The Garden of Letters (15 page)

When her bow hit the last chord, her head lifted and her eyes opened wide. Luca was shaking his head from side to side.

“You are extraordinary, Elodie. Beyond extraordinary. You are love, art, and God all combined into one.”

He was the one who finally took the cello from her. After she had completed her playing, she sat there exhausted, as if she had lost herself for several minutes in a trance and had just awakened.

She was breathless. Her fingers were still grasping her bow, and her skirt was wet with perspiration.

“Let me,” he said, standing in front of her. He stood there with his white shirt and his well-chiseled face; his hand reached out and fell upon hers. Their skin met at the highest point of her cello, where the neck curled like the top of a wave.

“How lucky I am to hear you play,” he said again.

She felt herself warming again. In the darkness of the back room of Luca’s bookstore, Elodie’s skin was shining so much she could have illuminated the whole room.

They both knew they had to work with great efficiency because of Elodie’s time constraints, and the two of them were fueled by equal amounts of passion to accomplish the task at hand.

Each one wanted to impress the other: Luca with his knowledge of crucial information that needed to be sent, and Elodie with her knowledge of music and composition.

Over the next two hours, Elodie was able to use the key he had been given to create the cadenza. Although it was almost atonal in parts, it would still pass as an acceptable cadenza by a student.

“I don’t know how great this will sound. Will I still play it for this person, or can I just hand him the score?”

“It’s up to you, Elodie. The guise, should anyone question you, will be that you’re arriving for a music lesson, to see if perhaps he is willing to privately tutor you. But it would be impossible for even the most gifted musician to figure out this particular code acoustically, so no matter what, the musical score with the coded cadenza must be handed to him at some point . . .” He cleared his throat. “If this mission is successful, we hope to create codes that don’t need the support of a written score.”

“I understand,” she said. “Anyway, playing it first would cement the credibility of the music lesson, just in case there are any meddling neighbors,” she reasoned.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. He was impressed with her foresight. She was starting to learn the pattern of one involved in a successful underground mission. Always think ahead. Always try to anticipate the threat before it actually happens.

Verona, Italy

J
ULY
1943

On Tuesday afternoon, Elodie arrived at the bookstore, eager to learn the final details of her mission.

Luca appeared anxious when she arrived.

“Finally!” he said. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for hours to see you.”

“Hours?” Elodie glanced at her watch. “I’m perfectly on time.”

“You may be on time, but that doesn’t stop the fact that there’s so much to do.”

He placed his hands down on the front counter. The black smudges of newsprint came off on the blotter. He noticed almost immediately the glare of his own fingerprints and quickly wiped them on his oilskin smock.

“Let’s go to the back room.” He went over to the door, quickly hanging a sign with a clock and adjustable arrows, showing he’d be gone and the shop closed for the next hour.

She led herself to the back room, which was now familiar to her, lifting the curtain and stepping inside. She was seized with excitement as she waited for him.

“You will not go by the name ‘Elodie’ for this mission,” Luca told her. “We have given you a special code name.”

Elodie knew that many of the partisans and higher-ranked people went by code names: Rat, Eagle, Fox. She had heard these men referred to during meetings, but who they actually were, she had no idea.

“And what will my name be?” she asked.

He looked at her with intensity. She even thought she saw his eyes narrow and then refocus.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought and come up with something that I think fits you perfectly: they’re beautiful, they’re focused, and always precise . . .”

“Well, go ahead then. Tell me.”

“Your code name for this mission will be ‘Dragonfly.’”

For the next hour, he outlined the plan. He wrote nothing down for her, but he spoke every word slowly, knowing she was more than capable of committing his instructions to memory.

“The man you will be meeting is called the Wolf. He is a retired music teacher in Mantua. He plays both the cello and piano and was a professional before the Great War.”

“I wonder if he knows my father . . .”

“You will never ask that of him, Elodie. You are only to divulge your name as Dragonfly when asked. There is no need to tell him your real name and risk your family in these matters.”

“You’re right; I’m sorry. It’s just that the musical world is so small.”

