Читать книгу The Last Concerto - Sara Alexander - Страница 15

Battaglia

battle. A composition that features drumrolls, fanfares, and the general commotion of battle

For the seven years that followed, Alba’s fingers were in perpetual motion. Giovanna gave up yelling at her to cease their incessant tapping. Over time the compulsive movement paled into mild irritation because Alba performed her duties at home. The silent melodies became just another tic to join her other obsessive behaviours, like wiping a clean counter, scouring a gleaming range, or checking the taps were twisted tight. The more her fingers percussed, the less Alba spoke. The silence cloaked her in a guarded invisibility, a cocoon from which she could witness the world at a safe distance. After dinner, she would sit beside the record player and piano albums Signora Elias had lent her and play them without stopping. When Giovanna started moaning about the constant music, Signora Elias also let her borrow some headphones. The pieces she studied wove into her mind like a dance, and after listening for an evening, several sections would escape from her fingers onto the keyboard with ease. It was like repeating a conversation, almost word for word, and where discrepancies remained Signora Elias took time to make the necessary corrections, of which there were often very few.

Each morning Alba rose with the dawn she was named after, striding down to the bakery and back up through the hills of obsidian and crimson-streaked winter sunrises and the peony-orange haze of the summers. Signora Elias greeted her like a cherished granddaughter each of those days, never once forcing conversation, nor prying. The space they created every morning was a secret Signora Elias and Alba held close, clasped in complicit trust like the two photographic faces of a snapped-shut locket.

When her teachers crowbarred their way into Alba’s personal and mental space, yelling from their desk, haranguing her out of her self-imposed silence, Alba replayed minute details of Signora Elias’s mornings on a loop. The images squared into view, ordered, yet singular, like the family slides her neighbours would project onto their white walls, the mechanical clicks between each image a metronome chasing time; scales, morning light, gleaming floors, fresh coffee, arpeggios, the taut strings of the piano, their vibration, their frequency, their power.

May of 1975 was in full bloom. The grasslands surrounding Ozieri were splattered yellow with blossom. In the crags between the granite along the roadside leading up to Signora Elias, rock roses grappled with gravity, their fuchsia-purple blossoms widening to the sun. Giant wild fennel swayed on the gentle breeze, scenting the air with anise. Tiny orchids appeared in the cracks between the boulders; Alba gazed at their petal faces, minuscule mournful masks. By Signora Elias’s gate, tufts of wild poppies greeted Alba, and each day she visited, another unfurled its bloodsplat petals.

Shafts of morning light cut through Signora Elias’s large room and across the open piano lid, striking a golden gleam across its polished top. Alba could feel its heat trace her outline and light up her fingers. She looked down at the keys. Her fingers sprang into action.

Signora Elias interrupted at once. ‘You took a breath, yes, but it was high in your chest, snatched. You cannot expect to be able to keep up with this Bach fugue in this way. Bach is stamina, precision, absolute clarity. He is the source.’

Alba tilted her head back, blowing a puff of air out from her lower lip, which lifted a few strands of hair that had fallen onto her forehead.

‘And there’s no use in succumbing to frustration either. We can’t create or practise from that place. Sorrow? Yes. Feel the pain of those notes escaping from under you. Then simply work out what you must do to fix it.’

Alba wanted to say sorry, but the words stuck in her throat, a knot of silence.

‘Don’t apologize,’ Signora Elias continued, as always, intuiting what Alba longed to say but couldn’t, ‘this is the work, Alba. This is the constant reminder that you are merely human. What Bach is laying out for us is the entire cosmos, layers of mathematics, interweaving with glorious symmetry. Then he twists it in on itself, revelling in the asymmetry of those rules. It’s a kaleidoscope of patterns. We know this. So we honour this.’

Alba was accustomed to Signora Elias’s tempo increasing as she charged through her corrections, sometimes striding beside the piano, then drawing to a curt pause when the pinnacle of her thought was reached, a mountaineer charging towards the peak. She stood still now, in the spotlight of the sun’s glow. ‘Will you return to the beginning?’

‘Slower.’

