A Roman Rhapsody Read online

  He reached for the jug of water and filled a glass, emptying it in two gulps. He set it back down too quickly and it almost cracked. His eyes drifted over to the wide dish of fresh ravioli, fast cooling as the argument steamed on, the pecorino hardening to a congealed mess.

  “Bruno,” Grandfather stepped in, “eat your lunch, then decide what needs to be done. And something drastic. You can’t get away with this any longer, Alba, you hear me? Time you learned how to behave as part of this family. People respect us. We’ve all worked our guts out to give you children a good life. You don’t throw it in our faces like this, you hear? Your father got taken by the bandits and we fought against them. I won’t stand here and watch my granddaughter become a spoiled brat. I won’t let you ruin my name, do you hear?”

  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 toward 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 favorite 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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 neighbor 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?

/>   5

  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 them 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.

  “Good, you’re back. Your father has come home to talk to you before your brothers get home. Sit down.”

  It was the first time Giovanna had looked excited about anything other than Marcellino’s wedding, or directed anything to her for that matter.

  Alba’s suspicion peaked.

  “Your father and I have been talking.”

  Bruno patted her mother’s hand. They smiled at each other. Their loving moment should have filled Alba with relief. Had they decided to let her work for Signora Elias again? Had they mistaken her sullen quiet for obedience? Something stirred in her stomach.

  “I’ve been asked to give permission for you to marry,” Bruno said, taking over the exposition of wonderful news.

  Alba sat motionless.

  “Say something,” Bruno murmured. “A smile would be a good start.”

  “By who?” Alba blurted, her cheeks’ creasing, making the bruises from the fight still ache.

  “Who?” Bruno asked, perplexed. “How many are you leading on at once?”

  “It’s perfectly normal to be nervous!” Giovanna piped up. “I was a wreck when your father asked me. It’s what girls do. It’s a big step. You’re young, I know. This week has been difficult, yes. But having children young is better. And I will help of course with the children so you can keep up your job at the officina. All the modern girls do that now. You don’t have to stay at home like I did. You can have it all, Alba. Freedom! And such a good family. I’m going to cry.”

  Alba watched as her mother lived her proposal on her behalf. All the tears she ought to be shedding, all the excitement for a life revolved around work at the officina and babies. A delightful seesaw of obligations to guarantee fulfilment.

  “I said yes, of course,” Bruno added, trying to steer the conversation back.

  Alba looked at her father. Whose betrayal was worse? Hers for sneaking out of their sight under the guise of aiding an old lady or theirs for coordinating the rest of her life? She couldn’t protest because she was too guilty. She couldn’t accept because the thought was absurd. Why had her friend done this to her? He was saving them both from the fate of small-town living, but had he not stopped to think that their fate was inscribed in the stone streets of the very place they needed to careen away from? Was his love for Claudio so deep that he would do something as stupid as this? Love was not blind, thought Alba. It was sheer self-destruction.

  Giovanna’s arms wound around her now, squeezing what little hope there was left. Celeste rose into Alba’s mind, her dancing eyes, her voice filled with spring and floral celebration. That room felt like a place she’d touched in a dream.

  A knock at the door tore the trio’s attention away from the absurd plan. Alba opened the door, more to escape the enforced celebration than anything else. Signora Elias stood on the street. She looked smaller somehow. Without words Alba tried to describe what had happened. She watched her teacher look at her face, still marked with the fight, registering the cuts and bruises.

  “I couldn’t come,” Alba said, feeling tears sting her eyes, watching her teacher read in between her breaths.

  “It’s quite alright, Alba,” she soothed. “You’re not to worry. I had to come now though. I have a letter for you which you must read.”

  “Signora!” Giovanna called out, stepping in behind her daughter. “Please, come in, you need coffee? An aperitivo maybe?”

  “Grazie, Signora, but I can’t stay. I have a shopping order to pick up at the butcher. Actually, might Alba just help me to carry it to my car? I won’t keep her more than five minutes. I know she’ll be helping you with lunch.”

  “Bruno is here, he can help. I’ll call him!”

  As Giovanna turned to call for him, Signora Elias insisted. Alba suspected she was the only woman who might do that to her mother. “I won’t have you trouble him. I know how hard he works, Alba will do just as well.”

  Alba tried not to look excited at the prospect and it appeared to serve as enough to convince her mother that running the errand would not upset her father. She gave a terse nod and Signora Elias didn’t waste any time.

  Alba hadn’t realized how fast the old woman walked until they were striding downhill. Anyone who might have seen would have been as confused as her father as to why this nimble woman needed a young girl to run her morning goods up to her each morning. It made Alba love her even more than she already did. Nothing stood in the way of Signora Elias’s will. Besides her playing, that was a dark art in and of itself.

  Signora Elias led them to a bench in the small Piazza Cantareddu, where next week the fires would be lit for St. John’s celebrations. Alba and Raffaele would always leap over the embers together with the other teenagers. This year would be different. If she didn’t strangle him before then for not stopping this harebrained idea of marriage before it got out of hand.

  They sat beneath the acers, sheltered in their mottled shade. Alba knew better than to ask about the butcher. There was no shopping to collect. Signora Elias had prized a little privacy for them, that was all.

  “I have something important to tell you, Alba.”

  Alba’s heart lurched.

  “I have a letter here.”

  Signora Elias was about to elucidate when Alba’s tears compelled her attention.

  “Dio, whatever is the matter, child? What I have to say is the most amazing thing I’ve ever had to say to any of my pupils.”

  Alba looked up.

  “Whatever’s the matter?” Signora Elias asked.

  “They want me to marry,” Alba sobbed, hating herself for not being able to talk like a sensible person, to stretch her back, deepen her breath, hold some kind of center. She was behaving like the very girls she never longed to emulate.

  Signora Elias wiped her tears. Her thumbs were smooth and firm.

  “I didn’t know you were courting?”

  “I’m not. He’s my best friend. It’s not our idea. It’s all so stupid I can’t believe I’m even telling you. I’m so sorry, Signora.”

  “Nonsense. I would be hurt if you didn’t. Here.” She handed over a neat folded tissue from her pocket.

  “Grazie.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Alba grew aware of the sauntering teenagers beginning to fill the piazzetta, still parading after the end of school before returning home. It would be better if none of them saw her like this, even if Signora Elias had picked a bench a little way from the main drag.

  “Perhaps when they find out what I have to say everything might change?” Signora Elias soothed. “You may want to cry again, and that is absolutely fine with me, do you hear?”

  Alba nodded, but her words were a dying echo. Signora unfolded a letter. It was cream paper, emboss
ed at the top, which Alba could make out from the sunlight hitting it from behind Signora Elias. Her teacher began reading.

  When she finished she looked up.

  Alba could hear nothing but the galloping thuds in her chest.

  “Do you understand what they’re offering you, Alba?”

  “I want to but I don’t think I believe it.”

  “A full scholarship, Alba. This is only offered for exceptional students at the accademia. Celeste has also offered that you might take a few classes at the conservatorio, the adjoined school, which prepares pupils from the basic level up to a standard where they might try out for the accademia. These extra classes would only be for the first few months, just to bring you up to speed on the theory side of things. I’ve covered most of what you need but she thinks it would help you. Only a handful of piano students are chosen each year.”

  “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 in 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.”