colour of each note, to race up and down like Elias.
‘Very good, Alba. Your fingers look quite at home there, wouldn’t you say?’
Alba looked up at Signora Elias. She hadn’t felt this safe since before her father’s ordeal, or perhaps ever. Her eyes grew moist. This time she swallowed her tears before they escaped.
‘Alba Fresu, what do you think you are doing?’ Giovanna cried, waddling down the stairs with buckets and brooms in tow. ‘Signora, I’m so so sorry – this won’t happen again.’
‘I think it would be criminal if it didn’t.’
Giovanna looked at her, unsure if she was about to be fired.
‘Giovanna, I would very much like to teach this young lady, if you and she were agreeable to the idea.’
Alba looked down at her fingers on her lap.
‘That’s very kind, signora’ – Giovanna flustered a laugh – ‘but right now we must get on and finish your downstairs and get home to make lunch. I’m so sorry if she made a nuisance of herself.’ Giovanna’s gaze flitted to the sospiri crumbs on the doily. Alba’s cheeks burned.
‘Very well, Giovanna, but once you’re finished you’ll take some of these sospiri home to your family, won’t you? No pleasure without sharing.’
Giovanna nodded. Alba jumped up from her stool.
They mopped the kitchen and downstairs bathroom in silence.
Outside, the heat swelled. The cicadas were in operatic form and the tufts of yellow fennel blossoms on the side of the road gave off their sweet sun-toasted anise scent. It was of some comfort ahead of Giovanna’s tirade.
‘What exactly did you make that poor old woman do? Did you ask her to play on that expensive piano?’
‘Of course not, Mamma, she asked me.’
Giovanna skidded to a stop. She pinned Alba with a glower. ‘Alba Fresu, we don’t have much, but I work every hour under the sun to teach my children one thing: honesty. You stand here lying to my face and think you won’t be punished? You wait till your father hears this.’
‘She asked me to listen!’
‘Maybe she did. But that’s no excuse to push your way in like a peasant. You know better.’
Tears of injustice prickled Alba’s eyes.
‘I’ve been waiting for the moment where you show some kind of thanks, for your father being alive, for having escaped this ordeal. But nothing! You float around like you’re invisible. Like a princess. It’s disgusting. You don’t talk. You help, but I have to redo the things after you’ve finished. Is this how I’ve taught you to be?’
Alba would have liked to cry then and there, to spit out that her night terrors were more than she could bear, that the feeling of a cave’s dampness skirted her dreams and waking hours, that she didn’t know how to describe the way her heart thudded in her chest for no reason during the day. That every bush held a secret promise of bandits lurking beneath. That their job was unfinished. That they would return for more. She longed to be held by her mother, told that everything would be fine, that one day she wouldn’t have the sinking feeling of dread trail her like a menacing shadow, that the dusk wouldn’t seep white panic through her veins. Instead, a sun-blanched silence clamped down.
‘There, you see? More sulky silence. Well, this has got to stop, signorina. You hear me?’
Alba swallowed. Her throat was hot and dry. The pine trees further up the hill swished their needled branches. Their woody scent wafted down on the breeze. Alba longed for them to be the comfort they once were.
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
