A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten,” he said.

  It wasn’t the kind of conversation starter that appealed to Alba. Misha was behaving like a boyfriend, and the idea felt contrived. They strolled in silence for a little while, uphill.

  “Are we headed to the little kiosk at the top of the hill, Misha?”

  “I think it’s the only place I know where you can breathe in Rome at this time of day.”

  They fell into step. She allowed his hand to wrap around hers, his fingers strong, comforting.

  They sipped Frascati under the trees at a metal table for two. After their plate of homemade ravioli drizzled with sage-infused butter Alba asked for two espressos.

  “You are absolutely gorgeous, Misha. I’d love to trap you in my apartment and never let you out.”

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not. But I need to tell you that how I feel and what I need are often polar opposites. It’s something I’ve learned to live with.”

  Misha scooped the last dregs of his coffee. “So now you’re going to tell me that you’re too old for me, that I need someone younger, that you feel guilty for following your instincts.”

  Alba felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention.

  “I feel no guilt. Why is there the assumption that a woman my age must have shame attached to sex? That idea is absurd to me. Especially from someone so young. I thought society had moved on from this.”

  “You’re twisting my words.”

  “No, Misha. We had a momentous night. But I’m not looking to share my life. I’ve tried it once, and I know where it leads.”

  Misha undid another button of his shirt. He signaled for the waiter to bring the bill. “Can we walk and talk? I’m feeling like an idiot seated here.”

  His resistance to approaching the conversation with calm made her tunnel through.

  “This is what I fear. I’ve been in love with musicians. It’s a slow torture. For both involved.”

  “Now you do sound your age. Bitterness doesn’t become you.”

  Alba took a breath. “I know what I want and what I need. And I have a sense it’s not what you do.”

  He stood up. She didn’t move.

  “I’ve embarrassed you, Misha.”

  “Actually, you’re breaking my heart.”

  Alba stood up. Misha looked away, aware of the diners around him now. He leaned on the back of the chair and dropped his voice.

  “I feel like you’ve brought me here so I won’t make a scene.”

  “You invited me, Misha.”

  The waiter cut through with a dish of chocolate thins and the bill. Alba put down the money before Misha could beat her to it.

  “I invited you—let me get this,” he said.

  “Let’s walk,” she said, leaving the table.

  He followed and paused by the kiosk window where a crowd had gathered lining up for fresh-squeezed juices. They staggered downhill back toward Flaminio.

  “I’m sorry I lost my cool,” he said.

  “I need to be brutally honest with you and myself. That’s the cold truth.”

  “There’s nothing cold about what’s happening between us, Alba, and you know it.”

  She drew to a stop. He walked a few paces ahead and then turned back.

  “I won’t do this, Misha. These pulls and tugs. We barely know each other and already our conversation is unraveling.”

  “What do you expect, Alba? For me to run away with my little boy tail between my legs? You can be honest about your feelings, and so can I!”

  Alba nodded, her jaw tightening.

  “You want honesty?” he asked, his voice rising. “I think I’ve loved you for longer than I care to admit. I don’t want to lie down and let you walk away without a fight, no.” His face hardened. Alba witnessed her feelings rise high in her chest, followed by a swift coolness. Like a parachute in reverse, Alba was being pulled high above from her body, sucked up on the wind, observing herself from afar, a speck on the ground as her view became ever more distant, Rome’s giant pines now little bushes under the swirling air beneath her feet, the deafening silence of the cloudless sky suffocating her.

  “Say something, Alba! Say you don’t have feelings for me, you’re scared. I’m scared too but I know we have the kind of connection that only happens once in a lifetime.”

  Alba loathed these ultimatums, this idea of people having one chance at something sublime. She willed her breath to deepen. “I want the world for you, Misha, and I don’t want to share mine. I don’t want to qualify my decision, my reasons. I don’t want to be held to account. I’m acknowledging our fierce connection, of course I am. I felt it the moment you stepped into that sunbathed room at Santa Cecilia, it scorched through me from your first note. I feel I understand you and that you understand me. These things never die.”

