The Piano Tuner

by Daniel Mason

  It was a simple space, used by visiting officers, and the porter told him that the surrounding buildings were also living quarters for the garrison, “So should you need anything, sir, you can just knock on any door.” He bowed and took his leave. Edgar waited only long enough for the sound of the man’s steps to disappear, before he opened the door and walked back down the lane, and stood at the base of the long flight of stairs leading to the temple. A sign read “No shoes or umbrella carrying,” and he recalled what he had read of the beginnings of the Third Anglo-Burmese War, when the British emissaries refused to remove their shoes in the presence of Burmese royalty. He knelt and untied his boots, and, carrying them in his hand, began the long walk up the steps.

  The tiles were moist and cool on his feet. The climb was lined with vendors selling a riot of religious goods: paintings and statues of the Buddha, garlands of jasmine, books and fans, baskets filled with offerings of food, stacks of scented joss sticks, gold leaf and lotus flowers made of fine silver foil. The merchants languished in the shade. Everywhere, pilgrims climbed the steps—monks and beggars and elegant Burmese women dressed in their finery. At the top, he passed beneath an intricate portico and onto a vast platform of white marble and gilded domes of smaller pagodas. The crowd of supplicants swirled in clockwise fashion, staring at the tall Englishman as they passed. He stepped into the current of bodies, following it past rows of smaller shrines and kneeling worshipers, who fingered rosaries of large seeds. As he walked, he stared up at the pagoda, its bell-like swell tapering to a fine tip capped with a cylindrical umbrella. He was blinded by the glint of gold, the reflection of the sun on the white tiles, the pulsing mass of worshipers. Halfway around the pagoda, he stopped to rest in the shade, and was wiping his face with his handkerchief when the faint chime of music caught his attention.

  At first he couldn’t tell where it came from, the notes reflecting off the corridors of shrines and mixing with the chants. He followed a small path behind a vast platform where a monk led a group in prayer, hypnotic words he would later learn were not Burmese but Pali. The music became louder. Beneath the hanging branches of a banyan tree, he saw the musicians.

  There were four of them, and they looked up to acknowledge his presence. He smiled and studied the instruments: a drum and a xylophone-like board, a long goosenecked horn and a harp. The last was the instrument that most caught his attention, for he knew the harpsichord well, of course, as the grandfather of the piano. This was a beautiful harp, carved in a form that looked like both a ship and a swan; the strings were strung close together, which he noted was possible because of the harp’s unique shape. A clever design, he thought. The man’s fingers worked slowly over it; the melody was eerily discordant, and Edgar found it difficult to pick out a pattern. He noted the haphazard way it danced along the scale. He listened more closely, yet still the melody eluded him.

  Soon another observer came, an elegantly dressed Burmese man holding the hand of a child. Edgar nodded to the man and the boy and they listened to the song together. The presence of the other man reminded him that Captain Dalton would be calling on him that evening and that he had to bathe and dress. Reluctantly, he left the musicians. He finished circling the pagoda, joining the crowd once again where it pooled up against the entrance and poured over the stairs. He followed it back down to the street and sat on the bottom steps to tie his shoes. Around him, men and women slipped easily in and out of sandals. Fumbling with his laces, he began to whistle, trying to recapture the piece he had just heard. He rose to his feet. It was then he saw her.

  She was standing about five feet away, a baby perched on her hip, her clothes in rags, her hand outstretched, her body painted a deep yellow. At first he blinked, thinking she was an apparition, the color of her skin a ghost image of the gold of the pagoda, like the floating illusion one gets from staring too long at the sun. She caught his eye and stepped closer, and he saw that she was gold not from paint but from a yellow dust, which covered her face and arms and her bare feet. As he stared, she extended the baby toward him, her yellow hands clasped tightly around the tiny sleeping person. He looked at her face and the dark pleading eyes outlined with yellow; only later would he learn that the dust was turmeric, which the Burmese call sa-nwin, and which women spread over their bodies after childbirth to protect against spirits, but which this woman wore to beg, for by tradition, a woman who still wears the sa-nwin should not leave her home for days after childbirth, and if she did, it could only mean that the child was sick. But standing at the base of the Shwedagon, he did not know this, he could only stare at the gilded woman, until she took a step closer and he could see flies at the mouth of the child and a widening sore on its tiny head. He stepped back, horrified, and rummaged through his pocket for coins, and without counting dropped them into her hands.

