Made For Music

Before we moved into our house, the landlady, who lived next door, told us that her daughter Mizuho was a concert pianist.

"She lives in Vienna," the landlord added. "She's been studying there for twelve years."

"It hasn't been easy for her," his wife put in. "People don't like living next door to a music student; it's too noisy."

"She's been kicked out of her last two flats," the landlord said. "She moves in and no sooner has she got the place all fixed up but they want her out."

"It doesn't help that she's a foreigner," they sighed. "So we can imagine how hard it must have been for you, trying to find a house to rent."

In fact, it had been hellish for us to find a place to live in the suburbs of Tokyo, and our landlady's sympathy was appreciated. Few landlords wanted to rent to a foreign couple with a ten-month-old baby, especially when one of them did not speak much Japanese. The house we were moving into had crumbling plaster and rattly windows. The roof was sound and there was a little patch of garden out in front -- a huge rarity in the Tokyo area -- but it was old and dilapidated. In short, it was nearly perfect for a couple with a soon-to-be toddler.

The house was unfurnished except for a grand piano in our front room which almost entirely filled the space. This room had fake wood paneling and a cracking linoleum floor. With its smooth dark wood polished to a high gloss, the piano looked as out of place as a jewel on a dung heap.

"It's Mizuho's," our landlady told us. "We'll be moving it into our new house, but we've had to hire a company with a crane."

A week later, the piano movers wrapped the piano in a blanket, took our sliding glass windows out of their frames and managed to lever the piano out. We shielded our eyes from the sun, watching its slow progress through the air. There was a lot of salty language as they painstakingly maneuvered it into the upstairs window of the house next door.

For five long years, the piano sat silent. Then one day, our landlady came over, her face lit up with happiness. "Our daughter is coming home this weekend!" she informed us. A week later, she proudly introduced me to Mizuho.

"Will you be playing the piano?" I asked eagerly.

"Yes, but I'll try not to make too much noise," Mizuho assured me, creasing her brow.

"Make all the noise you want!" I told her. "We love piano music!"

For the next four years, we could hear her playing from early morning until around ten at night. She was a fantastic piano player and we never once tired of listening to her, but we learned that we could not tell her this. Just mentioning her playing made her nervous. "I hope it wasn't too loud!" she would say anxiously. Clearly, her experiences in Vienna had made a dint in her confidence.

"It wasn't loud at all -- it was heavenly! You have amazing talent!"

"Really, if it is too loud, you must complain. My father has put in sound insulation, but I can play at different hours if it bothers you."

We finally had to give up complimenting her.

Lying on our futons, my husband and I would smile and sigh as a ripple of chords came wafting across. It made us think of birds singing, water splashing, a sunlit morning. "Debussy, isn't it?" one of us would ask the other.

"I think so. What was that thing she was playing earlier?"

"Tchaikovsky?"

"I thought it was Mozart."

"Maybe it was."

"What was that piece you were playing first thing this morning?" I once made the mistake of asking Mizuho.

She bit her lower lip and clasped her hands. "I'm so sorry! Was it too loud?"

No amount of reassuring could persuade her that it was not.

In fact, it was never too loud. Her music would soothe my headaches. It lulled our kids to sleep. We felt so grateful that we could retire every night to a virtual piano concert. When our eldest was six, Mizuho offered to give her piano lessons in return for English lessons from me. I eagerly accepted, and we got the better deal.

Clearly, Mizuho was a dedicated musician -- almost obsessively so. I marveled that our landlady, who did not seem pushy or academically minded and was by her own admission no musician herself -- should have a girl for whom music was everything. I pictured Mizuho as a small child, forced to practice hours a day. Our daughter had to be pushed; what a lot of patience our landlady must have had!

"I don't know how you did it," I told her once, after we'd pestered our eldest to do her twenty minutes of practice. "But whatever you did, it really worked!"

She stared at me. "I didn't do anything. In fact, I begged her to stop practicing. I had to bribe her to go outside and play with her friends." She sighed. "If I hadn't interfered, she would never have left the piano at all."

That night Mizuho played again. I think it was Vivaldi.