The Garden of Letters (34 page)

He looked into her eyes and they were shimmering with a light like he had never before seen. He felt himself traveling between time and space, where nothing mattered now but the pull between them.

The fear, the exhaustion of war, and the threat of death dropped away. The only thing in Luca’s mind at that moment was that he loved Elodie.

He inhaled every part of her as if she were his own breath. She was like air, fire, and water all at once—every element that he needed to exist in this world.

They had used their clothes to dry themselves off. They kissed again, lovers who couldn’t get enough of the other’s touch. She remembered the sensation of being clean, the clear spike that ran from her head to the bottom of her feet, and of feeling alive.

She remembered that once she had pulled on her skirt and buttoned her blouse, she had turned to Luca and looked at him deeply in the eyes, and thought that nothing else mattered in the world except him. And although they were no longer entwined, and their limbs now moved freely and separately, she still felt him as if his body was imprinted inside her. It was like music that penetrates and still moves within you, even after the melody has ceased playing.

As they walked, she remembered him looking up at the sky, his neck stretching out from the collar of his shirt as he searched for the sun in order to learn the direction they needed to go.

They headed back to the camp holding each other’s hand. She saw her delight in his eyes; her happiness mirrored in his smile. Both of them felt as though their discovery of a new camp would make everyone cheer.

She remembered the sight of the small bellflowers beneath her feet, how careful she had been not to step on them and crush their petals. That was her last memory before the sound of bullets ricocheted through the air. She had not wanted to harm the delicate blossoms. But then there was the sound of shouting, the chaos of the ambush. The sound of Luca turning to her and saying, “Not now! Jesus. Please not now!”

They were steps away from the camp, but already Elodie could hear gunfire as though she were in the line of fire. Luca pulled her into a thicket and told her to make herself into a tight ball.

“Stay here, Elodie,” he ordered. His face was the same as when he had pushed her against the wall in the Piazza delle Poste and ordered her to get inside the café.

Now, she was even more afraid. She begged him not to leave her alone in the woods. But she knew she couldn’t fight; she had no gun and would be useless in battle.

“I need to go!” He leaned over and kissed her one more time, the amulet of St. George dangling from his throat.

“I’ll love you forever, Elodie. Remember that. From beyond the stars.” He kissed her one last time.

She felt herself trembling. She did not want him to quote
The Little Prince
. They were too young to have a love that existed beyond sight or touch.

He pulled his necklace of San Giorgio from his neck, breaking the leather knot in the back. “Hold this. It will protect you.”

She hadn’t wanted to take it. But he had tapped his rifle and told her he already had protection. That she was the one who needed the amulet more than he.

As the sound of gunfire laced the air, she clasped his amulet like a rosary. She heard the horrible screaming of soldiers in German. It was only hours later, after the sound of bullets had ceased, and she no longer heard a sound coming from the camp, that she stood up from the mass of thicket and broken tree boughs and went in search of Luca and the others.

She saw Rita first. Her face was covered in black dirt and her blouse had been ripped down the length of her sleeve. Blood soaked the kneecap of her trousers.

Luigi was standing above two dead Germans, pulling their rifles from their lifeless bodies.

To the left of the tent, Elodie spotted the Falcon on the ground, his chest soaked with blood and his eyes motionless, staring up at the sky.

Another body was slumped over a trunk that some of the others had used for sitting. Elodie could see by the slender build and kerchief around the neck that it was the young boy who had just the day before brought her up to the camp. Elodie felt her stomach rising within her chest. She was sure she was going to retch.

Rita looked at her; her eyes conveyed everything.

“We were ambushed,” she finally managed to say. “We lost Raffaele, too.”

Elodie shook her head. She felt her fingers tighten around the amulet. The small disc with the saint in the center cut into her skin.

She did not believe Rita. Without the sight of his body, she believed there was still a possibility Luca was alive.

“They attacked while you were away. It was Raffaele who heard the first footsteps while he was out on patrol. He killed the first two, but another five followed.”

“We had found a new camp . . .” Elodie’s voice trembled.

Suddenly, Elodie saw two men carrying a large body from the brush on a stretcher made of vine poles. She did not need to look at the face to know it was Raffaele’s. She saw the overalls and knew immediately it was him.

She shut her eyes tight, not wanting them to see Raffaele being placed, lifeless, on the ground.

