A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  29

  Seconda volta

  often repeated sections of a composition will have different endings

  Heat waves zigzagged skyward from the scorched tarmac of Catania Airport. A driver waited for Alba beyond the luggage carousel and escorted her to his large black Mercedes. They wound through the parched Sicilian countryside toward the hotel on the coast by the town of Noto. Parts of the scenery reminded her of Sardinia, the long yellow grasses cooked dry in the heat; the rocks seared by the same; tree trunks gnarled with age, creaking out of the ground at acute angles, twisted in the temperature like human figures contorted in contrition. They reached the resort where Maschiavelli’s assistant directors had informed her she would be staying along with a filming schedule mailed to her a week ago that appeared to be a feat of human engineering in and of itself. Her suite looked out over the Lido di Noto, a wide bay now dotted with the winding-down crowds of late September, with children back at school, but summer’s hold still clasping the crowds in its torching clutch.

  There was a knock at the door. Alba opened it.

  “Buona sera, Maestra Fresu, my name is Giulia, I’m the third assistant director, I wanted to welcome you to the shoot. I’m here to make sure you have everything you need. I’ll be your point of contact on set too, whilst the second director is on scheduling and our first, Gianluigi, is Francesco’s mouthpiece, in essence.”

  Seeing Alba’s look she backtracked. “Scusa, Maestra, you must be tired from your travel day.”

  “No, I’m fine, it’s just you’re speaking another language somewhat.”

  Giulia’s face lit up with a smile, highlighting the deep dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was cropped short and lent an efficiency to her bright demeanor.

  “I’m sorry, I should have simply said, please ask me for whatever you should need whilst we’re working together. I’ll see it gets done. We have an appointment scheduled for costume and makeup ahead of shooting, just to go through a few things before we begin. It’s in the schedule I’d sent to Dante for you?”

  “Yes. I’d read through that, Francesco had said I would be wearing my own stuff?”

  “That’s fine. We just have a few things for you to try, and Francesco and you will discuss your preferences, of course. A car will be here for you in the morning, Maestra. Your driver is Tomaso. He’ll be your personal driver for the shoot during filming and around those times. He’s on call for whatever you need.”

  Alba smiled, a little overwhelmed by the onslaught of information.

  “Signor del Piero gave me this package for you also. There are some changes to the score that he wanted to let you have as soon as he’d made them. I know Francesco has spoken to you about the likelihood of changes as we go through and so forth.”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “I’ll leave you in peace now to rest, we’re all delighted to have you on board. Don’t be alarmed if some of the crew are a bit tongue-tied, I’m sure you’re used to that.”

  “I’ll be the tongue-tied one, you can be sure of that.”

  The women looked at each other. Giulia’s green eyes were alive with the energy of a young woman set to move up the ladder of her career with an inspiring drive, the focused verve of youth. She reminded Alba of herself at that age. Goldstein poked into her mind, a sly comment about her serious approach to music sometimes standing in the way of her exploring the unexpected flair she found as she matured during training. Looking at Giulia she felt a sharper understanding of his sideways comments, even more than she had already.

  * * *

  The next morning Alba arrived on set to a Giulia who looked like she’d already been up for most of the day even though the dawn had just started to peek out over the valley. She offered Alba a coffee and then escorted her to her trailer, parked beside several others within the grounds of a magnificent crumbling villa, complete with a courtyard and long drive. Inside Alba made herself comfortable on a long sofa, sipping her espresso. A few moments later Giulia escorted her to the trailer where Luigi, a makeup artist, set to work on her face with the flurried brush of a painter and Marianna, the hairdresser, twirled her hair to look like her usual tussled mess but with a few more self-conscious flicks. She looked at herself in the mirror when they were done and wondered how they had managed to formulate a more high-definition version of herself. It was as if they’d put her under a magnifying lens, extended a length here, focused the eye there; she was a photograph of herself with the shutter finger holding the power to expand details often hidden.

  Vittorio stepped in and stood behind her reflection.

