Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

‘How much do you need?’

‘About two hundred thousand lire. That will be enough for the fare and my first week. Just till I find a job. Signora Elias and her friend told me my accommodation and tuition is all covered by the scholarship. If I don’t go now, I will never play again. I can’t live like that.’

Alba watched Raffaele’s expression spin through a spectrum of colours: uncertain blues, doubtful greys, flecks of amber hope.

‘You’re my last hope, Ra’. If we love each other then let’s do the right thing for each other.’

He held her. She could feel his heart pulsing beneath the thin skin of his chest.

‘So you’re asking me to raise a load of money, in secret, without rousing suspicion, so that you can live your dream and I’ll never see you again?’

Alba looked at him square. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Ra’.’

‘You are.’

When the party returned to the beach house, salt-crusted, sun-toasted, the table was laid with ramekins of gherkins and tiny pickled onions, olives, trays of sausage and cheese, piles of pane carasau , thin crisp bread, drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Mammas shooed their overgrown offspring towards the outdoor showers, hurrying them up. Fathers put their worlds to rights around the fire, passing around bottomless glasses of wine, clinking towards the embers whilst Bruno eased the flesh off the skewers and onto large trays of cork, with stems of wild myrtle upon it, letting the tender meat and its juices soak onto the fragrant platter. Ceramic troughs of culurgiones were paraded towards the hungry guests once everyone sat, at long last. The little pasta parcels, pinched-together dough in the shape of wheat, filled with creamy ricotta and spinach drizzled with fresh tomato sauce, arrived to cheers and clinks and the promise of happiness and wealth and health. The guests congratulated her parents’ generosity, their hospitality, oblivious to the fact that the person they appeared to be celebrating was their mute prisoner. The hypocrisy of this pounding celebration made Alba’s throat scratch. A swell of salty water popped in her ear.

Dinner was an indeterminate age of gluttony. At last the watermelon arrived and the eaters stabbed the red flesh, poking out the seeds, some cutting perfect staircases of sweet crisp fruit, others vertical splices. Alba ate half of hers before the teenagers and younger adults were urged to leave the elders in peace and make trouble someplace else.

‘Come on, Alba, you’ll come out with us, right?’ Raffaele asked. ‘Please, God, don’t leave me with all these cool lot. It’s like sending me to purgatory. Dear God, don’t do that. They’ll all be eyeing up the girls in the square and jeering me on. I’d rather not commit social suicide without you beside me, si? ’

Raffaele filled her hand with his and led her from the table. They shuffled towards the back of the pack, slow stroll widening the gap between them and the group.

‘Have you thought about what we talked about?’ Alba asked.

‘You ask just to make me cry on the street in front of these lot?’

Raffaele’s voice eased away from his nervous tempo. They walked a few silent steps, the scuff of the dusty white road underfoot, the streets dark save for sporadic streetlamps, surrounding bungalows alive with the clinks of other parties.

He drew them to a stop in the dark between two streetlights.

‘I love no soul in the world more than you, Alba.’

Alba swallowed.

‘It terrifies me to help you leave.’

The cicadas’ warbled beat intensified. Alba smelled juniper and wild myrtle on the whisper of breeze. ‘It terrifies me to stay.’

‘What will I do?’

‘Follow your own dreams.’

‘Since when do you talk like those stupid movie girls?’

Alba shrugged.

‘Our marriage plan was our escape. Now you go off to your music and I’m here marooned.’

An ending and beginning opened up in the breaths filling the space between them. She could hear his muffled tears in the dark. Her arms wound around her best friend.

‘I love you, Ra’.’

‘I want to help you. I’d be a shit if I didn’t. And the thought of you hating me for not doing it is worse than being abandoned by my best friend.’

Alba held his hand.

‘Who will I talk to about Claudio?’ he asked.

‘You’ll write. Long letters. Gory details.’

Raffaele’s smile was wan; the streetlamp caught its fade.

‘When do you need the money by?’

‘Late August.’

He looked towards the darkened end of the street where it reached the piazza. ‘Do I look like a magician?’

They joined the others in the piazza, eating gelato, watching the visiting clowns warble through a half-rehearsed comedy routine, which delighted the younger children of out-of-towners and left Alba longing for solitude. She slipped away from the crowd. Her body needed to move. She didn’t notice the houses fall away in her periphery, the darkened woods didn’t fill her with fear. The dunes rose before her after a while and at last the moonlit water. She sat down, feeling the sand peel away beneath her, tipping downhill. The waves lapped in rhythm like a sleeper’s breath.

‘You should be careful running about alone like that in a strange place, Alba.’

Mario’s voice startled her. She twisted round to him. He was seated, far enough away to not have noticed him, cradling his knees, watching the water.

‘You should be careful scaring young women who need to be alone for a change,’ she called out.

‘Sarcasm is a killer. Probably the only fact in this world, I’d say,’ he replied.

Alba watched his chin raise into a smug grin. His humour was more disarming than his aggression.

She sat in defiant silence. So did he.

‘What’s all that stuff about music college they were on about?’ he asked after a while.

Alba shook her head.

‘Alba, we’re alone now, no one has to know that we’re actually able to talk without a fight. You don’t have to let anyone see the fact that you can answer a real question with a real answer.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

He retreated into her imposed silence.

‘I never forgot about that time, you know.’

His tone dipped burned ochre. She turned to face him.

‘When I heard you play at Elias’s.’

They looked at each other for a breath.

‘You going to pretend to forget?’ he prodded.

She turned to face the water. They watched the curling laps disappear into the dark.

‘Never heard anything like it in my life.’

He stood up. Alba waited for a further snide gibe to follow his unexpected admission. The water rushed up to the sand fighting the pull, then acquiescing. Her breaths followed their rhythm, an incessant seesaw of advance and retreat. Whose battle was to be won?

She turned back.

He’d gone.

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