A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  “A witch?” Alba thought about the mustached women her mother went to when she’d lost something, had a stubborn wart she wanted to get rid of, or came down with influenza and felt desperate to be cleansed of the evil eye.

  “An effigy, not the real deal,” Natalia said, sarcastic.

  “Right.”

  “Alba, you are funny. Everyone knows real witches can never be caught.”

  “I’m funny?”

  Natalia kissed her friend’s cheek. “It’s an effigy of the befana, you know, the old crone who supposedly interrupted the three kings to see Jesus and all that? The one who gives fruit and nuts to the kids.”

  “Of course I know the befana.”

  “Yeah, so she’s like a representation of the past year. We burn her. Out with the old and all that. Depending on the way the smoke goes tells us pagans, sorry, ‘Catholics,’ how our year is going to be. Apparently. I don’t care so much about that. I just love looking at the wild flames redden the night. Neighbors’ faces lit up orange. Hypnotized by the cleansing power of it all.”

  Alba raised an eyebrow.

  “You know,” she said with a tilt of her head, making her long beaded earring swish away from her neck, “that kind of thing.”

  Natalia lifted her arms above her head in the catlike stretch Alba was accustomed to her pawing into on impulse. “Come downstairs when you’re settled in. Mamma will be opening wine most days as soon as it’s aperitivo time. Then we can argue about politics and you can watch Francesca show off for gorgeous Anna. Standard evening at casa Cicchetti.”

  Natalia left the room and closed the door behind her. Alba walked over to the tiny window and gazed over the snowy hills. The wood spattered a spark in the stove. Burning away the past year didn’t seem like too bad of an idea. Burning away the past few weeks was even better. Somewhere frozen beneath the white outside was the beauty of that master class, the shimmering memory of that night, clouded by the uncomfortable escape from Vittorio’s, an ending neither had spoken of since, having avoided each other for the final few days of school that remained after the performance. All the fizz of intense pleasure now clouded by what she’d decided was an act of brutality disguised as a lover unfurling another with elegance and skill. Now, the thought of him fully clothed, igniting a charge so deep inside her, made her feel ripped of something special; he had uncovered something electric and hidden, the force of which scared her.

  It hadn’t felt like that with Raffaele. Theirs was a floundering between friends. But Vittorio was not her friend. She knew nothing about him in fact. She only knew his music, the magnificent way he communicated with his instrument so that it was almost impossible to tell where he ended and it began. She only knew the delicate, passionate intimacy he didn’t appear afraid to share in front of an audience. She was dazzled by his talent, verve, his artful communication with wordless prowess, and felt ridiculous for having blurred that with attraction to the person behind it. How vulnerable he had appeared to her on that stage, how bare, it was as if she had seen through him right to the hot center of his soul. She had felt his light and heat. That wasn’t enough to warrant opening up to him as she did in the shadows of his home though. That wasn’t music. That was a one-sided game. She’d been played with a clumsy beat. And she hated herself for it, for confusing the person with their music. Goldstein’s words now fought for attention, his insistence that her own spirit was the only thing that would play her piano to its capacity, after she had dissected the composer’s intent, their desires, she, the pianist, must by necessity connect with a parallel to her own emotions. She had not thrown herself into the Rhine like Schumann, but she needed to understand and connect with the feeling that precedes that action, understand the person behind the music, seek a reflection of their intentions in her own life.

  The log crackled again. If only it was as simple to smolder away the burned embers of her father’s ire, watch her decision to abandon her family to follow her dream of being a pianist lift up into smoke, perhaps the ignored weight trailing her would disappear too.

  Voices bubbled up from the kitchen below. Most likely Francesca had made another carved quip to the despair and delight of the family. What would Alba’s siblings be doing now? Had her mother received her Christmas card? She didn’t send any in return, of course, though Alba had made sure to leave her address clearly written on the back of the envelope to give her the option of replying. She hadn’t written back to her after any of the other brief letters assuring her she was well and safe, so it was not surprising that the festive one had essayed the same effect. Perhaps her father had received it first and burned it? Perhaps it didn’t matter? She wasn’t asking her mother’s approval, she’d written to reassure her, no more. Perhaps she’d even written to prove herself the stronger of the two? To show that she, unlike her mother, was free to live without her father’s approval or suffocating smears.

