“Are they the same instruments?” she asked.
“Immortal keys touched by the sublime, yes. I have to remind the students to wash their hands afterward even though they want to fall asleep with your fingerprints plush on theirs.”
Alba laughed and sat at the right one. So many hours were stamped onto those strings, hammers softened by the repetition of section after section, endless measures of words and silences Goldstein fed her, drawn out pauses filled by her unanswered questions. Each time she’d studied alongside him tiny beads of confidence strung together on tenuous invisible ribbons. Her body now lit up with adrenaline, or nostalgia or caffeine, she didn’t care to decide which.
There was a knock at the door. Goldstein barked a welcome.
A young man poked his head around the slight opening. His face looked flush, a crushed petal of lateness or tension upon his cheek. Alba recognized the pre-Goldstein look. He ran a hurried hand though the tight wave of his blond hair, blue eyes sparkling with a simultaneous childlike curiosity and mature intelligence.
“Ah yes, I had forgotten to mention that I have a few coaching sessions today.” He turned back toward the young man at the door. “I can’t teach with you at the door, can I, Misha?”
Alba stood up. The student’s eyes shot to her in surprise.
“Alba, this is our very own Russian novel chap I was just speaking of, in fact,” Goldstein said, beginning his introduction. “He’s flown in from the States so he likes to think he is American, but both he and I know better—the way he plays is more Uncle Vanya than Uncle Sam.”
The blond adult-boy bubbled an embarrassed laugh. He straightened and reached out a hand to Alba. His touch was firm, no hint of nerves, confident not puppy dog. “I’m a huge admirer of your work, Maestra Fresu.” He stopped for a breath but not quite long enough for her to answer. “I’d hoped I wouldn’t blurt it like that, but there you go. My speech is very much American. I think afterward.”
“Nice of you to notice at long last, Prince Misha,” Goldstein trod on. “Now be quiet and make a different kind of noise.”
Goldstein nodded for Alba to take a seat.
“Maestra Fresu will be listening for today, to see what on earth she’s got herself into. Don’t let that make you want to show off more than you usually do, Misha.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Maestro,” he threw back, with the kind of wry grin Alba would not have expected any student to be brave or stupid enough to flick Goldstein’s way. Any suspicion of Goldstein’s mellowing over the years was brushed aside within the first few minutes, however, as he desecrated Misha’s interpretation of Mozart. He tapped his floppy wrist, cursed his elegant handling of a pert section, asked him why he hadn’t leaned on logic for more sensible fingering. It was like watching a flickering reel of her own lessons with different voices dubbed over the top, a jagged interpretation of a foreign film.
Throughout the onslaught, Alba found Misha’s poise compelling. He had lightness to his gait. Despite, or perhaps in spite of Goldstein’s intensity—Alba intuited a diffident streak the boy kept under control—he weathered his corrections with implicit precision, void of the defense of ego, filled with an attack to implement the direction with an energy Alba related to in an instant. His back was long, strong, moved with ease, but his hands drew her eye like a magnet. They moved with delicacy, at odds with their size, a feral freedom matched with an intelligent sensitivity. She couldn’t help but wonder whether his appearance must belie his years.
The hour and a half lesson passed in a heartbeat. Alba retrieved herself from the mathematics of Mozart, the elegant flourishes and expression, aching to hear more, sensing the areas where this student yearned for further development, his natural flair for the dramatic coupled with an innate sensibility, pillars of a great musician, but with room for deepening practice, a greater attention to finer details, perhaps an encouragement to broaden his creativity in the passages where he sounded a little held. The room eased back to Via Vittoria, not without some effort. It took several moments before the feeling of looking at the scene through a jar of honey began to retreat.
“It was a pleasure to meet you.” Misha’s voice light, warm, and buoyant cut through her syrupy memories. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you, Maestra Fresu.”
