The Piano Tuner

by Peter Meinke

  Their city was not a happy one, to generalize wildly, but it had an erotic atmosphere, which was perhaps connected to its unhappiness. The weather was often cold, and the women wore tall boots and long skirts, and all one saw of their legs was the back of a knee or the top of a calf as they got on a bus or settled themselves on sofas. Stefan got a very Victorian frisson from such glimpses. The Victorians had many difficulties with sex, but at least they knew it was important. Yes, that was it: Stefan was a Victorian out of place in the New World.

  Their affair was very tender. In her apartment, to which they would go during the long lunch break when her roommate was absent, she would stand shyly and passively with her arms at her side while he fumbled and trembled with her hooks and buttons. In bed he would say, “Do you like this? Do you like this?” and she would murmur, “Yes. Yes. I like everything about you. I like everything you do.”

  And she loved the opera. Sometimes they would just lie there while he whistled scores from Traviata or Madame Butterfly. She was his Carmen, he was her Don José. The fact that these stories ended with corpses littering the stage gave a certain poignancy to his whistling.

  Hannah certified the existence of the affair in a very old-fashioned way: she found blonde hairs on his coat (he was such a pig!). Possessing a shrewdness that her husband lacked, she said nothing the first two times. Once could be an accident, twice could be a coincidence, but three times is a pattern, and it was then that she called the Authorities. The voice on the wire had been noncommittal, as always.

  “With whom is your husband having an affair?”

  “I don’t know. A blonde.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “At the main post office.”

  “Thank you.”

  And that was all, the voice hung up. It had been surprisingly easy, Hannah thought. She had expected a long interrogation, perhaps demands for proof. The voice had given the impression of competence, of knowledge in this area, of efficiency derived from long and woeful experience. It was hard to tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. Hannah hoped it was a woman; men really were brutes, after all. She sat back, narrowing her eyes when her husband came home whistling virtuoso riffs from Figaro, closing them entirely when he made that disgusting throat-clearing sound, and waited.

  Three weeks later, on his desk at the post office, Stefan saw the familiar blue envelope with the eagle stamped on it. Now what? he thought with irritation. He was sure all his bills were paid. A new tax? Something he said at a party? No one liked to get the blue envelopes; they were always trouble, even if it were just some computer mix-up, which was often the case. He tore it open, hoping his co-workers hadn’t seen it. But who put it there?

  It was simply a notice that he had an appointment at 13:45 on Tuesday—that was today!—in Room 4230h at the Central Office. Nothing else. Just that and the eagle embossed over an indecipherable signature. Stefan’s hands began to sweat, what bad luck! He was supposed to meet Eva at 2:00, but her room was in the other direction, and as she had no phone there was no way for him to get in touch with her. She would be worried, poor thing. In the new system most offices had a rotating lunch break, and they had arranged theirs to be from 1:30 to 3:00. What a lot of nonsense this was! Stefan muttered all morning, giving people the wrong change, banging their packages into the big bins. Just let somebody try to get smart with him! Bam! Into the bin went another package. At 1:25 a young woman in maternity clothes, with wispy hair and a drawn face, came to his window with four large packages. He studied the first package, frowning, for some time, weighed it, stamped it, tossed it in the bin, pulled his window, and put up his OUT TO LUNCH sign while the woman stood there with her mouth open. He hurried out the back door.

  Stefan blinked for a minute in the harsh winter sunlight. Snow was still hard-packed over the streets and sidewalks, and on the corners clusters of little old women—where do they find these creatures?—poked at the large piles with snow shovels consisting of a piece of plywood on a broom-handle. Real shovels were in short supply. He turned right, toward the old square. The new buildings, like the post office where he worked, were all quite modern, big beehives of interchangeable cubicles. But the buildings in the old section, they were something else. There were still mysteries there, and shadows, beautiful carvings, spires and minarets, hidden staircases, stained-glass windows, all in miraculous and irrational profusion. There were constant rumors that they would all be torn down because they were inefficient to run, but Stefan hoped this was not true. The younger people didn’t seem to care, but there were enough older ones left who could make things hot, even for the Authorities, if such a thing were done.

