Edgar smiled weakly. “We will see.” He looked about the room. He could barely recognize it as the drab clinic or office he was accustomed to. Torches burned in each corner, filling it with light and the aroma of incense. The walls had been draped with carpets and skins. Around the room stood servants, many of whom Edgar recognized, others he didn’t. They were all dressed in fine flowing trousers and blue shirts, their turbans clean and impeccably tied.
There was a sound at the door, and a hush fell over the room. A large man in glittering regalia entered. “Is that him?” Edgar asked.
“No, wait. He is smaller.” And as she said this, a short, plump man in an extravagantly sequined robe entered the room. The Shan servants at the door dropped to the floor and kowtowed before him. Even Carroll bowed, and Khin Myo, and—glancing to his side to imitate the Doctor—Edgar bowed as well. The sawbwa and his retinue crossed the room until he reached the empty cushion beside Carroll. They sat. They were all dressed in matching uniforms, pleated shirts with sashes, their heads tied with clean white turbans. All save one man, a monk, who sat back from his table, which Edgar understood as a refusal of food, as monks are not to eat after noon. There was something different about the way the man looked, and as Edgar continued to stare, he realized that what he first thought was unusually dark skin was a blue tattoo, which covered his entire face and hands. When a servant came and lit a bright torch in the center of the room, the blue skin stood out sharply against the saffron robes.
Carroll spoke to the sawbwa in Shan, and although Edgar couldn’t understand their words, he sensed murmurings of approval around the room. The hierarchy of the seating surprised him, that he should sit so close to the sawbwa, closer than the village representatives, and closer to Carroll than Khin Myo. Servants brought out fermented rice wine in carved metal cups, and when all had been served, Doctor Carroll raised his cup and spoke again in Shan. The room cheered, and the sawbwa looked especially pleased. “To your health,” whispered Carroll.
“Who is the monk?”
“The Shan call him the Blue Monk, I think you can see why. He is the sawbwa’s personal adviser. He doesn’t travel anywhere without him. When you play tonight, play to win the heart of the monk as well.”
And the meal was served, a feast unlike any Edgar had seen since he had arrived in the Shan States, dish after dish of sauces, curries, bowls of noodles served with thick broth, water snails cooked with young bamboo shoots, pumpkin fried with onion and chili, seared pork and mango, shredded water buffalo mixed with sweet green aubergines, salads of minced chicken and mint. They ate much and spoke little. Occasionally the Doctor would turn to say something to the sawbwa, but for the most part they remained silent, and the Prince grunted his approval of the food. Finally, after countless dishes, each of which could have culminated the meal, a plate of betel nuts was set before them, and the Shan began to chew vigorously, expectorating into the spittoons the party had brought themselves. At last the sawbwa leaned back and with one hand draped over his stomach, spoke to the Doctor. Carroll turned to the piano tuner. “Our Prince is ready for music. You may go to the room before us, to prepare. Please bow to him when you stand and keep your head low as you walk out of the room.”
Outside, the sky had cleared, and the path was lit by the moon and rows of burning torches. Edgar climbed the path, his chest tight with apprehension. There was a guard outside the piano room, a Shan boy he recognized from the mornings on the Salween. Edgar nodded to him, and the boy bowed deeply, an unnecessary action, as the tuner had come alone.
In the torchlight, the room looked much larger than before. The piano stood on one side, and someone had laid a number of pillows over the floor. It feels like a true salon, he thought. At the far side of the room, the windows that faced toward the river had been propped open, flooding the room with the serpentine course of the Salween. Edgar walked to the piano. The blanket had already been removed from the case, and he sat at the bench. He knew he shouldn’t touch the keys—he did not want to reveal the song, nor let the others think that he had begun without them. So he sat with his eyes closed, and thought about how his fingers would move and how the music would sound.
Soon he heard voices on the path below, and footsteps. Carroll and the Prince and the Blue Monk entered, and then Khin Myo, and then others. Edgar stood and bowed, low, like the Burmese, like a concert pianist, for in this respect the pianist has more in common with cultures of the East than those of the West, he thought, who choose to greet by taking the hand of their visitor. He stood until they had reclined on the pillows and then seated himself again on the piano bench. He would begin without introduction, without words. The name of the composer would mean nothing to the Prince of Mong-nai. And surely Carroll knew the piece; he could explain what it meant, or what he needed it to mean.
He began with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Minor, the fourth piece of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. It was a tuner’s piece, an exploration of the possibilities of sound, and a series that Edgar knew from testing the tuning of professional pianos. He had always called it a testament to the art of tuning. Before the development of equal temperament, the even spacing of notes, it was impossible to play all of the keys on the same instrument. But with equally spaced notes, the possibilities suddenly seemed endless.
He played through the Prelude, the sound rose and fell, and he felt himself sway as he played. There is much I could tell the Doctor, he thought, about why I have chosen it. That it is a piece bound by strict rules of counterpoint, as all fugues are, the song is but an elaboration of one simple melody, the remainder of the piece destined to follow the rules established in the first few lines. To me this means beauty is found in order, in rules—he may make what he wishes from this in lessons of law and treaty-signing. I could tell him that it is a piece without a commanding melody, that in England many people dismiss it as too mathematical, as lacking a tune which can be held or hummed. Perhaps he knows this already. But if a Shan does not know the same songs, then just as I have been confused by their melodies, so might the Prince be confused by ours. So I chose something mathematical, for this is universal, all can appreciate complexity, the trance found in patterns of sound.
There are other things he could say, of why he began with the fourth Prelude and not the first, for the fourth is a song of ambiguity, and the first a melody of accomplishment, and it is best to begin courtships with modesty. Or that he chose it simply because he often felt so moved when he heard it, There is emotion in the notes, If it is less accessible than other pieces, perhaps this is why it is so much stronger.
The piece began low, in the bass strings, and as it increased in complexity, soprano voices entered, and Edgar felt his whole body move toward the right and remain there, a journey across the keyboard, I am like the puppets moving on their stage in Mandalay. More confident now, he played and the song slowed, and when at last he finished he had almost forgotten that others were watching. He raised his head and looked across the room to the sawbwa, who said something to the Blue Monk and then motioned for Edgar to continue. Beside him, he thought he could see the Doctor smile. And so he began again, now D Major, now D Minor, and forward through each scale, moving up, each tune a variation on its beginnings, structure giving rise to possibilities. He played into the remoter scales, as his old master had called them, and Edgar thought how fitting a name this was for a piece played into the night of the jungle, I can never again believe Bach never left Germany.