Edgar hummed softly as he worked. It was his habit, often to Katherine’s chagrin, that while at work he became completely absorbed in tuning. Do you see anything when you are working? she had asked soon after they were married, leaning over the side of the piano. See what? he had answered. You know, see anything, the piano, the strings, me. Of course I see you, and he took her hand and kissed it. Edgar, please! Please, I am asking how you work, I am being serious, Do you see anything while you work? How couldn’t I, Why? It just seems that you disappear, into a different place, maybe a world of notes. Edgar laughed, What a strange world that would be, dear. And he leaned forward and kissed her again. But in truth, he did understand what she was trying to ask. He worked with his eyes open, but when he finished, when he thought back on the day, he could never remember a single visible image, only what he had heard, a landscape marked by tone and timbre, intervals, vibrating, They are my colors.
And so now, while he worked, he thought little of home, of Katherine, of the Doctor’s absence, or of Khin Myo. Nor did he notice that he had observers, three little boys who watched him through slats in the bamboo wall. They whispered and giggled, and had Edgar not been lost in the Pythagorean maze of tone and mechanics, and had he spoken Shan, he would have heard them wonder how this could be the great musician, the man who would repair their singing elephant. How peculiar these British are, they would tell their friends. Their musicians play alone, and you cannot dance or sing to such strange, slow melodies. But after an hour, even the novelty of espionage wore off, and the little boys walked glumly back to the river to swim.
The day drew on. Shortly past noon, Nok Lek brought Edgar his lunch, a large bowl of rice noodles drenched in a thick broth that the boy said was made from a type of bean, garnished with minced meat and peppers. He also brought a jar of paste made from burnt rice husks, which Edgar painted over the bottom of the soundboard before stopping to eat. After several bites he returned to work.
In the early afternoon, clouds arrived, but it didn’t rain. The room grew humid. He always worked slowly, but he was surprised by his own deliberation. A thought that had begun to plague him when he first started on the piano now returned. In a matter of hours, he would be done with the tuning and would no longer be needed in Mae Lwin. He would be forced to return to Mandalay, and then to England. But I want this, he told himself, for it means I will be home again. Yet the immediacy of the departure became more real as he worked, his fingers raw from the strings, the monotony hypnotizing, crank, key, listen, crank, key, listen, the tuning spreading over the piano like ink spilled on paper.
Edgar had three keys left to tune when the clouds broke and the sun shone through the window, lighting the room. He had replaced the lid on the piano overnight, and raised it while he tuned. Now he could once again see the reflection of the view in the polished mahogany. He stood and watched the Salween flow through its square of light on the piano’s surface. He walked to the window and stared out at the river.
Two weeks until the piano needs to be tuned again, he had told the Doctor. What he didn’t tell him was that now that the piano was tuned and regulated and voiced, to keep it in fine tune would be relatively easy, he could teach the Doctor, perhaps even one of his Shan assistants. He could tell him this, he thought, and he could leave the tuning hammer, This is only right. And then he thought, I have been away from home for a long time, Perhaps too long.
He could tell him this, and he would, eventually, but he reminded himself there was no need to rush things either.
Besides, he thought, I have only just arrived.
15
Doctor Carroll didn’t return the next day as planned, nor the day after that. The camp seemed empty and Edgar saw neither Nok Lek nor Khin Myo. He was surprised that he thought of her only now, that he been so absorbed in the excitement surrounding the piano. He had seen her only once in the few days since their arrival. Then she had passed him while he was with the Doctor, had nodded politely and stopped to whisper something to Carroll in Burmese. She stood close to the Doctor when she spoke and looked past him to Edgar, who quickly shifted his gaze out to the river. He had tried to see if there was something in their interaction, a touch or shared smile. But she only bowed slightly, and moved off gracefully down the trail.
He spent the morning making minor adjustments to the Erard, fine-tuning some of the strings, touching up areas on the soundboard that had not been covered with enough resin. But he soon tired of the work. The piano was well tuned—perhaps not his finest job, he conceded, as he didn’t have all the tools he needed—but there were few other improvements that could further help the piano, given the circumstances.
It was noon when he left the Erard and walked down to the Salween. By the river, several men stood out on jagged rocks that jutted into the water, casting fishing nets, crouching, waiting. He laid out a blanket and sat in the shade of a willow and watched two women beating clothes against a rock, naked save for their hta mains that had been pulled up and tied around their chests in modesty. He wondered if this was a Shan custom or merely an English import.
His mind wandered, aimlessly, from the river, over the mountains, to Mandalay, farther. He wondered what the army thought of his absence. Perhaps it hasn’t even been noticed, he thought, for Khin Myo has also gone, and Captain Nash-Burnham is in Rangoon, and he wondered, How many days have I been away? He hoped they had not contacted Katherine, for certainly she would worry, and he could comfort himself only with the thought that she was far away, and that news traveled slowly. He tried to calculate how long he had been away from home, but was surprised when he realized that he wasn’t even certain how long he had been in Mae Lwin. The trip across the Shan Plateau seemed without time, a moment, a kaleidoscope of silver temples and deep jungle, muddied rivers and swiftly riding ponies.
Without time, Edgar thought, and he thought of the world outside suspended, It is as if I have left London only this morning. He liked the idea, Perhaps this is so, Indeed my watch stopped in Rangoon, In England Katherine is only now returning home from the docks, Our bed still holds the fading warmth of two bodies, Perhaps it will still be warm when I return. And his thoughts pushed forward, One day I will climb out of the valley of the Salween and walk back across the hills to Mandalay, and I will sit one more night and watch the yôkthe pwè, and this time the story will be different, a story of return, and I will take the steamer back down the river, and there I will meet soldiers and over gin I will add my tales to theirs. Forward, The trip will be faster now, for we will travel with the current, and in Rangoon I will return to the Shwedagon and I will see how the turmeric-painted woman’s baby has grown, I will board another steamer, and my bags will be heavier for I will carry gifts of silver necklaces and embroidered cloth, and musical instruments for a new collection. On the steamer I will spend my days staring at the same mountains I saw when I arrived, only this time I will stand on the starboard side, The train will speed across India as before, it will climb away from the Ganges like a prayer, the sun will rise behind us and set before us, and we will chase it, Perhaps somewhere, at some lonely station, I will hear the end of the Poet-Wallah’s story. In the Red Sea I will meet a man, and I will tell him I have heard songs, but not his. In the Red Sea, it will be dry, and the humidity will be drawn from my watch in invisible vapors, it will begin to work again, ticking, The time is no later than the day I departed.