The Garden of Letters (18 page)

She smiled. “I felt like I didn’t breathe the entire day yesterday.” Blood was rushing through her, as the exhilaration of being so close to Luca and also hearing him say she had done a masterful job made her feel more alive than ever.

“Well, now you have some time to relax,” he continued. “But in two days, we’ll need to send him another message using the same code. I know school will be starting for you soon, but this second message is just as important.”

“Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to make the mission a success.”

“Now, we must pray all goes well for the men in the mountains,” he said. “I feel guilty that I’m safe down here in my little store while my brother and his men prepare to fight in the wilderness . . . And who knows what will happen once the weather turns . . .”

Elodie shook her head. She tried her best to sound like a good soldier. Solemn and serious, though inside her mind was spinning with other thoughts. She felt that her mission had made her more animalistic in a way. As if she now moved to pulses and rhythms that did not have an acoustical sound, but were sensed instead through instinct.

“Yes, we must consider ourselves lucky and pray that the autumn will not bring too much rain nor the winter too much snow.” Her words sounded wooden and came out flat. Quickly, Elodie tried to light a bit of fire to her words.

“I suppose a bookseller’s job is not affected by the weather.”

Luca let out a small laugh. “Indeed, not.”

“Was the store your father’s?”

“Oh no!” Luca threw his head back and laughed again. “My father? He couldn’t even read. Neither of my parents could. Nor could I until the age of ten. I actually taught myself to read.”

Elodie looked surprised. “Really?” Suddenly the room felt bright as an energy was ignited between them.

“Yes.” Luca nodded. “No one in my family, not even I, ever went to school. The fact is, I’m the son of a blacksmith. There were no books in my house. My father knew how to work only with his hands. My three brothers and I all helped him. We swept the floor and chopped wood, and my older brothers helped stoke the fire.”

Luca cleared his voice.

“One day, when I was ten years old, a customer came into my father’s shop with a book tucked under his arm. My father told him the iron set he had ordered for his fireplace would be ready shortly; he just needed another twenty minutes for it to cool.

“The man’s answer startled me. Typically, customers got angry when their orders were not immediately ready. But this man seemed almost happy with the news.

“‘Twenty minutes, eh?’ he said. ‘Great. I’ll just sit outside and read a bit.’ The man tapped on his book and walked to the bench outside my father’s workshop and I followed him.

“I watched as he sat down, looked up at the sun for a moment, and then opened his book on his lap.

“‘What’s the matter, little fellow?’ he asked me. I was covered in soot, as my brothers and I always were.

“‘Nothing,’ I said shyly. He seemed to study me for a second, perhaps sensing the curiosity in my eyes, peeking out of the mask of filth, before returning to his book.

“I crouched by the doorpost for twenty minutes, watching as his face changed with every page.

“I tell you, Elodie, it was like watching an actor in a movie. The words he was reading made him smile, even laugh out loud on occasion. Then a few pages later, his face became serious and grave. His brow wrinkled, and his eyes were fixated on every sentence. Then, when my father called out that his order was ready, the man couldn’t even respond until he had finished reading his chapter. That’s how taken he was by the book’s content.

“I remember that day as if it were yesterday because it was then and there I vowed to myself that I, too, would learn to read. I guess you could say I realized from an early age that there was a code locked inside each book, and I wanted to be the one to learn it.”

“But then how did you come to own this store? You’re so young!” Elodie gushed.

“Well, you have to understand, I wasn’t busy like the rest of the children with any obligations of school. Once I started teaching myself to read, through mostly discarded newspapers, I saved all my money from odd chores to buy my first book. And eventually after several months, my collection grew. I then began to trade books with dealers. By the time I was fifteen, I had enough to sell books on the street from a cart. Five years later, having combed all the flea markets for secondhand books, I found a handful of rare editions that I got for a song and resold them for a bounty. I had a friend, Pelizzato, who used to trade books with me; we positioned our carts side by side in Milan. Eventually both of us had enough to open our first shops. He went to Venice and named his La Toletta . . . and I started Il Gufo here in Verona.”

