The Forest of Wool and Steel

by Natsu Miyashita

  Because really my issue was this: I wanted to be the one. I wanted to tune her piano. But I couldn’t say so. I wasn’t good enough. I might not make it in time for when Kazune really took flight.

  ‘I think everybody who plays the piano understands this – a pianist stands alone,’ Kazune insisted quietly. ‘Once you start playing, you’re all on your own. That’s why I want to play the piano that Yuni has tuned. That’s my dream now.’

  Her dream. And Yuni’s, too.

  Mr Yanagi’s eyes met mine. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said.

  But I felt frustrated. Is it OK for Yuni to have such a humble dream? Shouldn’t she be chasing after something else – some much larger dream, away from her sister’s shadow? Kazune was, after all, Kazune, someone who would make a life for herself through the piano.

  ‘Once you start playing, you’re all on your own.’ Yuni repeated Kazune’s words. I could feel the strength of will in her voice. ‘So all of us need to do what we can to support her. Like Kazune, I’m going to live for the piano too.’

  A sparkling tree in the far distant mountains – this image came to me again. Yuni was already determined to become a tuner, that much was clear.

  ‘Thank you for everything today. We’ll be going now.’ The twins bowed in unison, and as they looked up they both smiled brightly.

  I walked them out to the showroom and waved them goodbye. When I returned to the office on the first floor, Mr Yanagi was still pretty worked up.

  ‘I feel like I want to do my very best for them right this minute,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. It’s like how I felt when I watched a boxing match on TV. Afterwards I felt all stirred up, like I had to get out and do something ridiculous. Like go for a run.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘It’s kind of annoying, though. I feel hell-bent on doing my very best, but I don’t know what it is I should do my very best at.’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ I said.

  How could I do my best to help the twins? How could I get better at tuning? If I knew the answer, I would leap into it with every ounce of strength I had. No matter how tough it might be, no matter how painful or trying, I would do it – if only I knew what it was.

  Perhaps it was the same for a pianist. Learning the basics and practising one’s technique are of course indispensable, but how do you polish your expression, your interpretation? It requires an extra unfathomable ingredient to create truly beautiful music. But who can say for certain what that might be or whether it can ever truly be acquired?

  ‘I’m ready to sweat blood here to do my part.’ Mr Yanagi, his right hand balled up in a fist, seemed to realize I’d been staring at him all this time. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do. Definitely. But I don’t know what I should do my best at, or what sort of effort I should make to be able to create a better sound.’

  ‘Ah, so you do understand.’ Mr Yanagi looked like he was pondering something. ‘Maybe some good, hard physical activity would be the thing for you – early-morning runs, skipping rope. They say swimming’s good, too – two kilometres a day in a pool.’

  ‘Do you really think it would help?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  My downcast face made him hoot with laughter. ‘Building up your strength through running or swimming is important for you as an individual – but it won’t really help you develop as a tuner! I wouldn’t ever do it myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t?’

  ‘Of course not! I can’t stand running. There’s something about pounding such filthy roads … it’s just not for me.’

  I smiled, remembering Miss Hamano’s words and discoveries of old.

  ‘You spend a lot of time tuning the pianos in the showroom, don’t you, Tomura? I think exercise would be about as useful as doing that. I’m not saying that tuning so many pianos of the same brand and in such good condition is a waste of time, but after you’ve done a few circuits I don’t think it’s going to be that helpful any more. It’s a lot better than not doing it, but it’s time to move on to the next level.’

  The next level. It’s all I wanted – if I was capable of it. But if I didn’t do my best I’d only be fooling myself. Kazune and Yuni had already begun to walk their own new paths in life.

  A lack of self-confidence was once more rearing its head within me. I felt at a standstill, not knowing how I should proceed. Yet what I wanted more than anything was to spend more time with the twins, to be of service to them as they chased after their dreams.

