speaking of steinways & hearths

speaking of steinways & hearths
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

This is my grandfather's Steinway.

For a long time it lived in the house that Bompa built, nestled between the dining room and his richly outfitted bar that smelled sweet like the masterful martinis that cooked his liver and put him in his grave.

He was a WWII vet who saw Guadalcanal and told great stories about beer rations and contests with sawdust and ice and deep pits dug on South Pacific beaches to see who could keep their beer the coldest for longest in that tropical heat. He told the story of how, as a communications officer, he and a few fellow soldiers were left on the island to create radio chatter while the others shipped out for elsewhere, in the hope the enemy would hear and presume the island was still occupied.

The others shipped out in a hurry and left all their beer behind.

My Bompa told that story laughing; told of the plunder; the abandoned beer pits like sea turtle nests loaded with fresh eggs.

He never mentioned the fear of being a lonely mark for Japanese bombs.

When I'd ask him to tell me a war story -- a real battle story -- he'd say he spent his time hiding out in pineapple fields, and then he'd make another martini, tenderly working the essence of a lime peel around the rim of his glass.

Once I found and furtively read a letter he wrote to his mother from the Pacific theater. The images are all I recall: the dark fear of an air raid and then, the planes gone, the slow stirrings, the murmurs of conversation, and out of the warming stillness: the sound of a piano, playing.

The letter closed with words of gratitude and love.

The Steinway was his one holy relic, and still he let his grandkids pound on it. "Careful. Gently," he'd urge us. But still: He let us.

My sister and I played Heart and Soul on this keyboard so often that he insisted on paying for lessons one summer so he could hear something else.

My aunt has it now. I snapped this on my cameraphone when I was in Seattle at the tail end of July. Her grandson managed to nick a corner off the right hand side. I winced when I saw the jagged break, composite layers of deep red varnish peeled back under the serene concert hall black, like a freshly skinned knee flushed wet with the rising blood.