The Piano Maker (5 page)

She was ten years old then. She’d been taking piano at the conservatory since the age of six, and now began her formal apprenticeship in the serious business of piano making.

Monsieur Bendix Raoul, because she liked and trusted him, had also been the one finally able to convince her that a dog on the factory grounds was not a good idea. Her mother had been saying that all along and there had been fights and tears over it, but when Bendix Raoul eventually talked to her about it, she came around. It helped that he made her see it from the dog’s point of view.

“Mademoiselle,” he said to her, “a dog can be an affectionate and loyal companion, I grant you that. But you won’t always be there to watch out for it.”

“Why not? I would be very responsible.”

“I’m sure you would be. But what about when you are at school, for instance? Or in the house, and the dog is out here? And how would you feel if some injury were to happen to the dog? This is a factory.”

“I would train it. Dogs are intelligent.”

“Yes. Some are. But I once knew a dog at a factory down south and it got caught in the master belt from the mill
shaft, Mademoiselle. That’s the widest belt on the floor and it’s often loose like ours is, and that dog got caught in it and the belt carried it into the cogs and right around and up through the idler. It was terrible, Mademoiselle. All the fur and skin was torn off and when they finally got to it—”

She covered her ears and told him to stop. “Is that true?” she said.

He nodded. “It was terrible.”

“I could have a long leash and tie it up when I’m not here.”

“Yes, you could do that. But think about it. Imagine you are the dog, and how would you like being tied up for hours? And all the noise and goings-on around you. The saws and routers and the trucks coming and going.”

This conversation took place under a grand piano, when they both were on hands and knees so that he could point out to her the principles of soundboard anchoring and the subtle thinning and widening of the frame.

He said, “Maybe take your time and think about it, Mademoiselle. Look around at all the dangers here on the floors and in the yard. For the men too, when they’re carrying cabinet pieces. But think of the dog, mostly.”

She did think about it, and eventually there was no more talk of a dog.

NATHAN HOMEWOOD
came more than ten years later, and the way her entanglement and her problems with him began was strange and quick and wholly unexpected.

The Boston order had essentially saved the company and, as a result, Nathan became a frequent visitor and dinner guest at the house. On the third such evening he brought twenty long-stemmed roses, and he grinned with his usual confidence and handed them to her.

Mother and Juliette exchanged glances but made no comment. By the end of that dinner they were treating him like a family friend. They called him
Monsieur Ohm-bois
, and he enjoyed that. Her, he called Miss Helen, and then just Helen. He said the first-name basis was the American way and that the proper pronunciation of those accented vowels defeated him.

He told them his family had been Americans who’d moved north to Canada, and then some had gone back. His parents had moved to New Mexico for the climate,
and he was now dividing his time between England and the Continent and North America, always on the lookout for new business opportunities.

Before long it became her task after those visits to see him out, to turn on the lights on the stairway and to walk down with him and then to unlock the front door. Mother’s design, of course, to give them moments of privacy. Saying goodbye, he would stand close, holding her hands, and kiss her on both cheeks, on the left and then the right, and his lips would try to linger there. The first few times, she held still while she considered this. It was confusing. Even though she found him interesting in some way, these moments made it clear to her that he was not a man she would choose for herself – perhaps as a man to learn from, but not as a future husband or even as a lover. She was not sure why, and was not interested in analyzing it.

“Mother,” she said firmly after the third or fourth such occasion, “from now on would you mind walking him down yourself? I don’t want to. And will you please stop encouraging him. I’m not interested in him that way.”

“You are not? Why on earth not?”

They were standing in the hallway between dining room and kitchen, and Mother was carrying a tray of used dishes.

“I don’t know,” said Hélène. “And it doesn’t matter. Here. Let me take that.”

