A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  Alba had no idea what reaction to offer. Her chest grew rigid.

  “What do you know about fear? About loss? About rejection?”

  His rhetoric held in the pungent air. Her eyes burned. He took a sharp breath.

  “Ah. So we do know something about life. I see it now. There’s the fire you Sardinians are famous for, no?”

  Alba swallowed.

  “So play from there. Right there. In your fury at me for prying. That’s where you play. Now!”

  Alba lifted her wrists. She played the cornered feeling. She played the claustrophobia. A salty droplet from her eye landed on her wrist. She didn’t let it stop her. The metallic notes rang, simple, profound, cutting through the thick smoky quiet. She finished the phrase.

  “Complimenti,” he said, his voice a scratch of gravel, “now you’ve shown me you can listen. So now I hear.”

  Alba left the room with the feeling of failure trailing her like Goldstein’s smoke. If her three years here were going to continue in this manner, she doubted she would survive unharmed. This was the failure her father had projected all along. This was the insistence she’d chosen to ignore. She couldn’t do anything right at the officina, or at home, or at school, and she couldn’t do much right here either. Effort wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough. But failure wasn’t an option. That was a satisfaction she’d never gift her father.

  Instead of heading up toward Piazza del Popolo and past Flaminio to catch her bus back to the quiet of her landlady’s apartment in Lodi, Alba turned left at the end of Via Dei Greci where the conservatorio entrance stood, and strolled down Via del Corso, passing the trawl of boutiques, cutting through the narrow side viccoli until she reached the toasted hazelnut air outside Giolitti’s gelateria. Customers passed the early evening at small metal tables, served by waiters in white jackets with shiny gold buttons. Her funds were fast trickling away and it was crucial she secured a job within the week, even if she hadn’t yet proved to herself that she was capable of holding one of them down. Her father had reminded her enough times of that. She followed the cobbles downhill until the road narrowed and La Tazza D’Oro coffee roasters faced her, customers spilling out onto the streets, clinking red bubbles of aperitivi, others arguing over tiny coffee cups, and beyond, golden in the evening light, the Pantheon. Goose bumps rippled up her arms. The temple columns of another world stood before her. She reached the marble fountain at the center of the square before it, tourists cooing over the age, snapping their memories into their metal boxes. Even after the month, she found it hard to believe that she was here at all. Her family rose into her mind, their picture swirling away as soon as they snapped into focus, overexposed photographs dripping blank in a puddle.

  Her pace quickened a little now as she found her way to the Tiber and crossed over the Garibaldi Bridge to Trastevere. The evening was already hot with bodies and young students. The bars here lacked the pomp of those closer to her school. Here, the buildings fought for space, its Jewish ghetto past still clung to the fading painted plaster, the wooden shutters creaking with age, scarred with flaking paint. Bar Calisto took up the corner of a palazzo on the main square, facing the church of Santa Maria di Trastevere. The cobbled square was filling with young people, flicking their ash onto the cobbles, putting the world in order at great volume.

  Alba stepped inside. It was heaving with drinkers, and the two waiters behind the bar performed a frenzied dance with precision, almost crashing into each other but somehow managing to retain the drinks inside their relevant glasses to reach their rightful owners. The noise was a belly laugh of politics and gossip. Alba wove her way through the Roman crowd and reached the high bar.

  “What do you want?” the young man yelled, flicking coffee grounds into his espresso handle and screwing it tight onto the machine that whooshed into a temper.

  “I’m here to see Antonio!” she yelled over the din.

  “And you are?”

  “Alba. A tenant of his sister. I’ve come about the job.”

  His eyebrows did a little dance, he swerved around his colleague, placed the two espresso cups onto the saucers, and held them out into the narrow space of air over the bar toward a couple. They swirled the creamy contents, downed it in one go, dropped a coin onto the marble, and left.

  “You done this before?” the barman called to her, slicing an orange and flipping it into a glass with Campari and a large hunk of ice.

  “No.”