‘And?’

Alba swallowed. ‘Then I’ll play these first few measures, repeating at speed, playing with alternate rhythms.’

Signora Elias raised her eyebrows, waiting for the end of the thought.

‘Until my fingers play me,’ Alba whispered.

‘Until there is no space between those patterns and you,’ Signora Elias added. ‘I don’t want to see Alba Fresu play with her fingers. I want to see the music ripple out of you. That’s when we know that you truly know the piece. When we have stripped it to its core, asked what it is, why it is, what it needs to tell us, and then step inside.’

Alba looked at Signora Elias and allowed herself to smile in spite of a sinking in her stomach. When would these exercises become instinctive?

‘It’s about learning to control every minute movement of your body to produce the precise tone the piece requires,’ Signora Elias began, ‘and then, in performance, being able to shift that focus on control alone, and simply allow your technique to be in place, so your musicality can soar. We want to hear the music, not the practice. Music is about control and the loss of it at the same time; a beautiful contradiction. At this moment, from your flushed cheeks I see you are still grappling with the sensations of losing control in the first instance.’

The past seven years Signora Elias had sat beside her each and every morning leading her down these waterways of her music. Now, at eighteen, as Alba approached her final year at school, their lesson together was a cool balm before class. After it, Signora Elias would permit her to practise unguided.

‘I want to apologize,’ Alba replied, her voice dry.

‘I know. Hold onto this thought – my corrections are leading you towards your music, Alba, they are never criticism alone, however it might feel.’

Signora Elias invited the silence for a moment, as if it were an unexpected yet welcome guest. Alba lost herself in it. Her breath dropped down into her abdomen, warm, deep. She felt her lower back unlock, each vertebra separating a little, rising up out of the top of her head. Her fingers lifted back onto the keys. As she exhaled, they became heavy, assured, curious. The first few measures tumbled out effortless, precise. Alba stopped, then began again, each time her breath deepening a little more, each time her feet finding the reassurance of the wooden parquet rise up to meet them. As the cascade of notes became equal, controlled, her hands began to relax, speeding up without tension. Her fingers sank into the ivories, weighted but free. The glorious symmetry of the sounds and patterns washed over her, shining light. She was no longer in Ozieri. She was far beyond the plains, above her turquoise coast. She was deep in the forests of Gennargentu, beneath a gushing waterfall, icy cold electrifying her body. She was everywhere but here. And the feeling lit her up from her feet and lifted up out of her head. She was inside her body and far beyond it at the same time.

The final run descended and landed, in perfect alignment, both hands announcing the last chord. The vibrations lifted out of the piano thinning to a faint blue glow somewhere in the air above the strings.

And then it was over.

She returned to a stark awareness of the room, once more a piano student surrounded by the landscape paintings on the wall around her, the promise of the spring morning outside sketching hope. She looked over at Signora Elias. Her eyes appeared wet, or perhaps it was the morning light, which caught a spiral dance of dust motes in the space between them.

‘You and I both know our lessons will reach their end after the summer. Your father has made it quite clear that you will be working at the officina. That will leave little or no time for you to be coming here.’

Alba nodded. The thought of the minutes ticking away towards a time when the piano wouldn’t be part of her daily life made Alba feel like she was suffocating.

‘It’s time at this crucial point in your training that you are allowed to perform. At the very least once. Every performance I gave taught me something I needed to learn, and stayed with me forever. I want to give you that.’

Alba felt her chest crease into a tight knot.

‘Don’t look so terrified, Alba. Perhaps in preparation you might play for my friend first? She is staying with me at the moment and her favourite thing is to listen to piano music. Would that be all right? After next lesson would be the perfect time.’

Alba nodded, though the idea sent a sliver of terror scorching through her.

Signora Elias looked into her. ‘When you practise in the way you have today, Alba, anything is truly possible. When you can acknowledge that fire and channel it with humility and passion, this instrument, and you, will sing.’

The next morning Signora Elias instructed Alba to use their lesson time to warm up and run through her repertoire. ‘Take all the time this morning to repeat whatever you need. What have I told you?’

