Edgar blew out the candle and lay back. It was cool in the room. On the roof, branches scratched against the thatch. He tried to sleep, but found himself thinking of the story, of his own journey to camp, of the burned fields and the steep jungles, of the dacoit attack, of how long it had been since he left. At last he opened his eyes and sat up. The room was dark, its features blurred by the mosquito net.

He lit the candle and looked back at the letter. The light of the flame cast his shadow against the inside of the net, and he began to read it again, thinking, Perhaps I will send it to Katherine with my next letter home. He promised himself this would be soon.

Somewhere in the course of the Erard’s journey onto the Plateau, the candle flickered out.

He awoke with the letter still resting on his chest.

He didn’t bother to shave or wash, but dressed quickly and walked straight to the piano room. At the door, he reconsidered, and decided it would be proper to say good morning to the Doctor, and ran back down the stairs to the river. Halfway down, he met Nok Lek.

“Is the Doctor taking breakfast by the river?”

“No, sir, not this morning. This morning the Doctor is away.”

“Away? And where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

Edgar scratched his head. “That’s odd. He didn’t tell you?”

“No, Mr. Drake.”

“Is he often away like this?”

“Yes, he is. Very often. He is important. Like a prince.”

“A prince…” Edgar paused. “And when do you expect him back?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me.”

“Well then…did he have any messages for me?”

“No, sir.”

“Strange…I would have thought—”

“He said you will tune the piano all day, Mr. Drake.”

“Of course.” Edgar paused. “Well then, I will be off to work.”

“Shall I bring breakfast to your room, Mr. Drake?”

“Thank you, that would be very kind.”

He began the day’s work by voicing the hammers, repairing damaged felt so that the hammer strike would produce a good clean tone. Back in England, he often waited until fine-tuning was complete before voicing, but he had been bothered by the tone: it was either too hard and tinny or too dull and soft. He needled the harder felt to soften it and pressed the softer felt with the voicing iron to harden it, reshaping the hammerheads so that they presented an even-angled surface to the strings. He tested the voicing by running through each octave chromatically, in broken arpeggios, and finally by pounding individual keys, so that the hardness deep within the felt would be noticed.

Finally he was ready to fine-tune the piano. He began an octave below the string that had been shattered by the bullet. He inserted lever wedges to mute off the side strings of each note in the octave, so that when the key was struck, only the middle string would vibrate. He struck the key, reached into the body of the piano, and turned the tuning pin. When the middle string was tuned he moved to the side strings, and when this note was in tune, he moved one octave lower– as a builder would first lay the foundations of a house, he always told his apprentices—falling into the familiar pattern, twisting the tuning pins, testing them, key pin key, a rhythm only broken by absent-minded slaps at mosquitoes.

With the octave spanned, he then turned to the notes that lay in between, to set them in equal temperament, so that the notes were all equally spaced along the octave. It was a concept many apprentices often found difficult to understand. Each note produces a sound at a particular frequency, he would explain, Strings in tune with one another can harmonize, while out-of-tune strings produce frequencies which overlap to produce a rhythmic pulse, known as a beat, a synchrony of slightly discordant sounds. On a piano tuned perfectly in a particular key, there should be no beats when correct intervals are played. But then it is impossible to play the piano in any other key. Equal temperament was an innovation that allowed for more than one key to be played on a single instrument, the sacrifice being that no key would be in perfect tune. To tune in equal temperament meant deliberately creating beats, adjusting the strings finely so that only a well-trained ear could discern that they were slightly, if necessarily, out of tune.

Edgar hummed softly as he worked. It was his habit, often to Katherine’s chagrin, that while at work he became completely absorbed in tuning. Do you see anything when you are working? she had asked soon after they were married, leaning over the side of the piano. See what? he had answered. You know, see anything, the piano, the strings, me. Of course I see you, and he took her hand and kissed it. Edgar, please! Please, I am asking how you work, I am being serious, Do you see anything while you work? How couldn’t I, Why? It just seems that you disappear, into a different place, maybe a world of notes. Edgar laughed, What a strange world that would be, dear. And he leaned forward and kissed her again. But in truth, he did understand what she was trying to ask. He worked with his eyes open, but when he finished, when he thought back on the day, he could never remember a single visible image, only what he had heard, a landscape marked by tone and timbre, intervals, vibrating, They are my colors.

And so now, while he worked, he thought little of home, of Katherine, of the Doctor’s absence, or of Khin Myo. Nor did he notice that he had observers, three little boys who watched him through slats in the bamboo wall. They whispered and giggled, and had Edgar not been lost in the Pythagorean maze of tone and mechanics, and had he spoken Shan, he would have heard them wonder how this could be the great musician, the man who would repair their singing elephant. How peculiar these British are, they would tell their friends. Their musicians play alone, and you cannot dance or sing to such strange, slow melodies. But after an hour, even the novelty of espionage wore off, and the little boys walked glumly back to the river to swim.

The day drew on. Shortly past noon, Nok Lek brought Edgar his lunch, a large bowl of rice noodles drenched in a thick broth that the boy said was made from a type of bean, garnished with minced meat and peppers. He also brought a jar of paste made from burnt rice husks, which Edgar painted over the bottom of the soundboard before stopping to eat. After several bites he returned to work.

In the early afternoon, clouds arrived, but it didn’t rain. The room grew humid. He always worked slowly, but he was surprised by his own deliberation. A thought that had begun to plague him when he first started on the piano now returned. In a matter of hours, he would be done with the tuning and would no longer be needed in Mae Lwin. He would be forced to return to Mandalay, and then to England. But I want this, he told himself, for it means I will be home again. Yet the immediacy of the departure became more real as he worked, his fingers raw from the strings, the monotony hypnotizing, crank, key, listen, crank, key, listen, the tuning spreading over the piano like ink spilled on paper.

Edgar had three keys left to tune when the clouds broke and the sun shone through the window, lighting the room. He had replaced the lid on the piano overnight, and raised it while he tuned. Now he could once again see the reflection of the view in the polished mahogany. He stood and watched the Salween flow through its square of light on the piano’s surface. He walked to the window and stared out at the river.

Two weeks until the piano needs to be tuned again, he had told the Doctor. What he didn’t tell him was that now that the piano was tuned and regulated and voiced, to keep it in fine tune would be relatively easy, he could teach the Doctor, perhaps even one of his Shan assistants. He could tell him this, he thought, and he could leave the tuning hammer, This is only right. And then he thought, I have been away from home for a long time, Perhaps too long.