“Small, yes. The world itself is small, especially when similar souls tend to gravitate toward one another. But the Wolf is significantly older than your father, and he also lives in Mantua. He lives on 17 Via Cesare Battisti, behind Santa Andrea. You will ring doorbell number three.”

Elodie blanched. She wasn’t terribly familiar with Mantua. There had been a few excursions to the city for shopping with her mother, but with the strain of wartime, it had been years since they had indulged in such luxury. She had also performed last year at the Teatro Bibiena in a joint effort with Mantua’s Instituto Musicale. But she had never traveled there by herself. What she remembered of it was the sight of the city emerging majestically from a shimmering lake and its medieval fortress and stone towers. It was amazing that Mantua, which was only thirty kilometers away from Verona, seemed to her like a different world.

“Show up there tomorrow sometime after lunch. Tell your parents whatever you think you need to, but you’ll be bringing your cello so they will not be suspicious if they think you’re simply off to practice all day with a friend.”

He moved the curtain to pass through, and she was struck by the light suddenly flooding through the room. She pulled up a hand to shield her eyes.

Her entire body was rushing with adrenaline. She wondered if he realized that behind her calm countenance, she was a web of live wires.

Elodie only wanted to appear calm and collected for Luca, so that he would feel their mission was in the most capable hands. So she responded to him simply and as succinctly as she could. “Yes, Luca. I understand exactly what I have to do.”

Luca looked at her straight in the eyes, and she felt the heat burning off of him onto her own skin.

“Be smart, but above all, be careful,” he said to her. She wondered if she was imagining this sensation she felt, the feeling that he didn’t want her to go.

“Don’t worry, I will.” She lifted her cello and began to walk toward the door.

She felt his hand graze her arm and gently hold her flesh for just a second.

“I wanted to say one more thing, Dragonfly . . .”

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were burning now into his.

“Fly back to us safely.”

Verona, Italy

J
ULY
1943

Elodie left early the next morning, telling her parents she would be out all day to practice a quartet with Lena and two other students from school.

Her father sat in his robe at the breakfast table; her mother was in the kitchen getting more coffee.

Just as she was about to leave, her father beckoned her closer. He had always seen himself in his daughter. Her hands were his hands. Her musical ability, too, was from him. And he knew that Elodie had the capacity to keep a secret tucked deep within.

“Elodie,” he said. His face was unshaven, but his eyes had a sense of life in them that had been missing since he’d returned from being beaten by the police.

“I want you to be careful . . .” he whispered, leaning into her.

She pulled back from him, startled by his warning.

“Elodie . . . no, do not speak . . .” He quickly turned his head toward the kitchen to make sure Orsina was out of earshot and then whispered the words: “Hasten thoughts on golden wings. Hasten and rest on the densely wooded hills.”

It was from Verdi’s “Va, Pensiero,” the music responsible for his arrest. But the words of the chorus now floated over her like a blessing.

“Papa, I’m only going to—”

“All I did was play my record to protest . . . You were born with far more courage.”

Elodie was taken off guard. Her immediate reaction was to deny that what he was insinuating had any truth. But before she had a chance to tell him he was mistaken, her father took a finger to his lip, then pressed it to hers, as if sealing each other to their shared secret.

“A musician always knows what’s beneath the text. Let’s speak of it no more.”

She left the apartment in a hurry, her father’s strange blessing still circling in her ears.

She tried to regain her focus. She told herself that, unlike Lena, she was not carrying anything that could incriminate her. She carried all of her instructions in her head.

In her cello case, she carried her instrument and the music she had written with Luca, which contained the encrypted code.

She looked at the clock on the church and noticed she had fifteen minutes to get to the train station. Within an hour, if there were no delays and no random searches, she would be in Mantua. From the city center, she would walk another fifteen minutes, until she found the Wolf’s apartment.

At the train station, the Fascist police were examining identity cards. She calmed herself by silently repeating that she was not carrying anything dangerous. There were no bombs hidden in her cello case. Her clothes were not lined with gold coins.

