The Forest of Wool and Steel

by Natsu Miyashita

  I grew familiar with the homes I visited. Not the houses so much or the clients, but the pianos. Oh, I’d think. I’d open up the black lid and see clear traces of a previous tuning I’d done. It felt like staring at my reflection in a mirror. What I’d had in mind, what I’d been aiming for, what I’d accomplished. I was amazed how I could see it all, reflected back.

  I’m not that sociable or friendly, but with a piano I could feel a closeness I lacked with people. How have you been? I wanted to say aloud. It’s been a while. That I felt that way made sense, since a part of me remained behind within each piano.

  Sometimes it felt as if a piano that had been all prim and stiff a year earlier, was now opening up a little, drawing closer to me, and the same held true for the clients. Those who had stuck close by on my previous visit, watching my every move as I worked, now left me to my own devices.

  ‘All thanks to you, I now regard my piano as a very fine instrument indeed.’ This came from an elderly lady whose piano I had tuned on one of my first appointments of the day. ‘It makes me so happy to see how carefully, how lovingly, you treat it,’ she added.

  I felt a little embarrassed. ‘No, please, I should thank you for allowing me to work on it,’ I told her.

  She wasn’t praising the sound I’d created, but at this point in my career any words of praise still felt wholly unmerited.

  That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy hearing them. I loaded my tools into the little car and drove back to the office quite full of myself.

  Mr Yanagi was just leaving the shop as I arrived. ‘What’s up? You seem in a good mood,’ he said. Mr Yanagi seemed pretty cheerful himself.

  ‘I was thinking how blessed I am to have such wonderful clients.’

  ‘Clients, eh?’

  I thought about it then added, ‘And such brilliant mentors, too.’

  Mr Yanagi glanced at me, chuckling. ‘Hey, you don’t have to worry about sucking up to me! I was just thinking how very like you that is – that you reckon you’re blessed with wonderful clients.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he prefaced, and his next words hit me hard, ‘but you’re not blessed with anything special.’

  He was right. Of course he was right.

  ‘At most, some good clients, some good mentors – that’s about it.’

  I didn’t have a particularly good ear, wasn’t that clever with my hands, and had no grounding in music. So I wasn’t blessed in any way at all. I had nothing. I was only here because of my obsession with that big, black instrument.

  ‘What I mean is, it’s all based on your own technical know-how, Tomura.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  Mr Yanagi grinned. ‘It’s not that you’re blessed with wonderful clients – it’s your own ability that gets you the jobs.’

  I couldn’t come up with an immediate response, and watched in silence as he walked out.

  I felt like I’d just been hit over the head.

  ‘But how does one become a great tuner?’

  I must have said this out loud as I returned to my desk, because a voice answered from behind me.

  ‘First you have to put in ten thousand hours.’

  I turned and saw Miss Kitagawa looking at me.

  ‘They say that if you put in ten thousand hours towards any goal, things will fall into place. If you’re going to worry, best to wait until after you’ve done your ten thousand hours and then see.’

  I calculated how many days that would come to. ‘About five or six years, isn’t it?’

  She held up a calculator from her desk to show me her own workings. ‘You can’t spend every minute of every day tuning, plus you need days off.’

  I scanned across to Mr Akino, busy with his paperwork. ‘Mr Akino?’ I said, but got no response. ‘Mr Akino, could I go out with you again to watch you tune?’

  Slowly he withdrew the earplug from his left ear. ‘I’m busy. How about getting Mr Itadori to let you watch him, instead of me?’ He presented this in a disinterested monotone, without even looking up.

  ‘I’d really appreciate that, too. I, er …’ I hesitated. ‘The thing is, I’m not planning to become a concert piano tuner, but I want to get good at tuning domestic pianos.’

  He let out a long sigh. ‘I see. Yeah, you’ve got to start there.’ He rubbed his eyes and then lowered his voice. ‘But are you sure that’s all you want? She’s going to be performing recitals before long.’

