The Forest of Wool and Steel Read online

  Perhaps sensing my unease, Mr Yanagi broke into a smile. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just be bold. Nobody’s going to trust a tuner who seems uncertain.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to apologize. So long as you appear to know what you’re doing, you’ll be just fine.’

  He was far more experienced than I was, but never set himself up on a pedestal or showed any measure of self-importance and I was grateful for his attention. Having spent most of my life in a very small community, I found it hard to truly grasp how hierarchies functioned. I knew power dynamics existed that went way beyond my experience and understanding.

  I likewise took a slow but steady meander through the canon of music composed for the piano. Until I’d graduated from school I’d hardly ever listened to classical music, so it was a whole new world for me. I was instantly hooked and fell asleep every night to the strains of a Mozart or Beethoven sonata or a Chopin nocturne.

  I’d had no idea there was such a diverse repertoire of music – so many sonatas, concertos, ballads, preludes, scherzos, studies, impromptus – and all performed by the widest possible variety of pianists. I had no sense of degrees of merit. I would never have the time to compare them all, so set myself the task of simply listening to as much as I could, trying not to choose the same pianist twice. Just as a newly hatched chick thinks the first creature it sets eyes on is its mother, so I too grew attached to the first performance I heard of each piece. As far as I was concerned, that pianist was clearly the best. The performance might be quirky, might be an interpretation that played freely with the tempo and dynamics, but if that was the first version I heard, it became the gold standard by my reckoning.

  Whenever I had a spare moment I’d stand in front of a piano, heave open its mighty lid and peer inside. Eighty-eight keys, each with one to three strings attached. The steel strings were taut, and I felt a jolt of excitement each time I contemplated the line of hammers, ranged across the action like an exquisite row of magnolia buds, just waiting to be used. The forest, with everything in perfect balance, was utterly beautiful.

  And here was another thing: ‘beautiful’, like ‘right’, was a totally new word for me. Until I’d found the piano I’d never been aware of things that you might call beautiful, which is a little different, of course, from not knowing they exist. I recalled the milky tea my grandmother used to make me when I came home from school. She’d boil the tea in a small pan, then add the milk, transforming its colour to that of a muddy river after a downpour. I often used to imagine the fish swimming in the hidden depths of the pan. She’d pour out the tea and I’d stare fascinated at the way the liquid swirled around in the cup, half expecting to see a fin or the flap of a small tail. I recognized beauty in that now.

  The delicate frown lines between the brows of a crying baby. The bare mountain trees beginning to bud, and the ecstasy of the moment when the tips of the branches reflect a reddish hue, casting a warm glow across the mountain. The mountain on fire with these imaginary flames would stop my breath and fill my heart to bursting.

  It liberated me to have a word for these things – for the trees, the mountains, the seasons. To call them beautiful meant I could take them out any time I wished, exchange them with friends. Beauty was everywhere in the world. I had just never known what to call it or how to recognize it – until that afternoon in the school gym, when it flooded me with joy. If a piano can bring to light the beauty that has become invisible to us, and give it audible form, then it is a miraculous instrument and I thrill to be its lowly servant.

  Sisters Are Cool

  I remember vividly the first day I went out to tune a piano. Autumn was on its way, the sky a spellbinding blue. I’d been working with the company for over five months. Mr Yanagi was called out to tune a client’s piano and I was to accompany him as his assistant, although in reality I was less of an assistant than an observer. It was a good opportunity to study technique, of course, and how one interacted with clients – the back and forth between client and tuner.

  It’s fair to say I was a bundle of nerves when Mr Yanagi pushed the intercom button outside the entrance to the white block of flats. A lady answered and her voice seemed kind. The door buzzed open, and I calmed myself with the thought that we were here for the piano rather than for her.

  We took the lift to the fourth floor.

  ‘I’m looking forward to this one,’ Mr Yanagi murmured as we strolled down the hallway.

  The door opened to reveal a woman of about my mother’s age. The piano was standing in the first room to our right, where a thick blue carpet covered the floor and luscious heavy curtains hung at the window – for soundproofing, I imagined. Two identical stools were arranged in front of the piano. The instrument itself was a gleaming black baby grand, expertly polished. Not a particularly high-end model, it was nonetheless clearly looked after with pride. When Mr Yanagi played an octave interval I could sense immediately that it was out of tune, only six months after the last tuning, which confirmed that it was regularly played.

  Now I understood why Mr Yanagi had said he was looking forward to working on it. It was sheer pleasure to tune a piano whose owner loved it so much. Pianos want to be played. They are always open – to people and to music, ready to shine a helpful guiding light towards worldly beauty.

  Mr Yanagi struck the tuning fork firmly on his black briefcase. A high-pitched tone rang out and the A above middle C resonated with it. It’s fully connected, I thought. I should explain that each and every piano is distinct and individual, but all pianos are essentially connected. To tune the piano we manipulate the tension of the strings and adjust the hammers until they produce uniform vibrations of pure sound to link the instrument to the multiple musical sounds out in the wider atmosphere. In silence and with a serious look on his face, Mr Yanagi was ensuring that this piano could at any moment harmonize freely with the outside world.