  He backed away, his heart racing. Around him, the pilgrims continued their procession, oblivious to the gilded girl who counted the coins in surprise and to the tall, lanky Englishman who looked one last time at the temple and the girl beneath its soaring spire, thrust his hands into his pockets, and hurried down the street.

  Later that evening, he received a visit from Captain Dalton, who invited him to join some of the officers for billiards at the Pegu Club. He declined, feigning fatigue. It had been several days since he had written to his wife, he said. He did not tell Dalton of the image that still stayed with him, that it felt wrong to drink sherry over war gossip while he thought of the girl and her child.

  “Well, there will be plenty of time for billiards,” said Dalton. “But I do insist that you join us for the hunt tomorrow. Only last week an infantryman reported seeing a tiger near Dabein. I have made plans to travel there with Captain Witherspoon and Captain Fogg, both of whom recently arrived from Bengal. Would you care to join us?” He stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  “But I have never hunted before, and I don’t think I’m—”

  “Please! I will not hear of it. This is a matter of duty. This tiger has been terrorizing the local villagers. We leave early tomorrow. Meet us at the cavalry stables, Do you know where they are? No, you do not need to bring anything. Your hat perhaps, We have plenty of riding boots, and of course, rifles. A man with such skilled fingers as yourself will be a fine shot.” And at this flattery, and because he had already turned down one invitation, Edgar accepted.

  7

  The following morning, Edgar found the Captain saddling a horse outside the stables. Five other men were gathered around him, two Englishmen and three Burmans. Seeing the piano tuner approach, Dalton came out from under the horse, where he had been cinching the saddle. He wiped his hand on his breeches and extended it. “Mr. Drake, beautiful morning, isn’t it? Wonderful when a breeze comes this far inland. So refreshing. It means the rains may be earlier this year.” He stood and looked up at the sky, as if to confirm his meteorology. Edgar was struck by how handsome and athletic he looked: his face ruddy and tanned, his hair combed back, his shirtsleeves rolled up over his dusty forearms.

  “Mr. Drake, let me introduce you to Captains Witherspoon and Fogg. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Drake, London’s finest piano tuner.” He pounded Edgar on the back. “A good man, family’s from Hereford.”

  The two men extended their hands amiably. “Good to meet you, Mr. Drake,” said Witherspoon. Fogg nodded.

  “I will be finished saddling this horse in a moment,” said Dalton, ducking back under its belly. “She can be very naughty, this one, and I don’t want to fall off when a tiger is in my sights.” He looked up and winked at the tuner. The men laughed. Ten feet away, the Burmans squatted on their heels in loose pasos.

  They mounted the horses. Edgar struggled to get his leg over the saddle and had to be helped by the Captain. Outside the stables, one of the Burmans rode ahead, and soon disappeared. Dalton led their small group, chatting with the two other captains. Edgar followed them. Behind, the other two Burmans rode together on the same horse.

  It was still early, and the su
n hadn’t yet burned the mist off the lagoons. Edgar was surprised at how quickly Rangoon became farmland. They passed several oxcarts traveling into the city, whose drivers pulled over to the side of the road to let them pass, but otherwise scarcely acknowledged their presence. In the distance, fishermen poled thin boats through the marshes, materializing in and out of the mist. Egrets hunted in the marsh, close to the road, lifting and placing their feet with precision. Ahead, Witherspoon asked if they could stop to shoot them.

  “Not here,” answered Dalton. “Last time we shot birds, the villagers made a huge fuss. The egrets are part of the founding myths of Pegu. Bad luck to shoot them, my friend.”

  “Superstitious nonsense,” huffed Witherspoon. “I thought we were educating them to abandon such beliefs.”

  “Indeed, indeed. But I, for one, would rather hunt a tiger than spend my morning quarreling with some local chieftain.”

