The Piano Tuner

by Peter Meinke

  “That’s more like it,” said Sara, ducking away from Tomas, who seemed to be licking her face. “Here’s to Paris. To Art. Cheers. Santé!” She tilted her beer and took a huge swallow. “Drink up, Nancy,” she gasped, and Nancy drank as much as she could, some of the beer spilling over her chin and neck.

  “Here’s mud in your eyes,” said Tomas, beaming.

  Adrian straightened up, raised his bottle, and said, “Up your bottoms.” He looked pleased as Sara and Giselle shrieked with laughter, raising their steins and repeating his toast. He looked at Nancy without smiling. “English good,” he said. “Un peu difficile.” He slumped back again, keeping his eyes on Nancy.

  Nancy, for her part, began to read the magazines stacked beneath the coffee table because it was embarrassing to watch the two couples. She felt like a Peeping Tom. Tomasina. The radio played loud music as she read an entire article, in French, about American jazz. Every once in a while Adrian would reach over for her hand, or arm—his aim was vague—and she brushed him away. She knew she was fairly drunk herself, but she felt reckless. After finishing the beer, she got up with a slight stagger and got a wine glass.

  “Get me one, too, will you, honey?” said Sara. “One for Gigi, too.” Nancy put the glasses carefully on the table and squinted at the labels. There were several different kinds of Côte du Rhones and vins de table. She picked up one with red wine and a label reading de Gianval.

  “Good,” said Tomas, taking the bottle from her and pouring. “Seven francs a bottle, can you believe this? At these prices you’re losing money when you’re not drinking!” Everyone laughed except Adrian; Auguste laughed at everything, whether he understood it or not. His shirt was soaked with sweat. Adrian suddenly fell over, with his head on Nancy’s lap. It startled her so much that she drained the whole glass of wine. Tomas grinned, refilling it. “Good, isn’t it? Don’t worry about Adrian. He just needs a good sleep.”

  “If he sleeps any better,” Sara said, “he won’t wake up.”

  Up close his face was quite nice, delicate, aristocratic in repose. His long dark lashes were dramatic against his white skin. His ears could be cleaner, Nancy noticed after a while, but outside of that . . .

  Tomas picked up the magazine lying open beside her. “Listen to this,” he said, reading, “women don’t need the orgasms, after all!”

  Was that what it said? Nancy had trouble lifting her head.

  “Don’t need it!” said Sara. “You mean I’ve been over-achieving all this time?” A general babble arose, jokes, coun-terjokes, in French and English. Auguste sang a little song, not pretty, obviously ribald. Suddenly, Nancy realized, Giselle was taking off her clothes.

  “Giselle will be posing for us!” said Tomas, applauding. “We shall take guesses. Aphrodite! Olympia! Déjeuner sur l’herbe!”

  “Odalisque!” bellowed Auguste, across whose thick outstretched arms Giselle was hanging her clothes. All of this seemed perfectly logical to Nancy, who stood up, thinking she must go home, and instead wobbled past Sara and Tomas into the bedroom. He sat against the wall near the door with Sara sprawled between his outspread legs, his hairy arms around her breasts, his bad teeth showing as he watched Giselle.

  Nancy stumbled head first onto the bed. As soon as she landed, the bed took off and began spinning over Paris, zooming with sickening speed by the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the iron edge of the Eiffel Tower. She dropped into the narrow lanes of the rue Mouffetard, face to face with gelatinous squid, fat fish with gaping mouths, rabbits swinging on hooks, and then lifted swiftly to a high plateau above the white dome of Sacre Coeur, the lights of Paris winking beneath her. Eventually she seemed to be flying out of Paris toward the huge cathedral at Rheims that somehow she could see in outline and in all its ornate detail at the same time. Far below, the cold squares of the winter vineyards, with their thin sticks lined up like crosses in formation, looked like gigantic graveyards in somber shades of brown.

  For a while, then, she felt that she was in the great cathedral itself. It was cooler, and dark; she was being carried down the aisle to the altar and placed on the carpet there. The priest loomed, immensely tall, above her. He looked down at her, kindly, smiling. It was Tomas, and Nancy screamed.

