The Piano Tuner (40 page)

We signed a treaty.

You don’t speak
Shan.

I saw it, I saw dozens, no hundreds, of Shan warriors bow down
before him. And you were not surprised? No. I don’t think that is
true.

I wondered, perhaps.

And now?

He gave me his
word.

And then the Limbin Confederacy attacked our troops.

Perhaps they were traitors to him.

The two were silent, and in the
vacuum of their words once again came the sound of the forest.

I
believed in him once too, Edgar, Perhaps more than you. In this bloody war of
dark intentions, I thought he stood for the best of England, He remained the
reason I stayed here.

I don’t know if I can believe you now.

I am not asking you to, I am asking you only to dissociate what he was
from what we wanted him to be, what
she
was from what you wanted
her
to be.

You do not know about her.

Nor do you,
Edgar, Was that smile only the hospitality due a guest?

I don’t
believe that.

Then do you believe her affections were his request, a
seduction only to make you stay, Do you believe he didn’t know?

There was nothing to know, there was no transgression.

Or he had
faith in her. Faith in what? Possibilities only, Think, Edgar, beyond your
fleeting glances, you did not even know what she was to him.

You know
nothing about this.

I warned you once, Do not fall in love.

I
did not.

No, Perhaps not, Yet she remains entangled in everything.

I don’t understand you.

We come and go, armies and
pianos and Grand Intentions, and she remains, and you think that if you can
understand her, the rest will come, Think, Was she also your creation, Is the
reason you couldn’t understand her because you couldn’t understand
your own imaginings, what you wanted to be, It is not too much to suppose that
even our own dreams elude us?

Silence again.

You don’t
even know what this has meant to
her,
what it is like to be someone
else’s creation. Why are you telling me that? Because you are different
now from when I met you last. What does it matter, we are not talking about me,
Captain. When I met you last, you said that you couldn’t play the piano.
I still cannot. Yet you played for the Shan
sawbwa.

You
don’t know that.

You played for the Shan
sawbwa
of
Mongnai, and you played
The Well-Tempered Clavier,
but only to the
twenty-fourth fugue.

I told you, you cannot know that, I have not told
you that.

You began at Prelude and Fugue number 4, that is sad, number
2 is so beautiful, You think that your song would have brought peace, You
cannot admit Anthony Carroll is a traitor because it denies everything you have
done here.

You don’t know about the song.

I know a lot
more about you than you think.

You aren’t here.

Edgar,
Don’t destroy that which you cannot understand, Those are your
words.

You aren’t here, I hear nothing, you are only the
crickets’ shrill, you are my imagination.

Perhaps, or perhaps
only a dream. Perhaps I am only the night playing tricks. Perhaps you picked
the lock on the door yourself. Possibilities, no? Perhaps four shots were fired
from the bank instead of three. Perhaps I came here not to ask questions for
anyone but myself.

And now.

The door is open, Go, I
won’t stop you, You are escaping alone.

Is this why you
came?

I didn’t know until now.

I wish to embrace you but
that will answer a question I do not yet want to answer.

You wish to
ask if I am real, or but a ghost.

And you wish to answer.

We
have been ghosts since this all began, said the shadow.

Good-bye, said
Edgar Drake, and walked through the open door and into the night.

The camp was empty, the guards were all asleep. He moved
silently, and left the door open behind him. He began heading north, thinking
only of putting distance between himself and the camp. Heavy storm clouds
covered the moon and the sky was black. He walked.

He ran.

24

O
nly minutes away,
and rain began to fall. He was running, already breathless, when the first
drops hit him, one two three points of moisture on warm skin. And then, without
hesitation, the sky opened. Like a dam breaking, clouds cracking as if
sundered. Water drops falling like spools of unraveling thread.

As
he ran, Edgar tried to picture a map of the river, but his memory was blurred.
Although they had been traveling for almost two days, they had been slowed by
the piano, and could not have traveled more than twenty miles. And the wide
bends in the river meant that perhaps Mae Lwin was even closer by land.
Perhaps. He tried to recall the terrain, but distance suddenly seemed less
important than direction. He ran faster through the falling water, his feet
kicking up soft mud.

