The Piano Tuner (16 page)

They were met onshore by Captain Trevor
Nash-Burnham, who had originally intended to meet Edgar in Rangoon, and whom
Edgar knew as the author of several of the reports he had read on Surgeon-Major
Carroll. The reports were rich with descriptions of Mandalay, of the river, of
the winding trails to Carroll’s camp. Edgar had secretly longed to meet
Nash-Burnham, as he had been unimpressed by most of the bureaucrats he met
following the hunt, whose dullness in the presence of such color astounded him.
Standing on the bank, he now recalled how in Rangoon, in the administrative
frenzy after the shooting, he had been walking home from a briefing with a
member of the Department of Village Administration. They had passed a crowd of
people trying to move the body of an opium addict who had fallen asleep under a
wagon and been crushed when the horses pulled the cart forward. The man was
crying, a low, stuporous wail, as a group of merchants alternately tried to
coax the horses forward or back the wagon up. Edgar had been sickened, but the
functionary hadn’t even stopped talking about the teak tallies collected
from the various districts of the colony. When Edgar asked where they could
find help, the man shocked him not by answering “Why?”—which
would have been predictably insensitive—but “For whom?” And
this answer he could scarcely hear over the man’s screams.

Standing on the banks of the city, he shifted awkwardly. As the Captain
read a letter from the War Office, a detailed notice about supplies and
timetables, Edgar scrutinized his face for the man who had written of the
Irrawaddy as “this shimmering serpent who carries off our dreams, only to
bring fresh ones from the jeweled hills.” He was a squat man, with a
broad forehead, who wheezed when he talked too fast, a striking contrast to the
youth and fitness of Captain Dalton. It was an odd moment for an official
briefing. Edgar looked at his pocket watch, a gift from Katherine before his
departure. It was four, and only then did he remember that the watch had rusted
to a halt only three days after he had arrived in Rangoon, and now, as he had
jokingly written to Katherine, was correct only twice a day, although he kept
it “to preserve appearances.” He now thought with some amusement of
the London advertisement, This Christmas day, when church bells chime, Give
yourself the gift of time—Robinson’s quality watches …

The river was beginning to come to life, and a stream of vendors could be
seen making their way down the road to the water. The men boarded a carriage
and drove into town. The center of Mandalay, as Edgar would note in his next
letter home, was about two miles from the Irrawaddy; when the capital had been
moved from Amarapura, on the river, the kings wanted a site far from the noise
of the foreigners’ steamships.

The road was dark and rutted.
Edgar watched shapes pass outside the window until it became opaque with
condensation. Nash-Burnham reached up and wiped it clean with a
handkerchief.

By the time the carriage entered town,
the sun had begun to rise. Outside, the roads were filling with people. They
approached a bazaar. Hands pressed against the window, faces peered in. A
porter carrying two bags of spices on a pole dodged out of the path of the
carriage, swinging his bags so that one of them touched lightly against the
window, dusting it with curry powder, which caught the rising sunlight and
stained the glass gold.

As they moved through the street, Edgar tried
to picture himself on one of the maps of Mandalay he had studied on the
steamship. But he was lost, and allowed himself to be caught up in the momentum
of his arrival, the wonder and speculation that accompanies a new home.

They passed seamstresses, their tables set out in the middle of the road,
betel vendors, with trays of cracked betel-nut shells and cups of lime, knife
sharpeners, sellers of false teeth and religious icons, of sandals, mirrors,
dried fish and crab, rice,
pasos,
parasols. Occasionally the Captain
would point something out on the road, a famous shrine, a government office.
And Edgar would answer, Yes I have read of it, or It is even more beautiful
than in the illustrations, or Perhaps I will visit it soon.

At last
the carriage pulled to a halt in front of a small, unremarkable cottage.
“Your temporary lodgings, Mr. Drake,” said the Captain.
“Usually we put up guests in the barracks inside Mandalay Palace, but it
is better if you stay here now. Please make yourself at home. We will lunch
today at the residence of the Commissioner of the Northern Division—a
special reception in honor of the annexation of Mandalay. I will call for you
at noon.”

