He takes her hands.
They sit for a long time like that, their knees touching, her hands in his. She says again, I am not angry. You can be angry. I was angry, the anger came and went, I only wish you had told me, I don’t care about Burma, no that is wrong, I do care about Burma, I just…I wondered why you didn’t tell me, if maybe you thought that I would stop you from doing this, That hurt the most, I am proud of you, Edgar.
The words stay before them, suspended. He releases her hands, and she begins to cry again. She wipes her eyes, Look at me, I am behaving like a child. I can still change my mind, he says.
It isn’t that, I don’t want you to change your mind. You want me to go. I don’t want you to go, but at the same time, I know you should go, I have been expecting this. You have been expecting an out-of-tune Erard in Burma? Not Burma, this, something different, It is a lovely idea, to use music to bring about peace, I wonder what songs you will play there. I am only going to tune, I am not a pianist, I am going because it is a commission. No, but this one is different, and not only because you are going away. I don’t understand. Different, something different from your other projects, a cause, something worthy.
You don’t believe that my work is worthy already. I didn’t say that. You said as much. I watch you, Edgar, sometimes it is as if you are my child, I am proud of you, you have abilities that others don’t, you have ways of hearing sounds that other people can’t, you are skilled in the mechanics of things, you make music beautiful, that is enough. Except now it sounds like it isn’t.
Edgar, please, now you are angry. No, I am only asking you for your reasons, You have never told me this before, This is still just another assignment, I am still a mechanic, let us be careful before we give credit for Turner’s paintings to the man who makes his brushes.
Now you sound as if you don’t know if you should go. Of course I don’t know, only now my wife is telling me I should do it to prove something. You know that is not what I am saying. I have had other strange commissions, Katherine. But this is different, This is the only one you have kept hidden.
Outside the sun dips finally behind the rooftops, and the room grows suddenly darker.
Katherine, I didn’t expect this from you. What then did you expect? I don’t know, I have never done this before. You expected me to cry as I am now, to implore you not to go because that is how women behave when they lose their husbands, You expected that I will be afraid if you are gone because you will not be here to take care of me, that I will be afraid I will lose you. Katherine, that isn’t true, that isn’t why I didn’t tell you. You thought I would be scared, You tore a page from the Illustrated London News because it had an article on Burma.
There was a long silence. I am sorry, you know this is new for me. I know, this is new for me too.
I think you should go, Edgar, I wish I could go, It must be beautiful to see the world. You must return to me with stories.
It is only another commission.
You keep saying that, You know it isn’t.
The ship doesn’t leave for another month, That is a lot of time.
There is a lot to get ready.
It is very far, Katherine.
I know.
The following days passed swiftly. Edgar finished the Farrell contract and refused a new commission to voice a beautiful 1870 Streicher grand with an old Viennese action.
Officers from the War Office visited frequently, arriving each time with more documents: briefings, schedules, lists of items to take with him to Burma. After the tears of the first day, Katherine seemed to embrace the mission enthusiastically. Edgar was grateful for this; he had thought she might still be upset. Moreover, he had never been organized. Katherine had always teased him that the precise ordering of piano strings seemed to necessitate a chaotic disorganization in every other aspect of his life. On a typical day, a soldier would come to their house to drop off paperwork while Edgar was away. Katherine would take the papers, read them, and then organize them on his desk into three piles: forms that required completion and return to the army, general histories, and papers specific to his mission. Then he would come home, and within minutes the stack of papers would be in disarray, as if he had merely sifted through the piles looking for something. That something, Katherine knew, was information about the piano, but none came, and after about three or four days she would greet him with, “More papers arrived today, lots of military information, nothing about a piano,” which left him looking disappointed but helped considerably to keep the table neater. He would then collect whatever was sitting on top of the pile and retire to his chair. Later she would find him asleep with the folder open on his lap.
She was astonished by the amount of documentation they supplied, apparently all at Carroll’s request, and she read the papers avidly, even copying out sections of a history of the Shan written by the Doctor himself, a piece she had expected to be dull, but which thrilled her with its stories and gave her confidence in the man whom she felt she had entrusted to watch over her husband. She had recommended it to Edgar, but he told her he would wait, I will need things to distract me when I am alone. Otherwise, she rarely mentioned her readings to him. The stories and descriptions of the people fascinated her; she had loved tales of far-off places since she was a young girl. But while she caught herself daydreaming, she was glad she wasn’t going. It seemed, she confided to a friend, like one big silly game for boys who haven’t grown up, like stories from Boys’ Own or the penny cowboy serials imported from America. “Yet you let Edgar go,” her friend had responded. “Edgar never played those games,” she said. “Perhaps it is not too late. Besides, I have never seen him so excited, so filled with purpose. He is like a young man again.”
After several days, other packages arrived, these marked from Colonel Fitzgerald, to be delivered to Surgeon-Major Carroll. They looked as if they contained sheets of music, and Edgar started to open them, but Katherine scolded him. They were packed neatly in brown paper, and he would surely leave them disorganized. Fortunately, the names of the composers had been written on the outside of the paper, and Edgar contented himself with the knowledge that should he be stranded, he would at least have Liszt to keep him company. Such taste, he said, gave him confidence in his mission.
The departure date was set for November 26, one month to the day following Edgar’s acceptance of his commission. It approached like a cyclone, if not for the mad preparations that preceded it, then for the calm that Katherine knew would follow. While he spent his days finishing his work and tidying up the workshop, she packed his trunks, modifying the recommendations of the army with knowledge unique to the wife of a tuner of Erards. Thus to the army’s list of items such as water-repellent rot-proof clothes, dinner wear, and an assortment of pills and powders to “better enjoy the tropical climate,” she added ointment for fingers chapped from tuning and an extra pair of spectacles, as Edgar invariably sat on a pair about once every three months. She packed a dress coat with tails as well, “In case you are asked to play,” she said, but Edgar kissed her on the forehead and unpacked it, “You flatter me, dear, but I am not a pianist, please don’t encourage such ideas.”
She packed it anyway. She was used to such protestations. Since he was a boy, Edgar had noticed in himself an aptitude for sound, although not, he had also sadly learned, an aptitude for composition. His father, a carpenter, had been an avid amateur musician, collecting and constructing instruments of all shapes and sounds, scavenging the bazaars for strange folk instruments brought from the Continent. When he realized that his son was too shy to play for visiting friends, he had invested his energies in Edgar’s sister, a delicate little girl who had later married a singer with the D’Oyly Carte Company, now quite well known for his starring roles in the operettas of Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan. So while his sister sat through hours of lessons, Edgar spent the days with his father, a man whom he remembered primarily for his large hands, Too large, he would say, for finery. And so it had become Edgar’s job to tend to his father’s growing collection of instruments, most of which, to the boy’s delight, were in manifest disrepair. Later, as a young man, when he had met and fallen in love with Katherine, he had been equally delighted to hear her play, and had told her this when he proposed. You dare not be asking me to marry you simply so you may have someone to test the instruments you tune, she had said, her hand lightly resting on his arm, and he had replied, a young man flushed by the feeling of her fingers, Don’t worry, if you wish you may never play, Your voice is music enough.