Bösendorfer Piano

The Bösendorfer Piano is an upright instrument in Mrs Brooks’s living room, where it shifts in Bunny’s attention from a potential source of money to the centre of an uncanny episode. Its appearance invites ordinary appraisal; its pounding chords later seem to give the room a force that Bunny cannot master, though the scene leaves their cause uncertain.

Appearance and Appraisal

The instrument stands open-lidded against the far wall of Mrs Brooks’s living room. Around it, the room is crowded with dusty old books and conspicuously lacks a television. Bunny registers the piano as a possible prize for an enterprising antique dealer, estimating that it could earn well in a couple of years. His gaze turns the Bösendorfer Piano into a commodity before he asks Mrs Brooks whether she plays it.

Mrs Brooks answers by making claws of her arthritic hands and joking that she plays only on Hallowe’en. The exchange sets the piano between domestic amusement and menace: Bunny treats it as an object to value, while the old woman’s joke gives it a theatrical, almost ominous place in the room.

The Chords and Bunny’s Vision

After Bunny finishes his business with Mrs Brooks, the atmosphere changes. The radio stops transmitting, the room darkens and cools, and Bunny feels numbness in his fingertips and the hair rise on the back of his neck. As the overhead light crackles, he becomes certain that Libby will be sitting on the brocaded piano stool beside the Bösendorfer Piano, wearing the nightdress associated both with their wedding night and with her suicide. He sees only a blur of orange and an indistinct upward movement at the edge of his vision; the anticipated appearance is not presented as a clear sight of Libby.

The Starlings begin to peck and scratch at the window as the air seems to throb and warp. Then heavy, doom-laden chords sound from the piano. Bunny covers his ears and tries, unsuccessfully, to scream. Mrs Brooks rakes the air with her hands and cries out that it is Beethoven. The scene supplies no definite explanation for the music: the piano is heard, but whether it is being played by a person, a ghost, or something Bunny perceives through terror remains unsettled.

Departure and Significance

Bunny turns toward the instrument in time to see the piano stool empty and the air appear to wobble as Libby’s ghost departs. The Bösendorfer Piano thus anchors an encounter that is both physical and uncertain: the stool is there, the chords are heard, and Bunny reacts bodily, but Libby’s presence is never confirmed by an unambiguous appearance. The instrument’s material weight and its eerie sound occupy the same scene without resolving into a single explanation.

Bunny turns away, pats his pocket after stealing Mrs Brooks’s wedding rings, and leaves the house. Outside, he notices that the Starlings have gone. He still thinks he can hear the funereal chords from Mrs Brooks’s flat, but cannot be sure. The piano’s sound therefore follows him beyond the room as a doubtful residue of the haunting, contrasting with his earlier confidence that the instrument could simply be valued and sold.