‘A piece soars only when it’s shared.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s then that we find out what we really feel about it, how much careful time we’ve given it. Whether our practise has been well directed.’

‘Which, of course, it has. You have the most wonderful teacher, I hear.’

They laughed at that.

‘We’ll be down in a little while so you aren’t observed during practice. I have a gentleman coming to work on my car shortly, but he shouldn’t make too much noise; I’ll look out for him so he doesn’t ring the bell.’

‘Grazie, Signora Maestra.’

Signora Elias closed the door behind her as she left. The doorbell clanged soon after. ‘I spoke too soon! I’ll see to it, you carry on.’

She thought about the anticipation brewing in her house for Marcellino’s upcoming wedding. The way her mother insisted they practise her make-up. The way every breath of life seemed to be directed towards their first-born, the boy who could do no wrong, now set to marry the most beautiful young woman in town. The town was electric with the imminent nuptials. Alba was tired of the incessant talk of it after the first day back in the freezing fog of January, when all of a sudden, both families had agreed the marriage should go ahead sooner rather than later. Her mother clawed at her attention now, the picture of her demanding she return at a good hour today to help set up the luncheon with the closer family members as they sampled all the food the caterer was planning on providing. Giovanna, Grazietta and several other women would already be at their vignia now, setting up a long table in the one-room cottage, the wood heaving.

With a breath, Alba wiped her thoughts clear. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the surrounding vines, the gnarled rows that grew to eclipse the terror of what first happened there. The grapes had exorcised those memories and now the vignia would be the centre of more celebration for the boy who was kidnapped in place of his sister. She pictured the cottage behind her as she walked through the vines, down the hills towards the plains, across them, past the Nuragic towers, onto Lake Coghinas, its glassy surface urging her to step in. She imagined turning around in the water with the jagged mountains surrounding her, breathing in the juniper and toasted thyme air.

Her breath fell deep, down into the watery bed of her thoughts. Her hands lifted. Her fingers stretched along the piano keys. Her left hand began a wave rolling deep currents of passion and longing whilst her right soared above. She was a bird swooping towards the lake from above, ripples shooting out from the flick of her tail upon the crystal liquid. The music tugged her deeper into thoughtlessness. She was diving into her sea, unfathomable, powerful, free. Her skin flushed, her arms hot and fast as they stretched up and down the keys. Now she was the lover yearning to be understood, to be forgiven, to be heard, to be loved with every fibre, to be touched, tasted, savoured, honoured.

The door creaked. Her fingers lifted.

A shattering silence: Mario’s face was in the slit of the opening.

Splintering currents of electricity fractured the space between them. She felt naked. Stinging vulnerability crawled up her calves. He didn’t blink. Neither breathed.

He was the last person in town she would have liked to be spied on by. Now he had the ultimate arsenal for his incessant attacks. Alba snapped into panic. The person she trusted least was privy to the biggest betrayal of her parents. She sat, motionless in cloying dizziness, as if her feet were sticky in almond brittle before the tacky molten sugar sets.

Signora Elias and her friend swept in, and she watched Mario tumble a clumsy apology for being inside the house rather than outside with his father. The women closed the door behind them. Mario’s face disappeared.

Signora Elias’s friend was a reed. Long, thin, with an elegant bearing about her. A woman Alba desired not to cross. Yet as she spoke, her voice wove out like a clarinet, woody and warm. Her face lit up listening to Signora Elias, crinkling the wrinkles on her thin white skin deeper still. The many colours of her dress undercut her poise. Here were washes of blues and reds, a scarf swooped across her with a tropical print. Geometric earrings clasped her earlobes in colourful anarchy. She reached a hand out for Alba’s. The nails were painted fuchsia. Her hand was firm, unapologetic.

‘I’m Celeste. So very lovely to meet you, tesoro. Elena has told me so very much about you. I’m terribly excited to hear you play.’

Alba flushed, embarrassed by her embarrassment. She was about to play for a lady who appeared to value confidence and Alba wished she could find some. It was impossible, having just heard that Signora Elias had already spoken about her to a distinguished friend. It made their lessons at once less private. A secret had been divulged elsewhere too.

