Book Read Free

The Piano Tuner

Page 7

by Daniel Mason


  “You have come from far away,” said the old turtle woman.

  I was shocked. “You speak Arabic?” I asked.

  “Enough to trade. Please, sit.” She nodded at a young girl who sat near the door. The girl jumped to her feet and brought a small rug that she laid on the sand for me. I sat.

  “My grandchildren said that they found you near the coast of the Red Sea.”

  “They did. They gave me water and, by doing so, saved my life.”

  “How did you get there?” Her voice was stern.

  “An accident. I was on a ship traveling from Suez to Babelmandeb when there was a storm. The ship was wrecked. I do not know what happened to my shipmates, but I fear them dead.”

  The turtle woman turned to the room and spoke to them. There was nodding and hasty chatter.

  When she stopped speaking, I spoke again. “Where am I?”

  The old woman shook her head. One eye, I noticed, deviated from the other, giving her an eerie sense of watchfulness, as if while she scrutinized me she was also carefully watching the room. “That is a dangerous question,” she said. “Already there are those who feel that the fame of the appearance has spread too far, that if too many people come She will not return. You are fortunate to have found me. There are those here who would have killed you.”

  With those words, the relief of finding civilization was washed over with the nausea of fear. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Do not ask too much. You have come at an auspicious time. The Bantu astrologers say that tomorrow She may appear to sing. And then your questions will be answered.” And with those words, she raised her pipe to her mouth once again and turned first one eye, and then the other, back to the fire. No one spoke to me for the remainder of the evening. I feasted on the roasted leg and drank a sweet nectar until I fell asleep before the fire.

  I awoke the next morning to find the tent empty. I prayed and then lifted the flap of the tent, emerging into the heat. The sun hung in the center of the sky; in my exhaustion, I had slept nearly to noon. The camels were still tethered, but both goats were gone. I went back inside the tent. I had no water to wash myself, but I tried my best to fold and smooth my headdress with my hands. I returned outside.

  The paths were relatively empty; everyone must have been hiding from the sun. I saw a group of men saddling camels in preparation to hunt, and nearby a group of young girls, dressed in a vivid blue, grinding grain. Toward the outer edge of the encampment I saw the new arrivals, some of whom must have arrived at dawn, who still worked to unroll tents from the backs of stoical camels. I walked to the edge of the camp, where the tent city ended suddenly, and where a line had been etched, drawn by many tribes as a ritual barrier between their camp and the desert. The sands stretched out unbroken. I thought back on the old woman’s words. Long ago, when I was a child, I had accompanied my brother to Aden, where we spent the night with a tribe of Bedouin. The Bedouin speak their own dialect, but I understood some, as much of my youth had been passed in trading bazaars, where the young acquire a great collection of tongues. I remembered we had joined the family by their fire, and listened to their grandfather tell a story of a congress of tribes. In the light of the fire, he had described in exquisite detail each tribe, the robes they wore, their customs, their beasts, even the color of their eyes. I had been spellbound, and sometime during the night fell asleep before the story was finished, to awake only when my brother prodded me, and we crawled back into the tent. Now, standing at the edge of the open desert, something in that old man’s story returned to me, a sensation only, like a memory of a dream.

  In the distance, beyond a small dune, I saw a flutter of red fabric, tickled by the wind. It was brief, like the short flight of a bird, but such visions are rare in the desert and beg inspection. I stepped across the line—at the time I thought this a superstition of infidels, although now I am not so certain. I climbed the dune and descended into a plain of sand. There was no one. I felt a presence behind me and turned. It was a woman. She stood nearly one hand shorter than me and stared up from behind a red veil. I thought by the darkness of her skin that she must be from one of the Ethiopian tribes, but when I kept staring at her, she greeted me. “Salaam aleikum.”

  “Wa aleikum al-salaam,” I answered. “Where are you from?”

  “From the same land as you,” she said, but her accent was strange.

  “Then you are far from home,” I said.

  “And you as well.”

  I stood speechless, entranced by the softness of her words, by her eyes. “What are you doing alone in the sands?” I asked.

