The Piano Maker (4 page)

“Oh, them. I don’t think so.”

“He was making windmills for them.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence.

“I know he was often away,” said Juliette. “But not because he didn’t want to be with you or with your mother. It was his work. He would have loved to be with you. He was a good father to you and a good husband to your mother, and he was a successful engineer. Remember those things as time goes by. Let no one take them from you. It’s important.”

But the fact that her father was truly gone and would never come back, not even for a short time between postings, did not sink in for a long time. After the news from Africa there were nights when he sat calmly by her bedside or when she could hear his voice in dreams, and she would feel safe and sleep on. She would tell Mother in the morning, and Mother would look at her across the breakfast table, pale and still, and not say anything.

Dr. Menasse told Juliette that Mother was exhausted. She needed rest, he said.

Hélène heard them through the closed library door because she was standing on the other side with her ear pressed to a glass against the wood.

“She works long hours and she’s always worried,” Juliette was saying. “It’s not just her husband’s death, it’s also the business. There is so much competition and some of them make terribly good pianos, in modern facilities. She doesn’t have the money to modernize, but even if she did, she’s stubborn about doing things her way. The quality is wonderful, of course. Everyone says that, but at what expense?”

It was well known in the industry that with the help of modern machinery, firms like Bechstein and Bösendorfer could put out a piano every ninth day, while the Molnar factory was still mostly water-powered and pianos were made by hand, much the way they’d been since the beginning in 1850. A Molnar concert grand could take a month from start to finish, and a baby grand took not much less.

“Well,” said Dr. Menasse, “I don’t think there is too much wrong with her physically. Nothing that rest and good food won’t cure. There is lots of room in this house, Juliette. Perhaps you could move in and lend a hand. You are family, after all.”

“But I like it at the squire’s lodge, Charles. I waited a long time for that apartment and I wouldn’t want to give it up. At my age.”

“I understand that. Hmm. What can I say? And you? Let me see your eyes and take your pulse.”

There was silence for a moment in the library and then Dr. Menasse said, “Good, good.” Hélène heard the snap of his doctor’s bag.

“I suppose I could come in the mornings,” said Juliette then. “Help out in the household. See how that goes.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Menasse. “You could try it.”

Not very long after that, Nathan Homewood came knocking on the office door. He said he owned an export agency that sought quality instruments for America and Canada.

“May I?” he said, and pointed at a chair. “I have an important proposal for you.”

He said there was a buyer from a large Boston firm visiting Paris right now, and he would like to bring the man here and make a presentation. The first order would probably be for no fewer than ten pianos. He repeated that for emphasis.
Ten pianos
. For a commission he wanted fifty per cent of net profits.

“Fifty per cent?” Mother said to her. “Is he mad? Did I hear that right?”

“Yes, Maman. Of net profits, not the gross.”

“He can’t be serious. Tell him that is impossible. It is ridiculous.”

“Madame,” said Nathan, “my French may not be perfect, but I think you can understand me without your
lovely daughter’s help. I agree that under normal circumstances one-half would be too much, but in this case I am opening up a very large and desirable market for you. Which would then be all yours.”

Mother said she’d think about it.

“But what is there to think about, Madame? One-half of profits after all overhead and expenses. It will leave you with the other half free and clear in the bank. Business that you won’t have unless I bring it to you. I repeat: What is there to think about? Tell me and I’ll examine it with you.”

Hélène sat watching him: the spark in his eye, the American self-assurance that would be considered immodest in a Frenchman. But it worked for Nathan. He was a nice-looking man with a good haircut, wearing a good suit and shined shoes, and his firm and reasonable way of speaking gave the listener confidence. She had never met anyone like him. So bold. So effective.

“I prepare my business ventures very carefully,” he once told her, later. “So carefully that if someone says no to me, it must be because they haven’t understood. And so I need to slow down and explain better. It’s that simple.”

On that first day he said to Mother, “Madame, let me point out that a deal like this will set you up in North America. It will spread the Molnar name in the right circles, and any further business over there will be yours, free and clear. All that in exchange for half the profit from just the initial transaction.”

“Why Molnar?” said Mother. “I imagine that Bechstein
already has representation over there, but have you spoken to Bösendorfer or to Gaveau?”

“Of course I have. Would you rather I took my business to them?”

“No. But why Molnar?”

“Because I like what the music world says about the quality of your pianos. That they are exceptional. And also because I’m certain that since you are smaller, and you need to compete, you’ll try harder than any of the other firms. Am I right, Madame?”

When the Boston buyer came, Mother, in a new skirt and blouse, showed him to the listening chair in the showroom, and Juliette served him hazelnut-cream biscuits and a good local Calvados. Mother took her place on the sofa and Nathan sat in a chair, further back. She herself had on a new sky-blue dress from Mouchaire, low-cut and taken in by Juliette to fit closely. She wore a thin gold chain around her neck, and her hair was brushed to a shine and held up with combs and a blue ribbon. On her feet she wore new kid slippers, the soles roughed with sandpaper for a good grip on the pedals.

She played the Liszt
Liebestraum
, and then she played some late Schubert and Schumann and Mozart.