  It took three seconds for it to click with me that she meant Kazune. Before long she would be performing recitals – Mr Akino had said it so casually it took me by surprise. It made me so happy that Mr Akino, with his keen sense of hearing, recognized Kazune’s talent.

  ‘Mr Itadori does ordinary domestic piano tuning, too. He does a pretty amazing job with that as well.’

  ‘Amazing how?’

  ‘Why don’t you go and check it out yourself?’ Mr Akino said, sounding a little exasperated. ‘It’s reborn.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The piano. It’s reborn into something totally different.’

  Mr Akino pulled a very strange face when he said this, almost as if what he was about to say was something he didn’t comprehend himself.

  ‘When Mr Itadori tunes your piano it makes you wonder what the piano was up to until then. You can’t believe what a great sound it’s suddenly making – you feel like your playing has suddenly improved.’

  How wonderful is that? What a lucky piano. Both people need to feel satisfied – the person who plays that piano, and the tuner himself who can make someone so happy.

  Mr Akino sighed again. ‘Tomura, do you understand what I mean by the piano’s touch? You probably think of it as the keyboard having a light or a heavy feel when you press the notes, yes? Actually it’s not so simple. When you press a key with your finger it connects to a hammer, which strikes a string. I’m talking about that sensation. A pianist doesn’t sound the keyboard. He strikes a string. It’s possible to play in such a way that you feel your fingertips connect directly with the hammers and with those hammers striking the strings. That feeling is the special touch Mr Itadori has.’

  ‘That’s extraordinary. I would think everyone who plays would ask Mr Itadori to tune for them, if they knew that.’

  Mr Akino ignored my gushing admiration. ‘Treat the piano with high reverence. It can teach you all manner of things.’

  I took this to be Mr Akino’s way of saying how wonderful the instrument is.

  ‘What do you mean by “all manner of things”?’

  It was an honest question, but Mr Akino kept his eyes lowered for a while.

  ‘When a pianist plays the piano,’ he said, ‘he expresses everything in his imagination through the tone of his music. To switch it around, a pianist is unable to play any sound that does not already exist within him – but the piano enables his skill and technique to come out loud and clear.’ Mr Akino stared at me now, his expression unusually grave. He stuffed the earplug back in his left ear, indicating the end of the conversation.

  I understood him to mean that Mr Itadori’s tuning was to be revered. Truly, his gift was to arrange the soundscape of a piano so that its music would shine light into the shadows, revealing even those things that would rather remain out of sight.

  Perhaps it was a piano tuned by Mr Itadori that had led Mr Akino himself to give up on his dreams of a career as a pianist. Possibly Mr Akino imagined that Mr Itadori had done this intentionally.

  I viewed Mr Itadori as the ideal, the kind of tuner I wanted to become, but Mr Akino must have viewed him through different eyes.

  The Answer Is in the Stars

  Polishing my tuning hammer, I sat at my desk in the office waiting for my next appointment.

  ‘Here you are,’ Miss Kitagawa said, placing a cup of tea on my desk.

  ‘Oh, thank you very much.’

  Miss Kitagawa watched intently as I folded up the cloth I’d been using to polish the tuning hammer and se
t it aside.

  ‘Your tuning tools always look so immaculate, Tomura-kun.’ She seemed genuinely impressed. ‘You’ve been here two years now?’

  ‘That’s right.’ I would soon be starting my third year. The tuning hammer she was admiring was the seasoned tool Mr Itadori had given me all that time ago.

  ‘When you first came here, Tomura-kun, and I heard you were born and raised in the mountains, it made sense to me. You seemed selfless, gentle, straightforward, and for better or for worse, the sort of person who doesn’t stand out. You didn’t strike me as the cheerful type either. I couldn’t picture what kind of work you’d do here as a tuner since you don’t seem to show a strong preference for anything, one way or the other.’

