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- [00:01]
Deborah Treisman
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Support for this podcast comes from Odoo. Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need, and they're all connected on one platform. Doesn't Odoo sound amazing? Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Sign up today at odoo.com, that's O-O-O.com.
- [01:06]
Yiyun Lee
This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Debra Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear the Piano Tuners Wives by William Trevor, which appeared in the New Yorker in October of 1995.
- [01:25]
Belle
Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him when he was old. There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing Violet to be his wife, the piano tuner had rejected Belle.
- [01:41]
Yiyun Lee
The story was chosen by Yiyun Lee, who's the author of eight books of fiction, including the novel the Book of Goose and the story collection Wednesday's Child, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Hi, Yiyeon.
- [01:54]
Belle
Hi Deborah.
- [01:55]
Yiyun Lee
Welcome.
- [01:55]
Belle
Thank you for having me.
- [01:57]
Yiyun Lee
So you've always had a really strong connection with William Trevor's work. Why do you think that is?
- [02:03]
Belle
Well, personally, I learned writing by reading his fiction, so I always considered him a mentor on the page. And then later I made friends with him and I learned a lot from him just by observing him. So I'm always very fond of his work.
- [02:21]
Yiyun Lee
How did you befriend him?
- [02:23]
Belle
I wrote a fan letter after my first collection. I think it won a prize in Ireland and he was on a short list, so I just felt very bad and honored. So I wrote him a fan letter and we started corresponding then.
- [02:41]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Did he have comments on your own work?
- [02:44]
Belle
He read a few of my stories and a couple novels early in my career when I wrote short Stories. I often thought I was going to write a short story to have a conversation with his stories. So many of my stories had conversation with his stories. And there was a novella I wrote called Kindness to have a conversation with his novella, A Night at Alexandra. And he wrote back. He said it was flawless. That comment, I only got it once in my life.
- [03:17]
Yiyun Lee
Right. Excellent conversation. And what was he like in person?
- [03:22]
Belle
Very observant. And he was trained as a sculptor, so he looked very closely at things, at people. And I could see in his story, he also look closely at colors and objects. My favorite moment was I visited him a couple times in Devon. And the first time I went was in February. We were having lunch, and he sat me down at the kitchen table, and he said, I'm sitting here so you can see the flowers in the garden. And then he look at me. And he said, but wait a minute. So he got up and he fixed the curtain. He said, this way you can see the flowers, but the sun will not be in your eyes. And I thought, that's a short story. Writer's attention to details. He was very attentive to details, I think.
- [04:17]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. And staging.
- [04:19]
Belle
Staging, that's right. It's all about writing stories.
- [04:22]
Yiyun Lee
And he published about 50 stories in the New Yorker between 1977 and 2018, and the last two were posthumous. He died in 2016. What made you choose the Piano Tuners Wives?
- [04:36]
Belle
This is possibly my most favorite story by William Trevor. I love all his stories, but this story just deserve rereading all the time. And I reread it all the time. I teach it. Sometimes it feels like every reading, you learn new things about human heart, I would say so. That's why I love the story.
- [05:00]
Yiyun Lee
Okay, well, I think we should talk some more after the reading. And now here's Yi Eun Lee reading the Piano Tuners Wives by William Trevor.
- [05:11]
Belle
The Piano Tuners Wives. Violet married the Piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him when he was old. 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 7. The shadows he lived among now had less shape and less density than those of 1951. I will, he responded in the small Protestant church of Saint 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 a decent interval had elapsed. 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 had not attended the first wedding, although she had been invited. 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. Well, so could she have. 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 Sam 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 warmed 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. He and Violet had not had children themselves, though they'd have liked to. He was her child, it had been said, a statement that was an irritation for Belle whenever she heard it. She would have given him children. Of that she felt certain. I'm due to visit you next month, the old bridegroom reminded a woman whose hand still lay in his. The owner of a Steinway, the only one among all the pianos he tuned. She played it beautifully. He asked her to whenever he tuned it, assuring her that to hear was fee enough. But she always insisted on paying what was owing. Monday the 3rd, I think it is. Yes, it is, Julia. She called him Mr. Drum Gould. He had a way about him that did not encourage familiarity in others. Often when people spoke of him, he was referred to as the piano tuner, this reminder of his profession reflecting the respect accorded to the possessor of a gift. Owen Francis Drumgood, his full name was. Well, we had a good day for it, the new young clergyman of the parish remarked. They said maybe showers, but sure they got it wrong. This guy. Oh, clothless, Mr. Drungood. Clothless. Well, that's nice. And you'll come on over to the house, I hope. He must, of course. Belle pressed, then hurried through the gathering in the graveyard to reiterate the invitation, for she was determined to have a party sometime later, when the new marriage had settled into a routine. People wondered if the piano tuner would begin to think about retiring with a bad knee and being sightless in old age. He would readily have been forgiven. In the houses and the convents and the school halls where he applied his skill, Leisure was his due, the good fortune of company as his years slipped by, no more than he deserved. But when occasionally this was put to him by the loquacious or the inquisitive, he denied that anything of the kind was in his thoughts, that he considered only the visitation of death as bringing any kind of end. The truth was, he would be lost without his work, without his travelling about, his arrival every six months or so in one of the small towns to which he had offered his services for so long. No, no, he promised. They'd still see the white Vauxhall turning in at a farm gate or parked for half an hour in a convent play yard or drawn up on a verge while he ate his lunchtime sandwiches, his tea poured out of a thermos by his wife. It was Violet who had brought most of this activity about. When they married, he was still living with his mother in the gate lodge of Barygorm House. He had begun to tune pianos, the two in Barygorm House, another in the town of Barnagorm, and one in a farmhouse he walked to four miles away. In those days, he was a charity because he was blind, was now and again asked to repair the seagrass seeds of stools or chairs, which was an ability he had acquired, or to play at some function or other the violin his mother had bought him in his childhood. But when Violet married him, she changed his life. She moved into the Gate Lodge, she and his mother not always agreeing, but managing