The Piano Tuner (20 page)

My dear, I digress. Or perhaps
not, for I wrote to you of my hopes, and now, slowly, my hopes have begun to
vanish, obscured by War and Pragmatism and by my own suspicions. This entire
trip has already coated itself in a veneer of seeming, a dreamlikeness. So much
of what I have done is tied to what I will do that at times the truth I have
already experienced threatens to vanish with that which I have yet to see. How
to express this to you? Whereas my journey until now has been one of potential,
of imagination, now its loss seems to question everything I have seen. I have
allowed dreams to melt into my realities, now realities threaten to melt to
only dreams, to disappear. I don’t know if anything I am writing makes
sense, but in the face of such beauty around me, I only see myself standing
outside our door in Franklin Mews, bag in hand, unchanged from the day I
left.

What more can I write? I spend hours looking out at the Shan
Hills, trying to decide how to describe them for you, for I feel that only by
doing so can I take some of what I have seen home with me. I wander the
markets, following the flow of oxcarts and parasols along the rutted roads, or
I sit by the river watching the fishermen, waiting for the steamer from Rangoon
that would bring news of my departure, or bring me home. The waiting has begun
to grow unbearable, as has the oppressive heat and dust that smother the city.
Any decision would be better than none.

My dear, I realize now that
in all the frightening possibilities we discussed before I left, we never
considered what now seems most likely: that I will return home with nothing.
Perhaps these words are only the ramblings of boredom or loneliness, but when I
write “nothing,” I mean not only that the Erard remains untuned,
but that I have seen a world that is very different, yet I have not begun to
understand it. Coming here has created a strange feeling of emptiness in me
that I didn’t know I had, and I don’t know whether heading into the
jungle will fill it, or tear it open further. I wonder about why I came here,
about how you said I needed this, about how I am now set to return home, how I
will have to face this as a failure.

Katherine, words were never my
medium, and now I cannot think of music for what I feel. But it is growing
dark, and I am by the river, so I must go. My only solace is that I will see
you soon and that we will be together again. I remain,

Your loving
husband,

Edgar

He folded the letter and rose from the
benches by the Irrawaddy. He walked home slowly through the city streets. At
the small house, he opened the door to find Khin Myo waiting.

She held
an envelope and handed it to him without speaking. There was no address, only
his name scrawled in bold letters. He looked at her, and she stared back,
expressionless. For a brief moment, he held it together with his letter to
Katherine. As soon as he opened it, he recognized the elegant hand.

Dear Mr. Drake,

It is my deep regret that our first personal
correspondence must be burdened by such urgency, but I believe that you are
well aware of the circumstances that have jeopardized your visit to Mae Lwin.
My impatience must only be equaled by yours. In the attack on our camp, the
strings belonging to the fourth-octave A key were snapped by a musket ball. As
you know, it is impossible to play any meaningful piece without this note, a
tragedy that those in the War Office cannot fathom. Please proceed to Mae Lwin
immediately. I have sent a messenger to Mandalay to convey you and Ma Khin Myo
to our fort. Please meet him tomorrow on the road to Mahamuni Pagoda. I take
full responsibility for your decision and your safety. If you stay in Mandalay,
you will be on a ship to England before the end of the week.

A.J.C.

Edgar lowered his hand. He knows my name, he thought.

He
looked at Khin Myo. “You are going too?”

“I will
tell you more soon,” she said.

The following
morning, they rose before dawn and boarded an oxcart full of pilgrims bound for
Mahamuni Pagoda, on the southern outskirts of Mandalay. The pilgrims stared at
him and talked merrily. Khin Myo leaned close to Edgar. “They are saying
that they are pleased there are some British Buddhists.”

In the
sky, dark clouds moved slowly over the Shan Hills. The oxcart rattled along the
road. Edgar clutched his bag to his chest. At Khin Myo’s suggestion, he
had left most of his belongings in Mandalay, taking with him only a spare
change of clothes and important papers, and tools to mend the piano. Now he
could hear the faint clink of the metal as they struggled over ruts in the
road. At Mahamuni Pagoda they disembarked, and Khin Myo led him along a small
path to where a boy stood waiting. He was dressed in flowing blue trousers and
a blue shirt, with a checkered cloth tied about his waist. Edgar had read that
many of the Shan men, like the Burmans, kept their hair long, and noticed that
the boy wore his wrapped in a colorful turban that looked like something
between the Burmese
gaung-baung
and those of the Sikh soldiers. He
held the reins of two small ponies.

