Sara Alexander - The Last Concerto

That’s when all her classmates stared. Unhurried Sardinian glares. Dozens of dark eyes pierced her. Her own darted across the once-familiar faces, but they seemed waxen, the disembodied type that haunted her dreams, people she thought she once knew who might spin off their axis on their own accord, or shape-shift into monsters.

Somewhere in the distance there was an echo of a familiar voice. Her gaze swiped to the front of the class. Her teacher peered at her over the glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

‘Well, Alba? What do you say to that?’

‘To what, Signora Maestra?’ she replied, trying to ignore the wave of dizziness.

‘Our class wishes your brother well. It’s polite to say grazie .’

Alba sipped a breath. Her whispered thank-you felt like it was warbling out from under water.

When the bell rang for morning break at long last, Alba shot out of the room to her usual spot in the concrete playground. The sun beat down. The noise was deafening; she’d never noticed how much her school friends shrieked. A hand tapped her shoulder. She twisted round. Mario Dettori stood before her, not a soul she despised more, his familiar sideways smile plastered over his face. ‘There she is, boys! The bandit girl!’

Alba pinned him with her hardest stare. He laughed.

‘What? Your brother spends a few nights in the woods and you’ve forgotten to speak too?’

He turned to the pack of snotty boys gaggled around him, cackling.

‘What do you say, boys? I think she looks wilder too now. Surprised you managed to remember how to get dressed. My uncle said they hung Marcellino naked in there!’

A snip-spark of something flamed in Alba’s chest. She didn’t remember throwing him to the ground, or swinging at his face, or breaking the skin, or the wild cries of the other children as they crowded around her.

Giovanna sat beside Alba. Her feet tapped nervously. Her bottom spread over the edges of the wooden child-sized seat. Alba stared down at her bruised knuckles. One of the cuts seeped a little blood as she bent it into a fist. Giovanna slapped them flat. Alba winced.

‘Thank you for coming, Signora Fresu,’ her teacher began, slicing through the room and perching on her desk. ‘Today has been difficult. For everyone. You and your family are under a lot of pressure, I know, but that is no excuse for the violence she instigated.’

Alba could feel her mother stiffen beside her.

‘Let me be blunt, signora. Alba is not a bright child at the best of times. She’s now missed two weeks of a critical time in school. She will never catch up with where she ought to be. And, to be frank, I think the experience you’re all going through is making her a danger to others. Let us recall the tussles back in the spring, the recurring altercations during the winter. Her ability to deal with typical childhood challenges is poor. At the slightest provocation she fights. This is not the kind of behaviour I am trying to instil in the girls in my class.’

Alba’s mind streamed incessant images of all the times her brothers fought her. The way her mother would admonish her for partaking but never them for instigating. She recalled the fights ignored by the teachers between two boys. The way Mario would always get palmed off with a disapproving stare whilst she would stay inside writing line upon line about why she should never fight. Her face felt hot.

‘So we are agreed, yes, Signora Fresu?’

‘ Si . I know you know best, signora.’

‘I do. I will make allowances, but only if we expel Alba for this last month and have her retake the missed classes throughout the summer to catch up. If I allow Alba to stay in the class now, what kind of message am I giving to the others?’

Neither Giovanna nor Alba had an answer for that.

Their silence pleased the teacher.

The vice that strangled Alba’s household continued to tighten. Sometimes her mother looked like she was close to breaking, even though a stream of women flowed through the house delivering never-ending trays of gnocchetti , sauce, pasta al forno . Grazietta swept the swept floors, dusted where there was none to remove, and incanted prayers where necessary. Sometimes Alba would find her clapping into the corners of the room, shifting the menacing energy. Her brothers left for school each morning. Her uncles would come by for lunch, when they would update Giovanna on the search efforts. Alba wafted around the house like a ghost, finding comfort in invisibility. Grazietta would give her stitching to occupy her, but needlework was her nemesis, and after a while even Grazietta grew impatient with her.

Everyone’s prayers were answered a week later.

Her father’s release was the miracle the entire island had been praying for. Her town threw a festa in his honour the following day. It was the first time in their history that a captive was released unharmed and without a paid ransom. Bruno Fresu had left an indelible mark on Sardinian history. This, along with him remaining intact, unlike other victims whose ears or digits were cut off and sent to relatives as warnings, gave rise to nothing short of a national holiday. Tables lined the length of the vicolo . Every family cooked something for the feast. Her uncle Benito built a firepit at the end of their street and spent the entire day overseeing a suckling pig, dripping its fat into the moist flesh, caressed with rosemary wands dipped in olive oil, its salty scent curling down the street. The feast was bigger than any wedding any of them had ever been to.

Her father sat at the head of the snaking tables. He was thin. His skin pale. His eyes no longer the sparkling onyx Alba remembered. He shaved away his thick beard that had grown the past month, on Giovanna’s insistence. Without it, his face looked smaller still. Everyone raised their glasses. There were tears. Alba even noticed several of the older men wipe their faces, then place their flat caps on their heads to shade their emotions.

The party trickled through the night till the wine-infused singing began. The men warbled in their thick Sardinian voices. The sound rang up the stone fronts, echoed down the viccoli to the piazza. Alba imagined the valley beyond, plains humming with the distant rumble of their celebratory voices. And beyond further still, the empty caves where he had slept, the damp crevices where her father had been stowed. Her heart hardened, trying to clamp her tears from escaping. Everyone was celebrating now, it was no longer her time to grieve for her missing father. The tears crystallized into a heavy weight in her chest. She wanted to feel the happiness surrounding her, but it felt like she was celebrating a family she knew, not her own. She hated herself for begrudging everyone’s fawning on her brother, or rather, the flicker of infuriating pride she saw in his eyes as they caught her own. Marcellino was crowned the prince after all, and Alba, as always, the disappointing renegade. All the faces along the long table joined in her parents’ disapproval of the girl who should have gone through this mortal test but failed even to show up. Her father seemed happiest that his son had survived, more so even than being reunited with his family and having been released himself. Where Alba grasped for any feelings close to pride, relief or love, only anger surfaced, a bitter taste in her mouth, burned artichoke, singed pigskin.

Her father was closeted in quiet. After his return, the house became a hushed mausoleum. Alba had never seen her mother so stilted, tiptoeing around her kitchen so as not to make any sudden noise. She waved over at Alba, who was on dusting duty.

‘Come on, get a move on, I’ll be late!’ Giovanna whispered, emphasizing every vowel with a theatrical movement of her lips.