Edgar thanked Nash-Burnham and slid out of the
carriage. The driver carried his trunks to the door. He knocked and a woman
answered. The driver led Edgar inside. From the anteroom, Edgar followed the
woman to a raised wooden floor, and into a room furnished sparsely with a table
and two chairs. The woman pointed at his feet, and Edgar, seeing that she had
abandoned her sandals at the door, sat on the step and clumsily pulled off his
shoes. She led him through a door to the right and into a room dominated by a
large bed covered with a mosquito net. She set the luggage on the floor.

Off the bedroom was a bathing room, with a water basin and pressed towels.
A second door led into a yard, where a small table sat beneath a pair of papaya
trees. It all felt very quaint, thought Edgar, and very English, except for the
papaya trees, and the woman who stood beside him.

He turned to her.
“Edgar naa meh. Naa meh be lo … lo … kaw dha
le?”
A question mark as much for the correctness of his Burmese as
for the question itself. What is your name?

The woman smiled.
“Kyamma naa meh Khin Myo.”
She pronounced it softly, the
m
and
y
melting together like a single letter.

Edgar
Drake extended his hand, and she smiled again and took it in hers.

His watch still read four. Now, by the reckoning of the
sun, it was three hours off; he was free until it was eight hours off when he
would meet the Captain for lunch. Khin Myo had begun to heat water for the
bath, but Edgar interrupted her. “I go … out, walking. I go
walking.” He made a motion with his fingers, and she nodded. She seems to
understand, he thought. He took out his hat from his bag and walked out to the
anteroom, where he had to sit again to tie his shoes.

Khin Myo was
waiting at the door with a parasol. He stopped by her, unsure of what he should
say. He liked her immediately. She held herself gracefully and smiled and
looked at him directly, unlike so many of the other servants, who seemed to
sneak away shyly when their tasks were finished. Her eyes were dark brown, set
beneath thick lashes, and she wore even lines of
thanaka
on both
cheeks. She had placed a hibiscus flower in her hair, and when he walked in
front of her, he could smell a sweet perfume, like the mixed essences of
cinnamon and coconut. She wore a bleached lace blouse, which hung down to her
waist, and a purple silk
hta main
folded with careful pleats.

To his surprise she walked with him. In the street, he tried again to piece
together some Burmese. “Don’t worry about me,
ma … thwa
… um,
you don’t need to um …
ma
walk.”
This was only polite, I shouldn’t burden her with taking care of me.

Khin Myo laughed. “You speak good Burmese. And they said you
have only been here two weeks.”

“You speak English?”

“Oh, not so well, my accent is rough.”

“No,
your accent is very nice.” There was a softness to her voice that struck
him immediately, like whispering, but deeper, like the sound of wind playing
over the open end of a glass bottle.

She smiled, and this time dropped
her gaze. “Thank you. Please, continue. I don’t want to interrupt
your walk. I can accompany you if you wish.”

“But really, I
don’t want to bother you …”

“It is no bother
at all. I love my city in the early morning. And I couldn’t let you go
alone. Captain Nash-Burnham said that you might get lost.”

“Well, thank you, thank you. I am surprised, really.”

“At my English, or that a Burmese woman is not ashamed to speak to
you?” When Edgar couldn’t find the words to reply, she added,
“Don’t worry, they see me often with visitors.”

They
walked down the street, past more houses with carefully swept dirt paths.
Outside one house, a woman hung clothes on a line. Khin Myo stopped to speak to
her. “Good morning, Mr. Drake,” said the woman.

“Good morning,” he answered. “Do all the …”
He paused, awkward with the words.

“Do all the servants speak
English?”

“Yes … yes.”

“Not
all. I am teaching Mrs. Zin Nwe when her master is away.” Khin Myo
checked herself. “Actually, please don’t tell anyone that; perhaps
I am a little too open with you already.”

“I won’t
tell a soul. You teach English?”

“I used to. It is a long
story. And I don’t want to bore you.”

“I doubt you
would. But may I ask then how you learned?”

“You have a lot
of questions, Mr. Drake. Are you so surprised?”

“No, no.
Not at all, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you …”

She was silent. As they walked, she still remained slightly behind
him.

