The Piano Tuner (7 page)

“Terrible.”

“That’s not the least of it,
but I will spare you the details. Now look to his left. That young fellow, with
dark hair, they call
him
‘Teak Harry.’ I don’t know
his real name. An Armenian from Baku. His father was a timberman, who licensed
steamers to carry Siberian wood from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to
its southern coast. For a time, they say he controlled the entire market into
Persia, until he was assassinated ten years ago. The whole family fled, some to
Arabia, others to Europe. Teak Harry headed east, for the Indo-Chinese market.
Reputation as a swashbuckler and adventurer. There are rumors that say he even
funded Garnier’s journey up the Mekong to find its source, although there
is no proof of this, and if it is true, Harry has been discreet, to preserve
his British shipping contracts. Harry will probably be with you all the way to
Rangoon, although he will take one of his company steamships to Mandalay. He
has a mansion, no, a court, lavish enough to make the kings of Ava jealous.
Which apparently it did. They say Thibaw twice tried to have Harry killed, but
the Armenian escaped. You may pass his quarters in Mandalay. He lives and
breathes teak. Difficult to talk to unless you are in the business.” The
Captain scarcely stopped to breathe. “Behind him, the portly fellow, a
Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Valerie, professor of linguistics at the Sorbonne.
They say he speaks twenty-seven languages, three of which aren’t spoken
by any other white men, not even the missionaries.”

“And
the man beside him, the man with the rings? A striking fellow.”

“Ah, the rug dealer Nader Modarress, a Persian who specializes in
Bakhtiari rugs. He made this journey with two mistresses—unusual, because
he has enough wives in Bombay to keep him too busy to sell rugs. He is staying
in the royal cabin. He can always afford the fare. As you saw, he has gold
rings on each finger—you must try to look at them, each ring is set with
extraordinary jewels.”

“He boarded with another gentleman,
a large blond fellow.”

“Bodyguard. A Norwegian, I think.
Although I doubt he is much good. He spends half his time smoking opium with
the stokers—nasty habit, but it keeps them from complaining much.
Modarress has another character in his hire, a spectacled fellow, a poet from
Kiev, whom Modarress hired to compose odes to his wives—the Persian
fashions himself a romantic but has trouble with his adjectives.
Ah—forgive me—I am gossiping like a schoolgirl. Come, let’s
take some air before I have to return to work.”

They rose and
walked outside to the deck. In the bow stood a lone figure, wrapped in a long
white robe that fluttered about his body.

Edgar watched him. “I
don’t think he has moved from that spot since we left
Alexandria.”

“Perhaps our strangest passenger of all. We
call him the Man with One Story. He has traveled this route for as long as I
can remember. He is always alone. I do not know who pays his fare or what his
business is. He travels in the lower berths, boards in Alexandria and
disembarks in Aden. I have never seen him make the return journey.”

“And why do you call him the Man with One Story?”

The
Captain chuckled. “An old name. On the rare voyages that he chooses to
speak, he tells only one tale. I have heard it once, and I have never forgotten
it. He doesn’t make conversation. He only begins the story and
doesn’t stop until it is finished. It is eerie, as if one is listening to
a phonograph. Mostly he’s silent, but for those who hear the story
… they are rarely the same again.”

“He speaks
English?”

“A deliberate English, almost as if he is
reading.”

“And the subject of this …
story?”

“Ah, Mr. Drake. That I will leave for you to
discover, if you are meant to. Really, only he can tell it.”

And
as if rehearsed, there was a call from the galley. Edgar had other questions,
about Anthony Carroll, about the Man with One Story, but the Captain quickly
bid him good night, and disappeared into the dining hall, leaving him alone,
breathing the scent of the sea air, loaded with salt and premonition.

The next morning, Edgar awoke early to the heat pounding
at the porthole. He dressed and walked down the long corridor and up to the
deck. It was bright, and he could feel the sun even as it barely hovered over
the eastern hills. The sea was wide, and both shores could still faintly be
seen. Further aft he saw the man in the white robes standing at the rail.

