Magic Pianos

It’s 1943 and I’m fourteen years old. My father is in the South Pacific on an island called Guadalcanal. He writes to me when he can, but I hear that it’s dangerous and my mother believes that he’s never coming back. She tells me to brace myself for that storm, so when the military men come and knock on the door, there’s no shock. She says she won’t even cry because he was a fool to go, and now she has to work long days at a textile factory. She cackles with laughter when I tell her I think that he’s a hero. “Boy, men have been killing themselves since the dawn of time. Heroes look after their families.”

I go to the Drekon school for boys up in Loudon. It’s a big gray building on a hill overlooking a small town thick with industrial smog. The boys there aren’t soldiers. They’re the boys who are going to send soldiers to their death. They even say so as they walk the halls filled with framed pictures of past presidents of the school. They’re the future bankers, lawyers, and factory owners. I don’t belong here, but my grandfather attended this school, and family of past alumni could attend Drekon so long as their grades were fine.

My mother tells me I need to do something good with my life. I tell her I will, but she laughs when I say it. She tells me, “You have too much of your father in you,” as though that’s the worst thing a mother could say to her son. But secretly I think that’s a good thing. He’s a good man, a hero, whether or not she wants to believe it.

On Wednesday’s after school, I take piano lessons from an old Italian man named Victor. His hair is thin and white, and when he isn’t teaching piano lessons, he’s in the back of his shop repairing them. The shop is beautiful, and it smells like history. It smells like if these pianos and violins could talk, they could tell you stories unlike anything you’ve ever heard. And the boy in me sometimes asks them questions quietly as Victor finishes up his work in the back.

I rub thin lines of dust in the shape of musical notes and I say, “What have you seen? Where do you come from? What do you think about the war?” They never answer, though my hope is that someday they will and I’ll sit with them for hours and write what they have to say. Because I want to be a writer, it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.

Victor takes me in the back and I sit at a Steinway piano made of Walnut and I tap the keys and play some of Chopin’s Berceuse in D Flat and Victor smiles. “You’re practicing, I can tell.” He says through his small spectacles.

“I am.”

“But your heart’s not in it?”

“It is.” I say, and he laughs. Like my mother, a big cackle. And he says,

“If you want to lie to an old man, you’ll need to do better than that.”

“I want to be a writer.” I say.

He smiles. “And what do you want to write about?”

“Soldiers.”

“Because your father is one?”

“Because I believe they sacrifice a great deal, and people like my mother think it’s all a waste of life.”

“And you don’t feel that way, young Charles?”

I stop playing Chopin and I look up at Victor. He never seems to get angry, just curious. I’ve seen a man throw profanities at him in his shop before, and Victor’s tone and his well-articulated responses never wavered. And I wonder how he can do that, because I can already feel my heart pounding at the idea of debating this old man, only to find out that he agrees with my mother.

“I think that the country called, and he answered. And that I’ll do the same thing if the war is still going on in the years to come.”

“Well, I think that’s honorable, Charles. I pray that you never have to experience war, but I do believe there is a great sacrifice in service, and that sacrifice should not go unspoken.”

“Did you serve?” I ask.

Victor pauses for a moment, rubbing the small stubble on his chin.

“In a manner of speaking, I did.”

“And did you regret it?”

He pauses again, his brown eyes staring off into the distance.

“I regret what war does to men,” He says.

“What does it do?”

“Young Charles, there are more ways to die than simply the stopping of one’s heart. There are people out here walking these streets every day who are more dead than my forefathers. And it isn’t only your father who is sacrificing.”

“I-I don’t understand.” I say.

“Maybe in time you shall. Now, enough of this. Your mother pays me to teach you piano, and she is not a woman to cross.”

He lets out a smile, and I laugh. And we play Chopin while on the other side of the world. My father kills, and like Victor says, dies as well.

I’m sixteen in May of 1945 when the war ends. My father returns home in June. When the taxi pulls up to the house, I jump up from my study and run down the stairs and out the door.

“Hey, kid.” He says and smiles as I run into his arms. Mother is working at the factory, and I’m happy about that because I want to pick his brain and finally have a story worth writing.

