The Last Concerto. Sara Alexander

you know when?’

      ‘Think so?’

      They looked at each other. Alba moved her face towards his. Raffaele sneezed, splattering his T-shirt. A speck of saliva flecked Alba’s wrist.

      ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, wiping his arm across his face.

      He took a breath and Alba knew he was about to launch into a punctuation-free sentence. She stopped him with her lips. He didn’t move. After a moment, their heads switched incline. The kiss was stilted and angular. It dissolved the hissing red in her ears. She twisted out of her jeans and he out of his. She felt his penis harden on her thigh. It felt like two friends marking their hypothesis ahead of a scientific experiment. He eased himself inside Alba. They stopped for a moment.

      ‘Is it awful? Does it feel weird?’ he stammered. ‘Does it hurt? I’ll stop if it’s hurting.’

      ‘Stop talking.’

      An expression streaked his long face. Alba reached up with her hands. ‘I’m not saying it’s not nice. Try moving.’

      He did, slowly at first, tentative whispers in his hips, reluctant, stiff. His breath quickened. His eyes closed. He looked like he was listening to a far-off call, a pianissimo section. Alba thought about the ferocity of a demanding measure of Liszt, her hands defiant, full of longing. But as her friend became urgent on top of her, it was like watching him through glass. The sounds and feelings muted, an echo reaching her, diluted and distorted. He pulled out. His semen spilled in spurts across the needled floor.

      It was over.

      They lay upon their backs gazing up at the pines above them, crisscrossing lines of green against the pure blue.

      ‘I don’t know how I’m feeling, Alba.’

      Their silence creased. The cicadas raised their cry. Congratulatory or mocking, Alba couldn’t tell.

      ‘I don’t know if I want to do that again,’ he said.

      ‘Me neither.’

      Alba propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at her friend’s face. ‘Your face looks awful.’

      ‘The idiot staring at me saved me. That’s all I care about.’

      His narrow chest rose and fell as his breath deepened towards normal.

      Alba smiled. Her headache had gone at last. ‘I love you.’

      He smiled with relief. ‘No one I would have liked to get all that out of the way with other than you. It’s a minty freedom.’

      Her face spread into a grin. ‘One try at sex and you speak poems, not algorithms.’

      ‘No,’ he replied, his voice dipped in a sudden seriousness. ‘Love does that.’

      Alba laughed and fell onto her back. She reached her hand for his.

      When they returned to their spot the next day, Raffaele broke down whilst revealing his love for his neighbour Claudio. Alba held her weeping friend as he described wanting to suffocate his desires by having sex with her. Her strong fingers wrapped around his shuddering arms as sobs spilled from him. Their foreheads touched. His tears streaked her cheeks. His secret was out and safe. Would she ever be able to say the same?

5

       Accelerando, accel.

      accelerating; gradually increasing the tempo

      At last, the week from hell reached its welcome end. Both daughter and parents stood firm, retreating into stubborn silences. Alba was accompanied to school by Marcellino, and returned flanked by Salvatore, both instructed not to let her out of their sight. The notes she’d written to Signora Elias in her mind would never reach her. Raffaele tried to talk with her but each time one or other of her brothers would intervene, as instructed. Alba ignored her mother at her own peril, because if she’d paid more attention, she may have noticed Raffaele’s father at the house more often. She might have thought that Raffaele’s mother coming round was odd. But she didn’t. She baked the papassini as her mother asked. She sliced melon thin upon a plate. She poured the coffee when asked and attended to all her usual duties, trying to mask her bitterness so as not to give them the satisfaction of seeing how much they hurt her. She returned from school that Friday to find her mother leaning over her father with a needle in one hand and a red thread hanging from it. She mimed stitching her father’s eye, as if joining both eyelids together. The thread lifted through her father’s thick eyelashes several times. He had another sty. This was the tried and tested remedy.

      ‘Good, you’re back. Your father has come home to talk to you before your brothers get home. Sit down.’

      It was the first time Giovanna had looked excited about anything other than Marcellino’s wedding, or directed anything to her, for that matter.

      Alba’s suspicion peaked.

      ‘Your father and I have been talking.’

      Bruno patted her mother’s hand. They smiled at each other. Their loving moment should have filled Alba with relief. Had they decided to let her work for Signora Elias again? Had they mistaken her sullen quiet for obedience? Something stirred in her stomach.

      ‘I’ve been asked to give permission for you to marry,’ Bruno said, taking over the exposition of wonderful news.

      Alba sat motionless.

      ‘Say something,’ Bruno murmured. ‘A smile would be a good start.’

      ‘By who?’ Alba blurted, her cheeks creasing, making the bruises from the fight still ache.

      ‘Who?’ Bruno asked, perplexed. ‘How many are you leading on at once?’

      ‘It’s perfectly normal to be nervous!’ Giovanna piped up. ‘I was a wreck when your father asked me. It’s what girls do. It’s a big step. You’re young, I know. This week has been difficult, yes. But having children young is better. And I will help of course with the children so you can keep up your job at the officina. All the modern girls do that now. You don’t have to stay at home like I did. You can have it all, Alba. Freedom! And such a good family. I’m going to cry.’

      Alba watched as her mother lived her proposal on her behalf. All the tears she ought to be shedding, all the excitement for a life revolved around work at the officina and babies. A delightful seesaw of obligations to guarantee fulfilment.

      ‘I said yes, of course,’ Bruno added, trying to steer the conversation back.

      Alba looked at her father. Whose betrayal was worse? Hers for sneaking out of their sight under the guise of aiding an old lady or theirs for coordinating the rest of her life? She couldn’t protest because she was too guilty. She couldn’t accept because the thought was absurd. Why had her friend done this to her? He was saving them both from the fate of small-town living, but had he not stopped to think that their fate was inscribed in the stone streets of the very place they needed to career away from? Was his love for Claudio so deep that he would do something as stupid as this? Love was not blind, thought Alba. It was sheer self-destruction.

      Giovanna’s arms wound around her now, squeezing what little hope there was left. Celeste rose into Alba’s mind, her dancing eyes, her voice filled with spring and floral celebration. That room felt like a place she’d touched in a dream.

      A knock at the door tore the trio’s attention away from the absurd plan. Alba opened the door, more to escape the enforced celebration than anything else. Signora Elias stood on the street. She looked smaller somehow. Without words Alba tried to describe what had happened. She watched her teacher look at her face, still marked with the fight, registering the cuts and bruises.

      ‘I couldn’t come,’ Alba said, feeling tears sting her eyes, watching her teacher read in between her breaths.