The Garden of Letters (30 page)

Verona, Italy

S
EPTEMBER
1943

Elodie does not see Lena and Beppe being dragged into the Nazis’ truck. She hears the news from Luca later on.

At the art studio, Maffini is lying on a wooden table. His trousers have been cut below the knee to reveal his bullet wound. Berto watches as Brigitte wraps strips of cut-up linen around his best friend’s leg. He looks at her with amazement. At first, Brigitte does not want any of the other women to help her, even Martha and Giulia, who have both trained as nurses. She washes her hands in the basin and returns to Maffini’s side.

“You need to get the bullet out,” Martha tells her.

“Can you do it?” Brigitte asks her. Her voice is serious—calm and unflinching. Elodie struggles to reconcile her memory of Brigitte in a silk blouse and pearls with this warrior in front of her, who hours ago had strapped on a rifle, but who now is tending to battle wounds.

“No,” Martha says shaking her head. “I have no surgical experience. We need to find a doctor right away. You don’t want an infection to set in. If he gets gangrene, you’re going to have to amputate.”

Elodie can hear Maffini groaning. Berto and Brigitte are desperate to find ways to ease their friend’s pain. Berto tries to offer him a sip of grappa, while Brigitte tightens the bandages to try and stanch the bleeding.

It had been Luca who carried Maffini, bleeding, up the stairs to the studio and ripped open his trouser leg to reveal where the bullet had entered. He had also been the one to tell Elodie that Lena and Beppe had been captured.

“Six dead and several of our group taken to the Edderle prison . . . And one of the men saw Beppe and Lena taken in a separate jeep headed toward Palazzo dell’INA near the Piazza Bra. We have to get them out of there.”

Elodie is shaking.

“We can plan that later,” Brigitte says above the chatter. “Right now we need to find a doctor. We can’t wait any longer.”

Orsina approaches the dining room table and looks at Maffini. His face is as white as bleached cotton.

“How about Doctor Tommasi?” she whispers to Elodie.

Elodie knows that there was no one kinder or more trustworthy than Doctor Tommasi. He had delivered her, taken care of her own father after his beating by the Fascists, and been the one who told her of his death.

“My mother can find someone to help,” she tells Brigitte.

Brigitte looks up at her with firm eyes. “Get him here as soon as you can.”

Elodie turns to walk out the door, but Brigitte stops her. “Not you, Elodie. Have your mother go. She’s less suspicious. We can’t afford to lose anyone else after today.”

While Orsina leaves to find Doctor Tommasi, Brigitte tells Luca to change his clothes.

“You’re covered in blood,” she says. Elodie stares at both of them. Brigitte does not weaken, even at the sight of so much blood.

“Elodie,” she orders. “Go to the bedroom and give Luca some of Berto’s spare clothes. He can’t go outside like that.”

He follows her into the back room, where the trunk has been emptied of its machine guns. Where the silver comb and brush belonging to Brigitte remain untouched on the side table.

In the wardrobe, Elodie finds a pair of dark pants and a white shirt. She sees Luca standing next to the table, his reflection cast in the long mirror that has been positioned across from the bed.

He is standing there shaking. His shirt is stained with Maffini’s blood. Dark patches of stubble darken his face; his skin is covered with dirt and sweat.

“Come here,” Elodie says gently. But he cannot move. It seems that because he has finally been given a moment to breathe and not have to shoot, to save someone, or to run, his body has momentarily shut itself down. So Elodie walks over to him.

She places Berto’s spare clothes on the bed and begins to unbutton Luca’s shirt. Her fingers move quickly and deftly. This is not the way she imagined undressing him for the first time, but the sight of his skin and the sculpture of his muscles sends a slight shiver through her all the same. She peels the shirt away from his shoulders, and he suddenly takes her hand and presses it to his heart.

“They took Beppe . . . they took Lena. They killed Luigi and Franco . . .” She doesn’t know the men’s names he is saying. But as soon as he mentions Lena, Elodie begins to cry.

“Lena . . . what will they do to her, Luca? I can’t bear the thought of them torturing her.”

