The Last Concerto

Her father was closeted in quiet. After his return, the house became a hushed mausoleum. Alba had never seen her mother so stilted, tiptoeing around her kitchen so as not to make any sudden noise. She waved over at Alba, who was on dusting duty.

‘Come on, get a move on, I’ll be late!’ Giovanna whispered, emphasizing every vowel with a theatrical movement of her lips.

‘For what, Mamma?’

‘You’re to come to work with me today. I can’t leave you here. Babbo needs to rest!’

Before Alba could ask anything further, she was bundled out of the door and the two began marching uphill. The sounds of the market awakening clanked up from the main square. Giovanna stomped at full speed. Alba was glad the morning heat had not fully cooked. By the time they reached Signora Elias’s villa, Alba could feel the droplets of sweat snake down the back of her neck. Giovanna gave her daughter’s shirt a tug or two and it curled back into its original shape. She smoothed her work apron. The door opened.

Signora Elias appeared behind it, the doorframe encasing her like a painting of an aging Madonna, black hair scraped off her face into a low bun, streaked with waves of grey. Her face wrinkled into a grin. The tiny woman, with the sharp intelligent eyes of a bird, snapped her gaze from mother to daughter.

‘Buon giorno, signora. Sorry I am a little late today,’ Giovanna said, breathless.

‘Nonsense. Your husband had quite the celebration last night. I fell asleep to the sound of it!’

She stepped back a little to let the two inside.

‘This must be your girl, yes?’

‘Si. She won’t make any trouble, signora.’

Giovanna’s face creased with streaks of worry. Did her mother fear Alba might pick a fistfight with this old lady too?

‘Piacere, signorina,’ Signora Elias said, reaching out a hand for Alba to shake. No adult had ever done such a thing. Alba felt Giovanna flick her shoulder to reciprocate.

Signora Elias’s hand was small but strong. Her fingers were assured, muscular, belying her size and age. She looked straight into Alba, without the pity or mistrust she was more accustomed to receiving from older Sardinian women. They shuffled through the darkened hallway, along the cool of the tiles, which opened out into the biggest room Alba had ever seen. At the far end three sets of double glass doors framed the Ozieri plains. Parched yellows streaked with ochre beneath the graduating blues of the summer sky, and they stood as if floating in the space above it.

‘Stop gawking!’ her mother spat under her breath.

Alba scurried behind her mother as they worked their way through to the utility cupboard beside the kitchen and removed all the cleaning supplies for the morning’s work. Her eyes slitted sideways, registering the paintings on the walls, the huge Persian rug that covered the centre of the room. As Giovanna flew out through the kitchen Alba had just enough time to see the enormous range, the double oven below, the bold, colourful designs on the tiles surrounding it. Giovanna headed to the upper floors only to discover she’d left the broom downstairs. She ordered Alba to fetch it.

That’s when she heard it for the first time.

A golden sound; uplifting like the first light, reassuring as the afternoon sun’s streaking glow through the fig trees. In silence Alba’s feet stroked the carpet lining the stairs, not wanting to interrupt the cascade of notes running towards her, the mesmerizing trickle of a creek as it winds its way around mossy boulders and uncovered tree roots; cooling, comforting, ancient.

At the foot of the stairs she reached stillness. In the far corner of the room Signora Elias sat on an upholstered stool, facing towards the enormous glass-paned doors and the expanse of their burnished valley. Her fingers caressed the keys of a deep mahogany instrument. Its lid was lifted at an angle like a sail, the mirror sheen of the wood reflecting the paintings on the opposite side of the room. Bright yellow notes of birdsong followed by sonorous, melancholic blues. Alba couldn’t move. Signora Elias danced on further carousels of notes till, at last, her fingers eased down onto the white and black; peaceful, heavy. The song reached its final rest. Alba couldn’t quite count all the different tones and sensations that wove out of the piano, but she knew the ending made her think of a sunset dipped in orange and ruby, or the memory she had created of her father before the kidnapping, edged with the silver-grey tinge of a farewell.

