The Piano Tuner

by Daniel Mason

  At one house he heard a ringing, and stopped to look. Two men crouched shirtless in loose blue Shan trousers, hammering metal. He had heard of the Shans’ reputation as skilled blacksmiths; Nash-Burnham had pointed out knives in the Mandalay market that were forged by Shans. I wonder where they obtain the metal, he thought, and looked closer. One of the men held a railway spike between his toes, which he hammered against an anvil. Don’t build a railway through a country of hungry blacksmiths, he thought, and it sounded eerily like an aphorism.

  A pair of men passed him on the road. One was wearing a gigantic wide-brimmed hat like those worn in common postcard images of rice-field workers, except the brim sloped down over the ears so that the front framed the man’s face like a giant duckbill. It is true, they are like Scottish Highlanders, thought Edgar, who had read this comparison but had never understood it until he saw the broad hat and wide kiltlike trousers. Ahead, the women he had followed entered another house, where a girl stood, holding a baby. Edgar stopped to watch the flight of a mynah bird, and saw them peering out of the doorway at him.

  Soon he came across a circle of older boys playing chinlon. It was the same game played by the children in the camp clearing, although it always turned to football once Edgar tried to join. Here he stopped and watched. One of the boys held up the ball to him as if inviting him to play, but he shook his head and nodded at them to continue. Thrilled by an audience, the boys returned to the game in earnest, using their feet to keep the woven rattan sphere in the air. They tapped and dived and back-kicked, and did high-whirling cartwheels to send the ball soaring. Edgar stood and watched for a while, before a stray ball flew his way and he put his leg out to stop it, and the ball bounced back into the circle and one of the boys continued to play. The others cheered, and Edgar, slightly out of breath and flustered by the effort, couldn’t help but smile as he bent to dust off his boots. He watched for several more kicks, but then, fearful that he wouldn’t be so lucky the next time the ball flew his way, he continued his walk.

  He soon passed another set of homes, where a group of women sat in the shade of the house by a loom. A naked little boy chased some chickens across the road and paused to watch Edgar as he passed, this new animal being apparently much more interesting than squawking birds. Edgar stopped by the boy. His face was completely covered with thanaka, pale like a forest sprite.

  “How are you, little chap?” said Edgar, and crouched and held out his hand. The boy stood and stared impassively, his abdomen swollen and dusty. He began to urinate. “Aaaii!” A young girl ran down the steps of a house and picked up the boy, pointing him away, trying to contain her giggling. When the boy had stopped urinating, she rotated him and placed him on her thin hips, in imitation of the older women. She wagged her finger at the child. Edgar turned to walk away and saw that more children had gathered in the road behind him.

  A woman led a water buffalo up the road, and the children parted for the mud-caked beast to pass. Edgar watched the animal’s thick, brushlike tail flick lazily at the flies that landed on its back.

  He continued to walk, the children following at a distance. Soon the trail rose slightly, and he could see out over a small valley covered with terraced, fallow rice fields. At the side of the road, a pair of men sat and grinned the broad Shan grin that he had become accustomed to. One of the men pointed to the group of children and said something, and Edgar answered, “Yes, quite a lot of children,” and they both laughed although neither understood a word the other had said.

  It was near noon, and Edgar found himself sweating profusely. He stopped for a moment in the shade of a small grain store and watched a lizard do push-ups on a bare stone. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He had spent so much time tuning the piano or sitting on his balcony that he hadn’t experienced the sun, nor the drought. The dead fields shook in the searing heat. He waited until he thought he was dull enough for the children to leave, but the crowd only grew in number.

  He walked along a road that seemed as if it led back to the camp. Soon he passed a small shrine where someone had set out a wide assortment of offerings, flowers, stones, amulets, small cups whose contents had long evaporated, dry sticky rice, small clay figurines. The shrine itself was built like a small temple. It was similar to ones he had seen in the lowlands, built, the Doctor had explained, to please a spirit whom the Shan called “the Lord of the Place.” Edgar, who never counted himself a superstitious man, searched his pockets for something to leave, but found only the bullet. He looked nervously around him. There was no one there but the children, and he backed away.