‘I would absolutely adore it if you would play?’ Celeste asked. Signora Elias turned towards her too. There was a different buoyancy to her this morning. Perhaps she was lonelier than Alba had thought?

‘Si,’ Alba replied. ‘Do you have a preference on which one I play first?’

‘Not at all,’ replied Signora Elias. ‘You must play what you feel is right for you this morning.’

Alba nodded. She scooted the stool a little way from the keys and rolled the knobs at the side up to where was comfortable. She’d never played for anyone else. Signora Elias was right. Doing so was the hardest thing. At once she was exposed, filled with doubt without knowing why. She turned back to Signora Elias, annoyed for seeking reassurance. Signora Elias responded with the calm and clarity Alba needed; an effortless smile, as if Alba playing for a stranger was the most natural thing to do this morning.

Alba took a breath. Mario’s face crisped into focus. She blew away the picture, though it remained at the fringes, like a spider’s sticky silk. ‘Clair de Lune’ was one of her favourite pieces. She allowed mind to be soothed by the fact. She began, fingers light, silver tones sparkling in a starry Sardinian night, silent, fragrant with sun-cooked rosemary and myrtle. She wove towards the midsection, letting her body move into the melody supporting her fingers. Mauves and violets replaced the metallic shimmer from the opening and then returned home, like waking from a dream. Alba lifted her fingers off, unhurried.

She turned towards the women.

Celeste was nodding her head. Signora Elias was a sunbeam.

‘My second piece is a Chopin.’

‘I should hope so too,’ replied Celeste with a twinkle.

The further two pieces wound out of Alba’s body like a story she’d lived and retold a thousand times. Then the final staccato of her last Bartók piece leaped off the soundboard with the perk of a vibrant orange. The energy of the frenetic rhythms hung in the air when she turned back to the women.

‘That’s all I have ready to share just now,’ said Alba, thrumming with a mixture of elation and relief.

‘No “just” about it, signorina,’ Celeste replied with a grin that stretched her thin crimson-painted lips. She stood up, wafting her silk kaftan behind her as she did so and planted two kisses on Alba’s cheeks.

‘And what, may I ask, do you intend to do with this talent? And the years of service my wonderful friend has invested in you?’

The question was so absurd Alba almost chuckled. Catching sight of the woman’s serious expression she stopped herself.

‘I don’t really know. I’m not sure how I could ever repay my debt.’

‘No debt to me, Alba,’ Signora Elias said. ‘Celeste is asking you whether you think you would pursue a life in music. Should you have the chance.’

Alba’s mouth opened then shut again.

‘You have undeniable talent, Alba,’ Celeste began. ‘You have a light inside you and it streams out when you play. It is unfettered. Unaffected. I listen to a great deal of young people play and very few have this, an affinity with the instrument. A respect. A lack of desire to be watched, but rather an ability to communicate with brutal honesty. Believe me when I tell you how rare that is.’

Alba longed for words, expression, something other than the numbing silence fogging her body.

‘When Signora Elias and I met at the Accademia of Santa Cecilia in Rome we were told the same thing.’

Signora Elias chuckled now.

‘It is a great responsibility – talent,’ Celeste said. ‘You were born with something to honour, nurture, share. And this fabulous woman Elias saw it right away. I can see that. She’s not as much of a fool as she looks, no?’

The women laughed in unison now. Celeste’s laughter tumbling out like a scale, Signora Elias’s voice warm, like papassini fresh from the oven.

‘It is so wonderful to meet you, Alba dear.’ Celeste stretched out her hands and held Alba’s. ‘Tell me one thing. How do you feel when you play?’

Alba took a breath. Signora Elias nodded.

‘I’ve never been asked really.’

‘I’m asking you now. And I want to see if you can be as honest with your answer as you are when you play.’

Alba let the words reach her like a lapping wave.