End of the year writing assignments are due in two weeks, and I want desperately to showcase my best work. I know that Mr Dupoint has contacts in the industry, because he himself is a published author. His novel For There Goes The Tides of War was a great and fascinating read. He wrote it when he was stationed in France back in 1917.

We walk inside, and he asks where mother is.

“At work.” I say.

“Ah, yes. And I suppose she told you she needed to work because I’d run off?”

I nod my head. He tousles my hair and smiles. Letting out a big laugh.

“Your mother never changes. I sent money in an envelope every two weeks. Enough to keep a roof over your head. And she goes out and gets a job. What a woman.”

I smile. I don’t know how long to wait before I ask. But I’m dying a slow death inside.

“H-how was it?” I ask nervously.

“I’m glad it’s over, Charlie.” Again, he tousles my hair. He sits down in the dining room and asks if I’ll get him a drink. I pour him one, and bring it over, and he shoots it down quickly before asking for another. “How’s school?”

“It’s okay.”

“Just okay? That’s a great school my father got you into.”

“I know. It’s just, I uh, I don’t want to be a banker or a lawyer.”

“No? And what do you want to be, kiddo?”

“A writer.”

Another crackle of laughter. The same one that my mother gave me when I called my father a hero, and the same one Victor gave me when he caught me lying, and now my father when I tell him I want to write.

“A writer? For the paper?”

“No. I want to write books.”

“Write about what?”

“I’d like to write about you. I’d like to write about the glory of war.”

“The glory of war?” He says, but I can see blackness in his eyes. The same blackness from when he brought my brother back from the train tracks. Holding him in his arms, and staring off like if someone made a single wrong move, it would be a swift end to their life. "There's no goddamn glory in war, kid."

I hadn’t seen him in so long. And the blackness had returned.

“Just get the hell out of here, Charlie.” He says.

“B-but I,”

“GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE, CHARLIE” He screams and points to the door. "You want to do something with your life, pay attention in that goddamned school and get a job. A real job. So just get the hell outta, Charlie. I'd like to be alone."

“But I miss you. I-I-I haven’t seen you. I just want to hear about your heroics” “

He grabs me by the collar of my shirt. “I won’t tell you again.”

I nod my head and despite my best efforts; the tears begin to fall and he scoffs. My father in his army green. The most handsome man I’d ever seen. My hero. And as I turn to the door, my mother is standing in her factory clothes, her left hand resting lazily on her hip. She’s smiling.

She wraps her arm around me, and my father grabs another drink.

“So, you made it out alive, eh? Well, I told the boy not to get his hopes up. Because a lot of men weren’t coming home. But Charlie kept his hopes, anyway. Nice for Charlie to get some one on one time with his hero, eh Walt?”

My father throws the glass against the kitchen wall.

“A bona fide real-life hero.”

Then they begin to yell at each other. He’s only been home a few minutes. I leave and grab my bike and go to the music store.

I walk in and Victor is in the back with a boy of no older than six teaching him the basics. I sit and wait at one of the grand pianos. I tell myself to calm down, that war is hard. That it was my fault. I shouldn’t have brought that on him so quickly. I should have let him rest.

I whisper to the piano, “You’ve been through it all. You’ve likely seen war, yet you are gentle and kind. Your music creates peace and warmth. You are easy and easy to love.”

Then the little boy comes out from the back crying. “I hate this,” He says to his mother, as she drags him through the store and out the door with the ring of the bell.

“It isn’t gentle and kind for everyone.” Victor says. “It takes patience and understanding before it becomes gentle and kind.”

“Oh, you heard that?” I ask, embarrassed.

“I know you talk to them and want their answers. I know you seek answers from them because you know they’ll never give them to you.”

“I suppose it’s easier that way. Because then I can create my own answers.”

“Perhaps that’s what makes you a writer.” He says, as he walks towards me, taking a seat on the bench next to me.

“Your father is home. But he will never truly be the same.” Victor says and begins playing. “He will have days when he can forget, and days when the war is so clear, he’ll forget that he’s home. In many ways, the father you knew is dead. But in other ways, he isn’t. Just like the Charles, who came here as a sulking 12-year-old boy is now dead, but in many ways, he isn’t. We all die small deaths every day. It’s all a matter of how you choose to carry on. Perhaps your father will beat the worst of it, perhaps not. But if you want to write, find the beauty in all of life’s pain.”