  He continued. Far ahead on the road, he saw a woman walking with a parasol. It was an image he had seen many times in the lowlands, but not yet on the Plateau: the sun overhead, a lone woman hidden beneath her parasol, her dress shimmering in the mirage of the road. The air was still, and he stopped to watch the thin line of dust rising from her feet. And then suddenly he realized the incongruity of the scene, that Shan women, with their wide-brimmed hats or turbans, rarely carried parasols.

  A hundred paces away, he recognized Khin Myo.

  She approached without saying anything. She was wearing a fine red silk hta main, and a pressed white cotton blouse that hung loosely and swayed in the breeze. Her face was painted with thick, even lines of thanaka and her hair was pulled back and fastened with a pin made of polished teakwood, carved in a delicate filigree. Several strands had worked themselves loose and fallen over her face. She brushed them back. “I have been looking for you,” she said. “The cook said that he had seen you walk up to the village. I wanted to join you. One of the Shan girls said that the nwè ni, ‘ipomoea’ I think you call it, have started to bloom, and I thought we could walk there together. Do you feel well enough?”

  “I think so. I think I am finally better.”

  “I’m glad, I was worried,” she said.

  “So was I … I dreamed a lot … strange, terrible dreams. I thought I saw you.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I didn’t want you to be alone.” She touched his arm. “Come, let’s walk.”

  As they moved slowly down the road, the crowd shuffled along behind them. Khin Myo stopped and looked back at the children. “Are you going to bring your … how do you say it?”

  “Entourage?”

  “A French word, no?”

  “I suppose so. I didn’t know you speak French.”

  “I don’t. A couple of words only. Doctor Carroll likes teaching me the meanings of words.”

  “Well, I would love to learn how to say ‘Go home’ to my entourage. They are charming, but I am not used to such attention.”

  Khin Myo turned and said something to them. They squealed and ran back several paces before stopping to watch again. Khin Myo and Edgar continued to walk. The children didn’t follow.

  “What did you tell them?” asked Edgar.

  “I said that Englishmen eat Shan children,” she answered.

  Edgar smiled. “Probably not the type of propaganda we want,” he said.

  “Oh, quite the opposite. A number of the most famous Shan spirits eat children. And they have been worshiped since long before you arrived.”

  They walked and followed a trail that rose over a small hill. They passed a house that Khin Myo said belonged to an old woman with an evil eye, and she warned Edgar to be careful. She said even this with a playfulness, a lightness, and the sense of sadness he felt from the memory of their talk by the river seemed distant. They entered a small grove of trees and began to climb the hill. The trees thinned, and the ground became spotted with flowers.

  “Are these the ones you are looking for?” asked Edgar.

  “No, there is a meadow on the other side of the ridge. Come.”

  They reached the top of the hill and looked out over a field of tall shrubs, covered with dark red and salmon-colored flowers.

  “Oh, how lovely!” exclaimed Khin Myo, and she ran down the trail with a childlike gait. Edgar smiled and follo
wed, walking, but then, reflexively, his legs began to run as well. A little. Khin Myo stopped and turned, and she started to say something, and Edgar tried to stop, but the downward momentum of the hill prevented him, and he skipped, once, twice, before finally stopping before her. He was out of breath, his face red and flushed.

  Khin Myo looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Were you just skipping?” she asked.

  “Skipping?”

  “I think I just saw you skipping.”

  “No, never, I just was running too fast and couldn’t stop.”

  Khin Myo laughed. “I think that I saw you skipping! Mr. Drake …” She smiled. “And now look, you are blushing.”

  “I am not blushing!”

  “You are indeed. Look, you are turning red this very instant!”

  “It is sunburn; that is what happens to Englishmen when they go out into the sun.”

  “Mr. Drake, I hardly think even English skin will burn so quickly beneath a hat.”