And then suddenly he stopped.

The piano.
He stood in a small clearing. The rain pounded on his body, stronger now,
washing over his hair, running down his cheeks in rivulets. He closed his eyes.
He could see the Erard, floating at the shore as the soldiers had left it,
shaking in the current. He could see them coming down to take it, pulling it
in, grabbing it, pawing it with hands dirty with rifle grease. He could see it
sitting in a powdered parlor, revarnished, retuned, and deep inside, a piece of
bamboo removed and replaced with spruce. He stood still. Each breath brought
the warm spray of rain. He opened his eyes and turned. Back to the river.

The bank was heavily forested, making walking almost impossible. At the
river, he slipped into the water, its surface shaking with the drumming of the
storm. He let the current move him downstream. It wasn’t far, and he
pulled himself into the shore with the willow branches. Water laced his face.
He struggled onto the bank.

Around him, the rain crashed through the
trees in massive sheets, carried on lashes of wind that whipped through the
willows. Tied to a tree on the bank, the raft tugged wildly, the river foaming
over its edge, threatening to tear it downstream. The piano was still tied to
the deck. They had forgotten to cover it, and the rain beat at the
mahogany.

For a moment Edgar stood and felt the current build up
against his legs, the sting of water through his shirt. He watched the piano.
There was no moon, and in the shifting curtains of rain, the Erard trembled in
and out of perception, its shape outlined by the droplets that shattered
against the dark wood, its legs tensing as it swung with the cant of the raft.

They would realize his absence soon, he thought with rising panic,
perhaps they already had, and all that was keeping them from finding him was
the rain. He waded through the water to where the raft was tied to the tree,
and dropped to his knees. The rope had already begun to rub the bark from the
trunk, the raw pulp turned out where the fibers had torn it. He fumbled at the
knot with his hands, but the raft had pulled it tight and his numb fingers
couldn’t loosen it.

The raft tugged against its ropes, water
gurgled up over the logs, it could capsize at any moment. The wail of the Erard
seemed to say this, the shaking of the raft was throwing the hammers up against
the strings, the notes crescendoing with the roar of the river. He then
remembered the tool bag he had packed. He led himself along the rope toward the
raft, and found the large chest. Struggling, he opened it, and reached his arm
inside. His fingers touched the dry leather and he pulled it out.

Fumbling with the ties, he opened the bag and frantically tore through its
contents until he found the penknife. The piano’s song was getting
louder, all strings at once. He threw the bag into the water where it floated
briefly in the eddy formed by the current against the raft, and he turned, back
to the bank. The river caught him off-balance and he fell to his knees,
catching himself on the rope. His glasses were knocked from his face, and he
caught them in the water and shoved them back on his nose. He reached for the
rope, opened the penknife, and began to saw, the twine of the rope peeling
apart under the tension as each strand was cut, until he reached the final
fibers and the rope broke on its own. The raft shook, the piano sang as the
hammers were slung up with the energy of the release. The raft paused briefly
in the current, turning, caught in willow branches, their leaves stroking the
piano’s surface. And then a curtain of rain, and the piano was gone.

With difficulty, he pulled himself to the bank. He thrust
the penknife into his pocket and began again to run. Through the underbrush,
slapping branches from his face, hurtling through clearings drenched with walls
of rain. In his mind he saw the piano floating, waves of rain pounding its
case, the wind tugging the lid open, the two playing a duet on its keys. He saw
foam and current pushing it downriver, past other villages. He saw children
pointing, fishermen paddling out with their nets.

When lightning
struck again, it illuminated a spectacled man running north through the forest,
clothes torn, hair plastered to his forehead, while a black mahogany grand
piano bobbed south in the current of the river, inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
which caught the light. They spun out as if released from a locus, where a
guard dog tore forward at its leash, and a reconnaissance team of soldiers
frantically gathered their lanterns.

