Teresa swept in. “Keep it easy, Bruno, you know what the doctor said the other day, si?” She placed a tray down loaded with boxes and small plastic medicine cups. Inside a few there was a collection of multicolored pills. The game show’s theme tune began calypso-ing through the stone room. She administered the pills and turned for the kitchen at the far end. “Lunch in a few minutes, yes?”
Bruno turned back to the television.
Alba grabbed the remote and switched it off.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to talk to you. Trying to say sorry for not having the courage to reach out earlier. Trying to say that I resent the fact you open your heart to a group of strangers at that victim group but freeze me out. You tell them that? That the one person who needed you most was abandoned?”
His face contorted into defiance. “I did everything to keep you here. Why? So I could give you a life to be proud of. You stop and think how it feels when people tell me about seeing you in the paper, about this and that and I wonder whether I’ll ever speak to you. I see fathers and their daughters, their grandchildren, and it rips me apart.” His expression clouded now.
“You could have called me.”
“A father should grovel to a daughter for attention?” He licked at his dry lips. “What kind of logic do you live by? You’re an artist, what would you know about that? Swanning around the continent. You don’t know real life.”
The word artist was slung like a weapon. Had he spoken to the painter who had immortalized his late wife upon his wall that way?
Teresa stepped in with a bowl of broth and pastina, a fresh roll, a hunk of cheese, and a small salad. “Here you are, Bruno, I’ll be preparing your bedroom now, si? After lunch you’ll take your nap.”
She left. The woman was a tornado. Alba had never seen a woman talk to her father like that. Some warped justice at last.
He tipped a small ramekin of Parmesan into his soup and gave it a swirl.
“I have no idea what you went through,” Alba said, at last, choosing not to take the bait, the hit, his cruel default to put her down.
“You don’t care.”
A familiar tightness gripped her middle. She noticed it without clinging on to the feeling.
“I was the child. You were the grown-up. Did you ever think of that?”
“I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“I need to.”
“You need to feel like you’re right.”
Alba took a breath. She willed her muscles to relax, finding a quiet inside the rage. “I’d like to feel like my father loves me.” She felt her voice become thin but refused to cave in to the feeling of drowning. “That’s all it comes down to. And bigger than that, I’d like to find a way to let myself love you too. Because this hate, this silence, has made me brittle. There’s so little time now.”
Bruno stopped swirling then. He looked at her. “You planning my funeral already?”
Alba shook her head. She didn’t move as he took a mouthful.
“I miss the man who told me stories before he thought he would be left to die in a cave.” Her face was streaming now. Droplets fell onto her trousers.
He couldn’t eat now. Ripples in the soup fell to stillness.
“The little girl I made those stories for left a long time ago,” he whispered now. “Was she ever there at all? There was a lot I didn’t teach her right.”
She could hear the crack in his voice and the tears he would never let fall.
“You sent me away.”
“It was your decision to go.”
No-man’s-land.
“I could have demanded you acknowledge my success. I preferred to shut you out.”
“You’ve done more than I could have ever dreamed of,” he added, “and not once did you let me share it. How do you think that felt?”
The words landed hard. His first admission of feeling something beyond rage opened up a sliver of space between them. She felt herself soften a little. “I never thought to think about how you felt. All I’ve known is that you’ve hated me for most of my life. You hated the fact I saw you at your weakest. You’ve never forgiven me for seeing you like that.”
Bruno nodded, deflated. She fought away a whisper of guilt for cracking open this old man.
“So you’ve said your piece,” he said at last. “Happy now? Go on running back to the city.”
“My life in Rome is finished.”
He looked at her. It wasn’t an expression of gratefulness but his diffidence looked tempered. “You look tired.”
“You look old.”
Bruno gave a half-hearted chuckle.
Alba watched him eat. His hands were shaky and sore, and she could see the gnarls of arthritis on his middle joints.
“I want to change,” she said.
“You’re too old to.”
“I was waiting for you to forgive me. To say sorry for everything you’d said and done to me. But I’m sick of doing that. I’m going to do it first.”
Bruno looked at her. “Just like that, after all this time? How?”
“No idea.”
Bruno sighed.
“Do we have to know?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
Alba stood up. “I’ll come again.”
Another islander shrug. Sardinian for do as you wish, or I couldn’t care less, or I care so much I don’t want to let on in case I’m ridiculed.
Alba bent down and kissed him on his cheek. The impulse caught both of them off guard. She looked down at her dad. She was her father’s daughter. They both knew it. And were both too stubborn to admit it.
She walked through the doorway back out to the hall toward the entrance door. Teresa came out of the downstairs bedroom, just as Alba’s eyes landed on a framed picture she hadn’t seen on her way in. It was a record sleeve. She was seated beside the Berlin Philharmonic’s piano during the live recording of a Schumann concerto. It had sold more copies than any classical album that year. She looked at herself, mid-run, her back long, poised, alert, her hands cupped and strong, about to race through the allegro. A fitting oscillation from the kidnapping documentation on the other side of the door; here was music, there was silence.
