The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier - Hardcover

Thad Carhart has lives in France for much of his life. He was educated at Yale and Stanford and has worked as an events coordinator in the music industry and as communications head of Apple Compter’s European division. A freelance writer and consultant, he lives in Paris with his wife, Simo, and their two children.

Luc

Along a narrow street in the paris neighborhood where i live sits a little
store front with a simple sign stenciled on the window: “Desforges Pianos:
outillage, fournitures.” On a small, red felt-covered shelf in the window
are displayed the tools and instruments of piano repair: tightening
wrenches, tuning pins, piano wire, several swatches of felt, and various
small pieces of hardware from the innards of a piano. Behind the shelf the
interior of the shop is hidden by a curtain of heavy white gauze. The
entire façade has a sleepy, nineteenth-century charm about it, the window
frame and the narrow door painted a dark green.

Not so many years ago, when our children were in kindergarten, this shop
lay along their route to school, and I passed it on foot several times on
the days when it was my turn to take them to school and to pick them up.
On the way to their classes in the morning there was never time to stop.
The way back was another matter. After exchanging a few words with other
parents, I would often take an extra ten minutes to retrace my steps,
savoring the sense of promise and early morning calm that at this hour
envelops Paris.

The quiet street was still out of the way and narrow enough to be paved
with the cobblestones that on larger avenues in the city have been covered
with asphalt. In the early morning a fresh stream of water invariably ran
high in the gutters, the daily tide set forth by the street sweepers who,
rain or shine, open special valves set into the curb and then channel the
flow of jetsam with rolled-up scraps of carpet as they swish it along with
green plastic brooms. The smell from la boulangerie du coin, the local
bakery, always greeted me as I turned the corner, the essence of freshly
baked bread never failing to fill me with desire and expectation. I would
buy a baguette for lunch and, if I could spare ten minutes before getting
to work, treat myself to a second cup of coffee at the café across the
street from the piano shop.

In these moments, stopping in front of the strange little storefront, I
would consider the assortment of objects haphazardly displayed there.
Something seemed out of place about this specialty store in our quiet
quartier, far from the conservatories or concert halls and their related
music stores that sprinkle a select few neighborhoods. Was it possible
that an entire business was maintained selling piano parts and repair
tools? Often a small truck was pulled up at the curb with pianos being
loaded or unloaded and trundled into the shop on a handcart. Did pianos
need to be brought to the shop to be repaired? Elsewhere I had always
known repairs to be done on site; the bother and expense of moving pianos
was prohibitive, to say nothing of the problem of storing them.

Once I saw it as a riddle, it filled the few minutes left to me on those
quiet mornings when I would walk past the shop, alone and wondering. After
all, this was but one more highly specialized store in a city known for
its specialties and refinements. Surely there were enough pianos in Paris
to sustain a trade in their parts. But still my doubt edged into
curiosity; I saw myself opening the door to the shop and finding something
new and unexpected each time, like a band of smugglers or an eccentric
music school. And then I decided to find out for myself.

I had avoided going into the shop for many weeks for the simple reason
that I did not have a piano. What pretext could I have in a piano
furnisher’s when I didn’t even own the instrument they repaired? Should I
tell them of my lifelong love of pianos, of how I hoped to play again
after many vagabond years when owning a piano was as impractical as
keeping a large dog or a collection of orchids? That’s where I saw my
opening: more settled now, I had been toying with the idea of buying a
piano. What better source for suggestions as to where I might find a good
used instrument than this dusty little neighborhood parts store? It was at
least a plausible reason for knocking.

And so I found myself in front of Desforges one sunny morning in late
April, after dropping off the children down the street. I knocked and
waited; finally I tried the old wooden handle and found that the latch was
not secured. As I pushed the door inward it shook a small bell secured to
the top of the jamb; a delicate chime rang out unevenly, breaking the
silence as I swung the door closed behind me. Before me lay a long, narrow
room, a counter running its length on one side, and along the facing wall
a row of shelves laden with bolts of crimson and bone-white felt. Between
the counter and the shelves a cramped aisle led back through the
windowless dark to a small glass door; through it a suffused light shone
dimly into the front of the shop. As the bell stopped ringing and I
blinked to adjust my eyes, the door at the back opened narrowly and a man
appeared, taking care to move sideways around the partly opened door so
that the view to the back room was blocked.

