The Garden of Letters (43 page)

She returns his gaze. They are both players in a game of chess. “No, I am not . . . I’ve been staying with a distant cousin of mine. Angelo Rosselli, the village doctor . . .”

The
kommandant
grunts, a small smile appearing on his lips.

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, I know him very well. I was told there was a young, pretty cousin staying with him.” He considers Elodie again, inspecting her even more carefully than before.

“My colleague said it looks like you’re packed to leave Portofino. Yet you claim to merely be going out for bread.”

“Yes,” she answers, her voice carefully measured. “Is this now a crime?”

“I’m not sure . . . Let me see your papers, and then we can decide.”

Elodie feels her fear ignite inside her. She fishes into her rucksack, touching her medal of Saint George as she searches to retrieve her forged papers.

She hands them over to the
kommandant
, who reads them with a quick glance.

“Anna Zorzetto. From Venice?”

She merely offers a slight shrug in response.

“That’s a long way from here. I had no idea our village doctor was partially Venetian.”

“It’s a distant relation.”

“I see. And you left Venice because?”

“The threat of bombs, of course. My mother felt it would be safer here.”

“Of course.” The
kommandant
nods his head as if humoring her. “Have they bombed Venice? I thought it was only Verona.”

The mention of her home makes Elodie feel as though he is dragging a shard of glass across her back. But she stifles her urge to reveal her discomfort.

“Every night there was the sound of sirens. I couldn’t sleep. Here it is peaceful.”

“A long way to journey just for a better night’s sleep, Anna.”

“Insomnia is a plague,” she answers, already aware of his weakness. “If you don’t suffer from it, you wouldn’t understand.”

Her words register with him immediately. She can see his eyes come alive as though they speak the same language. “I actually do understand. Quite well, in fact.”

She does not answer.

“So, Anna . . . I see we share two things in common. Insomnia and a love of music.” He reaches for the decanter next to the Victrola and pours himself a small glass of liqueur.

“I’m not terribly curious about your life in Venice. I don’t want to hear about your mother nor the suffering you endured from the sound of the sirens. What I would like to know—before I decide what to do with you—is how you could recognize Casals’s playing of the Bach.”

Elodie remains quiet. Her eyes focus for a moment on the instrument cases in the corner. She is like a drowning woman now eyeing a life preserver.

“That’s easy, sir,” she finally answers. “I have played the cello for years.”

He offers her the cello, as if it were a pawn he can spare in their chess game. The black case is placed on a table and then unlatched. The glimmering instrument is more golden than the one taken from her in Genoa, but its beauty nonetheless captivates her.

“
Bello
,” she says as her finger reaches to touch its varnish.

“It was my father’s,” he says. “The violin is mine.”

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t want to waste her breath with words. If she is going to save herself, she knows it can only be done by her bringing this instrument to life.

“May I?”

He nods. “Yes. Please.”

He offers her a chair. Sitting down with the cello, she expertly positions it between her knees. To buy some time to further calm herself, she searches the case for a piece of rosin, which she applies to the bow as she has done thousands of times in the past.

She pulls the cello to her chest and notices her abdomen is thicker than when she had played at the Bibiena months before. For the first time, there is now something separating her and the cello she is playing on.

There is another life.

This new life buoys Elodie. It gives her a new motivation. It is not only herself that she must now save, but the child as well.

Elodie grasps the bow and, by rote, slides it over the strings to tune the instrument. In her head, she can hear her father plucking a perfect A to help her, as though he, too, were now standing there waiting to hear her play once more.

When she feels she is ready, she takes a deep breath and lifts her bow. To anyone looking at the living room, the resemblance between the girl wielding her bow and the image of Saint George raising his sword to slay the dragon, is uncanny.

The pieces she chooses to play probably have little significance for the
kommandant
. But for her, they are the most meaningful ones she could possibly have selected. She re-creates her final performance at the Bibiena. First the “Belles of Genevieve,” and then the “Dying Swan.” When she finishes, she lifts her head and sees the
kommandant
standing with his mouth open, his eyes almost wet with tears.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “
Exquisito
.”

He reaches for the glass of
sciacchetra
he has poured for himself, and extends his arm to take the bow from her.

“I’m not finished,” she says boldly. “I still have one more piece.”

He raises an eyebrow. “As you wish . . . I will not stop you.”

Elodie begins to play, again impassioned, the notes of the Boccherini concerto rising from her cello like stitches of a quilt being plucked and released into the air. When she arrives at the place where she had once mistakenly played the Grutzmacher cadenza, she does not now pause. Instead, she increases the fervor of her playing. She is like a diver thrusting herself deeper into the water. She plays the code that she faltered on months before. She plays it this time for the ears of the Wolf and Luca, and she plays it with perfection. She plays it just for them. A tribute to them alone.

The
kommandant
is speechless. He places his drink down and begins to clap. He is surprised by this gifted girl in his living room, brought to him like a stray dog with a dirty rucksack and a face that looks like a fox.

Elodie does not look up right away. Had she lifted her gaze then, she would have seen the second figure that had just entered the room.

Angelo had arrived to administer the
kommandant
’s injection before making his way home to her. He stands at the threshold to the room, amazed by the beauty of Elodie’s music, hidden from him until now.

Before he can speak, the
kommandant
’s voice fills the air:

“What a talent your cousin has,
Dottore
. Knowing my love of music, why have you kept her a secret from me?”

Angelo stands at the threshold, seeing Elodie’s head lifting from the scroll of her cello. For a second, her eyelids are still partially closed, as though she is waking from a long sleep. When her eyes finally do open, it strikes him straight to his heart, as though he is seeing her true self for the first time.

