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Signora Elias and Giovanna performed the ritual dance of refusal and insistence, and, as always, age won out and Giovanna ate as ordered. Watching her mother do as she was told filled Alba with hope that what was about to happen might not be the disaster she anticipated.
‘Very well, Signora Giovanna.’
‘Please, signora, just call me Giovanna.’
‘You’re not working today, signora, today you are the respected mother of this wonderful young woman. What I would like you to enjoy now is the fruit of my time with Alba. She has helped me a great deal, and I know there have been times over the years where you have considered taking her job away as punishment, an understandable measure considering, but first of all I want to thank you, from the deepest part of my heart, for not doing so. When I came to you after the Mario debacle you listened to my plea, and, as an old woman living alone, I can’t tell you what that meant.’
Giovanna shifted in her seat. Alba saw her eye the sospiri. Signora Elias lifted the dish right away and insisted she take another. Giovanna had let Alba believe that she’d permitted her to continue working for Signora Elias out of the goodness of her heart, and for a while, Alba had believed her mother understood her friendship with Signora Elias was the most important part of her life. Now she watched the subtle shadow of betrayal cast a grey over her mother’s face. It made her own lighten for a breath.
‘But enough prattling from me. I invited you and Signore Bruno to hear something quite marvellous this morning and I can only say that I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. It is my wish, that when Alba has finished what she has prepared, you will understand what a wonder it has been working with your daughter.’
Giovanna took a breath to speak. Signora Elias interrupted. ‘Do get comfortable. And enjoy.’
Signora Elias nodded at Alba. The metallic ache in her stomach piqued. She stood up and took her seat at the stool. As she pushed it a little further away with her feet she caught sight of her canvas pumps. They were the ones she’d worn that day she’d had sex with Raffaele in the pineta. Giovanna forced her to scrub them clean once a week, but Alba felt like a little of the pine dust always remained. No amount of water could take that away.
She caught Signora Elias’s eye. It sent a wave of calm over her. She let her breath leave her chest and deepen into her lower back. The soles of her feet rooted onto the floor. The room shifted into her periphery. Her fingers sank down onto Chopin’s notes she had played countless times. A purple melancholy swept over her. Wave after wave of measures rolled on with ease, the notes a cocoon around her and the piano, dancing light. The mournful melody swirled out from her, weighted, familiar, describing the longing and silence she could not articulate with words alone. The ending trickled into view, an unstoppable tide urging towards the shore.
And then it was over.
Alba lifted her fingers with reluctance, holding onto the space before reality would have to be confronted. She placed them on her lap and looked at her mother.
Giovanna’s eyes were wet. Her breath seemed to catch somewhere high in her chest. Signora Elias didn’t fill her silence. Alba looked at her teacher. Her eyes glistened with pride. Whatever happened now, that expression was one Alba would cling to. In the golden gap between this moment and the next, Alba felt like her mother cradled her life in her lap, petals of possibility that might tumble and crush underfoot if she rose too quick, or be thrown into the air, fragrant confetti of celebration.
‘Signora Giovanna,’ Signora Elias began at last, ‘in return for all the errands your daughter does for me I offered what I could, besides money, in return. You see, the moment she sat at my instrument I knew I would be failing my duty as a teacher if I didn’t protect and nurture her talent.’
Giovanna opened her mouth to speak but her thoughts remained choked.
‘Your daughter has become an exceptional student and pianist.’
‘I’ve never heard anything like that,’ Giovanna murmured.
‘Alba has been offered a full scholarship in Rome to pursue her studies further. She has what it takes to become a professional, Signora Giovanna.’
Her mother’s expression crinkled through confusion, pride, concern, a troubled spring day between showers.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Giovanna replied after a beat.
‘I can’t tell you what to say, signora, but in my professional capacity I would urge you to permit her to go. I have friends there who will be able to arrange her accommodation; it will be simple, of course, but clean.’
‘In Rome, you say?’
Signora Elias nodded.
‘Alone? A girl alone in Rome? She’s going to be married.’
Alba’s eyes slit to Signora Elias, the prickle of panic creeping up her middle.
‘Take some time to think about it, signora, but I can reassure you that I know people who can help her in the early days and that many young people make the same pilgrimage every year. For their art. For talent that they have a duty to share with the world.’
Giovanna looked at her daughter. Alba persuaded herself that the flicker she caught in her eye was one of a mother almost convinced.