‘I’m not sure I can. I’m not a person who likes to describe things too well. I think that’s why I love the piano.’ Alba longed to be able to form her sensations into sentences, but the words slipped away like rivulets of water at her fingertips. She longed to explain that when she sat at Signora Elias’s instrument she had a voice to express feelings and thoughts it was impossible to in real life, when she was Bruno Fresu’s daughter, the sulky girl who couldn’t control her temper, or get through school without coming from a family that grew in influence each year. That when she played she felt protected by the music and ripped open at the same time. That the music told her things, secret stories, coded messages of what it meant to exist, in all its brutal unfathomable glory. That it lifted her into blissful invisibility. That feeling was what she loved most. Powerful because of what the music fed her. But instead of sharing her tumbling thoughts, Alba felt her expression crinkle into an awkward frown. ‘I love the piano.’ Her voice slipped out plain, without ornamentation, like a starched linen tablecloth before the plates and crystal glasses have been laid.

‘Music is mathematics and heart,’ Celeste replied, ‘it can’t just make sense nor can it be just emotional. It’s a tender, intoxicating balance. That’s why so many people give their lives to it.’

Alba let her words reach her like a longed-for promise.

‘I suspect you ought to, too.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s been a great honour to meet you, Alba.’

‘You too, signora.’

Up till this very moment Alba had no inkling of what she was capable of. Each time Signora Elias encouraged her, she never shook the feeling that it was an act of kindness, that her playing was good in context, for a girl who knew nothing of music, and learned in secret against the wishes of her parents, listening to the recordings on a loop till her body knew the tunes better than anything that had happened to her in real life. Did Signora Elias know that she ate all her meals, attended all her school classes, finished her chores at home with the carousel of pieces and exercises spinning in her mind; weaving incessant patterns, articulations, melodies, countermelodies?

‘You’d better head off to school now, Alba. I would hate for you to be late,’ Signora Elias said.

Alba felt she had overstayed her welcome. Her cheeks flushed in spite of herself.

‘I’ll see myself out, signora. Thank you so much.’

She left feeling that the heat and light scoring her chest as the door closed behind her had little to do with the sun batting down from above.

Alba swung her class door open so fast that the wood banged against the concrete in the same spot as the week prior when she was sent out of class for arguing with Mario.

That morning, her teacher, Signora Campo, was not in a mood to let her inappropriate entrance slide. She slashed through the clatter of students setting out their thick textbooks onto their desks, staccato thuds echoing in the stone-walled room. ‘Why are you late, Fresu?’

Alba twisted back to her teacher’s squawk, answerless.

‘Well?’

‘She’s doing shows at the old witch’s house, signora! Thinks herself quite the little maestro!’ Mario called out from his desk next to hers. The boys around him fell into confused whispers. Alba shot him a look. It made everyone but him avert their eyes.

‘I will speak to your mother if this continues to affect your school day in this way, mark my words.’

Bullseye. Alba sank.

‘Does she make you play for all her cronies?’ Mario whispered out of the corner of his mouth as Alba swung onto her hard chair. His friend on the next desk sniggered. She gave an extra lift of her backpack and it missed Mario’s face by a hair.

‘Go to hell,’ Mario spat.

Alba let her biology textbook thud onto her desk, hoping she wouldn’t be the first one called on.

‘Fresu, you may come up for interrogazione, seeing as you wish everyone to notice you this morning.’ Alba felt her shoulders heave an involuntary defeat. She stood up, ignoring Mario’s smirk. The teacher took a breath, pulled down her light brown sweater over the mounds of her breasts and abdomen, peered over the rim of her glasses, and launched her assault. As Alba returned to her desk, relieved she had memorized the chapter on osmosis better than she had expected – much to the frustration of her teacher, who was looking forward to having an excuse to send her out – she couldn’t ignore the smart of shrapnel left by her threat.

When the bell rang at one o’clock, the concrete building thrummed with the swagger of sweaty adolescence, corridors thick with hormonal bodies pushing for escape. Alba adjusted the strap on her backpack, feeling the weight of her textbooks pull down on her shoulders. The throng was an unbearable cacophony, walls of intersecting discordance pushing in like a vice. A familiar panic bubbled in her abdomen. Her fingers raced up and down her thigh, clinging to Bach like a mast; the quicker they scurried, the louder the music in her head rose above the din like a white light.

