The Piano Tuner

by Daniel Mason

  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.

  6

  It was morning when they first sighted land, three days from Calcutta, a lighthouse perched on a tall red stone tower. “The Alguada Reef,” Edgar heard an elderly Scotsman beside him tell a companion. “Bloody hard to navigate. She’s a graveyard for passing ships.” Edgar knew from the maps that they were only twenty miles south of Cape Negrais, that soon they would reach Rangoon.

  In less than an hour, the ship passed buoys marking the shallow sandbanks that spilled out from the mouth of the Rangoon River, one of hundreds of rivers which drained the Irrawaddy Delta. They passed several anchored ships, which the old man explained were trading ships trying to evade port dues. The steamer turned north, and the sandbars rose above the land to become low wooded shores. Here the channel was deeper, but still almost two miles wide, and were it not for the large red obelisks on either side of the mouth, he wouldn’t have known they were navigating inland.

  They steamed upriver for several hours. It was low, level, mostly unremarkable country, yet Edgar felt a sudden excitement when they passed a series of small pagodas, their coats of whitewash peeling. Further inland, a collection of shacks clustered at the water’s edge, where children played. The river narrowed, and both shores came into closer focus, the sandy banks fringed with thickening vegetation. The ship followed a tortuous course, hindered by sandbanks and sharp bends. At last, at one of these bends, boats appeared in the distance. On deck there was a murmur and several passengers filed toward the stairs to return to their rooms.

  “Are we there?” Edgar asked the old man.

  “Yes, soon. Look over there.” The man raised his arm and pointed to a pagoda that capped a distant hill. “That’s the Shwedagon Pagoda. You must have heard of it.”

  Edgar nodded. Actually, he had known of the temple before he had been given the Erard commission, reading of its splendors in a magazine article written by the wife of a judge from Rangoon. Her descriptions were loaded with adjectives: gilded, golden, glittering. He had scanned the article, wondering if he’d find mention of an organ, or a Buddhist equivalent, conjecturing that such an important house of worship needed music. But there were only descriptions of “shimmering, golden jewels” and the “quaint ways of Burmans,” and he tired of the article and had forgotten about it until now. In the distance, the temple looked like a small, shiny trinket.

  The steamer slowed. The dwellings that dotted the shore now began to break through the foliage with regularity. Further along the bank, he was startled to see timber elephants working, their drivers sitting across their necks as they hauled giant logs from the water and stacked them on the shore. He stared, incredulous at the strength of the animals, at how they whipped the logs out of the water as if they were weightless. As the boat approached the bank, they came into clearer view, rivulets of brown water spinning down their hides as they splashed along the shore.

  They passed other vessels on the river, now with increasing frequency, double-decked steamers, worn fishing boats painted with swirling Burmese script, tiny rowboats and thin skiffs, fragile and scarcely large enough for a man. There were others, vessels of unfamiliar shape and sail. Close to the shore, they were passed by a strange ship with a vast sail fluttering over two smaller ones.

  They were approaching the docks quickly now, and a series of European-style government buildings came into view, stately structures of brick and gleaming columns.

  The steamer approached a covered landing attached to the bank by a long, hinged platform, where a crowd of porters waited. The steamer hesitated, its engines churning in reverse to slow its course. One of the deckhands threw a rope to the quay, where it was caught and wrapped around a pair of bollards. The porters, naked except for loincloths tied around their waists and tucked between their legs, clamored to lower a plank from the dock. It slapped loudly against the deck, and they crossed it to help the passengers with their luggage. Edgar stood in the shade of the awning and watched the men. They were small and wore towels wrapped around their heads to guard against the sun. Their skin was patterned with tattoos, stretching over their torsos, emerging on their thighs to twist and twine and end above their knees.

  Edgar looked at the other passengers: most stood idly on the deck, talking to each other, some pointing and remarking on the buildings. He turned back to the porters, to watch them move, the shape of their tattoos changing as the sinewy arms tensed under the leather trunks and portmanteaus. On the shore, in the shade of the trees, a crowd waited by the growing pile of bags. Beyond them, Edgar could see the khaki uniforms of British soldiers standing by a low gate. And beyond the soldiers, in the shade of a line of sprawling banyan trees that followed the shore, hints of movement, shifting patterns of darkness.

  At last the tattooed men finished unloading the luggage, and the passengers walked across the gangplank to waiting carriages, the women emerging under parasols, the men beneath top hats or sola topis. Edgar followed the old man he had spoken to earlier that morning, checking his balance as he crossed the rickety gangplank. He stepped onto the dock. His itinerary said that he would be met at the port by military personnel, but little more. For a brief moment, he felt a sudden surge of panic, Perhaps they don’t know I have arrived.

  Beyond the guards, the shadows stirred, like an animal awakening. He was sweating profusely and took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

  “Mr. Drake!” someone shouted from the crowd. Edgar looked for the voice. There was a crowd of soldiers standing in the shade. He saw a raised arm. “Mr. Drake, over here.”

