Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

A voice yelled out from behind her towards the peacocking girls.

‘You asked her out yet?’

Alba swung round to see Mario jeering at Raffaele with a group of friends. She heard the girls simper pathetic laughter, high notes on a piano played with too frothy a touch.

Alba shot him a look.

‘Lover girl sticking up for her man. How sweet!’ Mario caressed his cheek with a girlish giggle. The pack of boys around him chuckled, thwacks of broken voices bracing boyhood.

Raffaele straightened. ‘Don’t talk to her like that.’

‘What you going to do? Write a calculation to shut me up?’ Mario snapped back, delighted his bait had been bitten.

The girls’ laughter spiked.

Alba watched Raffaele’s cheeks turn.

‘Don’t look at me like that, nerd,’ Mario jeered.

Raffaele’s frown creased in confusion.

‘I said, don’t look at me like that!’

Mario pounced from his throne at the metal table outside the bar where the teenagers congregated for soda, waiting for their buses home. He pushed off with such force that it tipped, sending the glasses smashing to the floor. In a breath, he was on top of Raffaele, pounding his back. Two of Mario’s friends jumped up and began kicking into his side. Alba watched her only friend being pummelled. Her chest burned. The sounds tunnelled into a pounding silence undercut with a familiar echo of scuffing feet, men’s voices. Her hand reached out to a large glass bottle on the table beside Mario’s. Her fingers tightened. She swung. The glass smashed against the back of Mario’s skull. A splat reached her face. Water? Blood? She didn’t care. Her arm cut through the air again and again. A hand on hers clamped her to stillness. The silence became a bass note, slow vibrations waving through the heat. The wetness on her hands turned red. A drip on her trousers blotted crimson. Someone held her.

The smash of the half bottle as it slipped from her hand onto the cobbles brought her attention down to Mario at her feet. There were men around him now. Some hollers. There was a cry, a beige blur of confusion.

Alba didn’t remember getting into the car until she noticed the heat of her grandfather’s passenger seat. The leather squeaked as Raffaele scooted into the back. They wound the vicoli to her house in silence but for the metallic simmer of the engine. As they stepped inside, Giovanna’s expression blanched into panic.

‘Found them in the square, Giovanna, killing each other like dogs.’ Her grandfather’s voice was a scrape of sandpaper.

Giovanna disappeared into the kitchen and came out with a bowl of warm water and some cloths. She sat Raffaele down and lifted his chin. He winced. He tried to swallow a tear before it tipped over his lashes but failed.

‘Which cretin did this to you?’ Giovanna puffed in between blotting. ‘You tell me who and we’ll sort him out.’

‘It was Mario!’ Alba cried out. ‘Who else?’

‘We will discuss this when Bruno is home,’ her grandfather interrupted. ‘You just get on and clean him up. Don’t want his father to think we’d sent him home without that. The very least we can do after what your child did.’

Alba didn’t meet his eye.

The door swung open. Alba’s brothers bounded in ahead of their father from the officina . Marcellino undid the two top buttons of his shirt; at nineteen he’d become the newest executive of the officina . His hair was black and thick like Alba’s, but his eyes lacked the probing intensity of hers. To him, life was a game and one that was sure to deal him a good hand. Her younger brother, Salvatore, flung his tie and shirt off to sit in just his vest, throwing the discarded uniform to the sofa in a thoughtless crumple. He ran his hand through his floppy light brown hair.

As he caught her eye his expression changed. ‘Christ! What the hell happened?’

‘ O Dio – who did this?’ Marcellino bellowed, seeing Raffaele’s face. ‘Tell me his name and I’ll crumple his face for you.’

‘Back off,’ Alba hissed, her lips opening into a thin line.

‘That’s enough from you, Alba,’ her grandfather overruled.

‘What’s happening?’ Bruno asked, his voice urgent as he stepped in by the table.

‘I caught your wild daughter attacking our mechanic’s son, Mario, in the middle of the piazza just now. Any more swings with that broken bottle and she’d near enough have killed the boy.’

‘He’s a cretin!’ Alba blurted.

‘Quiet!’ Bruno spat. ‘Every week you have to make a fool of yourself. Of us!’

‘She’s hurt, Bruno,’ Giovanna eased.

‘You’ve spoiled this girl and you see how she turned out? I’ve told you and I’ve told you again, but, no, you let her do as she pleases. And now look! Running around town like a demented urchin, picking fights. She’ll be at Marcellino’s wedding next week looking like this!’

‘Take it easy, Bruno,’ Alba’s grandfather murmured.

Giovanna’s hand began to shake. She pressed the cloth a little too hard onto Raffaele’s face. He took a sharp intake of breath.

‘ Scusa , Raffaele,’ Giovanna whispered, ‘are you all right?’

He nodded biting his lip.

‘And the boy?’ Bruno bellowed a breath away from Alba’s face. ‘Don’t tell me you hit him too, for God’s sake?’

Alba’s head didn’t move. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Say something, for Christ’s sake!’

Bruno’s shouts ricocheted against the surrounding stone walls, creeping closer with every hot second that pounded.

‘What you asking her for, Babbo?’ Marcellino jeered. ‘You think she’s going to answer for once?’

‘I’m not talking to you, Marcellino,’ Bruno replied, ‘or you, Salvatore.’

Alba noticed her younger brother swallow an interjection.

‘What in God’s name is this family coming to? You know what I do all day for you at the officina ? What we all do? And you just float in and out of this house as if you weren’t here. You run out of the house before dawn for that old lady on the hill, doing her every whim like a servant girl, and in here you’re like this! What am I supposed to do with someone like this at work?’

A knock at the door. Everyone turned towards it. Salvatore opened it. Their neighbour Grazietta poked her head around the wood. She took a breath to begin her usual prattle but the angry eyes pinning her at the doorframe stopped her train of thought in an instant.

‘Raffaele! Dio! Who did this? This boy needs a hospital! Giova’, I’ll come with you to the hospital,’ she flapped. ‘My nephew is on shift today, he’ll help us.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Bruno interrupted. ‘My lawyer’s son is being looked after just fine.’ Grazietta turned pale. ‘Sick and tired of you women telling me how to look after this stupid child! Alba did this. All this. You women have no idea how to bring her up. You bring shame on all of us!’

He reached for the jug of water and filled a glass, emptying it in two gulps. He set it back down too quick and it almost cracked. His eyes drifted over to the wide dish of fresh ravioli, fast cooling as the argument steamed on, the pecorino hardening to a congealed mess.

‘Bruno,’ Grandfather stepped in, ‘eat your lunch, then decide what needs to be done. And something drastic. You can’t get away with this any longer, Alba, you hear me? Time you learned how to behave as part of this family. People respect us. We’ve all worked our guts out to give you children a good life. You don’t throw it in our faces like this, you hear? Your father got taken by the bandits and we fought against them. I won’t stand here and watch my granddaughter become a spoiled brat. I won’t let you ruin my name, do you hear?’