My piano comes home

Johann Urbas, Dresden
No. 9281, circa 1920

My heart still feels all tight in my chest, and I am in the next room from where it sits, waiting for me to learn to play again on it. I never expected, ever, to own my own piano, let alone so beautiful an instrument, and I feel pure gratitude.



It has been so many years since I played, and I remember my first lesson, down Haverhill Drive with someone I have forgotten before I went to study with Mrs. Markarian. I also remember the day I stopped, You'll regret it, everyone who had also stopped told me. You'll never play again, and you will regret it.

"I already do," I replied to myself.

Think of something else.

Why is it that every time you see a piano in the company of someone else, you cannot refrain from saying, "I used to play. I played well, but I stopped, and I cannot play anymore."

"Play something for us!"

"I can't. I have completely forgotten how to play. Even to read music."

"But, that's not possible! Please, do play something."

"I'm sorry, I can't."

They said you'd regret it, and you knew it.

"And they were right."

I have to begin again, from scales and finger exercises. I wish I had my old sheet music books, the fingering marked my Mrs. Markarian. I'll need a bench, and a metronome.

They were right. I have felt guilt and regret all these years, every time I saw a piano and could not play it, when once I could have considered going to competition, looked at sheet music and wondered how I ever could have read it and told my fingers what to do. It seemed unbelievable, and part of another life. The one in which I knew how to do those things, but I was too scared to perform and thought it was too absurd to continue if I were so reluctant. I went to college, had too much work to do in studio to ever go to the piano practice rooms, visited home for vacations and walked right past the piano.

Monsieur Baudry looked around the garden at the sunlight and the flowers after the piano was safely in its place. I watched him.

"Ca c'est pourquoi je reste ici. La maison," we both turned and looked up at the house, "est dix fois trop -- excusez-moi, j'exagère -- petite, mais je ne peux pas quitter ce jardin." He looked back out over the flower beds and the treetops to the fields beyond and nodded.

"C'est une piscine là en bas?" he asked, pointing to the bright blue spot showing between the branches of a shrub in the middle distance.

"Oui," I answered. He looked, it seemed to me, very intently at it all.

"Vous voulez voir le reste?" I asked him, thinking he might refuse politely, preferring to hurry off to something else. I didn't think he would.

"Oui. Pourquoi pas," he smiled, and I felt grateful to my garden for yet another reason: it was helping make up for his having to keep my piano months in his studio. A lovely June afternoon, by some act of God's favor, was a much nicer time to deliver it than in the dead of January.

I showed him the bench in the right intermediate terrace, settled into the sloped bank of St. John's Wort, facing the daylilies, about to bloom below the row of stone urns, planted with Surfinias and Geraniums.

"C'est boucolique!"

"Là," I pointed down towards the jungle below us and the burning pile, "nous allons construire une sort d'abri pour un atelier pour mon mari pour la rénovation de son ancien bateau en bois, et pour moi -- une place pour mes outils de jardinage --"

"Vous avez des projets!" he laughed.

"Ca, vous pouvez le dire, et voilà pourquoi --", but I let the sentence drop off. We knew. Think of the months the piano had sat in a corner of his studio, ready to come here.

"Quand est-ce que vous allez avoir le temps de jouer au piano?" he said, laughing again.

"Oh, je vais le faire. Ca sera ma détente," I replied with conviction. I was forgiven.

I led him and his son down the other stair, under the arc of the Wisteria, past the Forsythia and down to the gazebo terrace, past the Pierre de Ronsard in full bloom, the Ghislaine de Féligonde, bent over from the weight of its bunches of small, butter-yellow roses, the grass thick with its petals, if not thick with grass, which it is not here.

"Vous vous en occupez toute seule de tout ça?" asked Monsieur Baudry. Claude.

"Oui. Ca aussi, c'est pourquoi --" It's why the room was still not ready for the piano six months after I bought it.

We passed the Judas Tree, and I explained that I had that area to redo; a previous effort had been rather a failure. We went down the stone steps, past a twisted hazelnut tree in need of a pruning, and came out onto the bit of scrappy lawn, green more from weeds than blades of grass, behind the Birch and Tulip trees.

