Free The Piano Maker by Kurt Palka

looking out. There were two windows in the living room, and this one faced southwest onto the ocean. The sky was deep red along the horizon and nearly purple above.
    “Beautiful,” he said. “I imagine on a clear day you can see Maine, and some nights you might even see lights refracting up from below the earth’s curvature. That would be Eastport then, or Cutler. Grand Manan would be more that way. You wouldn’t see it for the trees.”
    He took a few sips of tea and carried cup and saucer to the coffee table. They sat on the sofa and the chair in the light from the floor lamp.
    “You notice I’m not asking any questions, Mrs. Giroux. I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll all get cleared up, but in themeantime, like I said, I’d be glad to lend a hand. Just send someone to let me know.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Chandler.”
    For a moment all was quiet except for some seagulls in the distance.
    “I’m from New York City myself,” he said then. “My parents used to come here with us for the summers so my sister and I could get the air, as they used to say. I always liked it, and when they died I moved here. My sister moved to California. We still write.”
    “And you learned the business here?”
    “The leatherwork, yes. In New York I studied engineering and pattern making, and then here I learned the leatherwork. It’s good to have a second arrow to one’s quiver. And it’s interesting. I’ve been lucky in many ways in my life, Mrs. Giroux. Not in all. I was married for sixteen years, and then my wife died with the Spanish flu. Early on in the epidemic. Quite a few people did, in these parts.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Chandler. I was in London at the time, and we had it there too. I knew some who died from it. My daughter and I were lucky.”
    “Your daughter,” he said and smiled. “Tell me about her.”
    She rose from the chair and found her purse and took out the small leather folder with Claire’s photograph and handed it to him. “This was taken five or six years ago in Montreal. In the backyard of the house where we lived for many years. I too have been lucky in many ways, Mr. Chandler, but not in all. In one important event I was not lucky. But at leastmy situation now does give me time to think. That is the silver lining. I don’t need to look over my shoulder all the time any more, and I can slow down and prepare myself for what is coming.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I think I know what you mean.” He put the photo down on the table and waited a moment, and when she offered no more he said, “About the shoes now – the right one would be the more critical, and it’s fine, you say?”
    “It’s more than fine. It’s very good. Thank you, Mr. Chandler. By the way, did you mean that, that you’d be prepared to lend a hand?”
    “Yes, I do. I certainly do.”
    “Good. Because there is something. We were speaking of Claire just now – well, you’ll be meeting her soon because she’s coming to visit, and I was wondering, Mr. Chandler: Can you drive a car?”

Ten
    PIERRE HAD A TELEPHONE installed at the Tonkin Hill house, and over a relay of Colonial Office exchanges they would talk at prearranged times. The Vietminh attacks had flared up again, and he had been put in charge of a company of Foreign Legionnaires to patrol the countryside and plantations. He was losing men to explosives buried in dirt roads, he said. Dynamite, triggered by someone stepping on a crude switch. Grenades tripped by wires on bush paths. His men were also falling into hidden pits spiked with sharpened bamboo sticks smeared with excrement. But the enemy was never seen. They moved by night; they blended in with the local population.
    She asked if he should be telling her these things on the telephone, and he said it did not matter. Everybody knew. He sounded tired.
    “They hate us,” he said. “That is a well-known fact too.The upper classes still love us and they welcome our money and the jobs, but not these