  The Authorities’ Central Offices were in the largest of the old baroque palaces untouched by the war. Usually when Stefan walked through the square in the Old City he would stop, twirling his umbrella, and admire the ancient clock on the Town Hall with its figures of Death, Greed, Lust, and Time that turned mechanically on the hour while the heavy chimes rolled over the tiled rooftops. But today he was preoccupied and hurried onto the dark cobblestones of Celetna Street, turned the corner by the beerhall of the Two Cats, and arrived in front of the palace six minutes early. Wide stone steps led up to its many doors, but as usual in this city only one of the doors would be open, and there was always a crowd of pale men and women bumping into one another as they entered and left the building. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he said, “excuse me,” as he made his way into the cavernous hall where people seemed to scamper back and forth like the poor souls in Limbo, as if someone were tipping the floor so they would scurry first one way, then another. Plunged into the darkness of the hall after the bright light of outdoors, Stefan felt unbalanced, and he put a hand on a marble column to steady himself. Soon, between gaps in the ebbing and flowing crowd, he could make out in the gloom a single unmanned desk marked INFORMATION.

  When he reached the desk, there was no one to help him, but behind it was a small sign with numbers and arrows; 4000-4499 had an arrow pointing to the left, so he struck off in that direction. The surgings of the crowd made more sense to him as he followed the arrows around corners, across hallways, down and up stairs, seemingly circling back on his steps as if in a mad hotel designed for minotaurs. At last he came to a dead end with an open elevator; he was surprised to find himself suddenly alone. Stefan stepped into the elevator and pushed 4, looking at his watch. But he was only three minutes late—he could hardly believe it, it seemed he had been walking for ages—as he scurried down a long, impersonal corridor where all the doors were the same except for the numbers and entered Room 4320h feeling absolutely and irrevocably guilty.

  Stefan had always felt guilty when he was near the Palace, he didn’t know why. He had been in their branch offices many times—visas, work permits, travel passes when he visited his sister in Katow—and he felt guilty in those places, too. Lord knows he had often said uncharitable things about the Authorities and had thought even worse. But he had never done anything even remotely subversive, outside of the little cheating on his sugar stamps that everybody did. Still, he felt guilty. He even felt guilty about feeling guilty. It seemed to be part of his temperament. If he didn’t buy anything in a grocery store, for example, he would all but disrobe on the way out to prove he had stolen nothing. Since the beginning of his affair with Eva, despite surges of enormous happiness, he felt he was swimming in Guilt Soup, a thick broth of his own concoction. Therefore, facing the stern-visaged indeterminate-aged woman who stared at him from behind a large, well-ordered desk, he was tempted to cry out, “I confess!!” instead of the weak “Good afternoon” he finally managed.

  She asked his name. He told her. His address, age, occupation. She was a short lean woman with spectacles, almost a caricature of what a strict Latin teacher is supposed to look like. It was not a face that fitted easily into a smile.

  “You are overweight?” she asked. “You eat too much?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he heard right. F
or one thing, the answer was obvious. For another, what was this, a medical examination? He looked around the room. For the first time he saw the soldier standing motionless by an inner door.

  She repeated the question. Her voice was like an iron bell.

  “Yes.” His knees began to shake. There seemed to be no place to sit down. It was as if he knew what the next question would be, and he shuffled his feet in an attempt to postpone it.

  “You are having an affair with Eva Levandoska, yes?”

  “No,” he said, and she looked up at him so suddenly, so sharply, that he said, “Yes. Yes,” he said, looking not at her but at the soldier, who was just a boy, though tall and stockily built. “Do I have to answer these questions?”

  The matron’s face turned black, and she shouted, “How can you justify such piggish, antisocial behavior?” She stared at him with such violence that he almost fell down.

