The Garden of Letters (17 page)

After she finishes the cadenza, which is brief and furious, each one of the notes of the chromatic scale articulated in rapid succession, she dips back into the end of the concerto. It is like a wave that has crested and then fallen. She finishes slowly out of respect for the music.

She lifts her head and opens her eyes.

The Wolf looks not at her head, but straight ahead. At the door that is left slightly open. She can see that he is thinking about what he has just heard. That he is decoding something that has importance and relevance to not just him, but for many others as well.

She pulls the cello out from between her legs and gently puts it back in the case. She can feel her hair has become wild, and she smoothes it back with her palms, wishing she had some pins to twist it up and back.

He shakes his head, as if to commit the cadenza to memory before speaking. “That was very interesting, my dear, on many different levels.” He pauses. “But I’d say we were lucky Papa Haydn wasn’t in the audience to hear that.”

She fidgets slightly, wondering if he is commenting on her playing or the atonal quality of the cadenza.

“May I have the score?” he asks her. He reaches his arm out toward her.

She had not used it to play but bends down and pulls it from the open case, her hand shaking ever so slightly as she hands it over to him.

He takes it and walks to his desk, sliding it into the top drawer.

“It wasn’t meant to be beautiful,” she says, in whose defense she does not know.

Afterward, he walks closer to her and his glacially pale eyes stare straight into hers. “I am joking, my dear Dragonfly,” he says, smiling. “In times like these, we need a little levity every now and then.

“Your interpretation of the rest of the concerto was superb.”

She smiles and is surprised by the sense of relief that floods through her, not knowing if it’s because her mission is now complete or because an accomplished musician has given her a morsel of praise.

“Thank you, sir,” she says. As she stands up with her cello and scans the room once more, she sees there is a composition on the piano.

She can’t help but be curious. “May I ask what you were playing when I arrived?”

She notices his eyes moisten slightly.

“It was the last thing my wife composed,” he says. “She was in Paris when they arrested her.”

“She was in the Resistance?” Elodie said the word in the quietest whisper.

“No,” he says flatly. “She and Enrico Levi shared something in common besides just music. They both were Jews.”

Verona, Italy

J
ULY
1943

Elodie returned home that evening to her parents’ apartment, exhausted both physically and mentally from her mission. She merely picked at her pasta and told her parents that she wasn’t feeling well, and that she might be coming down with a cold.

Her father did not eat his dinner, either. He lifted his head to look at her several times during the meal. She could feel his eyes on her, and their weight was not one of judgment or suspicion, but one that was harder to place, a silent acknowledgment offered only in the blinking of an eye.

Orsina, however, was not attuned to this silent language that flowed between her daughter and husband. She was tired and worn, preoccupied with all the political unrest surrounding them. Her once-idyllic household of music and simple routine had been replaced with the shadow of uncertainty. Her husband no longer had any strength and spent most of his hours in bed. She sensed her daughter was also increasingly preoccupied, and feared she was spending too much time in places she did not know and could not see.

After she cleared the dishes and put everything away, Orsina heated the kettle and started to fill the bath. The sound of the flowing water immediately calmed her. She undressed and slipped into the tub.

The arrival of her mother’s singing floated into the walls of Elodie’s bedroom and soothed her as well. She closed her eyes, and the day’s events unraveled in her mind. She saw the long corridor of the Wolf’s apartment, the room with the peacock blue walls, and the painting of the girl in the red kerchief. She could hear the notes of her cadenza sharp and executed with precision. But it was the music the Wolf had been playing when she first stepped into the apartment that filled the rest of her head. She fell asleep thinking of those haunting notes, and wondering about the woman who wrote them.

In the morning, Elodie offered to do the grocery shopping.

“Mamma, give me your list.”

“My list means nothing. It’s not what I want to buy, it’s what do they have? If there are eggs, get eggs. If there’s flour, get as much as they will give you. Here, let me get my rations card.”

Orsina went into the next room and handed Elodie their weekly ration card. She also reached into her pocket and gave her daughter what few coins she had. “This may be enough. If not, be sweet to Flavio and see if he’ll extend our credit for another week.”

Elodie felt a wave of anxiety rush over her. “Mamma, maybe . . .”

“Stop. As soon as your father can return to work, things will get better. He just couldn’t do his private lessons like he does every summer. But school will start in a month and he’s insisting he will be well enough to return by then.” She squeezed Elodie’s shoulder. “Enjoy the last days of summer. School will be starting for you, too, before you know it.”

Elodie walked outside the apartment and headed straight to the little shop on Corso S. Anastasia, where her mother bought most of her groceries, like grains and the other provisions. They hadn’t had any meat in weeks, so there was no use asking her mother if she should get some. At the dairy next door, she would bring the milk tin and have it filled with the one-quarter liter allowed.

