Just tell me what keys to push

A man writes a composition for piano called "Piece for Three Hands", and bets people they can't learn to play it. He, however, is able to play it easily.

Just tell me what keys to push

He lay slumped on an armchair, legs dangling over the sides and neck distorted by an ill-placed pillow. A hand dangled pitifully to the floor, inches away from a bottle of sherry. The hand twitched slightly, middle- and forefinger stretching to the pure wool carpet, and began walking itself over to the bottle, which tipped. It had been empty anyway. It rolled off the edge of the carpet and onto the hard wood floor. The sound of a rolling bottle echoed through the house, until it came to rest in a patch of nine a.m. sunshine streaming through a window.

Birds were chirping outside. Distant traffic�"not disturbing, noxious traffic, but the pleasant kind one would enjoy floating through an open window on a Summer day�"mingled with the birds, and hung over the slumped figure like a happy cloud. None of these sounds dared enter the man’s ears, however, for fear of interrupting the swelling, frightful music which currently filled his head. Were one to lean in close to the man’s head, one would surely hear it swelling from within his skull, distant, yet surely deafening from his perspective. It was a piece for piano�"quite a difficult one at that�"and it was, the man was certain, slowly driving him mad.

One sound did manage to penetrate into the man’s consciousness. A car door slammed from outside, causing the slumped figure in the armchair to open a bloodshot eye. It swiveled around in its socket, peering out the window at a truck parked out in the street. Angelo’s Pianos was written on the side. The man groaned, and shifted himself into an upright position. His back cracked. He had been in a terribly uncomfortable position�"it was very hard to lie dejectedly in an armchair. There was a sofa out in the back room, which he could easily have moped on without straining his back, but he hadn’t been able to stay in the same room as it. He had opened a bottle of sherry and instead crashed on the armchair. He was regretting this now, for he has having difficulty standing up.

A few moments later, there came a polite knock on the door. Moving gingerly, the man stood and stumbled over to the door, cursing himself for forgetting about his scheduled tuning. The keys weren’t really that much off, but he had been regularly having Angelo’s Pianos tune his piano every six months, and he had felt that now would be an unwise time to break from tradition. He opened his door, expecting to see either Jeremy or Alexander, long time employees at Angelo’s, but instead he faced a man he’d never seen before: short, trim, though with a scraggly beard and mustache. The man, who had been fumbling with the clasp on his tiny briefcase, straightened as the door was opened, and took an involuntary step backwards. “Mr. Henry Babbage?” he inquired, peering aghast at the man before him.

Mr. Babbage managed to catch a reflection of himself in one of the lenses of the little man’s glasses, and was not at all surprised by what he saw. He looked like Tarzan. Having not endeavored to clean or maintain his appearance for nearly a week, a beard had started to crop up unevenly over his face like some sort of moss. His crowning mane also had an uneven look about it (strands of his own hair could be found tucked under his fingernails). His eyes were those of a hunted animal: bloodshot, with fully dilated pupils and a glint of either madness or terror. He was still unable to completely straighten his back, adding a Quasimodo element to his appearance.

“Dear God!” shouted the man on the doorstep after he had gotten a better look at Babbage. “Sir, are you quite all right? Pardon me for saying so, but you look rather�"ill.”

With enormous effort, Babbage straightened up, patted his unkempt hair, and said “I’m terribly sorry for my appearance. Was out late last night with a few friends. Bit too much to drink, you know. You’re here for my piano tuning?”

The man nodded. “My name’s Paul. Would you like to reschedule? Pardon me again, but you look in a bad way.”

Babbage shook his head vigorously. “No, no, better now than ever. Come on back, I’ll show you where it is.”