"Là," I pointed to the four shrubs along the wall under the gazebo terrace, "ce sont des Althéas." Roses of Sharon, in white, dark pink and purple. They will bloom much later in the summer. His eyes followed my hand, and he looked back up toward the house.

"C'est très beau, mais beaucoup de travail. Vous pouvez même enlever des plantes, tellement il y en a." I laughed, explaining that, indeed, I had already removed many plants, and it was true. I could remove more, but I like it. As much work as they are, I like them, although it needs more thought, changes. I have been adding plants again, actually. Roses and clematis to run through other plants and keep the flowering season going in the summer months, make it a jumble and almost overpowering, like heady perfume on a beautiful woman.

I want people to fall under its sway, overpowered, enchanted.

We walked over to the pool, where I pointed to a presently pathetic border behind the end of the pool where I had intended Hydrangeas to thrive, only to discover that the August sun and our annual absence during that time are overpowering to them.

"Vous vous en servez beaucoup?" he asked, wondering if we used the pool much.

"Pas de tout assez."

"C'est dommage qu'on n'a pas nos maillots de bain!" he laughed, sorry they didn't have their trunks. I nearly proposed I leave them to take a dip in their briefs, since the pool is in such a private location, but it occurred to me that perhaps we aren't on quite such intimate terms yet, although I certainly had felt quite free to abuse of his hospitality for my piano. Instead, I proposed that they feel quite free to return any time they please, bring his wife, and we could picnic and enjoy the garden, the pool and my work, finished.

"Je serai vieille par ce moment-là bien sur," I laughed, quite old by the time my projects and all my work here will be finished.

"Soyez certaine de le jouer," he said to me, climbing into the passenger seat of their truck. "Ca serait dommage de ne pas le faire."

"Croyez-moi, j'en ai l'intention de le jouer. Il est beau, non seulement à regarder, mais à entendre. Voilà pourquoi je l'ai acheté."

His son shifted into reverse, and the van started to beep as I waved and headed across the street to the old gate, held in place with wire. I secured it, avoiding the greeting of a new acquaintance, determined to become the companion of my days, a woman with one front tooth, two fewer than my old acquaintance down by the Seine, the one with the goats and dogs and cats in the camping trailer surrounded by the accumulated junk that makes her feel secure and prosperous, and headed in to play the one thing I remember.

It is the opening measures to my friend Martha's song "My Piano." She wrote it just before we both graduated high school, I to head off to Barnard and she to Yale, instead of conservatory. I was jealous, but she deserved it more than I did, and she didn't want to go, but it was her parents' dream for her come true, and an accomplishment after years of months in the hospital in Manhattan, recovering from kidney transplants, ice baths for her burning body, never allowed to turn into a woman's like our own from the heavy doses of steroids, and the dialysis. When we weren't even teenagers yet, we used to lie in bed together at night and listen to the sound of her blood, rushing through the shunt in her left wrist, thinking of marmalade skies and diamonds, strawberry fields forever, somewhat high from the colored markers we used to make our own psychedelic artwork for hours on end.

I hardly saw her after graduation, and then one afternoon a year or two after we had graduated from college, the friend that replaced her as my best friend called me in Washington to ask if she could come by where I would be taking care of the kids of friends of my family. She said she'd bring a bottle of wine; my mother had said that would be alright. Why, I had wondered all afternoon and into the evening, did my mother and she think I needed to get a little drunk? And why did my mother even know about this at all? An idea did come to me, and sitting on the walk in front of their Chevy Chase house, Ruth handed me the piece of newsprint I expected. I had known it. I only read the words that mattered. "Martha Blumberg died", followed by a date, more information I did not even see. I saw only the landscaping in the streetlight, and diamonds in the Chevy Chase sky.

I don't know the date. I don't know all the details. I talked to her mother again only many years later, when it had been 25 years since she and I graduated from high school, and I heard all that mattered.

"I miss her so much. Not a day goes by that I don't miss her," said her mother. She is alone. It was so unfair.

I placed my fingers on the keys and the notes came out sounding just like the song she wrote.

My piano
It's a symphony
When it sings
It bursts in harmony
My piano
When it sings for me

My piano, for me.
....