  For a long time she didn’t speak. My eyes followed her veil down to her body, which was covered in thick red robes that gave no clue to the form that lay beneath. The fabric fell and pooled on the ground, where the wind had already dusted it with a layer of sand, giving the impression that she had risen from the dunes. Then she spoke again. “I must fetch water,” she said and looked down at an earthen pot she was balancing on her hip. “I am afraid I will get lost in the sand. Will you come with me?”

  “But I don’t know where to find any,” I protested, shaken by the boldness of her proposition, by how close she stood to me.

  “I do,” she said.

  But neither of us moved. I had never seen eyes the color of hers—not dark brown like the women from my home, but softer, lighter, the color of sand. A breeze danced about us and her veil shook, and I had a fleeting glimpse of her face, strange in ways I couldn’t understand, for I blinked and again she was hidden.

  “Come,” she said, and we began to walk. A wind whipped up around us, firing sand against our skin, stinging, like a thousand pins.

  “Perhaps we should turn back,” I said. “Or we will be lost in the storm.”

  She kept walking.

  I caught up with her. The storm was getting worse. “Let’s turn back. It is too dangerous to be caught out here alone.”

  “We cannot go back,” she said. “We are not from here.”

  “But the storm—”

  “Stay with me.”

  “But—”

  She turned. “You are frightened.”

  “Not frightened. I know the desert. We can return later.”

  “Ibrahim,” she said.

  “My name.”

  “Ibrahim,” she said again and stepped toward me.

  My hands hung limply at my side. “You know my name.”

  “Quiet,” she said. “The sand will stop.”

  And suddenly the wind disappeared. Fine particles of sand froze in the air, like tiny planets. They stayed suspended in space, unmovable, whitening the sky, the horizon, erasing everything but her.

  She stepped toward me once more, and set the pot on the ground. “Ibrahim,” she repeated and lifted her veil from her face.

  I have never seen a vision so beautiful and yet so hideous. With woman’s eyes she stared at me, but her mouth wavered, like a mirage, not the mouth and nose of a woman, but of a deer, its skin soft with fur. I couldn’t speak, and there was a howling, and the sand took motion once again, spinning about us, blurring her. I raised my hands to my eyes.

  And then again the sand stopped.

  I lowered my hands tentatively. I was alone, suspended in the sand. My eyes knew not what to focus on, nor what direction lay the sky or the earth. “Salaam,” I whispered.

  And then from somewhere hidden came the sound of a woman singing.

  It began softly, and at first I didn’t recognize it as song. It was low and sweet, a song like wine, forbidden and intoxicating, like nothing I had ever heard. I could not understand its words, and its melody was utterly foreign. And yet there was something so intimate in it that I felt naked, ashamed.

  The wailing crescendoed, the sand began again to spin about me. Through its whirling, I caught glimpses of images. Of circling birds, of the camp, the cities of tents, the sun setting quickly, splintering, igniting the desert into a giant flame that stretched out across the dun
es, enveloping all and then receding, leaving only scattered campfires. Then it was suddenly night, and around the campfires gathered travelers, dancers, musicians, drummers, a thousand instruments that wailed like shifting sand, rising, louder and piercing, and before me a snake charmer came and played an oud, and his snakes climbed out of their basket and over his legs. Girls danced, their bodies buttered and scented, glistening in the campfires, and I found myself staring at a giant, with scars on his skin like stars, a flesh tattooed with stories, and the scars became men clothed in the skins of lizards and children made of clay, and they danced, and the children shattered away. And then it was day again and the visions vanished. I was left only with the sand and the scream, and suddenly this stopped. I lifted my hand before my face, and called out, “Who are you?” But I could no longer hear my voice.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, and opened my eyes to find myself lying by the sea, my legs half submerged in the water. There was a man squatting beside me. I saw his mouth move, but I couldn’t hear him. Several others stood along the shore, watching me. The man started to speak again, but I heard nothing, not his voice, not the wash of the waves as they lapped over my legs. I pointed to my ears and shook my head. “I cannot hear you,” I said, “I am deaf.”

