A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  Vittorio let the neck of his cello rest on his shoulder and ran his now free hand through his hair.

  “A difficult pill to swallow sometimes, yes, Vittorio,” Giroletti added. “This is your assignment before next rehearsal. Allow yourselves to converse a little, that way we stand a chance of chiming. Can you do that?”

  “I know my part, Maestro,” Vittorio replied, though Girloetti’s prodding invited no answer other than agreement.

  “No, Vittorio, I don’t think you do. We are not four soloists. Each instrument’s voice is part of the whole. This is the part to learn.”

  Giroletti nodded with a half smile, twisted on his heels, and walked out.

  Alba sat in the stilted silence. Vittorio took a sharp breath. Natalia and Leonardo walked in.

  “Giroletti throw the rule book at you?” Leonardo called out, strutting to his case and laying his viola inside.

  “Go on, then, what he say?” Natalia egged on.

  “He told us to talk,” Vittorio replied through the narrow space between his lips.

  “That’s why you look like a storm, Signorino? Did you tell him you only speak through your strings?” Leonardo cackled now, mimicking Vittorio at his cello. Natalia threw her head back with laughter, her light brown hair catching the afternoon streaks streaming in through the small windows that faced the courtyard.

  Vittorio packed his case in silence whilst the other two ping-ponged gentle insults. They watched him leave without a goodbye.

  Natalia turned to Alba. “Take my word for it—not all strings are like that, okay?”

  The threesome separated for their next classes. Alba reached her music theory room and took a seat at the back. It wasn’t till the last few minutes that she spied Vittorio seated on the far end of her same row. His face looked deep in concentration on every syllable that Professoressa Simonelli was uttering, her treble tones staccato in the heavy closed-windowed air. Her glasses were perched at the end of her tiny nose, hair sprayed into statuesque stillness, her painted lips dancing over complicated patterns in harmonics. Alba let her professor’s voice weave in as she described negative fifths, positive fourths, peculiar journeys from middle C, majors and their relative minors, the way twelve notes knitted together in concentric patterns, each connected to the web of others in astounding mathematical patterns. Her eyes, however, were focused on Vittorio’s left hand as it twisted his pencil between each finger, deft and restless. Either side of her, students scribbled their version of Simonelli’s words. Alba loved to listen and write her notes straight after the class, finding the act of writing drew her away from the details of what was being said; the physical task of absorbing the information becoming at once removed, cerebral, rather than understood somewhere in her bones. Vittorio’s page was blank also, but his expression signaled complete engagement. It wasn’t until Simonelli finished, somewhere at the end of the explanation of suspended notes within a chord, that he drew his gaze away from the large green chalkboard printed with staves and caught Alba’s eye. His expression revealed he had seen her and then it wiped clean off his face, disintegrating like powdered chalk off Simonelli’s felt eraser.

  The students piled out of the class and filled the courtyard. Alba found a spot on a stone bench along the walkway and took a seat, the autumnal sunshine dipping the grass in a golden haze, mourning the inevitable disappearance of summer. She took a bite of her apple and reached into her satchel for her notebook to take down some of the key information from Simonelli’s class. That’s when she spied Vittorio on the opposite side of the courtyard doing the same. She watched him scratch across his page, his pencil leaving squirls of notation. His proud demeanor vanished for a hidden second, out of obvious view of the other students pounding past him. Her instinct to avoid broaching the subject of meeting up as requested by Giroletti urged her to stay seated, to wait for him to approach, but her pride told her there was no dignity in that. She hadn’t escaped the unbending rule of her father only to be intimidated by a stuck-up Tuscan who thought himself far better than any of the others. She threw her notebook into her satchel and walked across the green.

  “When shall we practice?” she asked, her voice weaving out with unexpected crispness.

  Vittorio looked up. Alba noticed his expression stiffen. “My week is pretty full.”

  “Everyone’s is.”

  He swallowed, irritated.