nonetheless. She possessed a car, which meant she could drive him to wherever she discovered a piano, usually long neglected. She drove to houses as far as 40 miles. She fixed his charges, taking the consumption of petrol and wear and tear to the car into account efficiently. She kept an address book and marked in a diary the date of each next tuning. She recorded a considerable improvement in earnings and saw that there was more to be made from the playing of the violin than had hitherto been realized. Country and western evenings in lonely public houses, the crossroads platform dances of summer, a practice that in 1951, had not entirely died out. Owen Drum Goode delighted in his violin and would play it anywhere, for profit or not. But Violet was keen on the prophet. So the first marriage busily progressed, and when eventually Violet inherited her father's house, she took her husband to live there. Once a farmhouse, it was no longer so, the possession of the land that gave it this title having long ago been lost through the fondness for strong drink that for generations had dogged the family but had not reached Violet herself. Now tell me what's there? Her husband requested often in their early years. And Violet told him about the house she had brought him to, remotely situated on the edge of the mountains that were blue in certain lights. Standing back a bit from a bend in the lane, she described the nooks in the rooms, the wooden window shutters. He could hear her pulling over and latching one. Wind from the east caused a draft that disturbed the fire in the room once called the parlor. She described the pattern of the carpet on the single flight of stairs, the blue and white porcelain knobs of the kitchen cupboards, the front door that was never opened. He loved to listen. His mother, who had never entirely come to terms with his affliction, had been impatient. His father, a stableman at Barnagorm House who died after a fall he had never known. Lean as a greyhound, Violet described his father from a photograph that remained. She conjured up the big cold hall of Banner Gorm House. What we walk around on the way to the stairs is a table with a peacock on it, an enormous silvery bird with bits of colored glass set in display of its wings to represent the splendor of the feathers, greens, and blues, she said when he asked the color, and yes, she was certain it was only glass, not jewels, because once when he was doing his best with the badly flawed Grant in the drawing room, she had been told. The stairs were on a curve, he knew from going up and down them so often to the chapel in the nursery. The first landing was dark as a tunnel, Violet said, with two sofas, one at each end, and rows of unsmiling portraits half lost in the shadows of the walls. We're passing Ducy's now, violet would say. Father Filly is getting petrol at the pumps, as though it was at Ducy's, and he knew how the word was written because he'd asked and had been told two different colors were employed. The shape of the design had been compared to shapes he could feel. He saw through Violet's eyes the gaunt facade of the McCurdy's house on the outskirts of Oak Hill. He saw the pallid face of the stationer in Kilias. He saw his mother's eyes closed in death, her hands crossed on her breast. He saw the mountains, blue on some days, misted away to gray on others. A primrose isn't flamboyant, Violet said, more like straw or country butter with a spot of color in the middle, and he would nod. And no soft blue like smoke, she said about the mountains, the spot in the middle more orange than red. He knew no more about smoke than what she had told him, but he could tell those sounds. He knew what red was, he insisted, because of the sound, orange because you could taste it. He could see red in the Esso sign and the orange spot in the primrose. Straw and country butter helped him, and When Violet called Mr. Witton gnarled, it was enough. A certain Mother Superior was austere. Anna Craigie was fanciful about the eyes. Thomas in the sawmills was an albino. Bad Colin had the forehead of the Merrick's retriever, which was stroked every time the Merrick's broadwood was attended to in the time between one woman and the next. The piano tuner had managed without anyone, fetched by the possessors of pianos and driven to their houses, assisted in his shopping and his housekeeping. He felt he had become a nuisance to people and knew that Violet would not have wanted that, nor would she have wanted the business she built up for him to be neglected because she was no longer there. She was proud that he played the organ in St. Coleman's Church. Don't ever stop Doing that, she whispered some time before she whispered her last few words. And so he went alone to the church. It was on a Sunday, when two years almost had passed, that the romance with Belle began. Since the time of her rejection, Belle had been unable to shake off her jealousy, resentful because she had looks and Violet hadn't, bitter because it seemed to her that the punishment of blindness was a punishment for her too. For what else but a punishment could you call the dark the sightless lived in? And what else but a punishment was it that darkness should be thrown over her beauty? Yet there had been no sin to punish, and there would have been a handsome couple, she and Owen Drumgood. An act of grace. It would have been her beauty given to a man who did not know that it was there. It was because her misfortune did not cease to nag at her that Belle remained unmarried. She assisted her father first and then her brother in the family shop, making out tickets for the clocks and watches that were left in for repair, noting the details for the engraving of sports trophies she served behind a single counter, the Christmas season, her busy time, glassware and weather indicators, the most popular wedding gifts, cigarette lighters and inexpensive jewelry. For lesser occasions in time, clocks and watches required only the fitting of a battery, and so the gift side of the business was expanded. But while that time passed, there was no man in the town who lived up to the one who had been taken from her. Belle had been born above the shop, and when house and shop became her brother's, she continued to live there. Her brother's children were born, but there was still room for her, and her position in the shop itself was not usurped. It was she who kept the chickens at the back, who always had been in charge of them, given the responsibility. On her 10th birthday, that too continued. That she lived with a disappointment had long ago become part of her, had made her what she was for her nieces and her nephew. It was in her eyes, some people noted, even lent her beauty a quality that enhanced it. When the romance began with the man who had once rejected her, her brother and his wife considered she was making a mistake but did not say so, only laughingly asked if she intended taking the chickens with her. As long ago as childhood, her love of him had made her happy. Later there had been love's expectation. Passing through middle age, she remembered a person who was herself, whose nature seemed different from that of the woman she became. Some part of her had withered. But when the feeling of love began again, it was as though that had not happened. All around her a dinginess brightened, and it was not too late. That Sunday the two stood talking in the graveyard when the handful of other parishioners had gone. Come and I'll show you the graves, he said, and led the way, knowing exactly where he was going, stepping onto the grass and feeding the first gravestone with his fingers. He is Grandmother, he said, on his father's side, and for a moment Belle wanted to feel the incised letters herself instead of looking at them. They