A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  “Thank you, Raffaele.”

  Alba looked at her mentor. Her eyes were twinkling, open to the pain of her student, her own. Alba lit with the courage she saw there.

  “In your short time on the planet, Alba, you’ve had your fair share of pain. Don’t hide it away. It’s a gift. To feel deeply. Past the power of words alone. This is a musician’s superpower,” Signora Elias said.

  Alba sighed a half-hearted laugh.

  “Don’t shy away from what is yours, Alba,” Raffaele added, his eyes a deepening brown, the awkwardness of his youth a faded whisper now, in its place a quiet strength that he’d once masked beneath his geeky juggling of numbers and algorithmical nonsense talk, as she used to think of it.

  Alba turned away from them for a moment and took in the yellow plains of Ozieri. The sun was easing toward the start of its descent, the land golden in the afternoon rays, a herd of sheep tinkled their tin bells in the distance, charging alongside one another ahead of their shepherd. Alba had no idea how to operate from empty, but she knew her life was no longer here.

  21

  Capriccioso

  capriciously, unpredictable, volatile

  Alba returned to her room in the apartment to find a huge bouquet of white flowers upon her desk.

  “They came yesterday,” her landlady, Signora Anna, said, her face the picture of polite restrained grief. “I’m so sorry, Alba.”

  She leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks, an act that caught her off guard as she had never hinted at doing anything close to it in all the years she’d lived there. Theirs was not a familiar relationship; Signora Anna did well at keeping a professional distance. It was the reason Alba felt comfortable to stay so long.

  “You take your time now, si?” Signora Anna smoothed her apron and turned toward the corridor that led to the kitchen at the far end. “Anything you need, just ask.” With a nod to refrain from sharing her tears, she turned and left.

  Alba let her overnight bag slide to the floor. She reached for the small envelope and read the message, not expecting Vittorio to have undertaken such showy a performance of chivalry.

  Sending you all my love at this difficult time, Alba.

  May we meet this week as we had planned so I can

  give my condolences in person? Yours, Dante De Moro

  Alba reread the note and scanned the telephone number along the bottom. Goldstein’s friend was in no mind to let her grieving stand in the way of his plans for her. She thought about her recital examination evening, the way Goldstein had made her promise not to look this gift horse in the mouth. That fairy-tale evening, where life, for a breath or three, was a song, legato, effortless, sparkling. Excitement and guilt cramped her stomach. People offered condolences for her mother’s death. What they didn’t know was that it felt more like Alba’s entire family had disappeared, or worse, that they had never been there in the first place somehow, that the charade of being part of that tribe was like a forgotten refrain. This was the ache. She would do anything to flee from it. De Moro was offering her the world back again and a place in it.

  Alba decided to walk to Vittorio’s. It was a hot day, the buses were brimming with sweaty bodies, the trams the same. Romans’ predisposition for patience ebbed even further under these temperatures and it wasn’t a fight worth having today. She wanted to be cradled by the man she loved. She wanted a shelter from reality, a brief respite. He of all people knew grief better than her. He didn’t answer right away. As always. His voice sounded croaky on the intercom. He buzzed her in. She walked down the corridor to his door. It creaked open. His apartment was darkened, save for the one shutter half tilted open to the morning sun sending spidering shafts across the wall. She stepped in. He wrapped his arms around her. There was whiskey on his breath. They stood there, on the precipice of his studio for a breath or three, nothing but the thud of their hearts against each other.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair, his voice warm, a welcome home, her safe place. She let herself cry. The first tears since seeing her mother. He wrapped his arms tighter, his hands strong on her back, easing her into the sensations of flying and drowning at the same time. How long had they stood like that? When he led her inside, when their clothes slipped off, when their limbs stretched along the rug before the unlit fireplace, its fibers rubbing on her legs and arms, the weight of him inside her lifting her high out of herself. How long did she cry afterward, how much whiskey had they sipped, when she crawled on top of him and eased him back inside her? Was his glass still in hand? Did she crumple some manuscript paper? Did he hold her breasts a little tighter than she would have liked, did his finger claw too deep into her flesh? Did she care to say anything or did the twinges close to pleasure but nearer to pain silence her grief so that she welcomed it, yearned for it even? Were his movements more jagged than she had remembered them? Did she silence the sensation that his drinking had started that morning, not the night before? All she cared about was the white noise canceling out the past few days, the past few years. For a moment, there was nothing but their breaths, snatching together as one, and that’s all she needed. A flash of white inside, her thighs clenched and relaxed, a breeze flew through her. She folded down onto his chest, then rolled off him and lay beside him looking at the light and shadow across his ceiling.

  “I’m not going to fill the hole,” he said at last, his tone slurred. “Pardon the clumsy pun. Or don’t, whatever.” He turned his head to her, burning his dark eyes deep inside her. She loved his fearlessness, this welcoming of all things awkward. He thrived on it even. She may have envied him that. “Your mother. That hole. No one will fill it. And it won’t go away. And I won’t tell you it gets better, because it doesn’t. But the scar tissue is strong. Especially when you’re as stubborn as you.”

