The Piano Maker (9 page)

She asked if he should be telling her these things on the telephone, and he said it did not matter. Everybody knew. He sounded tired.

“They hate us,” he said. “That is a well-known fact too.
The upper classes still love us and they welcome our money and the jobs, but not these rebels.”

“And you?” she said. “Your own safety? I worry about you. We miss you.”

“Oh, I’m fine, sweetheart. I have developed a sixth sense about the dangers here.”

In the newspapers, she read that Indochina was not the only place where colonial trouble was stirring; hatred of the foreign exploiter, of the self-appointed, pale-faced overlord, was rising like the tide everywhere: in India and in Africa and many other places; against the British and the French and the Germans; against the Belgians and the Portuguese; and, in their own corners of the Far East, against the Dutch. In Eastern Europe against the Austrians.

In February 1914, Pierre was recalled and permitted a short leave before being reassigned. He stepped off the train, thin and yellow-eyed with tropical fevers, and she and Claire took him home in a horse-drawn carriage and put him straight to bed. Dr. Menasse examined his blood and in it found microscopic creatures, self-propelling forms of life, he said, that he did not recognize. He sent a report to the Ministry of Health in Paris, and their colonial office sent vials of a drug to be injected into Pierre’s veins.

At first he got worse, then he got better. By then the Austrian archduke and his wife had been shot dead and all the Balkans were in turmoil. The papers were full of
speculation and fearful predictions. Juliette said that war was coming, anyone could feel that. She said she was old enough to remember 1870. Every generation had its own war, but perhaps hers had two. Perhaps not, said Hélène. Perhaps the politicians had learned from the last one. But Juliette only shook her head and turned away.

In those days Hélène was torn in several directions at once: having Pierre in the house was new and mostly wonderful, but she also had a factory to run and orders for pianos to fill. Her workers depended on her.

The electrification of the plant had been undertaken, but because a Molnar piano was in every single stage still made by hand, the increase in production efficiency was less than she’d hoped. Monsieur Bendix Raoul had predicted as much, when she’d first consulted him; now, rather than remind her of that, he said that with the transmission belts gone the factory was much safer, and the power was good and constant whether the water in the river ran high or low.

Less than a month later, war did break out.

It happened on a day when she was in the cork room voicing a piano for a St. Petersburg dealer, struggling with the subtlety of a triple string, closing her eyes and cocking her head to the sounds with absolute concentration, striking the key again and again, and then making the tiniest shifts of the pins – tiny, tiny nudges, hardly any movement at all. This, while all over the country and all over Europe newspaper presses fell silent and a new headline was inserted or a special edition set. That evening she read it in
Le Figaro
.

Pierre received his orders, and he was pleased about them. He tried not to show it, but she could tell. Honourable action for a soldier at home, he said to her. A known enemy who would fight in the open, not by night and with booby traps. But no serious threat for the French army, he assured her. Such discipline and excellent training and leadership. It would be over soon. Perhaps not by Christmas as the newspapers were saying, but certainly by spring.

There was time for a short holiday before he had to report for duty, and they travelled by train to the Belgian town of Oostende and stayed at a resort hotel. They walked the beach at low tide and they swung Claire between them and watched her do cartwheels. She was so much in love with her little family, the three of them so fortunate, with a fine protective light around them. They rented a beach boat on wheels, and they skimmed along with the wind filling the sail and wet sand arching high in their wake. At night in the hotel she and Pierre had a room to themselves, and they made love to sweet exhaustion. They slept in each other’s arms as they had done in the house on Tonkin Hill, except that in Oostende in the morning a maid knocked and brought them breakfast in bed. Soon after that Claire would come bouncing in from the adjoining room, wide awake and impatient for the new day’s adventure.

On August 30 of that year, the military sent Pierre to take command of a company in the east, and just five weeks
later he was dead. A hero, his colonel’s letter said; one who’d given his life for France during a dawn attack on enemy lines. They sent his medals and his wallet, and a wedding ring that was not his. In the wallet, she found among other bits of paper a small print of the picture that the magazine had taken of her, and another picture of Claire looking scrubbed and uncommonly serene in her sailor suit, also taken by the magazine photographer.

The day after the letter, she and Claire took out the black clothes they’d bought for her mother’s funeral. Claire had started school that year; she’d outgrown the dress and Hélène bought a new one.

Juliette came along as they walked to her mother’s grave, and then they stood there for a while because they needed to stand at a grave that day.

It was another golden October day, much like the one ten years ago when she’d sat with Pierre eating ice cream and watching his face and promising herself that this would never change. Shiny chestnuts lay on the ground again, and from somewhere beyond the cemetery wall came the sounds of boys shouting and the thump of a ball. Eventually they turned and walked away along the gravel path.

“We are not alone, sweetheart,” she said thickly to Claire. “We are still a family.” And Claire looked up to search her face behind the veil and held her hand more tightly.

THERE HAD BEEN A TIME
when she disliked having to play the piano, playing for prospective buyers, always having to dress up as she had for the man from Boston, her hair always up because her mother insisted that there was a sweet vulnerability to a young woman’s neck.

“They’re not buying
me
, Maman,” she’d objected at first. And her mother had said, “No, they’re not, sweetheart. But something lovely attaches to the piano, and they like that. They’ll remember it. A moment of our exceptional culture, in their all-too-familiar English or American drawing-rooms back home. That is what they’re buying, Hélène: memories and dreams, and our wonderful pianos.”

