The Garden of Letters (35 page)

Verona, Italy

S
EPTEMBER
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.

“When do we leave for Venice?” Elodie was so weak that she could barely manage to get the words out. All she wanted to do was crawl back into her childhood bed and sleep.

“We’ll leave as soon as you feel strong enough.” Orsina hesitated for a moment. “But after you left with Luca, I started to wonder how we could manage to make a new start there.” She took a deep breath. “Your father gave us such a good life while he was alive, but we have to think how we’ll find money to live without his income from teaching.”

Orsina scanned the room. “There are a few things we could try to sell. The dishes, the silverware.” She stopped herself mid-thought. “But who would even buy them? No one has extra money to spare now, and they’re not of any real value . . .”

Elodie was barely listening to her mother. She cupped her face in her hands and began to sob.

“Luca’s dead, Mamma.”

Orsina’s face turned pale.

“A group of German soldiers discovered his brother’s camp. We . . . We . . .” She was trying to find her breath through her tears. “We had just scouted a new location and were returning to tell the others when the shooting began . . .” She knotted her hands together, her knuckles draining from pink to white.

“He insisted I stay hidden in the bushes . . . I begged him to stay . . . but he wouldn’t.”

Orsina wrapped her arms around her daughter. Elodie’s cheeks were so wet now that Orsina could feel the tears soaking through her blouse and onto her own skin.

She continued to hold Elodie for several minutes until her daughter’s tears stopped.

“I want to leave here, soon.” She was trying to regain her breath and peeled herself away from Orsina’s arms. “I have our new papers.” She stood up, went to her bag, and fetched the new identity cards. “One of the partisans made these for us, only a few hours before he was killed.” She handed Orsina’s over to her. “We’re Anna and Maria Zorzetto now.”

Orsina took her new identity card and studied the new name.

Elodie tried to smile. “Seriously, Mamma, you must remember this . . . It’s important in case we’re ever questioned.”

Orsina closed her eyes and etched the new date into her mind. “Your memory comes from me,
carina
. I will remember it.”

Elodie touched her temples with her fingers. Her face was streaked with red from crying. “I wish I didn’t remember so much . . . I can still see Luca’s body . . . his fingers blue . . .” Her voice cracked and she stopped.

Orsina came over and embraced her, but Elodie pushed her away.

“I just want to leave here and forget everything.”

Orsina tried again to soothe her daughter. She searched for her fingers and squeezed them. “We will make a new life in Venice. We will drown our painful memories in the lagoon and start anew.”

“It’s strange for me to envision us picking up everything and going to Venice.” Elodie bit her lip and searched to focus on her mother’s eyes. “It’s so close by train but you and Papa made it seem like it was a door to a city that it was best to keep closed.”

Orsina became quiet. A strange light came over her face.

“As much as I love Venice, I’ve associated it with death. I buried my parents there, I lost my first pregnancy there . . . So after I had you, and your father and I made a new life in Verona, I just could never manage to return.”

“Then why now?” Elodie was trying to understand her mother’s inner mind.

“Because Venice is a maze. It’s a place where you can both lose yourself and also reemerge. Especially for those who know it well.” She took a deep breath. “And it’s not safe for you in Verona anymore.”

Orsina reached to pull back Elodie’s hair. She wanted to see her daughter’s eyes and anchor herself to them. These were eyes she had watched since the moment the girl had come into the world. She had seen them transform from innocence into maturity. Now even through her daughter’s grief, she saw the strength within them.

“You’re right, though. We will need money, Mamma.”

Orsina nodded in agreement. “Yes. We must figure out a way to sell what we can.”

Elodie lowered her eyes. “Father did leave me something valuable.” She reached for her mother’s hand. “But it never really belonged to me. It’s now time for someone else to continue its story.”

She turned her head and looked at the cello resting in the corner. Its red varnish was glimmering.

Orsina shook her head. “No. I won’t let you. It hasn’t come to that yet.”

“I have a buyer in mind,” she said, her decision already made.

She briefly imagined herself without her cello and felt a crushing sensation inside her chest. But perhaps she needed to rid herself of everything she had before she arrived in Venice. To let the lagoon she had yet to see swallow her whole and then spit her out, new and transformed.

The next morning, Elodie woke up and held the instrument one last time. She unwrapped it from its yellow scarf, stroked its long neck, and ran her fingers up and down the strings.

She had no doubt who the right person to buy the cello would be. She needed someone who knew its history and appreciated its provenance. She also wanted to be sure that the new owner would take as great care of it as she and her father had. Only one person she knew fit this description, and she knew exactly where to find him. She just had to hope that he was still there. And so the next morning, Elodie, or rather Anna Zorzetto, was on a train to Mantua to see the Wolf.

She boarded the train to Mantua and found a seat on one of the third-class wooden benches. Holding her cello closely between her arms and legs, she scanned her fellow passengers. Everyone had the same weary expression. Blank faces that conveyed only the simplest message to anyone who pondered them for a moment too long: “I know nothing. I have nothing of value. I only ask that you let me travel undisturbed.”

In these times to be left undisturbed was truly a gift. So when the German
pass-kontrol
barged into the train compartment, demanding papers and scrutinizing identity cards, it caused nearly every heart on board to stop momentarily.

Elodie watched the woman next to her let her toddler suck on a piece of stale bread that was no bigger than her thumb. Everyone looked so thin, their hollow faces ghostlike and grave.

The woman seemed to find Elodie and her instrument a curious addition to the compartment. Her eyes slid over the curve of the case and the lock of Elodie’s fingers around its middle.

“It must be heavy,” she finally said.

Elodie nodded. The child reached to touch the case, his tiny fingers gently caressing its inner curve.

Elodie heard his little voice above the din of the locomotive’s wheels. “What is it?”

She felt his finger graze against her own, its warmth cutting through the chill that had run through her since Luca’s death.

“It’s a cello,
carino
,” she said quietly. “And it makes the most beautiful music.”

Since the Germans had arrived, it was impossible to travel on the rails without any significant delay. A typical forty-minute trip from Verona to Mantua could now take over two hours.

As Elodie looked out the window and saw the outskirts of Mantua, the city majestically rising in the distance, she felt as if she were traveling back in time. She could see the church bell tower and the medieval walls, and she tried to remember how long it had been since she was last in the Wolf’s apartment, playing the encoded cadenzas within those peacock-blue walls.

It had been nearly three months. Even in that short time period, so much had happened. Her father had died. She had failed her mission at the Bibiena. The Germans had invaded Italian soil. There had been the bloodshed at the Piazza delle Poste. Lena and Beppe were murdered. And now the heartache of losing Luca. Elodie wrapped her arms around the cello case even more tightly and shut her eyes.

She wondered what the Wolf would say when she arrived at his apartment. Whether he’d greet her warmly, or say he wanted nothing more to do with her after she had bungled the code at the Bibiena. She tried to imagine him instead bringing her into the apartment, sitting her down calmly, and asking why she had come.

She practiced in her head how she would ask him whether he would be interested in buying her cello. She would never forget the sight of the Wolf’s eyes when she first pulled it out of its case. He looked as though she had walked in with something more valuable than gold.

As she exited the train and made her way toward Mantua’s central square, she told herself that this would probably be the last time she would hold the instrument in her arms. She stiffened under her sweater, her spine as straight as a rifle. She wanted to feel like stone, to no longer feel the river of grief that flowed just beneath her bones. In her life, she had held two things that she loved more than anything else: her cello and Luca. And within the next hour, she knew the last of these would be gone.