Picking up his briefcase, Paul followed him through to the backroom. It was dark. The shades were drawn, and the only light was cast by a lamp on top of the piano. The air was musty, like some sort of cave. Babbage limped over to the windows and drew up the shades, casting light upon a floor covered with dirty plates, empty potato-chip bags, and a staggering amount of empty bottles. Although it looked at first glance like a random mess, the debris’ placement did seem to form a concentrated semi-circle around the piano, giving the scene an almost religious look about it. The effect was heightened by the crooked, black silhouette of Babbage in the window, casting a shadow across the room. Whether by coincidence or subconscious design, the head of Babbage’s shadow rested upon a pile of crumpled papers, lying on the floor. A corner of one of the scrunched up balls poked into the air. Paul peered at it. It was sheet music.

“Well, there she is,” said Babbage, gesturing at the piano without looking at it. He appeared oblivious to the state of squalor around him. “Have at it. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go catch up on some sleep. I haven’t had much shut-eye for the past week or so.”

Paul edged over to the piano and tapped a couple of the keys. “That’s fine by me. Would you like to write me a check right now and I can let myself out? Or…” But Babbage had already left the room. He had not once glanced at the piano.

Paul went about his work, ascending up through the keys, tapping each one with loving gentleness, twisting his little wrenches. He barely glanced at the tiny tuning machine he had with him�"he was blessed with near perfect pitch. Every now and then he paused to play a little Mozart or perhaps a Schubert sonata and maybe even a little Grieg. The backroom had wonderful acoustics. After a while, Paul began not to notice the filth of the place. With the sounds of a piano filling the room, he simply drifted away. Nothing gave him greater joy than pushing the delicate black and white keys.

When he finished, he played a quick piece by Debussy, and felt satisfied with his work. He gently closed the lid of the piano, packed his instruments back into his briefcase, and glanced around the room to make sure he had everything. His gaze fell on the crumpled sheet music. The sun had shifted, and a single column of light pierced through the dusty air and fell directly on the pieces of paper. The little hairs on the back of Paul neck stood on end at such a sight. He went over the picked up one of the sheets. The rustling sound seemed to fill the whole house as he flattened it out in his hands. His eyes widened, and his mouth gave an involuntary twitch. It was the title sheet. Across the top, it read Piece for Three Hands, and then in the corner, the composer’s name: A Rodriguez. His eyes skimmed over the familiar notes. Anyone looking at this for the first time may well have thought of it as a joke. The music was so complicated, the chords so engorged and busy that the piece’s title quickly became something of an understatement; it would have been quite tricky for even two people to play, sitting side by side. Paul smiled down at the tiny black dots which had given so many people anxiety fits, which, of course, was exactly the author’s intention. Paul knew Rodriguez, knew his cruel, sadistic approach to writing music. The melodies were rather nice�"there was no doubt that it was genius, beautiful music�"and yet it was clear that its main purpose was to be more or less impossible to play. Impossible, at least, for mere two-handed people.

The music had caused quite an outrage in the piano world when it was published a few months earlier. Some of the greatest players in the world took one look at it and tossed it in the fire. Very few managed to actually play it, and even then, they often missed notes, and it sounded on the whole pretty awful. They jeered at it and called on Rodriguez to play it himself. He refused every time, though made clear to the public that he could play the piece, and even went so far as to call it “easy”. People unanimously disbelieved him, until one day, Rodriguez announced that he was going to be performing Piece for Three Hands at one of his private mansions in the Swiss Alps. Only people specially invited could attend, and only the most renowned piano players got an invitation.

Paul got lucky. His cousin was at the time an extremely popular jazz pianist, and was one of the few to make the list of invitees (he had scoffed when he had gotten it in the mail. “I don’t give a s**t about this guy’s music. So he learned to play with his feet, who cares? Geez, get a load of this invitation, who does he think he is, Willy Wonka?). Nevertheless, he bought himself a ticket to Switzerland, but had a severe car accident a few days before his flight. He came out of a coma just long enough to delegate his invitation to his little cousin, who had a bit of talent on the piano. Paul, who had always secretly admired Rodriguez’s music, was thrilled to have such an opportunity to see the maestro himself. He had managed to contact Rodriguez�"or rather, his personal assistant�"fill him in on the situation, and had been given the OK. He was in.