Understanding Rapide

"Eric Tabarly" bud

I don't know why I didn't notice until this morning that the incredibly thriving "Eric Tabarly" rose closest to the door -- and I say "incredibly thriving" because it has been sitting in a largish plastic pot for about 1 1/2 years, ever since the workers had me dig them up to start on the garden façade -- has produced many first buds, since I study it closely most days, but it might have to do with the fact that I think I understand what ailed Rapide better, having spent a day lying in bed with my laptop on my stomach, unable to move. The French call it, ever so quaintly for their "best in the world" medical system, a lumbago. It sounds like a dance.

It isn't. I assure you.

Not unless you consider using your hands and knees to get out of bed or stand up straight a dance.

It also makes me a little hungry for something I can't quite make out, sounding like some dish, too.

Oh, look! We use it too!

lumbago

[lumbā′gō]

Etymology: L, lumbus, loin

pain in the lumbar region caused by a muscle strain, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or a herniated intervertebral disk. Ischemic lumbago, characterized by pain in the lower back and buttocks, is caused by vascular insufficiency, as in terminal aortic occlusion. See also low back pain.

Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

Actually, it sounds almost exactly like what Rapide was probably suffering, although my breeder friend called it cauda equina, also known as lumbosacral stenosis, and a bunch of other names. It's also a form of arthritism or a slipped disc or pinched nerve in the lumbar-sacral acrea, and after the last two days, I can completely relate to the whelps and whimpers every time I asked her to get up and walk, and even when she was just lying there. It "came and went" pretty much as suddenly for me as it appeared to for her, too. At least what pain remains is tolerable.

It's not the first time I have suffered this, but it was the worst time. It's no wonder, either, with what I put myself through, with the various tools I wield in the garden and the house, from shovels to pickaxes, and then the tons of rock and masonry debris I haul to the dump; I guess you could say that I'm asking for it, but poor Rapide?

Like mistress, like dog.

The first rosebuds probably appeared while I was whimpering in my bed.

And it wasn't due only to the back pain, either. No, it was also due to the pain of having to sit still and figure out what I want to do with the petit salon that my husband would also want done with this tiny little room. You'd think that would be easy, after all, I do know what he thinks the room should be. The problem is that I haven't been able to make up my mind in these long 8 years.

I alternate between a sitting room for reading, perhaps watching a proportionately tiny television, listening to and, now that the piano is about to come, playing music and an office outfitted with a piano. That seems selfish. To take one room of valuable real estate and make it about my work when I can do that at the kitchen/entry/living room table, or put a desk out in the summer room just seems selfish.

I opted for my husband's vision, and one that seems to go best with the piano.



"C'est beau," said my husband, after I gave him a tour of the future contents of the shallow storage closets that replaced the bookshelves I had had all around the door into the room from the entry (hall seems to great a word for the little space, off of which are this room, a narrow stair to the end bedroom and a WC, sans lavabo). I explained all about how they would be perfect to house the ironing board, iron, and other stuff that gets dumped into that room like an oversized utility closet.

I am all about having places to put things in a house that offers no place to put things, other than into the garbage as the radical solution.

"On dirait un château," he added, turning his eyes from the computer screen to me, "avec ce -- au fait, c'est quoi, une fenêtre?" He was talking about the oriole window above the door.

"Bon, ça peut être ça ou juste un cadre pour une autre porte cachée."

"Non, non, ça serait très joli," he hastened to say.

He liked it. He wasn't even complaining about the work it would, sans doute, involve. Or the expense. But my reply to that every time is, "Oh! We'll do that ourselves!," which rather adds to the burden of the first issue.

Of course, I could just do the room absolutely plainly. Plaster the walls right down to simple baseboards, but...

I want wainscoting.

And sometimes, when you use a lot of lines in a small room, you create, bizarrely, I know, the illusion of more space, while a very simple small room is "what it is," all apparent at once and small. I don't want it to be une chambre de moines, or a monk's room, but a little jewel box for the beautiful, beautiful piano, our books and photos. Maybe some new art work.

I get to choose it.

