The Garden of Letters (38 page)

Venice, Italy

S
EPTEMBER
1943

They are eager to leave. Valentina has been generous in giving them shelter, but she has little room to spare for long-term guests. A foot-pedaled sewing machine takes up most of one corner, along with a table piled high with bolts of material, patterns, and tins full of needle and thread. And while Orsina shares Valentina’s bed, Elodie has slept on the couch.

“I need to stretch my legs and to get some air,” she tells her mother. Valentina cautions her to be careful. “The Germans are swarming the city. And it’s so easy to get lost if you’re not from here.”

“Yes, let me go with you,” Orsina implores her. Orsina knows that, after a few walks, Elodie will be able to memorize the paths and bridges she would need to return back to the apartment. But until then, Orsina does not want Elodie out alone.

Elodie agrees, and the women change their clothes to go out. Elodie, into a simple navy dress, and Orsina into a black one.

Valentina looks at the two of them and frowns. “I’m not even going out,” she says, pointing to a pile of work she has to do, “and I still look more fashionable than the two of you.”

Dipping into the back of the apartment, she returns with two cloche hats.

“Here,” she says, handing one to Orsina made of burgundy felted wool with a black ribbon sewn around its edge. For Elodie, she selects a navy one stitched with a scattering of translucent beads.

“Your mother would never have forgiven me if I didn’t offer you one of her hats for a walk in Venice with her granddaughter.”

Orsina takes the hat between her hands and is comforted by it. The contrast between the stiff felt construction and the delicate plumage instantly takes her back to her childhood, when she loved to touch all the beautiful things that flowed in abundance in her mother’s workshop.

“Are these ones salvaged from the store?”

“Yes,” Valentina replies. “I still have a few that I could never bear to sell. You should each have one. Elodie, in particular, should have something made by her grandmother’s hands.”

Elodie goes to the oval mirror above the side table and places the hat on her head. She never wore a hat in Verona. When she was cold, she simply wrapped a scarf around her head. The hat makes her looked older, more sophisticated.

“You look beautiful, Elodie,” Valentina says as she approaches. Orsina had already positioned her hat on an angle, like a natural. She goes to grab her purse.

“You two should be careful,” Valentina cautions. “The Gestapo shot two gondoliers just a few nights ago. They claimed they were running guns for the Resistance.”

Valentina clicks her tongue. “The poor boys. They were brothers. I don’t know how their mother will manage now.”

Elodie’s eyes shift to the window just beside Valentina’s sewing table. A pale flash of light is streaming in through the narrow opening, which gives the dark, cluttered apartment the air of a Tintoretto painting.

“Orsina, Venice will come back to you,” Valentina promises. “I’m sure as soon as you start walking, the pathways, all the hidden spots of beauty, will return to you as if you were here only yesterday.” She smiles. “But use caution. The Germans are patrolling in full force.” She shakes her head. “And avoid going through the Ghetto. There is terrible suffering everywhere in the city, but especially for the Jews. We should be helping them more.” She let out a deep sigh. “But fear has made everyone blind.”

Several days have passed since they ventured out into the streets of Venice. Fall has cast the city in a veil of soft light and everything around them sparkles. The dome of the Salute church glimmers in the harbor. And the palaces on the Grand Canal are a bouquet of soft pastels against the chalk-blue sky.

They walk through the small, snaking
calles
of Castello and toward the harbor, their beautiful hats pulled over the rims of their eyes.

In the center of San Zaccharia, three German officers struggle to ask for directions in broken Italian, and an Italian woman gestures in the direction of the Rialto. Orsina dips her head and whispers just low enough that Elodie can hear.

“Resistance can come in many forms, it seems,” she says, her lips curling into a slight smile. “In this case, she’s sending them the completely opposite way.”

They walk past the near empty Hotel Danieli and the Bridge of Sighs with its windows carved with stone bars.

She inhales the air, damp and briny lifting off the harbor. The mist, so intoxicating, fills her lungs. The buildings of Giudecca emerge in the distance and the sound of church bells and ferry horns fill her ears. Elodie’s eyes struggle to differentiate between the sea and the sky.

And then past the marble arches of the Doge’s Palace and the brick tower of the Campanile, she is suddenly in front of San Marco.

As she lifts her head toward the basilica, Elodie hears the sound of fluttering wings. Hundreds of dark pigeons, with iridescent necks, taking flight.

