The Garden of Letters (5 page)

Portofino, Italy

O
CTOBER
1943

“My name is Angelo,” he tells her, and Elodie is immediately struck by the sweetness of the name.

Her sleep has refreshed her, and when she awakens, he is sitting in the small dining room. There is a long loaf of bread on the table and a small triangle of cheese. A carafe of wine and two glasses of water.

She notices the paintings on the walls. Small, simple scenes of the water. A fisherman and his net, and a white house against a sea of blue. She finds his age is difficult to estimate. His hair is still dark, but there are the first wisps of gray. He is paler than the men she saw at the port. His eyes are a soft, dusty blue.

There are books everywhere. On the shelves against the walls. On the small coffee table, stacked in threes, with shells placed neatly on top. She sees there is an open book on the counter, placed front down, as if he had stopped in midsentence.

The sight of the books conjures up memories of her first encounter with Luca, and she finds herself wanting to cry, though she stifles the urge to do so. But it snakes up her throat and she pushes it down with such intensity that she feels it twist like a tornado within her belly.

He lets her eat in peace, and she is thankful that he does not need to fill the air with words. In the silence, she hears only the sound of his knife cutting against the plate, or the snap of the bread as he breaks it in his hands. The quiet wash of water as he sips from his glass.

These are sounds that she can tolerate. Their rhythm soft with a simplicity that soothes her. She hears her mother singing Venetian melodies in the distance of her memory. She closes her eyes and tries to quell herself with another’s song.

She wonders if this man sitting across from her realizes that her mind is elsewhere. That as she breaks her bread and chews it into bits and pieces and sips from her water glass, just as he does, her body is her cloak of deception. It occupies the space across from him, it mirrors his in the simple ritual of eating, but her mind is far away.

She travels through time and space. Extracting her spirit from her limbs, in the same way she used to pull music from an instrument that would otherwise have remained silent.

First and always there is the image of Luca standing in his bookstore. His dark hair and canvas smock with two sharp pencils in the front pocket. His fingers smudged with newsprint. The smell of paper. The dizziness from a chamber of so many words.

She tries with all effort to push these thoughts from her mind. Instead, she finds herself reaching for the small dish of salt, but her hands shake as she lifts it toward her. When she looks up, she sees her host has noticed this as well.

She wants to tell him that she is not shaking because she is nervous. She is beyond that. It’s because her fatigue is bone deep. She wonders if that is how the elderly feel. So tired from the arc of their life, there is an almost instinctual urge to surrender. To finally give up and find rest.

After dinner, sensing she is still weary from her journey, he asks her if she would like to take a bath. He is quiet and respectful, giving her privacy as he shows her the door to the small room with the deep, wooden tub already half-filled with cool water.

She waits for him to bring her the kettle of hot water. Two more rounds will follow until the bath is sufficiently warmed, but the sight of the rushing water is a relief. She undresses with the door closed, and the simple ritual of removing her shoes and her skirt soothes her. She unbuttons her blouse and removes her slip and underpants. She does not look at herself in the mirror above the sink. She does not glance at the skin, now stretched taut and white. She places one foot in the water, then the other before she sits and pulls her knees to her chest. She closes her eyes and twists back her hair. Then, softly, quietly, thinking no one will hear her, she begins to sing. Not out of joy. But out of longing. Out of a desire for comfort. Just like her mother did, all those years before.

Verona, Italy

A
PRIL
1943

From the age of eighteen, Elodie attended full-time classes at the Liceo Musicale
,
studying chamber music, music theory and later orchestra training. In the hallway, she would often pass her father, a professor there.

But she began to notice slight changes in him. A look of strain, of increasing agitation, had replaced his former peaceful expression. He had believed the Liceo to be sacred, one of the few places where Fascism couldn’t penetrate. The saluting and the marches to show support for Mussolini, indeed all of Italy’s politics, had, for the most part, remained outside its walls. But the anti-Jewish laws enacted four years before, forced out every Jewish professor from his position, and Jewish students were no longer able to enroll. Elodie remembered with great clarity the day her father came home enraged and related how Professor Moretti had been told he could not even retrieve some papers in his office.

