After the second verse, having completed the refrain, the old man starts talking again with his usual subdued and scratchy voice, so different from his voice when he sings. In the meantime, his twisted, talon-like fingers have never ceased playing. The young man watches him, captivated, because when the old man plays, he doesn’t limit himself to replicating ad infinitum the melodic theme, but instead works variations on it, turning it into something new and yet consistent; as if he’d written it himself and knew something that the countless musicians who have performed their own versions over the years didn’t know, still don’t know, and never will know.
He’s a genius, the young man thinks for the umpteenth time since the day he first set foot in the room with the window overlooking the sea, outside which the swallows sing their high-pitched song. How can it be that this man isn’t world famous? How can he be a legend only among us musicians? Why isn’t his name on the lips of one and all? Why hasn’t he given concerts before oceanic audiences? Why isn’t he staggeringly wealthy, why doesn’t he live in a house glittering with silver, surrounded by household servants?
Lost in those thoughts, and in the melody, both age-old and brand new, he pays no attention to the old man’s question. While they’re traveling, you understand? the old man had said to him. And he had replied: Forgive me, Maestro, I missed what you said. The old man shakes his head. He seems saddened more than annoyed. Again, he repeats: A theatrical troupe is like a sort of family in constant movement. And it’s precisely during their travel, their stays at run-down little hotels where up-and-coming young actors and old over-the-hill artists are sent to sleep, in the smoky, crowded trattorias where they eat their meals, that those cursed dreams begin to intertwine. It happens during their journeys that the hellish loneliness, the thwarted pursuit of perfection, the envy and the home all get mingled together and muddled up, as if they were separate and distinct ingredients set to simmer in an enormous cauldron.
The young man struggles to understand what this sidetrack has to do with the story. He waits to discover what else will happen around the diva’s corpse. The old man prolongs in a sublime fashion the notes between the refrain and the final verse. The young man knows every single syllable of the song, and yet nonetheless he waits on tenterhooks for the next verse to arrive, as if it were some unexpected plot twist or some horrifying revelation.
The old man says: Their dreams mingled early. They were good looking and in the flower of their youth. And they were talented. Only the ballast of the present weighed down the future in which they’d surely take flight and conquer the world. Their opportunities, however, were not identical. It’s one thing to be a line dancer, one more actor among many, a starlet in the presence of established giants, but the art we practice is quite another. When we take our instrument in hand, there is no appeal for us. Those who are talented really are, those who are merely competent are well aware of the fact. The opinions of others count for nothing.
What changes is our self-confidence. We cherish the belief that we can improve, become increasingly good at what we do. But in fact a radiant smile, an enchanting face, a perfect body will wither with time. No different than a rose, red and proud and magnificent, which will lose its petals and its leaves as it dies, if dropped on the wooden floorboards.
The young man grasps the concept, even though the flower metaphor escapes him. So he asks: How important is this difference, Maestro? And how did their dreams intertwine?
The old man says nothing for a while, but the music, which has never stopped, fills the silence along with the cries of the swallows as they come and go, come and go from the rain gutter, reiterating their destiny: the eternal return.
Then he speaks. An attractive woman is always afraid, and that fear grows by the second. Fedora was afraid, too. In her husband, she glimpsed an omen of what would happen to her soon enough: wrinkles on her face, bleary eyes, the weariness that sleep is no longer enough to erase. It’s not even a matter of beauty: beauty changes, it doesn’t vanish, at the outside, it is transformed; at forty you can be more captivating than you were at twenty. Terror sinks its roots in the ambition to stop the passing minutes. It has nothing to do with sensuality, admirers, or backstage bouquets and candies: what is desired is simply for time to stop. And if you have power, as she does, then you believe that you can make that happen. But hers were not the only dreams hovering in the air between the stage and the dressing rooms. Other people had dreams, as well.
With his eyes focused on the old man’s left hand, as he says a silent prayer to God above to let him remember at least one of the series of chords, the young man murmurs: Maestro, whose dreams clashed with Fedora’s?
The old man stares up at the visible shred of blue sky, crisscrossed by the wild flight paths of the birds.
First and foremost, her husband’s dreams. He hoped to keep her at his side because he had invented her. The dreams of those who feared they’d lose their livelihoods, if the two of them broke up. The dreams of those who had other plans and a different future, with her or without her. The dreams of the man who desired her but had been spurned. The dreams of the man whom she desired. Who could even say how many other dreams pirouetted and plunged through the sky overhead?
Look at the swallows: there are so many of them, and each of them seems to hover and swoop at random. And yet they never crash in midair.
But dreams do.
The old man plays on and on: a melody that has neither beginning nor end.
Then he says: the curtain. We all pay too little attention to the curtain, and yet that curtain means that the show has ended. It can be pushed to one side for curtain calls, for standing ovations, but still, the show is over. And yet we never talk about it, we focus on the stage, the various movements, or the repertory, onstage entrances and exits, the marks we are meant to hit and occupy.
And we refer to the audience as if it were a single person. What will the audience say? What will the audience do? Will the audience be satisfied, or will it be disappointed? We ponder and scheme, we lose our wits, we spend hours and hours as if it were the tyrant of our existence, and we forget about that hanging strip of cloth which, let it be clear, is the single most important thing. It opens every time, true enough, but then, inevitably, it closes, too, once again separating dream from reality.
The swallow, you see, can remain behind the curtain. It can die. What will happen to all the other dreams once the swallow stops flying and the rose has lost all its petals? What will become of them?
The young man realizes that there is no answer to that question, but that it is the real reason why those wonderful fingers have failed to give joy to generations of delirious crowds.
He suddenly understands that the Maestro, the possessor of that unrivaled talent, is confiding in him the reason he drew that curtain and will never open it again.
In that instant, as if reading the young man’s mind, the old man begins to sing again.
Torna. Ll’amice mieje sanno ca tuorne.
Tutte se so’ ’nfurmate e a tutte dico:
“Dint’a ’sti juorne.”
Uno sultanto, era ’o cchiú buono amico,
nun ll’aggio visto e nun c’è cchiú venuto, fosse partuto?
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.
(Come back. All my friends have heard that you’re coming back.
They’ve all asked, and I tell them all:
“Soon, one of these days.”
There’s just one, my best friend,
but I haven’t seen him and he hasn’t come by,
could he be away?
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 with a sudden stab of pain to his heart, the young man understands.