  “Hey, sweetheart, it’s all right,” he said. “Calm down.” Her dress was pulled up over her waist, and she was unable to move her legs. A shirtless Adrian, expression vacant as ever, was holding her ankles apart with terrific strength. Violent groans, apparently from Giselle, were coming from the living room. Sara was sitting on the edge of the bed, a mound of massive flesh clad only in panties. Tomas was the only person fully dressed.

  “Adrian’s a good boy,” said Sara, “be nice to him. He’s very rich.” She rubbed her hand along Adrian’s white back. “You missed the big show. Gigi and Auguste posed for Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’—they were wonderful! You wouldn’t believe Auguste!”

  “I have to go home,” said Nancy, struggling to sit up. “Let me go. I feel sick.”

  “No, stay with us, baby. You still have three days left in Paris, you can spend them right here.” Sara leaned down, her moon face shining in the half-light; she began stroking Nancy’s face, her other hand still on Adrian. Her large breasts wobbled against Nancy’s shoulder.

  Nancy sunk her teeth deep into Sara’s plump hand. She didn’t know how she did it, or exactly what happened next, in what order. Adrian let her go at Sara’s cry of pain, and Nancy sat up. Certainly Sara slapped her, hard, across the face, but whether that was before or after she got sick she couldn’t remember. She knew she knelt, retching, in front of the toilet while Tomas stood holding her from behind, his hands firmly upon her breasts. But he stepped back when she got up.

  She walked out. It seemed impossible. Do you just walk out of scenes like this? Apparently so. She stood in the elevator for some time before pushing the button. When she emerged from the building the gray light of early dawn made the street ghostlike, pale and drowned. She forgot where the metro was and began walking along the sidewalk, head down, feeling that she should be crying, though she wasn’t. Eventually she came upon a café that was still open, or perhaps had just opened. It was almost deserted; two men looked at her without curiosity as she sat down and ordered coffee.

  Nancy sat slumped at her table. Every part of her body ached, especially her eyes. She couldn’t see right; she was probably still drunk and sick, and her head hurt where Sara had hit her. She felt that death surrounded her. The flesh on the man at the next table slid off his face like melting cheese. Croque monsieur, she thought, fighting hysterical laughter as the skeletons rattled their newspapers and coffee cups. She had made her first joke in French.

  The Water-Tree

  He liked to sit under the water-tree in the cool of the evening, nursing a cold bottle of beer and smoking a cigarette. Mrs. Carlin didn’t let him smoke indoors anymore. It was quiet here at that time, except for the soft sound of the water dripping from the blossoms, which smelled sweeter than the honeysuckle back in Georgia, although he supposed it wasn’t really water dripping, but nectar. He liked the name: water-tree—there was something so elemental about it, like Africa itself.

  Tonight the silence was shattered by the American group singing in Elizabeth Hall:

  I know a driver, mighty rash

  Hey la dee la dee la dee

  He almost broke my calabash

  Hey la dee la dee da

  The raucous music made him feel old. He was getting old, he thought. At forty-seven he felt hemmed in, everything already behind him. He recognized this as unoriginal, irrational, and repetitious, but there it was. The skin in the crease of his elbow had that yellowish mummified look. Every night his wife came to bed with pink sponges in her hair.

  That was why he and Mrs. Carlin had come on this trip, leaving the children behind with relatives. He was on a government study grant with other university professors, so he had only to pay his wife’s expenses. It was to be a great adventure and perk up their lives.
Lions and tigers and bears oh my! But it hadn’t worked out that way. After three weeks in Nigeria, Mrs. Carlin wanted to go home. She was always sick, she hated the food—monkey meat, she knew it was monkey meat floating in that soup!—and the malaria pills disagreed with her. And so, while his wife went to bed early each night, worrying (with cause) about rats in the dormitory, Mr. Carlin sat under the water-tree in the university courtyard and drank a liter bottle of Star Beer and thought about Africa. He was trying to figure out why he loved it.

  At first he thought it was because he had freedom here: no teaching, no domestic chores, no committee meetings or bridge parties. But he decided finally that he loved Africa because it was unstable: anything could happen. Society here seemed always on the verge of breakdown—coup and countercoup, gutted and abandoned houses with elegant carved porches, overturned Mercedes by the side of the road rusting in the April rains. And with all this, it had a positive energy that was missing in the States. For American society was also breaking down, and less excusably: corrupt politicians, greedy doctors, sleazy lawyers, lazy teachers, arrogant students, surly workmen. And unhappy children. His own son had been resisting his advice when they left.