  No strong preference – she was right about that. When I arrived in town to attend sixth-form college I realized for the first time that I’d never had any strong likes or dislikes about anything at all. My peers seemed to know about all kinds of things and had strong opinions about them. I alone was non-committal. In the mountains, the information and knowledge we could get hold of was limited. Compared to the town, living there took a lot more time and effort, and there were probably many aspects of that life that made us less picky about every little thing.

  Inside I hadn’t changed. Other than the sound of the piano, I really didn’t have strong feelings about anything, one way or the other.

  ‘But you know,’ Miss Kitagawa continued, ‘you still come in here early every morning and wipe down everyone else’s desk, don’t you? And not just a simple once-over, but a thorough clean. I don’t know for sure, but I rather get the feeling that life in the mountains must be like that – that’s to say, if you don’t do things the right way it could be dangerous. So if you don’t bundle up you could freeze to death, or if you don’t take proper precautions you could get attacked by some wild animal or something.’

  ‘It’s not like that, not really.’

  ‘Keep your tuning hammer neatly polished at all times, yes? I get the feeling that you’ve had it drummed into you that you need to take good care of your tools, or else when you really need them they won’t work and your life could be in danger.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’re really putting him on the spot.’

  I heard a suppressed chuckle and turned to see Mr Akino wiping his hands on a handkerchief and heading back to his desk.

  ‘Miss Kitagawa, you’re being weird,’ he said. ‘You are most definitely making Tomura uncomfortable.’

  Miss Kitagawa gave a little pout and said in a low voice, ‘Tomura-kun, people know you’re doing your best. Don’t let it get to you.’

  Tray in hand, she returned to her desk.

  ‘What was the old bat comforting you about?’

  I didn’t think Miss Kitagawa was that old, but Mr Akino resumed speaking before I could correct him.

  ‘Has one of your clients requested a different tuner?’

  I nodded vaguely. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, but indeed another of my clients had requested that someone else be put in charge of tuning their piano.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do.’ I hesitated, then went ahead and explained what had happened at a home I’d visited the previous day. ‘After I’d finished tuning and testing the piano, the client asked me if this was the absolute best possible sound.’

  The client had told me that he’d decided to have the piano tuned after a long period of neglect because his grandchild, now entering primary school, would soon be starting piano lessons. The instrument was in bad shape, but I’d cleaned it inside and got it all back in tune.

  ‘He wanted his grandchild to be trained to appreciate the arts, using a piano offering the best sound possible.’

  Mr Akino grunted.

  ‘When he asked me if this was the absolute best sound, I just couldn’t say yes.’

  There’s no such thing as an absolute best sound. No sound is absolute. It would have been better if I’d said it was, but I couldn’t. For a child being pushed to have an appreciation for the arts, hearing adults insist this was the absolute best possible sound was not going to help.

  ‘You’re quite the fool, Tomura.’ Mr Akino sounded pleased with himself. ‘You should have just agreed. No one likes to play the piano if they have concerns over whether or not it has a good sound.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  I nodded briefly, but then hung my head in doubt.

  ‘Isn’t it enough if a client thinks it sounds good?’ I said. ‘I don’t know – I just don’t like the idea of someone else deciding whether it’s the absolute best sound or not.’

  Mr Akino gave a small, dry laugh. ‘You can be such a pain, Tomura.’

  I’m a pain. Is that why people want to switch to a different tuner?

  When I lived in the mountains the doctor would visit our local clinic on Mondays and Thursdays only. He made very clear diagnoses and did not mince his words. He’d diagnose a cold as a cold. ‘You’re going to be fine,’ he’d declare in some cases, while in others he’d caution patients about their prospects in no uncertain terms. After I moved away from the mountains, I never saw another doctor who spoke quite so plainly or conclusively.

  Which approach is the more honest? Perhaps the one found in town hospitals, where doctors will consider a range of possibilities. But is avoiding a definite diagnosis really helpful to the patient, or is it just a way for doctors to shirk their responsibility? I started to have my doubts. I remembered how this felt.

