The Piano Tuner


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 2020 by Chiang-Sheng Kuo
 English translation copyright © 2023 by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
 First English-language Edition
 This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941812
 Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
 Cover illustration: Andy Ryan/Getty Images (woman); Eujarim
 Photography/Getty Images (clouds)
 ISBN: 978-1-956763-41-6
 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-956763-60-7
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 
 Contents
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 Acknowledgments
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 IN THE BEGINNING, we were souls without bodies. When God planned to give us souls a physical shape, we refused to enter into a concrete form that would fall ill and grow old, obstructing our free passage through time and space. God came up with a solution by having angels play enchanting music.
 We souls were so spellbound by the music we wanted to hear it more clearly, which was possible only through one channel, the human ear. God’s trick worked, and we souls gained a physical body.
 What happened next ought to start with Rachmaninoff, heard through Lin san’s ears.
 *
 The music came from the second-floor practice room.
 Lin had not heard the story of souls losing their freedom over a pair of ears. He had, in fact, just experienced a different kind of loss.
 Three months after his wife’s death, he’d finally pulled himself together enough to deal with the studio she’d run.
 She had poured her heart and soul into the studio, attracting an enthusiastic following in the neighborhood. Then why hadn’t she left a word about it during her last days? Maybe she’d felt bad about burdening him with the task of keeping the place going, he reflected. She knew that an amateur music lover like him would likely close up shop unless she asked him not to.
 That speculation assuaged his guilt feelings somewhat, for, after all, before meeting Emily, he hadn’t been able to tell a violin from a viola.
 Three months had gone by and classes were ending. The instructors and students had all been notified of the closure.
 It was the first time he’d been to the studio since her death, and he had waited until after nine at night, when the last session was over and he would not be subjected to reproachful looks from the newly jobless instructors. They would not say anything, but he would find their awkward attempts to avoid him unbearable.
 His first marriage had lasted six years before ending in divorce. This one was over even sooner, a short four years, before Emily had time to turn him into a true lover of classical music. The cancer had come out of the blue and with a vengeance. She was gone in six months.
 He was twenty years older than her. The thought of getting remarried had given him pause, fearing that one day he might be a burden to a young wife. He never imagined that it might end the way it did.
 With the door to the practice room ajar, the lyrical notes of a piano came through crisply in the night air.
 Emily had dragged him to a good many concerts, including her own recitals, but there were few pieces he could recognize right off. Surprised by the piano strains emerging from upstairs, he paused in his conversation with the studio manager and instinctively looked up in the direction of the music.
 It was Rachmaninoff’s “Song Without Words.”
 Emily’s violin had introduced him to the tune on the eve of their first anniversary.
 He’d gotten her a surprise gift, neither jewelry nor an expensive purse, but a self-sponsored recital. Overjoyed, she began by making him an audience of one in their living room, where she played the whole program for him. Only the Rachmaninoff piece inspired a strong reaction and deep emotions. The string version sounded unusually sorrowful, which may have led to thoughts of his mother, who had passed away a few years earlier.
 “Seems awfully sad,” he’d said.
 Emily graciously replaced it with another selection for the recital. Yet the melody was etched on his mind. Like an audio allergen, an earworm, he seemed to hear it all the time; from a soprano’s plaintive rendition to a cello performance, from car commercials to movie background music, the piece popped up around him in ever-shifting forms.
 But on this night, when he heard the piano version in the empty studio, not only was it missing that grave quality, it actually sounded weightless, expansive, somewhat hazy.
 “Who’s that playing so late at night?” he asked the studio director.
 From the moment he arrived, the moonfaced woman had tried to force a sad look onto her naturally happy countenance, but now, with this question taking her mind off her expression, she could relax.
 “Oh, that’s our piano tuner.”
 “Hasn’t he been told to stop coming?”
 “Yes, but he said he was happy to provide free service before the pianos are taken away.”
 Lin frowned but said nothing.