  “Or you,” she added, licking his top lip. He opened his mouth and wove his tongue inside her mouth. She could kiss this man forever.

  He pulled away, and laid his head back down on the rug, his fingers caressing her bare breasts.

  “Dante sent me flowers.”

  “Course he did. You’re going to make that man a millionaire.”

  Alba thumped him.

  “You’re fierce, talented, sexy, exotic—you know, from the bandit country—it’s the perfect package.”

  She raised her head on her hand. “You make it sound cheap.”

  “It is.”

  Her throat tightened. “What have I been working for all these years if not this? Why are you putting it down? You sound jealous.”

  “I’m never going to be a concert pianist. Why would I be jealous?”

  “Who knows how your sordid little mind works? You sound pissed off even. Like one of my brothers!”

  She sat up, curled into a ball. Then she jumped up to her feet and started to get dressed. “Why were you seated in the dark like this?”

  “You going someplace?”

  “I asked first.”

  “We’re aiming for playground chat, are we? Here’s a question then, why didn’t you call me? Straightaway? Why did you just keep me out? I tried reaching you. Had to get the info from your madam.”

  “Stop calling my landlady that.”

  “It’s a joke, for Christ’s sake, learn to take them.”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  “You didn’t. You were just asking me what I thought of De Moro and his courting.”

  Alba stopped. She shook her head with a terse sigh.

  “Face facts now rather than later, Alba. There are sharks out there, right?”

  “At this minute it feels the only shark is you. Look at me! I’m drinking whiskey with you midmorning, screwing on the rug like a teenager, telling you I’m going to meet with the biggest agent in the business and you sully it all. I don’t know why I came.”

  “Because you know no one knows you like I do, that’s why. Because I’m not going to talk bullshit with you. I’m going to call you on stuff that you don’t want to see. Th
at’s why.”

  He stood now and walked to the kitchen, his naked body like marble in the gray light, his muscles rippling beneath the surface. She wished she didn’t find him so attractive. Her mind sent arrows toward his back, but her body knew it wouldn’t divert the impulse to feel him against her. Their postcoital arguments were born from that sliver of terror she felt for loving him too fast, too soon, too deep. It made her feel like she had edged out of her body and lost a part of herself inside him. Un petit mort, he’d called it one afternoon after making love, the French name for orgasm. She’d thought about it for days afterward, realizing that for her, each time she climaxed with him it felt like another part of her had been ignited and swallowed up. At what point would all of her be used up?

  He lit the back ring and set a pot of coffee upon the heat. She didn’t move.

  “So storm out like you always do,” he said, without looking at her, “or let’s talk like people who want the best for each other.”

  She slumped into the chair by the window. “How’s the composition?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one you’re going to convince the festival of new writing to showcase. Full orchestra.”

  He threw her a grin. “It’s a bit like you. Comes flying in like a storm, takes all of me, and then leaves. There are these waves of notes I wake up in the night with thrumming in my head. Then the silence. If I could make it coffee and lure it into comfort like I do you it would make me happy.”

  “Can I open the shutters?” she asked.

  “So all of Trastevere can see my naked body?”

  “There’s such a thing called clothes, you know.”

  “Really?” he said, sliding across the room to her. Alba watched him kneel down before her. He buried his face in her crotch. She pulled his head back by his hair.

  “Life goes on, Alba,” he said, his lips darkened as they always looked after making love. “That’s the biggest head fuck. The pulse, the verve, that unstoppable passion has to go someplace. All that love you didn’t share with your mother is bouncing around you like an electrical current and you’re scared to touch it because you think it might burn you, kill you even, but it won’t, and you’ll run to stay ahead of it but no one can, not really, not for long.”

  Alba dipped her head and tasted his mouth. She let his hands peel away her trousers. He wound his tongue deep inside her whilst the coffeepot spattered for no one.

  * * *

  “I hope you don’t mind sitting on the street,” Dante began, pulling out a chair for Alba to sit on. He moved to the other side of the table, his crisp pale blue suit luminous in the sunshine. “It’s a glorious day and I always think food tastes divine when the sun is shining—oh dear, now I sound like an Englishman who doesn’t see it often, no?”

  Alba smiled, wishing she felt less on the spot than she did.

  Dante sat down and removed his sunglasses, folding them with precise movements and placing them down upon the linen. “I’m so sorry about your mother. Mine passed away only a few years ago. She was elderly. A dragon in fact. But it aches all the same. Of course. I might carry on and say a whole list of clumsy condolences, but I think I’ll stop there.”

  “Thank you,” Alba answered, as the waiter swung in beside them and placed a basket of fresh bread and thin homemade grissini beside them. He filled her glass with a crisp Frascati and a flourish.

  “I’d suggest the carbonara,” Dante began, “it’s really one of the best places to have it.” Alba hadn’t been taken to a restaurant by a Roman who hadn’t insisted theirs was the best place to eat the city’s famed dish. Dante signaled to the waiter, who seemed to intuit his decision. This was his local haunt after all.