  ‘How can she make such beautiful chords, like bells ringing in heaven?’ I said.

  Mr Yanagi grinned.

  It was true – everything about her playing was exquisite, but those chords were indescribable. So euphonious that my body felt as if it would melt away, and if I didn’t watch myself I’d be in tears. The way she blended the notes was exceptional. I’d heard any number of people play the same piano; why was her tone so unique? What sort of tuning should I do to bring those chords to even greater perfection?

  Mr Yanagi had clients to visit, and back at my desk a thought struck me. I wasn’t simply imagining that those chords were especially beautiful. Pianos tuned using the equal-tempered system create a slightly dampened, almost muffled sound – was she intentionally playing those sounds with less force? At tuning school I’d studied the theory behind this. A few rare pianists are able to apply a slightly lighter pressure to the keys when playing a chord in order to control the clarity of its sound. As I recalled, musicians of this calibre are also able to employ the pedals with consummate skill to manipulate the resonance.

  If Kazune really was one of these exceptional pianists, then what could tuning add? If the pedals were adjusted to be even more responsive, would she still be able to play with such nuance?

  I stood up, planning to check the pedals of the piano she’d been playing, but decided not to. The instrument had just been tuned for tomorrow’s recital. Fiddling with it now would only spoil that. Get a grip, I told myself. But once I sat down I felt the urge again. If I didn’t check this now, then I wouldn’t be able to try it out the next time Kazune played.

  I stood up again and a voice said, ‘What’s up with you, Tomura-kun?’ Startled, I fell back on to my seat.

  Miss Kitagawa was staring at me with a quizzical look in her eye. ‘You’ve just been bobbing up and down for the last few minutes.’

  ‘I was just – thinking I’d adjust the pedals.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, but then, maybe it’s better not to …’ I mumbled.

  Miss Kitagawa burst out laughing. ‘You have something you want to try out, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, it’s just – when I heard Kazune’s chords, I thought that if I adjusted her sustain pedal so it’s a touch more sensitive, it might make it easier for her to play. It’s just an idea.’

  ‘Then you should just go for it.’

  I hastily shook my head. ‘No, I don’t know if it would be helpful or not. It might be totally unnecessary.’

  Again Miss Kitagawa chuckled. ‘Listen, Tomura-kun. That idea of yours could be helpful to her, or maybe it won’t. Even if it isn’t, it might turn out to be useful to your tuning technique in the future.’

  ‘Miss Kitagawa … when I first heard Mr Itadori tuning a piano, it changed my life.’

  ‘Wow.’ She smiled knowingly.

  ‘I don’t know if music is useful to my life as such, but that’s when my inner life really began. It was an experience that went way beyond being useful or not.’

  ‘I understand.’ Miss Kitagawa gave a decisive nod. ‘Which is why I think you should act on your idea. If it doesn’t work out, you go back to where you started. But it might help Kazune.’

  I’d been sitting down, but stood up once again.

  ‘Listening to you, Tomura-kun, reminds me of a murder mystery I read a long time ago.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Miss Kitagawa stood up, walked over
to me, and said in a low voice, ‘The plot of the book was really interesting, but the solution at the end was – how should I put it? – a little unusual. When the criminal phoned the protagonist he didn’t say a word but there was a faint thump, thump in the background.’

  Where was she going with this?

  ‘When the protagonist heard the sound he knew where the call was coming from. The criminal had a small dog and that dog, on its last legs, was lying on its side, its tail beating listlessly on the floor. That small sound gave him away.’ Miss Kitagawa let out a breath. ‘From the tiniest, most trivial-seeming of clues, you might discover how to draw out the most beautiful sounds from a piano. The conclusion could turn out to be wrong, or a red herring. But seeing whether it can be done or not is the mark of a tuner with flair.’

  I shifted awkwardly in my seat.

  ‘I believe you can do it. My guess is you’re good at discovering those tiny clues, but your technical skills may not be quite up to it yet.’

