The Piano Tuner (21 page)

Some chickens
wandered in the road, pecking at the dust. A man lounging on a platform in the
shade of a tree called out to Khin Myo and she answered him.

“What did he say?” Edgar asked.

“He asked where
were we going.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said we are riding south, to Meiktila, but we came this way for
surveying.”

“Why lie?”

“The fewer
people who know we are going into the mountains the better. This is a lonely
place. Usually we travel with an escort. But because of circumstances, this is
somewhat … unofficial. If anyone wished to attack, we have no
help.”

“Are you worried?”

“Worried? No.
Are you?”

“Me? A bit. On the ship from Prome, there were
some prisoners,
dacoits.
Fierce-looking fellows.”

Khin
Myo studied him for a moment, as if weighing what she should say. “It is
safe. Nok Lek is a very good fighter.”

“I don’t know
how reassuring that is. He is a child. And I hear they travel in bands of
twenty.”

“You shouldn’t think of such things. I have
made this trip many times.”

Nok Lek returned with a basket, which
he fastened to the back of Edgar’s saddle. He bid good-bye to the man in
the shade, and hissed his pony forward. Edgar followed and raised his hand in
greeting. The man said nothing as the Englishman passed.

From the
basket rose the pungent scent of fermented tea and spices.

The trail rose steeply, and as it did, the vegetation
changed, the low scrub-brush giving way to taller plants, nourished by mists
that thickened as they ascended. They climbed a spur coated in a low forest,
humid like the plains near Rangoon. Birds flitted through the trees, chirping
loudly, and around them the movement of larger creatures could be heard through
fallen leaves.

A sudden crash, and Edgar turned quickly. Another, this
time louder, and then the distinct sounds of breaking branches, something
moving fast through the underbrush. “Nok Lek, Khin Myo! Watch out,
something is coming!” Edgar pulled his pony to a stop. Nok Lek heard it
too, and slowed his mount. Louder. Edgar looked around him, for something, a
knife, a gun, but he knew he had nothing.

Louder. “What is
it?” he whispered, and suddenly, in front of them, a wild boar bolted
across the trail and into the bushes on the other side.

“A
bloody pig,” cursed Edgar. Nok Lek and Khin Myo laughed and their pony
began walking again. Edgar tried to force a chuckle, but his heart was beating
wildly. He hissed at his pony.

As the slope steepened, the path broke
off along the flank of the mountain and emerged from the trees, affording the
first view in several hours. Edgar was struck by how the scenery had changed.
The opposite hillside rose so steeply that he felt that with a running leap he
could touch the moss-coated branches on the facing slope, yet to walk there
would involve a precipitous descent and ascent through impenetrable jungle. In
the valley below, thicker vegetation hid any signs of a river or habitation,
yet as the trail rose, the mountains opened onto another valley, where the
floor flattened in a series of narrow, terraced fields. Far below, in the
staircases of paddy, a pair of figures worked knee deep in water that reflected
the sky, transferring iridescent seedlings to the clouds.

Khin Myo saw
Edgar watching the farmers. “The first time I traveled into the Shan
Hills,” she said, “I was surprised to see rice growing, while
around Mandalay the land lay barren. The hills catch the rain clouds that pass
up the Irrawaddy River basin, and even in the dry season, they take enough
water for a second planting.”

“I thought there was a
drought.”

“On the Plateau there is. There has been a
terrible drought, for several years now. Whole villages are starving, and
moving into the lowlands. The hills may catch the clouds, but they also keep
them. If the monsoon rain doesn’t move onto the Plateau, it stays
dry.”

“And the farmers below, are they Shan?”

“No, another group.” She spoke to Nok Lek in Burmese.
“Palaung, he says, they live in these valleys. They have their own
language, dress, music. It is quite confusing, actually, even for me. The hills
are like islands, each has its own tribe. The longer they have been separated,
the more different they become. Palaung, Paduang, Danu, Shan, Pa-O, Wa, Kachin,
Karen, Karenni. And those are just some of the biggest tribes.”

“I never …” said Edgar. “Fancy that, hill
islands.”

