The Piano Maker Read Online Free PDF

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. Maybeshe’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