  I knew that the kind Miss Kitagawa was doing her best to encourage me.

  The road ahead was steep and long, and I had no firm idea as to how to achieve my goals. First came the will to do it, then persistence and effort. And then maybe something else entirely.

  Working with pianos every day. Paying careful attention to what clients might tell me. Polishing my tuning instruments. Retuning the pianos in our showroom, one by one. Listening to piano music, advice from Mr Akino and Mr Yanagi, hints from Mr Itadori. Kazune’s rich and wonderful melodies.

  And maybe, during our short summer, lying down with the scent of grass all around, seeing the trees glowing at night in the mountains, listening closely to the murmur of a mountain spring as it bubbles out of the ground.

  The spinning needle of my inner compass had now come to a halt. All the red arrows hovering over so many different pianos – in the forest, in town, in the gym of my sixth-form college – all of them were now pointing in a single direction. Towards Kazune’s piano.

  Tune for the Individual

  Kazune’s words, ‘The piano is how I’ll make a life,’ kept replaying in my head, along with her wilful, commanding tone as she said them. Her flushed cheeks. Her dark, sparkling eyes.

  In the mornings as I walked to work I mulled this over and over. Kazune’s playing, her words, her expression. I knew these weren’t just meant for me, but even so they moved me. Even in my lowly state there had to be some way I could give something back to her. Some response I could offer.

  I unlocked the door to the deserted office. When I’d first started with the company I’d assumed that as the new boy I would open up in the morning. But I was soon told not to worry about that. Mr Akino came to work early because the roads weren’t so busy then, so I needn’t concern myself with opening the shop up.

  This morning, however, I couldn’t contain myself. I couldn’t wait to get to the office and get my hands on a piano.

  It wasn’t just because she was so skilled that I liked Kazune’s playing. There was something beyond the beautiful and refined depths of her tone – an anticipatory tension that something was about to be revealed.

  That extra something in Kazune’s playing was no lingering shadow, nor was there any sense of her having taken on the burden of playing on behalf of a bitter and regretful Yuni, whose own dreams of life as a pianist had come to an abrupt end. Kazune had digested all of this, and out of it had been born an altogether fresh, new radiance.

  Back in the office I flung open all the windows. Morning light flooded the rooms, and the early breeze still contained a residual coolness.

  I imagined how, for Kazune, from the moment she decided to become a professional pianist, the world must have looked so different to her. I’d been the same age then as Kazune was now: seventeen when I encountered Mr Itadori. And I could still recall the ecstasy I’d felt when I decided to become a tuner. Nothing was for certain, yet I was full of elation as though the mist before my eyes had suddenly cleared, and for the first time my feet were properly touching the ground as I walked; a deep happiness so palpable I could almost trace its outline. Right at that moment, I was sure I could walk as far as I would ever need to.

  On the day we started tuning the Sakuras’ piano again, the twins’ mother told me Kazune never found practising the piano a strain, however long she sat at the keyboard.

  ‘She says she never gets tired, no matter how long she plays,’ Mrs Sakura said, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Being able to play that long is a talent in itself,’ Mr Yanagi put in.

  And I totally agreed. It wasn’t as if Kazune was forcing herself to play. Someone who can put in hard graft without resentment is at a distinct advantage. If you find something difficult or boring, you’re more likely to want a major return on your investment of time and effort and then be dissatisfied with the outcome. But because Kazune was able to slog away at her practice and enjoy it, the possibilities before her were beyond imagining.

  There was a decisiveness to how she approached the piano that I envied. Seated at the keyboard, it seemed she was capable of almost anything.

  Personally, I didn’t know where to focus my efforts, which is why I did things in such a haphazard manner. But there in the office at that early hour, I opened up the lid of a grand piano (the same model as the one in Kazune’s home) and set myself a clear goal: to retune this one instrument using the well-tempered system.