“
Mingala
ba,
” he said to them, bowing slightly. “Hello, Mr.
Drake.”

Khin Myo smiled at him. “Mr. Drake, this is Nok
Lek, he will take us to Mae Lwin. His name means ‘little
bird.’” She paused, then added, “Don’t let this mislead
you. He is one of Anthony Carroll’s best fighters.”

Edgar
looked at the boy. He seemed scarcely fifteen years old.

“Do you
speak English?” he asked.

“A little,” said the boy
with a proud grin, and reached down to take their bags.

“You are
being modest,” said Khin Myo. “You are learning very
fast.”

Nok Lek began to secure the bags to the saddles. “I
hope you know how to ride, Mr. Drake,” he said when he had finished.
“These are Shan ponies. Smaller than English horses, but very good in
mountains.”

“I’ll try my best to hold on,” said
Edgar.

“Ma Khin Myo will ride with me,” said Nok Lek. He
put both hands on the pony’s back and leapt lightly into its saddle. He
was barefoot, and he slipped his feet into a pair of rope stirrups, holding the
hemp between his first and second toes. Edgar noticed the boy’s calves,
muscles like knotted ropes. Nervously, he looked at his own pony: English metal
stirrups. Khin Myo climbed on behind Nok Lek and sat sideways with both feet
together. Edgar was surprised that the little animal could walk under such a
load. He mounted his own pony. Without speaking, they began to move east.

Above the Shan Hills, a smudge of light spread up the sky. Edgar expected
to see the sun rise, to mark the day as the start of the final leg of a journey
he had begun to think he would never make. But it was hidden in the clouds and
the land brightened gradually. Ahead, Khin Myo opened a small parasol.

They rode east for several hours at a slow pace, along a road that ran past
dry rice fields and empty granaries. Along the way they passed processions into
town, men leading oxen to market, women with heavy loads balanced on their
heads. Soon the crowds thinned, and they found themselves alone. They crossed a
small stream and turned south on a smaller, dustier road between two wide,
fallow rice fields.

Nok Lek turned back. “Mr. Drake, we go
faster now. It is days to Mae Lwin, and the roads here are good, not like in
Shan States.”

Edgar nodded, and gripped his reins. Nok Lek hissed
at his pony; it began to trot. Edgar kicked at the flanks of his. Nothing
happened. He kicked harder. The pony didn’t move. Nok Lek and Khin Myo
were getting smaller in the distance. He closed his eyes and took a deep
breath. He hissed.

They galloped south along a small road that
paralleled the Shan Hills to the east and the Irrawaddy to the west. Edgar
stood in the saddle with one hand on the reins, the other holding his hat. As
they rode, he found himself laughing, thrilled by the speed. On the hunt, they
had only walked the ponies, and he tried to remember when he had last ridden a
horse this fast. It must have been nearly twenty years ago, when he and
Katherine had spent a holiday with a cousin of hers who had a small farm in the
country. He had almost forgotten the pounding thrill of the speed.

They stopped in the late morning at a rest station for pilgrims and
travelers, and Nok Lek bought food from a nearby house, curries and scented
rices and salads of mashed tea wrapped in the leaves of a banana plant. As they
ate, Nok Lek and Khin Myo spoke in rapid Burmese. At one point Khin Myo
apologized to Edgar for not speaking in English, “There is much we need
to talk about. And I think you would be bored by our conversation.”

“Please don’t mind me,” said Edgar, who was quite content
with their spot in the shade, from which he could see the blackened rice
fields. He knew they were burned by farmers in preparation for the rains, but
it was difficult to convince himself that it wasn’t the sun’s
doing. They stretched for miles, from the river to the abrupt rise of the Shan
Hills. Like the walls of a fortress, he thought as he stared at the mountains,
Or maybe they are falling, like fabric over the edge of the table, pooling on
the floor in small hills and valleys. His eyes searched vainly for a road that
broke the facade, but found none.