“He’s told me all about you, Alba,” Teresa began. “You’ll come again?”
“Yes.”
“Your brothers come but they never stay long. They don’t talk to him. I see him decline because of it. When you get to his age you need to be stimulated, be part of something. They’re just pushing him out.”
Alba let the words sink in.
“I’m speaking out of turn, I know. They’re paying me after all. But I’m here to care for your father and I know what he needs. I do what I can, but I don’t work here all day, of course.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet the famous artiste at last. I’ve never met a professional musician. There used to be lots of music here in town. Broke my heart when the local studio closed. There’s a call for it, just not the money for people to invest. Our kids all leave for England, the mainland. What are they supposed to do here? Wait for the season and work on the coast, yes, thank God for the hospital, that employs a lot of them, if they have the time and money to study, of course.”
“I haven’t been back in many years. A lot has changed, obviously.”
“I’m sure. We’re hardly the bustling Roma, no?” Teresa straightened. “I won’t keep you, of course. But do come again. I’m here every morning.”
“Grazie, Teresa.”
Alba stepped out into the heat of midday. The stones were blanched in the rays. Her eyes crunched up in defense. She slipped her sunglasses on and looked out toward the valley. There was no man left to punish. Where there was rancor was now an empty page.
The peculiar nothingness flew through her bones, followed by a lightness, until the weight of twenty years of fury raced out in tears. She rifled in her bag for a tissue, wondering why she hadn’t thought ahead
to bring some in the first place. A rumble of a car drew her attention. It rolled up toward the door and came to a stop. A woman stepped out, makeup plastering a mural across her face, her wrists heavy with bracelets and bangles and a gemstone sparkle across all fingers.
“Dio mio—Alba?!” she gasped.
The voice of Marcellino’s wife, Lucia, sharpened into focus. Alba didn’t recognize the gilt persona before her. Where was the young woman who had blushed at the wedding-party table, playing her demure role to perfection?
“Ciao,” Alba said, reaching for her hand, receiving two kisses that almost touched her cheek.
“Marcellino!” the woman cried. “Your sister!”
Marcellino now rose into view, stepping out of the driver’s seat, slamming his door with a tired swing, loosening his tie. His girth had expanded with wealth and wine, and his skin was tired, someone who smoked too much, the golden sheen of youth now gone. He shifted his gaze at first, someone adept at carrying secrets but not without effort. He walked over to Alba, frowning in surprise.
“I came to see Babbo,” Alba said, as he kissed her on each cheek.
The couple’s faces unfurled into confused smiles.
“Why did no one tell me anything?” Alba asked, hearing a wisp of anger hiss out on her breath.
“It wasn’t serious. He’s fine. The doctors said a ministroke at his age is pretty common. Not life-threatening,” Marcellino replied. “You weren’t exactly on speaking terms. Didn’t think you wanted to know.”
“I’m here now.”
“How long are you staying?” Lucia pouted.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Your brother and I are pretty exhausted with all the ferrying. Hospitals, doctors, appointments. We do our best.”
Alba shook her head in disbelief. “I just wish you would have told me sooner.”
“You’re busy, Alba, playing to people all over the world. What would you have done?” He shifted. “Is that why you came back now?”
Alba felt her body tighten. She wasn’t about to explain what had brought her here any more than he was about to let go of the older brother’s throne.
“You come every day?” Alba asked, deflecting the rising tempers.
“I’m running all three officine now. The one in town and the two in the next region. I travel two hours back and forth every day to the center of the island and back. I pay for the care. That’s all that sorry bastard is getting from me. Treated me like shit all these years.”
Alba looked into his eyes. “I know the feeling.”
Marcellino shook his head. He looked like he needed an argument but didn’t want to give Alba the satisfaction.
“I work in Sassari at the lab,” Lucia added. “Our schedules are heavy. It’s been brutal.”
They stood in the hot silence for a moment.
“It’s a shock,” Alba said, at last, “that’s all.” Her guard drifted away like a fallen veil. “I’ll be back another day. Perhaps I can help? With money of course, but perhaps other ways?”
Marcellino and his wife shot a glance to each other.
“I’ll call later. When it’s cooler. When I’m cooler,” she added.
Marcellino gave a terse nod. He left for inside. His wife followed, then turned back to Alba. “We’ve given that man everything, you know,” she began, a statement that Alba knew in all probability reflected half of the truth, “and when his friends come round, you know who he boasts about? The piano girl. You have any idea what that does to your brothers? They’ve sweated their lives for him, chasing after his approval, but you? Abandon the family, do what you like, when you like, cut everyone out, and still, the star. It’s hurt me, watching Marcellino suffer that.”
Alba had no reply. A younger Alba would have settled the matter right then and there, with hands, perhaps. This Alba stood tall and calm: unbroken but pared down to the core.
34
Rhapsody
a work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, color, and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations.