“Roll your tongue back into your head, child,” Goldstein jeered. “No amount of sucking up will change the way you hammer Beethoven. Maestra is a master of the Romantics, so if you can manage to sop up some of the chocolate goo you’ve laid over your Chopins, it might mean you’ll leave your next lesson in one piece.”
Misha looked to Alba. Something flitted across his expression she couldn’t identify; a rogue note slipping into a fast trill or run, a minuscule slip unidentifiable to the lay listener but an instant, if brief, discordance to the trained. She pretended the hairs on the back of her neck hadn’t twitched to attention.
She reached out her hand and Misha shook it. “I look forward to it too, Misha.” The sound of his name on her lips was like a foreign place she’d lost herself in once before, darkened wintry streets lit by memory or the wistful warmth of an unknown audience. He left, taking a little of the air in the room with him.
* * *
When Alba returned to her apartment that evening her mind was alight with ideas of which students required what kind of development. All fears of her knowing whether she was adept at the post had disappeared, replaced by a passionate drive to implement the observations she had made. The day had flown past, ideas rushing to her whilst she listened, watched how their bodies moved, which parts of them appeared restricted, less pliable, which parts intuited the music. She was struck by how much a pianist revealed of themselves seated there at the keys, something she had reveled in watching musicians whom she admired, but now in the intimacy of the accademia she couldn’t wait to participate in the challenge of helping others. It was as if windows had been thrown open to a bright day, filling her with life-giving energy that she’d sensed she’d denied herself for too long.
She switched on a few lamps in her main living area that sent a glow along the sideboard where her favorite pictures stood, concert halls that had left the deepest, fondest memories: Dante with her at an opening in Venice, Natalia when she came to visit her in Vienna with her mother, Raffaele beside her when she’d played Milan. She opened the doors beside her grand piano, letting the air of the evening terrace waft over her face, the toasted early summer evening air warm on her skin. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine, then returned to the instrument. It looked beautiful in the suffused light. She took a sip and placed her glass on the flanking book shelves. Her fingers eased onto the keyboard. She improvised a lazy line, a triplet of gratitude. Chords unfolded with ease, a laid-back hum. She fed the day into those twisting lines of nowhere melodies, warmed honey. She couldn’t remember having felt like this in a very long time.
A blinking light on her answering machine caught her eye. It was the first place she always checked when she came in, but tonight was different. She had kept her pager on her at all times, like she always did, but Dante had no reason to reach her and this brief sensation of lightness was addictive. The machine flickered with the number three. She walked over and pressed play. The first message was Dante, checking in to see how her first day at school went; his voice had the frayed twists of laughter on it, and it made her smile too. Next was from a French classical singer she’d met in Naples several months ago and with whom she’d shared various unhurried nights, both clear in the understanding that their intertwining was casual, two laces held in a loose bow. He was in Rome, he said, his lilt inviting yet cool, and would she like to meet up?
She skipped to the final message.
Her heart lurched. Salvatore. He never called unless it was Christmas, and even then it would be an awkward voice message to which she would reply in the same manner. Still, she was touched that he would reach out over those holidays because she knew Marcelli
no forbade it, as his father’s chief guard. Salvatore had always been the most susceptible out of the three, neither the eldest nor the longed-for girl, and now he still hovered in the unseen shadow of his siblings. She played his message again straightaway to allay her panic that something had befallen someone at home. The sensation sent a shiver of guilt rippling through her. By the third replay she was ready to really listen.
“It’s your brother,” he began, his voice tentative but not without his unmistakable swagger. “I’ll be in Rome in a few weeks’ time, for business. Can I see you? Hope you get this message. You know my number. Call if you can.”
