Back in 1910, the year Elene's mother was born in Siberia, her grandfather bought his wife a Becker piano in celebration of the birth of their daughter. The little girl grew up learning to play, and love, this family piano.

In 1914 her father went off to war, drafted like other Russians. In 1917 he was lucky enough to come home again, only to be arrested by the local police because of his bourgeois background. When the police came to the house they made note of the piano as a reflection of his materialist ways. Indeed Becker pianos were made in St. Petersburg, and even the czar's family had one, although it is doubtful that the policemen knew that at the time.

So when Grandfather got out of prison (thanks to a cousin who was both Bolshevik and sympathetic to family ties) he decided he needed to hide the piano before it was confiscated.

Being too large to move easily, he dragged it out onto a porch and then built a false wall in front of the piano (an upright) so that a stranger would just think the porch happened to be shorter. To protect the piano, he stuffed it inside and out with straw, and hoped that would be enough to get it through the Siberian winter.

As things turned out, spring did not seem promising for a "white" Russian family in an increasingly "red" Siberia, so Grandfather sent his family across the river into China. The river was completely frozen over in winter, and the family was taken carefully down to the shore and given white sheets as camouflage. Their guide taught them how to crouch down behind the bumps of choppy ice if search lights were headed their way, and before long they were safely on the other, Chinese side. After a short stay in this neighboring river town, the family moved further away from the Russian border for safety -- to a town where Elene's mother finished high school. In time, their possessions from Russia followed them, including the piano. In 1927 the family moved on to Harbin, which had emerged as a major enclave of Russian ÈmigrÈs, and where she took lessons at the conservatory.

As the 1930s dawned, and Japan loomed menacingly on the horizon, Elene's mother, now turning 21, managed to get an invitation to attend a Seventh Day Adventist College in Calistoga, California. The trip began with a train ride to Korea (there was only one then) and on to Japan before landing in San Francisco by way of Honolulu.

For three nights she waited on Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West, until her sponsor, a professor at Berkeley, could be located to come and get her. During that time she remained alone in a room with hundreds of beds, all reserved for "whites" while a neighboring room was teeming with Chinese and Japanese -- no distinction between them yet. Each night, when the spooky sounds of the great empty hall got too much from her, she would sneak next door and seek the friendship of the Asian women. Then in time the matron would come and find her and send her back to her lonely quarters with words of warning in English, presumably to the effect that she did not belong „with them."

In time, Elene's mother was able to learn English and find her way, a path that included getting married and becoming a citizen. Finally in 1940, with her own status assured, she was able to send for her parents who had remained in Harbin under Japanese occupation. They were able to get passage on what turned out to be the last boat prior to Pearl Harbor.

But this is a story about a piano. No, not left behind, her father had managed to get it crated and shipped by rail to the coast for a promised freighter to San Francisco. Six months later, Elene's mother was greeted with a knock on the door by men who assured her they wanted to deliver her piano. It was, they said, in their truck, with her name on it, and as proof they produced a smaller package which purported to carry the legs.

"But then it's not my piano," she insisted. "Mine is an upright piano. It has no legs."

"Well, this is a fine, grand piano," they insisted. Surely she would want it and was entitled to it -- they showed her the label with her name and address.

"No," she insisted. She wanted her piano and none other and would wait until it arrived.

A few days later two other men arrived at the house and asked if she had received a piano, or perhaps just the legs of a piano.

"No," she insisted again. She would not have it, she did not have it, and she was determined to find out just where her real piano was.

A few days later still, two other men arrived, and identified themselves as being from the FBI. They had reason to believe, they told her, that a piano had been delivered to her, and they wished to examine the legs which, they thought, might contain some secret documents. Evidently the thick, solid nature of legs for a grand piano made a potential hiding place for these kinds of documents.

No piano, no legs, she insisted. "Well that's good," they assured her, because if she, as an immigrant, had had anything to do with these legs she would be in serious trouble.

With the war at hand it took some time, but in the end, Grandfather was able, with the help of the insurance company, to determine that the real Becker Russian-Chinese piano was still in a warehouse and got it sent, finally, to the proper address.

As a finale to my fine trip I listened to granddaughter Elene play this well-traveled clavier, a final reminder of what a long and winding trip these lives can be.