The Garden of Letters

by Alyson Richman

  “A few months before, I had fallen in love with a man in Verona. He loved books like you do, and working together with him, I carried hidden codes for the Resistance,” she said, her voice lowered to a whisper. “In my music, through my cello playing. And I made a mistake one night that possibly caused the loss of several lives.”

  She takes a deep breath. “This man who loved books. I heard music in his heartbeat; I came alive just with the grazing of his hand. I loved him in a way that was so new, I discovered a part of me that I had never known existed . . . And then one day in the mountains, where we were hiding with the partisans after we had all fought together at the Piazza delle Poste, he was shot by a band of Germans.” Recalling the violence of Luca’s death, the light in Elodie’s eyes becomes engulfed in shadow. To Angelo, it is like watching an eclipse.

  Angelo sits quietly listening to her confessional, never once interrupting her. There had been countless times he sat beside the dying, particularly when he was with the army in Ethiopia, before a priest could arrive to perform last rites, and his patient began reciting the very things that haunted his soul. Now Elodie’s words spill forth in a similar way.

  “Carissima,” he says, finally interjecting himself. “You need not do this to yourself.” He moves his chair closer to where she is sitting. “Certainly not for my benefit. I gave you shelter because I sensed you needed it, and because my own heart is heavy with loss . . .”

  His eyes are pale and wet like oysters, shucked and raw. “Anna, you have filled the empty spaces in my home. You have no idea how grateful I am that you are here.”

  She lifts her hand, as if to stop him from saying any more words of kindness.

  “Angelo, I am not Anna . . . My name is Elodie Bertolotti. My papers are false.”

  “You thought I believed Anna was your real name, carissima? Please. Every time it came from my lips, your face seemed surprised.” He lets out a small laugh. “The only thing that has caught me off guard was your talent with the cello. That, I was not expecting.”

  His lack of surprise startles her, but now she cannot stop until she has revealed everything she has kept from him.

  “There is one other thing.” She pauses gravely. She tries to catch another breath. “What you don’t realize, is that you didn’t save just one person that day at the port. You saved two.”

  She unlocks her hands, and her fingers stretch to pull taut the fabric of her blouse around her belly.

  “I’m at nearly four months.” She looks straight into his eyes, which have become wet with emotion.

  “I’m sorry I never told you earlier. I promised Vanna I’d tell you before Christmas.” She looks down at her belly. “That’s one of the reasons I tried to leave today. I don’t want to cause a scandal in the village and do harm to your good name here as the pregnancy becomes more pronounced.” Her voice begins to tremble and she struggles to release the words inside her.

  He wants to speak, but his words, too, are caught in his mouth. Didn’t she understand that she had saved him, too? That she had repaired the places of his heart that he had believed were permanently cracked, like shattered glass?

  Didn’t she realize that she was beginning to restore him? That her very sounds soothed him. The echo of her footsteps on the tile floor. Her preparing the water for her bath. Her fingers turning the pages of one of his books. Her breath. Her laugh, when she allowed it to escape. She had enabled him to feel alive again for the first time in years. She had offered him light and air.

  “Elodie . . .” He says her real name for the first time. It flies through the air pure and singular. A truth.

  “You have given me so much since I arrived,” she continues. “You let me regain my strength and to come to terms with all that I’d recently lost.” Her fingers grip the edge of the couch. She takes a deep breath. “You gave me space to breathe. To recover. To come to terms with this child that now grows inside me.”

  “I did it because I sensed you needed kindness . . .” he says. “And it was easy to extend it to you.” He had not expected his hand to travel toward hers, but he soon found himself moving even closer to her. He places a hand on top of hers, the swelling of her child beneath, now protected by each of their cupped hands.

  She feels his hand over hers like a coverlet, a tarp that could shield her from all harm.

  There is a silent looping between them as their eyes meet and they touch. Beneath his hands, he feels the life growing just beneath her skin. It strikes him so deeply, he feels it like a wound that has been unbandaged and finally allowed to meet the sting of the air.

  “You will never know how beautiful I find you now.”

  She feels as though she has become all water. That her bones have dissolved. The sharp edges of her heart soften like beach glass.

  Their two faces hover between them for a few seconds.

  He does not kiss her first. Instead he waits until he feels the pull of her hands bringing his face so close to hers that he can inhale her breath like vapor.

  She feels a cry well inside her. The struggle to maintain her secrets has taken so much energy and now, without them, her heart opens. She feels simultaneous loss and hope. She sees Luca flash before her eyes, before finding herself again in Angelo’s touch.

  His kiss is soft and careful. He caresses her cheek, then the edge of her ear. And when he kisses her she feels weightless. Her desire to be loved again, her happiness of having finally shed her secrets; Elodie feels she could take flight.

  She places his fingers on the buttons of her blouse and helps him unfasten her.

  He cups each breast. Traces each line, every curve and each plateau. Her body is so full of life that in her embrace, he feels the broken parts of him beginning to heal.

