Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

Bruno yanked a chair out from the head of the table; it screeched along the tiles. ‘Eat with us, Papà.’ He flicked a look at Giovanna. She pulled the cloth away from Raffaele’s face.

‘I’ll stop by later then?’ Grazietta squeaked into the charged silence.

‘And before you go,’ Bruno snarled, ‘and think about going around the rest of the street telling them what you just saw, just remember this is me when I’m calm. No one wants to see me angry. Hear me?’

Grazietta scurried back out onto the street.

The boys sat down in the shadow of their father’s suffocated ire.

‘You going to help Mamma or what?’ Marcellino hollered at Alba.

She stood up. Her fingers gripped the ladle.

‘Talk to that old woman Elias, Giovanna,’ Bruno called out to her as she returned to the kitchen for a basket of bread. ‘Tell her Alba has to stop working for her immediately. No knowing what she’ll do.’

His words tore right through Alba. A thin line of high-pitched whir in her head grew in volume. Alba scooped up three plump parcels of ricotta and spinach. Marcellino lifted his plate. She pulled the spoon over past the rim and let the ravioli fall onto his lap. Marcellino jumped up, yelping. Giovanna rushed out of the kitchen. The room skewed, piano strings twisted out of tune. Alba didn’t remember flinging the door open, the cries of her mother, the sound of her feet pounding the toasted cobbles as she dragged her friend behind her and ran towards the road for the pineta . She remembered only the salt of her angry tears wetting her lips and the sound of her brothers like hungry hounds, echoes swallowed up by the distance.

It was Alba’s favourite time to be in the pineta . The shade didn’t hum with the fringes of summer, there was a pleasant cool. They found a stump on the needled floor and sat in silence fighting to catch their breath.

‘I don’t know who’s going to kill me first. My father or yours,’ Raffaele murmured.

Their breaths eased towards normal.

‘What are we going to do, Alba? I mean we can’t just sit here. And when Mario sees me tomorrow, he’s going to kill me completely, I mean not just like this, I mean absolutely no breathing, as in dead, do you hear me? And dead is not what I want to be right now, can you understand that? Do you have any idea how terrified I am right now?’

Alba picked up a dried needle and started twiddling it between her fingers.

‘Tell me what to do!’

Raffaele’s tears fought for their freedom and won. Alba reached for his hand and squeezed it. The bruises on his face were starting to form, blushed bougainvillea pinks, crushed grape purples.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured.

‘You have to.’

‘I don’t remember any of it.’

‘You saved me.’

His eyes warmed into an expression she didn’t recognize. Her brow creased.

‘Are you going to kiss me, Raffaele?’

He swallowed. Neither moved.

‘You’re my brother.’

‘I know,’ he replied. His stillness unnerved Alba.

‘Don’t you just want to get all of this out of the way? I mean, it’s like I don’t care about any of it and just want it done. Cleared up. Is that weird? It’s a bit weird maybe. I just want to stop feeling like I should be having feelings about it? And I do want to kiss you. Well not really, but you’re sort of the only person I could if I had to. Not that we have to. I want to get some sex out of the way before I fall in love with someone. Sorry. I mean, not sorry, but sort of.’ His fingers reached up for a pimple on his cheeks and started twiddling. ‘Help me anytime you want, Alba. I’m drowning here.’

‘Sort of how I feel, I think.’

Raffaele looked up.

‘That makes us both weird, I guess,’ Alba added, smoothing the hair off her face. He was the only person she could be honest with. It was an orange glow in her belly.

‘We could try?’ she began, feeling the absurdity of the moment heat her cheeks.

‘Really? I thought you were about to hit me.’

‘Make sure you get out before you – you know.’

Raffaele swallowed. ‘Yeah, course.’

‘Will you know when?’

‘Think so?’

They looked at each other. Alba moved her face towards his. Raffaele sneezed, splattering his T-shirt. A speck of saliva flecked Alba’s wrist.

‘Sorry,’ he murmured, wiping his arm across his face.

He took a breath and Alba knew he was about to launch into a punctuation-free sentence. She stopped him with her lips. He didn’t move. After a moment, their heads switched incline. The kiss was stilted and angular. It dissolved the hissing red in her ears. She twisted out of her jeans and he out of his. She felt his penis harden on her thigh. It felt like two friends marking their hypothesis ahead of a scientific experiment. He eased himself inside Alba. They stopped for a moment.

‘Is it awful? Does it feel weird?’ he stammered. ‘Does it hurt? I’ll stop if it’s hurting.’

‘Stop talking.’

An expression streaked his long face. Alba reached up with her hands. ‘I’m not saying it’s not nice. Try moving.’

He did, slowly at first, tentative whispers in his hips, reluctant, stiff. His breath quickened. His eyes closed. He looked like he was listening to a far-off call, a pianissimo section. Alba thought about the ferocity of a demanding measure of Liszt, her hands defiant, full of longing. But as her friend became urgent on top of her, it was like watching him through glass. The sounds and feelings muted, an echo reaching her, diluted and distorted. He pulled out. His semen spilled in spurts across the needled floor.

It was over.

They lay upon their backs gazing up at the pines above them, crisscrossing lines of green against the pure blue.

‘I don’t know how I’m feeling, Alba.’

Their silence creased. The cicadas raised their cry. Congratulatory or mocking, Alba couldn’t tell.

‘I don’t know if I want to do that again,’ he said.

‘Me neither.’

Alba propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at her friend’s face. ‘Your face looks awful.’

‘The idiot staring at me saved me. That’s all I care about.’

His narrow chest rose and fell as his breath deepened towards normal.

Alba smiled. Her headache had gone at last. ‘I love you.’

He smiled with relief. ‘No one I would have liked to get all that out of the way with other than you. It’s a minty freedom.’

Her face spread into a grin. ‘One try at sex and you speak poems, not algorithms.’

‘No,’ he replied, his voice dipped in a sudden seriousness. ‘Love does that.’

Alba laughed and fell onto her back. She reached her hand for his.

When they returned to their spot the next day, Raffaele broke down whilst revealing his love for his neighbour Claudio. Alba held her weeping friend as he described wanting to suffocate his desires by having sex with her. Her strong fingers wrapped around his shuddering arms as sobs spilled from him. Their foreheads touched. His tears streaked her cheeks. His secret was out and safe. Would she ever be able to say the same?

Accelerando, accel.

accelerating; gradually increasing the tempo

At last, the week from hell reached its welcome end. Both daughter and parents stood firm, retreating into stubborn silences. Alba was accompanied to school by Marcellino, and returned flanked by Salvatore, both instructed not to let her out of their sight. The notes she’d written to Signora Elias in her mind would never reach her. Raffaele tried to talk with her but each time one or other of her brothers would intervene, as instructed. Alba ignored her mother at her own peril, because if she’d paid more attention, she may have noticed Raffaele’s father at the house more often. She might have thought that Raffaele’s mother coming round was odd. But she didn’t. She baked the papassini as her mother asked. She sliced melon thin upon a plate. She poured the coffee when asked and attended to all her usual duties, trying to mask her bitterness so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing how much they hurt her. She returned from school that Friday to find her mother leaning over her father with a needle in one hand and a red thread hanging from it. She mimed stitching her father’s eye, as if joining both eyelids together. The thread lifted through her father’s thick eyelashes several times. He had another sty. This was the tried and tested remedy.