2

Pianoforte

1. formal term for piano

2. mid-18th century, ‘soft and loud,’ expressing the graduation in tone

Alba couldn’t force the following week to pass quickly enough. The days dripped by unhurried, excruciating, as if she were listening to a leaking tap’s droplets echo into a metal watering can till it reached the rim. Her restlessness did not go unnoticed by Giovanna, who admonished her for hurriedly rolling out the gnocchetti from a large lump of dough, sweeping the floor without noticing what furniture she banged against in the process, and eating her food without chewing it first.

For Alba, the sounds around her became a claustrophobic symphony of erratic percussion; orderless, out of time, passionless. Her brothers rushed in from school each lunchtime, with stories of whom they had defeated in the playground, peacocking their self-appointed celebrity status amongst their peers for being sons of a hero. Her father would give them a swift glare, but his eyes smiled. He still spent his days in his room, but somehow the cacophony of her brothers brought him pleasure where the smallest noise of Alba’s broom would make Giovanna wince at best, swing her hand at her daughter at worst.

Alba tried to bury the worm of envy inching around her belly. When the feeling deepened, she thought about Signora Elias. The sounds of hungry boys and crisscrossing conversations then hushed into the near distance as the memory of her song rippled closer.

‘Alba! Do as your father said!’ Giovanna’s voice pierced the reimagined musical haze.

‘What, Mamma?’

‘Clear up. They’ve finished, can’t you see? Bring the cheese from out back.’

Alba stood and reached the cool stone cupboard towards the back of the room where several perette cheeses hung to form a hardened skin. She reached one and brought it to her father.

‘What’s got into you today, Alba?’ he asked, grabbing a knife and wiping it clean on the tablecloth.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re a wet cloth. This is how you thank your mother? She’s supposed to be taking it easy. Lord knows we’ve put her through enough.’

We. The way he slipped that tiny word into his sentence made Alba feel like she was folding down into a tiny parcel of tight paper. We. Giovanna had wanted her to go. The events had all been, in part, her fault. Bruno gripped the round-ended cheese in his palm and carved a slice. The boys eyed him as if they hadn’t just licked their bowls of gnocchetti clean. Bruno passed each of them a peeled piece, which they prised off the tip of his knife, then started to peel the rind off his own.

‘Well, don’t just sit there, Alba. Go and help your mother.’

Alba left the room for the narrow kitchen beside it. Giovanna was filling a plastic container inside the deep sink with suds and water.

‘Is this how you’re helping him get better?’ Her words were swallowed by the sloshing water. Alba could hear the force of it smack against the side; thwacks of cascading frustration.

Replying was pointless.

At last, Wednesday rolled around. Giovanna’s calls for Alba not to run on so far ahead fell on deaf ears, or rather ears that were attuned to the treble of birdsong, the metallic click-clang of the house at the end of the street whose upper terrace was being rebuilt, or the bee that buzzed close, which Alba watched land on the passiflora creeping up a neighbour’s front door. As they wove further uphill towards Signora Elias’s home, the sun bore down and the cicadas hummed. Alba noticed their perfect synchronization, how their notes shifted but nevertheless sang in unison.

Alba rang the bell before Giovanna could stop her. And Signora Elias’s smile silenced Giovanna before she could yell.

‘Good morning, signora. Alba is with us again today, I see?’

‘Sorry, signora, it won’t always be like this.’

‘It’s been too long since I’ve had children in my house. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.’

She welcomed them inside. This time the smell of the silent house was powdered with a sugary vanilla scent. Alba’s mouth watered.

‘I’ve made sospiri this morning. I hope you’ll have some, Alba. If Mamma says it’s all right?’

Giovanna shook her head. ‘We’ll get on with our work, signora.’

‘Very well, Giovanna, but I want you to send Alba down when you begin with the bleach in the bathroom. Those smells are toxic for young noses. She will sit down here in silence, of course, until you come down again, yes?’

This time Alba knew her mother could not refuse. A victory. She would have grinned if she knew it wouldn’t lead to mild physical harm.

Giovanna raised her eyebrows in unspoken agreement. When Signora Elias turned away to walk to her piano, Giovanna gave Alba a glare. In the utility cupboard Alba found all the cleaning equipment from the week before. This time she took a moment to commit the kitchen to memory. The white-tiled counters stretched one length of the facing wall with a window at the far end, which opened out onto the valley. Beyond lay the purple hills of Tula surrounding Lake Coghinas. A small wooden table beside the wall opposite the range was covered in baking parchment and topped with perfect medallions of almond paste sospiri, dipped in white icing. They were uniform in size and the morning light cast a tempting gleam across the tops of their perfect levelled surfaces.

