The Last Concerto

‘You’ve lost your mind!’ she blurted. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to hurt you.’

‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks, my friend, how are you?’

Alba shook her head. ‘You’re the insane one here, not me.’

‘Actually, I’ve accepted our escape route.’

‘For someone so clever your common sense has some seriously arrested development.’

Raffaele grabbed her shoulder. ‘You want to die here?’

‘No dramatics, Ra’.

‘We get married – we get to do what we like with our lives. Real lives. What town do you think we’re living in, Alba? We both know what plans they’ve made for you. And they don’t involve Elias.’

Alba stiffened.

‘You don’t think I’ve put two and two together? The way you speak about music. The way your face lights up like a flame when you’ve played me some of the records she gave you at my house? Come on. You don’t have to be a detective to know that spending every morning with a music teacher insinuates you are her pupil.’

‘Save your smart-ass for someone else, Ra. They stopped me going after the fight. Why do you think I’ve had my brothers following me like shadows?’

‘And it’s killing you. Alba, this is me. Not some idiot. I’m not going to tell anyone. Obviously. Crazy that we’re even having this conversation.’

Alba pinned him with a stare.

‘Don’t be like that. I’m just …’ His voice trailed off for a moment.

‘I thought you were my friend,’ she whispered, fighting tears of frustration and almost winning.

‘I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.’

Alba turned her gaze away from him, playing chess manoeuvres in her mind to escape her corner.

‘My parents will be expecting a good match for me,’ he said, undeterred, releasing his hands from her. ‘I don’t want to spend my life with another woman. It makes me feel like I’m dying. You don’t want to spend your life behind the counter of an officina – so why don’t we cut our losses, do the stupid thing, and then move away from it all?’

Alba turned to him, eyes stinging. ‘You’re talking shit.’

‘At least I’m talking.’

Her breaths rose in her chest.

‘I got the acceptance letter from the University of Cagliari yesterday. I don’t know how I’m going to cope without you, Alba. We know each other’s secrets.’

Not all of them, Alba thought.

‘I don’t think there’s a soul out there I could trust like I do you. And it terrifies me.’

Alba held her friend’s cheek in her hand. His skin was soft where he had shaved. She took a breath to tell him about her offer from the accademia. Mario’s sneer interrupted before she could. ‘People normally go someplace private to do that shit.’

The pair twisted round to him as he threw a cigarette into his mouth and lit it.

‘People normally don’t interrupt conversations they’re not part of,’ Alba snapped.

‘Planning on swinging for round two, Alba? Your papà would love that. At your brother’s wedding of the year and all.’

Alba pinned him with a stare. Mario flicked his ash down onto the dusty earth by her shoes. ‘Don’t know what you see in her, Raffaele,’ he jeered.

Raffaele didn’t return his glance.

‘Your dad’s pissed as a fart, Alba,’ Mario said, flicking her a diagonal grin.

She watched Mario take a deep drag on his cigarette, the orange-ruby light dipping his skin a richer olive, the thick mass of eyelashes potent shades for his jeering eyes.

‘Anyway, get back to your necking. Your dads will be organizing your big day in no time.’ He scuffed the dirt. ‘What?’ he asked, taking another drag. ‘Frustrating to have to hear it as it is and not be able to throw a bottle at me?’

He turned back to the hangar, which hummed with song now, a call-and-response chant, each verse interrupted by the throng in unison.

‘He likes you,’ Raffaele said.

Alba shot him a look.

‘I know you’d like me to say he’s straight out terrified of you. But when you’re a stupid boy choked by the feelings you have for someone you behave like him. Pretty much how I deal with Claudio on a daily basis. Either that or I act like I’m totally indifferent.’

Raffaele’s smile was fringed with sadness.

‘The next few months are going to be intense. I know it. Dad’s got big plans for me. I’ll do anything to take the heat off.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘That’s what we’re doing,’ he replied, just as Salvatore came bounding out of the hangar.

‘Alba, Raffaele! Babbo says to come in, they’re about to toast you!’

Alba couldn’t get her response out before they were dragged inside to deafening applause.

