The Piano Tuner (10 page)

Although the rebellion was directed
against the Burmese government, the goal of the resistance was not Shan
independence, a fact of history that is frequently misunderstood. Indeed, the
Shan
sawbwas
recognized that without a strong central power, the Shan
States would always be plagued by war. Their chief goal was the overthrow of
Thibaw, and the crowning of a suzerain who would repeal the
thathameda
tax, a land tax they deemed unjust. Thus, as their candidate they selected
a Burman known as the Limbin Prince, a disenfranchised member of the house of
Alaungpaya, the ruling dynasty. This rebellion became known as the Limbin
Confederacy. In December 1885, the Limbin Prince arrived in Kengtung. Although
the movement carries his name, evidence suggests he is only a figurehead, with
the true power wielded by the Shan
sawbwas.

Meanwhile, as
the Limbin Prince followed the lonely trails into the highlands, war had broken
out once again between Upper Burma and Britain: the third and final
Anglo-Burmese war. The defeat of the Burmese at Mandalay by our forces was
completed two weeks before the Limbin Prince arrived in Kengtung, but because
of the vast and difficult terrain separating Kengtung from Mandalay, the news
failed to reach the Confederacy until after he arrived. While we had hoped that
the Limbin Confederacy would drop its resistance and submit to our rule,
instead it switched its original aims and declared war on the British Crown in
the name of Shan independence.

It is said that nature abhors a
vacuum and this can also be said of politics. Indeed, the retreat of the Limbin
Confederacy to Kengtung in 1883 had left vacant thrones in many of the powerful
Shan
muang,
thrones which were rapidly filled by local warlords.
Notable among these usurpers was a warrior named Twet Nga Lu, who became the de
facto ruler of Mongnai. A native of Kengtawng (not to be confused with
Kengtung—at times one wonders if the Shan have named their cities to
confuse the English tongue), a substate of Mongnai, Twet Nga Lu was a defrocked
monk turned local brigand whose violence was notorious throughout the region,
earning him the nickname “the Bandit Chief.” Before the
sawbwa
of Mongnai had retreated to Kengtung, Twet Nga Lu had led several attacks
on Mongnai. These were for the most part unsuccessful, and Twet Nga Lu changed
his tactics from the battlefield to the bed, at last gaining power by marrying
the widow of the
sawbwa’
s brother. When the
sawbwa
fled
to Kengtung, Twet Nga Lu, with the support of Burmese officials, seized Mongnai
completely.

Twet Nga Lu, along with the other de facto usurpers,
ruled until earlier this year, 1886, when Limbin forces launched an offensive
and reclaimed much of their land. Twet Nga Lu fled back to his native town,
from which he continues a campaign of violence, leaving swaths of burned
villages in the wake of his armies. The feud between him and the Mongnai
sawbwa
represents one of the greatest challenges to the establishment
of peace. While the
sawbwa
commands the respect of his subjects, Twet
Nga Lu is renowned not only for his ferocity but for his reputation as a master
of tattoos and charms; his flesh is said to be embedded with hundreds of
amulets which lend him invincibility, and for which he is feared and revered.
(A short note: Such charms are an important aspect of both Burman and Shan
culture. They can be anything from small gems to shells to sculptures of the
Buddha, and are placed under the skin through a shallow incision. A
particularly shocking variant is found mainly among fishermen: the implantation
of stones and bells beneath the skin of male genitalia, a practice whose
purpose and function continues to elude inquiries of this author.)

At
the time of this report, the Limbin Confederacy continues to grow in power, and
Twet Nga Lu remains at large, with evidence of his reign of terror visible in
the embers of burned towns and slaughtered villagers. All efforts at
negotiation have proved futile. From my command at the fort at Mae Lwin, I have
been unable to make contact with the Limbin Confederacy, and my attempts to
contact Twet Nga Lu have also failed. To date, there have been few confirmed
British sightings of the warlord, and questions have even been raised as to
whether the man truly exists, or whether he is just a legend, grown out of the
summation of terror from hundreds of unassociated
dacoit
attacks.
Nevertheless, a ransom has been issued for the Bandit Chief, dead or alive, one
of many continuing efforts to bring peace to the Shan Plateau.