  “What do you know about life?” his son asked. “You’ve never done a damn thing!”

  “I know you’re like life itself,” Mr. Carlin had replied. “Nasty, brutish, and short.” His son had neither read Hobbes nor inherited Mr. Carlin’s height.

  In Nigeria, at least, the children and workmen seemed happy. But maybe he was wrong, he didn’t know. Maybe he liked it just because Mrs. Carlin didn’t . . . Mr. Carlin looked at his watch: 9:30. He had been thinking of going to the casino on the outskirts of town with Professor Giannino to watch the gambling. He had never been to a casino in his life, though in the army he had been a fair poker player. Gambling was legal in Nigeria and most of the large hotels had casinos as part of their attraction. Giannino, a young bachelor, had gone several times to the Hotel Internationale and had invited Mr. Carlin to accompany him the next time he went, probably tonight. But he was nowhere to be seen; perhaps he had forgotten his invitation and had gone off alone, as usual.

  The casino opened at ten o’clock and Mr. Carlin didn’t want to stay out past midnight: his wife would worry. If he was going, he’d have to go now. Impulsively, he finished his beer, left the courtyard, and walked down the broad flight of steps, immense in the fading light, leading to the guardhouse where the taxis gathered. It was impossible not to think of the theme song from Rocky as he did so, and his step picked up as he neared the small queue of battered vehicles. He hadn’t made up his mind to go, but when he reached the guardhouse he was surrounded by three taxi drivers clamoring for his fare, and the simplest way to stop them was to get into one of the waiting cars.

  “How much to the Hotel Internationale?”

  “Two naira.”

  “No, too much. Fifty kobos.”

  “I will take you for one naira, that’s all.”

  Mr. Carlin knew he was being overcharged, by Nigerian standards, but $1.60 for a twenty-minute cab ride seemed reasonable to him so he settled back in his seat. When they reached the hotel the driver said once again, “Two naira.”

  “No, we agreed on one naira.”

  “Two naira, traffic bad.” The driver began shouting, a mixture of Yoruba and broken English, gesticulating to the pas-sersby and loungers in front of the hotel. “No pay, he no pay!”

  Mr. Carlin hated scenes. He pulled two notes from his wallet, crumpled them up, threw them in the taxi window, and with flushed face marched across the sidewalk into the lobby of the Hotel Internationale. Heading straight to the bar, he ordered a double scotch, which they didn’t have, and got a double whiskey instead. Stupid to get upset about a couple of dollars! But he was furious, thinking of various and better ways he could have handled the situation.

  The bar was so dark that for a while he could see nothing. “And I Tiresias have foresuffered all . . .” he said to himself, quoting the only modern poem he was familiar with. Mr. Carlin taught European history, but having once had to wrestle with The Waste Land and The Odyssey in a Great Books course, tended to quote one or the other whenever he entered a darkened room. “So ends the bloody business of the day.”

  Ordering another whiskey, he got up and walked downstairs, following the signs to the casino. It was by now almost eleven, but when he opened the heavy leather doors he saw that the gaming tables were empty. Some people were drinking at the far end of the room, so—not knowing what else to do—he went over and sat down, embarrassed at bringing his own drink. There were six customers at the bar, two women and four men. Professor Giannino was not among them. Mr. Carlin sat between a black man in a tuxedo and the only white person there, who was speaking in German to the bartender. Mr. Carlin’s German had never progressed much further than “Wo ist der Bahnhof!” but he listened attentively nevertheless. The German seemed to be telling a sad story, for the bartender’s only contribution to the conversation was a series of sighs, rollings of eyes, and shakings of head. Perhaps he didn’t understand German either.

  The man on Mr. Carlin’s right asked for a light and began to make polite conversation. He was a lean and handsome Nigerian, with two parallel scars etched into both of his cheekbones.

  “I thought the casino opened at ten,” said Mr. Carlin.

  “O yes, the doors open, but no one plays until later.”