  “They’ve done the same to me,” he said, sipping his coffee, “only far less glamorous. Francesco wants me in some of the shots, I guess.” Alba met his eyes in the mirror. It looked like they’d emphasized his eyes somehow—had they given him the eyeliner treatment too?

  “You’re everything they warned me of,” Luigi said, looking at Vittorio’s reflection, voice dancing.

  “Never believe everything you hear, lovely Luigi. I’m even worse than they said.”

  Without breaking Alba’s gaze, he replied, “Ask the maestra.”

  His expression relaxed then, whilst Alba struggled to hold on to the absurdity of the moment, seated in a makeup chair at the crack of the day, a makeup artist flirting with her first love whilst he shot her conspiratorial looks in the mirror. She drew her mind toward the composition they were filming that morning. Vittorio seemed to intuit her shift because he sat beside her whilst Marianna combed a few stray locks.

  “Did you see the corrections I’d made?” he asked.

  “Yes, I liked the changes, I think they give a different modulation to the midsection, it cuts through the linear passages of chord progression.”

  Alba waited for a reply that didn’t come. Then he nodded, mulling over her words. “It’s such a pleasure to have you with us, Maestra,” he said at last, in that infuriating way he’d always had of flipping out an answer in such a way as to be construed as neither truth nor joke.

  When Luigi released Alba at last, Giulia was outside waiting to escort her to her trailer even though it was no more than ten paces away.

  “It’s fine, Giulia, I can find my way.”

  “No problem, Maestra,” she replied, shy of curtsying with her body as well as her tone, before leaving toward the costume trailer.

  “She’s just doing her job, Alba,” Vittorio said, under his breath, “go easy.”

  “Alright, Vittorio,” Alba said, spinning to face him. “We’re working together for the next few weeks, in closer proximity—”

  He stopped her flow before she could continue. “I don’t think I need everyone overhearing us, do you? Come into my room a second, okay?”

  “No, not okay.”

  “Alba, we have work to do before Francesco calls us in and starts messing with my score again. It will be helpful to the both of us. I’m not trying to shut you up.”

  “Fooled me.”

  He opened the door to his trailer, beside hers. She took a reluctant step inside, annoyed that her nerves ahead of the first day of shooting were getting the better of her and more so that he knew it.

  “Make yourself at home, Alba, they won’t call us for a while.”

  “You seem quite at home.”

  He paused a beat. “I’m scared shitless,” he said.

  Alba laughed.

  “You knew that already,” he added, joining in her laughter.

  “I just wanted to see you have the courage to say that, Vitto’. Now we’re having an actual conversation. Next time don’t keep me waiting so long.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. Alba noticed him take a swift glance at his reflection.

  “I think you missed a bit,” she said.

  They settled into a new silence.

  “I love the changes,” she said at last, “I adore the entire score.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be here if you hated it.”

  “Don’t brush off my
comments, Vittorio.”

  “I’m trying to keep you talking.”

  Alba fell silent for a breath. He looked luminous in this light. It was nothing short of being back in his studio, the taste of his skin, the feel of his breath on her body. That was what she loved about the score. It was a timeless entry into their private world, matrix of codes, melodies, and silences interwoven like a helix, vibrating, luminous, coming from somewhere deep inside each of them. His music allowed them to make love in public. Would she ruin the newfound openness between them by stating the fact?

  “It feels fresh and new and familiar and potent. I just want to do it justice,” she said.

  “I don’t know anyone else who could.”

  They stepped in the protective cool of this coded language. Neither needed to articulate what was written on those staves in words. The morning light caught the fullness of his lower lip, the sharp-edged outline of his mouth. Neither moved their gaze.

  Time slipped through the gap.

  A knock at the door clipped the pause.

  Giulia opened it, revealing her sunny face on the other side.

  “Oh, Maestra is here, wonderful, we’re ready for you both on set.”

