The Piano Tuner (2 page)

“I would like to hear about the piano if you
don’t mind.”

“Yes, yes of course, the piano.”
He sighed. “What would you like to know? I believe you have been informed
of most of the details of this matter in the letter from Colonel
Fitzgerald.”

“Yes, Carroll requested a piano. The army
purchased an 1840 Erard grand and shipped it to him. Would you mind telling me
more of that story?”

“I can’t really. Other than
hoping to repeat the success he found in reciting Shelley, we can’t
understand why he would want a piano.”

“Why?” The
piano tuner laughed, a deep sound that came unexpectedly from the thin frame.
“How many times I have asked myself the same question about my other
clients. Why would a society matron who doesn’t know Handel from Haydn
purchase an 1820 Broadwood and request that it be tuned weekly even though it
has never been played? Or how to explain the County Justice who has his
instrument revoiced once every two months—which, I might add, although
entirely unnecessary, is wonderful for my affairs—yet this same man
refuses an entertainment license for the annual public piano competition? You
will excuse me, but Doctor Carroll doesn’t seem so bizarre. Have you ever
heard, sir, Bach’s
Inventions
?”

The Colonel
stuttered, “I think so … I’m certain I must have,
but—no offense intended, Mr. Drake—I do not see how that has
anything to do with—”

“The thought of living for
eight years in the jungle without Bach’s music is horrid to me.”
Edgar paused, then added, “It sounds beautiful on an 1840
Erard.”

“That may be, but our soldiers are still
fighting.”

Edgar Drake took a deep breath. He could suddenly feel
his heart beating faster. “I apologize, I do not intend my remarks to
seem presumptuous. In fact, every minute of your history makes me more
interested. But I am confused. If you so disapprove of our pianist, Colonel,
then why am I here? You are a very important person; it is rare for someone of
your rank to spend several hours interviewing a civilian, even I know this. I
also know that the War Office must have invested a tremendous sum in shipping
the piano to Burma, let alone purchasing it. And you have offered to pay me
generously—well,
fairly
in my opinion, but from an objective
perspective, generously. Yet you seem so disapproving of my commission.”

The Colonel leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his
chest. “Very well. It is important that we discuss this. I am open with
my disapproval, but please do not confuse that with disrespect. The
Surgeon-Major is an extremely effective soldier, an unusual person perhaps, but
he is irreplaceable. There are some, very high within this office, who have a
great interest in his work.”

“But not yourself.”

“Let’s just say that there are men who get lost in the rhetoric
of our imperial destiny, that we conquer not to gain land and wealth but to
spread culture and civilization. I will not deny them this, but it is not the
duty of the War Office.”

“And yet you support
him?”

The Colonel paused. “If I speak bluntly, Mr. Drake,
it is because it is important that you understand the position of the War
Office. The Shan States are lawless. Except Mae Lwin. Carroll has accomplished
more than several battalions. He is indispensable, and he commands one of the
most dangerous and important posts in our colonies. The Shan States are
essential to securing our eastern frontier; without them we risk invasion,
French or even Siamese. If a piano is the concession we must make to keep him
at his post, then it is a small cost. But his post is a military post, not a
music salon. It is our hope that when the piano is tuned he will return to his
work. It is important that you understand this, that you understand that
we,
not the Surgeon-Major, are hiring you. His ideas can be …
seductive.”

You don’t trust him, thought Edgar. “Just
a concession then, like cigarettes,” he said.

“No, this is
different, I think you understand.”

“So I should not try to
argue that it is
because
of the piano that he is
indispensable?”

“We will know when it is tuned. Won’t
we, Mr. Drake?”

And at his words, the piano tuner smiled.
“Perhaps we will.”

The Colonel sat forward. “Do you
have any other questions?”

“Only one.”

“Yes, what is it?”

Edgar looked down at his hands.
“I am sorry, Colonel, but what exactly is
wrong
with the
piano?”

The Colonel stared. “I think we have discussed
this.”

The tuner took a deep breath. “With all due respect,
sir, we discussed what you think is wrong with
a
piano. But I need to
know what is wrong with this piano, with the 1840 Erard that sits somewhere in
a jungle far away, where you are asking me to go. Your office has told me
little about the piano besides the fact that it is out of tune, which, I might
add, is due to the swelling of the soundboard, not the body, as you mentioned
in your letter. Of course, I am amazed that you did not anticipate this, the
piano going out of tune. Humidity works horrors.”