The music came to a violent stop as a boy was pushed towards her, falling onto her back. Her knees buckled. The concrete met them with a painful blow. She reared underneath the weight with such force that the teenagers around her pressed back against the corridor walls. Her jet-black hair flung out in all directions, a horse flaying against the stable door. She twisted underneath the boy. He fell beside her, banging his head on the ground.

That’s when she recognized her only friend.

‘O Dio, Raffaele – I’m so sorry.’ They stood up, sniggering teenagers pushing around them.

‘Look at the lovebirds,’ someone shouted.

‘Don’t talk shit!’ Mario yelled from the opposite end of the corridor by the door to the yard. ‘He wouldn’t know where to stick it even if you told him!’

Thunderous laughter now. Alba’s cheeks deepened.

‘Don’t listen to those cretins, Alba,’ Raffaele whispered, scratching his head. Alba watched a few flakes of dandruff tumble down from his scalp over his forehead.

‘Did I break anything?’ Alba asked, feeling the sea of hormones wash behind her, blotting out the crackling voices, loose coins jangling in a pocket. Raffaele looked down at her, his huge black eyes sullen in his white face, small eruptions of acne threatening his cheeks. He launched into typical high-gear chatter. It reminded Alba of the passage she’d practised that morning. As always, he deflected the situation with a long explanation of algebraic logic from his morning’s math class. His familiar patter was reassuring. His rhythm rambled, sprouting shoots of tangential thoughts like weeds, filling the air Alba left bare.

‘So I decided that if I switched my approach, I could actually unpick the correct calculation. I think it just proves that maths is inherently a creative art. Like people always like to split us into artists or scientists, don’t you think? But it’s all bullshit because when I’m asking myself “what if”, it’s just the same as someone dreaming up something. Because that’s what I’m doing. Seeing an imagined list of outcomes and calculating which one is going to get me the result I need. You following?’

Alba watched Raffaele pull a skim of skin from around his nail with his front teeth.

‘Want to walk?’ she asked.

They crossed the forecourt, cutting through the cackles of the young girls and the clattering jeers of the boys. The noise grated, treble, discordant.

‘Hang on a second,’ Raffaele said, swinging his backpack round and reaching inside for a panino. Despite near constant eating, the boy was a spindle. He ripped the bread in two, a flap of prosciutto hung out the side beneath a thin slice of fontina cheese. He reached it out to her. ‘You want?’

Alba took it and sank her teeth in.

‘Mamma won’t stop checking my food. I swear she knows when I throw it away. Which of course I don’t because that’s a waste but what do I do when I’m not hungry? Seriously, feeding you is the only way I can stop Mamma launching into her lecture about the dangers of calorific and vitamin deficiencies in adolescence.’

Alba laughed. He was the only person who could make her do that.

‘Algorithmically speaking it’s complete nonsense. But she’s a Sardinian mother and she doesn’t care about the fact that I love numbers more than her. Correction, she is in fact threatened by that. She doesn’t even try to understand that. But she wouldn’t because she’s a doctor and she fixes things. And so do I. Only with my pencil and my brain. I got top marks for calculus today. There are people who do that all day. Did you know there are people who do that all day, Alba?’

They fell into hungry silence for a moment, chomping down on their halves of crusty roll, flicking off the flakes crumbling onto their sweaters as they strode downhill from the high school. Its large yellow concrete façade rose up behind them, overlooking a small park space with a rusting slide and metal seesaw. They reached Piazza Cantareddu, where the buses pulled into take students back to the neighbouring smaller towns. Raffaele ran a hand through his floppy hair and sighed. ‘I don’t want to go home yet. Absolutely don’t want to be home.’

Alba drew to a stop and wiped her mouth of a final crumb. ‘Come to mine?’

‘What will your ma say?’

‘Eat.’