  Alba was glad for Dante’s ability to ease them through lunch, filling her glass before it got empty, sharing wondrous anecdotes of the some of the greats he had looked after over the years. The waiter arrived at regular intervals, strewing the table with fresh grilled vegetables and crisp salad, which Dante dressed as if he were no stranger to cooking. He ordered two coffees before she knew she fancied one and waited till the end, when her mind was warmed with wine and sublime food, to share his proposed schedule of concerts. She looked at the list. The words Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Verona, Palermo, Brussels were one after the other. And at the bottom, the two words that formed the name of the city she’d always dreamed of playing: New York. Her heart was a frill of trilling notes. She looked up trying to hide her astonishment and failing. Her hands were clammy with excitement and overwhelm.

  “Yes, Alba. You didn’t believe me when I said that your performance was the start of an incredible career, should you choose to work with me.”

  “These are suggestions?”

  “They are bookings.”

  She swallowed hard. The sudden clangs of the narrow Roman street around her did little to drown the whirring inside her.

  “The schedule begins next month, so you’ll have time to hone your repertoire. Of course, they are most interested in your handling of the Romantics, and I told them we’d stick to that program. There was a mention of Tchaikovsky too, that’s in Paris. It’s part of an emerging artists series. There are young graduates from all over the world attending.”

  Alba looked down at the list again not knowing how to contain her thrill.

  “To the start of a beautiful partnership, si?” Dante offered.

  “I would love nothing more,” Alba replied. Freedom from her grief was typed in black-and-white upon the sheet in front of her.

  The following months were like a riding a carousel at great speed, watching the world whirr about her in Technicolor splendor, shades of fairy-tale reds and yellows, the silvery shimmer of applause, the golden opulence of the concert halls all like smeared paint on a crazed artist’s palette. Her feet brushed the floor long enough to know it was still there but no more. At the center of the circling haze was the blissful silence of her practice mind, and deeper still, the molten core of performance, the moment when all the noise dissipated and Alba swam in the sensation of freedom and simplicity that her piano gifted her in return for hours seated by her side. Her days were solitary, filled with diligent practice and one good meal in the middle of the day, where Dante made sure she was well fed and cared for as he accompanied her on the tour. One evening in Vienna she woke with a start, which was not atypical after a performance and the celebratory meal afterward, where Dante encouraged her to liaise with the rich and powerful music scholars and bookers in town, something she’d grown more accustomed to, but still recoiled from the idea. After a few months she’d learned to mask her reserve with an impressive performance of relaxed ease, but the effort left its toll the next day.

  She reached for the phone and dialed Vittorio’s number. His voice was sleepy.

  “I just wanted to hear you,” she said.

  “Are you sure that’s all?” he asked. She could hear his smile.

  “No. But that will do for now.”

  “Mr. Manager scheduled this call or is it playtime?”

  “This is me ignoring you.”

  “Stick to concertos, you’re much better at it.”

  “I love you.” Her words hovered like a golden ball, her lips tingling.

  His reply was silent.

  “Vittorio?”

  “Yes?”

  Her swallow sounded loud over the phone, it was easier to focus on that rather than the crackle of self-consciousness creasing her body.

  “We’ll see you in Paris tomorrow afternoon, yes?” she asked, brushing off her uncertainty.

  “Of course.”

  She could hear his breathing down the line.

  “Last chance for you to admit that you asked them to have me conduct?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Vitto’, I only mentioned how amazing you are. If anyone had something to do with you being asked to be part of this new artists program, it’s Goldstein. He loves you. You don’t know that yet?”

  “I know you don�
�t want me to feel like you’re my sugar mamma.”

  She sighed a laugh. It was useless to try and persuade him any longer. Besides, perhaps being a sugar mamma wasn’t such a bad prospect. “Have you made peace with performing the Tchaikovsky at last? I don’t want you throwing any tantrums now,” she giggled.

  “I can’t wait to hold you,” he said, his voice weaving a luscious thread through her bones, sewing her vertebrae in light.

  * * *

  Paris seduced Alba in an instant, at least the little she was allowed to wander. Dante’s schedule at the opera house was grueling and saw the orchestra, her, and Vittorio inside the theater rehearsing for most of the three days ahead of the concerto.

  Vittorio tapped his baton. The violinists looked up. “May we go from here again please?” he said, flipping the huge pages of the score back to the opening measures.

  “Alba, let’s keep the resonance of the first time you played it.”

  He turned back to the orchestra before he registered her expression. He’d never given her a correction like that, especially not in front of all the others. The orchestra were also recent graduates from the academy in Paris. The fact that he and Alba were a couple was not lost on them, especially the first violinist who took it upon himself to comment on the first whiff of the lovers’ tiffs at any chance he could.

  Vittorio lifted his baton, as he swung down the orchestra’s brass burst with the opening melody of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1. The strings replied. Vittorio’s arms swung in large circular motions. Then a silence. Alba watched his upbeat and then her piano percussed the opening chords, sweeping up the keyboard, as the orchestra and piano swelled together.

  Vittorio threw his hands down. The musicians fell silent.

  “We can’t go over this again, Alba, there’s no time!”

  She took her hands off the keys.

  “Back in twenty minutes everyone—is that okay, Pierre?” Vittorio called out to the stage manager seated in the wings.