both knew as they moved among the graves that the parishioners who'd gone home were very much aware of the two who had been left behind on Sundays. Ever since Violet's death, he had walked to and from his house, unless it happened to be raining, in which case the man who drove old Mrs. Purtail to church took him home also. Would you like a walk, Belle? He asked when he had shown her his family graves. She said she would. Belle didn't take the chickens with her when she became a wife. She said she'd had enough of chickens. Afterward she regretted that, because every time she did anything in the house that had been Violet's, she felt it had been done by Violet before her. When she cut up meat for a stew, standing with the light falling on the board that Violet had used and on a knife, she felt herself a follower. She diced carrots, hoping that Violet had sliced them. She bought new wooden spoons because violets had shriveled away. So she painted the upright rails of the banisters. She painted the inside of the front door that was never opened. She disposed of the stacks of women's magazines, years old, that she found in an upstairs cupboard. She threw away a frying pan because she considered it unhygienic. She ordered new vinyl for the kitchen floor, but she kept the flower beds at the back, weeded in case anyone coming to the house might say she was letting the place become run down. There was always this dichotomy, what to keep up, what to change. Was she giving in to Violet when she tended her flower beds? Was she giving in to pettiness when she threw away a frying pan and three wooden spoons? Whatever Belle did, she afterward doubted herself. The dumpy figure of Violet, gray haired as she had been in the end, her eyes gone small and the plumpness of her face seemed irritatingly to command. And the unseeing husband they shared, softly playing his violin in one room or another, did not know that his first wife had dressed badly, did not know she had thickened and Become sloppy, did not know she had been an unclean cook. That Belle was the one who was alive, that she was offered all a man's affection, that she plundered his other women's possessions and occupied her bedroom and drove her car, should have been enough. It should have been everything. But as time went on, it seemed to Belle to be scarcely anything at all. He had become set in ways that had been allowed and hallowed in a marriage of nearly 40 years. That was what was always there. A year after the wedding, as the couple sat one lunchtime in a car which Belle had drawn into the gateway to a field, he said you'd tell me if it was too much for you. Too much, Owen. Driving all over the county, having to get me in and out, having to sit there listening. It's not too much. You're good the way you've patience. I don't think I'm good at all. I knew you were in church that Sunday. I could smell the perfume you had on. Even at the organ, I could smell it. I'll never forget that Sunday. I loved you when you let me show you the graves. I loved you before that. I don't want to tire you out with all the traipsing about after pianos. I could let it go, you know. He would do that for her, her thought was as he spoke. He wasn't much for a woman, he had said. Another time, a blind man moving on. Toward the end of his days, he confessed at once. First he wanted to marry her. He hadn't put it to her for more than two months, knowing better than she what she'd be letting herself in for if she said yes. What's that bell look like these days? He had asked for Violet a few years ago, and Violet hadn't answered at first. Then apparently, she said, belle still looks a girl. I wouldn't want you to stop your work. Not ever, Owen. You're all hard, my love. Don't say you're not good. It gets me out and about, too, you know. More than ever in my life, down all those avenues to houses I didn't know were there, towns I've never been to, people I never knew. It was restricted before. The word slipped out, but it didn't matter. He did not reply that he understood about restriction, for that was not his style when they were getting to know one another. After that Sunday by the church, he said he'd often thought of her in her brother's jeweler's shop, wrapping up what was purchased there as she had wrapped for him the watch he bought for one of Lilac's birthdays. He'd thought of her putting up the grills over the windows in the evenings and locking the shop door and then going upstairs to sit with her brother's family when they were married. She told him more how most of the days of her life had been spent only her chickens, her own Smart in her clothes, Violet had added when she said the woman he'd rejected still looked a girl. There hadn't been any kind of honeymoon, but a few months after he had wondered if traveling about was too much for her. He took Belle away to a seaside resort where he and Violet had many times spent a week. They stayed in the same boarding house, the Sanssouci, and walked on the long empty strand and in lanes where larks guttered in and out of the fuchsia, and on the cliffs they drank. In Mailie's public house they lay in autumn sunshine on the dunes. You're good to have thought of it. Belle smiled at him, pleased, because he wanted her to be happy. Set us up for the winter, Belle. She knew it wasn't easy for him. They had come to this place because he knew no other. He was aware, before they set out of the complication that might develop in his emotions when they arrived. She had seen that in his face, a stoicism that was there for her. Privately, he bore the guilt of betrayal, stirred up by the smell of the sea and seaweed. The voices in the boarding house were the voices Violet had heard. For Violet, too, the scent of honeysuckle had lingered into October. It was Violet who first said a week in the autumn sun would set them up for the winter. That showed in him also, a moment after he spoke the words. I'll tell you what we'll do, he said. When we're back, we'll get you the television, Belle. Oh, but you. You'd tell me. They were walking near the lighthouse on the Cape when he said that he would have offered the television to Violet. Violet must have said she wouldn't be bothered with the thing. It would never be turned on. She had probably argued. You only got silliness on it anyway. You're good to me, belle said instead. Ah, no, no. When they were close enough to the lighthouse, he called out, and a man called back from a window. Hold on a minute, the man said, and by the time he opened the door he must have guessed that the wife he'd known had died. You'll take a drop, he offered when they were inside, when the death and the remarriage had been mentioned. Whiskey was poured, and Belle felt that the three glasses lifted in salutation, wore an honoring of her, although this was not said. It rained on the way back to the boarding house the last evening of the holiday. Nice for the winter, he said as she drove the next day through rain. That didn't cease. The television. When it came, it was installed in a small room that was once called the parlor, next to the kitchen. This was where mostly they sat, where the radio was. A fortnight after the arrival of the television set, Belle acquired a small black sheepdog that the farmer didn't want because it was afraid of sheep. This dog became hers and was always called hers. She fed it and looked after it. She got it used to traveling with them in the car. She gave it a new name, Maggie, which it answered to in time. But even with the dog and the television, with additions and disposals in the house, with being so sincerely assured that she was loved, with being told she was good, nothing changed for Belle. The woman who for so long had taken her husband's arm, who had guided him into rooms of houses where he coaxed