Edgar read the full report without stopping. There were
some other short notes by Carroll, and they were all similar, filled with
digressions into ethnography and natural history. On the first page of one, a
survey of trade routes, the Doctor had scrawled at the top of the page,
“Please include to educate the piano tuner as to the geography of the
land.” Inside there were two appendices, one on the accessibility of
certain mountain trails to the passage of artillery, the second a compendium of
edible plants, “in case a party is lost without food,” with
sketches of flower dissections and the name of each plant in five different
tribal languages.

The contrast of the Doctor’s reports with the
other official military notes he’d read was striking, and Edgar wondered
if perhaps this was the source of some of the military’s enmity. He knew
most of the officers were landed gentry, educated at the finest schools. So he
could imagine their resentment of a man such as the Doctor, who came from a
more modest background, but who seemed vastly more cultured. Perhaps this too
is why I like him already, he thought. When Edgar had finished school, he had
left home to live and work with a piano tuner in the City, an eccentric old man
who believed that a good piano tuner must have knowledge not only of his
instrument but of “Physics, Philosophy, and Poetics,” so that
Edgar, although he never attended university, reached his twentieth birthday
with more education than many who had.

There were other similarities
as well, he thought. In many ways our professions are alike, rare in that they
transcend class distinction—everyone becomes ill, and concert grands as
well as gin-palace uprights get out of tune. Edgar wondered what this meant for
the Doctor, for he had learned early that being needed was not the same as
being accepted. Although he was a frequent visitor to upper-class homes where
the owners of expensive pianos often engaged him in talk about music, he never
felt welcome. And this distinct sense of estrangement extended in the other
direction as well, as he often felt awkwardly refined in the presence of the
carpenters or metalsmiths or porters whom he frequently contacted for his work.
He remembered telling Katherine about this feeling of not belonging soon after
they were married, one morning while they walked beside the Thames. She had
only laughed, and kissed him, her cheeks reddened by the cold, her lips warm
and moist. He remembered this almost as well as he remembered what she had
said, Believe what you may about where you belong, all I care is that you are
mine.
As for other acquaintances, he found friendship in common
interest, of the kind that now, steaming toward Rangoon, he felt toward the
Doctor.

It is unfortunate that the Doctor has not written about the
piano itself, he thought, for
it
is the hero of this entire endeavor,
its absence an obvious omission in the narrative thus far. He was amused by
this thought: Carroll made the army read his natural histories—it would
only be fair if they were forced to learn about the piano as well. In the midst
of his creative rapture and growing sense of united mission with the Doctor, he
rose, took out an inkwell, pen, and paper, lit a new candle for the first one
had burned low, and began to write.

Gentlemen,

I write to
you from on board our steamer bound for Rangoon. It is now the fourteenth day
of our journey, and I have been very much entertained by the view afforded by
our route, and by the most informative briefings provided to me by your office.
It has come to my attention, however, that little has been written about the
very purpose of our endeavor, namely, the piano. Thus, for the purpose of
History as well as the general education of those in the War Office, I feel it
necessary to record this story myself. Please share it with anyone you wish.
Should you care for any further information, gentlemen, I would be more than
happy to provide it.

The History of the Erard Piano

The history of the Erard piano could naturally be told with two
beginnings, that of the history of the piano, and that of the history of
Sebastien Erard. But the former is long and involved—fascinating
naturally, but too much a challenge for my pen, for I am a tuner with a love of
history, not a historian with a love of tuning. Suffice it to say that
following its invention by Cristofori in the early eighteenth century, the
piano underwent great modifications, and the Erard, the subject of this letter,
is indebted, as all modern pianos are, to this tremendous tradition.

