Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

The Piano Tuner

In the winter of ‘15
I sat in the void
of my living room
a month into our move
to Sydney
with the first possession to arrive
from our last home in Singapore
the old piano
which had been shipped separately
in a custom wooden crate.

I found him, rated five stars
in the yellow pages
and he turned up
on a Tuesday morning
a man in his sixties
with eyes like burning rhinestones
heaving open the piano’s chest
exposing its mighty rib cage.

he sat tuning the aging strings
each key with surgeon’s fingers
feeling the vast exo-skeleton
of the old instrument
all the while regaling me
with tales of Vietnam
the golden beauties of Saigon
the music he played in the clubs
the persimmon skies at dusk
that punctuated bombs and grenades
as the war drew to a close.

we took a tea break and he meandered
into how I should invest
in a new piano
bigger, to exploit the acoustics

and I told him my personal tale
of the piano’s journey
through the flames of Desert Storm
a lost soul in the thick of war
pitchforked to safety
the miracle of pure chance
while oil fires turned to ash
surviving traces of life.

I thought I saw his jaw clench
his face flush carnation
a spark of a connection
between strangers
forged by our wartime sagas
and lifting the wooden frame
closed the piano’s heart
the speckled skin of his hands
shining like white magnolias.

and when he left, I wanted so much
to touch his hand
run my fingers
on the pronounced strings
of his metacarpal bones
convinced that I would hear
the tones of a harp
a music faint and sublime
held in them somewhere