  He puffed out a sigh.

  “I’m saying we are not obliged to act on it. But we did. And it was mind-blowing. And I choose not to continue. For both our sakes.”

  Misha ran a frustrated hand through his hair. She knew the feel of it on her face, on her stomach, between her thighs. The sensations returned from another time and place.

  “Why stunt us before we even know each other?” he spat.

  “Why not accept that I don’t want what I think you need?”

  “That’s it? You call the shots and your lovers obey?”

  He wasn’t the first stubborn male to diminish and ridicule her point of view, but she refused to take the bait. “Misha, let’s be gentle with each other.”

  He bit his lip. “I’m feeling so many different things right now I can’t even begin to explain which is hurting the most.”

  “I am too.”

  “You’re standing there like marble, Alba, watching me disintegrate like a fucking idiot.”

  “I’m asking you not to misconstrue my honesty for cruelty. It cheapens us both.”

  He shook his head. His tears fought over the edge of his lids now. He wiped them away.

  “You know what’s the most fucked-up thing about this? I feel like you’re the one person I’d ever want to cry in front of like this. You’re being a cold bitch but I don’t want to be anywhere but here. Maybe it’s for the best, you’re screwing with my head and we’re not even real yet.” He sighed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Shit!”

  Alba held the space. Misha took a sharp intake of breath. “So what, I say goodbye now? Storm off like a moody teenager, is that what you’re expecting?”

  “I’m expecting nothing.”

  He gave another short, sharp sigh. It sounded bitter. If she didn’t know it before, it was clear her decision was the right one.

  He looked at her, his eyes flashing with anger. Then he turned. She watched him storm downhill until his form was swallowed up into the crowd around Flaminio station, his hurt enveloped by the noise of the shoppers haggling over the flea market stalls and the hordes of tourists swarming toward Piazza del Popolo.

  28

  Con slancio

  with enthusiasm. This can also translate to “dash,” “leap,” “burst,” and “abandon,” directing the musician to play in this manner.

  Francesco Maschiavelli’s villa lay on the southern outskirts of Rome. A black Alfa Romeo picked Alba up, on his insistence. She’d sat in the back seat, replaying her exchange with Misha, watching the figurines act out their scene, flattened paper cutouts that fell away, tumbling like a house of cards. The driveway up to the villa was long, flanked by flowering oleander bushes splattered with fuchsia, white and pale pink blooms. The driver pulled up in front of a porch that stretched the front of the cream stone two-story home, now golden in the early evening light. Bougainvillea crept up the arched walkway, paper blossoms folded in translucent pastel shades, punctuated by Roman statues in marble, twisting in contorted poses to best display their musculature. A large, low terra-cotta pot with a tumble of succulents stood beside the door, beneath a wall-m
ounted marble fountain that trickled a delicate spray over a dancing nymph; a hedonist’s hideout. Florin appeared at the door, waving his arm as if welcoming a long-lost relative. As Alba stepped out of the door he flew to her side and kissed her on each cheek.

  “Benvenuta, Maestra! We’re so happy to have you,” he gushed, gesturing for her to come up the steps and through the thick wooden door.

  It took a moment for her to adjust to the dark inside. The corridor was lined with paintings and Florin led her straight out to the rear terrace, a large wooden table dominating the space, laid with linen, a huge vase at its center filled with purple-blue hydrangeas, cream roses, and a delicate spray of bougainvillea. Francesco appeared at the far end from another door, wearing what looked like a light denim poncho, blue silk scarf tied around his neck.

  “Darling! This is wonderful. Florin, come along, give Maestra my best!” Florin left the terrace and Armand appeared a moment later with a tray. A bottle of prosecco leaned at an angle inside an ornate silver ice bucket, beside it a bowl of large green olives, a glass filled with delicate hand-twisted grissini, a board of thin sliced pecorino, and a plate of tiny crisped bread topped with ricotta, minute twirls of anchovies dotted with capers and a grind of pepper. Alba’s mouth watered.

