A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  Books by Sara Alexander

  Under a Sardinian Sky

  Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea

  A Roman Rhapsody

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A ROMAN RHAPSODY

  SARA ALEXANDER

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  I Movimento

  1

  2

  3

  1975

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  II Movimento

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  1978

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  III Movimento

  Rome - 1988

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A ROMAN RHAPSODY

  Discussion Questions

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Sara Alexander

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1550-0

  Kensington Electronic Edition: September 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1550-0

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1550-0

  For Mum & Dad, thank you for the piano

  Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

  —Maya Angelou

  I Movimento

  1

  Overture

  a piece of music that is an introduction

  to a longer piece

  When her brother opened his eyes, Alba was convinced she was present at his wake. Her mother, Giovanna, knelt on one side of his bed, forehead resting on her thumbs whilst they crawled over the worn beads of her rosary. In the corner three wailers sobbed their own prayers, in warbled unison, invoking Mary, Jesus, and any saint who wished to assist. On the other side of the bed, their neighbor Grazietta held a bowl with oil and water. She told the women that the way in which the liquids mixed confirmed that Giovanna’s firstborn, Marcellino, was, in fact, yet another victim of the evil eye. There could be no other explanation as to why he had been kidnapped alongside his father, Bruno, who was still held captive, whilst his son was released by the bandits the night before, after three days of white panic for all their family and friends. Grazietta grasped her wand of rosemary twigs and dipped it into the liquid, dousing the sheets like a demented priest. The wailers let out a further cry, which trebled across the sheets. A droplet fell on his forehead, from another swing, this time a close miss of Alba’s eye. With his wince, everyone at last noticed that Marcellino was in fact conscious.

  Giovanna jumped to her feet and held her child into her bosom. Alba could smell the reassuring scent of sofritto in the folds of her housedress, even from where she stood at the foot of the bed, those tiny cubes of carrots, onion, and celery fried in olive oil before making Sunday’s batch of pasta sauce for the week, cut through with the sweat of her panic beneath.

  “Biseddu meu,” she murmured in Sardinian, rocking Marcellino with such passion that Alba knew would induce a vague seasickness. This was a woman obsessed with omens. If the sauce boiled too fast, three starlings rather than two screeched their morning tweet, or a feather fell unexpected from nowhere, her particular strain of logic would portend horrific visions. She sang prayers to Saint Anthony at the crossroads in their Sardinian town when they needed something specific, accepting that it would lead, by necessity, to her forfeiting something in return. Alba had faded memories of her mother praying to miss her cycle one month because there was extra work to be done, only to be doubled up in excruciating pain the following. Saints gave to those who prayed, but at a cost; the original protection racket. It sat at an uncomfortable angle in Alba’s mind, this idea of bargaining with a saint, the very thing she’d been taught was the devil’s speciality. Alba’s prodding at this point met only with the stone-setting stares of her aunts at best, physical harm at worst. She chose her battles with care, and made a silent pact with herself never to be indebted.

  The Fresus asked neighbors’ cousins’ friends to say secret prayers—known only to those who dabbled in this branch of acceptable religious magic—at midday on the second Tuesday of a month if they lost something. These initiates then relayed a dutiful list of everything they heard on the street in order to find said lost item. One day, when twenty lire had gone missing from her mother’s kitchen drawer, one such prayer had returned with the word Francesco repeated three times. Alba remembered her mother pinning the unsuspecting laborers working on the house next door with her Sardinian glare, black eyes like darts, thick eyebrows scouring a frown, when she found out they were from out of town and all shared that very same name. After that incident Giovanna stitched her cash into her skirts like her grandmother used to do.

  None of these accepted manias were woven into the morning of May 27, 1968. No red sky in the morning to warn the shepherds, no burned garlic, curdled milk, dough that wouldn’t prove, solitary nightingale calls. It was a joyous late spring day, the kind that teases you with the golden kiss of the Mediterranean summer to come. Giovanna had shrieked at Alba to return in time to accompany her father to the vineyard, her brothers Marcellino and Salvatore needed a rest and besides, it was her turn, but the familiar trill of her mother’s voice fell on deaf ears. Alba had lost track of time, or rather decided never to pay much attention to it to begin with, and when she sauntered home at last, was met with the kind of pummeling from her mother that should have been reserved for the making of bread or churning of butter alone. Marcellino had been sent in her place and because of it, he now sat wrapped up in bed with her family facing a daily terror of a missing father.

  Giovanna drew back and clasped Marcellino’s face in hers. “Eat, yes? Oh my tesoro, did they hurt you?” More questions tumbled out, but the noise spun around the room like a gale. Grazietta muttered another snippet of a prayer before crossing herself and leaving, oily water in tow. As news spread to the crowd downstairs that the firstborn had, at last, awoken, more women came upstairs and filled the room. Alba was shot a look that she recognized as her cue to bring the tray her mother had prepared. She pressed past the well-wishers and returned with the feast in hand, setting it down on his bed; fresh spianata, Ozieri’s renowned flatbread, enough cheese for a small football team, a handful of black figs, two long slipper-shaped papassini biscuits, and a glass of warm milk with a splash of coffee in it. If he wasn’t dead yet, it seemed the army of mothers were to kill him off with overfeeding.

  “O Dio mio,” one of the wailers cried, “his eyes, Giovanna, the look in this poor child’s eyes!”