Her father’s reaction came flooding back to her the moment Lena mentioned to her that she’d been privately instructed by Professor Moretti since she was seven years old. Moretti’s family had the apartment above Lena’s, and the two families had been friends for years. It was Professor Moretti who first noticed Lena’s musical potential, studying the young child’s hands, the expansion between the fingers, and her unique ability to follow complicated rhythm patterns, and had encouraged her parents to nurture it. Over the years, through private lessons after his regular day of teaching at music school, Moretti had taught Lena everything she knew, from first learning to hold her bow to mastering complex chamber pieces. Even now, her parents paid for her to have private instruction with him, giving him the chance to bring in a limited income to his struggling family, since he could no longer work at the school.

One afternoon, after they had finished classes, Lena looked particularly upset.

“What’s the matter?” Elodie pressed.

Lena shook her head. “Things have become worse for the Morettis. They are practically starving. My mother tries to send them some soup and what few vegetables she can spare, but they are embarrassed by the charity.”

She paused and then whispered, “I’m going to join Luigi tonight for a meeting.”

Elodie didn’t understand her. “A meeting for what?”

Lena shook her head. “Of people who want to stop all of this.” She took a deep breath. “Our country will be unrecognizable in a few months. Just wait, Elodie; you’ll see.”

“You’re barely nineteen, Lena.” Elodie attempted to be logical. “You can’t exactly fight the Fascist army.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to watch as my professor is rounded up with his family and act like I’m blind to it.”

“But you’re not going to do anything that could put you in danger, are you?” Elodie winced just imagining what the police might do to Lena if she were arrested.

“Danger?” Lena smiled and her eyes looked like firecrackers. “Well, no one will help me get false papers for the Morettis until I prove myself to them. That’s why I’ve been helping them distribute materials. I hope to become a messenger for the group. That doesn’t sound too dangerous, does it?”

Elodie looked at her friend, too shocked to utter a reply.

“How about you join me, then?”

“I wish I could, Lena.” Her words sounded so weak, that as soon as she said them, a slight sense of shame came over her.

“It’s just . . . my parents have such expectations for my musical career, and I don’t have a stomach for danger.”

Elodie could sense her friend cringing inside. She knew her answer, her evident lack of courage, was as repellent as the sound of broken strings.

As the weeks went by, Elodie noticed a transformation in her friend. Music was becoming less important to Lena, and Elodie sensed the difference first in her friend’s playing. There was no longer the same connection between her mind, heart, and instrument. Now Lena merely recited the notes. The spirit she used to give to her viola was instead focused on her activities for the early Resistance. Every afternoon, she left Elodie after their studies and went to the art studio of Berto Zampieri, one of the group’s members.

“I wish you’d come, too. Berto’s sculptures are beautiful . . . sensual in a way I’ve never seen before. Brigitte Lowenthal is his girlfriend and muse. God, Elodie, if you could see her! She has bobbed hair; her features are so sharp, she looks like a fox.”

“Sounds like the opposite of you, Lena . . .” Elodie raised an eyebrow. “If she’s the fox of the group, are you their kitten?”

“Hardly!” She laughed and Elodie noticed how alive Lena seemed since she began going to the meetings. “Really, they barely even notice me . . . Brigitte’s the one with the dramatic story. She’s the daughter of one of Verona’s wealthiest Jewish families. They came here from Germany.”

Elodie shook her head. “What you’re describing to me sounds more like you’re attending an art salon, not an anti-Fascist meeting. Soon you’ll be talking about music from the Liceo
and playing chamber music for them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I’m just giving you a little background on some of the more interesting members. There are others, too, Beppe and many of his friends from the university, and a bookseller by the name of Luca who owns Il Gufo, the shop on the Via Mazzini.

“But we’re all committed in our united goal to liberate Italy from the Blackshirts . . .”

Luca, Berto, Beppe . . . all these men’s names that Lena was mentioning, they were all new to her.

“Of course, some of them are
communisti
 . . . their satchels filled with the books of Marx and Lenin. They’re even printing their own newspaper, borrowing one of the presses from one of Brigitte’s contacts. But they’re looking for other women to help them . . . we can move around more freely. No one thinks we’re up to anything more than playing the instruments in our cases or going home to boil water for pasta.”

Elodie walked home that afternoon by herself, her heavy cello case strapped to her back. She studied the men around her. The Blackshirts congregating in the corner, the police, and the young men smoking cigarettes in the café. She wondered if it was true that she was invisible to them. Her face was unremarkable, her body so slight that she caused no distraction.

I am invisible
, she thinks. And suddenly, in a way that surprised her, she felt exhilarated by this transparency. It made her feel strong.