“We can’t think of that now, Elodie.” He touches her cheek in a gesture meant to soothe her. “Vincenzo is already plotting a way to get the men the Germans captured out of the prison. So we will work with him to then save Beppe and Lena as well.”

She feels protected by his touch, the warmth of his skin against her own. Just outside the doorway, she can hear the others talking and scrambling. Brigitte is telling them they all must scatter. Addresses where the men can hide are whispered to one another.

“Clean yourselves up in the sink. Comb your hair and make yourself look like a good Italian Fascist. Then lose yourself somewhere.”

Luca slips into his new clothes, takes Elodie into his arms, and kisses her one more time.

“I have to go find Vincenzo,” he says. “We will figure out a way to get our men out of the prison—and Lena and Beppe away from the Gestapo . . . I promise you.”

Luca leaves Berto’s studio just as night is falling. It is nearly curfew, and he knows the Germans will be patrolling even more heavily, searching for men who avoided being captured.

Doctor Tommasi arrives, escorted by Orsina who, in her simple housedress and upswept hair, looks more alive than ever. Elodie thinks to herself how much her mother seems to have transformed over the past twenty-four hours.

Martha boils the water for the doctor, while Giulia places his instruments over a flame to sterilize them. Brigitte holds Maffini’s head and tries to give him grappa, but the pain of extracting the bullet is excruciating. Brigitte takes a small washcloth, pours more grappa on it, and gives it to Maffini to suck on, hoping it will help quell his urge to scream.

After Doctor Tommasi has removed the bullet and stitched up the wound, he glances at Orsina and shakes his head.

“Every time you call me, I risk my life caring for the patient . . . You are lucky I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for you, Orsina.”

Orsina goes to him as the doctor washes his hands in the sink. “Thank you, Carlo,” she says, and kisses him on both cheeks to show her gratitude. “We won’t ever forget this kindness.”

The next morning, Luca and Vincenzo lead a successful raid on the prison, where the remainder of the men are held. After they scale the walls, some scurry into the fields to be absorbed by peasants willing to hide them, while others head to the mountains to fight with the partisans.

“Maffini needs to be moved. It is already a small miracle that the Germans haven’t knocked on the door searching for him here. They’ve probably already ransacked his apartment.”

“We can’t move him in the streets. He can’t walk. His injury is obvious and will incriminate him and us right away.” Brigitte is now becoming frantic. Her cool reserve is melting after the intensity of the past two days, and Berto has left for a secret meeting.

“I have an idea,” Orsina tells her. “We need to find the clothes of an old man. A cap, a cane, even an old overcoat. I’m sure he can walk a few blocks that way, to a more secure place.”

As Orsina and Brigitte work on the details to move Maffini to a safehouse, Luca tells Elodie she must go home and show up for class at the Liceo to maintain the consistency in her routine.

“It’s essential you still appear the innocent music student,” he tells her. “God knows what they’re doing to Lena and Beppe trying to get information out of them.” Elodie winces. Knowing Beppe and her friend are captured causes a pain to run through her. She knows from what happened to her father, the terrible measures they use on prisoners during interrogations, and it’s difficult to bear the thought of Beppe and Lena enduring such brutality. She closes her eyes and silently prays for them.

At Palazzo dell’INA, Lena is brought into a cement-block room with nothing in it except a metal table, three chairs, and a lightbulb that dangles from the ceiling. They have tied her hands behind her and given her nothing to eat or drink since they captured her the evening before.

After several minutes, two men appear. Both are dressed in Gestapo uniforms.

“Lena Galvetto?” one of the men asks her. His Italian is thick with a German accent, and his face resembles a hawk.

She doesn’t answer, but just lifts her head and stares at him. Her blue eyes are cold as ice.

She notices he twitches slightly at the sight of her eyes.

“Such blue eyes, such golden hair . . .” he says as he comes closer. “You look more German than Italian,” he says studying her.

Again she doesn’t answer. She wants to spit in his face, but she is afraid of these two men. They could beat her, rape her. She has heard all of the terrible things they do to captured
staffetta
before they put a bullet to their heads.

“Do you know why you’re here, Lena?” The German sits down on a chair and flips open a file. “So many things, Lena, we know about you, so many things . . .” He makes a small
tsk
ing sound against the roof of his mouth.