  Edgar pushed his way through the crowd of passengers and servants milling about their bags. A young soldier stepped forward and raised his hand. “Welcome to Rangoon, Mr. Drake. It is good you saw me, sir. I would not have known how to recognize you. Captain Dalton, Herefordshire Regiment.”

  “How do you do? My mother’s family is from Hereford.”

  The soldier beamed. “Fine luck!” He was young and tanned, with broad shoulders, and blond hair combed back diagonally across his head.

  “Yes, fine luck,” said the piano tuner, and expected the young man to say something else. But the soldier just laughed, if not for the small coincidence, then because he had recently been promoted to captain, and he was proud to state his rank. And Edgar returned the smile, for the journey, after five thousand miles, suddenly seemed to have brought him back home.

  “I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

  “Pleasant indeed.”

  “I hope you won’t mind waiting for one moment. We have some other luggage to carry to headquarters.”

  When everything had been gathered together, one of the soldiers called to the porters, who loaded the trunks onto their shoulders. They walked past the guards at the gate and into the street to where the carriages waited.

  Later Edgar would write to Katherine that in the fifteen paces that carried him from th
e gate to the waiting carriages, Burma appeared as if from behind a curtain lifted from a stage. As he stepped into the street, the crowd swelled around him. He turned. Hands struggled to thrust baskets of food forward. Women stared at him, their faces painted white, their fists grasping garlands of flowers. At his feet, a beggar pressed up against his leg, a mournful boy covered with scabs and weeping sores, and he turned again and tripped over a group of men carrying crates of spices suspended between long poles. Ahead, the soldiers pushed through the crowds, and had it not been for the branches of the giant banyan trees, those looking out from the office buildings would have seen a line of khaki passing through the mosaic, and a single man moving slowly, as if lost, turning at the sound of a cough, now staring at a betel vendor who had spit near his feet, trying to discern if this was a threat or perhaps merely an advertisement, until he heard one of the soldiers say, “After you, Mr. Drake,” for they had arrived at the carriage. And as quickly as he entered the world, he escaped, ducking his head inside. The street seemed to recede immediately.

  Three of the soldiers followed, taking seats facing him and at his side. There was a scuffling on the roof as the baggage was loaded. The driver mounted the box, and Edgar heard shouting and the sound of a whip. The carriage began to move.

  He was seated facing forward, and the position of the window made it difficult to see outside, so that the images passed in quick succession, like the flipping pages of penny picture books, each vision unexpected, framed. The soldiers sat across from him, the young captain still smiling.

  They moved slowly through the crowd, picking up speed as the vendors cleared. They rode past rows of more government houses. Outside one, a group of mustachioed Englishmen in dark suits stood talking, while a pair of Sikhs waited behind them. The road was macadamized, and surprisingly smooth, and they turned up a small cross street. The wide facades of the government offices gave way to smaller houses, still in European style, but with terraces festooned with languid tropical plants and walls stained with the dark, musty patina he had seen on so many houses in India. They passed a crowded shop where dozens of younger men sat on small stools around low tables laden with pots and stacks of fried food. The acrid smoke of cooking oil wafted into the carriage and stung his eyes. He blinked and the tea shop disappeared, replaced by a woman holding a plate of betel nuts and tiny leaves. She pressed close to the carriage and stared inside from beneath the shade of a wide straw hat. Like some of the vendors by the shore, her face was painted with white circles, moonlike against her dark skin.

  Edgar turned to the soldier. “What’s that on her face?”

  “The paint?”

  “Yes. I saw it on some of the women by the docks. But different patterns. Peculiar …”

  “They call it thanaka. It is made from ground sandalwood. Almost all the women wear it, and many of the men. They cover the babies with it too.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Protects against the sun, they say, makes them beautiful. We call it ‘Burmese face powder.’ Why do English ladies wear face powder?”

  Just then the carriage jolted to a halt. Outside they could hear voices.

  “Are we here?”

  “No, still quite far. I don’t know why we stopped. Wait a moment while I look outside.” The soldier opened the door and leaned out. He pulled himself back into the carriage.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Accident. Look for yourself. This is always the problem of taking the small streets, but today they are repaving Sule Pagoda Road, so we had to go this way. This could take several minutes. You may get out and watch, if you like.”

  Edgar poked his head out of the window. In the street in front of them, a bicycle lay sprawled amidst scattered mounds of green lentils, spilled from a pair of overturned baskets. One man, apparently the rider, nursed a bloodied knee while the lentil wallah, a thin Indian man dressed in white, frantically tried to salvage the few lentils that had not soaked up the muck of the street. Neither man seemed particularly angry, and a large crowd had gathered, ostensibly to help, but mostly to stare. Edgar stepped down from the confines of the carriage.