pianos back to life, still claimed existence not as a tiresome ghost, some unforgiving specter uncertainly there, but as if some part of her had been left in the man she'd loved, sensitive in ways that other people weren't Owen Drumgood continued to sense his second wife's unease. She knew he did. It was why he had offered to give up his work, why he'd taken her to Violet Seashore and borne there the guilt of his betrayal, why there was a television set now and a sheepdog. He had guessed why she'd recovered the kitchen floor. Proudly, he had raised his glass to her in the company of a man who had known Violet. Proudly, he had sat with her in the dining room of the boarding house and in Maddie's public house. Belle made herself remember all that. She made herself see the bottle of John Jamison taken from a cupboard in the lighthouse and hear the boarding house voices. He understood. He did his best to comfort her. His affection was. Was in everything he did. But Violet would have told him which leaves were on the turn. Violet would have reported that the tide was going out or coming in too late. Belle realized that Violet had been his blind man's vision. Violet had left her no room to breathe. One day, coming away from the house that was the most distant they visited the first time Belle had been there, he said, did you ever see a room as somber as that one Is it the holy pictures that do it? Belle backed the car and straightened it, then edged it through a gateway that 30 years ago hadn't been made wide enough. Somber, she said, on a lane like a riverbed, steering around the potholes as best she could. We used to wonder, could it be they didn't want anything colorful in the way of a wallpaper in case it wasn't respectful to the pictures? Belle didn't comment on that. She eased the Vauxhall out onto the tarred road and drove in silence over a stretch of parkland. Vividly she saw the holy pictures in the room where Mrs. Gwanahan's piano was. Virgin and Child, Sacred Heart, St Catherine with her lily, the Virgin on her own, Jesus in Glory. They hung against nondescript brown. There were statues on the mantelpiece and on a corner shelf. Mrs. Granahan had brought tea and biscuits to that small, melancholy room, speaking in a hushed tone as if the Holiness demanded that. What pictures? Belle asked, not turning her head, although she might have, for there was no other traffic and the bog road was straight. Aren't the pictures still in there? Holy pictures all over the place. They must have taken them down. What's there, then? Belle went a little faster. She said a fox had come from nowhere, over to the left. It was standing still, she said, the way foxes do. You want to pull up and watch him, Belle? No, no, he's moved out now. Was it Mrs. Granahan's daughter who played that piano? Oh, it was, and she hasn't seen that girl in years. We used to say the holy pictures maybe drove her away. What's on the walls now? A striped paper, and Belle added, there's a photograph of the daughter on a mantelpiece. Sometime later, on another day, when he referred to one of the sisters at the convent in Mina as having cheeks as flushed as an eating apple, Belle said that that nun was chalky white these days, her face pulled down and sunken. She has an illness soul, he said, suddenly more confident, not caring what people thought. Belle rooted out Violet's plants from the flower beds at the back and grasped the flower beds over. She told her husband of a change at Ducy's garage. Texaco sold instead of Esso. She described the Texaco logo, the big red star, and how the letters of the words were arranged. She avoided stopping at Ducy's in case a conversation took place there, in case Ducy were asked if Essel had let him down or what. Well, no, I wouldn't call it silvery exactly, belle said about the peacock in the hall of Barnagorn House. If they clean it up, I'd say it's brass underneath. Upstairs, the sofa at each end of the landing had new loose covers, bunches of different colored chrysanthemums on them. Well, no, not Lynn. I wouldn't call him that, belle said with the photograph of her husband's father in her hand. A sturdy face, I'd say. A schoolteacher whose teeth were once described as mammoth, had false teeth now less of a mouthful, her smile, sedate. Time had apparently drenched the bright white of the McCurdy's facade, almost a gray. You'd call it forget me, not blue, belle said one day, speaking of the mountains that were blue. When the weather brought that color out, you'd hardly credit it. And it was never again said in a piano tuner's house that the blue of the mountains was the subtle blue of smoked. Oh, when Drum Good had run his fingers over the bark of trees, he could tell the difference in the outline of their leaves. He could tell the thorns of gorse and bramble. He knew birds from their song, dogs from their bark, cats from the touch of them on his legs. There were the letters on the gravestones, the stops of the organ, his violin. He could see red berries on holly and cotton Easter. He could smell lavender and thyme, all that could not be taken from him. And it didn't matter if overnight the color had worn off the kitchen knobs. It didn't matter if the china lightshade in the kitchen had a crack he hadn't heard about before. What mattered was damage done to something as fragile as a dream. The wife he had first chosen had dressed drably from silence and inflections more than from words. He learned that now her gray hair straggled to her shoulders, her back was a little humped. He poked his way about and they were two old people when they went out on their rounds, older than they were in their ageless happiness, she wouldn't have heard a fly. She wasn't a person you could be jealous of. Yet of course it was hard on a new wife to be haunted by happiness, to be challenged by the simplicities there had been. He had given himself to two women. He hadn't withdrawn himself from the first, he didn't from the second. Each house that contained a piano brought forth its contradictions. The pearls old Mrs. Purtile wore were opals. The padded skin of the stationer in Kiriav was freckled. The two lines of oaks above Oak Hill were surely Beeches.
- [43:55]
Yiyun Lee
Of course.
- [43:56]
Belle
Of course. Oven Dromgood agreed, since it was fair, that he should do so. Belle could not be blamed for making her claim, and claims could not be made without damage or destruction. Belle would win in the end because the living always do. And that seemed fair also, since Violet had won in the beginning and had had the better years.
- [44:30]
Yiyun Lee
That was Yiun Li reading the Piano Tuners Wives by William Trevor. The story appeared in the New Yorker in October of 1995 and was included in Trevor's collection After Rain, which was published by Viking in 1996.
- [44:46]
Belle
Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer.
- [44:48]
Yiyun Lee
And I'm Evan Osmos, and we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.
- [44:54]
Belle
For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. Now that's so true, because first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps.
- [45:16]
Yiyun Lee
I also think, though, occasionally we get.
- [45:18]
Belle
Somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the.
- [45:35]
Yiyun Lee
Washington part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.
- [45:43]
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- [47:53]
Yiyun Lee
So, Yiyun, let's talk about the beginning of the story. Those sort of incredible opening lines. Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him when he was old. There was little more to it than that. And of course, there's a whole lot more to it. Why do you think he begins with this kind of summary that sort of dismisses the story that comes?
