Lucien first tuned the upright in the front room the spring the family moved in, when the walls still smelled of paint. The piano stood on the wrong side of the room, against the wall that the radiator warmed. He mentioned this, and Veronika, the woman of the house, ignored him. It was a good instrument that had been neglected, flat by almost half a semitone. While he worked, a small boy lay on the floor beneath the keyboard with his ear against the wood, announcing each note as it changed. "That one's finished," he said whenever a string came into tune. Lucien, who had never been thanked so precisely, left a card on the lid.
吕西安第一次给前厅里那架立式钢琴调音，是在这家人搬进来的那年春天，墙壁上还有油漆的味道。钢琴摆在房间错误的一侧，靠着被暖气片烘着的那面墙。他提了一句，女主人韦罗妮卡没理会。那是一架好琴，被冷落了，音准低了几乎半个半音。他干活的时候，一个小男孩躺在键盘下面的地板上，耳朵贴着木头，每当一个音变了，他就宣布一声。“这个调完了，”每有一根弦调准，他就说。吕西安从来没被人这样精确地道过谢，他在琴盖上留下了一张名片。
By the fifth year the boy had a sister, and the lid was crowded with drawings and a bowl of keys. The sound had grown a little brash, the way a piano does when it is played hard with the windows open, the treble bright and forward. He softened the hammers, and Veronika, listening from the doorway, said it sounded like the house taking a breath, then apologised for the phrase. Lucien had learned long ago that people said their truest things about pianos and apologised for them afterwards.
到第五年，男孩有了一个妹妹，琴盖上堆满了画和一碗钥匙。琴声变得有点吵闹，就像钢琴被用力弹、窗子又开着时那样，高音明亮、往前冲。他把琴槌弄软了些，韦罗妮卡站在门口听着，说这听上去像这栋房子在喘一口气，随后又为这个说法道了歉。吕西安早就知道，人们谈起钢琴时会说出自己最真的话，事后又为此道歉。
By the tenth year it was the girl who practised, scales mostly, with a fury that Lucien came to recognise by the loose screws it left behind. The boy played only in the evenings now, badly at first and then not badly at all. In the thirteenth year the piano was in tune but the house was not: the father's coat no longer hung by the door, and nobody explained. Lucien, who had always understood that his work concerned the instrument and not the weather, tuned a little more slowly than he needed to.
到第十年，练琴的成了女孩，多半是练音阶，带着一股狠劲，吕西安通过它留下的松动螺丝就能认出来。男孩现在只在晚上弹，起初弹得不好，后来就一点不差了。第十三年，钢琴音准是对的，家却不对了：父亲的外套不再挂在门边，也没有人解释。吕西安一向明白自己的活儿关乎乐器，而不是天气，他调得比需要的慢了一点。
Having let two winters pass without calling him, Veronika met him at the door in the nineteenth year with an apology that she delivered like a confession. Rarely had he found a piano so far out of tune and so little the worse for it; the silence had cost it pitch but nothing else. The children's names on the lid had been scrubbed down to ghosts. He said that pianos were more forgiving than people supposed, and she looked at him as if he had said something about herself.
两个冬天没有叫他来之后，第十九年，韦罗妮卡在门口迎接他，她的道歉说得像一份坦白。他很少见到一架琴音准偏得这么远，却受损这么小；沉默让它失了音高，别的什么也没有损伤。琴盖上孩子们的名字已经被擦得只剩下影子。他说钢琴比人们以为的要宽容得多，她看着他，像是他说的是关于她自己的什么话。
The girl came home once, in the twenty-second year, and played something slow while he packed his tools. He waited in the hall until the last chord had faded and said nothing about the C sharp that had always been slightly sour. The boy lived somewhere else now. What Lucien noticed in these later years was not that the piano sounded sadder, because it didn't, but that it sounded rounder. It was like a voice that has stopped trying to be heard from the back of the room.
第二十二年，女孩回家过一次，在他收拾工具时弹了一首缓慢的曲子。他在门厅里等到最后一个和弦消散，没有提起那个一直略微发酸的升C音。男孩已经住到别处去了。这些后来的年头里，吕西安注意到的并不是琴声变得更悲伤了，因为并没有，而是变得更圆润了。就像一个人的嗓音，不再想让房间后排的人也听到。
On the twenty-fifth visit there was almost nothing to do. Had anyone told him in that first spring that he would still be coming a quarter of a century later, he would have laughed. He had planned, then, to be tuning concert instruments in a bigger city by now. The piano had been played a little every day, he guessed, and then closed again. Veronika made tea and sat at the kitchen table while he worked, and the house had the quiet of a place that has been thoroughly used.
第二十五次上门，几乎没有什么可做的。要是在最初那个春天有人告诉他，二十五年后他还会来，他会笑出声来。那时他打算，到现在应该已经在更大的城市里给音乐会的乐器调音了。他猜，这架钢琴每天都被弹上一会儿，然后又合上。韦罗妮卡泡了茶，在厨房桌边坐着，他在干活，这栋房子有一种被彻底使用过的地方才有的安静。
He finished in an hour and ten minutes, twenty less than the first year had taken. When he played a single octave, up and down, she called through from the kitchen without coming in: "That's the one." At the door she handed him the cheque. He saw that she had already written next year's date at the top, in blue ink, with the care of someone who did not intend it as a question.
他一小时十分钟就调完了，比第一年少用了二十分钟。他弹了一个八度，上上下下，她在厨房里没有进来，隔着墙喊道：“就是这个。”在门口，她把支票递给他。他看到她已经在最上面写好了明年的日期，用蓝墨水，写得很认真，并不是想问他的意思。
