The Garden of Letters (10 page)

After he had finished eating, his mother sat down and pulled the basket of lemons up to her lap.

“Angelo. Angelo. My Angelo,” she said, each articulation of his name punctuated by a sympathetic sigh.

She reached into the basket and pulled out a single lemon. The large, yellow fruit looked like a sleeping canary in her hand. She cupped two palms around its skin to warm it, then brought it under her nose and inhaled. “She has picked these with love, Angelo. I can smell it in the fragrance. . . .”

He smiled.

“Very well,” she said. “You will need to tell your father tomorrow morning. He should be home early. The men have taken their boats out for some night fishing.”

Angelo’s father, Giorgio, was nearly twenty years older than Angelo’s mother. He was a white-haired fisherman with a face like a piece of driftwood, but set alight by two marble-blue eyes.

Angelo had never known a time when his father was away from the sea for more than a day. When he wasn’t on the water, he was down by the dock unloading his catch. As a child, Angelo had waited with excitement for his father to return from a day’s work. He could tell if his father’s catch had been plentiful just by the expression on the man’s face. On good days, when Giorgio returned with his nets brimming with the ocean’s bounty—fish with slapping tails and sparkling gills, baskets brimming with langoustines and spider crabs—he was radiant.

But on days when the seas had not been generous, the young Angelo could read his father’s disappointment even before he saw the loose, empty nets.

This was when Angelo first started to read people’s faces. To see hidden emotions in their eyes.

Happiness, sadness, anger, and frustration were easy to read in people’s eyes. But he had been trained to look at what lay beneath the skin. Diagnosing a patient was made through a series of observations, each one connected to the next. So what intrigued Angelo was being able to recognize someone who was carrying secrets, struggling not to reveal their fear.

Angelo woke up early the next morning. He knew if he timed things correctly, he could see his father arriving at the docks and coordinate with one of the men to take him over to San Fruttuoso.

“Papa!” he yelled, as he saw his father’s boat saddling up to the port. He waved his hands above his head to catch his father’s attention.

His father looked up and returned a wave. As Angelo walked closer to the boat, his father called out his name.

Angelo smiled. “It looks like your trip was a success!” He pointed to the full nets, which were leaping with life.

“
Non male
,” he said with a smile. His teeth were like a piano of chipped and missing keys.

He reached over to embrace Angelo, who was dressed in his best blue shirt and crisp trousers. The salty smell of his father’s skin returned Angelo immediately back to his childhood.

“How is my doctor?”

“Not a doctor, yet, Papa.”

His father shook his head. “Well, it’s good enough for me! What a surprise to see you.”

“Yes.” Angelo smiled. “I wanted to surprise Mamma. I’ll be home later tonight.”

“Your sisters will be so happy to see you looking so well. . . .” He patted his son on his back.

“Tonight, Mamma is making dinner. But this morning I need to go to San Fruttuoso.”

“Leaving, eh? You’re home less than a night and already going someplace else.”

“Yes. Just for a few hours. I was going to ask someone to take me over.”

“What about your father? I have a boat.”

“But you’re tired, Papa. Let me ask someone who hasn’t been out all night.”

“I am never too tired for my son the doctor . . . What’s in San Fruttuoso?”

“I have to meet someone, Papa.” Angelo tried to remain vague.

His father shook his head, but then looked at his son more closely, a faint smile crossing his face.

“Meet someone?” His father smiled again. “Let me guess: It’s a girl!”

Angelo nodded.

“Well, then,” his father said. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” He motioned for Angelo to hop into his boat. Angelo stepped into the center, making sure to avoid becoming tangled in the nets, which were piled high.

“Papa,” he said, “I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting all this enthusiasm!”

His father grinned; the missing spaces of his teeth only enhanced his look of mischief. “Angelo,” he said, laughing. “We should go . . . You don’t want to keep her waiting!”

Portofino, Italy

A
PRIL
1934

The week Angelo was off from medical school, he traveled every day from Portofino to San Fruttuoso. Either his father or his father’s fisherman friends became his ferrymen, dropping him off at sunrise and picking him up late at night. He always met Dalia in front of the café, bringing her flowers from his mother’s garden. And she always carried a new basket of lemons.

He never told her he was aware that one of her brothers was always watching them. He knew he would have done the same in any similar situation involving one of his sisters. So he courted her as best he could under the circumstances: telling her stories and making her laugh. Buying her an espresso and a
sfogliatella
. But trying nothing more than to hold her hand.

When the week came to an end and he had to return to school, he promised to write her every day.

“Might I have your address to write to you when I’m back at school?”

She pushed her hands into her skirt, showing him that she had no paper or pencil with her.

“I have!” he said resiliently. He put down his basket and reached into his satchel.

“Tell me,” he said lifting the pen to the air.

“It’s simple,” she said. “Dalia Orembelli. We have our home and lemon grove just behind the Piazzetta Doria Pamphili. Just put my name on the envelope and write that address, and the letter will get to me.”

“I’m a good writer,” he told her. “You will see.”

Her face did not have the reaction he anticipated. He saw her eyes begin to moisten, and a slight tremor rippled across her chin.

Without her having to say another word, he immediately knew what pained her: She couldn’t read.

“Stop your worrying, Dalia,” he said, taking a finger to gently move away her falling tears.

He could see the flush in her face, like a rose that deepened in color before him.

He took her into his arms to soothe her embarrassment.

“My
limonina
 . . . You are not just beautiful. You are smart, too.”