Alba didn’t drive straight back to Elena’s house. She wove farther uphill to the church of Monserrato instead, as if the circular view of the plains surrounding Ozieri might lend her an altered perspective on the disorienting visit. By the minute chapel perched at its peak, there was indeed more air than down below, and the lunchtime breeze wove across the large stones of its courtyard surround. When the sun beat down harder, the whimsy of seeking out a higher view left her with nothing but the feeling of being the archetypal artist still grappling with a yearning for poetic justice. In the near distance, a herd of sheep with metal bells around their necks clanged their lunchtime symphony, random rhythms she’d forgotten. Alba stopped by her car just before getting back inside. She tuned in to the welcoming sound, a Sardinian chorus of sorts, rugged, unselfconscious, music born of practicality, echoing across the stillness of the afternoon, bouncing off the crags and boulders of her childhood countryside. The flock’s tinny treble resonated. The modesty was compelling, and it was what had lain at the heart of her attraction to music in the first place: Simplicity was what Alba craved.
A ball of grief hardened in her chest. Just beyond this hill was the shadow she’d been fighting for so very long. She was ready to hang up her gloves.
Alba caught the delicatessen just as the owner was hurrying to close for lunch. She took her few etti of sliced meats, a hunk of cheese, a bulb of fennel, and a couple of bread rolls to the pineta and sat in her and Raffaele’s cool spot to eat, easing herself toward a thoughtless state, listening to the delicate taps of the needled branches overhead.
When she stepped into Elena’s house it was already early afternoon. The first sound she heard was her piano, a tentative tune being chased with a new pianist’s hands. She followed the song to find a young girl upon the stool, Elena beside her sipping a coffee, offering gentle hints as the girl stumbled through a central section. It was a Burgmüller study, Alba recognized it at once, an arabesque, she had played it herself early on in their lessons. She’d loved that piece, the A minor key lent a morose urgency; a drama that she’d locked in to from the first phrase Elena had played her. This girl had a muscular touch, a little tentative in places, but there was a bounce to her rhythmical understanding that made Alba feel like she was watching an old piece of footage of a life she’d known.
Now the girl shook the hair off her shoulders, its thick waves twirled down her back in defiant angles. Alba decided to accept this entire day would be a wade through the past. She rejected the impulse to sort and categorize, instead, at last welcomed the sensation as if she’d tipped an entire case of old photos onto the floor and sat at its center witnessing the sensory onslaught.
Elena looked up and saw Alba watching. She smiled and with a silent hand, motioned for her to come inside. Alba sat down upon the settee beside the piano. The girl stopped and looked at her teacher, then the stranger. Her eyes were an unusual shade of brown, vivid as the reddish bark of the cork tree’s trunk when they were stripped of their bark. It wasn’t the color that was compelling so much as the spark of intelligence within them. This child was afraid of nothing, it would appear, a flash of the girl shooting an arrow with precision pierced Alba’s imagination; she had the outside about her, the feral strength of mythical creatures. Either that, or the heat and grief of the morning had melted Alba’s brain at last.
“Good afternoon, Alba,” Elena began, “do let me introduce you to a very special young lady. This is Chiara.” Elena nodded toward her student, who twisted toward Alba and flashed her a smile. She shook her hand. Alba was impressed with the confidence of her grasp.
“Nice to meet you, Chiara. You’re playing one of the first pieces I learned.”
“Really?” Chiara answered. “Did you keep messing up this middle bit too?”
“Of course!” Alba replied
. “Sometimes I think that’s why he put it there. To trip up students, see if they had the gumption to keep at it. The hardest things are usually worth it in the end.”
“You sound like my dad,” Chiara replied.
“Those are the words of a very famous concert pianist, Chiara,” Elena corrected, her voice golden with pride.
“Who?”
Elena gestured to Alba. “This one. My best pupil.” She glanced toward Chiara. “So far.”
Chiara grew a little taller. “Do you get to play for lots of people?” she asked, her voice now dipped into a youthful naivety at odds with the verve of her physical presence, which bore a confidence beyond her years.
“I do,” Alba replied. “It’s a wonderful job. Hard. But wonderful.”
“I want to do that when I grow up. Papà says I have to do well at school first.”
“Yes, because she talks too much in class and gets in trouble every day,” the voice of another girl chimed in from the other side of the room. Alba hadn’t noticed the second girl, who didn’t look up from her coloring book as she spoke, fingers searching over the tub of pencils for her next color.
“Now now, you know my rule on bickering,” Elena interrupted. The young artist looked up from her book at the sound of her voice, her cheeks smeared with dirt, her hair tugged into a ponytail that looked like it had been at the center of her head once and now wilted across at an angle. Wisps of hair tweaked out of its grasp, fairer and thinner than what Alba presumed must have been her sister’s.
“That’s enough for today, Signorine, go on out and see if Papà needs some more help, yes? And take the jug of cold water to him from the fridge, si?”
“Did you make sospiri, Signora Elias?” the small one piped, just before Chiara elbowed her into silence.
“Of course I did. My best pupils always get my finest. Wash your hands first though, Donatella.”
The girls disappeared into the kitchen. When Elena looked at Alba, her teacher’s eyes were dancing. If she didn’t know better Alba might have thought she was plotting.
A Roman Rhapsody Page 39