  Another man approached me and the two raised me to my feet. There was a small boat, its bow wedged into the sand, its stern shifting in the waves. They walked me to the boat and we boarded. If they spoke, I could not hear them. They paddled into the Red Sea and toward a waiting ship, whose marks I knew as a merchant ship from Alexandria.

  For the entire narration, the old man’s eyes had not left Edgar’s face. Now he turned to the sea. “I have told this story to many,” he said. “For I want to find another soul who has heard the song that made me deaf.”

  Edgar touched his arm lightly, so he would turn and see his lips. “How do you know it wasn’t a dream? That you didn’t hit your head in the accident? Songs cannot make men deaf.”

  “Oh, I would wish it was a dream. But it couldn’t have been. The moon had changed, and by the ship’s calendar, which I saw the next morning at breakfast, it was twenty days after my boat had capsized. But by then I already knew this, for that night when I undressed for bed, I remarked at how worn my sandals were. And in Rewesh, our last port of call before the accident, I had bought a new pair.

  “Besides,” he said, “I don’t believe it was the song that made me deaf. I think that after I had heard something so beautiful, my ears simply stopped sensing sound, because they knew that they would never hear such perfection again. I don’t know if this makes sense to a tuner of strings.”

  The sun was now high in the sky; Edgar felt its heat against his face. The old man spoke. “My One Story is over, and I have no more stories to tell, for just as there can be no sound after that song, for me there can be no stories after that one. And now we must go inside, for the sun has ways of making even the sane delirious.”

  They steamed through the Red Sea. The waters lightened, and they crossed the straits of Babelmandeb, the shore washed by waves from the Indian Ocean. They dropped anchor in the port of Aden, where the harbor was full with steamers destined for all over the world, in whose shadows tiny Arab dhows darted beneath lateen sails. Edgar Drake stood on the deck and watched the port and the robed men who clambered to and from the ship’s hull. He didn’t see the Man with One Story leave, but when he looked at the spot on the deck where the man always sat, he was gone.

  5

  The journey is faster now. In two days, the coast appears tentatively, as tiny wooded islands that dot the shore like shattered fragments of the mainland. They are dark and green; Edgar can see nothing through the deep foliage, and he wonders if they are inhabited. He asks a fellow traveler, a retired civil administrator, who tells him that one of the islands is home to a temple that he calls Elephanta, where the Hindus worship an “Elephant with Many Arms.”

  “It is a strange place, full of superstitions,” says the man, but Edgar says nothing. Once, in London, he tuned the Erard of a wealthy Indian banker, the son of a maharaja, who showed him a shrine to an elephant with many arms, which he kept on a shelf above the piano. He listens to the songs, the man had said, and Edgar liked this religion, where gods enjoyed music and a piano could be used to pray.

  Faster. Hundreds of tiny fishing boats, lorchas, ferries, rafts, junks, dhows, swarm at the mouth of Bombay harbor, parting before the towering hull of the steamer. The steamer slows into port, squeezing between two smaller merchant ships. The passengers disembark, to be met on the dock by carriages belonging to the shipping company, which take them to the railway station. There is no time to walk the streets, a uniformed representative from the ship’s line says, The train is waiting, Your steamship is a day late, The wind was strong. They go through the back gate of the station. Edgar waits as his trunks are unloaded and loaded again. He watches closely; if his tools are lost, they cannot be replaced. At the far end of the station, where the third-class cars wait, he sees a mass of bodies pushing forward on the platform. A hand takes his arm and leads him onto the train and to his berth and soon they are moving again.

  Faster now, they move past the platforms, and Edgar Drake looks out over crowds such as he has never seen, not even on the poorest streets of London. The train picks up speed, passing shantytowns built to the edge of the track, children scattering before the engine. Edgar presses his face to the glass to watch the jumbled houses, the peeling tenements stained with mildew, balconies decorated with hanging plants, and every street filled with thousands of people, pushing forward, watching the train pass.

  The train hurtled into the interior of India. Nasik, Bhusaval, Jubbulpore, the names of the towns growing stranger and, thought Edgar, more melodic. They crossed a vast plateau, where the sun rose and set, and they didn’t see a moving soul.

