husband were smiling as they looked down at a baby curled up inside the peach, which had split open. I could see that pictures were helping to tell the story, but I did not know what the story was.
I looked at every page. A monkey and a dog were dressed up as humans and fighting with swords; a boat was sailing on a sea and heading for an island. I decided to read the story by myself. But there were a few big words I did not know.
When Okuma-san went outside for his evening walk through the gardens, I examined the pictures in the book again. Two were in colour. Others were shaded in black and white, as if they had been drawn with a pencil, or maybe with pen and ink. Okuma-san had three pencils in his shack, and these were kept sharpened in a small jam jar on the shelf. He had ink and a long pen with a nib that he sometimes dipped into a small bottle. The ink was dark, almost black. He had told me the name of the colour—indigo. In winter, the ink in our school froze on the coldest days. The teachers lined up the stubby bottles on a small table close to the stove, but it took hours for the ink to thaw. On those days, we wore our winter jackets all day, at our desks.
After Okuma-san returned from his walk, he said, “Would you like me to read the story to you?”
I nodded, though I was careful not to let him think I wanted to live with him, just because he owned a book that had pictures of a monkey and a dog dressed as humans.
We sat at the table and I learned, for the first time, the adventures of Momotaro, the boy who floated down the river inside a giant peach and washed ashore, only to be discovered by an old man and an old woman. I especially liked the part about the treasure Momotaro won. This included a hat and coat that made him invisible and a hammer that could turn objects to gold by striking them. If I had such objects, I thought, I would arrange my life so that things would turn out differently. I would start by wearing the hat and coat to make myself invisible. I would slip into the home of my real family and I would stay there. I would remain invisible so that everyone would think I had disappeared and would feel badly. Especially First Father, who had given me away.
That night, when I lay in my bed—a narrow cot that Okuma-san had built across the room from his own—I pulled the covers up around my ears and thought about my first family. I missed them all but I didn’t know if they missed me. Then I thought about the story of the river, which was also the story of the old man and the old woman who found the boy inside the peach. That boy was happy to be found. I wondered what the other stories in the book were about and tried to remember the details of the pictures. I decided that I would draw a story of my own. The next day would be a Saturday, and I made up my mind to ask Okuma-san for permission to hold the long pen with the fitted nib, and to dip the nib into the squat round bottle of indigo ink. I would look for a bit of cardboard or a piece of board as soon as breakfast was over. I was going to draw the great river below the camp. I was going to draw the island in its middle, the one I had been taken to on First Father’s back. But I would change the story. I was going to give it an ending of my own choosing.
In the morning, before I had a chance to ask about pen and ink, Okuma-san went to the corner of the small room that was both kitchen and living space, and lifted a plank that had been propped at a slant against the wall. I’d noticed this when I had first arrived in his house, but had not asked what it was. Okuma-san was not a big man like First Father, and his shoulders were slightly stooped. When he lifted the plank I could see that it was almost as long as he was tall.
“An old tree has given up this gift for me while I must live in this place,” said Okuma-san, as he turned the wood so the flat side faced up. “This is my keyboard and it is made of ponderosa pine, a tree that can live to an old age, four or even five hundred years. Imagine what the earth was like when the tree that gave this wood was no bigger than a tiny seedling. It is the kind of tree that likes to stand tall, and sends out a long, long root.”
He gestured in invitation, and I reached out to feel the wood and rubbed my fingers across the surface. The keyboard had been smoothed and sanded, right to its edges.
“At first, the wood was sticky, maybe more so than Douglas fir, but when I saw it, I understood how it would show its beauty. It was dry when I chose it. That helped. That and the sanding. I began to work on it soon after I arrived here.”
The clear and even grains of the plank, face up, were visible even through the black-and-white keys that had been painted on its surface. On the underside, bits of bark were still attached, as if to remind that this had once been a tree. The bark was as it had grown in the forest, grooved in thick, hard plates. The underside, in its natural state, was as beautiful as the sanded surface.
“Do you see where I have drawn the keys?” he said. “I have made this my instrument. When I lived in Vancouver, I had a piano that was beautiful in both appearance and sound. I played it every day until it had to be sold. But here, if I want to play and have no piano, I must practise some other way. I can do this, as long as the music is inside my head and my heart. Do you see the keys?”
I nodded, but I had never heard anyone say they had music inside their heart.
“There are fifty-two white and thirty-six black keys along the length of the pine. That adds up to eighty- eight—a full keyboard. Have you ever heard anyone play the piano?”
“Missisu,” I said. “I listened from our step. Sometimes I looked at the piano in her house.”
When I saw the question on Okuma-san’s face, I explained. “Missisu lived beside us in our fishing village. That was before the Mounties told us we had to leave.
Okuma-san nodded. “I see. And what was it that Missisu played on her piano before it was taken away on the cart?”
“I don’t know the names of anything. She taught other children and I listened from the step. Sometimes I could hear her from inside our kitchen.”
“I, too, taught children at one time,” he said. “Grown-ups, too. But there were no students after Pearl Harbor was bombed.”
I did not tell Okuma-san about the morning we left our home by the sea, when the whiteness of sound from the piano drifted in front of my face and had to be batted away. I did not tell him about the tears that had rolled down my cheeks while I’d listened to Missisu play. I did not tell him about the hated rice pot banging into my legs while I followed Mother’s navy blue coat, or about the fates that First Father had read aloud so many times. He did not have to know everything.
Okuma-san sat on a rough kitchen chair and placed his homemade keyboard in front of him across two small trestles he had fashioned from tree stumps. The trestles were solid, and narrow enough to stow beside the plank when it was propped in the corner. He inched the keyboard back and forth until it balanced to his satisfaction. Then he adjusted his position, tucking his knees beneath the wood, raising and lowering his heels, planting his feet several inches apart. When both feet were firmly on the floor, he shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly, closed his lips and nodded. His arms hung at his sides in relaxed fashion. Then both hands came up over the centre of the board, acting as if they were not truly connected to his arms.
“Watch closely,” he said. “Watch my hands. Maybe your neighbour Missisu played this.”
He looked towards the pine plank, then tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He had been sitting straight in his chair but his upper body dipped forward suddenly, as if he were entering a place that could not be seen. His fingers began to move against the wood and seemed to be following a familiar path. What I heard was rhythmic and insistent, a rapping against pine. Although both hands were in motion, the fingers of the right were moving more quickly. Okuma-san’s left hand paused briefly and then struck the plank emphatically several times. I strained to hear any sort of melody, but there was nothing to discern, apart from fingers rapping on wood. The sound filled the room of the shack.
Both hands came down at the same time and stopped abruptly. He rubbed at his left hand and shut his eyes. I wondered if he was in pain, but then he spoke again.
“It is a minuet. Minuet in G. Not a long piece, but a good one for piano students to practise once they have already begun to study.”
Okuma-san’s hands were once more suspended an inch or two above the plank, his fingers relaxed and extended. At any moment, they might drop back to the painted keys and begin their race up and down again.
“The man who gave this minuet to the world was called Beethoven. Can you say that?”
“Bait-o-ven,” I ventured.
“Good. He created this minuet 150 years ago. He was a great artist but he did not have an easy life. There were many problems that had to be faced. But he did not give up just because he had problems. He continued to create so others would always be able to listen to his music, even though he could not hear it himself. Because, you
