One of the things that the young man has learned, in these days that have taken him from summer’s heat to winter winds and chill, and then back around to the warmth of sunshine, is to be aware of the weather.
They’d never discussed it as such during their lessons. And yet the fact remains, he muses as he walks up the slight incline that leads to the old man’s home, that in the time he’s been taking the old man’s lessons, his own perception of things has changed, and not just professionally speaking. It has been a change as subtle as it’s been inexorable. He sings differently now, everybody tells him so. It’s not clear exactly what’s new and different about the way he plays and modulates his voice, but everyone has noticed the change: both the audience of his fans, who never miss a single one of his concerts, and those who work with him. But no one knows where it is he goes one or two afternoons a week, when he heads out on those odd strolls from which he doesn’t return until much later in the evening.
The young man smiles. The most precious gift, the most significant achievement has been the acquisition of awareness. Before meeting the old man, he thought that he’d been a virtuoso musician, but still basically cold. He felt a certain lack, a foggy absence. Now, however, every time he picks up his instrument, every time he completes an introduction, every time he opens his mouth to sing, he understands that he’s telling a story. Now he knows that, aside from keys and chords, he needs to tune himself to match the sentiments wrapped up in that song.
Now he realizes, without any doubt or hesitation, that he needs to play a part, just like a great actor. He, who plays and sings, becomes for a few minutes the author of the piece. Like a medium, he needs to allow the phantoms imagined by a poet and a musician to take possession of his hands and his voice, so that he can narrate an age-old story. Each time starting over from scratch, every time as if it were the first. Without thinking of anything else; not the lights or the applause or the eyes wide open in the half-light before him—none of it can exist for him. Only the story. The story, and nothing else.
And so his hands have that new and limber ease that he never could have imagined he’d acquire, not even after years of lessons and practice. He’s become a virtuoso, a first-rate virtuoso, even as his reputation for knowledge and skill has grown. He senses that there’s so much more left to learn. That old man knows a great many things that he has yet to teach him; and the young man is hungry to learn.
As always, the diminutive housekeeper answers the door, her eyes downcast, an instant before he can ring the doorbell. He always wonders how she does it, where she manages to spy on him, how she sees him coming; there are no peepholes, and in the building’s window he never spots anyone looking out. Then she leads him, her house clogs clopping ahead of him, all the way to the old man’s bedroom, and then vanishes.
The young man opens the door and senses the atmosphere. He has learned that there’s a subtle, almost imperceptible variation in the air that dictates the climate of their time together; every single time is different, unpredictable. There have been afternoons when no mention has been made of music at all, and the topics discussed have been varied and scattered; except when it’s over, the young man realizes that they’ve talked about a song, or even more than one. Those have been the most useful lessons. Other times, after a brusque and fleeting greeting, the old man has played his magical, venerable instrument; and the young man has sat there, motionless, observing those arthritis-twisted fingers fly up and down the neck, captivated by a heavenly sound and transported who knows where by age-old passions.
In time, the young man has stopped asking or demanding. Now he just waits, grateful to have been given admittance; grateful for what he receives; grateful to be able to sit there, in the treasure chamber, amidst the stacks of books, perched on an uncomfortable stool a foot or so away from the worn leather armchair. Over time, he’s grown familiar with every fragment of that chaos, governed by an illogical order. Over time he has learned. And he’s still learning.
The old man is standing, with his back turned, next to the open window. The air is soft and warm even up here; the afternoon is lashing down on the sea. The city’s voices arrive muffled. And there’s a different screeching, like a congregation of piercing whistles.
The swallows, says the old man. They’ve returned.
The young man halts his step in midair, as if the old man had shouted a warning that he was about to step on a landmine. His voice. What is it, about his voice? A tone that he’d never heard before in such an ordinary, workaday phrase. As if he’d just unveiled the day and the hour of the world’s end.
The young man observes the old man’s back. He’s often wondered what he must have been like when he was young. What kind of life did he have, that man of such immense talent, about whom legends are told and of whose performances there may still survive some long-forgotten recordings—maybe, maybe not, no one knows for certain. When he decided to come learn from him, the young man had to work hard to track him down. The old man seemed to have dissolved into thin air, vanished from this world and from the domains of music, outside of the variegated canvas of an environment where everyone knows everyone else.
He must have been striking, quite charismatic: that much the young man had decided right a way. Sure, he’s not much to look at now, he’s let himself go, with the stringy, thinning hair, too long, the prominent, hooked nose and the haggard, sunken eyes, but he stands erect, he’s quite tall. And talent is the best cosmetic.
Why had that phrase caused a shiver to run down the young man’s back? What was there in those words that seemed so ineluctable, so definitive? Buonasera, Maestro.
Sure, springtime has arrived, you can tell from the . . .
No. Not springtime. The swallows. Those are swallows. Don’t you hear them?
The old man had spoken with a harsh edge, cutting and annoyed. He hadn’t specified some detail, he’d expressed a completely different concept. The swallows are one thing, springtime quite another. The young man nods his head, hastily. Of course, certainly, Maestro. The swallows, of course.