“Dear child,” said her mother. “I’m just so astonished. I thought you were interested. All those roses. And he’s a
good-looking man, a talented businessman, and one day he’ll be rich, if he isn’t already. Maybe give it time.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” said Hélène. “Giving it time. One either knows or one doesn’t. And can I decide that for myself?”

Minutes later she overheard Mother and Juliette in the kitchen, and Juliette was saying, “You don’t know better than the girl. Just because he brought business and
you
like him doesn’t mean she has to as well. Maybe you just feel indebted to him. Is that it?”

“Don’t be silly. He seems like a good choice. He’s clever and decisive. I can say that much, can’t I? And good-looking. Mothers have a certain right when it comes to things like that. An obligation, even. Don’t interfere in this, Juliette.”

“I am not. I’m talking to
you
, aren’t I? Not to Hélène. But you must let her decide for herself. You did that, and where do you think she got her stubborn streak from?”

All these conflicts ended when she met Pierre; it was sudden and so very clear to her, and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it.

The first time she saw him was on the train coming home from the city after a day at the foundry that was making the harps and the bronze
MOLNAR, FRANCE
inlay for the fallboards. She had her music diploma by then, but not yet her trade permit or the guild brief. Mother insisted that she learn every aspect of the business, and the days
at the foundry were meant to give her an appreciation of the engineering principles that went into the various cast-iron harps so that with a minimum of mass they could withstand the combined pull of a piano’s steel strings, which added up to many thousands of pounds.

The first time she noticed him, she felt shy and would not look at him directly, but she kept glancing across the carriage aisle as if to see out the windows there, and when their eyes finally met as if by chance, he smiled. The next day she made sure to be on the same train, again in the second carriage, and he was there. This time he stood up and crossed over to her and introduced himself. His name was Lieutenant Pierre Giroux, and he was fresh from military college, posted as an adjutant to the garrison in the city. They met twice more on the train and then in Montmagny at Faustin for ice cream.

He had been born of French colonial parents in Dahomey, in French West Africa, not far from where her father had disappeared. In her school atlas Dahomey was just two centimetres over from Côte d’Ivoire. There had been other boyfriends – local boys and city boys to go to dances with and for walks – and most recently there’d been the annoyance with Nathan. But this new one, Pierre from Dahomey, was altogether different. He was sweet and thoughtful and he had brown eyes, and she loved his smile and the way he looked at her.

That day at Faustin they sat spooning ice cream and chatting so easily. He was in civilian clothes and his
shirtsleeves were rolled up because it was a warm fall day. The leaves on the chestnut trees were turning and the sun came through them, golden and warm. She loved looking at him: at his face, the shape of his lips, his tanned hands. His smile.

This will never change
, she said to herself. And at home in her room, at her desk in the light from the old paper lampshade with cut-out bears from her childhood, she wrote it down like a promise:
This will never change
.

It was still her secret then.

But Nathan kept coming to visit. Relentlessly so, it seemed to her. Once he even took a three-day holiday and stayed at the hotel in town. Twice he appeared unannounced at the factory to find her in her shop coat and with her hair full of sawdust, and he suggested a walk on the trundle path along the river.

The second time, in a fit of anger and to put an end to this, she agreed. It was a cool day, and she fetched her coat and a scarf and then led the way. They had not gone very far when she stopped and turned to him.

“Nathan,” she said. “There is something I need to tell you.”

“Oh, all right.” He smiled at her. “What? Let me guess.” He stood with his back half turned to the river and with one hand on the wooden railing.

She briefly touched that hand with hers. “No need to
guess, Nathan. You won’t like this, but I am not free. There is someone else.”

He stared at her. “What? But … I don’t understand. Since when?”

“That doesn’t matter. Listen, Nathan. There are many things I admire about you. Your business skills, your frankness. I’ve learned about that from you, and so I’m being frank also. I like you but not the way I need to like, never mind love, a future husband. You did a great service for Molnar, but you also benefitted handsomely from it as well. Can’t I just like you as a friend? Someone to learn from. Isn’t that also something?”