“That is what Anthony Carroll calls them, he
says they are like Mr. Darwin’s islands, only here it is culture that
changes, not the beaks of birds. He wrote a letter about that to your Royal
Society.”

“I didn’t know …”

“They haven’t told you everything,” she said. “That
is not the least of it.” She told him then of the Doctor’s studies,
of his collections and correspondences, of the letters that he collected each
month from Mandalay, letters from distant biologists, physicians, even
chemists—chemistry was an old passion. “Half the mail that comes to
Upper Burma is scientific correspondence for Anthony Carroll. And the other
half is music for him.”

“And do you help him with these
projects then?”

“Perhaps, a little. But he knows so much
more. I only listen.” And Edgar waited for her to explain further, but
she turned back to the path.

They rode on. It grew dark. New unfamiliar
sounds shifted in the darkness, the burrowing of scavengers, the howls of wild
dogs, the rough voices of barking deer.

Finally, in a small clearing,
they stopped and dismounted, unloading a military tent that Nok Lek had
brought. They pitched the tent in the center of the clearing, and Nok Lek
disappeared inside to arrange the bags. Edgar remained outside, near Khin Myo.
Neither spoke. They were tired and the song of the forest was deafening. At
last Nok Lek emerged from the tent and told them to enter. Edgar slipped under
a mosquito net and arranged his mattress. Only then did he notice the pair of
double-barreled shotguns propped up against the inside of the tent, their
cocked hammers reflecting the ounce of moonlight that trickled in through a
hole in the canvas.

It took two days to climb through
the steep jungle and over a mountain pass. In front of them the descent was
brief, and steep, and softened into the Plateau, a vast patchwork of field and
forest. In the distance, at the edge of the plain, another set of hills rose,
gray and undefined.

They descended a narrow, stony path, the
ponies’ hooves searching for footholds in the soil. Edgar let his body
rock loosely in the saddle, relishing the stretching of muscles tightened by
days of riding and sleeping on the ground. It was late, and the sun cast their
shadows long into the valley. Edgar looked back at the mountains, at the crest
of mist that capped the peaks and spilled over the slopes. In the fading light
of dusk, Shan farmers worked in the fields, wearing wide hats and trousers that
flowed about their feet. The rocking of the pony was slow and rhythmic, and
Edgar felt his eyes close, the fantasy world of crags and temples disappearing
briefly, and he thought, Perhaps I am dreaming, It is all just like a
child’s fairy tale. Soon it was dark, and they galloped through the
night, and he felt himself slumping forward on his pony.

He dreamed.
He dreamed that he was riding a Shan pony, that they were galloping, that in
the pony’s hair were twisted flowers that spun in the air like pinwheels
as they moved through the paddy, past costumed ghosts, choreographed flashes of
color against an infinite green. And he awoke. He awoke and saw the land was
barren, and burnt rice stalks swayed in a slight breeze, and out of the earth
grew mountains of karst, crag towers that hid golden statues of the Buddha,
rising from the floors of caves like stalagmites, so old that even the earth
had begun to dust them with deposits of carbonate. And he dreamed again, and as
they passed, he could see into the caves, for they were lit by the lights of
pilgrims, who turned to watch the strange foreigner, and behind them the
Buddhas trembled, and brushed off their lime cloaks and hovered, also watching,
for the trail was lonely, and few Englishmen ever passed this way. And he
awoke, and before him on a pony’s back rode a young boy and a woman,
strangers, she sleeping too, and her hair broke loose and streamed back to him,
and flowers drifted out, and he dreamed he caught one and he awoke and they
were crossing a bridge and it was dawn, and beneath them, a man and a boy
paddled a dugout in the brown churning water, themselves the color of the boat
and the current, and so it was only by the shifting shadows of the water that
he could see them, and they were not alone, for no sooner had they passed
beneath the bridge than came another boat, drifting, a man and a boy, and he
looked up and a thousand bodies paddled for they were the stream and he
dreamed, and it was still night, and from the crags and valleys came not men
nor the blossoming of flowers, but something else, like light, a chanting, and
those who chanted told him that the light was made of myths, and it lived in
the caves with the white-clad hermits, and he awoke and they told him the
myths, that the universe was created as a giant river, and in this river
floated four islands, and humans lived on one, but the others were inhabited by
other creatures who existed here only in tales and he dreamed that they stopped
by a river to rest and the woman awoke and unwrapped her hair from where the
wind had tied it about her body, and the boy and she and he knelt and drank
from the river, and in it catfish churned, and he awoke and they were riding
riding and it was morning.