  When tuning a piano there are several schemes available for dealing with the twelve musical intervals of an octave – the do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, plus the semitones. The two main methods are well-tempered and equal-tempered tuning.

  Equal-tempered is a system based on logic, dividing an octave into twelve equal parts, and is the tuning used for nearly all pianos. There are a few issues with it, since adjacent notes are tuned to have an equal interval between them even though, strictly speaking, they are not a regular distance apart in terms of resonance, so when you combine sounds they result in a certain muddiness. For instance, with chords, the mi notes in do-mi-so and in la-do-mi are intrinsically different pitches.

  By contrast, well-tempered tuning prioritizes this resonance of sounds. It regulates things so that the frequency of each note is a ratio of whole numbers in mathematical terms. When you put several sounds together, the simpler the frequency ratio, the more the resonance is pleasing to the ear – which is why chords sound so beautiful on a piano tuned to the well-tempered system. There is one significant weakness to this method, however, namely that since the interval between each note is different, it can’t be used when you change key.

  With a string or wind instrument a player can modify the pitch of notes himself. With the minor chord do-mi-so, for instance, if the mi is flat it can be tweaked upwards a little to create a perfect harmony. But in order to do that a player has to fully grasp the tonality of the mi, what chord it’s in and its precise location in the chord sequence. Also, the player needs the technical ability to discern all that from the instrument while he continues to play. I understood the theory behind it all, but knew as well that very few musicians could reach this level of skill.

  On the piano this is impossible. There is a fixed sequence of sounds and a player is unable to modify the musical intervals himself. He has to play within the pattern of sound we tuners have created. If he senses a slight lack of sparkle to the harmony, all he can do is live with it as he plays.

  So I was keen to try well-tempered tuning in spite of misgivings about my ability. But nothing is absolute. ‘Correct’, ‘useful’, ‘wasted’ – these words are neither helpful nor true. I simply wanted to learn and was keen to give well-tempered tuning a try.

  It took me under an hour to retune the piano from equal-tempered to well-tempered, and I was excited to hear the difference in tone. As I couldn’t play the piano myself, I just pressed the keys to see how they resonated. Do-mi-so, so-ti-re, fa-la-do. I’d have to retune it back to equal-tempered tuning before the end of the day and regretted this deep
ly, since the new sound was exquisite.

  ‘What’s going on in here?’ It was Mr Itadori, looking in from the door to the showroom. ‘Oh, it’s you, Tomura-kun.’ He bent backwards in mock surprise. ‘What have you been doing here?’

  I couldn’t understand what he meant.

  ‘It’s so much better all of a sudden.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your tuning, of course.’ His tone was even, his expression quite serious. ‘You’ve achieved such a superb clarity of sound.’

  It made me really happy to hear that. But it couldn’t be true. I’d changed the tuning to well-tempered, but timbre and tone? I hadn’t intentionally worked on those.

  ‘Very nice,’ Mr Itadori said, a smile stretching from ear to ear.

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  Still beaming, Mr Itadori exited the room.

  Was he right? Was my tuning really improving? I wiped the keyboard with a cloth and gently closed the lid.

  Mr Yanagi had used a restaurant metaphor once. He’d described how a chef, since he doesn’t know who is going to eat the dish, will go to great lengths to make sure anyone tasting it will be delighted from the very first bite. But if you do know who is going to eat it, you can target that person’s preferences and give them the flavours they prefer. Tuning is the same. If you know the person who will play the piano, you can tune it to produce the optimal sound for them, with the whole palette of tonal colours that particular person most wants in their instrument.

  A single magpie flutters in and comes to rest in a forest of spruce.

  I tuned the piano in the showroom with Kazune’s playing in mind, doing it for the sake of the piano that she would play, now that she had decided to turn professional.

  It Only Takes Ten Thousand

  From that day, I started going out on increasing numbers of tuning jobs on my own, and gradually gathered a number of repeat customers.