Elodie was amazed. “That’s incredible,” she said. “You’re a self-made man at the age of what, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-four,” he said, smiling. He straightened his spine and pushed back his shoulders. “And I’ve cleaned up, too . . .” He patted his cheeks with both hands. “No soot! Just some occasional ink.”

“And now instead of unlocking codes, you’re creating them,” Elodie said.

“Yes. Exactly. And we need to write another.”

“I only have until dinnertime,” she said. “Then I need to get home.”

“Well then,” he said looking at the clock, “let’s get to work.”

Just like before, the two of them worked side by side. Elodie now knew the key by heart, so it was easy to write the coded cadenza once she knew the number of sixteenth notes needed to relay the amount of guns being stockpiled, and the particular placement of the triple-stopped whole note so that she could inform the intelligence scouts of the location.

She worked deftly and efficiently. Once the code was written, she stood up and pulled out her cello.

“Let’s hear how it sounds. I don’t want to completely offend the Wolf’s sensibilities again . . .”

It was strange how things had changed between the two of them. The first time Elodie played for Luca, she remembered the pangs of embarrassment and nervousness flooding through her body, before she was able to surrender to the music. Now, it just seemed natural to play for him.

She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he had just revealed something about his past to her that made her feel more connected, or perhaps it was their shared connection to creating the important codes. But regardless of the reason, this time felt different to her.

She picked up her cello and settled into her chair. In two seconds, her bow was at the strings, her body was like a dancer electrified. The music. The code. Her playing. She radiated like a starburst from her cello.

Verona, Italy

J
ULY
1943

Elodie’s second mission to the Wolf did not evoke the same fear in her. She knew the route, she knew approximately how long it would take her, and she knew that the man was far less intimidating than his code name.

The day after she finished the code with Luca, Elodie woke up, tucked her white blouse into her navy skirt, and told her parents she would be out rehearsing with Lena, taking her cello with her.

She moved quickly and efficiently through the streets. She looked at no one. She made her face expressionless. The only thing she focused on was getting to the station to catch the early morning train to Mantua.

When she arrived at the Wolf’s apartment building, she found the main door ajar. She walked inside and took the stairs to his apartment. Elodie placed down her cello case and knocked at the door. One minute passed; she remained outside. She pressed her ear to the door to see if he was lost in his piano playing, but again there was nothing but silence. Elodie knocked again.

She didn’t know if she should remain on the landing to the apartment or return home. She decided to knock one more time. Shortly after, she heard movement. A shuffling of footsteps. Then a crash, like the sound of a vase falling to the ground.

“Hello? Who’s there?” It was the sound of the Wolf’s voice.

“I’ve come for my lesson,” she said. She thought it unwise to announce herself as Dragonfly and call attention to herself, should any of the neighbors be listening.

Suddenly the door unlocked and the Wolf stood there, looking far shabbier than at their first meeting.

“Please excuse my appearance,” he said, smoothing his shirt down with his hands. The top button of his chemise had been left undone, allowing a small tuft of white hair to peek through.

“I only got back last night and need to leave tonight again, so I’m sorry that I’m not better prepared for you.”

She smiled. “Don’t even mention it. I usually close my eyes anyway when I play.”

“Yes. Indeed.” He clasped his hands. “Let’s hear you play then. I’m anxious to hear what you have in store today,” he said. “Come with me.”

They walked down the long corridor, where a shattered ceramic vase lay on the floor. “I’ll get to that later,” he said as he shuffled by. “I hate to lose any time while you’re here.”

“Thank you,” she said as she stepped again into the peacock-blue music room.

“Same position as last time, then?” He went to get a chair for her. She scanned the room, glancing again at the painting in the golden frame above his piano.

The Wolf turned his head and saw the line of her gaze.