- [48:16]
Belle
It's the most interesting opening of a story, as the whole story is in those two lines. Yeah, and very few writers would do that. I suppose he had the confidence, but also he had this sort of sly humor, saying these two lines tell you the story, but there's a little more to that. And it leads you into the story. And those two lines are quite just calm two lines. And what comes after those lines are quite shattering. So I suppose he is setting up like a sort of like a calm tone at the beginning. And also those two lines introduce the two most important names in the story. Belle and Violet. The piano tuner cannot see color, but he can feel color. The piano tuner cannot see beauty, but he sees beauty all the time. So I feel that by choosing those two names, he's giving us a lot to think at the beginning.
- [49:20]
Yiyun Lee
And right at that moment, we actually don't know that the piano tuner's blind. We don't know anything.
- [49:24]
Belle
Not yet.
- [49:25]
Yiyun Lee
In fact, in maybe the next sentence, we learn that he's sort of the ruins. She got the ruins of him.
- [49:33]
Belle
Farmers always speak up their mind, Right?
- [49:35]
Yiyun Lee
Exactly. No one else put it quite that way. For me, the first two lines do something that continues to happen throughout the story, which is he has both marriages happening at once.
- [49:47]
Belle
In a way, this is an interesting love triangle. It is a love triangle that one point of the triangle already died but remains in place. And the two marriages, as you said, they sort of collapse into one marriage.
- [50:03]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. And there's kind of a parallel line toward the end of the story that says he had given himself to two women. He. He hadn't withdrawn himself from the first, he didn't from the second. So at that moment, we see it. He's still married to two people. He's still married to Violet. And that's the heart of this story. Yes.
- [50:24]
Belle
And not only he's still married to two women, they occupy the same space. They're doing the same activities for him. Driving him around, you know, getting him to tune the piano. And what's heartbreaking for me is on their drive, he said we used to say this. He let it slip. He said we used to say the house. And you realize that we is so heavy, but that we is probably natural for him because he existed in this marriage for 40 years. It's a marriage of we. But now he's talking about we to the second wife. That is quite shocking. And I just thought, why would he make that mistake? How? Why?
- [51:12]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Well, he is sensitive to Belle and to what she's going through. And he tries to come up with these different things. Right. Like getting her a television or a dog or, you know, things to distinguish her at the same time, marriage. And marriage for him. And a wife is a sort of steady, unchanging force.
- [51:29]
Belle
Right.
- [51:30]
Yiyun Lee
Whether it's Violet or Belle.
- [51:31]
Belle
Yes. And the sad thing about this second marriage, nothing is new other than destruction and damage. Is there good things that happen, good.
- [51:43]
Yiyun Lee
Things in this second marriage?
- [51:45]
Belle
In the second marriage?
- [51:45]
Yiyun Lee
Well, I suppose he's not alone. He can still tune pianos. But, you know, I'm thinking about everything from Belle's point of view. Because I think in a certain way, we read this story, and Belle's a bit of a villain. And we can get to her villainy in a bit. But Belle has sat and waited for 40 years. And ironically, she has sat in a shop dealing with broken watches and clocks, dealing with this stoppage of time. And even the world sort of reflects it because the story begins with a marriage in 1951 and ends in the 1990s. Nothing seems to have changed in this village. People go to the second wedding. Who went to the first wedding? The first wedding, yes.
- [52:30]
Belle
Not many people died. But it's interesting because the timepieces change. They don't need to be fixed anymore. They can just use battery. That seems to be the only modern touch in this village.
- [52:43]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. I also. It makes me think maybe it's because she's called Belle. Though I realize that's the wrong fairy tale. It makes me think of Sleeping Beauty.
- [52:52]
Belle
Oh, right.
- [52:52]
Yiyun Lee
You know, this sort of sense that she's wounded by something, which is Owen's marriage to Violet.
- [52:58]
Belle
Right.
- [52:58]
Yiyun Lee
And she just goes into a 40 year sleep.
- [53:01]
Belle
Sleep, yes, yes. With the chickens.
- [53:04]
Yiyun Lee
With the chickens, yeah. Those are the only things that belong to her that keep her alive, actually. Yes.
- [53:08]
Belle
And you realize the chickens are the only things that she can call her own. And then she didn't bring the chickens to the new marriage. Which is a sacrifice, I think.
- [53:19]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. It was a mistake. Right?
- [53:20]
Belle
It's a mistake. She thinks it's a mistake. She regrets the decision.
- [53:24]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. So what does she do in those 40 years? Because I'm sympathetic to her, but she also bears some blame because she's the one who does not move on.
- [53:35]
Belle
Right.
- [53:35]
Yiyun Lee
Who spends those 40 years resenting Violet and resenting the rejection of her.
- [53:41]
Belle
Yeah. Trevor used this word, jealousy. Right. She lived in that jealousy for 40 years. But I was thinking when I was rereading it yesterday, I thought, it's more than jealousy, it's envy. It's a much stronger feeling than jealousy and envy. I think it's in Dante's envy. When people suffer from envy, they're blind or their eyes are blinded by envy. So I thought it was interesting that she's the seeing one, but she is also blinded by something. That's why she gets stuck there. She cannot move on from that envy. I don't think jealousy can keep someone going for 40 years. But envy is a stronger wounded feeling. Right?
- [54:27]
Yiyun Lee
Envy, yes. She wants what someone else has, and.
- [54:30]
Belle
Then she's willing to destroy what he has.
- [54:33]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. I think what she sort of expresses often is a sense of injustice. You know, justice hasn't been done because she was the more beautiful one. And, you know, in her mind, that was supposed to be the important factor here. She didn't have anything going for her, but she had this.
- [54:49]
Belle
But then she said it's the punishment. Yeah, punishment of the blindness. It's for her to bear.
- [54:56]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. His blindness punished her.
- [54:58]
Belle
But she also said if they were married, her beauty would be grace for him. So I just thought there's also some sort of religious passion there in this injustice, too.
