The Piano Maker (16 page)

“How ridiculous.”

“Is it really? Why, Claire?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t … never mind.”

“He wants to make it up to us. Why would I say no? Stop being so cynical.”

“He did a terrible thing, Mother!”

“Yes. We know that. And he agrees that he did a terrible thing.”

“You see?”

“See what? What would you suggest as the best move forward? Be realistic.”

Claire picked up the knife and began spreading butter on a piece of toast.

The Quebec trip came just two days later, on Saturday. Nathan had stayed at a hotel and made his telephone calls, and early that morning she met him at the railroad station. He handed her an envelope, and she opened the flap and looked inside.

She counted seven fifty-dollar bills. Far more money than she’d seen in a long time.

They took the train to Quebec City, and over breakfast in the dining car, while the small villages and church steeples of snowbound Quebec moved past the window, he explained the deal. It was about an Indian transformation mask. He’d seen it. It was a fantastic Mi’kmaq ceremonial thing of rawhide and bones and feathers and mineral paints. The idea of transformation occurred in many religions and cultures, he said. In Egypt they’d found spirit masks of fantastic beings and of eagles and
lions. The notion of becoming something or someone else, to slip out of this troublesome life into some kind of bliss, to become something other altogether – even Christianity had that, with the notion of salvation and rising up to heaven, and Buddhism with the promise of getting off the meat wheel. And so forth, he said. In any case, the Indian agent, whose name was Monsieur Jacques Damien, was offering to sell the mask.

“How can he?” she interrupted. “Does he own it?”

“Helen, you are not going to do this every time, are you? He is in possession of it, and it was given to him to sell by an elder of a tribe for the benefit of that tribe. With the money, they can pay their bills at the Hudson’s Bay. They can buy clothing, guns, and ammunition. They can make another mask, but they can’t make guns. It so happens that I know of a large museum that is building the world’s best aboriginal collection, and the curator is an acquaintance of mine. I described the mask to him, without telling him where it is, and he became very excited. We know very little about the Mi’kmaq. About the others in Canada, like the Cree and the Huron, we know a fair bit, but not the Mi’kmaq. The mask is quite old, and it comes with seven pages written by a Jesuit missionary describing the transformation ceremony itself. It’s a coup for the museum, and it’s a good deal for everybody involved.”

Monsieur Damien turned out to be the perfect French gentleman. They met for lunch in the dining room of the Château Frontenac, and throughout the meal he could hardly take his eyes off her as she sat straight-shouldered and interested, with good eye contact and as essentially French as her mother had been on the day of the big sale to the man from Boston. The similarity of the two situations did not escape her, in that both had to do with Nathan and the healing power of money.

They talked about music and France and the devastation the war had caused there. Monsieur Damien had never been to Montmagny, but he’d heard of Molnar pianos, and he shook his head when she described the end of the company.

“But we won, Madame,” he said. “We regained our honour, and we built the memorial to Marshal Foch for all to see and never to forget.”

After lunch he took them quite unceremoniously to a storeroom in the basement of a government building just one block away, and there was the mask, sitting on a shelf. A dark, moody thing of fur and skin and other materials, dimly lit by an overhead bulb. On the floor, mice stirred and made it hard for her to concentrate.

“I’ve never seen one like it,” said Monsieur Damien. “Along with the pages, it should be the centrepiece of any exhibit.”

Nathan gave him three one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, and Monsieur Damien thanked him and folded the money and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“There is a canvas sack for it,” he said. “If you look on the floor there, behind you, Madame. Is that it?”

They went back on the night train, with the mask in the sack on its own seat next to Nathan. They had the compartment to themselves and there was only one light on, the one above the door. Out the window the night was deep blue, with moonlight on snow and most of the houses dark.

“You’ll be sending me the money, Nathan?”

“Of course. Once the museum has paid me. Or, wait – in this case I can probably do it sooner. I’ll call my bank and have them wire it. I’ll need the name and branch of your bank and your account number.”

For some time they sat in silence. They dozed and woke. There was only the clacking of the wheels and the train whistle at crossings.

“Helen,” he said at one time from the dark. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“You did well. He liked you. He trusted you, and that made all the difference. There may be situations in the future when you’ll need to do more, like help me negotiate or explain.”

“Explain?”

“Yes. Ease the way. We’ll always discuss our strategy beforehand.”

“All right.”

When they arrived at the train station in Montreal, it was nearly five o’clock in the morning. They walked to the taxi stand and shook hands. No light in the sky, a damp cold, sparse early morning traffic. They took two different cabs. She held the sack with the mask while he climbed in, and then she passed it to him and closed the door. She saw his face and hand behind the window. She waved back.

Two days later the money was in her bank account. Five hundred dollars for just one day’s work.

AFTER SHE
’
D SPENT THREE
nights in jail, the attorney managed to have her released back into house arrest. The matron, Mrs. Doren, unlocked the cell and walked with her to the washroom and stood by while Hélène rinsed her face at the basin. She put on some lipstick and tidied her hair.

“A good man, that,” said the matron. “Mr. Quormby. People respect him in these communities. He almost never smiles, have you noticed? And the rare time that he does, it’s more like a bite. But what a good lawyer the man is.”