‘I could – is that OK? I mean, is that a bit weird or maybe rude just showing up again? Are your brothers going to give me that look like I’m-the-boyfriend look because I don’t know how to deal with that look like they’re going to eat me or kiss me or both or worse, I don’t like that look. Mamma’s visiting a hospital down in Nuoro. Dad’s in Sassari at the office.’

Alba pictured her mother’s face if Raffaele turned up on her doorstep. She made it no secret that she loved the boy. The fact that his mother was a doctor and his father a lawyer only served to cement her affections. Alba ignored the sensation that her mother had crafted secret plans for him to become her son-in-law at the soonest opportunity.

Alba grinned. ‘My brothers share a brain. My mum loves you.’

‘I thought you loved me for my physique.’ He pulled a face then and curled his bicep, which peeped up under his shirt in a feeble half moon.

‘I love you because you were the only boy in kindergarten who didn’t try and mutilate my toys.’

They began the climb behind the main square, passing several schoolmates. One girl looked them both up and down, scanning for gossip; she leaned into her friend and whispered something. They giggled. Then both of them, catching the eye of someone beyond Alba, separated, lengthened, and pushed their chests further out, displaying their breasts as a prize. It made Alba feel nauseous. The facile rules of adolescence were exhausting and surreal. She scanned the kids hanging out in groups waiting for their lifts, picking up the whispers in the air: who kissed whom, which eyeliner was best, which Levi’s showed off their hips. Another girl threw a look her way as she passed them with Raffaele, checking for make-up and chosen style, both a drawn blank. Alba wore whatever lay on her chair in the morning from the day before, ran an impatient hand through her hair, and left the house. The other girls’ expressions told Alba that such an intimate friendship with an awkward boy like Raffaele was beyond their understanding.

A voice yelled out from behind her towards the peacocking girls.

‘You asked her out yet?’

Alba swung round to see Mario jeering at Raffaele with a group of friends. She heard the girls simper pathetic laughter, high notes on a piano played with too frothy a touch.

Alba shot him a look.

‘Lover girl sticking up for her man. How sweet!’ Mario caressed his cheek with a girlish giggle. The pack of boys around him chuckled, thwacks of broken voices bracing boyhood.

Raffaele straightened. ‘Don’t talk to her like that.’

‘What you going to do? Write a calculation to shut me up?’ Mario snapped back, delighted his bait had been bitten.

The girls’ laughter spiked.

Alba watched Raffaele’s cheeks turn.

‘Don’t look at me like that, nerd,’ Mario jeered.

Raffaele’s frown creased in confusion.

‘I said, don’t look at me like that!’

Mario pounced from his throne at the metal table outside the bar where the teenagers congregated for soda, waiting for their buses home. He pushed off with such force that it tipped, sending the glasses smashing to the floor. In a breath, he was on top of Raffaele, pounding his back. Two of Mario’s friends jumped up and began kicking into his side. Alba watched her only friend being pummelled. Her chest burned. The sounds tunnelled into a pounding silence undercut with a familiar echo of scuffing feet, men’s voices. Her hand reached out to a large glass bottle on the table beside Mario’s. Her fingers tightened. She swung. The glass smashed against the back of Mario’s skull. A splat reached her face. Water? Blood? She didn’t care. Her arm cut through the air again and again. A hand on hers clamped her to stillness. The silence became a bass note, slow vibrations waving through the heat. The wetness on her hands turned red. A drip on her trousers blotted crimson. Someone held her.

The smash of the half bottle as it slipped from her hand onto the cobbles brought her attention down to Mario at her feet. There were men around him now. Some hollers. There was a cry, a beige blur of confusion.

Alba didn’t remember getting into the car until she noticed the heat of her grandfather’s passenger seat. The leather squeaked as Raffaele scooted into the back. They wound the vicoli to her house in silence but for the metallic simmer of the engine. As they stepped inside, Giovanna’s expression blanched into panic.

‘Found them in the square, Giovanna, killing each other like dogs.’ Her grandfather’s voice was a scrape of sandpaper.

Giovanna disappeared into the kitchen and came out with a bowl of warm water and some cloths. She sat Raffaele down and lifted his chin. He winced. He tried to swallow a tear before it tipped over his lashes but failed.

