Stinging vulnerability crawled up her calves. He didn’t blink. Neither breathed.
He was the last person in town she would have liked to be spied on by. Now he had the ultimate arsenal for his incessant attacks. Alba snapped into panic. The person she trusted least was privy to the biggest betrayal of her parents. She sat, motionless in cloying dizziness, as if her feet were sticky in almond brittle before the tacky molten sugar sets.
Signora Elias and her friend swept in, and she watched Mario tumble a clumsy apology for being inside the house rather than outside with his father. The women closed the door behind them. Mario’s face disappeared.
Signora Elias’s friend was a reed. Long, thin, with an elegant bearing about her. A woman Alba desired not to cross. Yet as she spoke, her voice wove out like a clarinet, woody and warm. Her face lit up listening to Signora Elias, crinkling the wrinkles on her thin white skin deeper still. The many colours of her dress undercut her poise. Here were washes of blues and reds, a scarf swooped across her with a tropical print. Geometric earrings clasped her earlobes in colourful anarchy. She reached a hand out for Alba’s. The nails were painted fuchsia. Her hand was firm, unapologetic.
‘I’m Celeste. So very lovely to meet you, tesoro. Elena has told me so very much about you. I’m terribly excited to hear you play.’
Alba flushed, embarrassed by her embarrassment. She was about to play for a lady who appeared to value confidence and Alba wished she could find some. It was impossible, having just heard that Signora Elias had already spoken about her to a distinguished friend. It made their lessons at once less private. A secret had been divulged elsewhere too.
‘I would absolutely adore it if you would play?’ Celeste asked. Signora Elias turned towards her too. There was a different buoyancy to her this morning. Perhaps she was lonelier than Alba had thought?
‘Si,’ Alba replied. ‘Do you have a preference on which one I play first?’
‘Not at all,’ replied Signora Elias. ‘You must play what you feel is right for you this morning.’
Alba nodded. She scooted the stool a little way from the keys and rolled the knobs at the side up to where was comfortable. She’d never played for anyone else. Signora Elias was right. Doing so was the hardest thing. At once she was exposed, filled with doubt without knowing why. She turned back to Signora Elias, annoyed for seeking reassurance. Signora Elias responded with the calm and clarity Alba needed; an effortless smile, as if Alba playing for a stranger was the most natural thing to do this morning.
Alba took a breath. Mario’s face crisped into focus. She blew away the picture, though it remained at the fringes, like a spider’s sticky silk. ‘Clair de Lune’ was one of her favourite pieces. She allowed mind to be soothed by the fact. She began, fingers light, silver tones sparkling in a starry Sardinian night, silent, fragrant with sun-cooked rosemary and myrtle. She wove towards the midsection, letting her body move into the melody supporting her fingers. Mauves and violets replaced the metallic shimmer from the opening and then returned home, like waking from a dream. Alba lifted her fingers off, unhurried.
She turned towards the women.
Celeste was nodding her head. Signora Elias was a sunbeam.
‘My second piece is a Chopin.’
‘I should hope so too,’ replied Celeste with a twinkle.
The further two pieces wound out of Alba’s body like a story she’d lived and retold a thousand times. Then the final staccato of her last Bartók piece leaped off the soundboard with the perk of a vibrant orange. The energy of the frenetic rhythms hung in the air when she turned back to the women.
‘That’s all I have ready to share just now,’ said Alba, thrumming with a mixture of elation and relief.
‘No “just” about it, signorina,’ Celeste replied with a grin that stretched her thin crimson-painted lips. She stood up, wafting her silk kaftan behind her as she did so and planted two kisses on Alba’s cheeks.
‘And what, may I ask, do you intend to do with this talent? And the years of service my wonderful friend has invested in you?’
The question was so absurd Alba almost chuckled. Catching sight of the woman’s serious expression she stopped herself.
‘I don’t really know. I’m not sure how I could ever repay my debt.’
‘No debt to me, Alba,’ Signora Elias said. ‘Celeste is asking you whether you think you would pursue a life in music. Should you have the chance.’
Alba’s mouth opened then shut again.
‘You have undeniable talent, Alba,’ Celeste began. ‘You have a light inside you and it streams out when you play. It is unfettered. Unaffected. I listen to a great deal of young people play and very few have this, an affinity with the instrument. A respect. A lack of desire to be watched, but rather an ability to communicate with brutal honesty. Believe me when I tell you how rare that is.’
Alba longed for words, expression, something other than the numbing silence fogging her body.
‘When Signora Elias and I met at the Accademia of Santa Cecilia in Rome we were told the same thing.’
Signora Elias chuckled now.
‘It is a great responsibility – talent,’ Celeste said. ‘You were born with something to honour, nurture, share. And this fabulous woman Elias saw it right away. I can see that. She’s not as much of a fool as she looks, no?’
The women laughed in unison now. Celeste’s laughter tumbling out like a scale, Signora Elias’s voice warm, like papassini fresh from the oven.
‘It is so wonderful to meet you, Alba dear.’ Celeste stretched out her hands and held Alba’s. ‘Tell me one thing. How do you feel when you play?’
Alba took a breath. Signora Elias nodded.
‘I’ve never been asked really.’
‘I’m asking you now. And I want to see if you can be as honest with your answer as you are when you play.’
Alba let the words reach her like a lapping wave.
‘I’m not sure I can. I’m not a person who likes to describe things too well. I think that’s why I love the piano.’ Alba longed to be able to form her sensations into sentences, but the words slipped away like rivulets of water at her fingertips. She longed to explain that when she sat at Signora Elias’s instrument she had a voice to express feelings and thoughts it was impossible to in real life, when she was Bruno Fresu’s daughter, the sulky girl who couldn’t control her temper, or get through school without coming from a family that grew in influence each year. That when she played she felt protected by the music and ripped open at the same time. That the music told her things, secret stories, coded messages of what it meant to exist, in all its brutal unfathomable glory. That it lifted her into blissful invisibility. That feeling was what she loved most. Powerful because of what the music fed her. But instead of sharing her tumbling thoughts, Alba felt her expression crinkle into an awkward frown. ‘I love the piano.’ Her voice slipped out plain, without ornamentation, like a starched linen tablecloth before the plates and crystal glasses have been laid.
‘Music is mathematics and heart,’ Celeste replied, ‘it can’t just make sense nor can
