The Garden of Letters (26 page)

Elodie seemed taller, thinner, even more angular. Her skin glowed. Her eyes were piercing. It wasn’t just green that Orsina saw, but blue and gold. When she looked into Elodie’s eyes, she couldn’t help but think of the peacock feathers in her mother’s hat shop.

She clasped her daughter’s hand; the strong grip of her musician fingers was familiar. It reminded her of Pietro.

“Elodie,” she said, “before the year’s end, promise me one thing. Promise me you’ll make me get on the train and go back to visit Venice, even if it’s just for the day.”

Elodie nodded. She had always wanted to see this city of her mother’s childhood, this floating city that emerged from the sea. She never understood why they had never gone there.

Orsina looked out the window. She closed her eyes and saw the church where she first heard Pietro perform. She saw her mother in plum-colored silk, her own yellow chiffon dress fluttering over her knees. She saw the water underneath the canal and the window of her parents’ hat shop filled with hats and exotic feathers.

She realized she had packed away so much of herself after she became a wife. As a child she had an almost incurable sense of adventure, a hunger for places far away. How many photographs of Paris had she pulled from her mother’s magazine collection? Streetlamps and bridges, gardens full of flowers and automobiles instead of gondolas and
vaporetti
. Every feather she touched, she wondered not just which bird it had come from, but also which country. But her need to discover the world had somehow died alongside her parents. Looking at Elodie alight in her beauty and powers, she had the desire to find herself again. Even if her body was no longer young, her dreams were waiting to be rediscovered.

The two women held each other’s hands during the short train ride.

Elodie wondered if her mother could feel just how nervous she was. The notes to the three pieces she was to play, she knew those by heart. She had played them for countless hours at school, at home, inside her head, but the pressure to deliver just the right new notes for the Wolf’s perfectly tuned ear was taking all the breath from her.

“I’m nervous,” she whispered, turning to her mother as they stepped with the others off the train.

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Orsina said, hoping to soothe her daughter’s nerves. “It’s just a concert. Play with your eyes closed like your father taught you. That way you won’t even see the crowds. You’ll be able to focus fully on the music.”

Her mother didn’t understand. Her father would have never said such nonsense. Yes, she could close her eyes and perhaps tune out the faces of the crowd.

But that wasn’t why she was nervous.

Her mind didn’t feel as clear as it typically was. Every time she tried to concentrate and hear the music, she saw Luca. She saw the storeroom. She saw the two of them entwined.

She tried to take a deep breath, but the dress was like a second skin. Try as she might, Elodie couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. Yet, in stark contrast, Orsina looked as though the train ride out of Verona had rejuvenated her. Her skin was luminous and her eyes were sparkling. “Train fumes are like oxygen for you,” Elodie teased her as they came off the train. Orsina threw her shawl over her shoulder and brushed her daughter’s cheek.

“Yes,” she said. “I feel better from the trip . . . the rhythm of the train always helps me dream.”

The Teatro Bibiena was Mantua’s small but elegant theater, an illuminated vault of stone walls and velvet seats. Soft light flickered from candelabra-like sconces. Only a few people in the audience were related to the performers. The majority of seats were occupied by music lovers who wanted to see the next generation of performers.

Elodie had hoped that Lena would come, but the night before Lena had been wrapped up in more pressing things. Berto Zampieri had acquired the counterfeit passports for the Morettis.

“Forgive me, Elodie. But this will be their last night in Verona and I want to be able to say good-bye . . .” Elodie understood completely Lena’s need to do this. The Morettis’ little boy was like a baby brother to Lena, and she had waited for months to get them passports.

Elodie nodded. “I understand; don’t even give it a second thought. There will be other concerts.”

Lena looked up to the sky, as if anticipating the buzz of airplanes, the threat of bombs. “I hope so. You’ve always been the optimistic one between us.”

Elodie smiled. “Optimistic? I’ll take that . . . better than being called naive.”

Lena embraced her friend. “You are not naïve, you are stronger than you appear.” She pinched Elodie’s slender arm. “Good-bye, warrior, and good luck!”