His seat had been in the back. Only about a hundred people showed up (a little less than half of the invitees), all of whom were in a state of annoyance or irritation at the super secret gathering. At eight o’clock sharp, Rodriguez had stepped out onto the mini stage where his piano had been awaiting his arrival. He told everyone to remain in their chairs, and not to get up. He assured everyone blandly that what he was about to play was not pre-recorded, that he was in fact going to play his piece as it was, with his own two hands. Members of the audience snorted. A few pointedly yawned. Paul was sure he was not alone in resenting the fact that piano keys were turned away from the audience, so that once Rodriquez had sat down and rested his hands on the keys, no one could see his hands.

Despite this fact, Paul had been blown away. It was clear that the sound was coming from the piano, and not from some hidden speaker. It was clear that Rodriguez’s hands�"what he could see of them�"were indeed managing to hit every note of his piece, and playing it with such expression that it took his breath away. Paul had glanced around midway through the performance, and could tell that most of the people present were impressed, and some even looked incredulous. Clearly they had been expecting Rodriguez to take off a shoe and play with the help of his twos, or else reveal a birth defect which had granted him a third arm�"but no. Both his feet remained on the ground. His slim-cut suit left no room for extra appendages. And yet he played Piece for Three Hands to a fault. It was miraculous.

After the performance, Rodriguez mingled with the crowd. Although Paul managed to exchange a few words with him, Rodriguez seemed uninterested in speaking with him, undoubtedly due to his lack of fame as a pianist. He was a shrewd looking man, with beady eyes which were quite off-putting. When he was grudgingly asked how he had done it, he smiled and chalked it up to his technical abilities. No one that night left in any better a mood than when they had arrived. No one except Paul. He had felt elated, rejuvenated. He, among everyone who had bothered to peak at the sheet music for Three Hands realized that Rodriguez had not published a mere piece of music. He had published a puzzle, one which Paul was determined to solve.

As he had preparing to leave the hall, a woman had come over and smiled at him, apparently wanting to engage in conversation. She happened to be Rodriguez’s girlfriend of about a year. “I could pick you out in the crowd. I can tell you’re the only one who had a good time. You must not play piano professionally.”

They both laughed, and had continued conversing. Paul hadn’t been able to help himself however, and eventually asked her if she knew how Rodriguez was able to play the piece. She smiled slightly. “I can’t say I do, though I do have my suspicions.” She said something then which made Paul quite lightheaded. She clearly didn’t know the impact of she had just said, for she continued to smile serenely, oblivious to the whirlwind taking place in Paul’s mind. He remembered like it was yesterday, when the idea had hit him. He knew, then, what he had to do. He had locked himself away for several weeks with a copy of Piece for Three Hands. His idea had been correct.

To this day, he believed that he was one of only two people who could play it fluidly, and without any mistakes or missing notes. Despite this fact, he had never gone public with the fact. Paul was a shrewd man. As of right now, he saw no direct way of getting himself filthy rich off what he had managed to learn. He was just biding his time.

He nearly leapt out of his skin when a voice growled at him from the shadows. “You play well.” Henry Babbage had sidled back into the room, and was leering at him. Apparently he had not been able to fall asleep with the sounds of the piano echoing through the house. Perhaps he’d been there the entire time Paul had been tuning. The thought unnerved him.

Before he could think of anything to say, Babbage nodded to the sheet still held in his hands. “You know it?”

“Piece for Three Hands?” (Babbage winced) “Yes, I know it well. In fact, I’ve seen Rodriguez�"the composer�"perform it.”

Babbage’s eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted in incredulity. “You’ve seen the b*****d play it before? When?”

“He performed it at his home in Switzerland about a month ago. I managed to get an invitation.” He was not surprised Babbage hadn’t heard about the concert. In fact, the whole business of Three Hands had only been given mild coverage by a few news papers. It was mostly a scandal in the piano world.

“Then you actually saw, with your own two eyes, Rodriguez play this piece?”

