The Piano Tuner

The door opened and a figure entered, floating, a shadow as dark as the lightless night, Edgar, hello.

The piano tuner said nothing. May I come in, the shadow asked. The door swung softly. I am not supposed to be here, it said, and the tuner answered, Neither am I, Captain.

For a long moment there was silence, before the voice floated once again out of the darkness, I need to talk to you.

I think we have spoken enough.

Please, I am already under suspicion myself, If they know I am here, they will arrest me as well, I have been interrogated. Is that meant to comfort me? This is not easy, Edgar, None of this is easy, I only want to talk. Talk then. Edgar, I want to speak as we spoke before today. As we spoke before you killed the boys. Edgar, I killed no one. Is that so, three of my companions are dead. I shot no one, I asked them not to kill anyone, but I have been suspended from my command. Nok Lek was fifteen, said Edgar, The others were only boys.

They were silent, and the insects entered again in chorus. Edgar listened to the trill, The sound is so strong yet it comes only from the scraping of tiny wings.

Edgar, I am risking everything to come here to talk to you.

He heard a deeper rising falling from the insects’ call, Those are beats, sound built from the interaction of unequal tones, Sound made from discord, I am surprised I have not heard this before.

I need you to talk to me, Think of your wife.

Sound of discord, he thought, and he answered, You have not asked me a question.

We need you to help us find him, said the shadow.

The sound of the insects seemed to cease, the piano tuner lifted his head. I thought you said you captured Mae Lwin. We did, But not Carroll. And Khin Myo? Both escaped, we do not know where they are.

Silence.

Edgar, we only want to know the truth.

It seems in short supply.

Then perhaps you can talk to me, and this can end without more bloodshed, and you can go home. I have told you what I know, Doctor Carroll was a great man.

Those are empty words at times like this. For you perhaps, Captain, perhaps that is the difference. I only want to know facts, After that we can decide what he was. You mean you can decide, It should be clear I have decided already. I don’t think that is true, There are many reasons to disappear into the mountains, to bring pianos into the jungle, to negotiate treaties, There are many possibilities.

He loved music.

That is one possibility, There are others, Is it too much to admit that? Admit, perhaps, but not doubt, I have not doubted him. That is not true, We have your letters, You shouldn’t lie, It helps no one.

My letters?

Anything you wrote since you left Mandalay.

Those were for my wife, They are my thoughts, I didn’t…

You didn’t think that we would wonder about a man who disappeared?

She never read them.

Tell me about Carroll, Edgar.

Silence.

Edgar.

Captain, I have questioned intentions only, I have not doubted his loyalty. You admit this. Yes, I do, but intentions and loyalty are not the same, There is nothing wrong with questions, We mustn’t destroy everything we don’t understand. Tell me those questions then. My questions. Your questions, Edgar.

Perhaps I wonder why he asked for a piano.

You wonder. Of course, I have asked myself this every day since I left Britain. And have you answered it yet? No, Must I, What does it matter why he requested it, why he requested me, Perhaps it was central to his strategy, Perhaps he only missed music and was alone.

And which do you believe?

I don’t think it matters, I have my own thoughts;

As do I.

Tell me your thoughts, Captain.

The shadow shifted, Anthony Carroll is an agent working for Russia, He is a Shan nationalist, He is a French spy, Anthony Carroll wants to build his own kingdom in the jungles of Burma, Possibilities, Edgar, only admit that they are possibilities.

We signed a treaty.

You don’t speak Shan.

I saw it, I saw dozens, no hundreds, of Shan warriors bow down before him. And you were not surprised? No. I don’t think that is true.

I wondered, perhaps.

And now?

He gave me his word.

And then the Limbin Confederacy attacked our troops.

Perhaps they were traitors to him.

The two were silent, and in the vacuum of their words once again came the sound of the forest.

I believed in him once too, Edgar, Perhaps more than you. In this bloody war of dark intentions, I thought he stood for the best of England, He remained the reason I stayed here.

I don’t know if I can believe you now.

I am not asking you to, I am asking you only to dissociate what he was from what we wanted him to be, what she was from what you wanted her to be.

You do not know about her.

Nor do you, Edgar, Was that smile only the hospitality due a guest?

I don’t believe that.

Then do you believe her affections were his request, a seduction only to make you stay, Do you believe he didn’t know?

There was nothing to know, there was no transgression.

Or he had faith in her. Faith in what? Possibilities only, Think, Edgar, beyond your fleeting glances, you did not even know what she was to him.

You know nothing about this.

I warned you once, Do not fall in love.

I did not.

No, Perhaps not, Yet she remains entangled in everything.

I don’t understand you.

We come and go, armies and pianos and Grand Intentions, and she remains, and you think that if you can understand her, the rest will come, Think, Was she also your creation, Is the reason you couldn’t understand her because you couldn’t understand your own imaginings, what you wanted to be, It is not too much to suppose that even our own dreams elude us?

Silence again.

You don’t even know what this has meant to her, what it is like to be someone else’s creation. Why are you telling me that? Because you are different now from when I met you last. What does it matter, we are not talking about me, Captain. When I met you last, you said that you couldn’t play the piano. I still cannot. Yet you played for the Shan sawbwa.

You don’t know that.

You played for the Shan sawbwa of Mongnai, and you played The Well-Tempered Clavier, but only to the twenty-fourth fugue.

I told you, you cannot know that, I have not told you that.

You began at Prelude and Fugue number 4, that is sad, number 2 is so beautiful, You think that your song would have brought peace, You cannot admit Anthony Carroll is a traitor because it denies everything you have done here.

You don’t know about the song.

I know a lot more about you than you think.

You aren’t here.

Edgar, Don’t destroy that which you cannot understand, Those are your words.

You aren’t here, I hear nothing, you are only the crickets’ shrill, you are my imagination.

Perhaps, or perhaps only a dream. Perhaps I am only the night playing tricks. Perhaps you picked the lock on the door yourself. Possibilities, no? Perhaps four shots were fired from the bank instead of three. Perhaps I came here not to ask questions for anyone but myself.

And now.

The door is open, Go, I won’t stop you, You are escaping alone.

Is this why you came?

I didn’t know until now.

I wish to embrace you but that will answer a question I do not yet want to answer.

You wish to ask if I am real, or but a ghost.

And you wish to answer.

We have been ghosts since this all began, said the shadow.

Good-bye, said Edgar Drake, and walked through the open door and into the night.

The camp was empty, the guards were all asleep. He moved silently, and left the door open behind him. He began heading north, thinking only of putting distance between himself and the camp. Heavy storm clouds covered the moon and the sky was black. He walked.

He ran.

24

Only minutes away, and rain began to fall. He was running, already breathless, when the first drops hit him, one two three points of moisture on warm skin. And then, without hesitation, the sky opened. Like a dam breaking, clouds cracking as if sundered. Water drops falling like spools of unraveling thread.