Giovanna said nothing on the walk home, nor as they prepared lunch. She cut the cured sausage into thin precise slices without a word. She handed Alba the six plates to set the table without even looking Alba in the eye. She washed the fresh tomatoes and placed them in a bowl without the slightest evidence of emotion of any kind, other than a robotic repetition of their regular rhythms. Only when she tipped the salt into a tiny ramekin for the table and it overflowed onto the counter did Alba spy any nerves. When Giovanna made no move to clear up the salt flakes, Alba’s sense of impending storm peaked. She gave the linguini a swirl in the simmering water.
Salvatore came in soon after, world-weary and hungry as he always was after Saturday mornings at the officina. He slumped onto his chair.
‘Why all the plates?’ he grumbled.
‘Marcellino and Lucia are coming,’ Giovanna shouted from the kitchen.
‘When’s Babbo back?’ he called back.
‘Didn’t he say at the officina?’ Alba said, laying down a bowl of chicory on the table.
‘He wasn’t at work today.’
Alba wanted to check her mother’s face for a reply as she brought out a hunk of Parmesan and a grater, dropping them onto the table with a thud, then thought better of it.
The door opened. Marcellino and Lucia strode in, taking over the space as they always did. Lucia stepped towards Giovanna and greeted her like her second mother. Then she swished over to Alba and gave a dutiful kiss on each cheek, almost touching the skin.
‘Nearly ready, Ma?’ Marcellino harangued his mother.
Lucia gave him a playful tap on his belly.
‘What?’ he guffawed. ‘A boy’s hungry!’
‘Not a boy for long,’ Lucia purred, her blue eyes flashing with something Alba struggled to identify. She did look different today, but it was hard to pinpoint why. She sashayed across the tiles with her usual perky sway, her jet-black hair lustrous even in the dim light of the shady room.
Giovanna yelled for Alba and handed her the pasta pot. The family took their seats. Bruno stepped in just as the first bowl was filled.
‘Buon appetito!’ he called, his walk a playful swagger.
‘Get changed, amore, si?’ Giovanna insisted. Bruno stopped and grinned at his daughter-in-law. ‘Don’t get any ideas now, Lucia? You see how old married men are? Do what their little wives say at all times, si? Watch out, Marcellino, it’s the beginning of the end.’
Alba thought her father sounded a little drunk. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to have an aperitivo at the bar with his cronies after the morning at the officina, or to drum up more business over a Campari and soda or two, but there was more sway than usual about him that afternoon. Only when he turned for upstairs did Alba spy a fleck of lipstick on his collar. The clang of the metal serving fork upon the bowls as her mother tipped another portion of the pasta brought her back into the room. She watched the steam ribbon off the strands, fragrant with anchovy, garlic, chilli, and fresh tomatoes.
Just before the figs were brought out at the end of the meal, Lucia asked for everyone’s attention and announced she was pregnant. Alba’s father needed no excuse to crack open a bottle of moscato and the sweet wine frothed six glasses like it was Christmas. When Lucia was asked her due date, she shied around a direct answer. It wasn’t until Alba brought out the coffee that she understood Lucia’s pregnancy was almost five months along. Women on the cusp of marriage were granted different rules, it seemed.
When everyone left, the house dipped into a sleepy quiet. Bruno snored upstairs. Salvatore lay on the couch. Only the percussive sloppy grating of Giovanna washing at the tub outside cut through the stillness. Alba stepped outside into the narrow courtyard garden. Above, a canopy of wisteria wept purple blooms. Giovanna plunged a shirt into the sudsy cement tub, then lifted it and began attacking it along the ridges of the washboard, which lifted out at an angle. Her mother’s knuckles were red.
‘When are you going to tell Babbo?’ Alba asked, before realizing that it was her father’s shirt Giovanna was waging war on.
Her mother looked up at her, eyes bloodshot from dried tears.
‘Leave me now. I’ve had quite the morning, don’t you think? Sending me up there to be shamed by my daughter who has become a charity case? Have you any idea how I felt? I told you loud and clear what I thought about imposing on that kind woman. After everything she did for me when we were struggling? All those years when she would give me extra cleaning work to help us? Meanwhile you start pretending to run errands for her when all you’ve been doing is plonking that instrument. And now you stand here, silent as a cave, telling me to tell your father. You’ve got another think coming.’
