The Piano Tuner

by Daniel Mason

  “In late 1868,” continued the Colonel, “the deputy director of our military hospital in Rangoon, then the only major hospital in Burma, died suddenly of dysentery. To replace him, the medical director in Calcutta recommended Carroll, who arrived in Rangoon in February 1869. He served there for three years, and since his work was mainly medical, we have few reports on his activities. All evidence suggests he was occupied with his responsibilities at the hospital.”

  The Colonel slid a folder forward on the desk. “This is a photograph of Carroll, in Bengal.” Edgar waited briefly, and then, realizing he should rise to accept it, leaned forward, dropping his hat on the floor in the process. “Sorry,” he muttered, grabbing the hat, then the folder, and returning to his chair. He opened the folder in his lap. Inside was a photo, upside down. He rotated it gingerly. It showed a tall, confident man with a dark mustache and finely combed hair, dressed in khaki, standing over the bed of a patient, a darker man, perhaps an Indian. In the background there were other beds, other patients. A hospital, thought the tuner, and returned his eyes to the face of the Doctor. He could read little from the man’s expression. His face was blurred, although strangely all the patients were in focus, as if the Doctor was in a state of constant animation. He stared, trying to match the man to the story he was hearing, but the photo revealed little. He rose and returned it to the Colonel’s desk.

  “In 1871 Carroll requested to be moved to a more remote station in central Burma. The request was approved, as this was a period of intensifying Burmese activity in the Irrawaddy River valley south of Mandalay. At his new post, as in India, Carroll busied himself with frequent surveying expeditions, often into the southern Shan Hills. Although it is not known exactly how—given his many responsibilities—Carroll apparently found the time to acquire near fluency in the Shan language. Some have suggested that he studied with a local monk, others that he learned from a mistress.

  “Monks or mistresses, in 1873 we received the disastrous news that the Burmese, after decades of flirtation, had signed a commercial treaty with France. You may know this history; it was covered quite extensively in the newspapers. Although French troops were still in Indo-China and had not advanced past the Mekong, this was obviously an extremely dangerous precedent for further Franco-Burmese cooperation and an open threat to India. We immediately began rapid preparations to occupy the states of Upper Burma. Many of the Shan princes had shown long-standing antagonism to the Burmese throne, and …” The Colonel trailed off, out of breath from the soliloquy, and saw the piano tuner staring out the window. “Mr. Drake, are you listening?”

  Edgar turned back, embarrassed. “Yes … yes, of course.”

  “Well then, I will continue.” The Colonel looked back at his papers.

  Across the desk, the tuner spoke tentatively. “Actually, with due respect, Colonel, it is a most complex and interesting story, but I must admit that I don’t yet understand exactly why you need my expertise … I know that you are accustomed to give briefings in this manner, but may I trouble you with a question?”

  “Yes, Mr. Drake?”

  “Well … to be honest, I am waiting to hear what is wrong with the piano.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The piano. I was contacted because I am being hired to tune a piano. This meeting is most comprehensive with regard to the man, but I don’t believe he is my commission.”

  The Colonel’s face grew red. “As I stated at the beginning, Mr. Drake, I do believe that this background is important.”

  “I agree, sir, but I don’t know what is wrong with the piano, or even whether or not I can mend it. I hope you understand.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course I understand.” The muscles in his jaw tensed. He was ready to talk about the withdrawal of the Resident from Mandalay in 1879, and the Battle of Myingyan, and the siege of the Maymyo garrison, one of his favorite stories. He waited.

  Edgar stared down at his hands. “I apologize, please, please, do continue,” he said. “It is only that I must leave soon, as it is quite a walk to my home, and I really am most interested in the Erard grand.” Despite feeling intimidated, he secretly savored this brief interruption. He had always disliked military men, and had begun to like this Carroll character more and more. In truth, he did want to hear the details of the story, but it was almost night, and the Colonel showed no sign of stopping.

  The Colonel turned back to the papers, “Very well, Mr. Drake, I will make this brief. By 1874, we had begun to establish a handful of secret outposts in the Shan territories, one near Hsipaw, another near Taunggyi, and another—this the most remote—in a small village called Mae Lwin, on the bank of the Salween River. You won’t find Mae Lwin on any maps, and until you accept the commission, I can’t tell you where it is. There we sent Carroll.”

  The room was getting dark, and the Colonel lit a small lamp on the desk. The light flickered, casting the shadow of his mustache across his cheekbones. He studied the piano tuner again. He looks impatient, he thought, and took a deep breath. “Mr. Drake, so as not to detain you much longer, I will spare you the details of Carroll’s twelve years in Mae Lwin. Should you accept the commission, we can talk further, and I can provide you with military reports. Unless, of course, you would like to hear them now.”

  “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 a
t 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

  SWANBILL CORSETS FOR THE THIRD TYPE OF FIGURE.

  CIGARS DE JOY: ONE OF THESE CIGARETTES GIVES IMMEDIATE

  RELIEF IN THE WORST ATTACK OF ASTHMA, COUGH,

  BRONCHITIS, AND SHORTNESS OF BREATH.