  Her eyes focused on a tree at the farthest point in the distance. It stood alone, a faint blue-black outline to its barren branches, delicate as one at the hand of a fine watercolorist, rising up from the white wash below and around. An unfamiliar warmth spread through her. She wondered how she would ever put all this into words so that Raffaele could understand that her first experience of feeling at home at Christmas was in the rambling old mountain house of the Cicchettis.

  The days that followed were marked by a stream of food and sweet indulgences, settled by unhurried stretches of time where the family lost themselves in books and music practice. Alba sat at their piano each morning, which dominated the lower living room, flanked by a wide stone hearth, lit through most of the day. She played her scales and technical exercises for the first half and after a break, ran through her repertoire, repeating the same in the afternoon. Meanwhile, upstairs, Natalia made her violin sing. Her mother stayed upstairs in the study on the corridor of the bedrooms. Her cello resonated along the beams of the house, her woody rich sound filling the upper floor. It was the perfect antidote to the tumultuous first term at Santa Cecilia’s, one she didn’t even know she needed until now. Her mind was silent. Her doubts and embarrassment over Vittorio dissipated. She lost herself in her music as before, as it was supposed to be, as she had sacrificed her family for. Here was peace in its most wordless astounding simplicity; the promise of the true meaning of home, by traveling within herself, spiraling into the core of what she had set out to do, whilst allowing herself to be fed, in every way, by the people now surrounding her.

  “I’m really glad my sister wasn’t full of hot air about you, Alba,” Francesca said, stepping into the living room for a book she’d left on the coffee table. “She gets so overexcited, you know? But everything she’s said about you? On the nose. Complimenti.”

  “Grazie,” Alba replied without taking her fingers off the piano.

  “You gearing up for our annual concert, right?”

  Alba lifted her hands.

  “I didn’t think Natalia would have mentioned it. Mamma loves showing off her kids’ friends when they’re musical. Silvio usually gets together with his mates and they do something and then Natalia. I might even sing. If they fill me with enough drink!” Her laughter rippled out then, stretching her face into a smile that lit up her face and eclipsed her usual pout. “After the panevin bonfire we all head back here and play until dawn. Pretty cool. You know, in a Cicchetti sort of way. Anna is a flautist. I fell in love with her the first time I heard her play.”

  Alba watched Francesca register her own admission, then stiffen back into her typical gait. “Forewarned is forearmed, no?”

  Alba smiled, wishing she agreed.

  By the afternoon Natalia was a twirl of skittish excitement. Her patter was double the speed of her accustomed tempo and Alba worried she’d be exhausted by the time her lover eventually arrived. Just after the deep afternoon lull the bell jangled and Natalia flew downstairs from her third practice of the day and flung open the door. Alba heard Leonardo’s voice, followed by a silence in which
she knew her friends would be wrapped around each other in their usual unselfconscious embrace. After a beat, Leonardo’s head popped around the doorway.

  “There she is! Hard at work—no one told you it was Christmas, Alba?”

  He strode across the space, swinging his arms out in amazement at the literature-filled shelves, fire roaring in the hearth, comfortable chairs strewn with blankets and half-finished books.

  He kissed her on both cheeks. “Everything alright?” he asked. “You look, how do I say, happy?”

  Alba laughed. “Your lover has kept me fed and watered for the past week. Her mother has carved out silence for me to practice. I am literally in heaven, yes.”

  Another voice filled the hallway.

  Alba heard Violetta’s welcoming tone.

  The door opened a little farther.

  His eyes traced the length of the shelves, the beams, the deep red Persian woven rug. “This place is perfection, no?” he asked, catching Alba’s eye on the ebb of his broad smile. She felt her jaw tighten.

