The Garden of Letters Read Online Free Page A

encroaching war. She senses it like a shadow as soon as she leaves the classrooms at the Liceo or her home. The women in line for food at the grocery store, their hands clutching ration cards; the striking factory workers protesting on the streets. The black, billowing shirts of the Fascist police on their motorcycles. The fear that doesn’t hang in a single note, but rather an intricate orchestration that is impossible for Elodie to decipher.
    She is chosen to play in an advanced string quartet with three other students. Lena, a violist, is chosen as well. The majority of girls attending the Liceo Musicale play the piano or the flute. But Elodie and Lena are among the few girls who play the strings.
    The two girls are opposites. Elodie, with her dark black hair, her sinewy body, and her green eyes. Her friend Lena looks more German. Her body is soft and curved. Her hair blonde, her eyes blue and round. There is a voluptuousness to the way she plays her viola as well.
    They quickly become friends and learn to complement each other’s playing. Lena laughs more easily and takes Elodie to the cafés to have espresso after class. She does not have Elodie’s memory, though. Lena is like the two boys in the quartet as she needs to read the musical score. But on several occasions, her beauty is responsible for distracting their classmates.
    “Franco was trying to look down your blouse today in rehearsal,” Elodie teases. “It’s a small marvel he didn’t lose his place . . .”
    “He’s an imbecile.” Lena snorts. “He wouldn’t be able to open my bra even if he had three hands.”
    Elodie is amazed by her friend’s quick tongue. It’s such a contrast to Lena’s angelic looks and the mask of demureness she wears through the halls.
    Lena is critical, too, of Mussolini’s alliance with the Germans. “Those swine,” she calls the Germans. “The lowest from the gutter. You just wait and see . . . if we’re not vigilant, we’ll be like Czechoslovakia and they’ll be steamrolling in here and ruling our country.”
    Elodie can feel the weight of eyes on them as her friend blurts out her feelings.
    “You shouldn’t speak so loudly . . .” she whispers. “You’ll get us dragged into the police station with talk like that.”
    “What are you afraid of? The police don’t see us as a threat. You’re just a girl with a cello on the street. They’re too stupid to even notice us.”
    Elodie looks around. What Lena said is true. The piazza is lined with women pushing baby strollers and a few men walking toward the post office. They are just two young girls carrying instruments, and easily blended into the scenery. No one takes notice of them at all.

THREE

    Verona, Italy
    A PRIL 1943
    As a child, Elodie fell asleep with music in her head. In the morning, she would wake and hear it, too. “Sleeping with the angels,” is what her father called it when your dreams were accompanied by song. But Elodie couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t hear notes while she slept. Her father played long into the night, when he thought the house was already asleep. Softly and quietly, he played a nocturne, or occasionally a quiet romance.
    He always stood near the tall paned windows that overlooked the street, his white shirt slightly unbuttoned, his violin tucked expertly underneath his chin.
    His playing was the lullaby of her childhood. She knew when he played Mozart that he was savoring good news, when he was nervous, he played Brahms; and when he wanted forgiveness from her mother, he played. She knew her father more clearly through his music than she did through his words.
    Like her, he spoke very little. It wasn’t that he didn’t have thoughts or feelings. If anything, he had too many of them. He didn’t have a quiet head. He felt things too deeply. Music had become a tonic for him early on in his youth, and he had learned to play three instruments expertly: violin, cello, and piano.
    Elodie’s mother,