  “Humph,” said Witherspoon, enunciating the noise as though it were a word. But this answer seemed to satisfy him. They rode on. In the distance, the men threw spirals of fishing nets, blurs of rope that spun out water droplets in illuminated arcades.

  They rode for an hour. The marshes began to give way to a thin brush. The sun was already quite warm, and Edgar felt sweat trickling down his chest. He was relieved when the trail turned and entered a thick forest. The dry burn of the sun was replaced by a sticky humidity. They had ridden only a few minutes into the forest when they were met by the lead Burman. While the man conferred with the others, Edgar looked around him. As a boy, he had read many tales of jungle explorers, and spent hours imagining the chaos of dripping flowers, the teeming legions of ferocious animals. This must be a different type of jungle, he thought, It is too quiet and too dark. He peered into the depths of the forest, but he could only see five yards into the tangle of hanging vines.

  At last the men ceased talking among themselves, and one of them rode up to Dalton and began to speak. Edgar was too distracted to follow the conversation. His glasses steamed over and he took them from his nose and wiped them on his shirt. He put them back on his face and they fogged again. He took them off. After the third time, he let them sit on his face, watching the forest through the thin layer of condensation.

  Up ahead, Dalton had finished conferring with the Burman. “All right then,” he shouted, and turned his horse around, the animal’s hooves trampling the tangle of underbrush. “I spoke to our guide. He says that he rode to the nearest village and asked the villagers about the tiger. Apparently, it was sighted only yesterday tearing the throat from the breeding sow of a local swineherd. The whole village is distraught, one of the soothsayers said that this same tiger is the one that killed an infant two years ago. So they are organizing their own tiger hunt, trying to flush it out of the jungle. They said that we can try to hunt it. It was last sighted three miles north of here. Or, he said we could try heading south to a series of swamps where there are many wild boars.”

  “I didn’t come all the way out here to shoot pigs,” Fogg interjected.

  “Nor did I,” said Witherspoon.

  “And Mr. Drake,” asked Dalton. “Your vote?”

  “Oh, I won’t even be firing a shot. I couldn’t hit a stuffed, glazed pig if it lay on the table in front of me, let alone a boar. You decide.”

  “Well, I haven’t hunted a tiger in months,” said Dalton.

  “It’s decided then,” said Witherspoon.

  “Just watch where you fire,” said Dalton. “Not everything that moves is a tiger. And Mr. Drake, be careful of snakes. Don’t grab anything that looks like a stick unless you are certain that it doesn’t have fangs.” He kicked his horse’s flank, and the other men followed, winding on through the forest.

  The vegetation grew thicker, and they stopped frequently for the first rider to cut at vines that hung over the trail. More plants seemed to grow from the trees than from the ground, twisting creepers that climbed vines toward the sunlight. Jagged epiphytes, orchids, pitcher plants, clung to the larger trees, losing their roots in the confusion of shoots that crisscrossed the sky. Edgar had always enjoyed gardens, and he prided himself on his knowledge of Latin plant names, but he searched in vain for a plant he could recognize. Even the trees were foreign, massive, borne by elephantine trunks that stretched across the ground with finlike buttress roots, tall enough to hide a tiger behind their walls.

  They rode for another half hour, and passed the ruins of a small structure, wrapped in the tangled roots of the trees. The Englishmen rode past it without stopping. Edgar wanted to call out to ask what it was, but his companions were too far ahead. He turned to look at the stones, hidden in moss. Behind him, the Burmans also seemed to notice. One of the men, who had been carrying a small wreath of flowers, quickly dismounted and laid it at the base of the ruins. Edgar turned as his horse walked on. Through the tessellations of hanging vines, he saw the man bow, and then the vision was lost, the vines closed in, and his horse pushed forward.

  The others had ridden ahead, and he almost collided with them at a turn in the trail. They were all gathered at the base of a large tree. Dalton and Witherspoon were arguing in a whisper.

  “Just one shot,” Witherspoon was saying. “You can’t let a pelt like that pass. I promise I could get it in one shot.”

  “I told you, for all we know, the tiger could be watching us. Fire now, and you will scare it away for certain.”