‘Run on up to your mother before she calls now, won’t you, Alba.’ Signora Elias’s voice made her jump round. Her guilt dissipated on seeing the old woman’s grin. ‘You’ll have some when you come down, I promise.’

Giovanna gave Alba several more chores to do before she at last allowed her downstairs with a squinty-eyed Sardinian glower. Alba left, trying not to look too happy about the fact.

‘There you are at last!’ Signora Elias called out, coming in from the kitchen with a porcelain plate of sospiri. She placed it down on a lace doily, which sat at the centre of a spindle-legged side table, a pink velvet hall chair beside it.

‘Do sit down, Alba, we were never meant to digest standing up, you know.’

Alba took a tentative seat.

‘Those are for you. And yes, I will be offended if you don’t finish them all. You’ve lived on our island long enough to know that, surely?’

Alba wanted to join her laughter, but the corners of her mouth clamped down the impulse, in case her mother heard.

‘This is my practice time, Alba. If you don’t mind, I will carry on as I always do. I don’t do very well if I don’t stick to my routines. I don’t go to church often like the other women my age in town. But if I miss my morning practice my day does go off track somewhat. Perhaps I’m getting old after all.’

Her smile lit up her little face, her eyes a dance of sagacity and infectious childlike joy. Alba took her first bite. It was perfection; sweet, nutty, smooth.

‘Glad you like them,’ Elias said. Alba looked up. The signora must have other magic powers beyond the songs her fingers made.

Signora Elias sat on the piano stool. She turned away from Alba now and let her hands rest on her lap. Alba watched her breathe in and out three times. For a moment she wondered if maybe the old lady wasn’t falling asleep. No sooner had she thought that, the woman’s hands sprang to life. Her wrists lifted and her fingers touched the keys, soundless, elegant as a ballerina’s silent feet.

They gave a twirl upon the keys, followed by a fierce, effortless run of notes. In her left hand, the notes spaced at even intervals undulated up and down towards the centre notes. In her right, her fingers trilled into ripples of watery movements as if the two hands fought to be heard over each other; a heated conversation. The music rolled on, in waves, urgent, chasing, till Signora Elias reached up for the higher notes, spreading her palm wide and playing stacked notes at the same time. The tune from the earlier passage repeated, fuller for the addition of the lower notes, emphatic. The scarlet sounds burst with passion, insistence. And then, as quick as the storm blew over the instrument, it fell back, like a tide fast retreating. The reds were replaced by golden yellow tones, making Alba think of how the sun shines all the warmer after a summer downpour. Yet beneath the hope, Alba heard nostalgia, as if the song harkened to a lost peace. The tune was a bitter balm. An involuntary tear left a wet streak on her cheek. Then the waves crashed in again, Signora Elias’s fingers racing, till, at last, her rocking hands wove an ending, the repetition of the midsection playing over echoes of the tumultuous start, reaching a truce, both points of view sounding in their own right.

And then it was over.

Signora Elias looked at Alba’s face.

‘The first time I heard Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu I cried like a baby. You show remarkable self-control to shed only a solitary tear.’

Alba laughed at that, in spite of herself.

‘That’s the piece which made me want to become a pianist.’

Signora Elias held the silence, unhurried, as unflustered by it as the great splash of sound she’d just made. Then she stood up from her stool. Alba took it as her signal to leave, and she jumped up from her seat and pounced towards the stairs. Elias called out to her.

Alba turned back.

‘My piano. Would you like to play it?’

Alba wanted nothing more than to know how that magic poured out of her fingers, but she stood, frozen between terror and embarrassment.

‘Mamma will be busy for a while yet. I can show you some things. Only if you like, of course?’

Alba glanced towards the stairs, imagining the look on her mother’s face if she came down to see her daughter fingering this magnificent instrument.

‘Here, take a seat and I’ll adjust the stool to your height.’

