TheBanyanTree: The Piano Tunas who forgot their scales

[peter macinnis]

The granddaughters are about to head off for a holiday, so we minded 
them today while the parents packed. They wanted the stories from my 
monster book, and they liked this one, even though they missed e of the 
fine detail. I can afford to wait...

* * * * * *

Steinway was very worried. He had forgotten something, and whatever it 
was, he knew it was important for piano tunas.

He phoned his friend Bosendorfer. “I’ve forgotten my scales,” he said.

Bosendorfer said nothing. “Hello?” said Steinway. “Are you there? Answer 
me!”

There was a pause, then Bosendorfer answered slowly. “Yes, I’m here. 
What are scales?”

“I’ll call you back,” Steinway told her. He realised now that this was a 
serious problem.

Within half an hour, Steinway had called all the other piano tunas in 
his octave. Pleyel, Yamaha, Erard, Kawai, Bechstein and Brentwood were 
all equally puzzled when he mentioned the word scales.

They all agreed that scales were important for a piano tuna, so Steinway 
called a meeting at his house. Pleyel was a bit crotchety when they 
asked her to take notes, but she agreed when the others said the notes 
only had to be minimal.

Just as they were about to begin their discussions, there was a loud 
crash from Steinway’s kitchen. They all jumped up as the kitchen door 
opened slightly, and a strange yellow snake pushed into the room.

Steinway, who everybody agreed was highly strung, started to run up the 
curtains, but the others called him down as more of the snake appeared, 
and they saw that it was knotted. “It’s just the front end of a 
forgetful elephant,” said Yamaha.

Steinway dropped lightly back to the floor and nodded to her. “I knew 
that,” he said, and the others smiled quietly but said nothing.

Steinway walked over and opened the door wide. “Come in,” he told the 
small yellow elephant who stood there. “You might be able to help us!”

“How’s that?” asked the forgetful elephant.

“Well, you’re a forgetful elephant, and we’ve all forgotten our scales. 
We need help from a forgetting expert, and that’s what you should be.”

The elephant stood silently, thinking. “I’m a forgetful elephant, am I? 
Thanks, I was wondering about that. Have you tried tying a knot in your 
nose? That’s what I do…”

Bechstein laughed. “The knot was how we knew what you were,” he said. 
“We’ve all got fishy noses, full of bones. They won’t knot, not at all! 
Now do you know anything about scales?”

The forgetful elephant looked down at the knot in his trunk. “That 
knot’s to remind me to have a bath, so that’s no use, but somebody once 
told me I was a scale model of an elephant. Could your scales be 
anything to do with that?”

The piano tunas looked at each other and all shook their heads.

“Well that’s about it. Would you mind if I had a bath while I’m here?”

“Not at all,” said Steinway, pointing at a door. “Through there…”

“Thanks,” said the forgetful elephant, walking out through the kitchen 
instead and crashing into things. They heard the screen door slam and 
there was silence.

“That’s the last we’ll see of him,” said Kawai. “Probably just as well, 
given how heavy and clumsy he is.”

“That’s it!” shouted Brentwood, excitedly. “Shops use scales to weigh 
things! Has anybody been putting on weight lately? Is anybody on a diet?”

The piano tunas all looked at each other and shook their heads.

“I once worked at La Scala in Italy,” said Yamaha. “The name means 
ladder or staircase. Has anybody been involved with stairs or ladders?”

Bosendorfer had one worked in the movies, and liked to remind people of 
it. “I once saw the famous equinox, Ginger Rogers, dance sideways 
upstairs in high heels,” she said.

“Well, you wouldn’t forget that, would you?” Yamaha answered. “But I 
think we can forget that one. What other sorts of scales are there for 
us to forget?”

Erard was shy and spoke quietly. “Well, we are sort of fish, aren’t we? 
Could we have forgotten those scales?”

“I oiled mine this morning,” said Kawai, looking around. Most of the 
other piano tunas were nodding.

“And I cleaned mine last night with a brush,” said Pleyel.