  Occasionally they stopped, the engine slowing, screeching into windbeaten, lonely stations. There, from the shadows, vendors would descend on the train, pushing up against the windows, thrusting in pungent plates of curried meat, the sour smell of lime and betel, jewelry, fans, picture postcards of castles and camels and Hindu gods, fruits and dusted sweets, beggars’ bowls, cracked pots filled with dirty coins. Through the windows would come the wares and the voices, Buy, sir, please, Buy, sir, for you, sir, special for you, and the train would start to move again, and some of the vendors, young men usually, would hang on, laughing, until they were pried off by a policeman’s baton. Sometimes they made it further, jumping off only when the train started moving too fast.

  One night Edgar awoke as the train pulled into a small, dark station, somewhere south of Allahabad. Bodies huddled in the crevices of the buildings that lined the tracks. The platform was empty except for a few vendors who marched along the windows, peeking in to see if anyone was awake. One by one they stopped at Edgar’s window, Mangoes, sir, for you, Do you want your shoes polished, sir, just pass them through the window, Samosas, They are delicious, sir. This is a lonely place for a shoeblack, thought Edgar, and a young man walked up to the window and stopped. He said nothing, but looked in and waited. At last Edgar began to feel uncomfortable beneath the boy’s gaze. What are you selling, he asked. I am a Poet-Wallah, sir. A Poet-Wallah. Yes, sir, give me an anna and I will recite for you a poem. What poem. Any poem, sir, I know them all, but for you I have a special poem, the poem is old and it is from Burma, where they call it “The Tale of the Journey of the Leip-bya,” but I only call it “The Butterfly-Spirit,” for I have adapted it myself, It is only one anna. You know I am going to Burma, How? I know, for I know the direction of stories, my poems are daughters of prophecy. Here is an anna, quick now, the train is moving. And it was, groaning as the wheels turned. Tell me quickly, said Edgar, suddenly feeling a swell of panic, There is a reason you chose my car. The train was moving faster, the young man’s hair began to whip with the wind. It is a tale of dreams, he yelled, They are all tales of dreams. Faster now, and Edgar could hear the sounds of
other voices, Hey boy, get off the train, You, stowaway, Get off, and Edgar wanted to shout back when briefly there appeared at the window the form of a turbaned policeman, also running, and the flash of a baton, and the boy broke off and fell into the night.

  The land fell and became forested and soon their route approached that of the Ganges, passing the holy city of Benares, where, as the passengers slept, men rose at dawn to sink themselves into the water of the river and pray. They reached Calcutta after three days, and once again climbed into carriages that pushed through the swarms of people to the docks. There Edgar boarded a new ship, smaller now, for there were fewer people traveling to Rangoon.

  Once again the steam engines rumbled. They followed the muddy outflow of the Ganges into the Bay of Bengal.

  Gulls circled overhead, and the air was heavy and humid. Edgar peeled his shirt from his body and fanned himself with his hat. To the south, storm clouds hovered, waiting. Calcutta soon disappeared from the horizon. The brown waters of the Ganges faded, spinning off into the sea in spirals of sediment.

  He knew from his itinerary that only three days remained before they would reach Rangoon. He began to read again. His bag was packed with papers, with equal contributions from Katherine and the War Office. He read military briefings and newspaper clippings, personal reports and chapters of gazetteers. He pored over maps, and he tried to study some phrases of Burmese. There was an envelope addressed “To the Piano Tuner, to be opened only upon arriving in Mae Lwin, A.C.” He had been tempted to read it since leaving England but had resisted only out of respect for the Doctor; surely Carroll had good reason to ask him to wait. There were two longer pieces, histories of Burma and the Shan. The first he had read in his workshop back in London, and he continued to return to it. It was intimidating, he thought, there were so many unfamiliar names. Now he remembered the second history as the one Katherine had recommended, written by Anthony Carroll himself. He was surprised he hadn’t recalled this earlier, and carried the report to his bed to read. Within the first few lines, he saw how different it was from the others.

 

‹ Prev