They rested briefly after lunch, and
then remounted the ponies. They rode all afternoon and into the evening, when
they stopped in a village, and Nok Lek knocked on the door of a small house. A
shirtless man came out and the two spoke for several minutes. The man led them
to the back, where there was another, smaller raised structure. Here they tied
the ponies, rolled out mats on the bamboo floor, and hung mosquito nets from
the ceiling. The entrance to the hut was to the south, and Edgar arranged his
mattress so that his feet rested by the door, a precaution against any
creatures that might visit during the night. Immediately Nok Lek grabbed the
mat and turned it. “Don’t point your head to the north,” he
said sternly. “Very bad. That is the direction we bury the
dead.”

Edgar lay down next to the boy. Khin Myo went to bathe,
and later slipped back quietly through the door. She lifted her mosquito net
and climbed under it. Her mat lay inches from Edgar’s, and he pretended
he was sleeping and watched her arrange her bed beside him. Soon she lay down
and soon her breathing changed, and in sleep she shifted so that her face
rested close to his. Through the thin cotton of the two mosquito nets, he could
feel her breath, soft and warm, imperceptible were it not for the stillness and
the heat.

Nok Lek woke them early. Without speaking,
they packed the thin mattresses and mosquito nets. Khin Myo left and returned
with her face freshly painted with
thanaka.
They loaded the ponies and
rejoined the road. It was still dark. As he rode, Edgar felt a tremendous
stiffness in his legs, his arms, his abdomen. He winced, but said nothing; Khin
Myo and the boy moved gracefully and unencumbered. He laughed to himself, I am
not young.

Instead of continuing south, they took another small road
east, toward the lightening sky. The path was narrow, and the ponies
occasionally were forced to slow to a trot. Edgar was surprised at how Khin Myo
managed to balance herself, let alone hold on to the parasol. He was also
surprised that, when they stopped and he collapsed in exhaustion, covered with
dust and sweat, she still had the same flower in her hair that she had plucked
from a bush that morning. He told her this, and she laughed. “Do you too
wish to ride with a flower in your hair, Mr. Drake?”

At last, by
late afternoon on the second day, they reached a set of small dry hills covered
with brush and scattered boulders. The ponies slowed and followed a narrow
trail. They passed by a crumbling pagoda with peeling white paint, and stopped.
Khin Myo and Nok Lek dismounted without speaking, and Edgar followed. They left
their shoes at the door and went through a small portal and into a dark and
musty room. A gilded Buddha statue sat on a raised platform, surrounded by
candles and flowers. Its eyes were dark and mournful, and it sat with its legs
crossed, its hands cupped in its lap. There was no sign of anyone else. Nok Lek
had brought a small wreath of flowers from his bag and set this on the altar.
He knelt, and Khin Myo did the same, and both bowed low, so that their
foreheads touched the cool tiles. Edgar watched Khin Myo, the tied bun of her
hair shifting, baring the back of her neck. Catching himself staring, he
quickly bowed in imitation.

Outside the pagoda, he asked, “Who
maintains this place?”

“It is part of a larger
temple,” said Khin Myo. “The monks come here to take care of the
Buddha.”

“But I don’t see anyone,” Edgar
said.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Drake,” she said. “They
are here.”

There was something about the loneliness of the place
that unsettled him, and he wished to ask her more, about what she was saying,
what she was praying for, why she had stopped here and not at any of the other
countless pagodas. But she and Nok Lek had begun to talk to each other
again.

They mounted their ponies and began to walk. At the top of the
hill, they stopped to look back over the plain. Despite the low altitude, the
flatness of the valley afforded them a view of their journey, a lonely country
of empty fields and twisting streams. Small hamlets clasped rivers and roads,
all of the same brown color of earth. In the far distance, they could discern
the grid of Mandalay, and farther, the snaking course of the Irrawaddy.

The road descended over the other side of the hill, and they followed a
small rise to a group of houses which lay at the base of a larger mountain.
There they stopped and Nok Lek dismounted. “I will buy food. Maybe we
don’t see anyone for a long time.” Edgar sat on the pony and
waited. The boy disappeared into one of the houses.