She told herself she was simply a young music student, carrying her cello to a lesson.

At the train platform she stood with the other waiting passengers, her head down and fingers gripping her case. A man behind her tried to make a joke of the largeness of her instrument.

“It’s nearly as big as you, darling. Did you buy an extra ticket for it? You better have, if you think you can put it on the seat beside you.”

She wondered how to respond. She could tell him she had taken a train many times before with her instrument, and that she hadn’t bought an extra ticket for the cello, because it fit quite comfortably on the luggage racks above.

But she decided just to smile back and keep moving.

On board, a policeman checked identity cards. The conductor directed people to the third-class compartments.

“Elodie?” the policeman asked with a smirk. “Is that Italian?”

“The name is French. But, yes, I’m Italian. One hundred percent.” She lifted her head and gave him her brightest smile.

She sensed immediately that this was an unexplored power for her. She had never smiled easily, but now she wondered why she had not exploited this simple gesture before.

Within seconds, she noticed a change come over him. He met her gaze and smiled back.

“Well, then, have a nice trip, signorina.”

She took her papers back and entered the train car, carefully placing the cello beside her.

In one hour, she would be in Mantua.

She rested her head against the window and felt the rhythm of the locomotive’s wheels underneath her. She closed her eyes and began to dream.

Elodie recalled her specific instructions. “Take via Roma. You’ll pass by Santa Andrea. Then, make a right at the corner with the shoemaker. The apartment is on Via Cesare Battisti. It’s number seventeen. Ring the third doorbell. The Wolf will be expecting you.”

She had shaken her head. “The Wolf will be expecting me?” As she said the words, she couldn’t help but smile. “Maybe I should wear a little red hood?”

“Very funny, Elodie. But promise me, you’ll just play the coded cadenza for him and then leave.”

She smiled. A year ago, if anyone had told her she would be traveling to deliver a message to someone called the Wolf and that she would also find herself attracted to a man who wasn’t a musician, she would have said they were crazy. But she had discovered she could change from a young music student to a covert messenger in a matter of weeks, and she found Luca’s confusion of all the musical terms charming.

The train had miraculously run on time, but Elodie’s body was still seized with the possibility that anything could go wrong. Last year, she had traveled with Lena to perform at the Teatro Bibiena. But they had not traveled alone. Each of their families had accompanied them. They had all taken third-class seats, dressed in their best clothes. The hard seats didn’t bother anyone, as the trip took no time at all.

Mantua was quite different from Verona, which had a Roman amphitheater, ancient crypts, and the famous house of Romeo and Juliet. But Mantua was steeped in Renaissance splendor. Surrounded by a moat of water, it emerged like a man-made fortress: salty gray marble and pitted cold stone.

She walked down the street and held her cello to her side so that it was aligned with her body. The instrument’s heaviness soothed her, as if it were a shield offering protection. In the July heat, she began to perspire.

In the Piazza Sordello, she paused for a moment and gazed at the huge expanse of sky. Above her, a small army of birds dove through the air and then returned through the peaks of the Palazzo Ducale. Elodie felt her heart soar at the sight of a hundred fluttering wings.

She continued to walk straight, until she passed Santa Andrea; the instructions still engraved in her mind. When she made a left and arrived at the apartment number seventeen in Via Cesare Battisti, she stood for a moment in front of the large wooden door. There was a large, lion-shaped brass knocker in its center.

But she did as she was instructed and ignored the temptation to use it. Instead, she looked to the right of the door, found the third buzzer, and rang the bell.

As Luca had said he would, the Wolf did not ask who was at the door, but simply buzzed her in.

There was no elevator inside the building, just a long set of winding stairs that wrapped through each flight of the building. She mounted the stairs quietly, lugging her case, her arm heavy from carrying the instrument so far.

When Elodie arrived at the third-floor landing, she saw the door was already ajar.

She felt strange entering unannounced. She placed her cello down on the floor and knocked at the door.

“I left it open for you,” she heard a voice say from within.

Then, before she had a chance to answer, she heard the voice say flatly, “Please bring your instrument and come in.”