  The woman sitting next to the Nigerian leaned across him and said, “See, there are the dealers now.” Across the room five men in dark suits were talking together at a table.

  The Nigerian’s name was Tom Adedeyo, and the woman with him was named Ayo; laughing, she wrote her name for him on a cocktail napkin. Regal and fierce-looking as an ebony carving, she had small well-formed breasts made prominent by her dress, which was dark blue, tight, and cut very low. When Adedeyo excused himself to greet some newcomers, Mr. Carlin found it difficult not to stare at her breasts as she leaned over to talk to him, and began gazing at her forehead with an effort of will that seemed ridiculous even as he was doing it.

  By the time the lights brightened and the dealers had taken their places, the room had become more crowded, it was almost midnight, and Mr. Carlin had downed several more drinks. Though by no means a problem drinker, he loved his alcohol, not least because, compared to his friends, he held it well. But he was drinking faster than usual tonight, for two reasons. First, he was intimidated by the casino: he wasn’t sure what the games were, how high the stakes; suppose he did something stupid, and lost all their money? There were five tables. One looked like regular three-card draw poker, one was blackjack, one he believed to be baccarat, and the other two he couldn’t figure out. The tables were arranged in a circle, covered wagons huddling against an Indian attack. In the middle of the circle stood a high ladder-like perch, like a lifeguard’s chair, on which two men sat back to back. Riding shotgun, Mr. Carlin thought.

  The second reason was Ayo. Although attracted to many women, Mr. Carlin tended to be nervous when left alone with them. He had been this way all his life: he never knew what they were thinking. If his wife hadn’t positively reached out and grabbed him, he would never have proposed. He was almost handsome, a slim, tall, dark-eyed man who looked younger than his age despite flecks of gray in his black hair, and this partial shyness was part of his charm. Now it seemed to him—though he wasn’t sure, what did he know about African women?—that Ayo was looking at him boldly, holding his eyes with hers whenever she could pry them off her forehead.

  “What are you going to play?”

  “I don’t know, poker or blackjack,” he told her. “I can’t play very long. Where do you get the chips?”

  “O I love to play blackjack! Come on, I’ll show you.” Ayo led him to a small alcove where an obese Nigerian sat with a stack of chips and a strongbox. You could buy two-, five-, and ten-naira chips, a minimum of twenty nairas to play.

  Mr. Carlin took out his wallet. Twenty nairas
was over thirty dollars! He had about a hundred nairas in his wallet, along with three fifty-dollar bills and a packet of American Express travelers’ checks. But these had to last for more than a month, and he and his wife hadn’t yet bought any of their gifts and souvenirs of carvings and fabrics—they were considering buying a statue of a snake magician, intricately carved from one piece of omoo wood, for which the artist was asking $150.

  Well, what the hell, he thought—this was his one and only casino fling. He bought ten two-naira chips and gave five to Ayo. “Let’s lose these and get it over with,” he said.

  “No, we’re going to win!” she said. “You’ll see.”

  While most of the tables were crowded, only one customer was playing blackjack. The casino used lean dealers and fat cards. The cards were the size of a paperback book. The dealer shuffled and handled them with speed and dexterity, pulling them from the bottom of a clear plastic container.

  They each put out a chip. Mr. Carlin’s down card was a six, then his up card a jack. “I’m good,” he said. The dealer had fourteen, and pulled an eight.

  “See, I knew we’d win,” said Ayo.

  Mr. Carlin kept winning. In a short time Ayo had lost all her chips. He offered her some more but she refused. “You’re the lucky one tonight.” Somebody kept bringing more drinks to the table.

  He became absorbed in the game. He got two tens, split them, got another ten and an eight. He split the other ten and got a queen. The dealer had thirteen, pulled an ace and then a king. Mr. Carlin gathered up the chips. He began betting five-naira chips, won for a while, and then began to lose. He wanted to stop while he was still ahead.

  “This is my last hand,” he said, and he bet twenty nairas. The queen of spades, the ace of diamonds, his first blackjack, paying double, over sixty dollars. The dealer swiftly changed Mr. Carlin’s large pile into thirteen ten-naira chips: he had won 130 nairas, more than two hundred dollars. Ayo linked arms with his as he cashed them in with the fat man in the alcove.