Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

‘What?’

‘My dear friend is the head assessor at the Accademia of Santa Cecilia in Rome. What she says goes. It is highly unusual, which means your first year will be very important. As with all students, there is no guarantee that you will stay for the whole three years unless you maintain a high standard. If you do not keep up the work it will be within their rights to ask you to leave, you understand? Especially with such an atypical admission process.’

‘I’m trying to hear what you’re saying but it’s like it’s so sunny my ears are blocked. Does that even make any sense?’

Signora reached forward and wrapped her arms around Alba. She wasn’t sure which one of them was crying now. As Signora Elias pulled away, her face lit up. ‘I knew it from the very first moment. Something about the way you sat. Something about your curiosity, humility, power, passion; even you don’t fully understand just yet, I suspect. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing way – it’s not a reductive remark, I mean that you are just at the start of your potential and it fills me with grace and hope and pleasure that has been lacking in my life for too long.’

Alba watched her wipe her eyes, feeling waves of gratitude and embarrassment and grief and excitement.

‘I will be happy to let your parents know. You won’t do this alone. This has a lot to do with me and I will take the responsibility, you must trust me on that, yes?’

‘How?’

‘All you need do is play. You must leave everything else to me, si ?’

Sunday arrived and the Fresu household became a tense allegro. Alba’s fingers ached for the instrument in the house she’d been barred from. Her heart raced with the prospect of when and how Signora Elias would explain her offer to her parents, which they’d decided to delay till after Marcellino’s wedding. Giovanna ran up and down the stairs remembering and forgetting, her feet stomping the stone as she switched scarves, exchanged earrings, begged her sons to wear what they had agreed the night before. In one hand she clutched a cloth bag of grains and in another a basket of rose petals. She and Grazietta had stayed in the previous evening, plucking them from their stems, listing the wrongs of the neighbours and the fanfare with which Marcellino’s prospective mother-in-law had dealt her demands for his wedding to her daughter Lucia. Alba noticed her mother’s streaming thoughts had more in common with the discarded thorny stems than the petals as they released their delicate scent between the women’s tugging thumbs. At last it was the morning of the largest wedding in town to date, a triumph Alba’s mother bore with pride and panic.

Alba heard her mother fly up the stairs one more time and took the chance to step into the kitchen for some water. Marcellino leaned against the tiled counter.

‘You look like a ghost,’ she said.

He glanced up and gave a half smile. He sighed, ran his hand over his black hair, cemented with gel.

‘Break the habit of a lifetime and say something nice,’ he replied.

Alba noticed his skin was salty with nervous sweat. She returned his half smile in reply. Marcellino ruffled her hair, nearly pulling out the flower Giovanna had insisted she wear. She felt like a hedge trying to dress as a rose. Her mother had painted over her bruises, but they still blushed through the make-up.

Bruno poked his head around the doorframe. He reached out a small shot glass to his first-born, filled to the brim with acquavite . There were no words to accompany the gesture, only a complicit silence. Marcellino’s eyes widened with the fire coursing down his throat. Bruno laughed and took his son’s cheeks in his hands. Alba couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her father so happy. Would he do this to her once he heard her music? Would he understand the gift Signora Elias had given her? It was the first time Alba could remember seeing his smile take over his face with complete abandon. Her heart twisted into a knot. Bruno shot her a glance. A warning? She would have liked to find the words to reassure him that she wouldn’t be starting a fight at the party, but a stubborn silence froze her face into well-rehearsed diffidence; the night before, she’d heard her parents argue over where Mario’s father, Gigi, and the family would be seated to make sure that Alba wouldn’t cause unnecessary problems.

The men left and bundled into a large black sedan Fiat. Giovanna, Grazietta and Alba scooted onto the leather back seat of a smaller vehicle. At once the line of cars waiting outside their house started sounding their horns. The caravan of trumpeting cars wove through Ozieri, announcing to the few people who were not invited that the son of one of the most successful families in town was about to marry the love of his life. The narrow viccoli were filled with the bombardment of metallic orchestration, the rumble of the engines, the treble of the obnoxious klaxons. The cars filled every nook around the cathedral, a metallic cluster of ants upon the cobbles. Cars were eked into narrow spaces at angles, double-parked, a breath of space between them, whilst the Fresu clan headed up to Lucia’s flower-strewn house for Marcellino to collect his bride. Lucia’s mother greeted Giovanna with two kisses. Wine was passed around. Voices collided like currents bouncing off the marble floors and up the stone walls and concave ceiling. The eldest aunt threw flowers over Lucia’s head, a face floating in a meringue of lace and tulle. Grains were thrown over Marcellino for fertility. A plate was smashed. The cheers were an assault on Alba’s ears, but her mother’s face was streaked with tears and Bruno’s infectious smile made everyone believe him to be the proudest of fathers.

Violent happiness thundered around her. The claustrophobic energy reminded Alba her music might swerve towards unavoidable disappearance. Her father made no secret that her destiny lay behind the counter at the officina , learning from Mario’s father no less, overseeing the parts and books. Alba decided it was his prolonged punishment for what she’d done to his son. Every Saturday from now on was to be spent beside him learning every detail of the job. What pleasure would be found in the quiet order of nuts and bolts? The idea of listening to the customers and their mechanical needs made her heart ache. To Mario’s father, customers’ car stories elongated into detailed descriptions of domestic concerns, delivered with mechanical precision. He oiled their worries, wiped them clean off their conscience, and then replaced them with new thoughts. Alba couldn’t picture herself doing the same. The knot in her chest twisted a little tighter.

In the cathedral, the priest intoned a mass they all knew by heart whilst the echoes of the crowd rippled whispers up the stone like a September sea caressing the white sands of the shore. The couple were blessed, then stepped out into the glare of the mid-morning sun, where they were showered with more grains of rice and petals and cheers. The snaking parade of cars then curved through the valley, pumping out their triumphant cries with a further blast of horns vibrating the sunny stillness towards the plains. When they reached the new headquarters of the officina , waves of people flooded the hangar where the cars were usually stored, now moved and parked outside, filling the surrounding tarmac, to allow shelter of the seven hundred invitees. Tables stretched from one end to another with a central one heaving with food.

Vast trays offered every kind of salad, sliced meats and cheeses, which the guests dived into as if everyone had refrained from eating for the entire week in preparation. Servers swarmed the tables after that with trays of fresh gnocchetti , linguini with bottarga and fresh ravioli. The king prawns that followed were almost punishment, but the guests soldiered on, plates heaped with discarded pink shells, fingers sticky and happy with parsley and garlic juice. Wine sloshed between glasses, onto tablecloths, onto some men’s shirts. When the roasted suckling pigs were pushed in on a trolley, they were met with cheers.