May 1, 2025 · 1 hr 11 min · 22 segments
Yiyun Li joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Piano Tuner’s Wives,” by William Trevor, which was published in The New Yorker in 1995. Li has published eight books of fiction, including the…
Deborah TreismanHostNo entities detected.
There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing Violet to be his wife, the piano tuner had rejected Belle.Which was something everyone remembered when the second wedding was announced.
"Well, she got the ruins of him anyway," a farmer of the neighborhood remarked, speaking without vindictiveness, stating a fact as he saw it.
Others saw it similarly, though most of them would have put the matter differently.
The piano tuner's hair was white, and one of his knees became more arthritic with each damp winter that passed.
He had once been svelte, but was no longer so, and he was blinder than on the day he married Violet, a Thursday in 1951, June 7th.
"I will," he responded in the small Protestant church of St. Colman, standing almost exactly as he had stood on that other afternoon.
And Belle, in her 59th year, repeated the words her one-time rival had spoken before this altar also.
No one in the church considered that the memory of Violet had not been honored, that her passing had not been distressfully mourned.
"And with all my earthly goods, I thee endow," the piano tuner stated, while his new wife thought she would like to be standing beside him in white instead of suitable wine red.
She'd kept herself occupied that day whitewashing the chicken shed, but even so, she'd wept.
And tears or not, she was more beautiful and younger by almost five years than the bride who so vividly occupied her thoughts as she battled with her jealousy.
Yet he had preferred Violet, or the prospect of the house that would one day become hers, Belle told herself bitterly in the chicken shed, and the little bit of money there was, an easement in a blind man's existence.
How understandable she was reminded later on, whenever she saw Violet guiding him as they walked, whenever she thought of Violet making everything work for him, giving him a life.
As they left the church, the music was by Bach, the organ played by someone else today, for usually it was his task.
Groups formed in the small graveyard that was scattered around the small gray building where the piano tuner's father and mother were buried, with ancestors on his father's side from previous generations.
There would be tea and a few drinks for any of the wedding guests who cared to make the journey to the house two miles away, but some said goodbye now, wishing the pair happiness.
The piano tuner shook hands that were familiar to him, seeing in his mental eye faces that his first wife had described for him.
It was the depths of summer, as in 1951, the sun warm on his forehead and his cheeks and on his body through the heavy wedding clothes.
All his life he had known this graveyard, had first felt the letters on the stones as a child, spelling out to his mother the names of his father's family.
There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing Violet to be his wife, the piano tuner had rejected Belle.Which was something everyone remembered when the second wedding was announced.
"Well, she got the ruins of him anyway," a farmer of the neighborhood remarked, speaking without vindictiveness, stating a fact as he saw it.
Others saw it similarly, though most of them would have put the matter differently.
The piano tuner's hair was white, and one of his knees became more arthritic with each damp winter that passed.
He had once been svelte, but was no longer so, and he was blinder than on the day he married Violet, a Thursday in 1951, June 7th.
"I will," he responded in the small Protestant church of St. Colman, standing almost exactly as he had stood on that other afternoon.
And Belle, in her 59th year, repeated the words her one-time rival had spoken before this altar also.
No one in the church considered that the memory of Violet had not been honored, that her passing had not been distressfully mourned.
"And with all my earthly goods, I thee endow," the piano tuner stated, while his new wife thought she would like to be standing beside him in white instead of suitable wine red.
She'd kept herself occupied that day whitewashing the chicken shed, but even so, she'd wept.
And tears or not, she was more beautiful and younger by almost five years than the bride who so vividly occupied her thoughts as she battled with her jealousy.
Yet he had preferred Violet, or the prospect of the house that would one day become hers, Belle told herself bitterly in the chicken shed, and the little bit of money there was, an easement in a blind man's existence.
How understandable she was reminded later on, whenever she saw Violet guiding him as they walked, whenever she thought of Violet making everything work for him, giving him a life.
As they left the church, the music was by Bach, the organ played by someone else today, for usually it was his task.
Groups formed in the small graveyard that was scattered around the small gray building where the piano tuner's father and mother were buried, with ancestors on his father's side from previous generations.
There would be tea and a few drinks for any of the wedding guests who cared to make the journey to the house two miles away, but some said goodbye now, wishing the pair happiness.
The piano tuner shook hands that were familiar to him, seeing in his mental eye faces that his first wife had described for him.
It was the depths of summer, as in 1951, the sun warm on his forehead and his cheeks and on his body through the heavy wedding clothes.
All his life he had known this graveyard, had first felt the letters on the stones as a child, spelling out to his mother the names of his father's family.
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