pushed her against the wall in the Piazza delle Poste and ordered her to get inside the café.

  Now, she was even more afraid. She begged him not to leave her alone in the woods. But she knew she couldn’t fight; she had no gun and would be useless in battle.

  “I need to go!” He leaned over and kissed her one more time, the amulet of St. George dangling from his throat.

  “I’ll love you forever, Elodie. Remember that. From beyond the stars.” He kissed her one last time.

  She felt herself trembling. She did not want him to quote The Little Prince. They were too young to have a love that existed beyond sight or touch.

  He pulled his necklace of San Giorgio from his neck, breaking the leather knot in the back. “Hold this. It will protect you.”

  She hadn’t wanted to take it. But he had tapped his rifle and told her he already had protection. That she was the one who needed the amulet more than he.

  As the sound of gunfire laced the air, she clasped his amulet like a rosary. She heard the horrible screaming of soldiers in German. It was only hours later, after the sound of bullets had ceased, and she no longer heard a sound coming from the camp, that she stood up from the mass of thicket and broken tree boughs and went in search of Luca and the others.

  She saw Rita first. Her face was covered in black dirt and her blouse had been ripped down the length of her sleeve. Blood soaked the kneecap of her trousers.

  Luigi was standing above two dead Germans, pulling their rifles from their lifeless bodies.

  To the left of the tent, Elodie spotted the Falcon on the ground, his chest soaked with blood and his eyes motionless, staring up at the sky.

  Another body was slumped over a trunk that some of the others had used for sitting. Elodie could see by the slender build and kerchief around the neck that it was the young boy who had just the day before brought her up to the camp. Elodie felt her stomach rising within her chest. She was sure she was going to retch.

  Rita looked at her; her eyes conveyed everything.

  “We were ambushed,” she finally managed to say. “We lost Raffaele, too.”

  Elodie shook her head. She felt her fingers tighten around the amulet. The small disc with the saint in the center cut into her skin.

  She did not believe Rita. Without the sight of his body, she believed there was still a possibility Luca was alive.

  “They attacked while you were away. It was Raffaele who heard the first footsteps while he was out on patrol. He killed the first two, but another five followed.”

  “We had found a new camp . . .” Elodie’s voice trembled.

  Suddenly, Elodie saw two men carrying a large body from the brush on a stretcher made of vine poles. She did not need to look at the face to know it was Raffaele’s. She saw the overalls and knew immediately it was him.

  She shut her eyes tight, not wanting them to see Raffaele being placed, lifeless, on the ground.

  Rita came over and embraced her. “We will move there after we bury the dead. And we’ll have to do that quickly, before more Germans arrive. They will be looking for their men when they don’t return.”

  She then saw Jurika and another young partisan, Carlo, bringing Luca’s body back to the camp on another makeshift stretcher. Elodie knew it was him, even before she saw the soles of the boots, the dangling of a thin arm.

  When they lowered him to the ground, she felt every part of her sink into the earth. Her own blood drained from her head and from her heart. There was no breath, no music, left inside her. She felt Rita’s arms tighten around her. The teacher knew better than to call him a fallen partigiano to the trembling girl; she referred to him as Elodie’s amato, her love. And then so softly did her mouth whisper the words her father had once blessed over her: “Hasten thoughts on golden wings. Hasten and rest on the densely wooded hills.”

  Elodie said the two lines as if they were a prayer.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Verona, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1943

  Elodie stood there motionless, her face pale with shock. She was cold and shivering. She could not believe that Luca now lay beneath a mound of hastily dug earth. Only a few hours ago they had been together, their bodies wet and entangled, nothing separating their beating hearts but a thin sheath of skin. But now the only trace of him was a makeshift cross marking his grave.

  It was Rita who insisted that Elodie leave the camp. “Get your mother and go to Venice.” She was staring at Elodie, her blonde hair pulled tightly behind her ears. Rita had yet to wash the dirt from her face. “That is what Luca would have wanted . . . certainly not staying here in the mountains to die. They say a partisan’s life span is no more than six months,” Rita said, shaking her head.

  It was hard for Elodie to imagine the young woman who stood before her as a schoolteacher. Rita looked every bit the warrior. Her body was strong and muscular; her blue eyes were hard like river stones. “This is no place for you. You have your mother waiting at home. My family was put on a truck bound for a concentration camp.” Rita’s voice was like flint. “At least here I get to choose how I will die.”

  “I don’t want to leave him here . . .” Elodie was still wearing Luca’s sweater, and his amulet was still wrapped around her hand.

  Rita looked up at the sky. The sun was already midway in the horizon. “There isn’t a reason to stay here. You are not a soldier. You need to go now.”

  If Elodie did leave now, she might be able to get home before curfew. So in a daze, she followed one of the remaining partisans down the wooden path.

  “I can’t take you any farther than this,” he said as they came close to the base of the mountain. He had taken her nearly to the end of the dirt path. Between the trunks of the pin oaks, Elodie could see the stretch of the road below. “Be careful . . . There are Germans swarming around everywhere.”

  She nodded.

  “Good luck,” he said, casting one last look in her direction before he began his ascent back up into the hills.

  She found her bicycle in the brush, its black frame still covered in the branches. She had camouflaged it in the same way she had with Luca the first time they met in the mountains. Now, as she began to move the pine limbs, clumps of leaves, and dried grass, she saw that her hands were shaking.

  It had only been a little over a week since she and Luca had stood there in the wilderness collecting leaves to cover her bicycle. She had marveled at how different he seemed since the battle in the Piazza delle Poste. His muscles moving beneath his canvas shirt, his sleeves rolled to show the length of his arms.

  In the bookstore, Luca had moved like a quiet mouse. But here in the woods, he moved like a lion.

  She still could not believe he was gone. Every part of her fought to erase the image of him and his brother being carried into the camp, lifeless and soaked in blood. She pretended it was not true, that she would see him shortly in the back room of his store on the Via Mazzini. Where she would again play her cello for him, and his eyes, his touch, and e
very part of him would spring forth and come alive.

  She was afraid that if she began to cry, she’d never be able to stop. But the tears welled inside her, and no matter how much energy she put into ensuring they didn’t fall, she felt them all the same. Painful as bits of swallowed glass.

  Once on her bicycle, her body took over. She pedaled for forty minutes before she was stopped by two Fascist policemen who asked to see her identification.

  She handed them her new papers. In her mind, she had already memorized her new name, Anna Zorzetto, as well as her new birth date and all the other details. Fortunately, her dirty appearance after days in the woods did not pique the guards’ interest, and she was allowed to pass through.

  When she finally arrived at the gates of the Porto San Giorgio, the German officers were busy pulling over truck and cars, focusing their efforts to investigate the male drivers entering the city. They barely noticed a girl with her heart torn out of her chest, her eyes wide and unblinking as she held back her tears.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Verona, Italy

  SEPTEMBER 1943

  When Elodie reached her family’s apartment building, she struggled to pull her bicycle inside. It took every ounce of her strength to make it up the stairs.

  Orsina was only three steps from behind the door when she heard Elodie’s knock. She had been waiting there virtually from the moment Elodie had left with Luca days earlier. She threw her arms around her daughter.

  “I expected you back two days ago . . . When you didn’t return . . .” Orsina’s voice cracked. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I couldn’t get back home . . . there were explosions in the streets. The Germans are everywhere . . .”

  Orsina shook her head. She looked at her daughter, who by now had found a seat on one of the living room chairs. Elodie looked beyond exhausted.