The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart

Author:Thad Carhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780375507007
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

14

* * *

Tuning

AS LUC HAD warned me, my piano gradually went out of tune over the course of the several months after it was delivered. I therefore arranged for Jos, the Dutch tuner who occasionally worked with Luc, to come by and tune the piano properly. This would be the first time that Jos would come to our apartment and while I relished his reputation as one of the best, I was wary of the consequences of his drinking. He agreed to stop by at eleven in the morning and in this I was following Luc’s advice to catch him before noon, before the ballons de rouge.

At half past eleven Jos had not showed up, and I began to be concerned. Just then my wife returned to the apartment for lunch and I explained the situation. She sympathized, and then she added with a dawning awareness: “Wait a minute. When I came into the courtyard a few minutes ago there was a guy in front of the neighbor’s door looking confused. I stopped to talk to the concierge for a few minutes and he just stood there. When we asked him if he needed help, he said no and then he walked out to the sidewalk.”

“Tall and thin, with straggly hair and a red nose?”

“Yes, a very red nose”—inwardly I winced—“and he was carrying a satchel that looked like a doctor’s bag. I thought he was a delivery guy at the wrong address.”

“That’s our man. Which way did he go?”

“I have no idea. He just wandered out to the street.”

This did not augur well. Despite my detailed written instructions, Jos had taken himself only as far as the neighbor’s apartment. Another five meters and he would have been at our front steps. Now there was nothing I could do; I would just have to wait to see what developed. I didn’t have to wait long. A minute or two later the phone rang and Jos greeted me in a loud, affable voice. He spoke slowly in his Dutch-accented French. “I have been at your door, but you were not there.”

“No, Jos, you were at the neighbor’s door. We’re the next one down on the right, just before the back of the courtyard.”

“Ah, it says ‘second-to-last door on right’ ”—he was obviously reading from the paper I had given him—“but that’s where I was.”

There was no point in arguing the detail, so I proposed that he come by and I would wait for him in the courtyard. “All right, then, I’ll come right away. I’m just using the phone in a nearby café.” He hung up and as I held the receiver with its droning dial tone I cursed my stupidity.

“What’s wrong now?” My wife had overheard my side of the conversation.

“Our tuner is settled into a café somewhere nearby and I let him get away. He’s supposedly coming right over.”

Another twenty minutes passed, during which I kept an eye on the courtyard from our windows one floor above. Finally the

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