Now, where are those damn masons? They were "aiming" for 8 am. It's lunchtime, and the frogs just started calling.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go iron curtains and prepare the guest rooms for next week. Tomorrow, we leave on the TGV for a family wedding in Toulon, and our guests arrive next week right on our heels. Monday, I make boeuf bourguignon so I won't have to cook one night, but mostly so the house will smell good.

French, too, for our American guest. Even American houses can smell like Labrador Retrievers.

Sisyphe nods sagely.
....

The absence of no

The plate, gold-leaf restored and polished
Steinway Model A 1911
Pianos Baudry, Us, France

"No", it turns out, is not "yes". Le même s'applique pour "non" et "oui".

I knew that. I really did. The absence of "no" is, however, closer to yes than is the presence of "no". I knew this, too. The dinner table is becoming the marketplace, the corner café, the place where news is sought and exchanged, for better and for worse.

"C'est vrai qu'on va avoir un piano?" asked his youngest daughter, past 12, not yet 13. She got me. The moment of truth was thrust upon me, and by no treachery on her part. She looked genuinely interested in my answer. My answer. I glanced at her father, and then back at her before replying. Think quick.

"Ben [that's a form of "bon", or good, that means "wellll" or "OK"], peut-être," come on, say it, there's no use pussy-footing around here, "Je veux dire, oui."

"Ah bon?" spluttered her father, seated across from me at the table. This was the first indication that the absence of "no" is not the presence of "yes". Think quick.

"Enfin, si votre père donne son accord final," I glanced quickly at him. His daughter continued without missing a beat; our exchange being irrelevant at past 12 and not yet 13.

"Parce que d'ai envie de jouer au piano," she finished. She is turning into an excellent ally. Now I know why mothers require at least one daughter.

"Alors, tu joueras au piano."

"Comment on va payer ce piano?" asker her father without missing a beat; my exchange with his daughter being irrelevant as bread-winner. Think more quickly.

"Euh, avec un peu de notre argent et un peu de ce que j'ai aux States."

"Avec l'euro à $1.50?"

"Ah bon? C'est à ce point là?" As if I didn't suspect. The dollar has been weak against the euro ever since we arrived, more than 7, but less than 8 years ago.

"Où est-ce qu'on va le mettre?" asked his youngest son, more than 15, but not yet 16, although he's gaining, without stopping to pay attention to the exchange between the bread-winner and his lovely partner.

"Pas dans le salon," his father replied, decisively. Remember, he thinks pianos are ugly and make an unpleasant noise.

"Ca serait dommage quand même car il est beau. Il serait la plus belle chose dans la maison."

"On peut le mettre dans le petit salon," said his son, mine remaining quite quiet during all this. It struck me that I had another ally in my stepson. Somehow, the subject petered out, for the moment. I did the dishes with my husband, dejected. I went to bed and wrote in my journal (that's where I say all the things I would never say here. You didn't think I tell you everything, did you?), dejected, while he read.

"Tu fais la tête?" he asked, not without concern. I shook my head, but I was pouting. Absolutely. I felt terrible about wanting a piano -- this piano -- so much, when we need so many things that I want, too. Like a sofa. Ours is, well, a hand-me-down, beat to hell and an embarrassment.

I woke up, dejected, next to my husband.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a qui ne va pas?" What's wrong?, he asked.

"Je pense au piano." He laughed. "Je le veux."

"Tu viens à la gyme avec moi ou non?" I was too miserable to answer. How to tell him why I want this so much? Worse, how to explain to someone who feels exactly the opposite way why it's so important to me? I was going to have to. That, or renounce. I shrugged. He went to get ready to go, and I pulled the duvet up closer to my chin and stared at the wall. I was going to have to get up eventually, and the car, it appeared to me, would be, after all, the best place to talk to him. It's always that way with males. But, in the car, I was still mute and miserable.

"Tu penses à quoi?" he asked.

"Au piano." This time, he laughed out loud.

"Mais, si tu le veux tant que ça, achete-le. Je ne sais pas comment on va le payer, mais -- "

"Je ne sais pas t'expliquer pourquoi je le veux -- "

"Tu ne dois pas m'expliquer pourquoi -- "

"Si, je dois. Je dois t'expliquer pourquoi."