They build their nests in the rain gutter that runs right in front of this windowsill. They aren’t afraid of me, you know? I look out and they still keep on coming and going, coming and going. Then, without warning, they vanish. I always expect that, one time or another, with all of these cars, with the exhaust and the noise, with the heat and the cold that arrive so unexpectedly, they’ll finally fail to return. But they always return.
The young man nods foolishly, behind the old man’s back. The beginning of their conversations is almost always incomprehensible, only to become clear in time. Usually.
The old man’s voice is low, practically croaking; very different from when he sings. The swallows, you know. The swallows don’t understand anything. They don’t look at the world. They leave and they return. They think only of themselves, the swallows. Over the years, I’ve developed an idea, about the swallows. I think they dream. But they have only one dream.
The young man wonders if he’s supposed to reply. The old man acts as if he’s expecting some response, but the words that the young man utters out of courtesy for the most part drop into the void, unanswered; so for the past few months he’s started saying what he thinks at the exact moment that he thinks it, and as if by enchantment, that’s proved to be the best approach, he’s obtained the occasional glint of understanding in those cataract-veiled eyes, even the occasional wrinkled smile.
A dream for each swallow, Maestro? he asks. Or do they all have the same dream?
There follows a fairly lengthy silence; he can’t tell whether the old man is pondering the question or whether he’s ignored it entirely. At last, the old man says: The same for each, I think; otherwise, they wouldn’t all do the same thing, would they?
He turns and stares at him, fixedly. Expressionless. Motionless, his hair tousled lightly by the springtime breeze tumbling in through the window. The young man lowers his gaze, shuffles his feet uncertainly. Then the old man speaks.
Once I made the acquaintance of a swallow. I’ve never told anyone about it, in all these many, many years. But today they’ve returned, and you’re here, and I need to leave this story with someone, before dying. I’ve been thinking about it all night.
Maestro, what are you saying? You mustn’t think about death at all. You’re fit as a fiddle. And you have so many things still to tell me, so much still to teach me . . .
No. I don’t need to teach you anything at all. And I haven’t taught you a thing, except which old steamer trunk to delve into and extract whatever you need to perform each song you sing. But this time, I’m going to tell you the story of the swallow I got to know, when the world struck me as full of colors, full of all the colors imaginable: and then it lost one of those colors. A single solitary color, all the others still remained; but knowing that you’d never again see this one specific color makes you die inside, little by little, one grain of sand after another, like in an hourglass. And in my hourglass, there’s practically no sand left now.
What are you saying, Maestro? I’m not ready, I can’t just . . .
No one’s ever ready, guaglio’. Never. If you’re ready, then you’re perfect: and that will mean you can sing no more. That’s the reason, don’t you see that? You sing if you’re imperfect. If there’s a crack, a fissure that lets light through. What we sing is imperfection, pain, and passion. Otherwise, it’s all pointless.
The young man sighs. That conversation is like a knife to his heart, it terrifies him. When did he begin to love that crazy old man so dearly? When did that happen?
Tell me, Maestro. Tell me all about the swallow.
The old man steps over to the case, he bends over with some effort, he snaps the fasteners open the same as always. He pulls out the instrument, he caresses it. His hand trembles.
Then he goes over and takes a seat in the armchair. The young man holds his breath, just as he does every time.
He recognized the chord, the start of the introduction. It’s not one of the more famous songs, the ones you hear wherever you go. The young man takes in every movement of the claw-like fingers, every excursion of the aged hand up and down the neck of the instrument. But at a certain point he notices something else: the old man’s eyes are fixed on the window, on the bright blue air of the bright blue city as it darkens in the springtime evening, amidst the swallows that come and go from the rain gutter, rebuilding the nests they abandoned last autumn.
The old man’s eyes are steady and expressionless. And yet, the tears roll slow and viscous down his bristly cheeks.
Maestro, the young man murmurs. Maestro, please. If it’s too much . . . if it’s too much . . . don’t do it, play a different song. I beg of you.
The old man’s eyes remain fixed, unwavering, but he smiles. No, he says. You have to hear this. I’ll stop after each verse and I’ll tell you the story. Because someone needs to know about that swallow.
He resumes the musical introduction, then starts to sing:
Tutte ll’amice mieje sanno ca tuorne,
ca si’ partuta e no ca mm’hê lassato.
So’ già tre ghiuorne.
Nisciuno ’nfin’ a mo’ s’è ’mmagginato
ca tu, crisciuta ’ncopp’ ’o core mio,
mm’hê ditto addio.
E torna rundinella,
torna a ’stu nido mo’ ch’è primmavera.
I’ lasso ’a porta aperta quanno è ’a sera
speranno ’e te truva’
vicino a me.
(All my friends are sure that you’re coming back,
that you’re just off on a trip somewhere, not that you’ve left me.
It’s already been three days.
No one so far has ventured to imagine that you,
who’ve grown to be a part of my heart,
have told me farewell.
So come home, little swallow,
come back to this nest, now that it’s springtime.
I leave the door open when evening falls,
hoping to find you again,
by my side.)
And here he stops singing. Continuing to play slowly with those magical fingers of his, he begins telling the story.
The story of the only swallow that didn’t come back.