  He slit his eyes with a smile. “Why you want to start now then?”

  Alba prepared to answer, wishing he would call his boss and stop the carousel conversation. The waiter’s attention was redirected to a customer yelling an order two rows of people back from the marble. A small man appeared at the beaded doorway behind the bar. The waiter signaled to him and then nodded his head toward Alba.

  “You the Sardinian?” the man called out to her.

  Alba nodded.

  “You good at clearing up?”

  “I think so,” Alba replied, trying to make her voice ping over the trebled conversation over her head.

  “Take this,” he snapped, chucking an apron at her. “I’ll give you a try because you stay with my sister. If you’re no good, you don’t stay.”

  He turned and disappeared before Alba could thank him. She stepped up onto the raised level behind the bar, feeling like she was about to sight-read a concerto. Some sections she played by ear, others she improvised, watching her colleagues and mirroring their tempo and, where possible, their precision. When the shift came to its end Antonio held out his hands for the apron. “Not bad for an out-of-towner. You’re fast. You’re quiet. You’re hired.”

  “Grazie!”

  “Don’t burst a blood vessel.”

  Alba straightened, trying to subdue her excitement.

  “Turn up on time or you go, you hear? Tuesday and Thursday evenings and weekends, si?”

  He turned before she could reply, disappearing up the stairs to the rooms above.

  “Impressive, kid,” the male waiter nodded. “I’m Dario, you ask me when you don’t know something. Next shift I’ll get you on the coffee machine, si?”

  “Grazie.”

  “Don’t thank me. We need the extra hands. I won’t tell you what happened to the last girl.”

  He gave a wry grin. Alba decided it was time she got used to the Roman sense of humor sooner rather than later.

  She stepped into the streetlamp-lit back streets of Trastevere. She wasn’t ready to go home. The mild terror of jumping in to help at that busy bar had made her feel wide awake. Goldstein’s lesson was a distant memory. If she could wrangle the Roman throng of Antonio’s bar, perhaps conquering the piano might not be as hard as she thought? Natalia had invited her over to Leonardo’s place tonight. She looked toward the Tiber and decided to join them. The first tinge of autumn hung in the humidity. Someone answered the door after she rang the bell several times. Natalia’s face brightened on seeing her. “Yes! You came at last! Come on, we’re needing some keys.”

  “What do you mean?” Alba asked, following her friend up the narrow stone staircase toward a door music was slipping out of, a ramble of improvisation.

  She didn’t answer but led her down the thin corridor toward a snug sitting room. Leonardo shouted a welcome. He was flanked by a couple of young men she didn’t recognize, who took out their cigarettes to say hi. Someone put a glass of wine in her hand and before she could say anything more Leonardo started to wail a lament on his viola. The room’s chatter reduced to simmer, before Natalia picked up her violin and one of the young men crooned his saxophone. Then a deeper melody resonated from the corner behind her. She twisted to see Vittorio, his head bowed as he bowed, swinging toward the sound of his strings. They swerved the key signature, every now and then someone skidded off at an unusual musical angle, offering a sketch off the theme, then returning to home. Natalia lifted her bow. “Alba, take a seat, we need you!” She gestured toward an old piano in the corner of th
e smoky room. “We’re A minor,” she added, before joining in with the others. Alba sat and lifted the lid. Several ivories were missing. She tuned in to the wash of glissandos around her, and gambled a start on A. She followed the others, intuiting their shifts, playing the neat threesome of main chords within the scale, and then, when Leonardo gave her a nod, she added her own melodic twist. The others paired away, till only the bold strings of the cello and her keys rang out. Her improvised melody tinkled up toward the upper registers, then back down to grounded chords, whilst Vittorio’s cello hummed like a bass whisper beneath, steady as a drone, the warm hum beneath a lullaby. Then Natalia sang over the top and then the others molded back into the silence adding their own colors. They sensed the ending and came to a gradual stop. Their glasses raised as they clinked to one another. Her new musical family surrounded her in cheers, the dim light of the room catching the tips of the students’ wine-rosy cheeks. Was this the tribe her father was so terrified of her joining? Was this warm feeling such a threat to him after all? Her happiness was the rebellion he’d sought to crush for so very long. She hushed the cruel resonance of his words into the echo of an almost forgotten memory.