At half past eight, Elodie walks onto the stage with the rest of the orchestra. She is seated closer to the front, near the conductor, so the audience can see her when she plays her cadenza in the Boccherini concerto and then her solo in the piece by Saint-Saëns.

She notices a slight shift in the breath of the audience as she appears. The sight of a beautiful young girl with a long swanlike neck, dressed in dark taffeta, and carrying her cello causes a stir through the audience. Elodie hears the gasps and feels a slight tremor run through her.

The musicians take their seats and focus their eyes on the conductor and his baton.

Marin Marais’s “Bells of Geneviève” begins in perfect rhythm. The music is meant to simulate the ringing of church bells, both persistent and full of longing, rising to a crescendo. Elodie plays with increasing fury. Orsina sees that Elodie has yet to open her eyes since the piece began. The boys who play alongside her use their bows like swordsmen. They play with precision, but Orsina senses that they do not play like her daughter. Elodie is playing as though she has become one of the church bells. She is swaying back and forth, her body like a pendulum, her arms striking passionately with her bow. Still, Elodie’s eyes remain closed. She does not look at a single face in the audience; she dances with the music alone.

When she finishes, the audience claps, some even stand and yell “Brava!” before they return to their seats and resettle themselves. After a small wave of silence returns to the theater, the students in the orchestra pick up their bows again. But a strange feeling overtakes Elodie. Within the first few rows of the theater, she sees Luca’s face, his eyes radiant and shining, his complete attention focused on her on the stage. His smile curling like a cat’s tail at the sight of her lifting her bow.

The orchestra begins the Boccherini and the music sweeps beneath her. Her fingers play the notes, but Elodie is not connected to the score. Her bow moves with perfect precision, but the sight of Luca’s face is like a floodgate, a dam breaking inside her. She is seized by the images of the night before. His hands sliding over her; his fingers searching for her. She cannot stop the reel inside her head. It is as if he has taken possession of her mind.

Time and space suddenly fall away. She hears herself playing, but the notes are not what she wants. Her memory of the written score has taken control. The Grutzmacher cadenza, the one her teacher wanted her to play, emerges from her cello, and the small space she had to insert the code evaporates into midair.

No one but Luca and the Wolf—whom she cannot see, but whom she knows is in the audience—can detect her error. The cadenza was played perfectly, without a single note missing, but Elodie has failed her mission and she is seized with terror over her mistake. Her stomach is turning into tight knots. Her mind is racing. While moments ago her mind had temporarily been taken over, now every part of her is rushing to find a way to rectify her error. She wonders if she can add the code at the end, but she knows that it would sound out of place and set off an alarm with the others. If only there was a cadenza in Saint-Saëns’s “Dying Swan.”

She does not look again into the rows of the theater. She keeps her eyes on the floor, her cello firmly placed between her legs and her bow at her side. Part of her wishes that she could vanish from the stage. She does not want to find the searching eyes of Luca. She does not want to see the confusion or the disappointment on his face. Nor can she bear the thought of the Wolf’s eyes. She imagines them bloodshot and furious, incredulous over her ineptitude.

Elodie tries to push the thoughts of both men out of her mind. She tries to imagine her mother instead. Orsina would have no idea that Elodie had failed at her debut. Elodie straightens her neck, even as her gaze remains fixed on the ground. She can feel her mother smiling at the thought of her daughter becoming the swan.

After the applause dissipates, a harp is wheeled onto the stage for the final performance of the “Dying Swan.”

The harpist, Francesca Colonne, arrives on the stage, glorious in a long red silk dress, her hair piled like a cornetto on her head. Elodie is thankful that all eyes are no longer on her but on the exquisitely delicate Francesca.

Francesca sits down at her harp, the tall instrument with its gilded scrolls and heavenly strings, and begins to seduce the audience into a dreamy sleep. She plucks and strokes the strings with exquisite and celestial beauty. Elodie raises her head, her long, white neck stretches from her blue neckline, and it is she who channels the beating wings of the swan, its heart on the cusp of breaking.