The Piano Maker (17 page)

He inclined his head to her and waited while she translated for Nathan.

As a sign of his station, the chief wore a red silk coat that was embroidered with dragons and suns and clouds. His food was being offered to him by two young women who knelt at either side of him.

That night in her own room in a house made of mud bricks and bamboo, she lay under the mosquito net with the window open but the gauze stretched tight and she listened to the noises, distant rustling in the jungle, animals calling out. She lay breathing in the scent of the night and she thought of her family in the little house on Tonkin Hill, of Pierre’s face as he knelt on the deck planks of the boat and embraced Claire.

For a while she slept, and when she woke in the night her pillow was wet and she turned it over and wiped her eyes. She lay on her back with her hands on her stomach and eventually she went back to sleep.

In the morning the statues were laid out in a row in the grass, and a holy man in a yellow robe touched them with a carved wand, and then they were wrapped in palm leaves and tied in sacking and loaded onto an elephant. An hour later the train set off on the return journey to Can Tho.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Nathan said to her during a rest stop along the way. “It’s always ceremonial and important, and it’s obviously legal and proper by their rules, which are the only rules that count here. Do you see that now, Helen? You and I are merely fortunate to be in the right place with the right connections to give them an opportunity to share what they have with the world.”

The Can Tho statues ended up in a famous New York museum; she saw pictures of the display in a prospectus that the museum sent to Nathan. They stood on a stone platform in a dark, cave-like room all their own, lit like a stage play by small directional lamps from above and from the sides: nine figures grouped in veneration around the Buddha. The figures were six inches tall and of solid gold carved in fantastic detail of eyes and lips and hands and regional dress; the museum made it known that they were insured for a million dollars as very early examples of Ma-Xe religious art.

“A million dollars,” she said to Nathan at the time. “How much did they pay us for them in the end?”

“They paid us seven thousand. You know that. Take off what we paid for the statues and our expenses, and we were left with four thousand and what, eight hundred? The million-dollar insurance thing is just advertising.”

More trips followed.

Usually when they boarded a steamer in London, Nathan would be seen off by a young woman. In the three and a half years of their travels, she met four of them. Pretty and high-breasted they were, with good legs and lipstick and nail polish all of them, but the goodbyes were always overshadowed by tense smiles and unvoiced grievances, and not until the ship had cast off and Nathan could stop waving and turn away did he relax and smile and become the man she knew.

She asked about his women only once, early on. “What happened to the Belgian?” she asked then. “The one in the tea shop. Were you engaged? She seemed nice. And the other one, the blonde at the Canada House concert?”

“The Belgian? Marielle. You drove her off, don’t you remember? With the others it was always the same thing after a while. Arguments and differences of opinion. They always wanted marriage and children.”

“And that surprised you?”

He shrugged and did not answer. It was the first and last time she inquired, mostly because expressing any interest in that side of his life might have interfered with the complex nature and etiquette of their own relationship. Also, she did not really care.

They travelled much of the colonial world in those years; not all the adventures were quite as spectacular as the Buddha statues, but all were unique and interesting, and all were astonishingly profitable.

In one case, Nathan knew of a wooden temple entrance
and altar he could buy in Peru and sell in London; in others, they bought a desiccated Aztec woman holding her tiny desiccated child for Stockholm, and they bought Roman art in North Africa for Vienna.

In one memorable deal, they bought an entire horse and rider, a Kāshān warrior turned to bone and leather in a Persian bog, for a museum in Madrid. On the day when hired helpers were there with block and tackle to hoist the find onto a carriage, the group came under attack from four men on horseback, and it was the first time she saw Nathan reach for a rifle and aim and fire it. She never forgot that. He watched the attackers for a moment and then he reached for the gun and quite calmly stood and fired two warning shots. He watched and fired two more even as the men reined around their horses and took off. The ease with which he did that impressed her, and she told him so.

