by Daniel Mason
Dmitri Mendeleev, the father of the periodic table, did meet with the Burmese consul in Paris. What they discussed is still unknown.
Maung Tha Zan was a star of Burmese pwè. He was not as skilled as Maung Tha Byaw.
Belaidour, which Berbers call adil-ououchchn, is known to Western science as Atropa belladonna, and is used primarily for hearts that beat too slowly. It earned its species name because its berries also make women’s eyes wide and dark.
Anthony Carroll’s suspicions about the spread of malaria were correct. That the mosquito carries the disease would be proven ten years later, by another Englishman, Dr. Ronald Ross, also in the Indian Medical Service, but at a different hospital, in the city of Secunderabad. His use of “a plant that came from China” was also prescient. Qinghaosu is now used to make artemisinin, a potent antimalarial drug whose efficacy was “rediscovered” in 1971.
All the sawbwas are real, and still local heroes in the Shan States. The meeting in Mongpu is invented.
As for Twet Nga Lu, the Bandit Prince was captured at last by British forces, and the description of his death, by Sir Charles Crosthwaite, in The Pacification of Burma, is worth quoting here:
Mr. Hildebrand was instructed therefore to send Twet Nga Lu back to Mongnai to be tried by the Sawbwa. On the way he attempted to escape and was shot by the Beluchi guard escorting him. The men returned to Fort Stedman and reported what had happened, saying that they had buried him on the spot …
All doubt on this point was removed afterwards. The scene of the brigand’s death was in the wooded hills which border Mongpawn. The day after he was shot, a party of Shans from Mongpawn disinterred, or rather lifted, the corpse from its shallow grave, and shook off the loose earth. The head was cut off, shaved, and sent to Mongnai, and exhibited there at the north, south, east, and west gates of the town during the absence of the Assistant Superintendent at Fort Stedman. The various talismans were removed from the trunk and limbs. Such charms are generally small coins or pieces of metal, which are inserted under the skin. These would be doubly prized as having been enshrined in the flesh of so noted a leader, and no doubt were eagerly bought up. The body was then boiled down, and a concoction known to the Shans as mahe si was obtained, which is an unfailing charm against all kinds of wounds. So valuable a “medicine” did not long remain in the hands of the poor, and soon found its way into some princely medicine-chest … Such was the end of Twet Nga Lu. It was certainly, so far as the body is concerned, most complete.
Or as Lady Scott, who edited Scott of the Shan Hills, wrote of the Bandit Prince, “This was the wholesale end of this remarkable man.”
Details of Shan myths and culture, local medicine, and natural history I have collected in Burma and Thailand, and the literature of the period. While I believe most of the literature I encountered to be well intentioned and well researched, I fear that many of the sources contain prejudices or simple misinterpretations common to Victorian England. For this novel, however, what Victorians thought to be fact at the turn of the century is more important to me than what is known to be fact now. Thus I apologize for any factual inconsistencies that have resulted from this decision, an example of which looms in the paragraph cited above: the relationship of the Kachin mahaw tsi used by Doctor Carroll, which according to the great plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward was made from a species of Euonymus, and Crosthwaite’s etymologically similar mahe si is still a mystery to me, yet clearly intriguing.
I am indebted to countless sources. Among the books I found indispensable, in addition to those by Scott, Kingdon-Ward, and Crosthwaite were: Burma’s Struggle Against British Imperialism, 1885–1895 by Ni Ni Myint, for its discussion of the Shan Revolt from a Burmese perspective; Shans at Home by Mrs. Leslie Milne, a wonderful ethnography of the Shan published in 1910; and The Illusion of Life: Burmese Marionettes by Ma Thanegi, for its details of the yôkthe pwè. The Making of Modern Burma by Thant Myint-U is worth noting for its discussion of the Anglo-Burmese wars, a refreshing reanalysis of many opinions long held by historians, as well as by characters in my book. Finally I am indebted to William Braid White’s Piano Tuning and Allied Arts for rounding out Edgar Drake’s technical skills.