“What if I don’t know how?” I ask.

Victor laughs. Again, that bright big cackle of his that drives me mad, but this time I smile.

“Then you’re no writer.”

It’s 1955. I’m 26 years old and I’m promoting my first book at a coffee shop a block from my childhood home. My hair is slicked back, and the reporter smokes Lucky’s while writing in his notepad. He asks me questions about my novel, Factory Girl and says that there seems to be a large demographic of women who consider me to be ahead of my time.

“What do you think about that?” He says.

“Well, it’s based on my mother. I spent a lot of time idolizing my father as a child because I felt that, as a boy, it had to be my goal to become a man. But being a man is a little more complicated than that, I believe. My notion of manhood was certainly one devoid of happiness and of any kind of aspirations that were my own.”

“What does your mother think about your book?”

“She likes it.” I say with a laugh. “She thinks that my fictitious mind sometimes runs away from me and that the book would be better if it were a bit more grounded.

“Your father is certainly a character in this book, but he isn’t necessarily a heroic figure, is he?”

I stop and look at the newspaper on the counter. I sip my coffee and see a headline that reads. Local Music Shop Owner Dies with a picture of Victor Abate. His stubble from my childhood, grown into a jolly old Saint Nick beard.

His voice echoes in my head at that moment, clearer than the voice of the reporter in front of me.

There are people walking these streets every day who are more dead than my forefathers

“I, uh, think that my father was gravely wounded during the war. Not physically, but certainly mentally. And I feel that perhaps my fictitious mind ran away from me slightly, but he became another child to my mother. And maybe she didn’t mind for a while because I lost my brother at a young age, but it broke her down as it did to me. In my eyes, she became more of a hero, and I began to understand exactly why she wanted to work while he was away. Because she’d heard horror stories of men returning home, and she needed to ensure that a roof was kept over my head. I began to look at the everyday heroics of the women who worked and cared for their children.”

“And how long has it been since your father passed?” The reporter asks.

“Three years ago. I miss him dearly, but I believe that he is happier now.”

I think back to the day he returned. The coldness of his eyes, and the sharpness of his words. The silence was paralyzing, he never told me a thing about the war.

Somedays I fear he was never a good man. And that my memories of him before the war were just snapshots. Just another story of a boy wanting desperately to be loved by his father.

“And what are your plans for the future?”

“I’m here to visit my mother, and I plan to persuade her to leave this town and move in with me. She worked tirelessly to keep a roof over my head and I believe it is now my turn to put one over hers.”

“Do you have another book in you?”

“I believe I do. Although I couldn’t at this moment tell you what it’s about but perhaps something about the magic of pianos.”

“The magic of pianos, you say?”

“Yes. The old man who owned the music store just passed away. His name was Victor, and he was a great friend of mine. I, uh, used to be a very lonely child, and I’d go to his shop early even though I knew he had other students. I wasn’t too keen on the piano, but the smell of aged wood provided me with a great comfort. I’d even ask the piano questions.” I chuckle softly at this. The reporter raised an eyebrow quizzically. “I was a young boy looking to write, and the pianos had history. I prayed that they’d open up and tell me their story, and I could write the world’s greatest novel.”

“Did they ever answer?”

“No. No. Not in so many words. But they still helped me unfurl my own stories. If not for Victor and the pianos, I would have never written this novel.”

We finish the interview, and I shake the man’s hand. I walk out of the coffee shop and head down towards the music store. I walk in and the bell rings over my head and I picture the young boy of six years old, screaming to his mother that he hates the instrument.

There’s a young man in the back who peaks his head out and tells me he’ll be with me in a moment. I tell him to take his time, that I’m simply browsing.

I walk through the store and I sit at a couple of the pianos, and think that I haven’t played one in a decade or so. I haven’t spoken to one in the same amount of time.

So I walk and rub my hands in the light dust all along the storefront and at the end, I see a note written in the dust.

Make the piano talk, or you’re no writer

I cackle with laughter, and then I go to my childhood home to fetch my mother. She opens the door and tells me I’m late.

“You’re too much like your father for your own good.”

I smile, but I hope that I’m not completely like him.