The Piano Tuner (38 page)

“Mr. Drake,”
said Nok Lek, “we thought you were lost.”

“Yes, I
was, in a way,” said Edgar, pushing his hair from his eyes. “This
village, how long has it been abandoned?”

“This
village?” asked Nok Lek, and turned to the other boys, who crouched by
the opened baskets and rolled small bits of food in their fingers. He spoke to
them, and they answered in alternation.

“I don’t know.
They also don’t know. Months maybe. Look how the jungle has come
back.”

“Do you know who lived here?”

“They are Shan houses.”

“Do you know why they
left?”

Nok Lek shook his head and turned to ask the brothers.
They shook their heads in turn, and one of them spoke longer.

“We
don’t know,” said Nok Lek.

“And what did he
say?” asked Edgar, motioning to the boy who had spoken.

“He
asked why you want to know about this village,” said Nok Lek.

Edgar sat in the sand beside the boys. “No reason. Only curiosity. It
is very empty.”

“There are many abandoned villages like
this. Maybe the
dacoits
did it, maybe British soldiers. It
doesn’t matter, the people move somewhere else and build again. It has
been this way for a long time.” He passed Edgar a small basket of rice
and curried fish. “I hope you can eat with your fingers.”

They sat and ate in silence. One of the brothers began to speak again. Nok
Lek turned to Edgar. “Seing To asked me to ask you where you will go when
we reach British territory.”

“Where?” said Edgar,
surprised by the question. “Well, I don’t know, really.”

Nok Lek answered the boy, who began to laugh. “He says that is very
strange. He says you are going home, of course, that is what you should answer,
unless you forgot the way. He thinks this is very funny.” The two boys
were giggling in starts, covering their teeth. One reached over and held the
other’s arm and whispered something. The second nodded and placed another
ball of rice in his mouth.

“Maybe I
have
forgotten the
way,” said Edgar, laughing now himself. “And Mr. Seing To, where
will he go?”

“Back to Mae Lwin, of course. We will all go
back to Mae Lwin.”

“And I’ll wager
you
will
not get lost.”

“Lost, of course not.” Nok Lek said
something in Shan, and the three boys began to titter again. “Seing To
says he will get home by the scent of his sweetheart’s hair. He says he
can smell it even now. He asked if you too have a sweetheart. And Tint Naing
said you do, it is Khin Myo, so you will come back to Mae Lwin.”

Edgar protested, thinking, There are terrible truths in the taunts of
children, “No, no … I mean, yes I do have a sweetheart, I have a
wife, she is in London, in England. Khin Myo is not my sweetheart, you should
tell Tint Naing that he should get rid of this silly thought right
now.”

The brothers were giggling. One put his arm around the
other and whispered to him. “Stop that,” said Edgar, weakly, and
felt himself beginning to laugh again as well.

“Seing To says
that he wants an English wife. If he goes to England with you, can you find him
a wife?”

“I am certain that there are many nice girls who
would like him,” said Edgar, playing along with the joke now.

“He asked if you have to be a piano man to have a beautiful wife in
England.”

“He asked that? If you have to be a piano
man
?”

Nok Lek nodded. “You may ignore his
questions. He is young, you know.”

“No, that is fine. I
rather like that question. Nok Lek, you may tell him, that, no, you do not need
to mend pianos to have a beautiful wife. Although it doesn’t hurt, I
imagine.” He smiled, amused. “Other men, even soldiers, find
beautiful wives.”

Nok Lek translated. “He says it is too
bad he must return to his sweetheart in Mae Lwin.”

“It is a
pity indeed. My wife has many friends.”

“He said that since
he can’t meet her, he wants you to describe her. He wants to know if she
has yellow hair, and if her friends have yellow hair.”

This
is
getting somewhat silly, thought Edgar, but as his thoughts returned
to her, he found himself speaking earnestly. “Yes, she …
Katherine—that is her name—she does have yellow hair, it has
streaks of brown now, but it is still very pretty. She has blue eyes, and she
doesn’t wear spectacles, like me, so you can see how lovely they are. She
plays music too, much better than I do, you would like very much to listen to
her play, I think. None of her friends are as beautiful as she is, but you
would still be happy.”