In the end the shipment reached the museum safely, and one month later the money was in her bank account. By then Nathan’s original debt was long paid off, and her share had dropped to twenty-five per cent. But even so, every trip was still a profitable adventure, and it was more than that: along the way, when they needed to rely on each other, a solid peace was made, and eventually they were not just good business partners but also good friends. Crossing the line into intimacy had long ago become unthinkable, and she knew that he understood and respected that. It would have destroyed what they had, and because of that, it too would have been short-lived.

UPSTAIRS IN THE ANNEX
Claire sat across from her at the kitchen table while they shared lunch. A bit of chicken and wild rice and mashed turnip.

She said, “When did they call?”

“Early this morning. I’ve looked into the connections already. I feel badly, with the trial coming up. You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Well, I’d rather have you here with me, but if you need to go back, you need to go back.”

“You’ve got Mr. Quormby now, and he seems very competent. If necessary I can be back here within a few days. On the Zeppelin, or maybe one of the new airplanes. They’re faster across the Atlantic.”

“Claire, sweetheart. Please don’t worry about me. I’m happy for you. Is it a good opportunity they are talking about?”

“It’s fantastic, and it could become permanent after a while. Mrs. Seeley said I did well in the exam. I had to
draw a human foot in detail the way a Roentgen tube at three-quarter power would see it from the side. Bones, muscles, and connective tissue. There are more bones and muscles in our hands and feet than in the rest of the body, Mom.”

“Are there? I had no idea, Claire.”

She got up and collected plates and cutlery and took them to the sink.

Claire said, “I want to spend this last night on the sofa. All right? I’ll check out of the hotel and have my bags here when Mr. Chandler comes to get me.”

“You could take the bed. I’m sorry that with all this confusion you never stayed here with me.”

“Next time. And for tonight I want the sofa, like a sleepover. Do you like him, Mom? Mr. Chandler.”

“He is a very solid man, inside. And a fine craftsman. Old-fashioned and polite and considerate.”

“Yes, yes. All that. But do you
like
him?”

“I do.”

“Mom! How sweet. You’re blushing.”

“Am I? I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Maybe it’s time to put Dad’s picture further back on the shelf, or put it away in a drawer. Or let me take it. Come to think of it – that’s what I’ll do. If you don’t mind.”

At one time that night she used the bathroom, and afterward she went into the living room to check on Claire. Phosphorescence from the ocean was reflected down from
the clouds and in that palest of light Claire lay on her side, asleep and completely at rest. The blanket had slipped half onto the floor, and she picked it up and gently put it back on the girl.

She backed away and for some minutes sat on a chair in the dark room. Then she got up and returned to bed.

In the days leading up to the trial Mr. Quormby met with her several times, and Father William permitted her to continue her practice sessions and take her place again at the church piano. But at the next service Lady Ashley and a few others stood up and walked out, and then Father William in his strong young voice spoke the line from the Bible about casting stones. He said that while there might be some in this community who stood accused of a crime, Christian moral law, which guided basic human conduct in much of the Western world, knew better than to condemn anyone before all the facts were known. And he reminded them that English civil law as confirmed over the centuries said that everyone was innocent until proven guilty.

“Proven in a court of law,” he said. “Judge and jury.”

It was very quiet in the church when he said those things, but then five more people stood up and with much boot-banging clattered out of their pews and walked away, and the heavy door fell shut behind them.

But on the following Sunday there were many in the church who’d come from other villages east and west along
the French Shore, and on the Sunday after that all the pews were full and people stood five deep at the back of the church.

Father William welcomed them all.

“
Oremus
,” he said. “Let us pray.” And he folded his hands and turned to the tabernacle.

The audience for her practice sessions had also grown, from perhaps a good dozen people to sixty-two on the Friday before the arrival of the circuit court. On that day she and the full choir were working on the Bach cantata for the coming Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. The cantata was “Now Come, Saviour of the Heathens.”

