The Piano Tuner and the Night Song

Nora closed the little brass latch on the upright as if it were a lid on some small, careful life. The merchant had left a strip of lemon peel on the sill and a polite thank-you note folded into a coin envelope—an economy of gratitude the town favored—and Nora wrapped the wrench and cloth in their stained linen and set them gently into the leather case at her feet. The shop smelled of varnish and lemon and the faint sweetness of old felt; Pip, the grey cat with a permanent air of mild accusation, blinked at her from the piano stool and then leapt with the theatrical grace of someone with theatrical debts to settle, sprawling across the keyboard as if claiming a throne.

She pressed her palm along the instrument’s fallboard and listened to the hollow hum that lingered after a proper tuning, the kind of small echo that said, for tonight, a house would sleep easier. It had been a precise, slow job—winding the tension, coaxing a stubborn A back to its right breath, and knowing which string to nudge so the whole instrument would calm. Nora’s hands knew the work in the way a map knows a river: a sequence of leanings and lightings, of short fast acts and softer, patient reshaping.

Outside, the street was already settling into the town’s evening rhythm. The bakery on the corner had shut its shutters but left a half-cart of fennel buns cooling on a crate—a town custom: any leftover buns went out with a note for those who worked late. It was a small mercy that smelled of anise and warm bread and it had nothing to do with organs or repairs, yet it made the town feel less like a collection of separate houses and more like a set of rooms in the same long house. A wind-bell on the green chimed three slow rings that meant tomorrow’s weather would be fair; people checked it like a civic recipe.