They climbed the hills on the opposite side
of the valley. The land became mountainous, and soon again it was night. Then
Nok Lek said, “Tonight we rest. In the dark, we are safe.”

At their side there was a loud crash. Edgar Drake thought, Another pig, and
turned to catch a pistol butt in his face.

And now
only trajectory, falling. A crack of wood on bone and a spray of spit and then
a bending, slipping, slowed by boots in metal stirrups, fingers still in reins,
releasing, down, now the crash of the bushes, the body against the ground.
Later he will wonder how long he is unconscious, he will try to recollect
memories but cannot, for only movement seems to matter, not only his but
others’, the descent of the men from the trees, the glinting arch of
cutlasses, the sweep of shotgun barrels, the bolting of ponies. So that when he
stands again in the crushed branches, he sees a scene that could have composed
itself in seconds or, if measured by heartbeats or breaths, much longer.

They are still on the pony. She holds the shotgun and the boy a sword, high
above his head. They both face a band of four, three with knives drawn,
flanking a tall man with his arm extended, a fist, a pistol. The weapons glint
as the men crouch and dance, it is so dark that the glinting is the only clue
that tells him they are moving. And for this moment, they are all still, they
bob only slightly, perhaps this movement is just from the deep breaths of their
exertion.

The blades float imperceptibly, winking like starlight, and
then a snap, and with a flash of light they move again, it is dark, but somehow
he can see the tall man’s finger tense, and she must see it too, for she
fires the shotgun first, and the tall man shouts and grabs his hand, the pistol
is thrown across the forest floor, the others spring on the pony, grab the
shotgun barrel before she can discharge the other chamber, pull her, and she
doesn’t scream, all he hears is a small cry of surprise as she hits the
ground, one man whips the shotgun from her hands and points it toward the boy,
now the other two are on top of her, one grabs her wrists, the other tears at
her
hta main,
she cries out now, he sees a flash of her thigh pale in
the thin light, he sees that the flower has fallen from her hair, he sees its
petals and sepals and stamens still dusted with pollen, later he will wonder if
this was but his imagination, it is too dark. But he doesn’t think now,
he is moving, he springs out of the brambles, toward the flower, and the fallen
pistol which lies beside it.

It is not until he raises his hand,
shaking, saying let her go let her go let her go, that he thinks he has never
fired a gun.

Freeze, and now it is his finger that flickers.

He awoke to the coolness of a wet cloth against his face.
He opened his eyes. He was still lying on the ground, but his head was resting
on Khin Myo’s lap. She gently cleaned his face with the cloth. Out of the
corner of his eye, he could see Nok Lek standing in the clearing, rifle at his
side.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You saved
us.” She said it in a whisper.

“I don’t remember, I
passed out, I didn’t … did I shoot … them …”
The words came out jumbled, incredulous.

“You missed.”

“I—”

“You almost hit the pony. It bolted.
But it was enough.”

Edgar looked up at her. Somehow, in the midst
of everything, she had thought to fasten the flower in her hair once again.

“Enough?”

She looked up at Nok Lek, who watched
the forest nervously. “I told you, one of Anthony Carroll’s best
men.”

“Where did they go?”

“They fled.
Dacoits
are fierce but can be cowards when confronted. But we must go.
They may return with others, especially now they have seen an English face. It
is much more lucrative than robbing poor farmers.”

Dacoits.
Edgar thought of the men on the steamship from Rangoon. He felt her run
the cloth over his forehead. “Have I been shot?”

“No,
I think perhaps you fell after you fired because you were still hurt from your
fall from the horse. How do you say, you fainted?” She tried to appear
concerned, but couldn’t suppress a smile. Her fingers rested on his
forehead.