‘Please God, these two will be the next!’ Bruno shouted. The crowd stood, gleaming eyes that Alba felt were seeming to wish imprisonment on them both. Her bones felt brittle, as if they’d never felt the response of a piano’s song beneath them, calling out all that was hers to utter in secret, filling the air with melodic freedom, nor never would again.

She tried to swallow, but her mouth remained dry.

6

Fuoco

a directive to perform a certain passage with energy and passion. Con fuoco means with fire, instruction to play in a fiery manner

A few days later, Signora Elias dropped by to speak with Giovanna and offer a cordial invitation to come to hers for coffee, an official thank-you for all the time she and Alba had worked for her, she’d said, in a way that Giovanna was left with no power to refuse. The date was set. During the weekend, after school had reached its end, Alba and her parents would come to her house. Never had five days felt so close and far away.

Now, at the beginning of the week, all of Ozieri crowded around the huge bonfire in Piazza Cantareddu to celebrate St John the Baptist. Beside the fire, people sat upon wooden benches drinking wine and carving slabs of cheese from enormous pieces, wrapping them into blankets of bread and toasting the feast. Applause began from one end of the square and rippled up to where Alba sat with her mother and Grazietta.

‘Abaida!’ Grazietta called above the din. ‘Isn’t that Gigi’s boy? I didn’t know he was singing with the men now!’

Alba shot a look across to where a group of men were tightening into a circle intoning a chord before their song. She scanned the familiar faces and there, beside his father, was Mario. His flat black hat flopped over one ear, his white shirt billowing out from beneath a black tunic. Their voices vibrated with a warm, burnished sound, glistening copper tones. Then they stopped, took a breath in unison, and began to sing. She listened as Mario’s voice lifted up above the group, the purest column of sound she’d ever heard. His timbre woody yet crisp, golden and bright, full of yearning. It was impossible to match this voice with the imbecile she loathed. This couldn’t be the arrogant boy flicking ash towards her feet. Where was his snarl, the sideways grimace, the unattractive swagger? He took a deeper breath and his voice rose higher still, enhanced by the earthy bass chord beneath, the crowd hushed at the sound. The other men’s voices glowed blood red and ochre, and above, the sky blue of his love song. Alba felt the tears in her eyes but stopped them from falling. Her mother mopped her own with a frenetic hand. Grazietta wound an arm around her.

‘People are born with this gift, Giovanna,’ Grazietta whispered, thrilled. ‘You can’t teach someone that. God bless him. What a voice. From God I say. What a sound.’

His eyes lowered from his upward gaze and found hers. She watched, her stare impenetrable. It was her turn to gaze through a crack and he knew it.

The crowd burst into cheers. Gigi’s friends patted him on the back. Some of the boys in their class knocked Mario’s hat off his head and whacked him with it. Then the group merged towards the other end of the piazza where a smaller fire edged towards embers. The children lined up on one side. One of the parents belted out instructions most wouldn’t hear above the noise. The first child burst into a sprint, then leaped over the flames. The crowd cheered.

Raffaele slipped in behind Alba. ‘We have to do it, you know, it’s our last year.’

‘I think we need more than a leap over flames to get us out of our mess.’

‘Now who is being dramatic?’

‘Pragmatic.’

‘We’re officially not kids next year, Alba. Besides, you want Mario to think you don’t have the guts?’

‘Why would I care what he thought?’

‘Saw you watch him singing.’

Alba thwacked an elbow into his side. He grabbed her wrist and ran them on, pulling her behind, Alba laughing in spite of herself, till they fell into line. Mario and his mates were coercing one another with shoves and pelted insults. One of the parents screamed to the younger child ahead of them, stay away from the embers and impervious to the kerfuffle behind them.

The music from the other side of the square was louder now, belting through the speakers. Alba thought she caught sight of her parents waltzing. All of a sudden, she was at the front of the line. Raffaele’s voice hummed in her ear. ‘Remember, you’ve got to think of stuff you want rid of! St John will sort it. Take away the bad.’

‘You don’t believe that shit and I know it,’ she screamed back.

‘And you love it more than you’d know, pagangirl.’

He knew her better than she’d like to admit. Besides, there were only a few days between now and her parents discovering her daughter had received the most prestigious invitation they could have ever dreamed up. A marriage to a local wealthy boy was nothing compared to that. And yet. She brushed off her unease, losing herself for a breath in the fire as it burned, insistent, free.

