The piano on the pavement

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching professional movers bring a piano into a building.

The piano looked larger outside the house. Without a wall behind it or a carpet beneath it, the polished case seemed to have acquired extra corners. It stood on a low moving platform beside the steps, its dark surface reflecting a narrow, undecided version of the sky.

The movers did not speak to it as musicians might have done. They spoke to one another in short measures: a little further, hold, now. Each phrase changed the position of a hand or a foot. I could hear no tune, only the small sounds of wheels, straps and breath. The instrument had become a problem of weight and space.

At the entrance, the front mover stopped. For several seconds, nobody did anything which looked like progress. He checked the gap, looked back and adjusted his grip. The other mover waited. Their stillness seemed more deliberate than any movement they had made so far. I realised that I had been judging the task by whether the piano was advancing, as if caution were a delay rather than part of the work.

Once inside, the piano was turned against the wall. The room immediately offered it a familiar shape again. One mover placed a hand lightly on the closed lid while the other gathered the straps. A car passed outside, filling the doorway with an ordinary rush of noise. The piano remained silent, but its silence no longer looked awkward. It had arrived somewhere it could be an instrument again.

How does the writer use language to change the reader's view of the piano and the work of moving it?