Page 110 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘It must have cost her a fortune! All those international calls!’

Everyone laughed.

‘No wonder she never bought a new dress.’

Nonna slept a lot, nearly all the time, and the doctor came in morning and night to make sure she was never in pain or distressed, but the Rossis were all over it, and not beyond letting her have a sip of her beloved grappa at bedtime, which was quite as it should be.

On the fourth day her breathing started to labour a little and they looked at each other as she became slightly more alert, aware of the breath tight in her body and on her chest, and tugging on the sleeve of everyone who came in and out, and they sat down carefully as she turned to them, one by one, and croaked out.

‘Ti . . . ti voglio bene.’

And of course everyone said, ‘I know you do. And we love you too. And everything is well.’

And the doctor came for the last time and agreed that it wouldn’t be long, but that nothing hurt, and time took on an odd feeling of being extremely elongated – minutes drawing out, punctuated by the sense that every breath was taking longer to come than the previous one, that it might be the last, and they milled, and cooked because they were going to need a lot of food for the funeral, after all, so they might as well put it in the freezer, and neighbours popped in and out quietly in the hush. The priest came and Marisa and Ann Angela got the worst fit of giggles, in the way you do at the most inappropriate moments, when in the middle of all the solemnity he turned out to be both radiantly handsome and quite magnificently camp, and Nonna held on to his robe as strongly as she’d held on to anyone else’s, and intoned, with a somewhat theatrical flair, the ancient words of the ritual.

‘Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.’

And they gathered round as the day turned to night, and Marisa texted Alexei for the first time – she didn’t even have his number; she found it on an advert for piano lessons – and said hello, and that they could hear him and would he mind terribly playing something?

And he said of course, and she had almost certainly left her balcony door open again so would she like him to climb in and grab the laptop so it was closer? She had told him not to be so daft, he would fall if he attempted to scale their balconies, but he took this as a challenge, vanished and reappeared thirty seconds later, clutching her laptop triumphantly.

It was lovely to see him; she couldn’t stop grinning, had forgotten her crossness.

‘Are you comink home?’ he said anxiously. ‘Or have you gone for ever to land of Puccini? Is good land.’

‘I am coming home,’ she promised.

‘Well, that is good,’ he said. ‘That is very good. You want me to play? Are you sure?’

She had been trying to be subtle but it was impossible withnonna’s old laptop right bang in the middle of the kitchen, the volume turned up to a level an eighty-year-old could communicate in.

‘Ooh, is that him?’ said Lucia. ‘Let’s have a look then.’

‘Shut up!’ hissed Marisa.

‘Is he better-looking than the priest?’ wondered Ann Angela aloud. She looked at the screen. ‘Oh. No.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Buona sera, Italian family of Marisa,’ said Alexei gravely, blinking, which produced much excitement among them, and some giggling among the younger cousins. ‘What music did your grandmother like?’

Marisa translated, and there was lots of shouting, particularly of popular Italian songs and hymns he simply didn’t know, but they finally settled on a gentle programme of Verdi and Rossini.

Marisa took the laptop into the bedroom, where the breaths were still faltering and far apart. One of the younger cousins immediately got up and Marisa slipped into their place.

‘Hey, Nonna,’ she said. ‘Here he is, he’s going to play for you.’

There it was, almost impossible to feel – the tiniest grasp on her sleeve.

‘Buona sera, Babushka of Marisa,’ said Alexei, and beamed cheerfully, then turned to his piano and started with a merry waltz, as other family members crammed into the bedroom to hear.

To Marisa’s astonishment, hernonna’s eyes opened for the first time in two days. She couldn’t quite focus, but Marisa held up the laptop.

‘That’s him?’ she said in a papery whisper. Alexei, oblivious, was concentrating intently on the music, those huge ungainly hands of his now flying as if they were in their natural habitat; a seal in water.

‘Si, Nonna.’

‘I like him,’ she said.

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