On a final note, long after beginning this story, I journeyed north from where I had once studied malaria along the southern Thai-Myanmar border, to the small town of Mae Sam Laep on the Salween River, far downstream from the imaginary site of Mae Lwin. There I traveled on a long-tailed trading boat through the wooded, silent shores, where we stopped at Karen villages hidden in the forest. It was hot that afternoon, and the air was still and silent, but at a muddy trading post on the banks of a small river, a strange sound rose up from the thick brush. It was a melody, and before the motor kicked in and we moved away from the shore, I recognized it as the sound of a piano.
Perhaps it was only a recording, creaking out on one of the dusty old phonographs that can still be found in some of the more remote markets. Perhaps. It was, however, terribly out of tune.
Acknowledgments
The research for this book would have been impossible without the help of the staff at the following organizations: in Thailand, the Mahidol University Faculty of Tropical Medicine and Ranong Provincial Hospital; in the UK, the British Library, the Guildhall Library, the National Gallery, and the Museum of London; in the United States, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in San Francisco, and the libraries at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at San Francisco. The names of the many locations in Myanmar (Burma) that inspired this story are too numerous to mention, but without the warmth extended to me by the people throughout that country, this book would never have been written.
I wish to acknowledge individually the support of Aet Nwe, Guha Bala, Nicholas Blake, Liza Bolitzer, Mary Lee Bossert, William Bossert, Riley Bove, Charles Burnham, Michael Carlisle, Liz Cowen, Lauren Doctoroff, Ellen Feldman, Jeremy Fields, Tinker Green, David Grewal, Emma Grunebaum, Fumihiko Kawamoto, Elizabeth Kellogg, Khin Toe, Peter Kunstadter, Whitney Lee, Josh Lehrer-Graiwer, Jafi Lipson, Helen Loeser, Sornchai Looareesuwan, Mimi Margaretten, Feyza Marouf, Gene McAfee, Jill McCorkle, Kevin McGrath, Ellis McKenzie, Maureen Mitchell, Joshua Mooney, Karthik Muralidharan, Myo, Gregory Nagy, Naing, Keeratiya Nontabutra, Jintana Patarapotikul, Maninthorn Phanumaphorn, Wanpen Puangsudrug, Derk Purcell, Maxine Rodburg, Debbie Rosenberg, Nader Sanai, Sidhorn Sangdhanoo, Bonnie Schiff-Glenn, Pawan Singh, Gavin Steckler, Suvanee Supavej, Parnpen Viriyavejakul, Meredith Warren, Suthera Watcharacup, Nicholas White, Chansuda Wongsrichanalai, Annie Zatlin, and the countless others in Myanmar and Thailand who told me their stories but whose names I never learned.
For advice on Burma, I am especially indebted to Wendy Law-Yone, Thant Myint-U, and Tint Lwin. Two piano tuners helped train Edgar Drake: David Skolnik and Ben Treuhaft. Ben’s experience tuning pianos in Cuba and time spent repairing an 1840 Erard grand once played by Liszt made him a perfect adviser for another grand, in another tropics. Of course, all errors with regard to Burma, piano tuning, or any other matter are entirely my own.
Finally, several people have been particularly devoted to this book. My deepest gratitude and affection goes to Christy Fletcher and Don Lamm for their advice and guidance on all matters, and to Maria Rejt, at Picador, in the UK, for helping make Edgar Drake a truer Londoner. Robin Desser at Knopf has been a wonderful editor; her insightful and incisive comments, support, and sense of humor leave me, after so many days spent discussing nothing but words, at a profound loss of them to express my true appreciation.
From the day I first told them about a piano by a river, my parents, Robert and Naomi, and sister, Ariana, have welcomed Edgar Drake into the family and encouraged my imagination to leave home. My greatest love and thanks go to them.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Mason received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard College in 1998, and spent a year researching malaria on t
he Thai-Myanmar border, where much of The Piano Tuner was written. He is currently a medical student at the University of California at San Francisco.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2002 by Daniel Philippe Mason
Map by David Lindroth, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mason, Daniel Philippe.
The piano tuner / Daniel Mason.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Piano technicians—Fiction. 2. British—Burma—
Fiction. 3. Burma—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A816P53 2002
813'.6—dc21
2002019069
eISBN: 978-1-4000-7771-7
v3.0