  Stefan swallowed, or tried to. He had never thought his behavior was justifiable. But he raised his chin and said in a quavering voice, “I think when two people come together in love, it is a kind of miracle.”

  She stared at him. “Perhaps. But it is an inevitable miracle.” She said the word sneeringly. “Repetitious. Childish. And basically harmful to society.”

  Stefan regretted he had said “miracle.” He didn’t want to get into a religious argument with the Authorities. Being half-Jewish put him in a difficult spot. His Jewish friends, Peter and Bo—two of the few Jews left in the city—were always afraid. But of what? They no longer seemed to know. In the old days Stefan’s father had taught him not to talk about religion. “Religion is all right,” he’d say, lopping the head off a chicken. “It just doesn’t apply to every case. That’s why we have the Authorities.”

  But the woman dropped the subject and went on with her questions, her voice once again controlled and low. She continued in this way for some time, asking the most intimate questions, as if this were a civil service test. Positions? Perversities? Did he sweat a lot? Stefan, answering, head down, in barely audible monosyllables, was sweating profusely, his shirt soaked and sticking to his skin. Was the soldier listening? He made no sign.

  “You are noisy?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “When you copulate, you are very noisy, yes?”

  Stefan looked around wildly. Hannah! They had talked to Hannah. She knew. She had turned him in! The matron had been staring at some papers, but now she looked up again. She placed a photograph of Eva before him. “You admit everything, yes?”

  Stefan didn’t hesitate; his heart was beating so hard he could scarcely hear anything. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He couldn’t look at her. Instead he found himself staring at a small printed placard on the left side of her desk, by a calendar, that said PASSION AND THE DECENT LIFE ARE INCOMPATIBLE.

  “Good,” she said, standing up and pushing a document at him. “We understand each other, I hope. Please sign here. And here.” Somehow she looked smaller when she stood up. Her dress was black or dark blue and hung on her shape-lessly. She looked at her watch. “You still have half an hour,” she said in a businesslike tone. “That should be enough time. Please take off your clothes.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Take off your clothes,” she repeated sternly but not unkindly, as if to someone retarded. “Hang them by the door and go in.” The door was by the soldier, an immovable statue. The matron sat down, busy at her desk. Stefan stood behind her, on the right, in front of the uniformed boy who now seemed to Stefan to have the bland face of a killer, a mass murderer. Stefan had always hated uniforms, even policemen and Boy Scouts, and he was terrified as he disrobed in front of this robot. Oh, God, God, God, he thought, they’re going to kill me, they’re going to gas me and take the gold fillings out of my teeth. And my new shoes.

  But he was not a fighter. Not knowing what else to do, he hung his clothes on the hooks by the inner door, dropping them several times, and, feeling ridiculous and defenseless standing naked with his round and hairy belly shaking between the matron and the soldier, he turned and plunged through the door, which the soldier immediately closed behind him.

  It was a small room, bare except for a large clock hanging on the green wall, and a medium-sized cot. Even in his fright he felt the lowered temperature, and he shivered. Just as he noticed a door opposite from where he had entered, it opened, and Stefan backed into a corner with a strangled cry. A figure came toward him, coming into focus as the door closed behind it.

  It was Eva. She looked at him with the startled eyes of an animal, tried to cover herself, then ran to him. Both of them began to cry as they embraced, rocking back and forth in the corner of this barren room where the clock loudly ticked to 14:08. They kissed. They sat down on the cot. He pulled a blanket over them; they were both shaking from cold and fright.

  “They’ve been watching us,” Eva said. “They know everything.”

  “I know. But what do they want with us? What are they going to do?” Suddenly from behind the wall by their cot came a series of gasps and moans. After their initial fright, it soon became clear to them that a couple was making love in the adjoining room.

  For a while Eva and Stefan were silent and embarrassed. They felt their nakedness as if for the first time. Stefan awkwardly embraced her.

  “Stefan, I can’t.”