Nok Lek translated for the other two boys,
who stopped laughing and stared, enthralled by the description. Seing To nodded
sagely and spoke, this time in a sober tone.

“What did he
say?” asked Edgar. “More questions about my wife, I
suppose?”

“No. He asked if you wanted to hear a story, but
I told him not to bother you.”

Edgar was surprised. “No, I
would be quite interested. What is the story?”

“Nothing
really, I don’t know why he is so insistent that I tell you.”

“Do tell me. I am rather curious now.”

“Maybe you
have heard it before. It is famous. It is about the
leip-bya—
a
Burmese word. It is a Burmese story, so I don’t know it well like Seing
To. His mother is Burmese. The
leip-bya,
it is a kind of spirit, with
wings like a butterfly, but it flies at night.”

“A moth,
perhaps.” There was something about these words which bothered him, as if
he had heard them before. “I am unfamiliar with this story,” he
said.

“Actually, maybe it is not a story. Maybe just a belief.
Some Burmese say that the life of a man lies in a spirit that is like a
… moth. The spirit stays in his body, a man cannot live without it. The
Burmese also say that the
leip-bya
is the reason for dreams. When a
man sleeps, the
leip-bya
flies from his mouth and goes about here and
there, and sees things on its journey, and these are dreams. The
leip-bya
must always return to a man by morning. This is why the Burmese
don’t want to wake sleeping people. Perhaps the
leip-bya
is very
far away, and it cannot return home fast enough.”

“And
then?”

“If the
leip-bya
is lost, or if in its
journey it is caught and eaten by a
bilu—
how do you say—an
evil spirit—then this is a man’s final sleep.”

The
boy reached forward and prodded the fire, sending up sparks.

“And
that is the story?”

“I told you—a belief only, but he
wanted me to tell you. I don’t know why. He is strange
sometimes.”

It was warm by the fire, but Edgar felt a chill. From
his memory, images of India, of a train ride, a boy falling, a baton flashing
in the night.

“A Poet-Wallah,” said the piano tuner
softly.

“Sorry, Mr. Drake?”

“Oh …
nothing, nothing. Tell him that it gives me much to think about. Perhaps one
day he should be a storyteller.”

As Nok Lek spoke, Edgar stared
across the fire at the small boy, who sat in the embrace of his brother. He
only smiled, his body lost in the smoke of the fire.

The flames grew low and Nok Lek left, disappearing into the darkness and
returning with more wood. Across the fire, the brothers had fallen asleep in
each other’s arms. It began to drizzle, and Nok Lek and Edgar rose and
put out the fire. They woke the boys, who mumbled and followed them up to the
shelter. It rained several times during the night, and Edgar could hear the
drumming of the raindrops on the mats covering the piano’s case.

In the morning, they struck camp beneath overcast skies. As they floated
on, they left the woven mat over the piano. The rain clouds broke in the late
morning, the sky cleared. The river, swollen with tributaries, flowed more
swiftly. By early afternoon, Nok Lek told Edgar that they had passed into land
controlled by the principality of Mawkmai, that within two days they would
enter Karen country. There the British had border posts on the river across
from northern Siam, there they could stop, they did not need to travel all the
way to Moulmein.

It will all be over soon, thought Edgar, It all
becomes but a memory. And without being asked by the boys, he removed the woven
mat from the piano and stood at it once again, deciding what to play. A finale,
for if tomorrow we leave the river, tomorrow the dream ends, and the pianist
will become a tuner once again. The raft floated lightly with the current, and
the strings rung with the wave of hammers. Ahead on the bow of the raft, one of
the brothers turned to watch.

He did not know what to play, only that
he must begin and the song would follow. He thought perhaps he should play Bach
again, and tried to think of a piece, but it didn’t seem right now. So he
closed his eyes and listened for something. And in the vibration of strings, he
heard a song that had risen to the sky weeks ago, one night on the Irrawaddy,
and then that moonlit evening in Mandalay, when he had stopped to watch the
yôkthe pwè.
The song of loss, the
ngo-gyin.
And
he thought, Perhaps this is fitting now. He put his fingers to the keyboard,
and as he began to play, the song descended from where it had risen once,
sounds that no tuner could have created, sounds that are foreign, new, neither
flat nor sharp, for Erards are not constructed to be played on a river, nor to
play the
ngo-gyin.