Paul hesitated. “Well, yes and no. I mean, I certainly saw him sit at a piano and play it, and I’ll swear before God that there weren’t any hidden speakers or trick devices�"what I heard, he was playing.”

“But…” Babbage was leaning towards him, his unwashed body pungent in Paul’s nostrils.

“But I can’t say I ever actually saw his hands. His piano was angled away from the audience. But I’ll tell you flat out, the man can play the piece.”

“But you can’t know that for sure! You never saw his hands! He must have an extra thumb tucked up under his sleeve! That’s how he can play it. I’m telling you, the piece cannot be played normally! He wrote it as a trick to scam people out of their money!” He was shouting, ranting about, kicking the trash on the floor.

“What do you mean, ‘scam people out of their money?’”

Babbage turned furiously upon him. “He conned me into a bet! The little cheat swindled me�"is swindling me! He has me by the ears, but I’m telling you, it’s impossible. I haven’t slept in a week, trying to figure out how to get all these notes. I’ve tried my feet, my chin, clamping a fork in my mouth and using that�"nothing works!” He grabbed the page out of Paul’s hand. “Look at these first few bars. Tell me these aren’t impossible to play. How am I supposed to play all these notes at the same goddamn time?”

Paul ignored this. He seemed to be missing something. “Are you telling me you’ve met Rodriguez yourself, and that you’ve made some sort of bet with him?”

“Met him? Of course I’ve met him! He dated my sister for over a year though they very recently broke up�"she realized what a scumbag he is. I had dinner with him regularly for a couple months. I had heard that he was some famous pianist, but I didn’t quite grasp the how famous he actually was. About that bet: I certainly did make a bet with him, but I tell you, it’s a scam, it’s a cheat! It’s impossible!

“This is how it came about. This Rodriguez has quite a high-and-mighty attitude, if you’ve ever met him. What a snob! I fancied myself a fairly good pianist�"I’ve been taking lessons since I was a boy. Now I’m not saying that I’m Artur Schnabel, but I can lay down a few Tchaikovsky’s if I like, and maybe throw in a Ravel or two. No miracles, but enough to warrant me a bit of respect�"you’d think! Here’s Rodriguez, listening to me play Suite Bergamasque and begins chortling to himself, right in front of me. When I asked him what was so funny, he just said something like ‘Haha, very nice interpretation, Henry. I’m sure those back flips Debussy is doing in his grave right now are just for a bit of cardio.’ Well how do you like that? Too bad my sister was out of earshot. She’d have seen the kind of arrogance she was dating! I tell him, rightly so, that every person plays pieces differently, and that my interpretation is no more blasphemous than his.

“Well, a few snarky comments down the road, we start arguing about what it actually means to be able to ‘play’ a piece. Well, I’d worked myself into a bit of a corner with this whole ‘interpretation’ business, so all I could do was to plow on and say: ‘As long as you can play the notes, the actual amount of emotion or feeling you put into it has nothing to do with it. You can still “play” that piece.’ And then I said, God save my soul. ‘I can “play” any piece, even if a few of my Rachmaninoff’s wouldn’t be worth paying to see.

“He pounced on me then. Told me he himself had composed a piece that he claimed I couldn’t learn to play in two whole montha. I told him he was crazy�"like I said, playing was just a matter of hitting the right notes, and anyone who can read sheet music can do that. He said he’d make a bet with me. Now mind you, I was wary. I asked him if he himself could play the piece, and he said absolutely he could. I thought ‘what the hell?’ I bet him a hundred dollars.

“He laughed in my face. ‘Come now,’ he said, ‘we are not beggars on the street! I have quite a nice amount of money tucked away, and I know that you are just as wealthy as I am! Why don’t we make it a hundred thousand?’ Of course I balked, but he reminded me of my own philosophy: anyone who can read sheet music can ‘play’ a piece. Two whole months, I would have. Sixty-two days and nights. The deadline is August first. He assured me that the piece wasn’t long�"only a few pages! As you can guess, I accepted.” He wrung his hands in the air again. “But I tell you, he’s a swindler! The piece is impossible! I demanded that he play the piece first, but he refused, and said that if a month passed and I could not play the piece, then he would play it for me, and I’d owe him a hundred thousand dollars!” His face had drained of color. “I’ve been sitting on that bench for over a week. It can’t be done. It’s too hard. I’m going to lose the bet, unless he really is joking, and can’t play it himself.” He glanced at Paul. “And yet you say you’ve seen him play it. What else is there to do but get out my checkbook?”