Alba looked at the grandfather clock holding court in the corner. She’d bought it after the first time she’d performed in Germany. It reminded her of Signora Elias’s room. The sudden panic of something having happened to her mentor sent ice through her veins. Perhaps that’s why he’d called? The business visit was a ruse? After all, that’s how she’d received the bad news from Raffaele about her mother years ago. She balked at the slipshod angles of her thoughts. The clock chimed eleven. Too late for her to call Salvatore back now. The thought of speaking to him, let alone seeing him, filled her with optimism and dread at the same time. He’d sounded stilted on the answering machine. She knew he hated to leave messages. He’d reached out though. He could have chosen not to. He wanted to see her and it was this that made her feel wary, her stomach crinkle with nausea. She had no desire to cover old ground, old mistakes, nor taste the bitterness she’d left behind all those years ago. But her family seemed compelled to crawl back somehow, crackle through her happiness, as if tied to some invisible antenna that made them tune in just when they lost her signal, desperate to regain control. She blew off the thoughts as a prickle of mania, admonished herself for it, swirled her wine, and took another sip. They didn’t hold that power, it was her own fear of being stifled, her own voices, not theirs, and she loathed the way their echoes made her own resonate, vibrating her shadows into life, like oblique silhouettes of cutout puppets, grotesque angles jerking a clumsy yet terrifying fairy tale.
The second hand ticktocked the evening away. She didn’t want to be alone tonight. She wanted to float on the feeling that had filled her at the accademia. She told herself it was the music, the return to the source of where she’d begun to spread her wings, retracing her steps, completing the circle. She didn’t give any air to the thoughts that the feeling had more to do with how the room dipped into toasted ochre as Misha played, than the simple return to her musical infancy. When she asked her French singer to enter her later that night, those thoughts were an ache she disguised as pleasure.
24
Prelude
a short composition for piano
a movement or section of a work that comes before another movement or section of a work. The word also has been used for short independent pieces that may stand alone, or even for more extended works, such as Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune.
“From the midsection again please, Signore e Signori—measure twenty-nine,” the conductor announced as the orchestra ebbed back into quiet. Gianni Conte was a small man with a verve that Alba found electric, and she adored playing with him. A powerhouse, he whipped the air about him with a ferocity that ignited the orchestra with such a deep understanding of the music and its textures that Alba could speak to him about the score for hours before and after performances. His wife, Anna, was a delightful human too, an exquisite violinist who treated Alba like a sister and fed her like a mother. Whenever they had the chance to work together Alba jumped at the opportunity.
Gianni sent her a look. They inhaled at the same time and the orchestra rose to glorious life. Then their tone eased into a silvery line of soft strings. Conte looked toward her, judging the entrance of a second melody to marry with seamless perfection to her piano’s entrance, fading the strings to silence as her score led her up to the top of the keyboard and back down in a jagged arpeggio toward the return of Rachmaninoff’s glorious melodious line, smooth and fine as a voice, rising through the quiet. Conte’s baton tapped his podium again. All fell quiet.
“Si, mervaiglioso! I’m happy with that for today. See you all at the concert!” He stepped off his podium and walked over to Alba. “Glorious, Signorina, as always, and of course you don’t need me to tell you, but take as much time on the adagio melody as you wish, we will be right behind you, si?”
“Grazie, Gianni, the orchestra is sounding heavenly.”
“They work hard, no? Today they didn’t eat too much for lunch, I think.” He chuckled then, as Natalia stepped in toward them. He kissed her on both cheeks. “Wonderful Signorina, you are my favorite first violinist.”
“You say that to every violinist, Maestro Conte,” she laughed.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Oh, I almost forgot, Anna insists you join us for dinner afterward, Alba.”
“I’m not sure. I may be meeting my brother.”
“He is most welcome to join us. I insist. We have a few friends in too, the more the merrier. I think it will be a special table.”
He left before Alba could reply anything to the contrary.
“You talked to Salvatore?” Natalia asked.
“Eventually. Took several attempts. It wasn’t as awful as I’d thought it might be,” Alba replied, leading them down the corridor behind the stage toward her dressing room. “He sounded pretty relaxed, grown up. I suppose at some point I have to accept that people change as much as I have.”