And I did try to explain why I want it so badly when there are so many things we both want. I tried to explain about playing when I was little and why I stopped. I tried to explain how when people tell you that you will regret having done so, they are right because you lose what you once had, and every time you pass a piano, you remember and you know that you can do nothing with it now. It's a real loss, and a real regret. I tried to explain how music had been in my life since I sat with my mother and watched the symphony on television and she taught me which instruments were which, since she bought a piano and I began lessons, since I sang in chorus and we were surrounded by musicians in high school, where our select choir won top honors in the state competitions, just like the orchestra and the jazz band. We ate lunch in the chorus room, listening to the stereo, gathering for jam sessions with Jeff Millstein improvising at the piano.

Jeff was the other reason I stopped playing. He had the quality that Fabio had, and that my nephew has; they know where the music is in the piano, and they only have to bring it out. I had to look for it, knowing it was in there, somewhere. But I found it, and I could play it. Today, I can't.

Then, Sam played the violin, and I listened to his teacher and wanted to make those sounds. I wanted a fine violin for my son, so that the sounds he could make would be the most beautiful and the most emotional possible. He stopped, and CDs in the stereo cannot come anywhere near real music in your home, whether you make it, or others make it. I tried to explain that I want the possibility of real music in my home and to make my efforts to make it myself, but it cannot be on just any piano. I need a piano that sings with warmth and vibrancy.

"J'ai besoin -- tu vas dire que c'est stupide --, mais j'ai besoin d'embellir notre vie."

"Ce n'est pas stupide."

"Je ne parle pas de la beauté superficielle, mais la beauté de la manière de vivre et les possibilités de cette vie."

"Je comprends."

I believed him.
....

My piano

My nephews, playing Schubert's Trio in E flat Major

"Tu étais où?" he demanded, when I opened the car door a little too casually, where I had just pulled up in front of the house and begun struggling with the car CD player to remove a version of Schubert's Trio in E flat Major with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Pinchas Zuckerman. I had seen him approach the passenger door out of the corner of my eye. He had been watching for me. I smiled. I knew I was in trouble. I had just received his message and seen that my cell phone answering service had called me, oh, 10 times, but I felt a little touched.

Going on 50, and nearly in trouble. I felt 15 all over again.

I sidestepped his question. The moment was not quite propitious to reply. Not at all. After all, for the moment, I was in trouble. I continued to fiddle with the CD player.

"Mais! Qu'est-ce que fais?"

"Je n'arrive pas à sortir le CD."

"Laisse tomber." But I didn't want to let it go and get it later; it was very useful for distracting a piqued husband. "Je ne savais pas où tu étais, et il est tard. Tu pouvais avoir eu un accident, et je n'en savais rien." It's true. I could have had an accident.

"Mais, j'ai dit à Sam où j'allais." The CD slid out and I gathered up my things and stepped from the car, hoping to confound him with my presence and beauty.

"Quand j'ai enfin pu arracher un mot de Sam, il ne savait pas non plus où tu étais allée." He wasn't sounding all too pleased with my son's communicativeness, but then again, it would be particularly misplaced of him to make an issue of that particular, well, issue.

"Oh," I thought a moment, making sure to look concerned and contrite enough, since my beauty was perhaps not having the full desired effect. "Peut-être je ne l'ai pas dit." I explained that he had called from the vaccination center for the terrible flu thing we call H1N1 here, when I was taking his daughter home from riding class, and I was trying to listen to him, talk and not be rude to her all at the same time. "J'ai peut-être oublié." He followed me into the house.

"Tu pouvais être blessée." At least he didn't say "dead". "Alors, tu étais où?" I was going to have to answer the question, and better to be honest about it, even if I had just managed to create the exact opposite of the conditions required for my communication.

"J'ai été allée voir les pianos." I turned to busy myself at the kitchen counter. It was, after all, past 10 pm, and no one had had dinner. I heard him draw a breath in.

"J'en étais sûr. Alors, tu l'as acheté?" He let the breathe out. I drew one in, much more subtly. This was it.

"Non. Pas encore."

"Pourquoi pas?" I let the breathe out, barely perceptibly.