Paul’s mouth had gone dry. “He bet you a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yeah, and I’m not the only one getting screwed over.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told me after we’d shaken on it that he’s been making bets with people all over the world. He has about a hundred current bets, he showed me his list of everyone involved. He didn’t say so directly, but from what I ascertained, the deadline for all of these bets is August first. If they can’t play the piece by then, Rodriguez is going to clean up. People will owe him millions.”

That’s when Paul realized that he was about to become extraordinarily rich.

As this realization hit him, he was also overwhelmed by the coincidence of it all. He remembered back to his time in Switzerland. It had been Babbage’s sister who had unknowingly given him the secret of the performance! And here he was, in this man’s house, tuning his piano! For this reason, he knew that if he was going to bring down Rodriguez, he would have to let Babbage in on it. It seemed as though it were written in the stars.

“Henry,” Paul said, grabbing the other man by the shoulders. “Mr. Babbage, listen to me. You’re not going to believe this, but listen to me. When I saw Rodriguez perform Three Hands in the Switzerland, I talked to your sister after the show. I asked her if she knew how he played the piece, and…”

“She doesn’t,” Babbage growled. “I’ve grilled her on it myself.”

“No, she doesn’t, but she said something to me that made me realize how he does it.”

If Babbage’s face had been white before, it was nothing to how he looked now. “Are you telling me that… that you know how he does it?”

“I do. I can play it.”

Babbage nearly passed out. “What are you doing standing there?” he roared. “Play it right now!”

“Listen to me, Mr. Babbage, listen. I’m going to tell you what I know. When I was talking to your sister�"very nice girl, by the way�"I asked her if she knew how he played the piece. She didn’t, but she told me this�"are you ready? This is what she said: ‘I don’t know exactly how he plays it, but doing so must really take a toll on the piano.’ ‘Why is that?’ I queried, and she said ‘Well, whenever he plays it, it always seems to get all the keys out of tune. Afterwards, he always has to tune open up the piano and fiddle around with his wrenches before he plays anything else.’ And that’s when it struck me. Don’t you see, Mr. Babbage? That’s how he plays Three Hands. He retunes the piano into a completely different tuning! The keys are no longer in ascending order, but jumbled up in just the right way that playing something like Piece for Three Hands is no longer impossible, but down-right simple!”

They were both suddenly clutching each other by the shoulders�"two complete strangers, having known each other for only half-an-hour or so, were suddenly bound by excitement.

“By God, it’s brilliant!” roared Babbage. “It’s out of this world! But how on Earth are we to figure out what the mystery tuning is?”

Paul laughed out loud. “I’ve figured it out! I locked myself away for nearly two weeks, and worked on it night and day. I looked like you look right now! I have the tuning, and the revised sheet music! I told you, I can play it!”

“Ha! That chiseler’s going to owe me a hundred grand!”

“Not only that! Don’t you see? If you get your hands on that list of bets, we could sell the tuning and the sheet music to everyone who’s sitting at their piano’s right now, trying helplessly to play something that’s practically impossible! Or else we could just threaten to publish it, and have the money right out of Rodriguez’s pocket. We’d be the one’s making millions.”

Both men laughed hysterically. “We’ll be rich, don’t you see?” cried Paul. “I can’t help feeling that you and your sister are as much to credit as I am! We’ll split our earnings fifty-fifty.”

Babbage shook his head. “You can keep it all for all I care. I just want to see Rodriguez’s face when he loses every single one of his bets! Oh, what a day!” He leapt across the room and flung the windows. Summer spilled in with all her glory.