  The street was narrow, flanked by a continuous facade of houses. In front of each one, steep steps climbed three or four feet to a narrow patio, now filled with onlookers. The men were wearing loosely tied turbans, and long cloth skirts wrapped around their waists, passed between their legs, and tucked in back. The turbans were distinct from those of the Sikh soldiers, and, remembering a traveler’s account of Burma, Edgar guessed they must be gaung-baungs, the skirts pasos. On women the skirts hung loose, and carried a different name, hta main, strange syllables that seemed breathed, not spoken. The women all wore the sandalwood paint, some covering the cheeks in thin parallel stripes, others with the same circles as the woman they had just seen from the carriage, others yet with swirls, with lines descending the crests of their noses. To the darker-skinned women it gave an eerie, ghostlike appearance, and Edgar noticed that some of the women also wore a red lipstick, giving the thanaka an aura of the burlesque. There was something disturbing about it that he couldn’t identify, but once his surprise wore off, he would admit in his next letter to Katherine that it wasn’t unattractive. Perhaps not befitting an English complexion, he wrote, but beautiful, and he added with emphasis, in the same way that one appreciates art. There is no need for any misunderstandings.

  His eyes followed the faces of the buildings up to balconies draped with hanging gardens of ferns and flowers. These too were filled with spectators, mostly children, their skinny arms interlaced in the wrought-iron banisters. Several called down to him and giggled, waving. Edgar waved back.

  In the road, the bicyclist had righted his machine and was straightening the bent handlebars, while the porter had given up on salvaging lentils, and had set about repairing one of the baskets in the middle of the road. The driver shouted something at him, and the crowd laughed. The porter scurried to the side of the street. Edgar waved at the children once again and climbed back into the carriage. And again they were moving, the thin street opening onto a wider road that circled around a vast gilded structure bedecked with golden umbrellas, and the Captain said “Sule Pagoda.” They passed a church, then the minarets of a mosque, and then, by the town hall, another market that was set up in the promenade before a statue of Mercury, the Roman god of merchants, which the British had erected as a symbol of their commerce, but who watched over the street merchants instead.

  The lane widened and the carriage picked up speed. Soon the images spun past the window too fast to be seen.

  They drove for half an hour and then stopped on a cobbled road outside a two-story house. Ducking their heads, the soldiers climbed out of the carriage one by one, while the porters scrambled onto the roof to pass the trunks down from above. Edgar stood and took a deep breath. Despite the intensity of the sun, which had now begun its descent, the air was cool compared to the stuffiness of the carriage.

  The Captain beckoned Edgar toward the house. At the entrance they passed two stone-faced guards, swords hanging at their sides. The Captain disappeared down a hallway and reappeared with a stack of papers.

  “Mr. Drake,” he said, “it seems we have several changes in our plans. It was our original intention that you would be met here in Rangoon by Captain Nash-Burnham, from Mandalay, who is familiar with Doctor Carroll’s projects. Nash-Burnham was here only yesterday for a meeting on efforts to control dacoits in the Shan States, but I am afraid the boat you were scheduled to take up the river is under repair, and he was in a hurry to return to Mandalay. So he left on an earlier ship.” Dalton paused to look through the papers. “Don’t worry. You will have plenty of time to be briefed in Mandalay. But it does mean that you will be departing later than expected, as the first steamer we could find you a berth on was with the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, which leaves at the end of the week. I trust this is not too much of an inconvenience?”

  “No, that shouldn’t be a problem. I woul
dn’t mind a few days to wander about.”

  “Of course. In fact, I was going to invite you myself to join us on a tiger hunt tomorrow. I mentioned the idea to Captain Nash-Burnham, who said it might be a fine way to pass the time as well as become familiar with the surrounding countryside.”

  Edgar protested, “But I’ve never hunted.”

  “Then this is an excellent way to start. Always a jolly good time. Anyway, you must be tired now. I will call on you later this evening.”

  “Is there anything else planned now?”

  “No schedule for this afternoon. Again, Captain Nash-Burnham had hoped to be here with you. I would recommend that you rest in your quarters. The porter can show you where they are.” He nodded to an Indian who was waiting.

  Edgar thanked the Captain and followed the porter out the door. They collected his trunks and walked to the end of the lane, where they reached a larger road. A large group of young monks walked past in saffron robes. The porter seemed not to notice.

  “Where are they coming from?” Edgar asked, entranced by the beauty of the shifting cloth.

  “Who, sir?” asked the porter.

  “The monks.”

  They were standing on the corner of the road, and the porter turned and pointed in the direction from which the monks had come. “Why, the Shwedagon, sir. Anyone who is not a soldier in these quarters has come to see the Shwedagon.”

  Edgar found himself standing at the base of a slope lined with dozens of small pagodas, rising to the golden pyramid that had winked at him from the river, now massive, towering. A row of pilgrims milled about the foot of the stairs. Edgar had read that the British army had established itself around the pagoda, but he had never imagined it was this close. Reluctantly, he hurried after the porter, who had already crossed the road and was continuing along the small street. They reached a room at the end of a long barrack. The porter set down the trunks and opened the door.