  Vittorio.

  “Yes, Alba,” Leonardo said, snapping their silence, “it’s not a ghost.”

  Off Alba’s glare, Leonardo twisted away from her and walked toward the door, swinging a playful slap onto Vittorio’s back as he left. Alba heard Natalia lead him into the kitchen, and the rest of the siblings joining in with their welcomes like they had when she’d arrived.

  Their eyes met. A static of silence crackled.

  “Good to see you, Alba,” Vittorio said at last.

  His voice pierced the peaceful cocoon she’d wound around herself since she’d arrived. Natalia had betrayed her.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said.

  “Neither did I. Leo’s gift of the gab—plus the promise of Signora Violetta’s hospitality.”

  He cast his face toward the fire. Alba could see the flames twist their light in his eyes.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked, without looking at her.

  “Week or so.”

  “Heaven.”

  Natalia swung her head around the door. “Come and meet the gang, Vittorio, Mamma is so excited to hear about your professors. She went to school with a few of them. I think she’s been gagging for some juicy gossip since I told her you’d decided to join us!”

  She left. Alba felt Vittorio turn toward the piano, but she didn’t take her eyes away from her fingers, scoring through her scales as if it were just another morning in the mountains, in the hope they may prove a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  16

  Family

  a grouping of instruments that produce sound in the same manner and are constructed in the same way but in different sizes

  Alba did a fine job of erasing Vittorio out of her periphery throughout most of the afternoon, until it was decided that she would team up with the token Tuscan to make panforte.

  “I don’t want to help make panforte, Natalia,” Alba whispered as she led her out into the hallway from the kitchen.

  “I’ve never seen you so passionate, Alba, apart from when you’re playing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t think him coming would upset you.”

  “It hasn’t.”

  Natalia inclined her head.

  “Don’t look at me all puppy dog.”

  Natalia said nothing.

  “You should have told me,” Alba added. “It was underhanded.”

  “Last thing I saw was the two of you laughing down a side street in Trastevere. Now you’re acting as if he’s your nemesis again.”

  Alba straightened, desperate to share every detail of why she was behaving this way whilst hoping that refusal to express any of it at all would somehow make the feeling disappear.

  Natalia softened. “It’s a stupid cake, that’s all. If it really bothers you cut some veg with us, it really doesn’t matter.”

  Alba sighed with a shake of her head, stung with embarrassment at her childishness. “Sorry. It’s fine. Your mum asked me to.”

  “She thinks you’re amazing. You will play later, won’t you?”

  “The least I can do.”

  Natalia gave her a squeeze. Alba tried to imagine becoming the kind of woman who could unruffle another’s feathers with such easy warmth, the images sifted together and fell away, like building a sandcastle without water.

  Leonardo and Natalia arranged several side dishes. Violetta was in charge of the slow-roasted joint of beef. Giacomo dusted off wines from the cellar and Francesca and Anna argued over how to prepare the lentils. Silvio in the meantime alternated between playing records with his friends upstairs in his room and filling the kitchen with a late teenage mix of restless energy and feckless wit, pricking off cubes from the large hunk of cheese at the center of the table and being swatted by his sisters and mother in turn, till the young men took on their job of preparing the sliced meat antipasti with a quiet concentration that unnerved Alba. She tried to imagine her own brothers doing anything like the same. It brought a wry smile to her face.

  “How are the silent duo getting on over there?” Leonardo asked, taking a swig of wine whilst stripping the hard base ends of a cavolo nero.

  “Fine, noisy,” Vittorio replied, not taking his eyes off the nuts and candied fruit he was chopping. “We’re almost ready, Alba,” he said, signaling for her to tip the honey, sugar, and a few tablespoons of marsala wine into the skillet warming on the stove. She gave the mixture a gentle stir. In her periphery she could see him at the table, sifting the flour, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom over the chopped toasted nuts and candied fruit and peel, having tipped them into a bowl. His movements had the same fluidity, patience, and precision as when he played. As when he’d touched her. She felt a twinge of pleasure, followed by a cramp of claustrophobia. She focused her attention back to the pan. The space heated with a syrupy scent.