- [55:10]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. She feels it's injustice. She never actually stops to consider that perhaps if he'd been able to see, he would have still chosen Violet because she had other qualities. Yes. And it's hard to picture Belle, over the course of 40 years, doing for him what Violet did for him.
- [55:30]
Belle
Right. And Violet gave him sort of that piano tuner's title.
- [55:36]
Yiyun Lee
She gave him a life, a career.
- [55:37]
Belle
She gave him life, a career and the pride of being useful. I think. I just imagine Belle is one of those characters who think love is enough.
- [55:47]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [55:48]
Belle
But love is about her, not about him.
- [55:50]
Yiyun Lee
And it's because she's stunted. Right. She has stunted development. That's what you think when you're 20.
- [55:55]
Belle
Yes.
- [55:56]
Yiyun Lee
Which she was when she was rejected.
- [55:57]
Belle
Yeah.
- [55:58]
Yiyun Lee
And she's never quite got to the point of thinking about what a marriage is like, you know, a partnership. It's not just about an attraction.
- [56:06]
Belle
Right. And then Violet mentioned that she still looks like a girl.
- [56:10]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Well, that's an interesting moment.
- [56:11]
Belle
Right.
- [56:12]
Yiyun Lee
Because we hear of Violet being such a saint and doing everything she does for Owen and we think of her as virtuous. And then there's this moment where he asks what she looks like now and she's silent. She's silent because obviously she's considering whether to tell him the truth.
- [56:32]
Belle
Right, right.
- [56:33]
Yiyun Lee
At least that's how I read it. Is that how you read it?
- [56:35]
Belle
I mean, I think there's a bit of jealousy there too.
- [56:39]
Yiyun Lee
Right. Yeah.
- [56:39]
Belle
But on the other hand. Well, it doesn't say, but we got a sense that Violet and Belle really rarely interact in those 40 years. It's the piano tuner who goes to the store to buy watch for Violet, for Violet, and Belle has to engrave it. Right. So there's that interesting triangle with those two women. You know, they are aware of each other the entire time, but they don't speak or interact with each other.
- [57:12]
Yiyun Lee
It's true. And there's five years between them.
- [57:15]
Belle
Yes.
- [57:16]
Yiyun Lee
So they wouldn't have really known each other in school or in the local life of the village.
- [57:22]
Belle
Yes. But you asked a good question. What happened in those 40 years? It's always those 40 years that matter. Right?
- [57:29]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [57:30]
Belle
Yeah.
- [57:31]
Yiyun Lee
And a whole lot happened for Owen and Violet.
- [57:34]
Belle
Yes.
- [57:34]
Yiyun Lee
Do you think that Belle matured at all?
- [57:37]
Belle
That's an interesting question. I think earlier you said she's stunted. She is stunted. But she did have one moment of that self reflection in the story. She said, you know, is this the woman she has become? She has that doubt. I think it's very sad. Whenever she does something, she doubts. And I think she's right to doubt. Right. So she has not matured in the way that we may think that would help her, but she has accumulated some thoughts, but a lot of doubts, I think.
- [58:14]
Yiyun Lee
And it's like there's just been a constant loop in her mind. I was prettier, I was more beautiful.
- [58:20]
Belle
I could give.
- [58:21]
Yiyun Lee
I deserved it.
- [58:22]
Belle
I could have given him children. That line just broke my heart.
- [58:27]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Would have broken Violets, too, probably. And then so she's in the marriage, and her marriage is happening simultaneously with Violet's because she's in Violet's kitchen, she's trying to dice carrots and hoping violets slice them. You know, she wants to rip out her flowers in the flower beds, which seems particularly petty. I mean, especially since Owen can't see them. Like, this is not.
- [58:57]
Belle
I know.
- [58:58]
Yiyun Lee
And she's sleeping in their marriage bed. She's living in their marriage house.
- [59:02]
Belle
She's driving her car, Violet's car.
- [59:05]
Yiyun Lee
And these two things are happening. And then Bel comes up with her way of making a break, of changing.
- [59:14]
Belle
Getting out of Violet's marriage, starting to write fiction.
- [59:18]
Yiyun Lee
So what do you think of that moment of inspiration that she has?
- [59:22]
Belle
I mean, we always say we write out of necessity. I think she starts to make up things out of her necessity. I don't think she has any way to go away from that marriage. And I think her realization that Violet also has given Owen sight. Right. Vision. Well, I suppose she has to destroy that vision before she can stay in that marriage. So what do you think? Why do you think that she has that moment of inspiration? Is it inevitable?
- [59:59]
Yiyun Lee
She's been suffering through this period of time, unable to make a change to what happened with Violet.
- [60:06]
Belle
Right.
- [60:07]
Yiyun Lee
And unable to erase Violet from their home, from the past, from his mind, even when they go on the little holiday. And. And it's clear that the lighthouse keeper is thinking of Violet and so on. And suddenly she sees a way to erase her.
- [60:26]
Belle
Right. But I do think, yeah, she sees the way to erase her, to assert herself, too. Yeah. What's interesting to me is it's the story about understanding. So she understands what she's doing. She also understands he understands what she's doing.
- [60:46]
Yiyun Lee
You think she knows that he knows?
- [60:47]
Belle
I thought maybe she also knows he knows what she's doing.
- [60:51]
Yiyun Lee
It's possible. He doesn't question.
- [60:54]
Belle
Right.
- [60:54]
Yiyun Lee
And that's his gift to her.
- [60:56]
Belle
Right.
- [60:56]
Yiyun Lee
That he appears to believe what she's saying.
- [60:59]
Belle
Right. Right.
- [61:00]
Yiyun Lee
And to accept it, to say, okay, well, if the nun's cheeks aren't rosy anymore, she must have an illness to find explanations that make Belle's descriptions make sense.
- [61:11]
Belle
Right.
- [61:12]
Yiyun Lee
But I don't know if she sees through that or not.
- [61:15]
Belle
Or maybe that's what drives her to keep making up things, because she has to make it believable. But just. I mean, my question is, isn't death enough?
- [61:32]
Yiyun Lee
That's the problem, though. Violet's not dead.
- [61:35]
Belle
Oh, yeah.