He had become accustomed to taking this stroll every morning, circling the
ship’s deck until it became too warm. It was on one of these walks that
he had first seen the man unroll his prayer rug to pray. He had seen him often
since then, but he said nothing.

Yet on this warm morning, as he
followed the same route of his usual stroll, aft along the railing, toward the
man in the white robes, he felt his legs weakening. I am afraid, he thought,
and he tried to tell himself that this morning’s walk was no different
from the previous day’s, but he knew it wasn’t true. The Captain
had spoken with a seriousness that seemed oddly out of character for the tall,
lighthearted sailor. For a moment, Edgar thought that perhaps he had imagined
the conversation, that the Captain had left him in the dining hall, that he had
risen to the deck alone. Or, he thought several steps later, the Captain knew
they would meet, a new traveler and a storyteller, Perhaps this is what is
meant by the gravity of stories.

He found himself standing near the
man. “Fine morning, sir,” he said.

The old man nodded. His
face was dark, his beard the color of his robes. Edgar didn’t know what
to say, but he forced himself to remain at the railing. The man was silent.
Waves washed against the bow of the ship, their sound lost in the roar of the
steam engines.

“This is your first time in the Red Sea,”
said the man, his voice deep with an unfamiliar accent.

“Yes, it
is, this is my first time away from England, actually—”

The
old man interrupted him. “You must show me your lips when you
speak,” he said. “I am deaf.”

Edgar turned. “I
am sorry, I didn’t know …”

“Your name?”
asked the old man.

“Drake … here …” He
reached into his pocket and pulled out a card which he had had printed
especially for the journey.

E
DGAR
D
RAKE
P
IANO
TUNER
—E
RARDS
-
A
-S
PECIALTY
14
F
RANKLIN
M
EWS
L
ONDON

The sight of the tiny card with curlicue lettering in the wrinkled hands of
the old man suddenly embarrassed him. But the old man puzzled over the card.
“An English piano tuner. A man who knows sound. Would you like to hear a
story, Mr. Edgar Drake? An old deaf man’s story?”

Thirty years ago, when I was much younger and not
crippled by the pains of old age, I worked as a deckhand, traveling this very
route from Suez to the Strait of Babelmandeb. Unlike today’s steamers
that plow directly through the sea without stopping, we rode by sail and
crisscrossed the sea, dropping anchor at dozens of tiny ports on both the
African and Arabian shores, towns with names like Fareez and Gomaina, Tektozu
and Weevineev, many of which have been lost to the sands, where we stopped to
trade with nomads who sold rugs and pots scavenged from abandoned desert
cities. I was traveling this same route when our boat was caught in a storm.
She was old and should have been forbidden from sailing. We reefed the sails,
but the hull sprung a leak, and the rush of the water split the boat. When the
hull ruptured I fell and struck my head, and entered blackness.

When I
awoke I was lying on a sandy shore, alone amidst some wreckage of the hull that
I must have clung to by good fortune. At first I found myself immobile and
feared I had been paralyzed, but found only that I was wrapped tightly in my
headdress, which must have unraveled and clung to my body like a child’s
swaddling or the mummies they pull out of the Egyptian sands. It took me a long
time to regain my wits. My body was badly bruised, and when I tried to breathe,
pain shot through my ribs. The sun was already high in the sky, and my body was
caked with the salt of the sea, my throat and tongue parched and swollen. Pale
blue water lapped at my feet and at the piece of broken hull, which still bore
the first three scrawled Arabic figures from what was once the ship’s
name.

At long last I unraveled my headdress and retied it loosely. I
rose to my feet. The land around me was flat, but in the distance I could see
mountains, dry and barren. Like any man who has grown up in the desert, I could
only think of one thing: water. I knew from our travels that the coastline is
marked by many small estuaries, most brackish, but some of which, according to
the nomads, merge with sweet water streams draining aquifers or the snows that
have fallen on the peaks of distant mountains. So I decided to follow the
coast, in the hope of finding such a river. At least the sea would keep me
oriented, and perhaps, perhaps, I might sight a passing ship.