Alba felt the thickness of the plush rug beneath her feet. She walked to the stool as if drawn to it by an invisible cord of golden thread. She listened to the metallic squeak of the stool as it rose.

‘Now, just place your hands on the keys, see what they want to naturally do.’

Alba did. They reflected back to her in the polished wood; twenty expectant fingers.

‘Have you ever sat at a piano, Alba?’

She shook her head.

‘Goodness. You hold your hands as if you have, my dear.’ Elias reached over and lifted her hands and moved them a little to the right until they seemed to be at the centre of the keyboard.

‘Why don’t you go ahead and play a few notes then?’

Alba turned to face Signora Elias, feeling like a trespasser.

‘Any note at all, any order, doesn’t matter, just feel the weight of them.’

Alba looked down at her hands. She pressed her second finger down. A bright sound rose up from beneath the lid, a fizz of yellow.

‘And another,’ Signora Elias encouraged.

Alba pressed her little finger down. This one was higher, prouder, a more certain sound.

‘What happens if you play one at a time starting with your thumb all the way up to your little finger, do you think?’

Alba felt the smoothness under the pads of her fingers, the thickness of the key, and let her fingers press down on each note in turn. A ladder, stepping-stones, sounds stacked on top of one another like building blocks.

‘Now come back down,’ Signora Elias said. Alba did. Her fingers were hot. They ached to touch every key, to hear the colour of each note, to race up and down like Elias.

‘Very good, Alba. Your fingers look quite at home there, wouldn’t you say?’

Alba looked up at Signora Elias. She hadn’t felt this safe since before her father’s ordeal, or perhaps ever. Her eyes grew moist. This time she swallowed her tears before they escaped.

‘Alba Fresu, what do you think you are doing?’ Giovanna cried, waddling down the stairs with buckets and brooms in tow. ‘Signora, I’m so so sorry – this won’t happen again.’

‘I think it would be criminal if it didn’t.’

Giovanna looked at her, unsure if she was about to be fired.

‘Giovanna, I would very much like to teach this young lady, if you and she were agreeable to the idea.’

Alba looked down at her fingers on her lap.

‘That’s very kind, signora’ – Giovanna flustered a laugh – ‘but right now we must get on and finish your downstairs and get home to make lunch. I’m so sorry if she made a nuisance of herself.’ Giovanna’s gaze flitted to the sospiri crumbs on the doily. Alba’s cheeks burned.

‘Very well, Giovanna, but once you’re finished you’ll take some of these sospiri home to your family, won’t you? No pleasure without sharing.’

Giovanna nodded. Alba jumped up from her stool.

They mopped the kitchen and downstairs bathroom in silence.

Outside, the heat swelled. The cicadas were in operatic form and the tufts of yellow fennel blossoms on the side of the road gave off their sweet sun-toasted anise scent. It was of some comfort ahead of Giovanna’s tirade.

‘What exactly did you make that poor old woman do? Did you ask her to play on that expensive piano?’

‘Of course not, Mamma, she asked me.’

Giovanna skidded to a stop. She pinned Alba with a glower. ‘Alba Fresu, we don’t have much, but I work every hour under the sun to teach my children one thing: honesty. You stand here lying to my face and think you won’t be punished? You wait till your father hears this.’

‘She asked me to listen!’

‘Maybe she did. But that’s no excuse to push your way in like a peasant. You know better.’

Tears of injustice prickled Alba’s eyes.

‘I’ve been waiting for the moment where you show some kind of thanks, for your father being alive, for having escaped this ordeal. But nothing! You float around like you’re invisible. Like a princess. It’s disgusting. You don’t talk. You help, but I have to redo the things after you’ve finished. Is this how I’ve taught you to be?’

Alba would have liked to cry then and there, to spit out that her night terrors were more than she could bear, that the feeling of a cave’s dampness skirted her dreams and waking hours, that she didn’t know how to describe the way her heart thudded in her chest for no reason during the day. That every bush held a secret promise of bandits lurking beneath. That their job was unfinished. That they would return for more. She longed to be held by her mother, told that everything would be fine, that one day she wouldn’t have the sinking feeling of dread trail her like a menacing shadow, that the dusk wouldn’t seep white panic through her veins. Instead, a sun-blanched silence clamped down.