- [61:35]
Yiyun Lee
She's just alive in Owen. She's his vision. She's his eyes. She's everything he experiences. Right.
- [61:41]
Belle
Yeah. But then Belle is just fighting with something that she would never win that battle. Right?
- [61:51]
Yiyun Lee
Right. She can't kill Violet without killing Owen.
- [61:53]
Belle
Right. Right. That's very good. That doesn't make her feel like a villain anymore. That makes her feel very sad.
- [62:01]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. She's haunted.
- [62:02]
Belle
She's haunted by Violet.
- [62:04]
Yiyun Lee
Owen isn't so haunted. I mean, he grieves for his wife, but he's happy to have company.
- [62:09]
Belle
Yes. I mean, it is a ghost story. One of the most haunting Ghost story.
- [62:15]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. So, in a way, I feel that most of Belle's life has been spent not thinking about Owen, thinking about Violet.
- [62:24]
Belle
Oh, yes.
- [62:25]
Yiyun Lee
This has been the focus of those 40 years. Not the man she thought she wanted, but the woman he chose and how.
- [62:33]
Belle
Much she could do better then.
- [62:35]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah, well, she tells herself that. I don't know if she believes it, because she knows she wouldn't have a house and a car. She probably wouldn't have thought to go drumming up business for him or getting him hired to play his violin.
- [62:48]
Belle
And she's also less sensitive than Violet. You know, just how Violet describes the mountain blue as smoke.
- [62:55]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [62:56]
Belle
You have to have art in you to be able to say those things.
- [62:59]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [62:59]
Belle
The country butter and straw in the primrose. And Violet has an artistic soul.
- [63:07]
Yiyun Lee
Violet looked at things.
- [63:08]
Belle
Right.
- [63:09]
Yiyun Lee
Violet paces in a way that Belle doesn't.
- [63:11]
Belle
Again, it's so interesting. Beauty is blinding her.
- [63:15]
Yiyun Lee
The story doesn't really go into depth about this, but Owen's a piano tuner, so he has perfect pitch. He hears things perfectly. So he probably hears Belle's words and hears what she's actually saying.
- [63:36]
Belle
Yes, but he wants to maintain that facade, the illusion that he believes Belle. Also, Belle doesn't like music. I always think Violet loves music.
- [63:48]
Yiyun Lee
Violet Loved having him play the violin.
- [63:50]
Belle
Violin?
- [63:51]
Yiyun Lee
At dances.
- [63:52]
Belle
Yes. And Belle sort of. There was that. Complaining that the husband playing the violin in one room or the other.
- [63:59]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [63:59]
Belle
It's a mismatch, the second marriage.
- [64:03]
Yiyun Lee
It is, though. Would it have been a mismatch if he had married Belle first? They might have adapted to each other in different ways.
- [64:11]
Belle
Right. But he would not have become the piano tuner.
- [64:14]
Yiyun Lee
No.
- [64:15]
Belle
He would just have remained the charity.
- [64:18]
Yiyun Lee
Case, living at his mother's.
- [64:19]
Belle
But then maybe they would have had children.
- [64:22]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [64:23]
Belle
But I just feel that piano tuner, that title is so important for him. That comes with the first marriage.
- [64:31]
Yiyun Lee
Right. And he's also the organ player. He's an organ player. He has so many roles.
- [64:37]
Belle
Yes.
- [64:37]
Yiyun Lee
Violet makes him a man. She makes him a fulfilled person.
- [64:41]
Belle
And he would not have given up all the work until he dies, but he was willing to give it up for Belle.
- [64:49]
Yiyun Lee
He knows he's taken on a responsibility with her.
- [64:52]
Belle
Right. Right. Why do you think he married her? Belle?
- [64:58]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. It's a good question. We know he had thoughts of her. He asks Violet about her and what she looks like and that's important to him. And he remembers very clearly going to buy the watch from her.
- [65:08]
Belle
Right.
- [65:09]
Yiyun Lee
So, you know, in his mind, she was the one who got away, even if she wasn't the great love. Or else he feels bad about rejecting her. They were friends in school.
- [65:18]
Belle
I think they were friends there from childhood.
- [65:20]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [65:20]
Belle
So she always loved him. Yeah.
- [65:23]
Yiyun Lee
So in a way, by rejecting her, he lost a friend, someone who had been meaningful in his life. So you can see him having some nostalgia and you can see him being lonely and not being able to do his work.
- [65:37]
Belle
Yeah. I think companionship too.
- [65:40]
Yiyun Lee
Yes. But I think he misjudged what her feelings would be.
- [65:44]
Belle
Right. I think he made a mistake when Belle decided to marry her sister in law and her brother said she made a mistake, which is really. He made the mistake. You're right. He misjudged a woman's feelings.
- [65:59]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. So interesting. The moment also when he sort of learns, I think it says not exactly from Belle's words, but from her silences, that Violet was dumpy and bedraggled, her gray hair straggled.
- [66:14]
Belle
And when they two went out, they were like two old people.
- [66:17]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [66:18]
Belle
But in his mind, I like that their happiness is ageless happiness.
- [66:23]
Yiyun Lee
Do you think that Belle does any damage when she's clearly lying to him about what's out there? So he knows he's not actually seeing what's there.
- [66:31]
Belle
Right.
- [66:31]
Yiyun Lee
Does that harm him?
- [66:33]
Belle
Well, I think it doesn't harm him now, but it sort of retrospectively takes away something from him that I think the sentences, the damage is done to the fragile dream. Belle probably makes him feel no longer just an equal partner. Van Violet describes things to him. It's all about poetry and the beauty of the world. And Belle is always. That nun is no longer looking like an apple.
- [67:06]
Yiyun Lee
So sallow.
- [67:07]
Belle
Yeah.
- [67:08]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [67:09]
Belle
So the world she's brought to him by, her descriptions. Seem to me there's no beauty anymore and no poetry, ironically. Yeah. Which is very sad.
- [67:22]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [67:23]
Belle
Maybe that's the damage, you know?
- [67:26]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. So do you think that the story ends not with a happy ending?