But if she’d hated playing the piano then, it was saving her life now, had been doing so for years.

She was at the keyboard, working from memory on “Morning Has Broken,” when she saw Father William entering by the side door. He looked at her across the sanctuary and then came her way. She stopped playing.

“It’s a new hymn,” she said. “Do you know it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The words are by an Englishwoman called Eleanor Farjeon, and they are set to a Gaelic tune. It’s lovely. Listen.”

She played and sang it for him softly:

Morning has broken like the first morning;

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird;

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning;

Praise for them springing fresh from the Word …

“Yes, lovely,” he said. “Lovely.”

“I’d like to find the sheet music so I can work on it with the choir.”

“We can probably get it in the city. There’s a good music store on Barrington Street. I’ll telephone them.”

He looked up and around. There were perhaps a dozen people sitting in pews in the dim light near the door.

“You have an audience.”

“Yes. They started coming the day after I put up the notice.”

“I’m glad to see you are able to think about music. How are you coming along with the choir?”

“Quite well. We’ve met six or seven times now. The new situation is not helping, but I’ve spoken to them and asked them to put all that aside until the court case, and most are quite good about it. One or two are resisting me, but I can deal with it.” She looked at her watch. “I could stop
now. There is something I want to talk to you about. Do you have a minute?”

“Yes, of course. Before I forget, the sergeant said he couldn’t allow an improperly registered car to be parked in a public place. He brought a form for you to fill out, and he’ll issue a temporary permit and registration at the church address.”

“Good. Please tell him I thank him for that. And by the way, David Chandler will be asking you for the car keys. He’ll be running an errand for me.”

In the vestry he closed the door after her, and then they sat facing each other across the table corner.

“You understand that you do not have to tell me anything, Mrs. Giroux. I’ve thought about it, and under the circumstances it might be better if you didn’t say things that could create a conflict. For either of us. Unless it’s under the seal of confession, and even that might not be advisable.”

She shook her head. “There’ll be no conflict. And I have nothing to confess. But I do want you to know what that policeman was talking about. You were right. I should have told you when we first spoke, but I was hoping to begin anew here, and I felt it might spoil my chances. You’ve been very kind to me, and you continue to be, and so I want to tell you about that photo in his file.”

“If you wish.”

“Father William, do you know where museums get most of their exhibits from? I don’t think anyone does, so I’ll
tell you. Some are donated, some are on loan, but most are bought for lots of money. But bought from whom? Who would have the right to sell these things? National treasures, many of them. Entire altars carted away from temples in Indochina and erected in museums in London and Paris. Burial gifts from Egypt, scrolls, tablets. Mummies and bones.
Bones
. You get the idea. And now that colonialism is coming to an end, there is an enormous rush for artifacts from foreign lands. The money involved, the competition and even thievery, you cannot imagine …

“A few years ago I was travelling the colonial world with the man the sergeant mentioned. Nathan Homewood. He was in the business of finding and buying museum exhibits, and I was helping him. On one trip in northern Alberta, he died under terrible circumstances, and I was the only person on the scene.”

He held up a hand to stop her. “I’ll remind you that you don’t have to tell me any of this.”

“I know I don’t
have
to, but I want to. It matters to me what you and a few others here think of me. So please listen …

“I know very well that by the time they found us, I was not myself any more. That photograph you saw in the sergeant’s file was taken after they released me from the institution. I certainly remember
that
place, naked in a cage and cold water from a hose – to cure me of my madness, they said. It was in all the papers, at least out west, and in France. I was charged with the worst offence anyone could
be charged with, and the trial went on for two weeks. Then the judge said there was not enough evidence to support the charge, and I was acquitted.”

She watched him, his open face and young eyes trying to sort all this fairly and not to show shock or disapproval.

“William,” she said. “Father William. Those are the facts. The charge was murder. I can say that now and admit it to you and to myself, and it is a relief. You can tell people. Mr. Chandler too, and Mildred. I don’t mind; in fact, I’d like you to tell them. Before long it’ll all be out anyway, and I’d prefer it if they heard it from you rather than through gossip and speculation. Tell them, so that the next time I see someone I won’t have to say anything, but I’ll know what it is they know because it came from you.”

LATER CLAIRE WOULD
describe how she’d taken the Zeppelin to New York and the train from there to Portland and the ferry across the Gulf of Maine to Yarmouth. David Chandler had stood at the dockside, and because she was dressed for winter and the electric light was poor, he did not recognize her. But she was the only young woman travelling alone, dressed in a coat and hat with a tired face and searching eyes, and so he’d walked up to her and showed her the photo in the little folder and introduced himself.

He’d carried the suitcase to the Austin and put it in the trunk, and then he brought her north along the coastal road to Saint Homais. They talked, but not much. She’d explained that she was very tired.
Fifty-three hours since London
,
Mr. Chandler
, she’d said.

For stretches along the dark road it had snowed, and when the flakes came dense and near-horizontal at the headlights, he’d shifted down into first gear and carried on.

While she waited for them she kept getting up from the chair and walking to the window. Several times she opened it and breathed in the cold, fresh air and leaned out to see past the church to the main street. It was empty and silent. No cars or horses, no people, no activity at all. Thick snowflakes like fog in the circles of light from the streetlamps.