She lifted her face from his chest to look at him, and he saw his reflection in her watery eyes.

He placed a finger beneath her chin, whispering, “It isn’t hard to learn. When I come back for Christmas, I will teach you. You’ll learn to read through my letters.”

And then he kissed her for the first time. Her brothers be damned if they tried to stop him.

She saved every one of his letters. And just as he had promised, one arrived daily. And although she could not read them, she did as he had instructed: She put every one in a box and waited for his return.

The box was simple, almost crude. A wooden one that, as a child, she had reserved for her most precious things. When the letters began arriving, to make room, she took out the small things she had once deemed so special: the glass button, the small sterling silver pin, and the tortoiseshell comb, and tucked the letters inside.

And although she wished she could read the words and understand what her love had written, just holding them in her hands gave her sustenance. She loved to look at his perfectly rounded letters, the curve of his script, the neatness of his lines. She thought she could sense the content even though she was incapable of reading a single word.

And so Dalia waited, counting the days until he came back to her to fulfill his promise.

When Angelo returned, they walked up to the top of the peninsula where the view was most beautiful, and there under the shade of a lemon grove he began to teach her to read.

He wrote out the letters of the vowels and the consonants neatly, and then once she mastered their sound, they moved on to short, simple words.

“Let’s now see if you can begin with my first letter,” he said, knowing that he had written it as simply but as purely as he could.

She took the little box made from cypress wood and opened the lid. The first letter he had sent was right on top.

She pulled out the paper from the envelope.

He could see her forming the sounds in her mind before working up the courage to actually say them. Gazing at her expression, Angelo knew that she could read the three words. The meaning of their simple beauty was floating across her face.

She smiled and turned to him, kissing him sweetly on the cheek.

“‘I love you.’ But that’s too easy,” she said, gripping his hand in hers.

“No, that’s not easy at all,” he said, staring straight into her eyes. “That’s beautiful and rare.”

Within months, she was reading with ease. Now when his letters arrived, she opened them and devoured every single word. He also began to send her books. Her head was alive for the first time with the world and its possibilities around her, and her heart beat faster every time she saw the postman walking up the street.

Her parents, now well aware of the courtship, were delighted that their daughter had charmed the heart of a soon-to-be doctor. They had so little money that a dowry was impossible, yet this young man seemed not to care.

“Do not worry,
limonina
,” he wrote. “I only want a life and a family with you.”

She counted the days until his next visit, throwing herself into her chores and reading the novels he had sent with little love notes tucked inside.

Then, a week before he was to return for the summer break, his last letter arrived with another sealed envelope enclosed. The front read “Please wait to read this with me.”

A few days later, he arrived in San Fruttuoso looking more serious then she had remembered him. His hair was shiny and neat; he wore a pale blue shirt and white linen trousers.

In front of the café where they always met, she was dressed in a white peasant skirt and blouse. As always, she had tucked a blossom behind her ear, and her basket was full with fruit.

“You look different,” she said as he went over and touched her arm. Inside she felt herself grow cold with worry.

“Let’s go up to the lemon grove,” he said. “Where are your brothers?”

“No brothers today,” she said. “They are all out on the boats.”

The two of them walked up the rocky path to their secret place. There, in the midst of the canopy of branches and fragrant lemons, she pulled out the last letter he had sent, still sealed in the envelope as he had requested.

It was written on heavy, handmade paper the color of natural linen. The edges were deckled and soft like a bird’s feather.

“Now open it,” he said softly. He noticed her hands were trembling.

She opened the small envelope, which had remained glued tight.

He saw her eyes register the words written within, and the gentle wave that came over her face, transforming it within seconds from a canvas that initially wore an expression of trepidation to one full of sheer joy.

She put down the paper, on which he had written, ever so simply, “Will you marry me?”

“Oh yes!” she cried. “Oh yes!”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, then took her finger to his heart and traced the words into his shirt. “I love you.” Then she kissed him so deeply and pressed her body against him so tightly, he felt his very heart sealed onto hers.

They married four months later in the abbey in San Fruttuoso, his family climbing up the weathered stone steps up to the church in a single file. The smell of lemon blossoms and jasmine clung heavy in the air.

Dalia’s mother had made her a gown from simple white cotton, and wove a crown of verbena flowers through the bride’s long black hair.

That night, Angelo took her into his arms, and as his head fell onto her breasts, he felt as though God had given him his own perfect cloud to forever rest his head on.

He kissed every part of her. The pink raspberry of each nipple, the globe of each breast. Every part of her was a piece to be discovered. To be touched. To be tasted.

He began to move down the length of her. His lips, his tongue, gently sliding the narrow line that divided her rib cage. He could feel her heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird, so rapid he thought she might take flight. As she quivered and moaned softly with his every touch, he continued along his path of discovering his bride.

“Dalia,” he whispered, as he lifted one leg over his shoulder.

“Where do you begin and where do you end?” he whispered into her skin. Her body was a map of hidden pathways each interconnected to make an exquisite whole. He took his fingers and traced the line from her ankle to her calf, circling behind her knee, then continuing up her thigh. He paused. He circled. He inhaled her, cradling her pelvis like a basket of fragrant blooms.

“My love,” he said, and kissed her.

She opened her mouth like an orchid.

And he sealed her kiss with his lips.

Angelo now knew the answer to a question his classmate had once challenged him with: “At what point is a woman most beautiful? When you first see her body? Her heart? Or her soul?”

It was at that rare moment when you hold the woman you love in your arms and you see all three at once.