  As he was finishing the job some two hours later, a voice sang out from the entrance to the flat.

  ‘I’m back!’

  Moments later, a young woman of about seventeen stepped into the room. She had black hair down to her shoulders and seemed shy. She bowed slightly, first to Mr Yanagi and then to me, before leaning against the wall to watch silently as Mr Yanagi tapped away.

  ‘Is this to your liking?’ Mr Yanagi played two scales before stepping away from the piano.

  The girl approached tentatively, and let her fingers glide gently and affectionately over the keyboard without answering. I felt goosebumps rise on my bare arms.

  ‘Go ahead – play it, and see what you think,’ Mr Yanagi said, gesturing encouragement. In silence, she pulled up her piano stool and settled down, placing her hands on her thighs for a few seconds before running her fingers lightly over the keyboard. A short piece, both hands travelling evenly up and down and in contrary motion. An étude to train one’s fingers, I imagined. I thought it was exquisite. The notes were precise, elegant. My goosebumps did not go away and my heart contracted a little when the piece was over.

  The girl rested her hands back in her lap, then nodded briefly. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said in a staccato manner. ‘I think this will do.’ Her voice was low and she did not meet our eyes.

  ‘We’ll be going then,’ Mr Yanagi said.

  ‘Oh, please wait a moment,’ the girl said, looking up suddenly. ‘My younger sister will be home soon, so would you mind holding on for her?’

  It seemed odd that her younger sibling should have the final say, but I wondered whether in fact it said more about the girl in front of us and her own reticence.

  As I pondered this, a beaming Mr Yanagi said, ‘Happy to oblige.’

  The girl left the room for a moment and her mother walked in carrying a lacquer tray. ‘Please have some tea while you wait. If my other daughter doesn’t come home soon, you really don’t need to stay.’

  She laid out the china cups and saucers on a small table in the corner of the room, and smiled, clearly a
nxious not to keep us too long.

  Mr Yanagi halted the process of putting his tools away, always methodical. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said with a bow.

  In less than five minutes the front door banged open.

  ‘I’m baaack!’ came a bouncy voice from the hall, and steps approached.

  ‘Yuni,’ called her sister, ‘the piano tuner’s here.’

  ‘Oh good! Glad I got back in time.’

  When they appeared together in the room, I was taken aback to see that their faces were nearly identical. The only difference was that one wore her hair down on her shoulders, while the other had hers in two braids hanging just below her ears.

  ‘Have you already tried playing it, Kazune? If so, I don’t need to.’

  The younger sister – who I now realized could only be younger by a matter of minutes – stopped in the doorway and looked over at Kazune.

  ‘No, you should definitely try it out. We like different things from our piano, you and me.’

  The girl with the braids left the room again, while her sister with a slight bow explained that she’d be back in a moment. ‘She’s just washing her hands,’ she said.

  The other girl was soon back, her hair loose now so I could no longer tell them apart at all.

  Although they looked exactly alike, the piano was a completely different instrument in the hands of this girl compared to those of her older sister. A different temperature. A different humidity. The sound was buoyant, overflowing with richness and colour. Now I understood why Kazune had insisted her younger sister play. With such variation in style, it would take a little finessing to tune the piano perfectly for them both.

  The girl suddenly stopped and turned around.

  ‘Can you make the sound any brighter?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, it’s rather selfish of me to ask.’

  She was a tiny bit solemn in her expression as she said this, and over on the other side of the piano her older sister looked equally serious. I wondered if she too was hoping for a brighter sound. On perhaps she was simply deferring to her sister’s opinion. The younger girl rose from her piano stool.

  ‘I think perhaps you adjusted it so it didn’t resonate as much? I think that suppressed the sound and made it a little darker.’

  Mr Yanagi smiled and nodded. ‘I understand. Let me take another look.’

  He adjusted the pedals and set the dampers so they lifted more easily. And that’s all it took for the sound, which had moments before been a little subdued, to be set free. In this small room it certainly felt brighter. But was that acceptable? The more strident tone fitted the younger sister’s performance, but what effect would it have on her older sister’s more serene style of playing?

  The younger girl sat down to try the piano again after Mr Yanagi had adjusted it. ‘Oh! It rings out so much more clearly now!’ She stopped playing after a moment, stood up and gave Mr Yanagi an excited little bow. ‘Thank you so very much.’

  The older sister bowed in turn. Lined up side by side, they really were two peas in a pod, performing gestures in tandem. The younger one probably had the broader smile. The way each played the piano, however, was utterly and unmistakably distinct.

  The sun had already set but the little white company car in the car park had grown warm and stuffy. Mr Yanagi placed his bag with his tuning tools on the back seat and opened the passenger door.

  ‘So what did you think?’ he asked as he squeezed into his seat.

  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the sisters or the piano, and hesitated.

  ‘The way she plays is always so delightful,’ Mr Yanagi said, chuckling, his eyes creasing up with mirth. ‘I haven’t heard such spirited playing for quite some time.’ He glanced over at me for a reaction. ‘It was so passionate, don’t you think? Makes it even more worthwhile tuning that piano.’