Elodie couldn’t get what Lena told her out of her mind. Part of her was impressed with Lena’s courage, while another part was concerned for her friend’s safety. It was no secret what the Fascist police would do to her should she get caught. Their beatings and torture were a well-known threat to everyone in the city. Many people had simply vanished after being arrested, while others were sent back to their homes severely beaten, their scars a visible reminder of who was in charge of Italy. It was reason enough to stay away. That, and the fact that Elodie could only imagine how devastated her parents would be if anything happened to her.

For several days, Elodie found herself distracted by the knowledge of Lena’s clandestine activities. Over dinner, her father, having sensed the recent lack of focus on her playing, tried to pull Elodie back to her music.

“Elodie, you need to devote even more time to your playing this year. You have to work harder than everyone else, even if it comes easily to you,” her father told her. “You don’t want people to accuse you of benefiting from the fact I teach at the school.”

Elodie nodded her head, aware that she was clearly distracted by her conversation with Lena. “I know.”

She tried to appear focused, but her head was spinning and the words of Lena kept resurfacing, like a song she couldn’t ignore. She could feel her body moving and her voice responding to her parents, but her mind was truly elsewhere.

“You have a great career ahead of you. It may be a bit unconventional for a woman, your mother and I realize this, but you were born with a gift.”

“Several gifts,” Orsina added.

“Yes. I wish I had your memory, Elodie,” he uttered. Pietro never ceased to be amazed that no matter how complex the score was, his daughter already knew her part by heart.

For several weeks, Elodie tried to refocus her attention on her music, but she continued to find herself distracted. Every Tuesday, Elodie and Lena would exit the school; Lena walked one way, to a meeting for the nascent Resistance, and Elodie would return home to quietly practice her cello and have dinner with her parents. But, still, she felt an increasing restlessness. Now everything that she saw on the streets seemed to be in high relief to her. The
Balilla
banner. The gangs of Blackshirts with their motorcycle brigades, threatening innocent people in the street. Terror was all around, if you opened your eyes and saw things clearly.

Her father, too, seemed to be increasingly angry when he returned home.

But it was the change in Elodie’s playing, not her husband’s behavior, that alarmed Orsina. There was an agitation to it that she had never heard before. A restlessness.

“Don’t you hear it, Pietro?”

“We’re all unnerved, Orsina. We’re at war. The Fascists are ruling the country. Mussolini is getting into bed with the Germans. My Jewish colleagues have been arrested; some have been transported to work camps. Why wouldn’t there be a restlessness to her playing? Even fear!”

“But does she also seem distant at school?”

He sighed. It was clear he was preoccupied with something else.

“I saw Moretti near Piazza Erbe today. He was gaunt. I hardly recognized him.”

Orsina didn’t seem to hear him. “Do you think you could watch her after school . . . See if she’s meeting anyone? What if she has a boyfriend we don’t know about?”

“Did you hear what I just said, Orsina?” His whole face was twisted in disbelief, bordering on anger. “I just told you that a colleague of mine, Professor Moretti, looked like he was on death’s door. God knows how his family is faring since he was forced to resign from school! What’s the matter with you?”

His face was now rushing with blood. She could see small, blue veins swelling by his temples.

“Orsina, where has Italy’s honor gone? Has everyone lost their sense of decency?” The striking of his fist against the table sounded like a gavel.

Orsina fell quiet. The intensity of Pietro’s anger seized her. She had not meant to sound unsympathetic to Professor Moretti’s plight. She
was
sympathetic. More than her husband could imagine. She, too, felt betrayed by Fascism, but unlike her husband had learned to keep these thoughts silent, for fear of someone overhearing her. She always felt a wave of fear come over her when Pietro voiced his true feelings. How many people had been turned in by their neighbors or friends, just for a better job or a bigger apartment?

No, she hated the Fascist regime as much as Pietro. It had been more than twenty years that Italians had been living under Fascism, but in the past five, it had become unbearable. Now, when she sees photographs of Mussolini in the papers with his bald head and bulging eyes, ranting in one of his speeches, it was hard to remember those first years of his leadership, when everyone was so hopeful he’d return Italy to its former glory. He spoke of a united Italy—one of efficiency and strength—where women were lauded for their contribution to the family and the moral values of the country. But Mussolini’s insatiability for more power overtook him. There was his pursuit of Ethiopia, now for Greece. How many mothers had seen their sons drafted and killed for his territorial gains?