  They stood and followed Giulia out past the other trailers, the breakfast truck, the electricians carrying in several lights, smoking and joking and arguing as they did. Francesco’s entourage surrounded him as Giulia reached the room where they were filming. Alba took in the high vaulted ceilings, decorated with delicate putti twisting through the clouds. Three sets of double doors were cranked open a little, letting light in through the peeling shutters, spidering strips of shade along the aged wooden floor. At the center of the bare space appeared a large black grand piano. Her fingers tingled.

  “Buon giorno, my darlings,” Francesco said, shooting a look to the crowd around them. A hush fell. He led Alba a little way from them. “We’re going to do some test shots of the section where I’ll cut back to you playing the second movement. We may interweave this with other parts of the orchestrated section, but don’t worry about that now. All I would love to see you do this morning is really just get at home with your piano, play through Vittorio’s composition in the sections we’ve talked through, yes?”

  “I’ve recorded in studios before, Francesco, but this looks like you’re trying to make me a pop star.”

  “Don’t insult me, Maestra. You couldn’t be bubble gum if you tried.”

  He kissed her hand. He nodded to a young man beside him who bellowed for silence. “That’s the first assistant director, Alba,” Vittorio murmured. “Does the shouting so Francesco doesn’t have to.”

  After the First’s announcement Marianna and Luigi rushed to Alba’s side, buffering their work that to Alba’s mind hadn’t altered since she’d left them a few minutes earlier. Then Giulia ushered Alba to her stool. She took a moment to adjust the height. Another bellow from the First and a small army of electricians stepped into play, cranking the lights up or down, twisting their angles. Alba felt her face heat in the light. Another pair of men twisted the lights from the windows so that now she saw the sunlight was aided by artificial means. Another two adjusted a statue by the double doors so that it was more in view. At a final command the team withdrew in unison. She was alone in the space, a crowd watching from beyond the camera. The First yelled for the camera to roll. A man beside the camera leaning over the man looking through the lens shouted, “Rolling!” A few beats later another interjected with “Speed!”

  Silence.

  The First’s voice dipped into a gentle invitation. “Whenever you’re ready, Maestra.”

  Into the golden hush Alba sounded the opening of the adagio, a pared-down tiptoe through a minor scale with the injection of occasional incidental notes. It was a love letter of few words, a wish, a whisper, a hidden hope. She left the space, disappeared somewhere inside the faint waft of smoke coming from a machine by the far wall, twisting to catch the rays of light rendering them solid forms across the space. She stepped inside the narrow gap between her face and Vittorio’s, the silent hum before a kiss, the complicit emptiness thick with expectation. She played the pause they’d sat in a moment ago inside the trailer, the unspoken space, craved, remembered, mourned. She played his touch, tender, precise, tentative, knowing, urgent, unpredictable. The feeling was the cool of a summer’s night, filled with the heat of the day, a balm and a memory. The camera didn’t cut until she had pressed down into the final note, high on the keyboard, a sigh from far away, an unrequited ending.

  Francesco was by her side. The crowd burst into applause, which echoed in the stone-walled room. “Absolutely divine, my darling,” he murmured, “I need no more. We’ll move on to the next setup now. Thank you, Maestra.” His eyes were wet, smiling. He moved off, swallowed into a group of men around the camera.

  Vittorio leaned on the piano top. “Thank you, Alba.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “that’s what I wrote.”

  Francesco darted over to them. “I’d love it if you took a moment to go through the changes with Alba, Vittorio, yes? Gianfranco, my director of photography, will just ease himself here”—his hand gave a generalized twist in space—“but this is not for the camera, we’re not here, if you like.”

  A distinguished-looking gentleman stepped out from the camera, bronzed skin, wearing the blue cotton coat of a hillside watercolorist, and shook both of their hands. “It’s a deep pleasure,” he said, his voice a purr, his white hair folded over in a neat line, with the demeanor of someone with infinite patience and acute powers of observation, something Alba suspected were intrinsic qualities for anyone working beside Francesco.