Edgar Drake played, and there was a crack
of gunfire and a splash, and another, and another. And only then did he open
his eyes, to see two of his companions floating in the water, and the third,
faceup, silent on the deck of the raft.

He stood at
the piano, the raft spinning lazily from the force of the fallen bodies. The
river was quiet; he did not know from where the shots had been fired. Trees on
the bank rustled slightly in the wind. Rain clouds drifted slowly through the
sky. A parrot called, and flew off from the opposite bank. Edgar’s
fingers remained still, suspended above the keys.

And then, from the
right bank, a rustling, and a pair of dugouts pushed off from the shore, making
their way steadily downstream to the raft. The piano tuner, who did not know
how to control the raft, could do nothing but wait, stunned, as if he too had
been shot.

The current was slow, and the dugouts gained on him. Each
dugout held two men. When they were about a hundred yards away, Edgar saw they
were Burman, and that they wore Indian Army uniforms.

The men said
nothing as their dugouts pulled alongside him. One man from each dugout climbed
out onto the logs. The arrest was swift, Edgar didn’t protest, but only
lowered the key cover over the keys. A rope was tied from the dugouts to the
raft, and they paddled to shore.

They were met on the bank by a Burman
and two Indians, who escorted Edgar up a long path to a small clearing of
guardhouses, above which flew a British flag. They walked to a small bamboo hut
and opened the door. There was a chair in the center of the room.
“Sit,” said one of the Indians. Edgar sat. The men left, closing
the door. Light shone through the slats in the bamboo. Outside, two men stood
guard. There were footsteps, the door opened, and in walked a British
lieutenant.

Edgar rose to his feet. “Lieutenant,
what is happening?”

“Sit down, Mr. Drake.” The
man’s voice was severe. He wore a freshly pressed uniform, its angles
sharp and starched.

“Lieutenant, those boys were shot.
What—”

“I said sit
down,
Mr.
Drake.”

“You don’t understand—there has been
some dreadful error.”

“This is the last time I will ask
you.”

“I—”

“Mr. Drake.”
The Lieutenant took a step forward.

Edgar stared him in the eyes.
“I demand to know what is going on.” He felt anger rising,
replacing shock.

“I am asking you to sit
down.
”

“And I won’t. Until you tell me why I
am here. You have no right to command me.”

“
Mr.
Drake.
”

The blow was swift, and Edgar could hear the crack
of the man’s hand as it crashed across his face. He fell back in his
chair. His hands rose to his throbbing temple, sticky with blood.

The
Lieutenant said nothing, but only eyed Edgar warily. The tuner nursed his cheek
and stared back. The Lieutenant pulled a chair out of the shadows. He sat
facing Edgar and waited.

Finally he spoke. “Edgar Drake, you are
under military arrest by order of army headquarters in Mandalay. Within these
papers are recorded the nature of your crimes.” He lifted a stack of
folders from his lap. “You will be held here until an escort arrives from
Yawnghwe. From there you will be taken to Mandalay, and then to Rangoon for
trial.”

Edgar shook his head. “This must be a
mistake.”

“Mr. Drake, I have not given you permission to
speak.”

“I need no permission.” He rose again from
his chair, and the Lieutenant rose as well. They faced each other.

“I—” Edgar was cut short by another blow. His glasses
fell. He stumbled back, almost knocking over the chair. He held on to it for
support.

“Mr. Drake, this will be much easier if you
cooperate.”

Shaking, Edgar reached down and picked up his glasses
and put them back on. He stared through them with incredulity. “You have
just murdered my friends. You strike me, and you request cooperation? I am in
the service of Her Majesty.”

“No longer, Mr. Drake.
Traitors are not accorded such respect.”

“Traitor?”
He felt his head spinning. Now he sat, still. “This is mad.”

“Mr. Drake, these charades will get you nowhere.”

“I know nothing. Traitor! On what charges?”