"Parce que, ce n'est pas le piano que je veux." He looked at me. "C'est un autre que je veux. De chez lui." He sought to clarify; I didn't want the piano at 3,000 euros that I did want the other day? I nodded. I'd have to explain. Monsieur Baudry had suggested that even if he didn't like the piano, he could possibly understand that like anything complex, there are differences in the quality of the instruments that can explain why -- oh! how self evident this was! -- a better one is more expensive.

This can perhaps be better explained if I say that I had given articulation to my fear some moments before, before I crossed the villages of the Vexin Français, listening to Schubert's trio and thinking of my nephews and niece playing it together, avoiding announcing the joy that made my heart sing as I drove in and out of drizzling rain and a succession of lovely old villages (picturing us -- and the piano -- living in several different homes I passed in the dark), over the phone, the fear that my husband not liking the piano at all would be perfectly indifferent to the reasons I wanted this piano, and not the one I thought I could want. Monsieur Baudry had made the list for me. It was my own. I drew breath in again, and decided to go for simplicity of expression and absolute truth.

I must have been convincing (enough) for when he asked me how much this piano was, and I gave an approximate answer (which I could do in all honesty because the price wasn't established, not yet, but I had a ballpark figure; it would all depend on whether Monsieur felt that he could harmonize the piano without sending the hammers to Germany to have the felt changed, which he wouldn't know until he sat down and studied it in the morning), he remained silent.

Which means, he didn't argue. He didn't tell me no.

In two weeks, I have gone from only thinking vaguely of wishing to have an to play a piano again, to considering purchasing a very basic piano for which you can find no information online (nor in the piano atlases -- a bad sign), to nearly purchasing a good Swedish piano with an excellent Renner mechanism and nice sound and touch, to actually contemplating the purchase of a 1920s Johann Urbas piano. I had not completely lost my mind; I was not looking at the Hamburg Steinway and Bechstein uprights, and I had not given serious thought at all to the lovely satin black Feurich, from the 1920s, as well. I had merely returned to make sure. "My" piano had moved to the front and center of the studio work area for harmonizing and tuning.

Seeing it there, I needed to swallow. I wasn't sure. I thought I might need to talk myself into it, like a reluctant courter. He played it a little for me and talked about how it was a good piano. Monsieur Baudry is not a "commercial", or a salesperson. He is a master piano technician, a lover of pianos. Whether I buy the least or the most expensive piano is of no concern to him for someone will buy them, every one of them that he presently has, and every one that he will have valued and brought to him, of which about a third will become his own pianos.

"Et s'il y avait un argument pour acheter un piano un crin au-dessus," just a hair better, "il serait quoi?"

Monsieur drew in a breath and began to explain that if I really thought I might wish to own a better piano (and it was starting to become clear that I did) it would be best to make the investment now, if I possibly could, since it would avoid the problems of selling the one I was buying, having it transported and moving a new one in. Beyond the practical aspect, I would, of course, benefit from better quality of construction, greater durability, a finer voice and touch, and a piano I would be happy to have for a very long time. It would be, he said, perhaps, a Sauter, and he rolled one out from a long line of pianos, stored sideways against the studio wall. The most impressive were the grands, ranged on their sides like so many filing cases, wrapped in moving blankets, their legs up on top. He knew which each was, how it sings, to what music it is best suited. They are the pianos he rents for concerts. They are his pianos.

I looked at it. It was walnut in a satin finish, rustic carvings of nature graced the Chippendale legs, the case and below the keyboard. Audouin would prefer it, I thought. Monsieur began to play it. It was nice. I sat down on the piano bench and looked at its open case, just touching the side of a gleaming 1920s Hamburg Steinway O model, and down along the length of the room, past several Steinway and Bechstein grands to the far wall, letting my gaze run back up the other side, stopping at the half taken apart mahogany upright to my side.

"J'aime ce piano." I stood and moved closer to it.

"Alors, achetez le," he said, raising his shoulders and eyebrows and smiling kindly at me.

"Vous plaisantez," I laughed, joining in the joke. Only it wasn't one. He thought I could. "Alors, il serait combien?"