“Again,
Mr. Drake, we were doing this for Carroll. You will have to make such
philosophical inquiries of the man himself.”

“Well, then
may I ask what it is that I need to mend?”

The Colonel coughed.
“Such details were not provided to us.”

“He must have
written about the piano somewhere.”

“We have only one note,
strange and uncharacteristically short for the Doctor, usually a man of
eloquence, which made us somewhat incredulous of the request, until it was
followed by his threat to resign.”

“May I read
it?”

The Colonel hesitated, and then passed a small brown piece
of paper to the piano tuner. “It is Shan paper,” the Colonel said.
“Supposedly the tribe is famous for it. It is odd, as the Surgeon-Major
has never used it for any other correspondence.” The paper was soft, a
handmade matte with visible fibers, now stained with a dark ink.

Gentlemen,

The Erard grand can no longer be played, and must
be tuned and repaired, a task which I have attempted but failed. A piano tuner
who specializes in Erards is needed urgently in Mae Lwin. I trust that this
should not be difficult. It is much easier to deliver a man than a piano.

Surgeon-Major Anthony J. Carroll, Mae Lwin, Shan States

Edgar looked up. “These are spare words to justify sending a man to
the other side of the world.”

“Mr. Drake,” said the
Colonel, “your reputation as a tuner of Erard grands is well known by
those in London who concern themselves with the matter of music. We anticipate
the entire duration of the journey to be no longer than three months from when
you leave to when you return to England. As you know, you will be rewarded
well.”

“And I must go alone.”

“Your
wife will be well provided for here.”

The piano tuner sat back in
his chair.

“Do you have any more questions?”

“No, I think I understand,” he said softly, as if speaking only
to himself.

The Colonel set the papers down and leaned forward in his
seat. “Will you go to Mae Lwin?”

Edgar Drake turned back
to the window. It was dusk, and wind played with the falling water, intricate
crescendos and diminuendos of rain. I decided long before I came here, he
thought.

He turned to the Colonel and nodded.

They shook hands. Killian insisted on taking him to Colonel
Fitzgerald’s office, where he reported the news. Then more words, but the
piano tuner was no longer listening. He felt as if he were in a dream, the
reality of the decision still floating above him. He felt himself repeating the
nod, as if doing so would make real his decision, would reconcile the
insignificance of that movement with the significance of what it meant.

There were papers to sign and dates to be set and copies of documents to be
ordered for his “further perusal.” Doctor Carroll, explained
Killian, had requested that the War Office provide a long list of background
readings for the tuner: histories, studies of anthropology, geology, natural
history. “I wouldn’t worry yourself too much with all of this, but
the Doctor did ask that we provide them for you,” he said. “I think
that I have told you all you really need to know.”

As he left, a
line from Carroll’s letter followed him, like a faint trail of cigarette
smoke from a salon performance.
It is much easier to deliver a man than a
piano.
He thought he would like this Doctor; it is not often that one
found such poetic words in the letters of military men. And Edgar Drake had
much respect for those who find song in responsibility.

2

A
heavy fog drifted along Pall Mall
as Edgar left the War Office. He followed a pair of torch-boys through mist so
thick that the children, swathed in heavy rags, seemed disembodied from the
hands that held the dancing lights. “Do you want a cab, sir?” one
of the boys asked. “Yes, to Fitzroy Square, please,” he said, but
then changed his mind. “Take me to the Embankment.”

They walked through the crowds, through the stern and marbled corridors of
Whitehall and then out again, through a jumble of carriages, filled with black
coats and top hats and sprinkled with patrician accents and the smoke of
cigars. “There is a dinner at one of the clubs tonight, sir,”
confided one of the boys, and Edgar nodded. In the buildings around them, tall
windows gave onto walls of oil paintings, lit by high-ceilinged chandeliers. He
knew some of the clubs, he had tuned a Pleyel at Boodle’s three years
ago, and an Erard at Brooks’s, a beautiful inlaid piece from the Paris
workshop.

