The Last Concerto. Sara Alexander
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Fantasie
1 a free composition structured according to the composer’s fancy
2 a medley of familiar themes with variations and interludes
The following week, just as Alba was starting to speed up her run towards Signora Elias, her mother handed her a crumpled piece of paper. On it was a detailed list of vegetables she wanted Alba to buy at the market. Alba looked up at her mother.
‘Don’t just stand there. Get on down before it gets too hot. You can clean the artichokes and cut the potatoes. Get a can of olives from the shop and see at the end of the list I’ve added a few strips of pancetta. I’ll make pasta al coccodrillo for a treat, I know how much your brothers love that. They’ll be hungry after the morning at the officina.’
Giovanna’s words tumbled out in one blast of breath. Alba’s stomach growled. She wanted to think it was because she’d only eaten half a roll with her milk and coffee. Signora Elias was the highlight of her week. Her mother had just robbed her of it.
When they both returned home, Giovanna took her frustration out on the unsuspecting white-skinned onion she massacred into tiny pieces. Next, she launched an attack on the slices of pancetta, thwacked open the lids of passata from their glass jars, and ripped into the can of drained black olives that turned into little discs in a brusque breath or two. Alba was instructed to chop the slab of semi-soft fontina cheese into tiny cubes whilst her mother whooshed a pan with warmed olive oil and the softening onions. Pancetta was thrown in soon after, and the smell in their galley kitchen would have filled it with the promise of a comforting lunch if it wasn’t for Giovanna banging every pan on the range. Alba knew better than to ask what the matter was. Instead she eased her knife down through the cheese, taking her time so that she wouldn’t have to lay the table yet. Each blade slice, Alba half expected her mother to tell her how Signora Elias was that day, what she’d played, if it had been a swirling piece like the others. No descriptions of her morning were offered, but the way Giovanna threw a fist of salt into the boiling water of a deep stockpot for pasta made Alba worry she’d been fired for her daughter’s impoliteness after all.
Alba’s brothers returned soon after to bellows from their mother to scrub their hands. Alba carried the huge pot of pasta to the table. The fontina cheese had melted over all the pennette mixed in with the red pancetta sauce and olives. As she scooped the spoon down towards the base and up onto one of her brother’s bowls, strands of fontina oozed off it.
‘Coccodrillo, Ma?’ her elder brother, Marcellino, yelled from the other end of the table. He reached out a hungry arm for his bowl. He had entered his teenage years in earnest and Giovanna moaned about having to cook almost two kilos of pasta for their family these days. His thick black hair was like his father’s, and his crooked smile, and the way his eyes twinkled with unspoken mischief. His voice was deep and broad and he held the weight of an heir upon his wide shoulders with pride. Beside him sat their younger brother, Salvatore, who had their mother’s moon-shaped face and never fought to step out of his elder brother’s shadow. Salvatore had his grandfather’s patter and a speed of speech and reaction to match Marcellino. Neither measured the volume of their voices.
‘It’s a treat for you all today!’ her mother cried from the kitchen.
When all the bowls were full and Giovanna and Bruno took their places, silence replaced the gaggle of voices. The boys were sent out to play after lunch whilst Alba helped clear the table. Her father took his time to peel an early peach and chop it into tiny cubes, which dropped into his tumbler. When it was almost full, he reached for a slice of melon and did the same. Then he poured wine over the fruit-filled glass and began to swirl the mixture, pressing the soft fruit down with a gentle spoon until it was submerged. He scooped up his first spoon of wine-infused fruit. The smell made Alba’s mouth water. She found herself, as always, hanging to her place waiting for him to cast her a story, share a secret. Since his return home, none came. He was in his faraway place that Alba was instructed to never interrupt.
‘Let your father eat his macedonia in peace, Alba, and finish up inside.’
Alba followed her mother’s instructions. Her parents’ voices became muffled all of a sudden. It made her tune in through the doorway; when adults whispered there was always information that would be better known than not.
‘And Signora Elias wants Alba to go every day to do this?’ she heard her father say.
‘Yes. I don’t know why. She has a car. She likes to walk into town every day. But she says it would be a big help. And the extra money wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Get Alba out of the house doing something too.’
Her father harrumphed.
‘So shall I tell her yes, Bruno?’
‘Is this some kind of charity bone for us poor down in town, Giovanna? You be sure that Alba works for every one of those lire, you hear me? We’re workers not takers, you hear me?’
Alba heard her father’s feet climb up the stairs for his siesta.
Giovanna didn’t mention anything more of that conversation for several days. At last, over breakfast one morning, Giovanna looked up from her little coffee cup, which she had been stirring without stopping for several minutes. Alba couldn’t remember if she’d even put sugar in it yet.
‘Signora Elias would like you to do a job for her over the summer, Alba.’
Alba looked up. The bit of bread she’d dipped into her hot milk and coffee split from the roll and fell into her deep tin cup with a plop.
‘You will collect her morning rolls from the panificio and newspaper from the tabacchi each day. She wants you at her house by seven and not a minute later.’
Alba blinked. The woman who forbade her to go with her was now sending her to that house on daily visits. It was better than any Christmas.
‘Well, say something, child. ‘Thank you for the job. Yes, Mamma I’ll do that.’ Anything!’
Alba nodded.
‘I’ll take that as agreement to do the best job you can. Now, you and I both know that the poor lady is taking pity on me. Everyone knows what I’ve been through. Now my only daughter, the girl who is going to look after me in old age, who will make me a grandmother, doesn’t speak? That’s not how daughters are to behave. From the boys I’d understand. They need their father. But you? A shadow.’
The tumble of words were hot, like the boiling water that wheezed through the packed coffee grounds of their morning pot. Alba held onto the hope that her own silence would be like lifting that screeching pot off the gas ring.
Her mother stood up. ‘You start tomorrow.’
Alba jumped out of her bed the next day, prepared the coffee pot for her mother, set out the cups for all the family, and ran out of the door for the panificio, across the cobbled street that ran in front of their narrow four-room house, clustered in the damp shade between a dozen others behind the town’s square. Down the viccoli, washing draped in waves of boiled white flags of surrender across the house fronts. After a few hairpin turns along stony streets, meant for donkeys and small humans, not noisy cars, she reached the main road, which funnelled around their town, snaking out towards the hills that encircled the valley. The baker gave her a milk roll on the house and filled a small thick brown paper bag with a slice of oil bread and two fresh rolls. At the tabacchi, the owner, Liseddu, handed her a copy of La Nuova Sardegna over the counter, and then told her, with a wink, that she could have a stick of liquorice for herself. With her load underarm, she swung up to Signora Elias feeling like the plains opening up below were a promise. The cathedral steeple shone in the morning light, its golden tip gleaming at the centre of town. The huddles of houses, narrow town homes, clustered together straining for height, top floors encased with columned terraces, now gave way to firs and pines as she climbed towards the pineta, the pine forests of the periphery, the cool sought by young or illicit lovers, shadows protecting their secrets, their desires permissible