I returned my gaze to the glow of the aged whiskey-colored wood, the straight legs, the keys that seemed less plastic than those of the Nordiska and the Sauter. I touched one. It was soft and alive. I read the name of the manufacturer again, in raised lettering on the plate, Johann Urbas. I heard him say the price. I looked at him. I thought I saw him trying to find a way to make this piano possible for me. So many pianists, he had told me, excellent ones, very capable ones, only think of the technical performance of the piano, they don't, he said, hear the piano. This made no sense to me, except how else could so many industrial assembly-mine pianos get to the market and be sold if this were not true?

"Mais, ce n'est pas comme ça pour les violonistes, violoncellistes? Il parlent toujours de la voix de leur instrument."

"Oh! Mais pas de tout!" he had said, agreeing. "Depuis qu'ils sont petits, ils cherchent à faire le plus beau son. Ils écoutent leurs instruments, et ils font la même chose quand ils achètent un piano."

"Peut-être," I sought to explain this, "c'est parce qu'un enfant joue souvent le piano qui se trouve chez ses parents, comme un meuble, un objet dans la famille, ou parce qu'ils achètent quelque chose 'pour voir' si leur enfant est sérieux, et puis il ne joue que celui-ci et celui de son professeur. Il travail la technique, et il vie avec le son de son piano." He nodded in agreement. I didn't know that Schubert sounds "right" on a Bechstein, nor that a Bechstein upright has a delicacy, a finesse that suits other music better than a grand, but I did know enough to be convinced that no two pianos are alike in the sound they produce.

He explained that the phenomenon of the ubiquitousness of certain instruments, despite a distinct lack of quality of sound (Yamahas) is because they were able to saturate the market with instruments at a competitive price at a time when quality of fabrication was dropping anyway -- gone with the last of the artisans in so many other fields -- as people were demanding the "democratization" of the piano. Combine that with lack of demand for "voice", and you have the resurgence of the Japanese pianos, and, today, the plethora of lesser quality pianos coming off the lines in Indonesia, China, South America, and so on. The conservatories, he explained, buy Yamahas and the students sign contracts to purchase an Yamaha, with the ability to "trade up" in their line after two years. The ear becomes trained to the instrument, and not the other way around. It is Monsieur Baudry's hope to encourage more music schools to buy well-maintained and reconditioned used European pianos, which more than compete economically, provide more nuanced sound and will outlast the production pianos.

As he spoke, I recalled my son's violin teacher as he played, first, his violin, and, then, his viola for us. The beauty of the sound. I recalled remembering the screeching dry sound of the violins in our school orchestra, provided by the school, and wanting to get the best-sounding instrument for my son that I could, while he still played. It makes a difference. We were still standing by the Johann Urbas piano, and I touched the keys while I watched him think. They made you want to play this piano.

"J'aime le toucher de ce piano."

"C'est beaucoup plus profond." I continued to pick out little melodies that came from nothing and were less while he thought a little more.

"Je pourrais peut-être éviter de changer les marteaux," he finally said. If he could, then he could offer me the piano for a little less, "pas beaucoup, vous comprenez, mais un peu." I understood, and I felt grateful to him. He said he would look at it in the morning. It would take him about an hour to determine if he could possibly do that and still make the piano sound the way he thought it should. He placed the front of the case back on it, and we looked together at the carving. He reached forward and touched it, "Je n'ai même pas touché à ça." It didn't look to me like it needed to be polished, cleaned or anything.

It was lovely.

"Je pourrais être très heureuse pour longtemps avec ce piano," I said. He raised an eyebrow, looking at me and then at the piano and nodded.

"Oui." Oui, vous pourriez l'être.

I felt my heart race a little, driving home. I knew what I was going to do, if it wouldn't be at the cost of my marital happiness, and remembered what my friend had written to me when I told her that I was about to buy another piano, "Congratulations, you are soon to be the owner of a beautiful piano! It's very exciting when they roll it into your home. You won't regret it."

Last night, I stopped at my sister and brother-in-law's to call home. There were problems with the trains on that line in and out of Paris all days, and my cell phone battery had given out. I didn't want a repeat of the prior evening's doings, so I rolled the load of fabric I had just bought with a friend at the Marché St. Pierre on the little cart I picked up at the bottom of the street, near Barbès Rouchechuart, from the RER station, up their street and stopped on the way to my car, parked a little further along, in front of my other sister and brother-in-law's home. I sat it inside the gate and went to knock on the door.