  “Grazie, now leave us awhile, boys,” Francesco said with a wave of his hand. The men retreated.

  Francesco lifted the bottle of prosecco out of the silver bucket and poured them each a glass. “What a delight to have you here, Maestra.”

  “Alba, please.”

  “I’ve never met a Sardinian with a name like that.”

  “Me neither,” she replied, taking a sip. “I was born at sunrise. I blame the post-birth hormones, or some latent act of rebellion on my mother’s part. In every other respect she was as traditional as they come.”

  “You ought to have been named after a saint like everyone else.”

  They laughed. Francesco nodded as if the information revealed the answer of a long calculation.

  “I’ve spent several days at the conservatorio, as you know,” he began, smoothing his thinning hair with a deliberate hand. “It’s been the most difficult few days. Casting is a horror. I think I had expected to find young Albas chomping at the bit.”

  “And instead?”

  “Instead, I found them lacking the intensity required for the part. Some had an inkling but quite the wrong look, others appeared to be just as I pictured the part but their playing lacked ferocity. I don’t want to make a story about a butterfly. I want a lioness to lead this project. I want to make something different from anything I’ve done before. I’m even thinking to make it without dialogue, or at least pared down to the skeleton of words. I want this picture to have a French sensibility and an Italian rendering of beauty in all its devastating forms.”

  Alba took another sip and reached for an anchovy crostini, the saltiness a perfect match to the dry sparkle of the prosecco.

  “In short, Alba, I want you.”

  Alba swallowed just before the contents of her mouth spluttered out in shock.

  He looked at her square. She threw her head back with a throaty laugh.

  “Exactly!” he cried. “I want abandon, a woman with life, who takes her music seriously, passionately, but can laugh without a care.”

  “Francesco, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He filled her glass. “It’s the smartest thing I’ve ever said.”

  “Getting me drunk is not going to convince me of anything other than you’re teasing me.”

  Francesco’s face relaxed into a studied thoughtfulness. Alba wondered if this was the face he’d pull when having portraits taken for newspaper articles.

  “Trouble is, Alba, I’m not. It came to me like a bolt, how all my best ideas arrive, from the cosmos, darting across space and time and I follow like the hungry disciple I am. Maestra, I’m asking you to be my star.”

  Alba shook her head. Noticing his expression, she straightened. The man was serious.

  “Francesco, I’m so touched, truly, but I don’t know the first thing of your world. It would be like me asking you to play a concerto.”

  “I’m not asking you to perform anything other than what you do. I’ve looked through my script and realized it’s an abomination. I’ve written a fairy-tale version of you, in essence. I don’t want a young girl doing a brutal impersonation. I want the real thing. A grown woman. A woman who knows herself and is not scared of the fact. Who doesn’t need to fit in, or prove herself, is not lost in vanity, or the desire to be desired, does not label herself by anyone’s standards but her own. And above all this, chases only the compulsion to lose herself in music, follow it, unpick it, lay it out for others to understand and feel things we all scarcely allow ourselves to do in real life. She is music—the only universal truth that exists.”

  The words hit her like a dart. The sincerity with which he spoke lacked posturing, theatrical swagger, his tone honest, a melody with the deceptive simplicity of a Ravel before the orchestra swells.

  “I think you love music as much as I,” she answered, feeling a complex complicity strike between them like a splinter of electricity.

  “I’m tired of doing what is expected of me, Alba, or what I’ve come to expect from myself,” he confided, “and I wonder if we haven’t met, by some delectable twist of fate because, perhaps, you are too?”

  A delicate fringe of lyricism gilt his words. For a moment she second-guessed his truth. But the words hit home. It was one of the first thoughts she’d had after the Rachmaninoff night. It was what had propelled her to pull away from Misha with the same power as she’d raced toward him. The prospect of doing something so improbable did seem exciting for a flash. Perhaps she’d drunk too fast.