  “Let’s go and book a room now, I suppose? I’ve got my one-to-one in ten minutes, so be quick,” he said, with barbed agreement.

  Alba twisted away from him and walked toward reception, where a short line of students already formed, waiting their turns to reserve practice rooms. Vittorio stepped in behind her. The other students’ chatter prattled around them. Neither of them said a word.

  At last Alba reached the front of the queue. The receptionist was patient and calm, accustomed to working with the intensity of music students, but couldn’t accommodate both their timetables with a suitable practice room.

  “Grazie, Signora, not to worry, we can work something out,” Vittorio replied, assured. He walked away from the reception and returned toward the courtyard, Alba catching up to his fast strides.

  “I’m late for class now,” he said, glancing back.

  “No, we’re not. We’ve got a few minutes.”

  “Listen,” he said, twisting round to a sudden stop, “I can’t give up my day practice times to work on this. I’m not here to carry people.”

  “Neither am I,” Alba replied, determined not to be silenced. “Giroletti asked us to do this.”

  “You always do what people tell you to?”

  Alba felt her cheeks deepen.

  Vittorio let out a sigh. “Fine. I have a piano at my place. I’m not far from Calisto. We can work after your shift one night? That’s the only time I can give you.”

  Alba hadn’t asked him to give her anything.

  “Fine,” she replied, deciding to dodge the argument for another time.

  “Give me your notebook,” he said, glancing to the side toward the corridor that led to the classrooms as a violinist from another class wiped by him, her strands of black hair lifting on the wind like threads of silk.

  Alba handed it to him. He wrote down his address, then looked up.

  “Tomorrow works for me,” he said, closing the book and handing it back.

  “Me too, I think,” she said, determined to reply even though he hadn’t laid the offer out as a question so much as a decision. He left. The courtyard dipped into a sudden quiet. She reached her class panting, after sprinting the three flights.

  * * *

  Alba’s shift was due to finish at ten, but in the short while she’d worked it was clear time was as fluid in this city as back home. It had never mattered until tonight, when she knew every extra glass she cleared and washed and wiped was a few minutes shaved off her practice time. That ached. At last, Antonio gave her the nod.

  The streets off central Trastevere grew quiet, some hidden in near complete darkness so that Alba struggled to read the names of the viccoli on the tiled signs. The main square politics reverberated in the distance across the night air fringed with a threat of frost. At last, she came to Vittorio’s door and rang the bottom bell. She waited for several minutes, trying not to notice that she was alone on the darkened narrow street. A smaller door within one side of the tall double doors, which reminded her of the cathedral in Ozieri, creaked open and Vittorio’s head poked into the shadows. She couldn’t tell if he’d just woken up.

  “Is it too late?” she asked, feeling like he’d forgotten about their arrangement.

  He shook his head. “No. I’ve been writing, takes me a second to be sociable—sorry.”

  Alba followed him down a wide flecked tile hallway, a door at the far end open, shafting a corridor of inviting light. He stepped inside. She did the same.

  The first thing that hit her was the smell of caramelized onion and garlic that made her mouth water in an instant and reminde
d her she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Her eyes landed on the huge window that dominated the main wall, its arched sash fitted with curved white shutters. Beside them stood an upright piano with walnut veneer and a panel of carved screen across the face with two candelabras reaching out from it.

  “It’s no Fazioli but it’s all I’ve got,” he said, walking across the Persian rug swirled with intricate gold and black patterns, toward the opposite side of the studio room where half the wall was taken up by a kitchen. There was an impressive hanging of pots along the wall, a shelf packed with glass jars of spices and dried goods, a wide gas range and oven flanked on either side with two wide cupboards topped with a tiled counter. He opened a glass dresser at the farthest end and pulled out two wineglasses. It felt like he’d lived here for years. There was nothing of the transient musical anarchy of Leonardo’s apartment. This was like stepping into a miniature creative cave.

  “Vino?”