It is a place of wings and starbursts. High above San Marco’s ramparts, a winged lion looks over the square, its majestic gate flanked by a parade of Etruscan horses. Glimmering mosaics sparkle underneath gilded arches, and a cobalt blue frieze is studded in gold stars. And in the pale, afternoon light, trapezelike shadows fly across the piazza like another dark, exotic bird.

But at the outdoor Café Florian, the pianist is playing
Die Wacht am Rhein
for a few German officers. Elodie’s body stiffens at the sound of the German melody, her mother sensing the tension in her daughter’s arm looped tightly within her own.

They cross through the Square and dip into another side street until they reach the
vaporetti
.

And as they begin to wander home, they avoid passing through the stone gateway that leads to the Ghetto, the ancient neighborhood that the Jews of Venice had lived in for centuries. Two shops flanking the archway are already shuttered closed, both marked by large swastikas and an ordinance announcing that they were “
Verboten
,” having once been owned by Jews.

Elodie’s eyes search for any signs of life within the damp, stone buildings. In a tall narrow window, she spots a child staring with half-hollow eyes, her head wrapped in a scarf as gray as an oyster shell. The girl’s eyes meet Elodie’s for a brief moment, before falling back into the shadow of her apartment.

In a few steps, the women suddenly find themselves facing two large German soldiers.

“Halt!” they call out to the women. Orsina and Elodie stop in their tracks like a pair of hunted deer. “
Ausweis.
”

The women reach to find their papers.

“Where are you going?” one of the men asks in German. He takes their papers. When neither woman answers, he tries again in broken Italian.

Orsina responds in Venetian. Her vowels elongated, her tongue rolling each word.

“She’s speaking in bloody dialect,” the soldier curses. “I can’t understand a word.” They each cast an eye on Elodie, who has yet to lower her eyes under the brim of her dark red hat. On the contrary, she stares directly, unflinching. Lena would have been proud.

The German hands their papers back. “Go! Get yourselves home!”

Elodie can feel her mother’s pace quicken, her chest inflating and her breath slightly halting. Only after they are steps away from Valentina’s apartment, does her mother finally let go of her arm.

Over the next week, Elodie learns to glide through the city like a native Venetian. She memorizes the small, narrow passageways and the bridges with only a few steps, even the ones that don’t have names. She avoids the large, populated areas like the Rialto or the Piazza San Marco, where German officers frequent in groups, their boots marching against the cobblestones, their battle songs and anthems filling the air.

In the evenings, as Elodie tries in vain to fall asleep, her body sagging against the couch’s weak springs, her mind replays over and over every moment she spent with Luca. And one night, a sentence he had said only in passing when describing his past returns to her. He had mentioned a friend in Venice who owned a bookstore with a funny name. “La Toletta,” he had said, and laughed. “The name means ‘the vanity table.’ Pelizzato and I used to sell books together on the streets in Milan. Our carts stood side by side.” A sense of longing fills her heart as she remembers the intimacy of being in the back room with Luca, the smell of paper, and the thrill of telling each other stories filling the air.

The next morning, she tells Valentina and Orsina she wants to find a new novel to read. “I’m getting restless and need something to do, but I’m afraid to disturb the neighbors with my cello.” She has taken it out of its case several times since arriving in Venice, to stroke the varnish and rub rosin into her bow. Sometimes, when the other women were busy with their sewing, she had quietly plucked the strings, just to let the instrument know she had not forgotten it.

“Yes, as much as I’d love to hear you play,” Valentina agrees, “since everyone around here knows I’ve lived alone for years, the sudden arrival of a cellist would bring suspicion.” She walks over to Elodie and touches her shoulder lightly. “A few bookstores are still operating. I could certainly suggest a few . . .”

“A friend once told me about a shop in Venice that had a good selection of American novels in translation.” Elodie pauses. “La Toletta . . . I think that was the name.”

Valentina nods, pulling a pin from between her pursed lips and fastening it to a piece of fabric in her hands.

“Yes. Of course. It’s not far. Close to Accademia.” She places her sewing down and draws Elodie a quick map with landmarks. Elodie looks at it intensely for a moment and then reaches for her coat.

“Don’t you need the map?” Valentina asks her.

“Oh no,” she says, delighted to have the chance to put her good memory to use. “It’s already in here . . .” She taps her finger to her temple.

Orsina smiles. She knows exactly what Valentina is thinking: that even though Elodie is not a native to this city, she has still inherited her memory from Orsina’s bloodline.