  ‘I wish she’d played a proper piece, though,’ I said. It was hard to tell if I could get away with showing any more enthusiasm.

  Mr Yanagi shook his head vigorously so that a section of short black hair fell across one eye. ‘That was a Chopin étude. It’s short, but if she’d played anything longer we would have had to leave. We spent more time than was allowed in our schedule.’

  A Chopin étude? I knew very little about classical music but could recognize some pieces, and surely that wasn’t Chopin. If anything, just a few finger exercises, I thought. And then it hit me.

  ‘Didn’t the younger sister play the Chopin étude?’

  Mr Yanagi turned to look at me from the passenger seat, wide-eyed and eyebrows raised. ‘What? You mean – you prefer the way the older sister plays?’

  I nodded. Of course I did. I could honestly say it had touched my heart. I had never heard music communicated with such emotion and poise in equal measure.

  ‘But why?’ He wasn’t going to let this go. ‘The older sister’s performance feels quite banal. She’s very precise, sure. But when it comes to flair, the younger sister has it in spades.’

  Was the older sister’s playing so banal? Perhaps my inexperience with the repertoire for the piano led me to think that an average player was properly talented. The image came to me again of a baby chick cheeping as it toddled after its mother. This had been my very first experience of going to tune a piano in a home, the very first time I heard a client play. Perhaps that was why it was so special to me?

  No, it wasn’t. I refused to think her playing was ordinary, it was undeniably superior. As far as I was concerned it was close to magical. It moved me, made my eardrums ring, sent pleasurable chills up and down my body. I would never ever forget it.

  ‘Her playing is really quite extraordinary,’ Mr Yanagi said. ‘The younger sister, I mean.’

  I nodded. The younger sister was good, her performance vivid and full of joy. Surely she’d had no reason to want the piano tuned to a brighter sound than it already had.

  I pressed on the clutch and let down the handbrake slowly.

  And then I understood. It wasn’t for herself that she wanted the cleaner, more sparkling sound from the piano, but for her older sister, whose playing was somehow darker and more restrained.

  ‘I get it,’ I said suddenly, and Mr Yanagi shot me a glance.

  ‘What? You’re being very weird,’ he said.

  ‘Sisters are cool,’ I explained.

  Mr Yanagi laughed. ‘Especially twins, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They’re both good pianists, and they’re both adorable,’ he said cheerfully, stretching his feet out in the footwell.

  Although I now felt even less confident of my ability to assess the quality of anyone’s piano technique, it was the perfect first home visit. If I could continue to work along these lines, then I would surely keep on learning, slow and steady.

  Tuning Is Like Cheese

  The berries on the yew trees that lined the streets of the city were changing colour now, brightening everything with their rich gleaming reds and purples. When I lived up in the mountains, I’d long for the wild kiwi fruit and grapes to ripen so I could pop one of each into my mouth on my way to and from school every day.

  ‘Is anybody going to eat these?’ I asked Mr Yanagi as we walked along, side by side.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I wondered if the trees along these roads are considered public property? Are we allowed to pick the berries?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The onko. Autumn’s come late this year.’

  As I was speaking I realized that city-dwellers had a different name for yews – not onko, but ichii.

  ‘You know a lot about them,’ Mr Yanagi said, sounding impressed. ‘I don’t know any names of trees. Where did you learn them?’

  Well, I’d never consciously given it any thought. Certainly I grew up surrounded by trees, but only now did I realize I knew them by name. But, just like being able to tell salmon and greenlings and white-spotted char apart, this knowledge didn’t amount to anything useful.

  ‘I just know th
e names of trees, that’s all. It doesn’t serve any purpose.’

  In the mountains it was much more useful to be able to tell apart the types of wind and cloud so you could accurately predict the changing weather.

  Trees are trees. They are there whether I know their names or not, budding in spring, heavy with leaves in summer, laden with berries in autumn. When I was a child, playing in the woods on an autumn day, I’d hear the gentle plop of berries and acorns falling around me. It was a soothing sound. Just knowing they would fall whether I was there or not brought me peace.

  I recall one particular time, when I had just turned ten, playing in the woods and thinking that even if I collapsed right at that moment and stopped breathing, the berries and the acorns would keep on gently dropping to the ground. It filled me with a curious sense of liberation, creeping up from the earth and through my feet. I am free, I thought. Then the wind turned, and cold and hunger sneaked up on me, and all at once I remembered the particular challenges of being human.

  ‘You must know the names of flowers, too?’

  The question pulled me out of my reverie. Flowers? I knew a few that grew in the mountains but none of the ones you find in a florist’s.

  ‘It’s pretty cool to know the names of flowers,’ he said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do. Not knowing things means you’re not interested.’

  I began to feel a little low as a result of this conversation. It was as though by discussing the trees and the flowers – things I had some knowledge of – the huge gaps in my musical knowledge were somehow widening. The client we’d just visited had asked me about a particular pianist’s tone, a famous pianist by the sound of it, and I had been left floundering.