A snatched breath, then she charged towards it. The summer air kissed her cheeks as she cut through. Her legs felt powerful. Excitement rose up through their fibre, her chest light and free. She leaped. Time melted. Below, the dancing flames. The sounds of voices swallowed up by the dark. There was only the red lick of the light beneath her. She rose higher. The amber glow upon a face on the opposite side of the circle huddled around the leapers met hers. The moment hovered, hot, hidden. Mario’s eyes were inscrutable. Then the cobbles rose to meet her with a thud as her gum soles landed. Ozieri crashed back into her ears, a fanatic crescendo, a sforzando chord full of authority, defiance and rebellion. Mario disappeared into the crowd.

Signora Elias’s piano room smelled of vanilla and almond. Giovanna agreed to let Alba go ahead of her, whilst she waited for Bruno to accompany her a little later. Alba arrived to practice to find the kitchen counters topped with several baking trays. There was a neat parade of fig jam–filled tiricche, fine white pastry twists cut with a serrated wooden wheel leaving edges like lace. In a ceramic dish Signora Elias’s famed sospiri were laid in a circle with a tiny space between each so that the heat wouldn’t melt them and make them stick together. These were Bruno’s favourite, but Alba knew no amount of sugar would sweeten the betrayal they were about to reveal.

‘Don’t hover in your nerves, Alba. You leave this all to me. All you must do is warm up and play. Everything else rests on my shoulders, do you understand?’

Alba wanted to but she knew her father better than that.

‘At some point our secret had to come out, no? This is the nature of secrets. They have a lifespan of their own. Eventually they too must die, as they shift from the dark into the light.’

Alba felt her eyebrows squeeze into a frown.

‘Goodness, my metaphors will do nothing to ease your mind I’m sure. Off you go, I have things to do here now.’

Alba let herself be shooed back out towards the piano. She took her seat as she had done for all those mornings up till today. Her scales began a little slower than usual. Her mind began to percuss the fragment of space between the notes, the middle quiet where one note ends and another begins, the subtle shifts in frequency urging her towards the instrument and away from her rattling nerves. As her fingers spidered up and down the keyboard Alba felt the warmth of that wordless place, one she was always being criticized by her father for living in most of the time but the very strength this instrument required. She didn’t hear the bell ring until it jangled for what must have been the fourth time. Her fingers lifted off the keys as if scalded. Signora Elias appeared at the kitchen doorway wiping hers.

‘You stay exactly where you are, signorina. I will let your parents in.’

Every sound thrummed like a chord cutting across a silence: the creak of the door, its solemn close, her mother’s footsteps along the shiny floors, tentative clips towards the piano room. Giovanna entered. She registered Alba seated upon the ottoman.

‘Please, do get comfortable, Signora Giovanna,’ Signora Elias said, leading her into the room she cleaned once a week. ‘The coffee is just about ready. Alba, do help me with the sweets, si?’

Alba was relieved to be asked to do something other than sit beside her mother, who looked stiff. She scooped up two plates and returned to the table in front of the ottoman. Giovanna gave her a peculiar look, swerving embarrassment or perhaps pride, Alba couldn’t decide which.

‘And Signore Bruno?’ Signora Elias asked without a trace of emotion, though his absence made Alba feel more uneasy than before. She placed the coffee pot on a holder and poured Giovanna a dainty china cup and handed it over.

‘He’s got caught with a terrible customer, signora,’ Giovanna replied, breathy. ‘I stopped by at the officina. It’s awfully busy. There was simply no way he could get away. He sends his apologies. It’s just us women together. Probably best. You know how he is, signora.’

Signora Elias smiled, unruffled. Alba shifted along the velvet, which prickled her bare legs below the hem of her cut-off shorts.

‘Do have a sweet, Signora Giovanna, I made them especially. It’s wonderful to have someone to bake for. Try one of each.’

Signora Elias and Giovanna performed the ritual dance of refusal and insistence, and, as always, age won out and Giovanna ate as ordered. Watching her mother do as she was told filled Alba with hope that what was about to happen might not be the disaster she anticipated.

‘Very well, Signora Giovanna.’