It felt good to devote herself to an hour or so of simple errands for her mother. It helped alleviate her guilt from deceiving her parents over the past few weeks. It was a relief to do this sort of menial, easy work compared to the more complicated coding for Luca. Here, all she had to do was wait in line, rip off a coupon, get a loaf of stale bread and a bit of coffee and sugar, and come home. She let her mind relax for a moment, enjoying the simplicity of standing in line with the other women, most of them matrons, including the mothers of some of her old classmates.

“Elodie!” Katia Segreti’s mother chimed when she entered the store. “I haven’t seen you in ages!”

Elodie smiled. “How are you? And how is Katia . . .”

“Good. Good. Well, as good as anyone can be during all this chaos. She got married in May. A good boy, Carlo Prescutti . . . do you know him?”

Elodie said she didn’t. But, in reality, she knew him to be a bully and a notorious Blackshirt.

“Please send her my congratulations,” Elodie said. Her eyes began to scan the shelves to see if there was anything she could bring home to her mother. But the store offered so little to buy. A can of tomato paste. A tin of sardines. A sack of moldy white onions.

Elodie waited until Signora Segreti had finished with her purchases and left the store before asking the shop owner to extend them additional credit.

Flavio was a kind man and said he could extend it by another week. “School’s starting soon, eh?” he asks her. “I bet you’re excited.”

“Yes, yes. It will be good for both my father and me to get back to our music,” she told him.

“Give him and your mother my best,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t have more on the shelves these days, but compared to our boys out there fighting . . .”

“I know, I know,” she answered. “We have to be grateful we have anything at all.”

They said good-bye, and Elodie went next door to get what she could from the dairy.

On the way home, she appraised her bounty. In her bag, she had three eggs, four deciliters of milk, one kilogram of flour, and a sack of dried beans.

When she got home, her father was still in his bathrobe. Her mother was standing behind him, rubbing his temples gently. There was a grave look of worry on Orsina’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Elodie asked as she placed the groceries on the table.

“It’s his headaches. Your father says they grow worse with each day.”

“Can’t we call the doctor for him?”

“I have! Who do you think visits us when you go out to practice with your friend Lena every afternoon?”

Elodie walked over to both of them. She touched her father’s cheek softly with the back of her hand.

“I hate to see you suffer so much, Papa.”

“Don’t worry, my
tesoro
,” he answered, his voice barely more than a whisper. He reached for her hand and kissed it softly.

“I’d ask you to play for me, but I can barely hear anything at the moment.”

“I understand. How about I just sit here with you? Mother can rub your temples and I can massage your hands.”

“No, no. Your mother can handle me by herself. Take your cello and go practice with Lena. I know the two of you have been working so hard these past few weeks. I’m proud of you and your dedication . . .” He managed a small, knowing smile through his obvious discomfort.

Elodie looked at her mother to see if she should in fact leave them alone.

“Your father is right, Elodie. You’ve already helped me by doing the shopping. Go practice with Lena. Just be home by dinner so I don’t worry.”

Elodie kissed both her parents on the cheek and left with her cello. But she didn’t go to find Lena. She went straight away to the bookstore, to see Luca.

When she arrived at Luca’s bookstore, he nearly leaped up from behind the front counter.

“Elodie! I’ve been hoping all day that you’d stop by!”

She smiled.

He scanned the room. There was a lone customer in the back, looking at some books on naval history. Luca motioned with his eyes that they would need to wait to go into the back room until this customer had left the store.

In the meantime, Elodie put down her cello and took advantage of the opportunity to browse the shelves. She had hardly spent any time in the main storefront, as both the group’s underground meetings and her time alone with Luca were always spent in the back room. But now she could see how charming the store really was. Around the perimeter were tall, wooden shelves bearing handsome leather volumes, and the light was soft and welcoming.

There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and ideas. Poetry and love. All of it bound into one perfect, calm place. The shelves lined with anything from Rome’s ancient history to photographs of archeological digs in South America. Luca had stacked love sonnets by Lord Byron against Francesco Petrarch’s unrequited love poems to his muse, Laura.

And behind all of this bounty of knowledge and passion was a room that only a rare few knew contained even more information. Like a clock whose dials and intricate mechanisms remain hidden from view, Luca’s bookstore was more than met the eye.

Elodie looked at Luca with great admiration as he gave the customer his change and tucked his book inside a crisp brown bag.

“
Ciao
 . . .
Mille grazie
,” he said politely, as the man tipped his hat and waved good-bye.

Luca walked to the door and switched over the sign to signal he’d be back in a few minutes.

“Let’s go,” he said to her. “I’m so glad you came.”

She took her cello with her and sat down at the table where, only two days ago, they had crafted the code and she played for him for the first time.

“Well, little Dragonfly,” he said. “You accomplished your mission with great success! Our contact said you delivered our message, and also played superbly for the Wolf.”