  Alba was so taken aback by his seamless shift into host that it took her a moment to answer. He didn’t wait and lifted his full one to hers. They clinked. Alba longed to unshackle her awkwardness, but it clung like briars.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, returning to the spiky patter she was accustomed to. “I don’t play hungry. I was about to eat. Haven’t had anything all day. You want?”

  Alba shrugged.

  “Well, either you watch me eat or you join in, but I don’t work on empty.”

  Alba felt her lips unfurl into a smile. He’d already retreated into the kitchen. The skillet on the stove was where the sweet smell rose from. She watched him turn up the heat a little then tip in cubed guanciale, cured pig’s cheek, from a small wooden chopping board. The studio filled with a salty sweetness. He fell into practiced silence, cracking three eggs and separating the whites with the deft hands Alba had seen slide up and down the neck of his cello. Into the bowl of yolks he tipped a heap of Parmesan and attacked it with a whisk.

  “What do you want me to do?” Alba asked, never having watched a boy his age do anything in a kitchen other than complain.

  “Warm up if you like, I don’t care. I don’t talk and cook at the same time.”

  Alba turned toward the piano. She took a sip of the wine and found a narrow space to put it down on amongst the manuscripts strewn across the wooden table by the window. His annotation was swift; scurries of marks and corrections danced along the staves.

  The piano stool looked well loved. She lifted the lid. Inside there were sheets of old music, notated in pencil, some popular hits, a couple of books with gold lettering along the spine, Beethoven, gilt and written in sweeping elegance beside a collection of Bach’s preludes and fugues. She closed it again without a sound, just in time to see Vittorio crack some pepper into the egg mix and tip in fresh spaghettoni into another larger pot of boiling water. His attention was the same that she had witnessed in class, but inside the four walls of his home he was a different version of that persona, his shoulders relaxed, his gait lacking the antagonistic poise of school.

  Alba sat at the piano and lifted the lid. The ivories were colored with age. She let her hands trace several scales, with whimsical, curious fingers. She let them feel every note, but her eyes wandered over to the kitchen where the smells deepened and Vittorio’s movements sped up, forking steaming strands of pasta into the egg mix bowl, twisting them this way and that, coating them with care. He tipped the contents of the onion and guanciale skillet into it and again scooped with a large fork, a helix of salty steam twirling up into his face. A few minutes later, she was presented with her bowl of carbonara.

  “Thank you—sorry I interrupted your dinner.”

  “Just tipped in more pasta. No trouble. I always eat at this time.”

  Vittorio handed her a fork; she twirled her pasta around it.

  “My brothers wouldn’t even know where to find a glass of water in the kitchen let alone cook in it.”

  “Your brothers probably have a mamma who won’t let them.”

  Alba stiffened. What did he know about her family? Who was he to comment? It didn’t seem like he’d had anyone stopping him doing what he’d dreamed of.

  “Relax. Just a stupid remark. You always get offended so easily?”

  Alba wiped the picture of her family from view. She was starving but no longer wanted to eat his food.

  She watched Vittorio take his first mouthful. “And before you say anything, my mamma didn’t let me either. I learned all this from my aunts. If that serves as an apology, you can have it.”

  Alba felt embarrassed her expression had revealed so much. She switched her attention to the food and twirled a mouthful. It was creamy, salty perfection. An audible gasp of delight escaped before she could stop it.

  “Really?” Vittorio asked without missing a beat. “I didn’t put enough salt in the water, I think.”

  Alba shook her head, savoring the depth of flavor, the smoky intensity of the guanciale crisped and sweetened with the onion and garlic. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  “Your first carbonara?” he asked, incredulous.

  Alba nodded.

  “You should be embarrassed,” he replied, sensing her shift, “you’ve eaten your first cooked by a Tuscan! Don’t tell any Roman friends, yes? They’ll accuse me of desecrating their city’s most famous dish.”

  They slipped into hungry silence for a moment, Alba waiting for the Vittorio she thought she knew to rise into view. Instead, he reached for the bottle of wine and filled their glasses. Alba became aware of her chewing and how loud it sounded. A few twirls later both their bowls were empty.