‘Please, signora, just call me Giovanna.’

‘You’re not working today, signora, today you are the respected mother of this wonderful young woman. What I would like you to enjoy now is the fruit of my time with Alba. She has helped me a great deal, and I know there have been times over the years where you have considered taking her job away as punishment, an understandable measure considering, but first of all I want to thank you, from the deepest part of my heart, for not doing so. When I came to you after the Mario debacle you listened to my plea, and, as an old woman living alone, I can’t tell you what that meant.’

Giovanna shifted in her seat. Alba saw her eye the sospiri. Signora Elias lifted the dish right away and insisted she take another. Giovanna had let Alba believe that she’d permitted her to continue working for Signora Elias out of the goodness of her heart, and for a while, Alba had believed her mother understood her friendship with Signora Elias was the most important part of her life. Now she watched the subtle shadow of betrayal cast a grey over her mother’s face. It made her own lighten for a breath.

‘But enough prattling from me. I invited you and Signore Bruno to hear something quite marvellous this morning and I can only say that I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. It is my wish, that when Alba has finished what she has prepared, you will understand what a wonder it has been working with your daughter.’

Giovanna took a breath to speak. Signora Elias interrupted. ‘Do get comfortable. And enjoy.’

Signora Elias nodded at Alba. The metallic ache in her stomach piqued. She stood up and took her seat at the stool. As she pushed it a little further away with her feet she caught sight of her canvas pumps. They were the ones she’d worn that day she’d had sex with Raffaele in the pineta. Giovanna forced her to scrub them clean once a week, but Alba felt like a little of the pine dust always remained. No amount of water could take that away.

She caught Signora Elias’s eye. It sent a wave of calm over her. She let her breath leave her chest and deepen into her lower back. The soles of her feet rooted onto the floor. The room shifted into her periphery. Her fingers sank down onto Chopin’s notes she had played countless times. A purple melancholy swept over her. Wave after wave of measures rolled on with ease, the notes a cocoon around her and the piano, dancing light. The mournful melody swirled out from her, weighted, familiar, describing the longing and silence she could not articulate with words alone. The ending trickled into view, an unstoppable tide urging towards the shore.

And then it was over.

Alba lifted her fingers with reluctance, holding onto the space before reality would have to be confronted. She placed them on her lap and looked at her mother.

Giovanna’s eyes were wet. Her breath seemed to catch somewhere high in her chest. Signora Elias didn’t fill her silence. Alba looked at her teacher. Her eyes glistened with pride. Whatever happened now, that expression was one Alba would cling to. In the golden gap between this moment and the next, Alba felt like her mother cradled her life in her lap, petals of possibility that might tumble and crush underfoot if she rose too quick, or be thrown into the air, fragrant confetti of celebration.

‘Signora Giovanna,’ Signora Elias began at last, ‘in return for all the errands your daughter does for me I offered what I could, besides money, in return. You see, the moment she sat at my instrument I knew I would be failing my duty as a teacher if I didn’t protect and nurture her talent.’

Giovanna opened her mouth to speak but her thoughts remained choked.

‘Your daughter has become an exceptional student and pianist.’

‘I’ve never heard anything like that,’ Giovanna murmured.

‘Alba has been offered a full scholarship in Rome to pursue her studies further. She has what it takes to become a professional, Signora Giovanna.’

Her mother’s expression crinkled through confusion, pride, concern, a troubled spring day between showers.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Giovanna replied after a beat.

‘I can’t tell you what to say, signora, but in my professional capacity I would urge you to permit her to go. I have friends there who will be able to arrange her accommodation; it will be simple, of course, but clean.’

‘In Rome, you say?’

Signora Elias nodded.

‘Alone? A girl alone in Rome? She’s going to be married.’

Alba’s eyes slit to Signora Elias, the prickle of panic creeping up her middle.

‘Take some time to think about it, signora, but I can reassure you that I know people who can help her in the early days and that many young people make the same pilgrimage every year. For their art. For talent that they have a duty to share with the world.’

Giovanna looked at her daughter. Alba persuaded herself that the flicker she caught in her eye was one of a mother almost convinced.