  “You’re wondering whether I’m insane. Perhaps I am too? But this is how I see it,” he offered. “We couch the story on your terms. I want this to be about a pianist’s process, as if we’ve opened the door into a pianist’s private world. I want to give my audience a sensation of being inside a woman’s inner musical world, not just the bravado of performance but the arduous practice, the inner barriers to overcome in order to express what the composer requires.”

  Composer. The word made Vittorio crash into her mind. His mesmerizing score filled her. “Francesco, it sounds extraordinary. But I am not an actress.”

  “Exactly. I’m not interested in performance. This will almost be a documentary of sorts, with a poetic lens. It’s genius. It’s the perfect way to allow your fans to see more than you at the piano.”

  “Why would I want that?”

  He smiled, unhurried. “Because you’re a trailblazer, Maestra Fresu. We have a chance to bring your music not just to the people who can afford the concerts, but to those who don’t know that music even exists. We can bring the celestial to the real people of Italy. To the world. It’s time. We’ve stayed in our artistic bubble too long.”

  Florin popped his head around the door leading to the terrace. Francesco looked up. “Seafood, I think,” he said. Florin nodded and disappeared once again.

  “You don’t need to agree this moment, Alba, but at least tell me you’ll consider it. We could make something so very beautiful.”

  They clinked to that, Alba’s head fizzy with prosecco and the prospect of even considering following this maestro’s lead. Armand, Florin, and several other young men performed a miraculous dance of gastronomy soon after, laying down plates of thin slices of sea bass carpaccio followed by charred langoustines and then a twist of linguini with the most delicious lobster sauce Alba had ever eaten. This was trumped by a bowl of steamed clams and mussels dripping with garlic, parsley, and wine-infused juices and a crisp salad of leaves and tomatoes grown, Florin announced with pride, in their vegetable garden beyond the terrace, which he promised to offer a tour of after the meal. Armand filled their glasses for the last time.

  “Francesco, is this what you do for everyone you wish to work with?”


  “This is what I do for those I adore,” he replied, wiping his mouth with the linen napkin and standing up. “We’ll take coffee and liqueur in the other room, boys, si?”

  He signaled for Alba to follow along the length of the terrace, past his fruit trees dotted throughout the large garden and into a powder pink walled room. In the center stood an oval Victorian settee, with padded velvet seating all around. On either side, large antique sideboards were crowded with black-and-white signed framed photographs. Chaplin leaned on his stick with a personal message to Francesco, beside Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, every opera singer Alba admired, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and almost every icon imaginable had their image and message preserved for all to see. Alba was a child in a candy shop.

  “Wonderful people, all of them,” Francesco began. “I am so very lucky. I’ve worked with true artists. I’m drawn to them. They are drawn to speak our truths. This is beauty. As Keats, the darling little English man, said when he came to our beautiful city to die, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ ”

  Alba looked over to him with a smile.

  Armand entered with a tray of fresh coffee, a plate of biscotti, and two glasses.

  “Vin santo, yes?” Francesco asked with a grin. “To bless our holy plans.”

  He lifted a glass for her and they clinked. His grand piano had pride of place in the window. “She’s a beauty,” Alba said.

  “I’m not going to ask you to play,” he said, “I’ve already put you on the spot enough for one night.”

  Alba felt the sweet dessert wine warm her cheeks. She welcomed the spin, the surprising conversation, being in the proximity of a living legend and having the opportunity of working with him, it was a heady mix. She lifted the lid, wound the stool up a little, touched the keys. It was an antique, restored well with carved swirling ornate legs. Vittorio’s music whispered inside. Her fingers wandered up the keyboard from the center. As they fell deep into the notes, the wash of sounds from outside his room rippled through her, those melancholic flecks she’d heard, the push and pull of the left hand in counterpoint to the lyricism of the melodic line rushed through her. It was as if she’d already played it. She waded deeper into that memory. She knew this tune; Vittorio had painted their love affair with notes. There was the familiarity, the pain, the elation, the brutal beauty of their love beneath her fingers, new and revisited, a grief and celebration. It was fire and air and space and loss in an incessant twisting turn of runs, luminous chords, angelic tones, earthed bass.