As I
walked, the sun rose over the hills, which I knew meant that I was in Africa.
This realization was simple but frightening. We have all been lost, but it is
rare that we do not know on which continent’s sandy shore we wander. I
did not speak the language nor did I know the land as I did Arabia. Yet
something emboldened me, perhaps youth, perhaps the delirium of the sun.

I had not walked one hour when I reached a turn in the coastline where a
sliver of the sea sliced into the shore. I tasted the water. It was still
salty, yet beside me lay a single thin branch, which had been washed
downstream, and on it, a single leaf, dry and shaking in the wind. My travels
and trading had taught me a little about plants, for when we anchored in Fareez
and Gomaina, we traded for herbs with the nomads there. And this little leaf I
recognized as the plant we call
belaidour,
and Berbers call
adil-ououchchn,
whose tea brings the drinker dreams of the future, and
whose berries make women’s eyes wide and dark. Yet at that moment I
thought little of the preparation of tea and much of botany. For
belaidour
is expensive because it does not grow along the Red Sea, but in wooded
mountains many miles west. This gave me the faint hope that man had once been
here, and if man then perhaps water.

So with this hope alone, I turned
inland, following the sliver of sea south, with the prayer that I would find
the source of the
belaidour,
and with it the water that nourished
those who traded it.

I walked for the remainder of the day, and into
the night. I still remember the arc of the moon as it passed through the sky.
It wasn’t half full, but the cloudless sky gave no shelter from the light
that cast itself over the water and sand. What I don’t remember is that
sometime during the night I lay down to rest, and I fell asleep.

I
awoke to the gentle prodding of a goatherd’s staff and opened my eyes to
see two young boys, wearing only loincloths and necklaces. One of them crouched
in front of me, staring with a quizzical gaze. The other, who looked younger,
stood behind him, watching over his shoulder. We stayed like this for the
duration of many breaths, neither of us moving, watching only, he squatting,
holding his knees, looking curiously, defiantly into my eyes. Slowly I rose to
a sitting position, never dropping my gaze. I raised my hand and greeted him in
my own tongue.

The boy didn’t move. Briefly his eyes left my face
and jumped to my hand, stared at it, and looked back at my face. The boy behind
him said something in a language that I didn’t understand, and the older
one nodded, still not dropping his gaze. He raised his free hand behind him,
and the younger boy unstrapped a leather canteen from his shoulders and placed
it in the raised hand. The older boy untied a thin lace from the mouth of the
bag and handed it to me. I raised the bag to my lips, closed my eyes, and began
to drink.

I was so thirsty I could have emptied the bag ten times
over. But the heat bid temperance; I did not know where the water had come
from, nor how much remained. Finished drinking, I lowered the bag and handed it
back to the older boy, who tied it without looking, his fingers winding the
leather lace. He stood up and spoke to me in a loud voice, and although the
language was foreign, the commanding tone of a child faced with responsibility
is universal. I waited. He spoke again, louder this time. I pointed to my mouth
and shook my head, as today I point to my ears. For then I was not yet deaf.
That story is yet to come.

Beside me, the boy spoke again, loud and
sharply, as if frustrated. He stamped his staff on the ground. I waited a
moment and then rose slowly, to show I did so out of my own will and not for
all his shouting. I would not let myself be commanded by a boy.

Once I
had risen, I had my first chance to examine the landscape around us. I had
fallen asleep by water, and no further than thirty paces ahead I could see
where a little brook bubbled into the estuary, casting reflected currents
across the pebbles. At its mouth, a scattering of pale plants clung to the
rocks. I stopped at the brook to drink. The boys waited and said nothing, and
soon we continued, up a bluff where a pair of goats gnawed at the grasses. The
boys prodded them along, and we followed a dry streambed that must have fed the
river in the rains.

It was morning, but already hot, and canyon walls
rose on either side of the sandy path, intensifying both the heat and the sound
of our steps. The boys’ voices echoed as they chattered to the goats,
strange sounds that I recall vividly. Now that I am old, I wonder if this was
due to any physical property of the canyon, or because in less than two days I
would no longer hear.