Giovanna said nothing on the walk home, nor as they prepared lunch. She cut the cured sausage into thin precise slices without a word. She handed Alba the six plates to set the table without even looking Alba in the eye. She washed the fresh tomatoes and placed them in a bowl without the slightest evidence of emotion of any kind, other than a robotic repetition of their regular rhythms. Only when she tipped the salt into a tiny ramekin for the table and it overflowed onto the counter did Alba spy any nerves. When Giovanna made no move to clear up the salt flakes, Alba’s sense of impending storm peaked. She gave the linguini a swirl in the simmering water.

Salvatore came in soon after, world-weary and hungry as he always was after Saturday mornings at the officina. He slumped onto his chair.

‘Why all the plates?’ he grumbled.

‘Marcellino and Lucia are coming,’ Giovanna shouted from the kitchen.

‘When’s Babbo back?’ he called back.

‘Didn’t he say at the officina?’ Alba said, laying down a bowl of chicory on the table.

‘He wasn’t at work today.’

Alba wanted to check her mother’s face for a reply as she brought out a hunk of Parmesan and a grater, dropping them onto the table with a thud, then thought better of it.

The door opened. Marcellino and Lucia strode in, taking over the space as they always did. Lucia stepped towards Giovanna and greeted her like her second mother. Then she swished over to Alba and gave a dutiful kiss on each cheek, almost touching the skin.

‘Nearly ready, Ma?’ Marcellino harangued his mother.

Lucia gave him a playful tap on his belly.

‘What?’ he guffawed. ‘A boy’s hungry!’

‘Not a boy for long,’ Lucia purred, her blue eyes flashing with something Alba struggled to identify. She did look different today, but it was hard to pinpoint why. She sashayed across the tiles with her usual perky sway, her jet-black hair lustrous even in the dim light of the shady room.

Giovanna yelled for Alba and handed her the pasta pot. The family took their seats. Bruno stepped in just as the first bowl was filled.

‘Buon appetito!’ he called, his walk a playful swagger.

‘Get changed, amore, si?’ Giovanna insisted. Bruno stopped and grinned at his daughter-in-law. ‘Don’t get any ideas now, Lucia? You see how old married men are? Do what their little wives say at all times, si? Watch out, Marcellino, it’s the beginning of the end.’

Alba thought her father sounded a little drunk. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to have an aperitivo at the bar with his cronies after the morning at the officina, or to drum up more business over a Campari and soda or two, but there was more sway than usual about him that afternoon. Only when he turned for upstairs did Alba spy a fleck of lipstick on his collar. The clang of the metal serving fork upon the bowls as her mother tipped another portion of the pasta brought her back into the room. She watched the steam ribbon off the strands, fragrant with anchovy, garlic, chilli, and fresh tomatoes.

Just before the figs were brought out at the end of the meal, Lucia asked for everyone’s attention and announced she was pregnant. Alba’s father needed no excuse to crack open a bottle of moscato and the sweet wine frothed six glasses like it was Christmas. When Lucia was asked her due date, she shied around a direct answer. It wasn’t until Alba brought out the coffee that she understood Lucia’s pregnancy was almost five months along. Women on the cusp of marriage were granted different rules, it seemed.

When everyone left, the house dipped into a sleepy quiet. Bruno snored upstairs. Salvatore lay on the couch. Only the percussive sloppy grating of Giovanna washing at the tub outside cut through the stillness. Alba stepped outside into the narrow courtyard garden. Above, a canopy of wisteria wept purple blooms. Giovanna plunged a shirt into the sudsy cement tub, then lifted it and began attacking it along the ridges of the washboard, which lifted out at an angle. Her mother’s knuckles were red.

‘When are you going to tell Babbo?’ Alba asked, before realizing that it was her father’s shirt Giovanna was waging war on.

Her mother looked up at her, eyes bloodshot from dried tears.

‘Leave me now. I’ve had quite the morning, don’t you think? Sending me up there to be shamed by my daughter who has become a charity case? Have you any idea how I felt? I told you loud and clear what I thought about imposing on that kind woman. After everything she did for me when we were struggling? All those years when she would give me extra cleaning work to help us? Meanwhile you start pretending to run errands for her when all you’ve been doing is plonking that instrument. And now you stand here, silent as a cave, telling me to tell your father. You’ve got another think coming.’