- [67:32]
Belle
I hardly can think of any story from William Trevor that ends happily. Happily for a happy ending. But it does feel to me the final paragraph is interesting. The question I want to ask you is I think he has written the story a bit longer than most writers. I think most writers would end somewhere. You know, what mattered was damage done to something as fragile as a dream. That seems a natural ending. But he went on for two more paragraphs. What he did in those two paragraphs is he went back to the beginning of those two lines. I mean, this is very musical movement. He has those two lines. And now he has a variation of those two lines at the end, which is so beautifully done, but also so heartbreaking in a way.
- [68:25]
Yiyun Lee
Right.
- [68:25]
Belle
If you end with what matters was damage done to something as fragile as a dream. We get a sadness, but we don't get unsettled. I mean, I always think that is how a master does things. We thought, he's finished. He goes on. He introduces something else, like a little bit different mood, I thought. The last two paragraphs make me feel it's a violent story.
- [68:50]
Yiyun Lee
Do you want to just read the last paragraph there again? Okay.
- [68:54]
Belle
Each house that contain a piano brought forth its contradictions. The pearls old Mrs. Purty wore were opals. The padded skin of the stationer in Kiliav was freckled. The two lines of oaks above ochill were surely beeches. Of course. Of course. Oven Drumgood agreed, since it was fair that he should do so. Belle could not be blamed for making her claim. And claims could not be made without damage or destruction. Belle would win in the end because the living always do. And that seemed fair also since Violet had won in the beginning and had had the better years.
- [69:47]
Yiyun Lee
See, that's fascinating to me because I don't think Belle wins.
- [69:50]
Belle
You did not.
- [69:51]
Yiyun Lee
No. What does she win? She's hollowed out.
- [69:55]
Belle
This man right well, annihilation. I felt there was some sort of annihilation of the past.
- [70:03]
Yiyun Lee
That's a triumph.
- [70:04]
Belle
Yes. For her, I suppose.
- [70:06]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [70:07]
Belle
That's why I always thought. What? The final paragraph, there's some violence in that. It's a triangle love story. It's a ghost story. But there, the battle came all the way. Right.
- [70:19]
Yiyun Lee
In a way, Belle's the only one left standing.
- [70:22]
Belle
Right.
- [70:22]
Yiyun Lee
So in that way, she wins, but it doesn't mean she got what she wanted.
- [70:26]
Belle
I know, I know, but she can't think. So I think that's the hard one, that the living always win. The living don't always win. Yeah, but the living think they always win. I think the dead cannot defend themselves.
- [70:42]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a slight contradiction with an earlier part in the story where he says that Belle was the one who was alive, that she was offered all a man's affection, that she plundered his other woman's possessions and occupied her bedroom and drove her car. Should have been enough. It should have been everything. But as time went on, it seemed to Belle to be scarcely anything at all. So to her, she hasn't won. Of course, that's before she comes up with this device.
- [71:09]
Belle
Right. I think I agree with you. This device will win her nothing. She did succeed in cutting both the piano tuner and Violet down.
- [71:18]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. Or she's cut the connection between them, I suppose.
- [71:21]
Belle
Yes.
- [71:22]
Yiyun Lee
That memory.
- [71:23]
Belle
The memory. And I just thought that's the most violent thing you can do to a man.
- [71:28]
Yiyun Lee
It makes you think of her on her wedding day in dark wine. Red wine.
- [71:32]
Belle
Red. And she wished she could wear white.
- [71:36]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [71:37]
Belle
It's all very.
- [71:38]
Yiyun Lee
It's too late. It's so very fairy tale, like, you know.
- [71:41]
Belle
Yes, but it's a very upsetting fairy tale.
- [71:44]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah.
- [71:45]
Belle
Disturbing.
- [71:46]
Yiyun Lee
Well, most fairy tales are, actually.
- [71:47]
Belle
And that's true. That's true. That's true.
- [71:51]
Yiyun Lee
Ultimately, it was a battle that wasn't worth winning.
- [71:55]
Belle
I suppose most battles are fought for very silly reasons. Yes. I mean, I feel that's the human heart part. I mean, William Trevor. I just imagine another writer would have written the story in a less brutal way.
- [72:13]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. It's funny because people think of Trevor sometimes as, you know, a quiet writer. That seems to be like a big insult that's used all the time when someone's a quiet writer. Sometimes the quiet moments are the most devastating one.
- [72:28]
Belle
I think when they say quiet writer, it means Belle didn't pick up a knife to do something.
- [72:35]
Yiyun Lee
She did something much more violent.
- [72:37]
Belle
Yes. Yes. And I think all those dramas you cannot see on the surface are most devastating, more devastating than the dramas you can see played out in the kitchen. Right?
- [72:47]
Yiyun Lee
Yeah. And that's kind of a layer to all of Trevor's work, isn't it? What's not on the surface?
- [72:53]
Belle
In the interview, someone asked him if he was a believer. He said he called himself a God perturber.
- [72:59]
Yiyun Lee
God perturber. Do you think God was perturbed?
- [73:05]
Belle
A reader can be perturbed. I mean, I do think these stories have their innate violence and also just the innate brutality, just wound afflicted in a way that you cannot see. I think it's all the things you cannot see that happen in life come into Trevor's story.
- [73:27]
Yiyun Lee
Well, thank you, Ian.
- [73:28]
Belle
Thank you, Deborah.
- [73:38]
Yiyun Lee
William Trevor, who died in 2016, was the author of more than three dozen novels and short story collections, including the Whitbread Prize winning Felicia's Journey, the Story of Lucy Gault, the Hill Bachelors, and Last Stories, which was published posthumously in 2018. He published 50 stories in the New Yorker between 1977 and 2018. Yiyun Lee has published eight books of fiction, including the novels Must I Go and the Book of Goose, a winner of the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the story collection Wednesday's Child, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. A new nonfiction work, Things in Nature Merely Grow, was published in May. You can download more than 210 Previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including ones in which Yiyun Lee read stories by John McGahran and Patricia Highsmith, or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page, or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Prosinos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening. I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters in print or here on the podcast. The New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [75:40]
Belle
From PRX.