She plunged the shirt into the tub again, though Alba sensed Giovanna was picturing submerging something, or someone else.
‘That’s it, stand there like a rock. I’m used to it now. I could have lost my son that night with your father. Do you know that? Or was it just a game to you? You think you’re the only one who has nightmares of that time? I did everything I could to raise you right. Do you know what your little secret means for me?’
Now her mother wrung the shirt as if it were her daughter’s neck. Alba stepped inside. She sat at the deserted table fingering her letter. When her father came back down an hour later, dressed in a new shirt and smelling of sandalwood, she asked him to sit down. He did. Alba put the letter in front of him.
When he finished, he folded it and handed it back to her.
‘Giova!’ he yelled.
She stepped inside, wiping her suds on her apron.
‘What do you know about this?’
Giovanna looked at the letter and then at her daughter.
‘I haven’t read it.’
‘Tell him, Mamma,’ Alba interrupted.
‘You be quiet, I’m talking to your mother.’
‘It’s what Signora Elias wanted to talk to us about today,’ Giovanna replied. ‘I know you were busy. I told her that.’
Bruno twisted away from Giovanna and ran a hand over his beard.
‘Why did they write to you, Alba?’ he asked, flames flickering the fringes of his tone.
Giovanna stepped in and took a seat.
‘Tell your father, Alba.’
She looked between her parents’ faces. For a moment a spark of optimism; a fast-fading firework.
‘I have had lessons. They want me to study in Rome.’
‘I can read, Alba, I’m asking you to tell me the truth.’
Alba’s swallow felt hollow. ‘Signora Elias taught me.’
Her father’s smile was crooked. ‘Took pity on the poor town mute, did she?’
Alba took a breath, but her stomach clasped tight.
‘And you sit here, telling me you’ve spent all these years studying music, wasting your time at the old woman’s when your father has been building a business that will take care of you and your unborn children? Is that what you’re saying? Are you actually telling me you think it’s a good idea to run to Rome and play an instrument? Now I’ve heard it all. You are even crazier than they tell me. What do you have to say about this, Giovanna? You sitting there wringing your hands? You going to sit there mute as well?’
The corners of Giovanna’s lips stretched as if she were clamping whatever words were fighting their way out.
‘This is all your fault, you know that, don’t you? I said so when she nearly killed that boy! And did you listen? You both sit there with no words! You’re the most stupid women I know! My own family, imbeciles! What happened to this family? Everything I do, and this is how you thank me. Selfish, stupid little women.’
‘I had no idea!’ Giovanna blurted.
‘Even worse!’ His voice rose, a crescendo, sweeping treble notes that ascended into a painful octave. ‘The girl’s mother not knowing what’s going on under her eyes! How did that feel? Watching that old woman shame you like that?’
Giovanna took a breath to speak, but Bruno swung his hand across her face. She cried out. Alba stood up. Bruno grabbed her chin.
‘See what you did? That’s all you. You and your surly little game. Over my dead body you go. You’re not going to make a mockery of me like that.’
He pushed her down. The wood thwacked the crease between her calves and the back of her thigh.
‘I won’t hear another word of it.’ He scuffed his chair back, swung his sweater over his shoulder, and slammed the door shut.
The silence could not suffocate Giovanna’s swallowed sobs.
7 (#ulink_85ea44f4-05e9-530a-a51a-d46b04345275)
Piu mosso
a directive to a performer that the music of the indicated passage should have more motion, it should move more quickly
Rena Majore was a small town tucked inland of a blustery, rocky coast and a winding drive north of Ozieri. Alba and her family had visited many of the smaller sheltered coves along the eastern coast before Bruno and his brothers had settled on this place for their shared second home. The sea was rough, unpredictable and uninviting. The town was sleepy and woke up, groggy, during the summer months with a half-forgotten piazza that whispered the promise of a town centre. It was a town that attracted those in search of shelter from holiday crowds. Alba hated the place, more so now, because it was where her parents had decided to celebrate Alba and Raffaele’s engagement and graduation.
‘Go on, Alba!’ Giovanna called from the kitchen window that opened out onto the terrace. ‘Go and have fun! You’ve worked hard enough! This is your day too, you know!’