  ‘So how did you answer him?’

  ‘I told him if you’re going to use the word “absolute”, then I don’t think this is the absolute best sound.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong and you didn’t lie.’ Mr Akino cocked his head to one side to ponder the question. ‘If you’re going to respond as honestly as you can, then sure, you might answer in that way. But if you do, it sounds more like your subjective opinion.’

  Unless you have a relationship built on trust, a subjective approach won’t be of any interest to the other person. But that’s what I didn’t understand – how to establish that kind of mutual trust.

  ‘Even if you can’t explain it in words, if you tune it so it sounds good, that’s enough,’ Mr Akino said. ‘Putting aside the question of absolutes, the end game is to make it sound good.’

  Fair enough. But what had me in knots was the question of how to go about creating that gorgeous sound in the first place.

  ‘Back in ancient Greece,’ Mr Akino began, twirling a pen around his index finger, ‘learning was divided into two areas – astronomy and music. In other words, if you studied both astronomy and music you could shine a light on anything in the world. That’s what they believed back then.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Music was one part of the twin foundations, Tomura.’

  So in ancient Greece they saw the world as being constructed from astronomy and music. That sounds like a splendid world to live in, although my memory of ancient Greece was that they were fighting battles with each other all the time.

  ‘Do you know how many constellations there are?’

  I shook my head and Mr Akino gave a triumphant little smirk.

  ‘That would be eighty-eight.’

  Now that he mentioned it, I remembered thinking it was strange when we studied the constellations in science at school. You could connect up the prominent stars, see them as forming a shape and name them. But scattered among them were other smaller stars you could also make out with the naked eye. You couldn’t just ignore them and come up with those other shapes, could you? It was pretty outrageous to settle on only eighty-eight constellations out of all the countless stars in the sky, infinite as the grains of sand by the sea or in the endless deserts of our planet.

  In a way, though, I could see how astronomy and music could be considered fundamental to understanding the world. You extract some stars from all the countless ones and make them into constellations. Tuning is similar. You select things of
beauty that have dissolved into the fabric of the world. You gingerly extract that beauty, careful not to damage it, and then you make it visible.

  Seven sounds – do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, or twelve if you include semitones – are teased out, named, and then they sparkle just like the constellations. And it’s the tuner’s job to pick these out with precision from the vast ocean of sound, arrange them delicately and make them resonate.

  ‘Tomura-kun! Are you listening?’ Head in hands, Mr Akino stared at me across the desk, looking somewhat put out. ‘The number of constellations: eighty-eight. It’s the same number as the keys on a piano.’

  ‘Ohh.’

  ‘A legacy from the twin pillars of Greek civilization, astronomy and music.’

  ‘Now hold it right there, Mr Akino.’ Miss Kitagawa interrupted him, seemingly unable to let that comment pass by unremarked. ‘Don’t you go spouting any more of your nonsense. Tomura-kun will start to believe you.’

  ‘Nonsense?’ Mr Akino shrugged and looked away.

  Which part was nonsense? I’d learned the history of the piano back in tuning school. It developed from the earlier harpsichord. Its keyboard did not have eighty-eight keys. And there was not even a prototype of the harpsichord back in ancient Greece. It was in Beethoven’s time, about two hundred years ago, that the piano replaced the harpsichord. At first it had anywhere from sixty-eight to seventy-three keys. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ has the inscription For harpsichord or piano. People believe that Beethoven changed his primary instrument from the harpsichord to the piano only between composing the first and second movements. It was at this time that the keyboard became fixed at eighty-eight keys.

  Was eighty-eight really the number of the constellations? Or was the point about astronomy and music being the first fields of study itself a bit of nonsense? I didn’t know any of the facts, but went ahead and opened my notebook anyway. The number of constellations, the number of keys. As I wrote down eighty-eight, I noticed Mr Akino leaning across the desk towards me.

  ‘So you’re still taking notes, eh?’ He peered into my notebook, and I hastily snapped it shut.