  “Nonsense,” said Witherspoon. “The tiger is scared already. Three years and I don’t have a good monkey pelt. They are always so old, and the only fine pelt I could have had was ruined by an inept skinner.”

  Edgar followed the direction of their argument up the tall tree. At first he saw nothing, only a tangle of leaves and vines. But then something moved, and the small head of a young monkey poked out over an epiphyte. Edgar heard a rifle being loaded next to him and Dalton’s voice again, “I am telling you, leave it alone,” and then above, the monkey seemed to sense something was wrong, lifted itself up, and began to leap. Witherspoon raised the rifle, and Dalton again, “Hold your fire, damn it,” and then above, the monkey’s jump was matched by the flick of Witherspoon’s finger, the flash from the gun barrel, the explosion of the shot. For a brief second there was a pause, silence, as above a scattering of debris from where the monkey had jumped drifted down through the clearing. And then Edgar heard another sound, directly above, a soft chirping, and he looked up to see a figure, silhouetted against the backdrop of trees and fragments of sky, falling. It seemed so slow, the body rotating in space, tail streaming up, fluttering, avian in its descent. He stared transfixed as the monkey fell past him, not three feet from his horse, and crashed into the brush. There was a long pause, and then Dalton cursed and kicked his horse forward. One of the Burmans jumped down from his saddle, picked up the monkey, and held it out to Witherspoon to inspect the coat, now bloody and matted with dirt. He nodded at the Burman, who threw the monkey into a canvas sack. Then Witherspoon kicked, and the group moved forward. Following behind, Edgar watched the tiny figure in the bag swing against the side of the horse, shifting shadows of the forest playing over the stain of red that spread across the canvas.

  They marched forward. Near a small stream, they passed through a swarm of mosquitoes, which Edgar tried to wave away from his face. One landed on his hand, and he watched it with fascination as it probed his skin, looking for a place to bite. It was much larger than those he had seen in England, with tiger-striped legs. Today, I am the first to slay the tiger, Edgar thought, and he crushed it with a slap of his hand. Another landed, and he let it bite, watching it drink, its belly swelling, and then this one he crushed as well, smearing his own blood over his arm.

  The forest thinned and opened into rice fields. They passed several women bent over in the mud, planting seeds. The road widened, and they could see a village in the distance, a scrambled mass of bamboo houses. As they approached, a man came out and greeted them. He was wearing nothing but a worn red paso, and spoke wit
h animation to the head rider, who translated.

  “This man is one of the village leaders. He says that they sighted the tiger this morning. Men from this village have joined in the hunt. He begged us to join them too. They have very few guns. He will send a boy with us as a guide.”

  “Excellent,” said Dalton, unable to control his excitement. “I thought that after Witherspoon’s hastiness, we had lost our chance.”

  “And I will have a fine tiger pelt in addition to the monkey,” said Witherspoon.

  Even Edgar felt his blood surge. The tiger was close, and dangerous. The only other time he had seen a tiger was at the London Zoo, a thin, pathetic animal losing its hair to a disease that puzzled even London’s best veterinary surgeons. His discomfort at having to kill something—amplified by the shooting of the baby monkey—vanished. Indeed, Dalton was right, this village needs us, he thought. He looked behind the villager, to where a group of women had gathered, each of whom held a baby against her hip. He felt a tugging at his boot and looked down to see a naked little boy touching the stirrups. “Hello,” he said, and the boy stared upward. His face was smeared with dust and mucus. “You are a handsome little fellow, but quite in need of a bath.”

  Fogg heard him talking and turned. “Made a friend, I see, Mr. Drake?”

  “Seems to be the case,” Edgar said. “Here.” He rummaged in his pocket until he found an anna. He tossed it down. The boy reached out but missed it, and the coin bounced into a small puddle by the side of the road. The boy dropped to his knees and thrust his hands into the water, searching for the coin, a frightened look on his face. Suddenly his hand grasped something, and he pulled the coin from the water and looked at it triumphantly. He spat on his hand and wiped off the coin, then scampered back to show his friends. Within seconds they were gathered around Edgar’s horse. “No,” said Edgar. “No more coins.” He looked forward and tried to ignore the little outstretched hands.