Rita came over and embraced her. “We will move there after we bury the dead. And we’ll have to do that quickly, before more Germans arrive. They will be looking for their men when they don’t return.”

She then saw Jurika and another young partisan, Carlo, bringing Luca’s body back to the camp on another makeshift stretcher. Elodie knew it was him, even before she saw the soles of the boots, the dangling of a thin arm.

When they lowered him to the ground, she felt every part of her sink into the earth. Her own blood drained from her head and from her heart. There was no breath, no music, left inside her. She felt Rita’s arms tighten around her. The teacher knew better than to call him a fallen
partigiano
to the trembling girl; she referred to him as Elodie’s
amato
, her love. And then so softly did her mouth whisper the words her father had once blessed over her:
“Hasten thoughts on golden wings. Hasten and rest on the densely wooded hills.”

Elodie said the two lines as if they were a prayer.

Verona, Italy

S
EPTEMBER
1943

Elodie stood there motionless, her face pale with shock. She was cold and shivering. She could not believe that Luca now lay beneath a mound of hastily dug earth. Only a few hours ago they had been together, their bodies wet and entangled, nothing separating their beating hearts but a thin sheath of skin. But now the only trace of him was a makeshift cross marking his grave.

It was Rita who insisted that Elodie leave the camp. “Get your mother and go to Venice.” She was staring at Elodie, her blonde hair pulled tightly behind her ears. Rita had yet to wash the dirt from her face. “That is what Luca would have wanted . . . certainly not staying here in the mountains to die. They say a partisan’s life span is no more than six months,” Rita said, shaking her head.

It was hard for Elodie to imagine the young woman who stood before her as a schoolteacher. Rita looked every bit the warrior. Her body was strong and muscular; her blue eyes were hard like river stones. “This is no place for you. You have your mother waiting at home. My family was put on a truck bound for a concentration camp.” Rita’s voice was like flint. “At least here I get to choose how I will die.”

“I don’t want to leave him here . . .” Elodie was still wearing Luca’s sweater, and his amulet was still wrapped around her hand.

Rita looked up at the sky. The sun was already midway in the horizon. “There isn’t a reason to stay here. You are not a soldier. You need to go now.”

If Elodie did leave now, she might be able to get home before curfew. So in a daze, she followed one of the remaining partisans down the wooden path.

“I can’t take you any farther than this,” he said as they came close to the base of the mountain. He had taken her nearly to the end of the dirt path. Between the trunks of the pin oaks, Elodie could see the stretch of the road below. “Be careful . . . There are Germans swarming around everywhere.”

She nodded.

“Good luck,” he said, casting one last look in her direction before he began his ascent back up into the hills.

She found her bicycle in the brush, its black frame still covered in the branches. She had camouflaged it in the same way she had with Luca the first time they met in the mountains. Now, as she began to move the pine limbs, clumps of leaves, and dried grass, she saw that her hands were shaking.

It had only been a little over a week since she and Luca had stood there in the wilderness collecting leaves to cover her bicycle. She had marveled at how different he seemed since the battle in the Piazza delle Poste. His muscles moving beneath his canvas shirt, his sleeves rolled to show the length of his arms.

In the bookstore, Luca had moved like a quiet mouse. But here in the woods, he moved like a lion.

She still could not believe he was gone. Every part of her fought to erase the image of him and his brother being carried into the camp, lifeless and soaked in blood. She pretended it was not true, that she would see him shortly in the back room of his store on the Via Mazzini. Where she would again play her cello for him, and his eyes, his touch, and every part of him would spring forth and come alive.

She was afraid that if she began to cry, she’d never be able to stop. But the tears welled inside her, and no matter how much energy she put into ensuring they didn’t fall, she felt them all the same. Painful as bits of swallowed glass.

Once on her bicycle, her body took over. She pedaled for forty minutes before she was stopped by two Fascist policemen who asked to see her identification.

She handed them her new papers. In her mind, she had already memorized her new name, Anna Zorzetto, as well as her new birth date and all the other details. Fortunately, her dirty appearance after days in the woods did not pique the guards’ interest, and she was allowed to pass through.

When she finally arrived at the gates of the Porto San Giorgio, the German officers were busy pulling over truck and cars, focusing their efforts to investigate the male drivers entering the city. They barely noticed a girl with her heart torn out of her chest, her eyes wide and unblinking as she held back her tears.