Inexorable. The first time I came across this word was in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, The Great Gatsby. It described the protagonist’s simple and naive faith in the distant, unreachable beacon of beauty and happiness that Daisy, his lover represented.
In a similar fashion, the piano tuner’s slow and somnambulistic glide towards his destiny in a world far from his own is also inexorable. Daniel Mason’s protagonist Edgar Drake is a 19th century Londoner with an inner longing for a different reality that his insipid life as a piano tuner could never bring about.
After receiving a rather mysterious commission to repair and tune a rare piano, an Erard, which had been shipped to the remote northeast jungle of Burma, he sets on a journey that would take him half way round the world, cut across India by train, and from Calcutta, by ship to Rangoon. From there, he would be shepherded by army officers to finally meet the eccentric army surgeon Dr Anthony Carroll to whom the piano belongs. What starts out as a simple mission, albeit strange in its circumstances, slowly develops into a unique drama of poetic misadventure.
Much of the novel charts Drake’s immediate experience of his surroundings, and his restrained inner response to them. Drake’s character is the typical man of Victorian restraint, in thought, speech and action. And it is this restraint of the mind and the senses, so alien to the situation in the jungle of Burma, which leads him inexorably to his destiny.
Apart from the captain of the army, he also meets the beautiful and mysterious Khin Myo with whom he strikes up a friendship that develops cautiously into an intimacy that could never be. Drake is also initiated into the tragic horror of a hunting accident involving a native child. It is horror he would never have encountered in his own environment. The same could be said about the exotic mystery of Khin Myo, who speaks fluent English. It is something he could never have imagined. The hunting accident and news of rebellion uprising in distant areas create for the reader a sense of impending upheaval but it is continually kept in the background so as to remain a threat only and not a reality.
Taking stock of his experiences, he writes a letter to his wife, Katherine, and reveals to her that he had always allowed dreams to melt into reality, but now realities threaten to melt to only dreams. And yet, uppermost in Drake’s consciousness is his duty as a piano tuner. However, he does not get to do it until we cross the three quarter mark of the novel.
Even after his meeting with the eccentric Dr Carroll, whom he finds strangely admirable, the aim of his mission is still momentarily set aside – instead a hunt for botanical information in the wild is scheduled. When, at last, Drake is brought to the piano, it seems to be a meeting of lovers – the tuner, previously separated from the piano, now finds a deep sweetness in “meeting” the object of his contemplation.
“The room was dark. The doctor walked across the floor to the windows and opened them. Outside, the view spilled out over the camp, to the Salween drifting past, dark and brown. The piano was covered by a blanket made of the same material he had seen on many of the women, decorated with thin multicoloured lines. The doctor removed it with a flourish. ‘Here it is, Mr. Drake.’ The Erard stood half in the light of the window, the smooth surface of its case almost liquid against the rough backdrop of the room.”
When he begins his task of tuning the piano, it is with the utmost care and attention of a master of his craft, and Mason’s knowledge of the subject draws us deeper into Drake’s inner world. Drake’s precision in his work is extremely engaging, and his devotion to the beauty and historic significance of the rare piano achieves a poetic luminosity that is surprising.
Here is a man whose life and livelihood in his native London wouldn’t have mattered much to anybody else, but thousands of miles from home, in the middle of a wild jungle, he performs his duty with the utmost care. It is as if his whole life has been lived thus far to arrive finally at this point.
And, strangely, he is asked to perform on the piano at a gathering of Shan chiefs whose co-operation is necessary to maintain peace in the region. Here the humble piano tuner is elevated to the status of an artist who has the marvellous power of transforming the warring chiefs with his music. The artist hitherto concealed all his life finds absolute creative expression in one evening. And serves a much larger, more significant purpose.
Surely this is the unique point of the novel: that an Englishman, attuned to a life of restraint can finally attain a moment of luminosity that renders him worthy and heroic. And having found this new sense of being, he finds that he no longer has any real desire to return. More inspiring is his discovery that the admirable Dr Carroll is regarded as a prince among the Shan chiefs.
His bubble is quickly burst, however. News of an impending attack on Dr Carroll’s fort in the village of Mae Lwin turn his hopes for a longer stay into ashes. What is worst, but right, is that the care and removal of the large but fragile piano to a safer place is entrusted to him. Things fall apart as the threat of real danger encroaches, and like the piano, a poetic anomaly in the tension-filled jungles of Burma, he is swept inexorably to his destiny, but gains a blazing, transient, moment of beauty.
Mason’s skill at keeping a tight rein on the denouement of the plot, combined with his sublime mastery of engaging our attention in the actual work of tuning a piano, brings about a pressure point that explodes when the reality of the political conflict finally collides with Drake’s inner reality. It is storytelling of an excellent standard.