Less than a week later a knock sounded on our door at the appointed time, loud and insistent, as if someone could not be bothered to use the bell. When I opened the door there stood before me an older man of about my height but with fully twice my mass in his upper body. His torso was the size and shape of a bass drum; he seemed to be all chest. Behind him, almost hidden by his bulk, lurked a slender young man with a narrow mustache and a nervous look on his face. The large man addressed me in a gruff voice. “You’re expecting a piano.”
“That’s right.”
“Where do you want me to put it?”
“Please come in and I’ll show you.”
We live on what in France is called the premier étage, one up from ground level. Our front door opens from a small, plant-filled courtyard onto a straight staircase that leads directly up to our apartment. He took this in as we ascended and he grunted approvingly: “No spiral staircase, that’s good.”
I thought of all the tiny twisting staircases that are so common in Paris and wondered what contortions must sometimes be necessary to deliver pianos. When I indicated the corner of the main room where I wanted the piano, he nodded. “No interior doors or hallways; this will be quick.”
“Will you and your crew need anything special for the assembly?” I assumed that there were at least three or four other men in a truck at the curb, waiting with the piano.
“What crew?”
“I mean . . . Well, how will you get the piano up here? Do you put a ramp on the staircase or something?”
“We’ll bring it up the same way we always do. Trust me; we’ve done this before.”
With that, he and the skinny young man marched down the stairs, leaving the front door wide open. Less than two minutes later I heard a chuffing noise out in the courtyard. I looked out the window and saw a huge black mass—our legless piano—making its way across the cobblestones, borne sideways on the shoulder of the barrel-chested man. The assistant trailed behind, his hand on the tail of the piano but apparently bearing none of its enormous weight.
At the open front door they paused and set the back tip of the piano on the doormat. I raced down the stairs, utterly amazed at what I had just seen and unsure how they proposed to come up the staircase. The older man stood before me, the piano strapped to his back with wide brown leather straps blackened and shiny from years of sweat. They ran diagonally over his shoulders and under his arms and looped around the piano so that the side curve of the cabinet hooked across his right shoulder, its snub tail resting on the ground. He was breathing heavily.
“Surely it’s not just the two of you! Can I help somehow?”
“Monsieur,” he stammered as he gasped for air, “I’ll tell you what I tell all our clients. Just stand clear and let us do our work.”
I ran up the stairs, baffled by how such a huge weight and massive bulk could be moved up the staircase by these two. Suddenly from below came a hoarse and rhythmic shout:
“Un, deux, trois: allez!”
The older man leaned into his straps and tilted forward so the full weight of the piano—nearly six hundred pounds—rested once again on his back. He then headed up the stairs, slowly but methodically. I watched, horrified but fascinated, powerless to help. The piano bowed him low and the straps disappeared into his flesh, pressing deep furrows through his shirt into the muscle and bone below. The younger man followed behind, carrying nothing but holding the tip of the piano and pushing it forward. I thought of the dragging tail wheel on an old airplane whose sole function is to stabilize.
About a third of the way up the stairs the man paused and stood partly up from his stoop. There was a precarious wobble as the mass of the piano swayed lightly and I had a vision of a singular disaster on our staircase; if the piano went, this man went, too. He was literally strapped to his load.
He exhaled hugely, like a draft animal at maximum exertion, and straightened a little. Then, with a quick intake of air through his clenched teeth, he leaned back into the straps and continued up the steps. This pause was repeated once more before the top, all the more terrifying for being higher on the staircase. The young man’s position was almost comically dangerous, as in a cartoon; if the piano slipped he would be crushed instantly.
At last the summit was achieved and the tail of the piano set down once again. The man before me had been transfigured into a red-faced mass of sweating muscle and bulging veins. As if to pause too long would break some strange spell that gave him power, after only a few seconds he once again hefted the entire cabinet and crossed the room, each footstep shaking the apartment mightily. He set it down in the corner on its side. At once the younger man attached two of the legs to the exposed underside. Then the older man lifted the piano to the horizontal while his assistant scurried underneath and attached the third leg.
The whole undertaking from the bottom of the stairs had taken perhaps three minutes, but I felt as if we had shared some major life experience. I had just witnessed the single most extraordinary feat of human strength that I could imagine.
~~The Piano Shop On the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion In a Paris Atelier -by- Thad Carhart
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