  “Oh my God, that’s divine!” Natalia announced.

  “You use that word for everything,” Francesca replied from the far end of the table, “and you haven’t even heard Anna play yet.”

  “Me neither!” said Violetta, opening the range door to check on the roast, tipping the pan slightly to spoon up the juices and trickle them back over the caramelized crust.

  “Signora, you’re making me weep with pleasure right now, no, Vittorio?” Leonardo charmed.

  “Once in your life, Leo,” Vittorio pinged, “keep your cakehole shut so I can finish making something to do the job for me.”

  Vittorio gave the bowl another stir, a little too hard.

  “He loves me really, Signora Violetta,” Leonardo added. “I give him excuses to show off how clever he thinks he is.”

  Violetta stood back up and closed the oven door. “I’m just thrilled you’re all here. It’s made our Christmas even more special than it normally is. Listen, Vittorio, you can use the upper oven here, I’ve lined this baking dish for your panforte when it’s ready to go in.”

  She cast an approving eye over her team of cooks and left.

  “How’s your honey looking, Alba?” Vittorio asked.

  Anna looked up and caught Leonardo’s eye. “Does your boyfriend always take everything Vittorio says as an innuendo, Natalia?” she asked, noting Leonardo’s raised eyebrow.

  “That’s the kind of boy my sister is attracted to. I suppose she can’t help it,” Francesca replied. Leonardo flicked her a wounded expression.

  “Actually, I think it’s ready, Vittorio,” Alba added, watching the sugar dissolve its final granules into the golden ooze. He stepped in beside her and tipped in the fruit mixture. She smelled the sweet coating lift the depth of cinnamon, cardamom’s complex spice, and the heat of the ginger. He stood closer than he needed to, so that beneath the skillet’s contents she could also pick up his scent; it made her think of pine needles, mint, wooden floors heated by the sun. His breath brushed her ear. They were back in the moonlight, lost and confused in the shadows of that wine-infused night
in his studio, a disorienting pleasure.

  “Here,” he said, “I’ll tip it in.”

  He reached for the handle and his fingers wrapped around hers for a moment. She slipped them out from underneath and stepped back, noticing the narrow gap between his jaw and his neck, where she’d buried her tears. Her chest was an ache of bittersweet; she longed to feel him close to her, but the sensation was the promise of something she might not be able to control, it was too unknown not to be dangerous.

  When the feast was assembled, the table cleared, the room awaiting a languid feast, the family left to watch the bonfire in the main square. Natalia lent Alba more appropriate clothing. They all stepped out of the house, cocooned in scarves and hats and gloves and good cheer.

  “I don’t want to sound all playground, but are we still friends?” Natalia asked, hooking her arm into Alba’s.

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Natalia, do you?”

  “Don’t know. You Sardinians take things so very serious. But I love you. And about what’s his name, Maestro Vittorio, my mamma has been nagging me to bring him up ever since I told her about him. Plus, Leonardo told him you were here. Seemed to change his mind somewhat.”

  Alba nodded as if it mattered little to her, but her eyes fixed on his silhouette a little way in front of her against the blue white of the moonlit snowbanks.

  All of Revine filled the main square, and, as promised, the upside-down Christmas trees hung on a pyre with a huge effigy of the befana made out of hay on top. Two local men lit several long torches and as the flames licked up toward the sky the town erupted in cheers. Soon the pyre was burning bright. Singing began, percussed with clapping, stomping, cheers, and laughter. Then the wind picked up and an expectant hush fell. The smoke twisted up, then from side to side till it blew out in a determined gust toward the west. The square shook with applause.

  “See?” Natalia shouted toward Alba. “It’s blowing west. So it’s going to be a good year after all! Perhaps I’ll believe it just this once, no?”