“So did I, now I think about it” said Erard. “So we can cross that sort 
of scale off the list.”

“Look!” said Bechstein, who was standing and looking out the window. 
“There’s Hugo the sinking goose. They’re heavy, so I’ll bet he knows all 
about scales!”

Erard and Pleyel tried to remind him that they had already done weighing 
scales and ruled them out, but it was too late. Hugo waddled over and 
poked his head in the window and there was a racket as Bechstein 
explained the problem and Erard and Pleyel tried to explain that it wasn’t.

Hugo nodded. “Well if you don’t want weight scales, how about boiler 
scales? In winter, I sleep in a boiler to keep warm, and the insides are 
covered in scales.”

The piano tunas shook their heads. They would remember scales like that.

Hugo took his head out and put one foot on the window sill. The woodwork 
creaked and the house rocked. He pointed at his legs. “Birds have scales 
on their legs. Is that any help?”

They shook their heads. “No good? I’m off then, but look, there’s 
Hyacinth the gutter otter. Don’t mention that she’s heavier than I am, 
and she might help you!”

“We understand,” said Steinway, “because we don’t like people mentioning 
cats.”

The piano tunas leaned out the window and called Hyacinth over. Steinway 
winced when he saw the furrow she made as she walked along through his 
garden, but he said nothing.

Hyacinth gave them a long talk about Mohs’ scale of hardness, which none 
of them understood, and then she wandered off again, making another 
furrow and breaking a water pipe, so the furrows started to fill with water.

Steinway went off to phone for a drain monster, and the others kept talking.

They discussed scale insects, the scales on lizards and snakes, the way 
that some people scale mountains, and Yamaha remembered how she had once 
had trouble from a motor-cycle maker. “They wanted to sue me for using 
their name, and I went to see a goth raven who wears a law suit all the 
time, and he said there was a scale of charges that was called the 
scales of justice.”

Everybody agreed that goth ravens were rotten to the caw and then 
everybody started talking at once.

They stopped when they heard cries for help. Looking out the window, the 
piano tunas saw that a roll model had stumbled into the water in the 
furrow. Bosendorfer jumped bravely out of the window and straight into 
the water. She dipped her nose under the roll model and pushed him to 
the edge, where he scrambled out.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m a bit soggy: could you put me in a low oven for 
ten minutes or so?”

The piano tunas did as he asked, and they sat around as he basked in the 
oven, telling him how they had forgotten their scales.

The roll model thought about this.

“The only scales I know are temperature scales, but you’re all cool cats …”

“Please don’t mention cats!” said all the piano tunas at once.

“Yes, sorry,” said the roll model. “I feel the same way about bread 
knives. Look, I can’t help, but I’ll make up for what I just said by 
baking you some nice bread."

The piano tunas were getting hungry now, and Steinway was still on the 
phone. “Yes please!” They chorused.

They moved out of the kitchen and left him to it as the seven piano 
tunas worked through the dictionary, but they were no closer to working 
out the answer.

Out in the kitchen, the roll model was singing. The piano tunas had 
heard the tune before, with different words. It was a catchy tune that 
made them think of dancing with children over Austrian hills full of 
music, but they couldn’t remember the words.

Dough is what we use for bread,
Raise is what it has to do;
Me’s the bloke that bakes it, and
Far it must be kept from stew…

They loved the tune, though, and one after another, they joined in, just 
humming along.

Then Steinway came back in, singing the words they had all learned when 
they were young. “The scales have fallen from my eyes,” he said.

“And ours!” shouted the others, and the whole octave of piano tunas 
swept in the kitchen to dance around the roll model who had found their 
scales. The kitchen was a terrible mess afterwards, but that’s another 
story.

*Notes (for groan-ups):*

All words in this story were fine-tuned and all musical instruments in 
this story feature catgut, by special request of the players.

All chromatic scales have been adjusted for the comfort of beings with a 
preference for black and white.

Requests for interviews with the piano tunas will be politely staved off.

The working notes for this study are available to scholars.

*Reference*: T E Carhart, /The Tuna Shop on the Left Bank/.