The black paddy wagon had been ruled out on an objection to do with prejudice raised by Mr. Quormby, and so the matron sat next to her in the backseat of the
RCMP
Ford, while the lawyer in his hat and coat sat in the passenger seat and the sergeant was behind the wheel. They drove towards the town centre, past the co-operative and the hotel to the church annex.

For some reason her dreams in the jail had been good. One night she had even seen her father smiling at her, and he had leaned and reached across a far distance to give her something. She hadn’t known what it was, but she’d closed her hand over it and put it safely away in the pocket of her pale-green printed summer dress.

When the
RCMP
car pulled up, the annex door opened and Father William stood waiting. He wore a coat over his soutane and a flat-brimmed hat on his head. Claire stood off to the side behind him, pale-faced in the dark doorway.

“Here we are,” said Mr. Quormby. He turned around. “You understand the new rules, Mrs. Giroux. You are not allowed to have more than one visitor at a time, and Father William is to permit or deny them. He will also be keeping a record of their names and times of coming and going.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Please get out now and walk directly to the door. I’ll be communicating with you through your daughter, or I’ll come and see you in person. Do you need to walk there with her, Mrs. Doren?”

“No, that’s all right, Mr. Quormby. As long as I can see her goin’ inside and that door closin’.”

She turned to Mrs. Doren and thanked her, and she said thank you to the sergeant’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Then she unlatched the door and climbed out into the snow and walked towards Father William and Claire.

There had been a day in Montreal when Claire and she had sat at their favourite lookout over the St. Lawrence River, with the fine old buildings in the afternoon sun and all the barges and ships going by. One was a cruise ship, and it gleamed with white paint and glass, and it flew both the Union Jack and the fleur-de-lys. On the main deck men and women in bright clothing stood and mingled, and on a smaller deck people sat at round tables and sipped coffee and champagne. They could see this from the outlook bench, could see the tall flutes catching light and see the mocha cups small in people’s hands.

“Maybe think about it some more,” she said to Claire. “You finished with good grades and you could study anything you want. Medicine, for instance.”

“And we’ll pay for it how?”

“Let me worry about that. The trip to Quebec a few months ago with Nathan was an eye-opener, and he’s waiting for me to do more.”

“No doubt.”

“Oh, stop it, Claire. I am earning money again at a time when it’s getting harder and harder to do that. Lots of money, with my language skills and my business skills and my social skills. And as for you, a profession like medicine would be the best form of security. A profession is portable.”

“Nursing
is
a profession, Mom. And a very good one. I know exactly what I want to do. I’ve known for some time.”

“Sweetheart. Does it have anything to do with the war? Like all the injured at the factory. Or with Xavier?”

“No, it doesn’t. Maybe. Does it matter?”

“No, Claire.”

“This college isn’t as expensive as a top university, but it isn’t exactly cheap either. It’s one of the best schools in Canada, and it’s connected to a famous research hospital in England.”

“In England?”

“Yes. I liked it there. I’m even thinking of doing my practicum there. I might have to write some other exam or A levels. I’ll find out.”

“Isn’t the one here still run by the Jesuits? They are a strict order and they have little use for women. I don’t think they have a single woman saint.”

“Now how would you know that? And even if it’s true, it’s irrelevant. Jesuits started it, when it was called the Loyola Mission, but it’s no longer run by them. It’s a hard school to get into, but my grades are good enough. I’ve already met the head of admissions.”

“You have? Claire! You amaze me.”

“Well. There’s just one thing. It’s a boarding school.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ll have to live there. Except for one Sunday a month. Then I could come home.”

Claire waited. “Mom? Say something. Will you be all right with that? It’s what I want to do. You’d be able to
go on longer trips with him. Like the one to Saigon. Can Tho. I know you want to go. You loved it in Indochina. We all did. Say you agree.”

That fall, with Claire in residence, she began her travels with Nathan, and just one year later his debt was paid off. It was astonishing, the way money rolled in. So much, for apparently so little effort. An office secretary, if she was lucky and still had a job, would have to work two or three years for the money Hélène earned on a single trip.

Can Tho and the Buddhist temple art paid $4,800 after expenses, and half that money was hers. A small fortune, and all she had to do was travel there and learn how to ride an elephant without getting sick or falling off. That took two days at the elephant station. She explained to the handler that she could not squat that way on the animal, not on its neck with her knees widespread behind its ears, and not on a high throne that swayed from side to side. In the end a compromise was reached with a much lower seat and a leather rope for her to hold on to, a kind of rein that looped around the animal’s neck and upper legs. The next day, the elephant train set off into the jungle. She still became nauseous and once had to get off the elephant and vomit, but then it went away.

In the village they were met by the district chief and the French regional administrator, and she spoke to them in polite and formal ways; Vietnamese to one, her best French
to the other. Over an elaborate meal on a reed mat in his house, the district chief said how happy and impressed he was to hear her speaking his language, and he said that as a result it pleased him all the more to be able to send the culture and art of his people out into the world for everyone to see. And as the dishes were passed around the circle of a dozen people, he said he hoped that the wisdom of Buddha would go in this way from person to person among foreigners, who so far had done nothing other than bring their own laws. He said it was an important cultural mission.