  “Exertion then. I am not a young man.”

  “Exertion then, Mr. Drake.” And once again she touched his arm. “Come, let’s look at the flowers.”

  It was not the type of meadow to which Edgar was accustomed, not the soft dew-coated fields he knew from the English countryside. This was dry, and the stalks and brushes exploded through the hard soil with hundreds of flowers in hues he couldn’t imagine, for a man trained to tell the difference in notes may not recognize the subtlety of vision. “If only it would rain,” said Khin Myo, “there would be even more flowers.”

  “Do you know the names?” he asked.

  “Only a couple. I know more of the lowland flowers. But Doctor Carroll has taught me some. That one is honeysuckle. And that one is a type of primrose, also found in China. And that one is Saint-John’s-wort, those will be wild roses.” She picked some as she walked.

  From over the hill, they heard singing, and a young Shan girl emerged, first her head, as if disembodied, then her torso, and then her legs and feet, which pattered along the path. She walked quickly, and lowered her head in respect. Ten paces along the trail, she turned back to look at them again, quickened her pace, and disappeared behind a rise.

  Neither Edgar nor Khin Myo spoke, and Edgar wondered if Khin Myo had noticed what had been implied in the young girl’s stare, what it meant for the two of them to be alone in the meadow of flowers. Finally he cleared his throat. “Perhaps they will get the wrong idea, if we are alone here together,” he said, and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am sorry, never mind.” He looked at her. She was standing very close to him, and a wind from across the meadow mixed the scent of flowers with that of her perfume.

  Perhaps she sensed his discomfort, for she didn’t ask again, but raised the flowers to her nose and said to him, “Come smell, there is nothing like it.” And slowly, he lowered his head close to hers, only the scent of the flowers hung in the air between their lips. He had never seen her so close, the details of her irises, the cleft of her lips, the delicate powder of thanaka that ran across her cheeks.

  Finally, she looked up and said, “It is getting late, Mr. Drake. You have just been sick. We should go back. Perhaps Doctor Carroll is here already.” And she didn’t wait for him to answer, but pulled an ipomoea from the bouquet and reached behind her head to fasten the flower in her hair. She began to walk back toward camp.

  Edgar stood only long enough to watch her walk away, and then set off down the trail to follow her.

  Doctor Carroll didn’t return that afternoon, but after six months of drought on the Shan Plateau, the rain did. It caught the two of them as they made their way down the trail, and they began to run together, laughing, big warm drops spinning down through the air with the force of hailstones. Within minutes they were soaked. Khin Myo ran ahead of him with her parasol at her side, her hair swinging with the weight of the water. The ipomoea stayed briefly, held by the tension of droplets, and then, carried off by them, drifted to the ground. With a nimbleness that surprised him, and without breaking the mad muddy rush, Edgar reached down and picked it up.

  At the edge of the village, they ran through crowds charging up from the river to escape the sudden downpour, everyone laughing, covering their heads, shouting. For each woman who ran for shelter, to protect her carefully tied turban, two children rushed out into the rain, to dance in a swelling puddle in the clearing. Edgar and Khin Myo finally reached shelter, in front of her room. Water rushed over the lip of the roof and fell curtainlike, separating them from the shouts that filled the camp.

  “You are soaked,” laughed Khin Myo. “Look at you.” “And you too,” said Edgar. He watched her, her long black hair plastered against her neck, her light blouse to her body. Her skin could be seen through the translucent cloth, the outline of her breast pressing at the cotton. She looked up at him and brushed wet hair from her face.

  He stood and watched her and for a moment she held his gaze, and in the deep recesses of his chest he felt something stir, a longing, that she would invite him to her room, to dry off only, of course, he would never ask for more. To dry off only, and then in the darkness of the room, scented with coconut and cinnamon, a wish that perhaps their hands would brush, first accidentally, then again, perhaps, bolder, deliberate, that their fingers would meet and entwine and they would stand like that for a moment before she looked up and he looked down. And he wondered if she thought the same, as they stood outside and felt the coolness of the water on their skin.