  Vittorio placed his score upon the stand and reached over Alba to scribble on it, signaling the section they were to alter. Alba could smell his skin. Beneath the cologne, and products they’d powdered his face with, was the unchanged scent she’d purged from memory. The scent she’d found herself summoning when another lover was beside her. It felt like the welcome shade of a forest. Vittorio made a joke now, which crashed her back to the present. The scurry of memory evaporated. The First shouted, “Cut!” and Francesco congratulated them. Vittorio left to return for the hotel soon after and Alba didn’t see him the rest of the afternoon, as they continued through the score till the day reached an early wrap and Francesco announced plans to take her and Vittorio for a well-deserved dinner. “I have some things to run through with Gianfranco, but I will see you in the foyer at eight o’clock, si?”

  * * *

  Alba waited in the foyer. Vittorio’s voice drew her round. He walked up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. No hidden intimacy this time, a clinical press, as you might kiss a distant relative, or colleague. It made Alba wonder whether she hadn’t imagined the tender touch back at the dinner after her concert. His black curls were tame, still a little damp from a shower perhaps, and his skin looked like he’d spent the late afternoon in the sun, while she was at the villa being interviewed on camera; at least, his demeanor, if not his golden glow, pointed toward the fact. It was good to see him like this, gone that terse edge she remembered preceding social gatherings. A picture of him surrounded by his manuscript papers on his studio floor unfolded in her mind. She creased the memories into a tight pile and shelved them.

  “Francesco just called me and says to go ahead without him. He’ll join us a little later perhaps. I think he wanted to go through some stuff with Gianfranco. Not like him to miss a good dinner, must be important.”

  Alba felt her body tighten a little.

  “We can get through one dinner just the two of us and pretend it’s not awkward, right?”

  Alba sighed. “I’m hungry. Pretending sounds like a sensible option.”

  They set off into the night with Alba’s driver, who had been instructed on where to go by Francesco’s driver, on the understanding that he would join them in a little while. They wound toward the hills inland and then toward a farther coa
st till the seawall promenade gave way to narrow cobbled alleys, so tight Alba worried the car might scratch the side of the small fishermen stone cottages that lined it. At last the car drew to a stop along a shingle beach where a handful of wooden glass-sided huts stood on thick trunks upon the water. The driver pulled up beside one of them and signaled for them to walk along a rickety jetty to one of the huts. Inside the tables were rammed with locals. Alba introduced herself to the owner by the door, whose invisible feathers puffed out in anticipation of their esteemed guest, whom she explained was delayed. The man wiggled his way through the narrow space between the tables to one at the far end, in a corner secluded from the other diners, facing the moonlit sea. He announced they were invited to dive into the long table of seafood antipasti and that Signor Maschiavelli had already ordered their signature seafood linguini to follow.

  “Apparently, if you don’t eat at least one sea urchin, they put a mark on your family’s name,” Vittorio whispered as they approached the delectable array of shells on offer. The urchins were halved, their orange flesh inside on show, long purple-blue spikes poking out toward the dishes that surrounded them: fresh squid with sliced potatoes and parsley, thin slices of rare tuna, fillets of sea bass drizzled with olive oil and fresh black pepper beside a bowl of prawns that reminded Alba of the interminable wedding feasts back home.

  “It’s so great to be around eaters,” Vittorio said, without looking at her. “When I’m out with Clare there’s so much I can’t eat because she has severe allergies. She’s also not partial to kissing anyone who’s eaten garlic within the hour.” He scooped another helping of clams onto his plate.

  She looked at him.

  “Stop staring, Alba, it’s rude,” he replied, with a soft smile. “This is me trying to make this process as enjoyable as we can, I’m making up for the tripe I spouted at the accademia the other day.”

  She replayed Misha’s session, the sensation of Vittorio working on the opposite side of the corridor, the way his familiar scent had spiraled through her like a golden splinter of energy, ricocheting along the pearls of memories stringing them together in one direct thread before she could stop them.