It was nearly dinner time, and one by one, those not home arrived. A plate was set out for me for dinner despite my protests that my husband was going to have a fit -- two nights in a row, deprived of my company -- and then we talked of my purchase. Unlike his brother, my brother-in-law and his wife love music period. Their son is a gifted pianist at only 11. His older brother plays the violin, their sister, the cello. They listened while I told them about my piano and listening to Schubert's Trio in E flat Major. I knew they children were working on this piece together, their first collaboration. They agreed to play for me, all but my niece, who had already gone to her room, sore from her new braces.

It was magnificent. It truly was. The others in the family who don't care to appreciate this may do and think as they like, but I want to be able to offer a gorgeous piano with beautiful sound in my home to musicians who come to visit, and to be able to do what I will be able to again one day with my own hands.

Johann Urbas began making pianos in Dresden, Germany in 1894. In 1945, it was bombed in the bombing of Dresden. I think of Victor Klemperer who survived that night, as did his wife, from whom he became separated during the horror; he found her the next day, another of the miracles in which life seems to abound. I think of Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose life was saved by a piano and a German officer, or, as he corrects himself, "a human being who wore the uniform of the Germans", Wilm Hosenfeld.

"Jouez quelque chose!"

Comment? Monsieur l'officier ignorait-il que les SS des environs allaient arriver en courrant dès qu'ils entendraient les premières notes? Je l'ai dévisagé avec perplexité, sans bouger, et il a dü percevoir mon embarras puisqu'il a ajouté d'un ton rassurant:

"Ne vous enquiétez pas, je vous assure. Si quelqu'un vient, vous irez vous cacher dans le garde-manger et je dirai que c'est moi aui voulais l'essayer, ce piano..."

Quand j'ai posé mes doigts sur le clavier, j'ai senti qu'ils tremblaient. Habitué que j'avais été à gagner ma vieen plaquant des accords, je devais donc la sauver maintenant de la même manière! Quel changement!... Et ses doigts agités de frissons, privés d'exercise depuis deux ans et demi, raidis par le froid et la saleté, embarrassés par des ongles que je n'avais pu couper depuis l'incendie qui avait failli m'emporter! Pour ne rien arranger, l'instrument se trouvait dans une pièce dont les fenêtres avaient été brisées et les réactions de sa caisse imprégnée d'humidité seraient sans doute désastreuses.

J'ai joué le Nocturne en ut dièse mineur de Frédéric Chopin. Le son vitreux des cordes mal tendues s"est répandu dans l'appartement désert, et allé flotter sur les ruines de la villa en face pour revenir en échos étouffés d'un rare mélancolie. Lorsue j'ai terminé le morceau, le simence n'en a semblé que plus oppressant, irréel. Un chat solitaire s'est mis à miauler dans la rue. Puis il y a eu un coup de feu en bas, e bruit agressif, sans apel, si typiquement allemand...

L'officier me regardait sans rien dire. Au bout de quelues minutes, ila poussé un soupire avant de murmurer:

"En tout cas vous ne devez pas rester ici. Je vais vous sortir de là. En dehors de Varsovie, dans un village, vous serez moins en danger."
J'ai sécoué la tête, lentement mais avec fermeté.
-- Non, je ne paritrai pa. Je ne peux pas.
A cette réponse, il a sursauté. Il venait enfin de comprendre pour quelle raison je me cachais parmi ces ruines, visiblement.
-- Vous... vous êtes juif? m'a-t-il demandé d'une voix oppressée.
-- Oui."

Pour la première fois depuis notre rencontre, il a décroisé les bras et s'est assis dans le fauteuil ui flanquait le piano, comme si cette révélation demandait d'être mûrement considérée.

"Euh, oui, certes... Sa voix était à peine audible. Dans ce cas je comprends, en effet."

If you have read or seen The Pianist, you know that he asked Szpilman to show him his hiding place in the attic, and that he brought him bread, sausage and raspberry jam to sustain him while he protected him; you know that it would be the officer who would die, while Szpilman would return to the radio in Warsaw and play again, his first piece that same one with which he left off at the beginning of the invasion, the same one he played for Hosenfeld, Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp Minor.


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