  And perhaps it could have been, had Edgar acted with the spontaneity of the rain, had he moved toward her with the same boldness with which water falls. But not now. This expects too much of a man whose life is defined by creating order so that others may make beauty. It expects too much of one who makes rules to ask that he break them. And so, after a long silence, as they both stand and listen to the rain, his voice cracks and he says, “We’d better change then. I must find dry clothes.” Fleeting words that mean little and much.

  It rained all afternoon and through the night. In the morning, when the sky cleared, Doctor Anthony Carroll returned to Mae Lwin, having ridden all night through the rain, racing through the storm with the emissary of the Shan Prince of Mongnai.

  17

  Edgar was sitting on the balcony, watching the frothy waters of the Salween pass, when he heard hoofbeats. The riders broke into camp: Doctor Carroll, followed by Nok Lek and a third man he didn’t recognize.

  A group of boys ran out to help the men dismount. Even from a distance, Edgar could see that they were soaked. The Doctor removed his pith helmet and tucked it under his arm. He looked up and saw the piano tuner outside his room. “Good morning, Mr. Drake,” he shouted. “Please come down. I would like to introduce you to someone.”

  Edgar pushed himself out of his chair and descended to the clearing. When he reached the group, the boys had taken the ponies away, and Carroll was wiping off his gloves. He wore a riding jacket, and puttees splattered with mud. A damp cheroot hung smoldering between his lips. His face was flushed and tired. “I trust you have survived in my absence?”

  “Yes, Doctor, thank you. The rains came. I worked on the piano a bit more. I think it is finally tuned.”

  “Excellent, excellent, Mr. Drake. That is exactly what I wanted to hear, and I will explain why in a moment. First, let me introduce you to Yawng Shwe.” He turned to his companion, who bowed slightly before offering his hand. Edgar shook it.

  “You can see he is familiar with our customs,” Carroll said of the visitor.

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” said Edgar.

  “He doesn’t speak English. Handshaking only,” said Carroll, wryly. “Yawng Shwe is here as an emissary from the sawbwa of Mongnai. You must have heard of it. It is to the north. The Shan prince—the sawbwa—of the state of Mongnai has traditionally been one of the most powerful in the cis-Salween states. We raced to get here because tomorrow the sawbwa will visit Mae Lwin, and
I have extended an invitation to him to stay at the camp. It is his first visit here.” The Doctor stopped. “Come,” he said, wiping his wet hair back from his face. “Let’s find something to drink before we talk further. We are completely parched from a night of riding. And this despite all the rain.”

  The four men turned up the slope and began walking toward the headquarters. At Edgar’s side, Carroll spoke again. “I am very pleased the piano is ready. It seems that it will be needed sooner than we thought.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I would like you to play for the sawbwa, Mr. Drake.” He saw Edgar begin to speak, and interrupted. “I will explain more later. The sawbwa is an accomplished musician, and I’ve told him much about the piano.”

  Edgar stopped walking. “Doctor,” he protested, “I am not a pianist. I have told you this many times.”

  “Nonsense, Mr. Drake. I have heard you play while you are tuning. Perhaps you are not ready for a London concert hall, but you are more than fit to perform in the jungles of Burma. And besides, we have no other choice. I told him that you came especially for him, and I must sit with the sawbwa to explain the music.” He put his hand on the tuner’s shoulder and fixed his gaze on him. “There is much at stake, Mr. Drake.”

  Edgar shook his head again, but the Doctor didn’t give him another chance to speak. “Now let me make our guest comfortable. I will meet you in your room.” He called out in Shan to a boy who stood at the door of the headquarters. The emissary of the sawbwa laughed and the men disappeared inside.

  Edgar returned to his room to wait for the Doctor. He paced nervously, This is ridiculous, I don’t need to be part of his games, This is not what I came for, I have told him many times I don’t play, He is like Katherine, they don’t understand this.