“Alba Fresu getting all philosophical. Going back to school has shuffled some stuff up, no?”
Alba laughed at herself. Natalia hit home.
“That look on your face says I’m right, Alba. It’s wonderful to see you like this. Really. And to sit next to you and play is, well . . .” Natalia’s eyes watered. “Ugh, look at me, I’m mush every time I feel even a twinge of emotion.” Her laugh was spilled out through her teary smile, unguarded. “I’m going to go now and mop myself up, see you at the performance.”
Alba watched her leave, feeling overcome with gratitude. She was playing the hardest concerto in her repertoire for the first time in public with her favorite conductor, alongside her best friend. How long would this feeling last?
* * *
Alba wasn’t anticipating Misha to be waiting outside the practice room when she arrived later that afternoon for their first session. She noticed herself talk a little too quickly, jarred speech she attributed to someone interrupting what she’d planned on being a little quiet time ahead of the session.
“I can come back in a little while, Maestra, I’m just going through the score some more. My colleague needed the room I was using.”
“I’ll take a moment, yes,” Alba replied, regaining her center.
Misha stood and closed his manuscript. “May I bring you a coffee?”
“I don’t think we’re on coffee terms just yet, do you?” She’d meant it to come out as pointed as it did but thought the flicker a little brittle. She wasn’t here to be another Goldstein. “The fact is,” she added, “I’ll be thinking faster than I can speak, and I don’t care for that this afternoon. See you in five.”
She entered the room and closed the door behind her. The windows were open, afternoon warmth filling the room with the golden hum of silence. The pianos’ black lids were lifted. She sat and looked through Misha’s piece again. She knew it well, but somehow fixing her gaze to the page made her forget their awkward greeting, silence the doubts that perhaps she wasn’t prepared to be a teacher at all. She played the first section; its spare yet profound introduction sent light down her spine. She adored this Debussy piece and knew why Goldstein had advised Misha to work on it with her; it was deceptive in its simplicity but required a great deal of thoughtfulness and precision to make it sing. She let the first few sounds of footsteps in the snow hover in the air above the strings of the piano. This was one of the pieces she’d played during her first few months at the school. It was a piece Vitto
rio loved her to play for him. She had interpreted his love of the spare as a signal of his controlled passion, a disciplined nature she found compelling but later understood what it was in truth: a narcissist’s compulsion for control.
She stood up from the notes and walked across the room and opened the door for Misha.
“So, here we are,” she said, swinging the door open and walking away from him toward her piano. “I love that Goldstein has suggested you begin with Debussy. He is a favorite of mine.”
“I’ve listened to this piece since I was a child,” Misha began, setting his satchel down on a chair and placing the score on the righthand piano.
“Your parents are musicians?”
“Engineers.”
Misha looked over at Alba, and she observed his eyes had the kind of openness it was easy to fall into, void of cloying naivety.
“That’s the look most people give me, yes,” Misha said, in place of any reply. “I just loved music from the beginning. My brother was obsessed. I heard it because of him, I guess.” His voice had an American twang but with throaty Russian vowels: a contradictory impression of modern confidence and old-world melancholic romanticism.
Alba nodded for him to begin. She sat beside him a distance away, watching how he dealt the weight of the notes, how he let the tone deepen. She didn’t interrupt till the end of the piece. She watched him skirt the tension, ease toward the profundity, then circle it instead.
He finished and looked over at her. His gaze was penetrating but not provocative or defensive. She wondered if she’d ever looked at her professors in that way.
“You know the sense, Misha, but I think you are not counting entirely correctly. You have to be precise with Debussy. There is always the danger of being a lazy watercolor with him. He is not that. This piece is about coming home. Yes, a walk through the snow, but which snow? Where? When? What is the protagonist returning from? For me, this entire piece is about loss. And that requires you to dig a little deeper, Misha.”
A Roman Rhapsody Page 26