  Alba tuned back into the laid-back ease of the room. Was even Vittorio lured by it? It was impossible to tell, because as everyone sank back into conversation, she noticed that he’d already left.

  11

  Libero

  a directive to perform a certain passage of a composition in a free, unrestrained style

  Natalia met Alba outside their rehearsal room the following day. “So great having you there last night, Alba. You feeling as fragile as me today?”

  “Maybe,” Alba replied.

  “I’ve listened to this piece I don’t know how many times. My mother tried to get me to play it when I wasn’t ready. We had the biggest fight of our lives over it. I mean bigger than the other two thousand fights.”

  Alba smiled.

  “Did your mamma set your practice schedule or you?” Natalia asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Who did your schedule? Like just after school or before too? I had to do one hour before school and one straight after. Then two half-hour practices spaced out between homework.”

  Off Alba’s expression Natalia blushed. “I know, right. Crazy. Wouldn’t be here today though. And actually I did love it. I just didn’t like her reminding me all the time. She’s a cellist. She teaches at home and at several schools. My father is with the philharmonic in Milan. I’m prattling again I know. I’m so nervous I think I’m literally going to throw up.”

  Alba let a laugh froth out.

  “At least I’m finally making you laugh. The green flecks in your eyes though. Just like a gem. Oh, here’s Mr. Happy.”

  Alba twisted round to see Vittorio saunter along the polished tiles. He looked straight at them without blinking.

  “Buon giorno, Vittorio. I’m surprised you’re not here before us,” Natalia said with a sideways smile.

  “Are you?”

  “No. But I thought I’d show you how to start conversation. You know, before you tell me what you think of my playing like in music theory class the other day.”

  “Glad you think so much of my opinion. I’m flattered.” He lifted his cello off his back and placed it onto the tiles with care.

  “Don’t be,” Natalia added, making sure she had the last word.

  Professore Giroletti greeted them from the opposing direction, his crisp linen shirt ironed to perfection, his white hair parted with precision. The students straightened to attention.

  “Buon giorno, my quartet. Glorious day for a first rehearsal. Right now our quartet is a trio. Where is Leonardo?”

  Natalia looked back toward the direction Vittorio had arrived from. “He said he was just grabbing a drink, Professore. He’s on his way.”

  Giroletti nodded and opened the door. They filed in. Natalia and Vittorio tuned up around Alba, who by now had become well practiced in helping strings. Just as they finished, Leonardo flung open the door and flew across the space with his usual mix of apologies and the vague sense that he had just returned from somewhere more important. His T-shirt hung on in patches, worn away in some parts to where you could see his skin underneath. His jeans flared out over his pumps. Natalia flicked her fringe off her face, and it flopped back to where it started. Alba noticed her cheeks were more pink than a moment ago.

  “What’s your delectable story this time, Leonardo? Which political rally needed your undivided attention today? How about you channel some of your fury against the establishment into a spot of Brahms?”

  “You read my mind, Professore!” Leonardo replied, breathy, whipping his viola from its case, reaching over Alba to press an A.

  “Sorry I stink,” he said, with a laugh. “Ran all the way here because the tram broke down. You don’t know Romans till you’ve been cooped up in a hot tram with fifty of them!”

  “Leonardo, let us leave the anthropology to another morning, shall we?” Giroletti interrupted.

  Leonardo wiped his brow, tightened his bow, and sat down.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, let us start with the first movement, si? Seems a ludicrously good place to start, no?”

  Natalia looked down the neck of her violin. Leonardo locked eyes with her. Vittorio straightened. Alba played her first octave alone. She held the space, observing those precious inner beats Goldstein hammered on about. Then she played her second. The strings entered in unison, sighing pairs of notes as the one slurred onto the other.