“So many wanting to see and hear you,” said Mildred to her afterward. “Row after row, Helen! Like at some concert. I was counting them. It’s unbelievable. Some of them were people who must have taken time off from work, like Monsieur Breville who runs the co-op and is our mayor on the side. And Madame Breton was there again, the one who gave us the cocoa. What does that tell you?”

That Sunday for High Mass the church was so full the doors could not be closed. People had come from all over, and they crowded nave and aisles in their winter coats, and they stood in clusters in the street by the main entrance and the side door. The lucky ones caught glimpses of her at the piano as they were performing the “Saviour” cantata, with the choir grouped on the crossing. At the back
of the church and in the street by the west door, they were whispering about it, stranger to stranger.
Is that her?
they said.
Could it really be she killed a man?

Mildred, with her many sources, told her all that.

A woman called Hermance Beaulieu, who helped out with the church decorations each year, had made wreaths of pine twigs and holly and a red ribbon wound around them diagonally. Hélène bought two of them, along with eight candles, and she gave one wreath and four candles to Mildred and kept the others for herself. Up in the apartment she lit the first candle of Advent.

Later Mr. Quormby came to update her. The prosecutor would be arriving on Thursday, he said. And the circuit court judge, the Honourable Sir James F. Whitmore, was due to arrive on Friday. There would be the usual jury screening and briefing of prosecution and defence, perhaps that same day or the next. And the first day of the trial was set for Monday.

“Good,” she said. “Finally.”

Mr. Quormby had brought a bottle of sherry and some Christmas cake. As he unwrapped it he said, “If we are going to have a small celebration, is there perhaps someone else you would like to invite? I think that tonight we can make an exception.”

“Oh yes,” she said. And she counted the names on her fingers.

There was still some light in the sky when they sat on the sofa and the chairs in the living room: David Chandler
and Mildred, Mr. Quormby and young Mona the foundry girl, and even Father William, now that the invitation had come from the lawyer.

David Chandler had brought the third pair of shoes, the ones with the Renaissance heel. They were beautiful. Everybody said how nicely they were finished. And that curve to the heel; how did one accomplish that?

There was English bridle leather stacked inside, David Chandler told them. Stacked and glued and pressed and shaped on the ball sander. And fine kid leather stretched over the outside.

She put the shoes on and walked up and down while Mr. Quormby poured sherry.

AFTER THE BUSINESS WITH
the horse and rider in the Persian bog, there was no communication between her and Nathan for some time. The Westmount townhouse where they lived was being sold, and she moved to a smaller place, a two-bedroom fourplex only a few streets away. Musique Gauthier had gone bankrupt in the summer of 1928, and few of her students could still afford classes. But she had money now, enough not to have to worry about it for some time. She’d set up accounts with the Dominion Bank: one for emergencies, another for her own needs, and yet another for Claire’s education and boarding fees and pocket money. She bought the Austin motorcar brand new with a cash discount from the dealership and drove it off the lot while the manager and the secretary and the salesman stood waving.

She painted the new flat and some afternoons went for long walks in the parklands and forests around the mountain and along the St. Lawrence River. And every morning she took the trolley to Saint Catherine Street East and
used the key they’d given her, and in the room she was still renting at the Métropolis concert hall she turned on the electric fire and rubbed her hands in front of it. Then she sat down and practised the piano.

She knew quite a few people by now, and once in a while she had tea with someone or took them along for a walk or a drive. But she missed deeper, older, more worthwhile relationships; she missed Claire, she missed Nathan. She felt lonely at times, but if anyone had asked her, she would have denied it. She might even have quoted Juliette on the matter, who had lived alone successfully much of her life and had her own strong views on solitude versus loneliness.

But there were the daily breakfasts by herself, the dinners, the same leftover food, sometimes for days. There was Claire’s room in the new place with the familiar furniture no longer lived in, and other people’s footsteps on the floor above, their dog’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor. She considered moving again, to a house of her own, but then did not. At times she even considered returning to France, to Montmagny, to start all over again. She called the lawyer, who told her there had not been a single inquiry about the property.