  They took another breath in preparation for a further fervent chorus when a shout tore through the pause. The door flung open. Grazietta reappeared, face flushed, her circular wire glasses askew on her nose. “Benito’s on the t
elevision, Giova’, beni—come quickly!”

  Giovanna followed Grazietta out, with the tumble of others close behind. Alba followed down the stone steps to their small living room. She’d never been in a room with so many quiet Sardinians. Even in church or at funerals words couldn’t fail but escape, a titbit of gossip here, a grievance about the lack of flowers or the ostentatious abundance of them, the age of the priest or lack thereof. Now the dozen or more neighbors crammed into their room made Alba feel like the charred aubergines her mother would squeeze into jars throughout the summer.

  On the small square of screen in the corner, above a chest of drawers topped with a lace doily, was her father’s brother Benito. The angle of the camera pointed up toward him; beyond, the familiar outline of the Ozieri valley in silver tones. He seemed relaxed, even though Alba was sure the words he spoke were some of the hardest he’d ever have to say. “I speak on behalf of all my family,” he began, “the bandits have picked on the wrong man. Our family is not rich. We don’t have the money they are asking. We will not pay the ransom to release my brother Bruno.”

  The lump in Alba’s throat became a stone. A murmur rippled across the room. Then the scene snapped to men signing a form at the police station. The neighbors took it in turns to shout at the screen as they recognized their husbands, brothers, sons. The clipped voice of the Rai Uno journalist began to describe a town in revolt. The scenes flipped between the main square with men huddled in groups back to the police station where the men were being described as signing on to a counter army to uncover the whereabouts of Bruno Fresu. Their firearms were being registered. Shepherds from the surrounding hills had come to town to aid the search efforts, citing the fact that they knew their Sardinian hills better than any bandit. All this was happening for her father. The rescue efforts were coupled with a revolutionary protest about to take place, the journalist said.

  The noise inside the stone room began to rise, the voices ricocheted over their heads to an unbearable volume. Someone called out from the street and the room began to herd out of the small door onto the cobbles. People lined the road outside her house. A cry pelted down from farther up the vicolo just before Alba saw the first of the banners. A sea of schoolchildren from the upper years snaked around the corner, wooden signs above their heads. They were chanting and so were their teachers. There were decrees against the bandits. Someone shouted they had gone too far this time. Another screamed Fresus were one of the people, not rich folk. Even Alba’s teacher, the most prim woman she knew, waved a sign high above her head yelling like she’d never heard her do before. The sea of students and teachers paraded past their house; there were shouts to not give up, to not give in, that Ozieri would stand against the criminal disease eating their island, that the bandits must not be bullied into taking one of their own by mainlanders. Alba should have been with her father when the men jumped out of a vehicle in the twilight. She should have been huddled with him in that damp cave, not Marcellino. A swell of guilt. Her father was the man who made her town revolt. No one marched when the rich landowners were kidnapped a few months back. There was little more than hand-wringing when the fancy American heir was kidnapped on the northeast coast the year before. There were even some hushed whispers that the rich had it coming to them, that their bandits maintained a warped equilibrium in society; the wealthy had no right to run their island as they pleased.

  This time, however, they had gone too far. Her father was a hard worker; his father, Nonno Fresu, had accumulated huge debts to gain the first Fiat dealership in town. For this they were captured, for a ransom that none of them had. Bruno and his three brothers worked around the clock at the dealership. There was not wealth to speak of yet; it was swallowed by the bank. That’s why Giovanna cleaned villas in the periphery, took on extra washing, fed the babies whose mother’s milk had dried up, all to keep her own family fed.

  Alba’s father was now a celebrity. He had started a revolution. Was it wrong to feel proud? Alba shook off the sharp twist of guilt, because thinking of her father in this way was the only way to stop herself picturing him shot through the head with his blood seeping out onto the fennel-scented dirt beneath him.

  * * *

  Alba woke to find her school grembiulino hanging on the door of the wardrobe she shared with her brother. This apron she wore over her own clothes looked like a relic from a distant past: one in which Alba played in the street, fought with her brothers, and recited poems by memory under the glare of her teacher. Life after Marcellino’s release and her father’s continued captivity was disorienting. Each time it seemed to tease reality Giovanna would yell at her daughter for picking a fight with poor Marcellino as if his recovery rested on Alba’s behavior alone. He was served his favorite breakfasts every morning. Neighbors would stop their whisperings as he entered the room. It was like living with a recluse celebrity, and Alba suspected that her brother’s ability to mine the situation for all that it was worth, with more than a little performance thrown in, was apparent to no one but his younger sister. Thank God it wasn’t the girl, women would lament over the never-ending pots of coffee bubbled to calm the nerves of the tormented wife, but their voices were a constant reminder that she was not guiltless in all of this. If she’d been home in time, they might have gotten to the vigna earlier, missed the bandits perhaps. The life Alba once knew was nowhere to be found.

  That morning the familiar dread of school awaited. Her black apron with the scalloped white collar a promise of normality. Giovanna took extra time saying goodbye to Marcellino. He walked beside her and Salvatore, only running ahead as usual when his friends caught up with him and enveloped him with their bombardment of questions. By the time they’d reached school Alba was sure that he had embellished his story from how it had begun in half sentences back at the house on that first day, when he’d arrived a scruff, mute, in silent shock. Alba stepped through the tall gates of the elementary school, lit by the promise of life easing back to recognizable order. She took her place at the third desk from the front.

  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 c
hild-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 to 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 behavior I am trying to instill 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.