They sat and ate in silence. One of the brothers began to speak again. Nok Lek turned to Edgar. “Seing To asked me to ask you where you will go when we reach British territory.”

“Where?” said Edgar, surprised by the question. “Well, I don’t know, really.”

Nok Lek answered the boy, who began to laugh. “He says that is very strange. He says you are going home, of course, that is what you should answer, unless you forgot the way. He thinks this is very funny.” The two boys were giggling in starts, covering their teeth. One reached over and held the other’s arm and whispered something. The second nodded and placed another ball of rice in his mouth.

“Maybe I have forgotten the way,” said Edgar, laughing now himself. “And Mr. Seing To, where will he go?”

“Back to Mae Lwin, of course. We will all go back to Mae Lwin.”

“And I’ll wager you will not get lost.”

“Lost, of course not.” Nok Lek said something in Shan, and the three boys began to titter again. “Seing To says he will get home by the scent of his sweetheart’s hair. He says he can smell it even now. He asked if you too have a sweetheart. And Tint Naing said you do, it is Khin Myo, so you will come back to Mae Lwin.”

Edgar protested, thinking, There are terrible truths in the taunts of children, “No, no…I mean, yes I do have a sweetheart, I have a wife, she is in London, in England. Khin Myo is not my sweetheart, you should tell Tint Naing that he should get rid of this silly thought right now.”

The brothers were giggling. One put his arm around the other and whispered to him. “Stop that,” said Edgar, weakly, and felt himself beginning to laugh again as well.

“Seing To says that he wants an English wife. If he goes to England with you, can you find him a wife?”

“I am certain that there are many nice girls who would like him,” said Edgar, playing along with the joke now.

“He asked if you have to be a piano man to have a beautiful wife in England.”

“He asked that? If you have to be a piano man?”

Nok Lek nodded. “You may ignore his questions. He is young, you know.”

“No, that is fine. I rather like that question. Nok Lek, you may tell him, that, no, you do not need to mend pianos to have a beautiful wife. Although it doesn’t hurt, I imagine.” He smiled, amused. “Other men, even soldiers, find beautiful wives.”

Nok Lek translated. “He says it is too bad he must return to his sweetheart in Mae Lwin.”

“It is a pity indeed. My wife has many friends.”

“He said that since he can’t meet her, he wants you to describe her. He wants to know if she has yellow hair, and if her friends have yellow hair.”

This is getting somewhat silly, thought Edgar, but as his thoughts returned to her, he found himself speaking earnestly. “Yes, she…Katherine—that is her name—she does have yellow hair, it has streaks of brown now, but it is still very pretty. She has blue eyes, and she doesn’t wear spectacles, like me, so you can see how lovely they are. She plays music too, much better than I do, you would like very much to listen to her play, I think. None of her friends are as beautiful as she is, but you would still be happy.”

Nok Lek translated for the other two boys, who stopped laughing and stared, enthralled by the description. Seing To nodded sagely and spoke, this time in a sober tone.

“What did he say?” asked Edgar. “More questions about my wife, I suppose?”

“No. He asked if you wanted to hear a story, but I told him not to bother you.”

Edgar was surprised. “No, I would be quite interested. What is the story?”

“Nothing really, I don’t know why he is so insistent that I tell you.”

“Do tell me. I am rather curious now.”

“Maybe you have heard it before. It is famous. It is about the leip-bya–a Burmese word. It is a Burmese story, so I don’t know it well like Seing To. His mother is Burmese. The leip-bya, it is a kind of spirit, with wings like a butterfly, but it flies at night.”

“A moth, perhaps.” There was something about these words which bothered him, as if he had heard them before. “I am unfamiliar with this story,” he said.

“Actually, maybe it is not a story. Maybe just a belief. Some Burmese say that the life of a man lies in a spirit that is like a…moth. The spirit stays in his body, a man cannot live without it. The Burmese also say that the leip-bya is the reason for dreams. When a man sleeps, the leip-bya flies from his mouth and goes about here and there, and sees things on its journey, and these are dreams. The leip-bya must always return to a man by morning. This is why the Burmese don’t want to wake sleeping people. Perhaps the leip-bya is very far away, and it cannot return home fast enough.“

“And then?”

“If the leip-bya is lost, or if in its journey it is caught and eaten by a bilu–how do you say—an evil spirit—then this is a man’s final sleep.”

The boy reached forward and prodded the fire, sending up sparks.

“And that is the story?”

“I told you—a belief only, but he wanted me to tell you. I don’t know why. He is strange sometimes.”

It was warm by the fire, but Edgar felt a chill. From his memory, images of India, of a train ride, a boy falling, a baton flashing in the night.

“A Poet-Wallah,” said the piano tuner softly.

“Sorry, Mr. Drake?”

“Oh…nothing, nothing. Tell him that it gives me much to think about. Perhaps one day he should be a storyteller.”

As Nok Lek spoke, Edgar stared across the fire at the small boy, who sat in the embrace of his brother. He only smiled, his body lost in the smoke of the fire.

The flames grew low and Nok Lek left, disappearing into the darkness and returning with more wood. Across the fire, the brothers had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. It began to drizzle, and Nok Lek and Edgar rose and put out the fire. They woke the boys, who mumbled and followed them up to the shelter. It rained several times during the night, and Edgar could hear the drumming of the raindrops on the mats covering the piano’s case.

In the morning, they struck camp beneath overcast skies. As they floated on, they left the woven mat over the piano. The rain clouds broke in the late morning, the sky cleared. The river, swollen with tributaries, flowed more swiftly. By early afternoon, Nok Lek told Edgar that they had passed into land controlled by the principality of Mawkmai, that within two days they would enter Karen country.

There the British had border posts on the river across from northern Siam, there they could stop, they did not need to travel all the way to Moulmein.

It will all be over soon, thought Edgar, It all becomes but a memory. And without being asked by the boys, he removed the woven mat from the piano and stood at it once again, deciding what to play. A finale, for if tomorrow we leave the river, tomorrow the dream ends, and the pianist will become a tuner once again. The raft floated lightly with the current, and the strings rung with the wave of hammers. Ahead on the bow of the raft, one of the brothers turned to watch.

He did not know what to play, only that he must begin and the song would follow. He thought perhaps he should play Bach again, and tried to think of a piece, but it didn’t seem right now. So he closed his eyes and listened for something. And in the vibration of strings, he heard a song that had risen to the sky weeks ago, one night on the Irrawaddy, and then that moonlit evening in Mandalay, when he had stopped to watch the yôkthe pwè. The song of loss, the ngo-gyin. And he thought, Perhaps this is fitting now. He put his fingers to the keyboard, and as he began to play, the song descended from where it had risen once, sounds that no tuner could have created, sounds that are foreign, new, neither flat nor sharp, for Erards are not constructed to be played on a river, nor to play the ngo-gyin.