The words were ridiculous droplets of forced maternal altruism, an impeccable performance enjoyed by everyone, it seemed, apart from the person to whom it was directed. Her mother’s gushing happiness held the same violent edge as the woman’s disappointment. Since her parents put a definitive end to her visits to Signora Elias, the offer of her place at the accademia had not been mentioned again, and Alba couldn’t help feeling that the whole experience was a warped dream, or a memory she had been taught to remember. But her fingers ached. They hadn’t played since the letter was torn up in her kitchen. The deeper she sank into the numbness, the more alive her mother became; her own fading life force was feeding her. The music had spun out of Alba and into her mother; she sang of summer and love and weddings and feasts. Her pans and pots and ladles and spoons percussed joy and hope.
A towel landed on Alba’s face. She looked across at Raffaele, who was grinning, performing on her behalf. A wan smile threatened her lips. Marcellino took the helm in Bruno’s newly acquired British jeep, delivered from England by one of his cousin’s foreign husbands. The teenagers crammed into the back, some on the metal benches that lined the sides, others on the space between them. Mario’s sister sat on his lap, Alba sat cross-legged on the metal floor by Raffaele. Lucia, clutching her protruding belly, yelled at Marcellino as he bombed down the white roads oblivious to the bumps and his wife’s discomfort. After passing the scant smattering of shops, edging open for the season, onwards through the pineta, they arrived at the beach at last. Tall white dunes rose into view as the party negotiated the steep incline and skidded down towards the coast. As always, the wind whipped, and the fine sand prickled Alba’s calves as it flew across the beach. The other people on the beach had long since given up on their umbrellas and laid them down, closed, beside themselves as they worshipped the glaring sun above. Nothing about this section of the coast was an alluring invite. The others in the group yelled in the water now, dashing towards the edge and diving into the deep. Lucia planted herself onto the sand, propping herself up on her elbows.
‘I’m surprised your mother let you out for once, Alba.’
She looked down at Lucia beneath her huge sunglasses. Two miniature concave Albas reflected back to her on the glass.
‘Enjoy your freedom while you can, no? Soon you’ll be making babies like me and then all this jumping around will feel like a story your grandma would tell you at bedtime.’
A blank space formed where the image of a kind grandmother ought to materialize. Alba nodded, to close the start of a conversation she could not relate to, if nothing else. The older women in Alba’s family shared whispered gossip, dabbled in magic and superstition in equal measure. They did not weave soporific fairy tales.
‘For heaven’s sake, Alba, go and have a swim. You stand there like the world’s ending already. I’d do anything to have just graduated from school again!’
And with that Lucia let out a breathy laugh and eased herself down onto the warm sand beneath her towel.
Alba peeled off her T-shirt and shorts and let them fall to the ground. She slipped out of her flip-flops and felt the grainy heat under her soles. The white sand slid away underfoot till she reached the water, waves rushing up to her, white foam curling into clear. She dived in, feeling the cool envelop her, head racing to the bottom, desperate to drown the noise around her. Her body rushed to the surface for air and then her arms beat through the surface without pause. Three strokes, one breath, repeat. The turquoise rose into view for a snatched intake of air, then down into the sloshing blue, pounding a beat in her ears. Her arms wouldn’t stop. All these weeks without her music had built up an avalanche of physical frustration, more than she could bear. Her hand cupped like the shape of a pianist’s diving into the water, pulling it away from her. The repetition was the closest way to reach her scales, to sense the symmetry of those exercises in her muscles, to feel the pulse that had greeted her every morning and now lay buried in a not so distant past.
She may have heard voices, which she chose to ignore; the shouts of her brothers, their cousins, Raffaele, Mario, all unnecessary interruptions. The ache for the solitude and complicit dance of music burned. With each stroke, each tension and relaxation of her muscles, her body fought to drive the feeling out further like a tide. She reached the first curve of rocks and pulled herself up onto them, the sun pounding down, drying her salty skin. Raffaele swam over to join her.
‘Need company?’ he said, hauling his dripping body beside her. ‘Well, you don’t have the choice right now, sorry. I’ve had just about as much as I can take of your cousin’s ball throwing. Mario’s swum out to catch squid so at least I don’t have to listen to him for a bit.’
Raffaele stopped mid-flow. ‘Alba?’ he murmured, watching her fat tears roll down her face. ‘Have I bored you to tears already? I’ve got to stop doing that. I think it’s becoming a habit.’
Alba snorted a laugh.
‘OK, a glimmer of hope in the dark, no?’
He reached his arms around her wet shoulders.