‘Which cretin did this to you?’ Giovanna puffed in between blotting. ‘You tell me who and we’ll sort him out.’

‘It was Mario!’ Alba cried out. ‘Who else?’

‘We will discuss this when Bruno is home,’ her grandfather interrupted. ‘You just get on and clean him up. Don’t want his father to think we’d sent him home without that. The very least we can do after what your child did.’

Alba didn’t meet his eye.

The door swung open. Alba’s brothers bounded in ahead of their father from the officina. Marcellino undid the two top buttons of his shirt; at nineteen he’d become the newest executive of the officina. His hair was black and thick like Alba’s, but his eyes lacked the probing intensity of hers. To him, life was a game and one that was sure to deal him a good hand. Her younger brother, Salvatore, flung his tie and shirt off to sit in just his vest, throwing the discarded uniform to the sofa in a thoughtless crumple. He ran his hand through his floppy light brown hair.

As he caught her eye his expression changed. ‘Christ! What the hell happened?’

‘O Dio – who did this?’ Marcellino bellowed, seeing Raffaele’s face. ‘Tell me his name and I’ll crumple his face for you.’

‘Back off,’ Alba hissed, her lips opening into a thin line.

‘That’s enough from you, Alba,’ her grandfather overruled.

‘What’s happening?’ Bruno asked, his voice urgent as he stepped in by the table.

‘I caught your wild daughter attacking our mechanic’s son, Mario, in the middle of the piazza just now. Any more swings with that broken bottle and she’d near enough have killed the boy.’

‘He’s a cretin!’ Alba blurted.

‘Quiet!’ Bruno spat. ‘Every week you have to make a fool of yourself. Of us!’

‘She’s hurt, Bruno,’ Giovanna eased.

‘You’ve spoiled this girl and you see how she turned out? I’ve told you and I’ve told you again, but, no, you let her do as she pleases. And now look! Running around town like a demented urchin, picking fights. She’ll be at Marcellino’s wedding next week looking like this!’

‘Take it easy, Bruno,’ Alba’s grandfather murmured.

Giovanna’s hand began to shake. She pressed the cloth a little too hard onto Raffaele’s face. He took a sharp intake of breath.

‘Scusa, Raffaele,’ Giovanna whispered, ‘are you all right?’

He nodded biting his lip.

‘And the boy?’ Bruno bellowed a breath away from Alba’s face. ‘Don’t tell me you hit him too, for God’s sake?’

Alba’s head didn’t move. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Say something, for Christ’s sake!’

Bruno’s shouts ricocheted against the surrounding stone walls, creeping closer with every hot second that pounded.

‘What you asking her for, Babbo?’ Marcellino jeered. ‘You think she’s going to answer for once?’

‘I’m not talking to you, Marcellino,’ Bruno replied, ‘or you, Salvatore.’

Alba noticed her younger brother swallow an interjection.

‘What in God’s name is this family coming to? You know what I do all day for you at the officina? What we all do? And you just float in and out of this house as if you weren’t here. You run out of the house before dawn for that old lady on the hill, doing her every whim like a servant girl, and in here you’re like this! What am I supposed to do with someone like this at work?’

A knock at the door. Everyone turned towards it. Salvatore opened it. Their neighbour Grazietta poked her head around the wood. She took a breath to begin her usual prattle but the angry eyes pinning her at the doorframe stopped her train of thought in an instant.

‘Raffaele! Dio! Who did this? This boy needs a hospital! Giova’, I’ll come with you to the hospital,’ she flapped. ‘My nephew is on shift today, he’ll help us.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Bruno interrupted. ‘My lawyer’s son is being looked after just fine.’ Grazietta turned pale. ‘Sick and tired of you women telling me how to look after this stupid child! Alba did this. All this. You women have no idea how to bring her up. You bring shame on all of us!’

He reached for the jug of water and filled a glass, emptying it in two gulps. He set it back down too quick 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 towards 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 favourite 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 towards 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 towards 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 towards 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 neighbour 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?