“You like that painting, don’t you? I noticed you staring at it when you were last here.”

“Yes,” she said blushing.

“I bought that painting many years ago, for my wife’s birthday.” He slid the chair underneath her, and she sat down.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. She reached down to unfasten her case.

“Not so beautiful, thankfully, that Goering wanted it. Mussolini’s henchmen came here in ’38 and took inventory of everything I had. I have friends who had Titians and Tintorettos, and all that was taken for Goering’s personal art collection. I’m lucky I had given my wife something too bourgeois for his taste.”

He smiled again as he turned his back to her and looked for a chair for himself. “Not that it doesn’t have value. You could probably sell that today for a tidy sum—as you could, your cello . . .”

She pulled out her cello and brought it to her chest.

“Enrico Levi’s Gofriller’s cello. Unbelievable.”

His eyes were firmly focused on her, and Elodie tried not to show her unease.

The Wolf let out a little laugh. “Don’t worry, Dragonfly, I’m not going to steal your cello away from you . . . It makes me happy that it’s in the hands of such a gifted musician.”

She knew enough not to smile. Even in her young age, she knew not to soften under the easy words of a man’s flattery.

“Levi was a kind man. A generous soul . . . He was Mantua’s best dealer when it came to fine, rare instruments. His showroom was just a few meters from the town center. A small door that once you entered, you could smell the scent of varnish and wood. Violins hung from the ceiling. Bows were pegged to the wall. Behind the glass, he kept his cherished Stradivarius violin. I once was at a salon where his son played the Strad and he played your Gofriller. To hear the two of them play! My God, angels were in the room that night!”

Elodie could almost see and hear the music wafting from the salon room he described. And, as much as she wanted to appear unmoved, she couldn’t help but smile.

“I wish I could have been there,” she said softly. Her hands, without her knowing it, were still covering her cello protectively. “I suppose you don’t think I do my cello justice,” she said to him.

“No, I don’t think that at all . . .” He narrowed his eyes slightly, as if to absorb her into his mind completely. “Something about you reminds me of my wife. She was older than you when I first met her, of course. But she had that same gaze. That fire underneath her eyes. So focused she was . . .” His voice cracked slightly. She heard him take a breath as if to fortify himself.

“When was the last time you heard from her?”

“It’s been over six months,” he said. “I begged her not to leave Italy. She was arrested in France trying to help her parents and was then deported—I’m told to somewhere in Poland.”

Elodie winced. She had heard from Zampieri that there were members of the French Resistance who were arrested by the police and sent to work camps in Poland. No one ever heard a shred of information about them after that. It was a big, vast hole.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “I heard you play her music the last time I was here, and it lingered inside my head for days. That’s how good it was.”

“She was a talent beyond words,” he replied. “She played three instruments, traveled throughout Europe to perform, and composed much of her own music. I was a pedestrian next to her.”

Elodie was about to offer another morsel of sympathy for him, but he suddenly grew conscious of the fact he was revealing too much of himself.

“Well, that’s enough of me bellyaching to you. You are here for a reason, Dragonfly. What am I listening to today?”

“Boccherini,” she said. “Cello Concerto in B flat Major.”

“Boccherini, eh? I prefer Haydn.”

She laughed. “Me, too, but it’s a good piece for a cadenza.”

“Well, begin,” he said. He pulled up the pleats to his pants and sat down.

Elodie lifted her bow, closed her eyes, and regained her focus. She forced everything he had just said to her out of her mind.

The music was lighter and faster than the Haydn concerto she had played the last time. This time when she shifted the key into the cadenza and did the triple-stopped whole notes, her bow plucked like a fiddler.

There was a strange levity to the sound of the notes, which she knew contrasted with the importance of the encoded message.

She saw the Wolf’s eyebrows lift when she got to the cadenza, his head nodding slightly as if giving his approval to the plan.

When she was done, she handed him the score.