Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

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?’

‘ Prag matic.’

‘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.