His feet pounded
the trail, splashing mud against his body. The path cut through a dense grove
of trees, and he followed, riding it into the dark, crashing through branches.
He stumbled, fell spinning into the mud. He pulled himself up, pushed forward.
Panting.

After an hour, he turned toward the river. He wanted to wait
until he was closer to Mae Lwin to cross, but he was afraid that the dogs would
catch his scent.

The river moved swiftly, swollen with rain. Through
the darkness and the downpour he could not see the other side. He hesitated at
the edge of the water, trying to discern the far bank. His glasses fogged with
rain, blurring his vision even more. He removed them and thrust them into his
pocket. For a moment he stood at the edge of the flowing river, seeing nothing
but blackness, listening to the current. And then, far in the distance, he
heard the bark of a dog. He closed his eyes and dove.

It was calm and
quiet beneath the surface of the river, and he swam through the darkness, the
current swift but smooth. For a few short seconds he felt safe, the cold water
running over his body, his clothes fanning out with each stroke. And then his
lungs began to burn. He pushed forward, fighting the need to rise, swimming
until he could not endure the burning any longer and shot to the surface,
exploding into the rain and wind. For a moment he rested, catching his breath,
feeling the river carrying him away, and briefly he thought how peaceful it
would be to just give up, and let the river carry him. But then lightning
flashed again, and the whole river seemed to burn, and once again he was
swimming fast wild strokes, and when he felt he couldn’t lift his arm
again, his knee brushed against rocks and he opened his eyes to see the shore
and a sandy bank. He pulled himself forward onto the bank, and collapsed in the
sand.

The rain beat down on his body. He took deep rapid breaths,
coughing, spitting up river water. Lightning struck again. He knew he could be
seen. He struggled to his feet and began to run.

Through the forest,
struggling over fallen logs, crashing arms first, blindly, through the lianas,
he pushed forward, panic growing, for he had thought he would hit a trail which
followed the left bank south from Mae Lwin, a route he had never traveled but
which he had heard of from the Doctor. But nothing, only forest. He ran down a
slope, dodging trees, to a small river, a tributary of the Salween. He tripped,
and skidded down through the mud, falling instead of running, until the slope
evened and he was back on his feet, and across the stream on a fallen tree
trunk, up the other side of the bank, scampering, pulling himself up through
falling clods of dirt, and at the top of the slope stumbling, falling, back up
again running, and then suddenly his feet caught in the brambles of a thicket
and he fell again, crashing into the brush. The rain beat down. When he tried
to rise, he heard a growl.

He turned slowly, expecting to see the
leggings of the British soldiers. But instead, inches from his face, stood a
dog alone, a mangy animal, soaked, its mouth full of broken teeth. Edgar tried
to move back, but his leg was caught in the bushes. The animal growled again
and lurched forward, its teeth snapping. A hand shot out of the darkness,
grabbing the animal by the skin of its neck, pulling it back, barking, angry.
Edgar looked up.

There was a man, and he was naked except for a pair
of Shan trousers, rolled up to reveal sinewy, muscled legs, streaming with
water. He didn’t speak, and slowly Edgar reached down and untangled his
foot from the brush and rose to his feet. For a brief second, the two men
stood, staring at each other. To each other, we are phantoms, Edgar thought,
and lightning flashed again, and the man materialized out of darkness, his body
glistening, tattoos winding over his torso, fantastic shapes of jungle beasts,
alive, moving, shifting with the rain. And then it was dark again, and Edgar
was running through the brush, the forest getting thicker and thicker, until he
burst into the open, a road. He wiped the mud from his eyes and turned north
running, slowing, tired, running again. The rain came down in sheets, washing
him.

In the east it began to get lighter. Dawn broke.
The rain relented, and soon stopped. Exhausted, Edgar slowed, walked. The road
was an old oxcart road, overgrown with weeds. Two narrow tracks ran in uneven
parallel, slashes cut by the worn edges of cart wheels. He looked for people,
but the land was still. Farther along, the trees dropped away from the side of
the road, becoming scrub-brush, scattered grasses. It began to grow warm.