Her mother. Their faces were identical, though the girl’s skin was lighter. The girl pointed at the sheet music, her face upraised with a question. I stood transfixed by the riddle of it: how could the native woman know the music, the instrument? How could she have taught the girl? But if she hadn’t, who else could have done so? And the greater enigma: how had the instrument got here? It was wildly out of place, an impression heightened by the presence of the upended carapace of a great lobster on top of it, affixed on a pile of wax. A lit candle had been placed inside so that it functioned like an orange lamp.

I accepted a mug—rum, unwatered—from the bearded man who’d appointed himself our guide, and crept forward in the crowd, heedless for a moment of my father and the doctor. Picking my way through clear spaces, I was able to approach close behind the girl and her mother. I could read J. S. Bach at the head of the sheet music. And on the varnished timber of the piano, just below the paper, the words Pleyel et Cie embossed in gold.

Aside from the Greek, I had taught the Cooper children elementary French. These words didn’t come from the basic grammar we’d studied, but they were naggingly familiar. The crowd pressed and I shrank back among them, away from the pianist. I could smell cooking fish, smoke from the fireplace, crushed grass and liquor. Declan Connolly had a mug in his hand, and already, so soon, he was staggering. I had not seen him drinking with any great relish thus far, even prior to my efforts to rid the Moonbird of booze. Perhaps I had forced him into unwanted abstinence and he was making up for it now.

Someone broke a bottle, away in the background. There were calls to hush.

A single note rang out in the night, a solitary raindrop of sound that hung there and faded, before it was followed by a torrent of notes and chords.

The girl’s fine fingers evoked a world that was not the island, but maybe a Europe they’d all forgotten or never seen. The sound had a soothing effect on the men in particular. They stood and swayed and closed their eyes as the music washed over them, rising in crescendos and receding into the slightest brooks of faint melody. The girl’s body rocked forward when she pounded, and arched back from notes that were only whispers. Her eyes were closed, as though all present saw the same thing behind their lids; and for once my father saw it with them.