  Giroletti sprang to his feet. “I stop you there. And I ask you what these sighs mean?”

  The four students looked between one another.

  “Well one of you must know?”

  Alba raised her hand. “Brahms was obsessed with Schumann’s wife, Clara, sir.”

  Giroletti smiled, willing her on.

  “Some people say that those notes are the sound of his yearning for her. They have the same beats as her name, if you like. Cla-Ra.”

  “Excellent, Alba! Yes. That is what I want to feel from you three. Again.”

  They repeated the first phrase several more times, Giroletti arcing his body to the sound, leading them toward the color he searched for. They skipped the second movement and moved on to the third section.

  “Vittorio, what do we notice about this movement?”

  Vittorio sized up the score before him upon his metal stand. He ran a finger along the first few measures. Alba noticed their length, the way the tiny muscles in his hand rippled beneath his alabaster skin, the veins scrawling deep blue tracks above the bone.

  “It’s the only movement that is not in C minor?”

  “And?” Giroletti prodded.

  “The opening theme here is pretty much a sequence of descending thirds? Brahms uses this a lot. The opening of Symphony number four, for example?”

  “You always sound like a book, Vittorio?” Leonardo asked, winking at Natalia.

  “Yes, very good, Leonardo, but don’t let yourself be intimidated by your colleague’s knowledge,” Giroletti cut through, “you’re not a conducting major, are you?”

  “I’m conducting A major, does that count?” Leonardo teased with his heavy Roman slur.

  “Not if I can help it, no,” Giroletti replied.

  “He’s just jealous that the second theme is stolen by the violin and then Natalia and I basically take us home from there,” Vittorio announced, his face creasing into a grin.

  “Alright, that’s enough now,” Giroletti said, snapping to attention. “Let’s hear it.”

  Vittorio stretched his arm and then rested the bow on his strings. The melody oozed into the space, then lifted up into the higher registers of his instrument with only Alba as an accompaniment. Giroletti listened for a moment, with his back to them. Then he flung out his arms cutting them short.

  “Alright. Natalia and Leonardo, I’m going to use the rest of this rehearsal to work with these two cotton-tapped musicians, while you a
nd Singsong here go next door and perfect your pizzicato in the final section, which I can tell from your work in the first movement leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Alba watched them pack away and leave. She turned to Giroletti, waiting for his direction.

  “So. You two know each other?”

  Alba and Vittorio alternated a “No” and “Yes” in unison.

  “No confusion there then.”

  Alba and Vittorio looked at each other for a half beat and turned straight back to their maestro.

  “Is this your first time accompanying strings, Alba?”

  “Yes, Maestro.”

  Vittorio muttered something under his breath.

  “Care to share?” Giroletti asked, his voice pointed.

  “No, Maestro.”

  “Good. Now, Alba, you are the backbone here, your support will carry on throughout the next section when Natalia will echo Vittorio’s theme, yes? So I need to hear your warmth, a grounding from which Vittorio can sing out, you understand?”

  “Take my lead for when to come in,” Vittorio added.

  Alba looked at him.

  “That means watch me, I’ll tell you when to start.”

  “I think we need to think a bit broader than leader and follower, dear boy.”

  Vittorio twisted toward Giroletti’s interruption.

  Alba noticed the cellist’s shoulders tense.

  “Do you know the word for teacher and learner in German is almost the same?” Giroletti began, his eyes dancing. “The two terms are intertwined so that in the very language there is an understanding that the two roles are one and the same. When I teach I learn, when you learn you teach me.”

  Vittorio took a breath. Giroletti didn’t give him space to speak. “And right now I am learning once again that the subtle art of cooperation happens only when two musicians can meet in the delicious quiet before the music, before melody, in the sensation that the melody must fight out into the space between them. Let us not talk about leaders and followers nor teachers and students. Let us meet one another in the glorious center. Where the magic happens.”