  Stefan looked down. “I obviously can’t.” But this made them laugh, and they huddled together under the covers. The sounds from the next room started up again. They lay with their arms around each other, and as the clock ticked to 14:22 he was surprised to find himself excited. They didn’t speak; they seemed to be in a situation in which nothing they could say would make any sense.

  They were scarcely finished when the door opened and the matron looked in. Did she nod approvingly? “Yes,” she said, “time’s up.” Stefan almost ran to the open door, not even looking back at Eva, sitting up on the cot with the covers clutched to her chin. He dressed before the unblinking soldier in a fury of shame and fear, and hardly heard the woman as she announced, “Your next appointment is at 14:00 a week from tomorrow. We will send you a reminder.” Stefan went blindly out the door, through the corridor, down the elevator, following the arrows in reverse order until he reached the front door. It was impossible, but the sun was still shining, though thinner now, and the old clock on the Town Hall was just striking three. Death was ringing its bell, Time waved its sickle. Greed and Lust made ambiguous movements with their hands. Stefan stared up at them, transfixed in complicated thought.

  He was late for work already, but he was too shaky to go back to the post office anyway. He could call in sick. He looked around for Eva in the crowd, but she was nowhere to be seen. He decided to head for home.

  On the long walk back to Krolewska Street through the already darkening city, Stefan began to cry. He cried for perhaps a half a mile, passersby stepping aside as he approached. But by the time he neared his apartment he was feeling better. The tears stopped. For the first time in months, he realized, he did not feel guilty. He was free! He had an image of his heart bobbing to the surface from a dark and densely pressured depth. The relief was so great that he was surprised by a rush of affection for his wife. She had known what to do after all. And what were Authorities for if not to lighten the burdens of their citizens? He took a deep, deep breath. Twirling his umbrella, Stefan waddled up the steps and into his flat. Hannah sat in the big chair, chin held high, drumming her fingers on the armrest. He went up to her, put his hand on her shoulders, began to whistle, stopped, and cleared his throat.

  The Twisted River

  “What’s black and white and runs away when you call it?” the American asked.

  Domanski was squinting at the menu, holding it up to the candle. “I give up.”

  “A Polish waiter!” The American barked three or four times at his own joke, and Domanski tried to smile. He had heard them all and hated them with a fierce passion. As he smiled he reached out in his imagination and broke the Ameri
can’s nose by twisting it sharply to the right.

  The American’s name was Dan Bradley; he was tall and well built, with wavy hair turned prematurely gray. He was handsome in a weak and romantic way, almost pretty, despite his long breakable nose. Bradley had deep-set dark eyes with long lashes and a high intellectual forehead, which was, like much of his appearance, totally misleading. He was a teacher of applied linguistics at a small Southern college and, despite his Ph.D., had scarcely read a real book in his life. This year he was teaching on a Fulbright at a Polish university, leaving his wife and children at home, and had just astounded Domanski not simply by his ignorance but by his ignorance of his ignorance. In their first ten minutes of conversation Domanski had discovered that Bradley had never even heard of either Edward Gierek or Joseph Conrad. How was that possible? Jesus Christ, what are the Americans trying to do, he thought, sabotage the whole program? Americans were chauvinistic and contemptuous of other cultures, but Bradley seemed to be an extreme case. What on earth could they talk about?

  “How is your apartment?” Domanski was the University man in charge of making the way smooth for the American professors.

  “It stinks, babes, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. It’s about Bubin.” Bradley leaned across the table, his hair close to the candle flame, and paused dramatically. “Did you know he was queer?”

  Domanski still pretended to study the menu. Polish restaurants tended to be dark, romantically (and economically) candlelit, with a menu typed on a fourth carbon, so you could spend hours trying to make it out. They seldom had what was on the menu anyway, and it was best to rely on the judgment of the waiter. Finally Domanski said, “Bubin is one of our best teachers.”

  “I bet,” said Bradley, “but he’s queer as a green kielbasa.”