“Entrez! Entrez, Monsieur!” He greeted me loudly, as if he had been
expecting my visit; he looked me up and down as he made his way slowly to
the front of his shop. He was a squarely built older man, probably in his
sixties, with a broad forehead and a massive jaw that was fixed in a wide
grin; the eyes, however, did not correspond to the mouth. His regard was
intense, curious, and wholly without emotion. I realized that the smile
was no more than his face in repose, a somewhat disquieting rictus that
spoke of neither joy nor social convention. Over his white shirt and tie
he was wearing a long-sleeved black smock that hung loosely to his knees
and gave him a formal yet almost jaunty appearance, like an undertaker on
vacation. This was clearly the chef d’atelier, wearing a more sober
version of the deep-blue cotton smocks that are the staple of craftsmen
and manual laborers throughout the country.

We shook hands, the obligatory prelude to any dealings with another human
being in France, and he asked how he could be of help. I explained that I
was looking to buy a used piano and wondered if he ever came across such
things. A slight wrinkling of his brow suggested that my question
surprised him; the smile never varied, but I thought I detected a glint in
his eyes. No, he was sorry, it was not as common as one might think; of
course, once in a great while there was something, and if I wanted to
check back no one could say that with a stroke of luck a client might not
have a used piano for sale. Both disappointed and puzzled, I couldn’t
think of how to keep the conversation going. I thanked him for his
consideration and turned to leave, casting a last glance at the
ceiling-high shelves behind the counter stuffed with wooden dowels,
wrenches, and coils of wire. As I pulled the door behind me he turned and
headed toward the back room once again.

I returned two, perhaps three times in the next month and always the
reaction was the same: a look of perplexity that I might consider his
business a source of used pianos, followed by murmured assurances that if
ever anything were to present itself he would be delighted to let me know.
I was familiar enough with the banality of formal closure in French
rhetoric to recognize this for what it was: the brush-off. Still I
persisted, stopping by every few weeks out of sheer doggedness and
curiosity. I was just about to give up hope when a development changed the
equation, however slightly.

On this occasion, as before, my entry set off the little bell and the door
at the back of the shop opened a few moments later. But instead of the
black-smocked patron there appeared a younger man—in his late thirties, I
guessed—wearing jeans and a sweat-soaked T-shirt. His face was open and
smiling, and ringed by a slightly scruffy beard that gave him the look of
a French architect. More surprising than the new face was the fact that he
left open the door to the back room; as he walked toward me I peered over
his shoulder for a glimpse of what had so long intrigued me.

The room beyond was quite long and wider than the
shop, and it was swimming in light pouring down from a glass roof. It had
the peculiar but magical air of being larger on the inside than the
outside. This was one of the classic nineteenth-century workshops that are
still to be found throughout Paris behind even the most bourgeois façades
of carved stone. Very often the backs of buildings were extended to cover
part of the inner courtyard and the space roofed over with panels of
glass, like a giant greenhouse. I took this in at a glance and then, in
the few seconds left to me as he made his way along the counter, I
realized that the entire atelier was covered with pianos and their parts.
Uprights, spinets, grands of all sizes: a mass of cabinetry in various
tones presented itself in a confusion of lacquered black, mahogany, and
rich blond marquetry.

The man gestured with his two dirty hands to excuse himself and then, as
is the French custom when hands are wet or grimy, he offered his right
forearm for me to shake. I grasped his arm awkwardly as he moved it up and
down in a parody of a shake. I explained that I had stopped in before and
was looking for a good used piano. His face broke out in a smile of what
seemed like recognition. “So you’re the American whose children go to the
school around the corner.”

I accepted this description equably and asked how he had known. It didn’t
surprise me that in the close-knit neighborhood he was aware of a
foreigner who daily walked down his street even though we had never met.

“My colleague told me you had been here a few times looking to buy a