‘There, you see? More sulky silence. Well, this has got to stop, signorina. You hear me?’

Alba swallowed. Her throat was hot and dry. The pine trees further up the hill swished their needled branches. Their woody scent wafted down on the breeze. Alba longed for them to be the comfort they once were.

3

Fantasie

1 a free composition structured according to the composer’s fancy

2 a medley of familiar themes with variations and interludes

The following week, just as Alba was starting to speed up her run towards Signora Elias, her mother handed her a crumpled piece of paper. On it was a detailed list of vegetables she wanted Alba to buy at the market. Alba looked up at her mother.

‘Don’t just stand there. Get on down before it gets too hot. You can clean the artichokes and cut the potatoes. Get a can of olives from the shop and see at the end of the list I’ve added a few strips of pancetta. I’ll make pasta al coccodrillo for a treat, I know how much your brothers love that. They’ll be hungry after the morning at the officina.’

Giovanna’s words tumbled out in one blast of breath. Alba’s stomach growled. She wanted to think it was because she’d only eaten half a roll with her milk and coffee. Signora Elias was the highlight of her week. Her mother had just robbed her of it.

When they both returned home, Giovanna took her frustration out on the unsuspecting white-skinned onion she massacred into tiny pieces. Next, she launched an attack on the slices of pancetta, thwacked open the lids of passata from their glass jars, and ripped into the can of drained black olives that turned into little discs in a brusque breath or two. Alba was instructed to chop the slab of semi-soft fontina cheese into tiny cubes whilst her mother whooshed a pan with warmed olive oil and the softening onions. Pancetta was thrown in soon after, and the smell in their galley kitchen would have filled it with the promise of a comforting lunch if it wasn’t for Giovanna banging every pan on the range. Alba knew better than to ask what the matter was. Instead she eased her knife down through the cheese, taking her time so that she wouldn’t have to lay the table yet. Each blade slice, Alba half expected her mother to tell her how Signora Elias was that day, what she’d played, if it had been a swirling piece like the others. No descriptions of her morning were offered, but the way Giovanna threw a fist of salt into the boiling water of a deep stockpot for pasta made Alba worry she’d been fired for her daughter’s impoliteness after all.

Alba’s brothers returned soon after to bellows from their mother to scrub their hands. Alba carried the huge pot of pasta to the table. The fontina cheese had melted over all the pennette mixed in with the red pancetta sauce and olives. As she scooped the spoon down towards the base and up onto one of her brother’s bowls, strands of fontina oozed off it.

‘Coccodrillo, Ma?’ her elder brother, Marcellino, yelled from the other end of the table. He reached out a hungry arm for his bowl. He had entered his teenage years in earnest and Giovanna moaned about having to cook almost two kilos of pasta for their family these days. His thick black hair was like his father’s, and his crooked smile, and the way his eyes twinkled with unspoken mischief. His voice was deep and broad and he held the weight of an heir upon his wide shoulders with pride. Beside him sat their younger brother, Salvatore, who had their mother’s moon-shaped face and never fought to step out of his elder brother’s shadow. Salvatore had his grandfather’s patter and a speed of speech and reaction to match Marcellino. Neither measured the volume of their voices.

‘It’s a treat for you all today!’ her mother cried from the kitchen.

When all the bowls were full and Giovanna and Bruno took their places, silence replaced the gaggle of voices. The boys were sent out to play after lunch whilst Alba helped clear the table. Her father took his time to peel an early peach and chop it into tiny cubes, which dropped into his tumbler. When it was almost full, he reached for a slice of melon and did the same. Then he poured wine over the fruit-filled glass and began to swirl the mixture, pressing the soft fruit down with a gentle spoon until it was submerged. He scooped up his first spoon of wine-infused fruit. The smell made Alba’s mouth water. She found herself, as always, hanging to her place waiting for him to cast her a story, share a secret. Since his return home, none came. He was in his faraway place that Alba was instructed to never interrupt.

‘Let your father eat his macedonia in peace, Alba, and finish up inside.’

Alba followed her mother’s instructions. Her parents’ voices became muffled all of a sudden. It made her tune in through the doorway; when adults whispered there was always information that would be better known than not.