By then she understood very well the importance of the first few notes – the power of good notes confidently played, with much of the music in the tension between
them – and she demonstrated the grand, the baby grand, and the upright with all the skill and art she could muster.

The American buyer sat still and attentive. After the presentation of each model he shifted in his chair and nodded approval, and at the end he stood up and applauded.

“Bravo,” he said. “Yes, indeed. Excellent.”

The first order was for twelve pianos to be crated and shipped to Boston, and another six to Toronto. Never in the history of Molnar had there been an order anywhere near as large.

BY THE MIDDLE OF HER
sixth day in Saint Homais she’d already worked twice with the choir. The piano was slightly out of tune, and that afternoon she used the 5/16-inch wrench she’d borrowed from David Chandler and tuned it. Before the war, whenever they had shipped a Molnar to America or to an English colony, they had sent along a six-millimetre pin wrench. Morris hadn’t been able to find the one that had come with this piano, and so she had asked David Chandler to cut her a thin metal shim to use with the wrench. She started with the one tuning fork she still owned, an
A
440, and then worked her way up and down through the strings by ear and intuition.

Near the end Mildred came and sat in a front pew. “How on earth do you do that?” she said when Hélène had finished.

“I had two very good teachers. My mother had perfect pitch –
l’oreille absolue
, it’s called. It made her an excellent tuner, just as good as some of the blind ones. Especially
in the final stages, the last tiny adjustments to strings and sometimes even to links and dampers that some call voicing. I learned from her and from our master installer. He used to say,
Rounded shoulders to the notes
,
Mademoiselle. Perfect in the middle
,
but rounded sides
,
nothing abrupt
. How often did I hear him remind me of that?”

They were sitting side by side in the front pew. Morris walked past, and he nodded at them and kept going. Somewhere a door opened and closed.

“I just had a run-in with Lady Ashley,” said Mildred. “My, how that woman can be difficult.”

“What happened?”

“She says she may stop singing in the choir.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I think she was hoping to lead it, but then Father put you in charge. It was the right thing to do even though you’re from away, but she doesn’t like it.”

“Should I talk to her?”

“I’d wait a bit, see what she does. I know she didn’t like you shushing her with the Huron Carol, but she and Adelaide didn’t get along either.”

“I wasn’t
shushing
her, Mildred. I gave her the down sign. There’s a difference. If she wants to sing in a choir, she’ll have to get used to taking directions.”

“Oh, I know. I didn’t mean anything. But she’s ambitious. We all know that.”

They sat in silence for a moment and then Hélène said, “I called my daughter this morning, in London. Maybe
she’ll come over for Christmas. Right now she’s preparing for an exam.”

“A fine profession, that,” said Mildred. “Nursing. I’d have liked to do something like that. But then I met my husband, and he was a cook. They’d sent him to Montreal to a chef school and I learned from him. I was a McTaft before my marriage, have I told you that? His mother, old Madame Yamoussouke, left him the hotel. It was a bit run-down, but we built it up with just very good food. Made our name with that, and then he died on me. When we had the flu here, after the war. Only thirty-six, he was.”

“Much too young. I’m sorry.”

Morris came back into the sanctuary. He was carrying a long-handled plume, and he reached up with it and began dusting the light fixtures that hung from the crossbeams.

Hélène said, “Father William showed me the little apartment up in the annex. I think I’ll take it.”

“I’m not surprised. If you’re going to stay here, you need a place of your own. His cook used to live there, before she got married. It’s nice, if you don’t mind the steep stairs.”

“I’ll get used to them. And there’s a handrail. I love the views from up there. And I can still have my meals at the hotel.”

“I hope so! We can set up an account if you like, and you just pay me once a month.”

At the end of her last year in primary school, the Molnar master installer began to teach her about pianos. Monsieur Bendix Raoul was not from the area; he came from what he called “real hammer mill country” in the French Alps, valleys of knife makers and gunsmiths and tool makers, plant after plant powered by the same river, and during his journeyman years he’d travelled widely and worked his way up through the strict guild system. He had grey hair and careful hands, and he always wore a faded blue shop coat with dusty reading glasses in the breast pocket. He never rushed anything, and from him she learned step by step over the years how to work with tuning fork and pin wrench and the raw keyboard; how to pay close attention to each of the many moving parts that connected a key to the hammer that would then touch the strings. She watched his fingers on the keys, firm yet gentle, his head bent and slightly turned to the side. Striking a key five, six times, and then just once more, and already knowing by how much to adjust each string.

From him she learned how to be precise and methodical, and from him she accepted what too often she rebelled against when it came from her mother.

“You know by now that a piano has many more strings than keys, Mademoiselle,” he said to her one day in the stillness of the cork-lined room. “The ratio depends on the model, of course, but let’s take our grand piano, for example. Two hundred and eight strings to eighty-eight keys. Many more hammers touch strings in threes and twos than in singles. So the question is, to what degree
should the side strings resonate differently from the main? You see, that is the art in the craft. The human ear wants to hear not just one isolated note at a time. It wants soft edges, a touch of polyphony. And it does not want to just
hear
that note, Mademoiselle. It wants to
feel
it.”