  “Now I work,” he said, lifting their empty bowls away and placing them into the ceramic sink.

  “Your studio is amazing,” Alba said, feeling the wine redden her cheeks.

  “My aunt’s. Mum’s sister. Spent a lot of time here when I was a kid. We have an arrangement. She doesn’t charge me what she could a stranger, let’s just say that. You?”

  “Me?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Other side of town.”

  Vittorio nodded. Their familiar silence filled the gaps. Then he lifted his cello off its stand and brought it over to the piano.

  “I’ll tune it to this old thing,” he said, nodding toward the piano.

  Alba played the notes before he asked. She could feel the start of his sarcastic eyebrow raise. As soon as they sat at their instruments they returned to the students of the courtyard, but this time the wine relaxed Alba’s muscles, more than she would have liked, the comforting carbonara sitting in her belly like a hug. She could have climbed up to the mezzanine bed and slept that instant. Vittorio stopped mid-flow during the andante section.

  “It just sounds a little flabby, stuck, no?” he asked, dropping his bow.

  “Should have thought of that before you force-fed me.”

  His face cracked into that of a stranger’s when he smiled, unrecognizable from the taut version at school.

  “Let’s go back a few measures, from the reprise of the theme, yes?” he suggested.

  They did. This time Alba took a few moments before she began to play, easing into the notes, the sounds weaving warmth into the space, like a carpet of copper thread, whilst Vittorio’s cello line soared above. His vibrato increased, miniature folds of sound filled the studio, lifting up till the point at which the violin section would begin. They didn’t stop there this time. Onward they flew through the rest of the movement, dipping into the shade of the midsection, rising toward the crescendo after that. It felt bare without the other two instruments, pared back to its skeletal core. Their movements were synchronized and assured. Gone was the tentative angular mismatch of their first rehearsal.

  The final chord sang. Alba’s hands lifted off the keys.

  She turned to Vittorio. Neither raced to pierce the silence.

  “I don’t know what I’m most disappointed about,” Vittorio said at last. Alba felt the hairs on the back of her
neck lengthen in preparation for a provocative comment, one she’d already decided she wouldn’t let pass without a fight.

  “The fact that I was wrong to say what I did in our rehearsal,” he began, “or the fact that Giroletti was right.”

  Alba felt her eyebrow raise. She caught sight of the clock above the range.

  “O Dio, it’s late”—she jumped up from her stool—“I’ve still got some work to finish for classes tomorrow.”

  “Me too,” Vittorio said, setting his cello back on its wooden stand.

  Alba pulled her sweater off the back of her chair and swung it over her shoulders.

  “I’ll walk with you,” Vittorio said.

  Alba knew she ought to be happy for the company but insisted he didn’t need to.

  “My friend lives toward our school,” he continued, seeing her expression, “I promised him I’d swing by.”

  “At this time?”

  “I get all my best work done after midnight. It’s why I’m a bear in the day.”

  Alba reached the door and twisted the lock. They stepped onto the darkened street and began their walk back toward the Tiber, cobbles dappled with late-night condensation. The scuff of their feet echoed along the stone through the emptied streets toward the main square where sporadic groups still huddled, swaying with alcohol, pelting the world with their wine-infused versions of reality. Vittorio walked like a Roman, twisting down narrow streets and unexpected turns with confidence. They reached the Spanish steps and he climbed them two at a time. Alba paused halfway to catch her breath, the double towers of the church above her creamy in the half-light. Vittorio stood at the top waiting. She reached him and turned back toward the piazza at the bottom of the steps, breathing in the autumn night air.

  “Come on,” he said, “I know a better view.”

  He turned and started climbing up another twist of steps that led to a pathway. She fell into step beside him.

  “Thanks for tonight,” she said, matching his pace.

  “No need to tell the others about my cooking, yes? Don’t want them all begging me to feed them.”