She spoke again, softly. “I am sorry. Here you are kind, and
I am rude.”

“No,” Edgar answered. “I
do
have too many questions. I haven’t met many Burmese. And you
know how most of the officers are.”

Khin Myo smiled. “I
know.”

They turned at the end of the street. To Edgar it seemed
as if they were roughly following the road he had arrived on.

“Where would you like to go, Mr. Drake?”

“Take me
to your favorite place,” he answered, startled by the sudden intimacy
implied in his answer. If she too was surprised, she kept it hidden.

They followed a wide road west, the sun rising behind
them, and Edgar watched their shadows advance headfirst, snakelike over the
ground. They spoke little and walked for nearly an hour. At a small canal, they
stopped to watch a floating market. “I think this is the most beautiful
place in Mandalay,” Khin Myo said. And Edgar, who had been in the city
less than four hours, said he agreed. Below them, the boats shifted by the
banks.

“They look like floating lotus flowers,” he
said.

“And the merchants like croaking frogs upon
them.”

They were standing on a small bridge, watching boats move
through the canal. Khin Myo said, “I hear that you are here to repair a
piano?”

Edgar hesitated, surprised by the question, “Yes,
yes I am. How did you know?”

“One learns a lot if others
assume you are deaf to their tongue.”

Edgar looked at her.
“I imagine so … Do you think that is strange? It is quite a
distance to travel to repair a piano, I suppose.” He turned back to the
canal. Two boats had stopped for a woman to measure out a yellow spice into a
small bag. Some of the spice dusted the black water like pollen.

“Not so strange. I am confident that Anthony Carroll knows what he is
doing.”

“Do you know of Anthony Carroll?”

Again she was silent, and he turned to see her staring out across the
water. In the canal, the merchants poled through ink and islands of hyacinth,
calling out the price of spices.

They walked back to
the house. The sun was higher now, and Edgar worried that he might not have
enough time to bathe before Nash-Burnham came to take him to the reception.
Inside, Khin Myo filled the basin in his bathroom with water and brought him
soap and a towel. He bathed and shaved and dressed in a new shirt and new
trousers, which she had pressed while he was bathing.

When he came
outside, he found her kneeling by a washbasin, already washing his
clothes.

“Oh, Miss Khin Myo, you don’t need to do
that.”

“What?”

“Wash my
clothes.”

“Who will wash your clothes if I
don’t?”

“I don’t know, it’s just
that—”

She interrupted him. “Look! Captain
Nash-Burnham is here.”

He saw the Captain rounding the corner.
“Hello!” he shouted. He was wearing mess dress: a scarlet shell
jacket, a mess waistcoat, blue trousers. A sword hung from his waist.

“Hello, Mr. Drake! Hope you don’t mind a stroll. The carriage
was needed for some of the less vigorous guests!” He walked into the yard
and looked at Khin Myo. “Ma Khin Myo,” he said, bowing with a
flourish. “Aaah, you smell lovely.”

“I smell like
cleaning soap.”

“If only roses could bathe in such a
soap.”

Here at last, thought Edgar, is the man who called the
Irrawaddy a shimmering serpent.

The
Commissioner’s residence was twenty minutes on foot from the house. As
they walked, the Captain tapped his fingers on his scabbard. “How did you
enjoy your morning, Mr. Drake?”

“Well, Captain, very well.
I went on a most charming walk with Miss Khin Myo. She is unusual for a Burmese
woman, isn’t she? They are all so shy. And she speaks beautiful
English.”

“She is very impressive. Did she tell you how
she learned?”

“No, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want
to pry.”

“That is kind of you, Mr. Drake, although I
don’t think she would mind telling you. But I appreciate your discretion.
You wouldn’t believe all the problems I have had with other guests. She
is very beautiful.”

“She is. Many of the women are. If only
I were a young man again.”

“Well, be careful. You
wouldn’t be the first Englishman to fall in love and never go home.
Sometimes I think that the only reason we seek new colonies is for their girls.
Let me be the one to warn you to stay away from matters of love.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” Edgar protested. “I have a
dear wife in London.” The Captain looked at him askance. Edgar laughed,
But I am telling the truth, I do miss Katherine even now.