The Life of Elves Read Free Page B

that had awoken her to the world, even though people assured her she was only an infant at the time, lying in hunger on the top step outside the church. But Clara did not question her faith. There was a great void of sensations, an absence festooned with whiteness and wind; and there was the melodious cascade that pierced the emptiness and which was there again every morning when the old housekeeper wished her a good day. The little girl had learned the Italian language with miraculous speed, but Paolo the shepherd had grasped that it was something other than her facility with Italian that had left a scent of prodigy in her wake, and one evening he whispered to her,
It’s the music, little one, isn’t it, it’s the music you hear?
In response, she looked up at him with her eyes as blue as the torrents from the glacier, with a gaze in which the angels of mystery sang. And life flowed down the slopes of the Sasso with the slowness and intensity of those places where everything requires effort but also takes its time, in the current of a bygone dream where humankind knew languor interwoven with the bitterness of the world. Labor was intense, and prayer along with it, and they protected a little girl who spoke the way others sing, and who knew how to converse with the spirits of the rocks and the combes.
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    One day in June, late in the afternoon, there came a knock on the door of the presbytery and two men strode into the kitchen, wiping their brows. One was the priest’s youngest brother, the other was the carter who had driven the large two-horse cart all the way from L’Aquila; on the cart was a massive shape harnessed by blankets and straps. Clara had watched the convoy making its way along the northern route as she stood after lunch on the steep path above the village: from there the view encompassed both valleys and, on a fine day, Pescara and the sea. When the cart had almost reached the final uphill stretch, she scampered down the slope and arrived at the presbytery, her face lit with love. The two men had left the cart outside the church and climbed up to the plum garden where they were greeted with hugs and a glass of the sweet chilled white wine that was served on warm days, along with some restorative victuals, and then, agreeing to some dinner later, they wiped their mouths with the cuffs of their sleeves and went back to the church where Father Centi was waiting.
    Two more men were needed to help move the big object into the nave, then they set about freeing it from its straps, and in the meanwhile the village began to assemble in the pews of the little church; in the air was a sweetness that coincided with the arrival of this unexpected bequest from the city. But Clara kept well back, motionless, speechless, in the shadow of a pillar. This was her moment, and she had known as soon as she saw the shape moving along the north road; if the old housekeeper saw on her face the exaltation of a bride, it was because she felt as if she were about to partake in strange yet familiar nuptials. When the last strap was removed and the object was finally visible, there was a murmur of satisfaction, followed by a burst of applause, because it was a fine black fortepiano, as polished as a pebble is by the sea, and it was almost without a scratch, despite having traveled widely and experienced much.
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    This is the story of the piano. Father Centi came from an affluent family in L’Aquila, but his lineage was declining, since he had become a priest and two of his brothers had died young, and the third, Alessandro, who was now at his aunt’s expiating the errant ways of his former dissolute life in Rome, had never gotten around to taking a wife. The brothers’ father had died before the war, leaving his widow with an unexpected pile of debts and a house that was too opulent for the impoverished woman she had become overnight. Once she had sold all her belongings and the creditors had finished