  He wants to make love to her properly on a bed, but he knows that his room, with the letters from his lost wife on the wall, is not an option. So he gathers the pillows from the sofa and lays one behind her back, opening her gently like a flower from his garden, her hair soft as a bird’s feathers in his hands.

  When her blouse falls away to reveal her belly, so small and taut, he feels his body freeze for a moment from the sheer beauty of her. Her skin glows, almost opalescent.

  He feels the hardness of her nipples. The pregnancy has made them dark as chestnuts, and he feels their texture stiffen as he runs them under his tongue.

  He waits before he enters her, not wanting to rush. He is just so grateful to have her in his arms. But she wraps her legs around him even more tightly, and he finds himself traveling into depths unexpected, the power of their coupling striking both of them to their core.

  When Elodie awakens the next morning, she discovers herself in the small bedroom with her body warm under the blankets and a flower by her bed.

  She listens for sounds, but hears nothing but the chirping of crickets.

  When her eyes come to focus, she sees Angelo in the doorway, smiling and dressed.

  “How did you sleep?” he asks her.

  “I hardly felt you carry me to the bed,” she answers. “That’s how deeply I slept. I certainly didn’t need any pills.”

  He smiles and she feels a sense of warmth again flood through her.

  “I hope you slept just as deeply.”

  “I did not sleep, but I still had dreams . . . They were so beautiful, almost like visions.”

  Elodie pulls the covers off her legs and reaches to find her clothes. Although her hair is not yet brushed and her face is not yet washed, to Angelo, Elodie’s radiance is blinding.

  As she walks over to him, he is struck by how different she now appears. She now moves with a sense of weightlessness. Her protective armor has been shed.

  In the living room, amid the piles of books and keepsakes he has collected over the years, he searches to find his own copy of The Little Prince. He suddenly feels the desire to read to her while sh
e nestles in his arms.

  He hums while he searches and smiles when he finally finds his copy, the familiar cover, with the migrating birds and the little boy clasping the strings.

  “So we have two copies of this book in this household . . .” She smiles as he slides next to her on the couch.

  “Yes,” he says, as his fingers reach to gently touch its cover. “It is a very special book.”

  “To think it was written for a child,” she says. She rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

  “Reading some of the passages to you the other day, I found myself discovering things within the story I hadn’t noticed when I read it the first time.” He reaches for her hands and kisses her fingers. “There is so much hidden wisdom within such a slender book.”

  With her head still against his chest, she can feel the rhythm of his heartbeat change. The tempo has quickened.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “When you have lost someone you love, the message that love still exists even when we cannot see it or touch it, makes the pain almost bearable.”

  Her fingers tighten around Angelo’s. The memory of Luca’s last words, that he would be “smiling at her even from beyond the stars,” returns to her. She always wondered if he had foreseen his own death that day.

  “It is very much a guide,” she says, and she can feel a hard lump in her throat like she’s swallowed a stone. “On how to survive after a heartbreaking loss.”

  She feels his thoughts shift. And she suspects it is the memory of Dalia returning to him. She closes her eyes and opens her heart.

  She feels his rib cage swell underneath her. She reaches for his fingers and squeezes his hand.

  He takes a few moments to gather his words and then begins to speak.

  “Just like you told me your story last night, I think it’s important you know mine.”

  She looks at him and nods. Although she has already heard bits and pieces of his past from Vanna, she knows how important it is that she learn this story from him.

  “As you fell in love with a boy who loved books, I fell in love with a girl I taught to read. I saw her one afternoon walking with a basket of lemons and a gardenia in her hair, and just the sight of her caused me to lose my heart.

  “She became my wife.” He took a deep breath. “ She died when I was a continent away, in Africa. She died and our baby died. And they buried them in the little cemetery behind the Church of San Giorgio before I was able to get home.”

  He chokes on his words. She takes her hand and cups it behind his head and strokes his hair and then his cheek, until her palm, too, is damp from his tears.

  “I should have been there with her when she delivered. I should not have left her here alone.”

  “It is no more your fault than Luca’s death is mine,” she says in a whisper.

  His arm reaches to grasp her waist, and he holds it there for a moment until his breath returns to him.

  “To think, you didn’t suspect I knew you were pregnant all along. What kind of doctor would I be if I didn’t notice your symptoms?” he says, smiling at her. “You have given me a gift, Elodie. You have allowed me to right a wrong. You have enabled me to care for a woman and a child who need my protection.”

  She feels herself trembling. She knows that what he says is like another message lifted from the book. She has become his rose.

  FORTY-ONE

  Portofino, Italy

  DECEMBER 1943

  When Vanna arrives that afternoon, she finds both Elodie and Angelo still nestled on the couch where they’d been since the morning. There were still untold parts of their stories, like the threads of an unfinished carpet that would still need to be finished off and tied.