They passed a crowd of well-dressed men and women, their
faces ruddy from the cold and from brandy, the men laughing beneath dark
mustaches, the women squeezed in the embrace of whalebone corsets, lifting the
hems of their dresses above a road glistening with rain and horse dung. An
empty carriage waited for them on the other side of the street, an old turbaned
Indian already at the door. Edgar turned. Perhaps he has seen what I will, he
thought, and had to suppress the desire to speak to him. Around him the crowd
of men and women parted, and losing the light of the torch-boys, Edgar
stumbled. “Watch where you are going, my dear chap!” roared one of
the men, and one of the women, “These drunks.” The crowd laughed,
and Edgar could see the old Indian’s eyes light up, only modesty keeping
him from sharing this joke with his fares.

The boys were waiting by
the low wall that ran along the Embankment. “Where to, sir?”
“This is fine, thank you,” and he flipped them a coin. Both boys
jumped for it, dropped it, and it bounced on the irregularity of the road and
down a grating. The boys fell to their knees. Here, you hold the torches. No,
then you will take it, you never share.
You
never share, this is mine,
I talked to him … Embarrassed, Edgar fished two new coins from his
pocket. “Here, I am sorry, take these.” He walked off; the boys
remained arguing by the grating. Soon only the light of their torches remained.
He stopped and looked out at the Thames.

Below, sounds of movement came
from the river. Watermen maybe, he thought, and he wondered where they were
going, or coming from. He thought of another river, distant, even its name new,
pronounced as if a third syllable lay between the
l
and the
w,
soft and hidden. Salween. He whispered it, and then, embarrassed,
quickly turned to see if he was alone. He listened to the sound of the men and
the splash of waves against the Embankment. The fog thinned over the river.
There was no moon, and it was only by the light of lanterns swinging from the
tugboats that he could see the vague line of the shore, the vast, heavy
architecture that crowded the river. Like animals at a waterhole, he thought,
and he liked the comparison, I must tell Katherine. He then thought, I am
late.

He walked along the Embankment, past a group of tramps, three men
in rags huddled around a small fire. They watched him as he went by, and he
nodded at them, awkwardly. One of the men looked up and smiled a broad mouth of
broken teeth. “G’day t’ ya, Cap’n,” a Cockney
voice heavy with whiskey. The other men were silent and turned back to the
fire.

He crossed the street and left the river, squeezing through
swarms of people gathered outside the Metropole, following Northumberland
Avenue to Trafalgar Square, where masses shifted around carriages and
omnibuses, where policemen tried to move the crowds in vain, where conductors
cried out for fares, where whips snapped and horses shat, where signs rose
shouting

S
WANBILL
C
ORSETS FOR THE
THIRD
T
YPE OF
FIGURE.
C
IGARS DE
J
OY
:
O
NE OF THESE
C
IGARETTES GIVES IMMEDIATE
RELIEF IN THE WORST ATTACK OF
A
STHMA
,
C
OUGH
,
B
RONCHITIS
,
AND
S
HORTNESS OF
B
REATH
.
HOP BITTERS HOP
BITTERS.
T
HIS
C
HRISTMAS
D
AY
,
WHEN CHURCH BELLS CHIME
,
G
IVE YOURSELF THE GIFT OF
TIME
—
ROBINSON’S
QUALITY WATCHES
.

Beneath the glow of the fountains around Nelson’s Column, he stopped
to watch an organ-grinder, an Italian with a screeching monkey in a Napoleon
hat, which hopped around the barrel organ, waving its arms while its master
turned the crank. Around it, a group of children were clapping, torch-boys and
chimney sweeps, rag collectors, and the children of costermongers. A policeman
approached, his baton swinging. “Get home now, all of you, get that
filthy animal out of here. Play your music in Lambeth, this is a place for
gentlemen.” The group moved slowly away, protesting. Edgar turned.
Another monkey, giant and grinning, groomed itself in a jeweled mirror,
B
ROOKE
’
S
S
OAP
M
ONKEY
B
RAND
: T
HE
M
ISSING
L
INK IN
H
OUSEHOLD
C
LEANLINESS
. The billboard rolled past on the side of an
omnibus. The busboy hollered for fares, Fitzroy Square, Hurry for Fitzroy
Square. That is home, thought Edgar Drake, and he watched the omnibus
pass.