Sebastien Erard was from Strasbourg, a German, but he went to Paris in
1768 when he was sixteen and apprenticed himself to a harpsichord maker. The
boy—to put it simply—was a prodigy, and soon he quit his
apprenticeship and opened his own shop. The other Parisian craftsmen felt so
threatened by the boy’s gift that they launched a campaign to have him
close his shop after he designed a
clavecin mécanique,
a
harpsichord with multiple registers, with quill and cowhide plectra, all
operated by an ingenious pedal mechanism that had never been thought of before.
But despite the boycott, the design was so impressive that the Duchess of
Villeroi gave the young Erard her sponsorship. Erard started making
pianofortes, and the duchess’s noble friends started buying them. This
time he aroused the ire of importers who resented the competition with their
imported English pianos. They tried to raid his house, only to be blocked by
none other than soldiers of Louis XVI; Erard was so renowned that the king gave
him full license to trade.

The sponsorship of the king
notwithstanding, Erard eventually looked abroad, and in the mid-1780s he
traveled to London, where he set up another shop on Great Marlborough Street.
He was there on July 14, 1789, when the Bastille was stormed, and when, three
years later, the purges of the Reign of Terror shook France. This history I am
certain you know well. Thousands of the bourgeoisie fled the country or were
condemned to die by the guillotine. But one fact few people know: those who
fled or were executed left thousands of works of art, including musical
instruments. Whatever can be said about French taste, it is worth noting
perhaps that even in the throes of revolution, when scholars and musicians were
losing their heads, someone decided that music must be protected. A Temporary
Commission of Arts was set up and Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni, a mediocre
violinist at the Comédie Italienne, was named Director of the Inventory.
For fourteen months he collected the instruments of the condemned. In all, over
three hundred were gathered, and each carries its own tragic tale. Antoine
Lavoisier, the great chemist, lost his life and his French-made Zimmerman grand
to the Terror. Countless other pianos still played today have similar
pedigrees. Of these, sixty-four were pianofortes, and of the French makes, the
majority seized were Erards, twelve in number. Whether this was evidence of the
taste of Bruni or of the victims, this dark distinction perhaps most
permanently established Erard’s reputation as the finest of piano makers.
It is significant that neither Sebastien nor his brother Jean Baptiste, who
remained in Paris, was ever brought before the Terror, despite their
sponsorship by the throne. Of the twelve pianofortes, the whereabouts of eleven
are known, and I have tuned all that now reside in England.

Sebastien
Erard is dead now, of course, but his manufacturing shop is still in London.
The remainder of his story is one of technical beauty, and if you cannot
understand the mechanics of what I describe, you must at least appreciate them,
as I appreciate the function of your cannons without understanding the chemical
nature of the gases which make them fire. His innovations revolutionized piano
construction. The double-escapement repetition action, the
mécanisme
à étrier,
attaching hammers singly to the rail instead of in
groups of six as in the Broadwood pianos, the agraffe, and the harmonic
bar—all these are Erard’s innovations. Napoleon played on an Erard;
Erard sent a grand to Haydn as a gift; Beethoven played one for seven
years.

I hope this information will be found useful to your staff in
furthering the understanding and appreciation of the fine instrument now
located in the distant borders of our Empire. Such a creation merits not only
respect and attention. It should be cared for as one would protect an objet
d’art in a museum. The service of a tuner is worthy of the
instrument’s quality, and I hope just the first step in the continuing
care of the instrument.

Your humble servant,

Edgar Drake

Piano Tuner and Voicer

Erards-a-Specialty

When
he finished, he sat looking at the letter, twirling his pen. He thought for a
minute, crossed out “cared for” and wrote above it
“defended.” They were military men, after all. He folded it into an
envelope and put it in his bag, to be mailed in Rangoon. At long last he grew
sleepy.

I hope they read the letter, he thought, smiling to himself as
he fell asleep. Of course, at the time he couldn’t know just how many
times it would be read, inspected, sent to cryptographers, held to lights, even
examined under magnifying lenses. For when a man disappears, we cling to
anything he left behind.