He notices her rucksack against the leg of the chair and reads her more clearly than he has ever before. He doesn’t care what trouble first drove her to Portofino, or what has caused her to leave in haste from the shelter of his home. He will now do anything in his power to save her.

“
Kommandant
,” he says walking into the room. His fingers whiten around the handle of his black medicine bag. “I’m so glad you’ve had the chance to hear Anna play. I’ve been meaning to mention her to you for some time now. She’s been a great pride to the family for many years. Isn’t she wonderful?”

“Indeed, she is,” the
kommandant
says. “A veritable virtuoso. So unexpected here in this hidden corner of the world.”

“Isn’t it the nature of Portofino to keep its beauty for a chosen few?”

The
kommandant
nods. Another chess game begins, this time between the two men. One with a gun in his desk. The other with a leather bag filled with syringes and pills.

“Yes. How fortunate we are here compared to the rest of Italy. No one’s bombing us, while Milan and Salerno burn to the ground. Your cousin traveled a great length to get here, just because she couldn’t sleep with the sirens blaring in Venice.”

Angelo glances at Elodie, who is frozen. Her arms grasp the cello toward her belly like armor.

“It’s terrible not to be able to sleep, as you well know,
Herr Kommandant
.”

“Yes. I’ve told Anna how we share this affliction. So many things we have in common, she and I . . . music, sleeplessness, and a desire to be left here alone.”

Angelo’s bag contains the sole source of his power. The needle and syringe that he can administer without the
kommandant
’s ever feeling any pain from his touch, and the white tablets of Nembutal, which enable him to sleep.

He walks closer to Elodie and the
kommandant
. He looks to Elodie, his eyes reassuring her with a glance. On the long wooden table, he places his leather bag and unlatches it, the sound of the metal snap filling the air in one sharp note.

“Your insulin,
Kommandant
. It shouldn’t be administered too late today.”

The
kommandant
walks over to his chair and rolls up his sleeve. His authority suddenly yields to Angelo, who swabs the man’s bicep with cotton soaked with alcohol. He pushes the needle into the glass vial and pulls back the syringe.

“Another artist in the family,” the
kommandant
says, rolling down his sleeve. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

“And how’s your sleep been?” Angelo says as he reaches his hands down into his bag. Elodie can hear a faint jangle of pills. A temptation. She hears it like windchimes.

“I’m happy to keep helping you with your problem,” he says as he measures out just a few pills and places them in a spare glass bottle. He prudently doesn’t leave too many. He wants to keep the
kommandant
hungry for more. He needs to preserve their arrangement. He needs to protect himself. And Elodie, most of all. His and the
kommandant
’s arrangement, much like the cello she now holds to her belly, is a shield.

Portofino, Italy

D
ECEMBER
1943

The
kommandant
tells them to both go home. “I have no need to hear any war stories about Venice, Anna,” he tells her. “Or anywhere else, for that matter. But don’t think you’re not going to be playing for me again. You’re my secret now, too.” There is an understanding made between them that requires no further conversation. His eyes communicate their agreement between the two men.

“Take her and go home,
Dottore
. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Elodie packs up the cello in silence and returns it to the corner. Angelo waits for her at the steps that lead to the hallway. When she approaches him, her rucksack now strapped to her back, he takes her by the hand.

They have never touched before and the sensation of his fingers wrapped in hers, feels like a promise. She no longer feels alone. She no longer feels afraid.

Hand in hand, they begin to walk up the hill toward his house.

This time when he asks if he can carry her bag, she slips it off her back and gives it to him without any trepidation. When they arrive at the archway, it is Elodie who lifts the tangle of vines, so Angelo can get to the heavy green door with ease.

They enter the house in silence, their movements are those of a couple who have returned from a long journey and are thankful to be home.

He places down her rucksack and leaves his medicine bag on a chair.

She is already in the kitchen peeling an orange. He takes a pitcher and fills it with water. He brings it to the living room. She places the plate of orange wedges down. Then two glasses for the water.

“Sit,” she tells him softly.

He lowers himself into the worn sofa. His eyes are blue as a gull’s. His mouth soft like the lip of a shell.

“I need to tell you a story,” she says as she, too, sits down.

He looks up at her.

“I’ve been waiting,” he says. And his words finally release her.

Elodie starts off slowly. “This is not a story like in your novels,” she tells him. “Nor is it as beautiful as the poetry you read yesterday, which warmed the air. This is a story that is full of heartache and will make your blood run cold.”

He stares at her. He is full of wonder, the music that she played an hour before is still in his ears. “Anna,” he says. “I am happy that you are here. No matter what you tell me, please know that I will always give you shelter. You are safe with me.”

She wonders if this is the first seedling of love, the embrace of protection. She feels it like a blanket of warmth covering her limbs and penetrating her bones.

“You are so very kind . . .” But she holds her breath, not yet fully believing him. Soon he will learn the truth that she is not Anna Zorzetto, but Elodie Bertolotti. A cello student from Verona, a
staffetta
for the Resistance, and a pregnant woman whose lover—not even her husband—died on the soil of the Monte Comune.

“When I first arrived, you said you picked me out from the crowd because I looked the most afraid.” Her voice quivers. Her hands are like a folded dove over her belly. Her eyes lift from the floor to meet his own.

“Two months ago, I left Venice, telling my mother that there was someone in Genoa who needed my help. She begged me not to go, saying that it was too dangerous for me to travel. Already the sound of sirens was deafening, and we slept every night fearing a bomb might drop on our heads.”

Her heart is racing inside her. She looks again at Angelo, who has not taken his eyes off her.

“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.