  Angelo had felt Elodie’s anguish as if it were his own as he listened to her describe how her cello was stolen from her, how the Wolf’s arrest had caused her to believe that if she returned to Venice it might threaten her mother’s safety. She had wandered the streets of Genoa for what seemed like hours until she eventually found herself at Genoa’s enormous port. The harbor was crowded with all types of boats. The larger ones were surrounded by German officers, but she had noticed there was a sign for a few ferries departing to the coastal villages of Liguria and beyond. She wasn’t thinking clearly, only that she wanted to get somewhere safe. Rapallo, Portovenere, the boats destinations were all a blur to her. She chose the boat to Portofino simply because it was the first one leaving from the dock.

  “I sat on that boat and I felt I was half dead,” she told him. “I had just seen a dear friend carted off in manacles, and then the German took my cello . . .”

  Angelo looked at Elodie’s hands differently now that he knew she was a musician. The strength and elegance of her fingers held a deeper beauty to him. But more than anything, he wanted to start a new life with her.

  “When the war is over, I will take you to see your mother again,” he promised. “And we will find you a new cello. But until that, you must write and let her know you are safe. And we will visit Venice together after the baby is born.”

  When he spoke with such tenderness for the child she was carrying, she heard a new melody inside her. Music that was not mournful, but rather full of hope.

  Vanna placed down her basket and looked at their hands, now like two trees whose roots had become entwined.

  “I took your advice, Vanna,” Elodie said. “He knows everything now.”

  Vanna eyes flickered. “For once, I was the smart one.”

  Angelo smiled. “Yes. And now you need to tell her that she has nothing to worry about meeting the rest of the family.”

  “Of course not. They will be relieved to see your gloom has finally lifted. And don’t worry about the rest of the town, either. There is too much sadness from the war, for anyone to be unkind to a beautiful pregnant girl. They’ll be happy the village doctor has finally found a wife.

  “I expect to see you both tomorrow at my table for Christmas Eve,” Vanna said before she left them. “You will be seen as a gift.”

  That night, Angelo led her to the room where Dalia’s letters had for years papered the walls. “I can’t bring you here to sleep. It doesn’t seem fair,” he said as he studied her eyes. “Perhaps we can paint over it? There’s a can of white paint in the shed.”

  “No,” she said softly. “It’s part of your history and should be respected.”

  She was not afraid of the room. On the contrary, it moved her deeply. She, too, still carried Luca’s love inside her. She could recite his words as if they were love letters papered onto her heart.

  If she were to stay with Angelo, and build a life with him and Luca’s child, the past layers of their story needed to be respected, not erased.

  She was silent for a moment and then began to move about the house. Through the windows, moonlight streamed into the rooms as Elodie worked in the kitchen, pulling down a canister of flour from the shelf and mixing it with water to make some glue.

  She found a pastry brush in the drawer and slipped it into her pocket, and then walked to her little room where she had slept for the past two months. There, she found her cherished sheets of music and her copy of The Little Prince.

  He watched transfixed as she did what he had imagined Dalia had done years before. Elodie quietly found a pair of scissors and began to cut bits of the written music, so that now the score appeared almost like clouds of floating notes. When she was about to take her scissors to her beloved book, Angelo stopped her and offered her his own.

  She did not speak, but she accepted his copy, keeping the one from Luca pristine. She took her scissors and began cutting the colorful watercolors of the little prince landing on the different planets and of his parachute made from flying birds. She cut out the images of the friends he met along his journey: his beloved rose, the elephant, the snake, and the fox. She cut out the magical baobab trees, t
he asteroids and the stars. She thought of the child that grew inside her, the way the baby might one day gaze at the ceiling. And she smiled as the walls suddenly sprang to life.

  The sight of her cutting and kneeling with a bowl of glue, papering the walls with bits and pieces of her own history, and carefully pressing them in the open places that did not cover the letters he had sent to Dalia, touched Angelo so deeply. He felt as though his memories and his future were merging into one.

  After she had finished adding her own pieces to the walls, Elodie slid next to Angelo in bed.

  “Now we will sleep under a shared story,” she said. “It’s only right.”

  Angelo’s hand reached to touch her growing middle, and his body flooded not only with warmth, but with gratitude as well. For now the wound in his heart had finally been mended.

  And they fell asleep under a new canopy, one created from sheets of faded letters, suspended notes, and paper stars.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Garden of Letters began after I heard an extraordinary story one night at a dinner party about a friend’s father. As a young man, he was trying to flee to safety during World War II when he was saved by a barrel-chested man in a small village on the Italian coast. Like the character Angelo, the stranger emerged from a crowded dock just as my friend’s father was about to hand over his forged identity card to a German control officer. The man called out, “Cousin! Cousin! I’ve been waiting for you all week!” and saved him from further scrutiny by the officer, and also subsequently provided him shelter during the war. Thank you, Judy Goldsmith, for telling me the story that became the genesis for this novel.

  After hearing this story, I immediately envisioned the opening scene of a novel. I was fascinated by the intersection of two strangers meeting that afternoon at the dock: one person who is on the run and has a secret, and the second figure who innately senses the other’s deep fear. From there, I began to imagine the two main characters in The Garden of Letters: Elodie, a woman who is in need of a safe harbor for reasons that unfold during the course of the book, and Angelo, the haunted doctor who desperately wants to help others because of his own tragic past.