So out comes my brother with the same sorry-for-being-in-the-world air that Mamma always had, even though his beautiful shirt and jacket – which Doctor Salevsky lent him – fit perfectly. The doctor came over to our place to give them to him, since he didn’t have anything appropriate for a concert. We thanked him profusely and he said that it was a pleasure to hear from us every so often and to know how things were going and to think how happy Mamma would have been on this day. As he stood at the front door saying goodbye he told us that his brother had been a pianist, and they’d crushed his hands because he fought the regime back in Argentina.
While he’s being introduced, my brother wanders about and the space seems not to belong to him. Nonna and I hold our rosaries tightly and pray under our breath. Zia says that if it doesn’t work out, my brother could become a surgeon, what with those splendid hands.
Or as the judge always says – when he comes by from time to time to pick up Zia, who holds no grudge against him and is now friends with him – he could study law, since he has a strong sense of justice. He could give music a kick up the arse.
But when my brother plays, the strange and wretched Beethoven and other greats have the better of everyone and everything. Because that music contains the fragile, tragic, joyous and divine intensity of life. All his schoolmates are there, and his female admirers and what’s left of the Sevilla Mendoza family, and the applause is never-ending.