“Is it the difference in our ages? It’s not that much. You are twenty-two and I am just thirteen years older. Or is it because I’m not French?”

“No, no. It’s nothing that simple. Please don’t ask me to explain. I couldn’t anyway. It’s how I feel.”

“Who is it? What’s his name?”

“That doesn’t matter either. Please don’t probe.”

He said nothing for a while, and it was almost as if he’d suddenly shrunk in height, the way he turned to look at the water. She felt sorry for him. She felt guilty and she wanted this to be over with, said and done and forgiven.

She touched his hand once more.

“Nathan, you are an interesting man in so many ways. You are bold and clever, and Mother and Juliette think highly of you. You’ll find someone else in no time. Of course you will. Nathan? Please.”

“We shall see,” he said then. He was still not looking at her. “Love can grow from friendship. I am not giving up hope. I can wait.”

“
Wait
? Nathan, please don’t even think that. I wouldn’t like the feeling that you’re standing back,
waiting
for me.”

He said nothing for some time, and there was not one word that she could add to ease the tension. After a while he let go of the railing and started to walk away. “Come,” he said over his shoulder. “I should let you get back to work.”

For some minutes they walked in silence, then he said, “I’ll be speaking to your mother about our business arrangement. Because of your antiquated methods, you are behind with the Boston order, you realize that. But I’ll talk to them. I respect your decision, Helen. Thank you for telling me. It was fair and square, as we say in America. I won’t be coming to the house socially any more.”

When she told them, Mother was at first amazed, then she became upset, but eventually she accepted the situation. Both Mother and Juliette wanted to meet Pierre, and she was asked to invite him for dinner. He arrived in his dress uniform, and he bowed to the women and unclipped his sabre and put it in the umbrella stand in the hallway.

He had good table manners and lively conversation, and after a few such dinners Mother said that she might get to like him, that he appeared to be intelligent and cultured. It was too bad that he was a soldier, because soldiers
had to go where the politicians sent them. These days that was the colonies, Mother said, and the colonies were far away. She looked straight at Hélène saying that. Then she repeated the words
far away
, and added, “Your father wasn’t a soldier, but he too spent much more time in the colonies than he did here at home with us.”

“I know, Maman. I do know that. We all do.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“Well,” said Mother after a long pause. “I do like the way he looks at you. With his brown eyes.”

Juliette approved of him too. She winked at Hélène and explained that what she liked most about him was that he had high expectations, not of others but of himself, of the kind of man he aimed to make of himself. She said he had
caractère
.

In those weeks and months she loved showing off her town to him: the streets that radiated out from the church square, lined by buildings seven and eight hundred years old, so ancient, all of it; the old museum and the new concert hall; the fountain where in the spring and fall a stage was erected for the travelling passion plays and morality plays, with electric lights on the backdrop of stone and tile roofs, the actors in medieval garb, the women in kirtles or gowns, the men in tunics and leggings and belts, their shouts echoing around the square, their boots loud on the stage planks, the shadow of a gallows never far away.

She showed him the river that still powered much of the town’s industry, and where as children she and her friends had come flying down the rapids, screeching and laughing, clinging to improvised rafts.

One day when the mill downstream was cutting Molnar veneer, she took him there, and they stood and watched as steam hissed from nozzles and softened the wood, and sharp blades peeled off thin sheets of veneer, which were then rolled up and sealed in wax cloth to keep them flexible.

The logs that day were from precious fruit trees, plum and cherry and pear. They came from an exhausted orchard on the north side of the river. She leaned close to Pierre and told him over the noise that her maternal grandfather had bought the rights to the trees the day they were planted. That long ago.

She said that after the trees were cut, the bark was removed to prevent beetles, and then the logs were stored to cure for another ten years in a vented shed. Plenty of air was kept between them and they were turned every so often, like wine bottles, which was why the texture and the colours in the grain were so rich and even.