I don’t know, maybe it was helpful advice. But I chose the saxophone. Course, you might ask what help a drunk could be when he couldn’t help himself. It may have been that it was against God I chose the sax, since His favorite is the violin. The fact was, God owed me. And him, whenever he’d had a skinful he’d always go on about God.
One time, in front of a full rec room he talked about how building a new world should start not from bricklaying and plastering, or welding or glazing, but from music. And if God had started from music, no new world would even be needed. Someone informed on him to the commandant. The commandant called him in, apparently there was a scene and he threatened the music teacher that if he didn’t quit talking about God he’d be sent back where he came from. He was lucky he’d been drunk when he said what he said. Of course they knew he drank. But they had no way of finding another music teacher. He was the only one who’d agreed to work at the school. That was the kind of school it was. They said the instruments had been confiscated from various oppressors, parasites, tyrants, all kinds of bad guys.
I didn’t understand who they were referring to. We were told this by our homeroom teacher. Now the instruments were for us, who were the future of a new and better world. Actually, I found it hard to understand anything back then. I was afraid of everything, people, things, words. Whenever I had to talk I’d get stuck on every word. Often I couldn’t even get past the first one. The simplest word would hurt, and each one would feel like it wasn’t mine.
When everyone in the dormitory had already fallen asleep, I’d put my head under the blanket and quiz myself in a whisper about this or that word, as if I was learning them from scratch, taming them, getting them used to being mine. Once in a while some boy in a nearby bed would wake up, tug at my blanket and ask:
“Hey, what are you talking to yourself for?”
“Hey, wake up, I think you’re having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep.”
Sometimes boys in the other beds would wake, they’d wake others up, and one bed after another they’d laugh, make fun of me for talking to myself.
Why did I do it in bed, under the blanket? I couldn’t say. Maybe words need warmth when they’re being reborn. Because when I landed in that school I was virtually mute. I could already talk a bit, but not much, and all in a jumble. When someone asked me a question, I couldn’t give them an answer even if I knew what I was supposed to say. It was only thanks to starting to play music that I gradually got my speech back, and along with it the feeling that I was alive. In any case I stopped stuttering so badly, and I held onto more and more words, and I was less and less afraid of them.
In fact, I was so insatiable that I decided to learn every instrument there was. Even percussion. There wasn’t much in the way of percussion instruments. A drum, one snare, a cymbal, a triangle. But when I played them I would sometimes feel something twitching inside me, as if a clock were starting to tick that till now had been stopped. In time I came to understand. In my view it’s not just music but life itself that’s governed by rhythm. When someone loses their sense of rhythm, they lose hope. What are tears, what is despair, if not an absence of rhythm. What is memory if not rhythm.
Though most of all I practiced on the saxophone. And let me tell you, there was something in the saxophone, even though those were only the very beginnings, that when I slung it around my neck, and put the mouthpiece between my lips, and placed my hands around the tube, just by doing that I could feel hope entering into me. Or that’s not quite it, it was something deeper, like I was trying to be born all over again. Who knows, maybe there’s something of that sort in all instruments. But I could only feel it with the sax. And right then, in school, I made up my mind that one day I’d buy a saxophone. I had to, come what may.
So when I graduated from the school and got a job working on the electrification of the villages, from the very first pay day I began setting money aside for that saxophone. Not a lot to begin with, because I didn’t earn a lot. I wasn’t a fully-fledged electrician right from the beginning. More of a gopher, as they say. I mostly worked putting up telegraph poles. One team strung the wires up on the poles, the other installed electricity in the houses. It was only later that they let me do other jobs. For example, when a house was built of stone and you had to make grooves in the stone for the wires, I would make the grooves. In the houses it was much better. You could earn a little extra for this or that odd job. Though in those days there weren’t that many stone-built houses. Sometimes they’d give you something, a cup of milk and a slice of bread and cheese. Or they’d let you pick an apple or a plum or pear if they had an orchard. Because sometimes our stomachs rumbled from hunger, especially toward the end of the month.
But however hungry a month it was, I had to set something aside for the saxophone. I knew the moment I collected my wages that I’d run out before the end of the month, but I had to put something away for the saxophone. Often I was tempted to borrow a few zloties from the saxophone. Not for food. For food I wouldn’t have dared. But for instance when my shirt was in tatters, or my socks couldn’t be darned anymore. Winter would be coming and I could have used some warmer clothes, long johns, a sweater, new shoes. It goes without saying that we worked in the winter too. Just not in severe frosts, we’d only work inside the houses then. But when it was only a bit below freezing we’d go on digging holes for the telegraph poles, breaking the frozen earth with pickaxes.
I kept my money in my mattress, in the straw, wrapped in newspaper. Believe me, a mattress is the best place to hide money. Especially when you changed villages and lodgings the way we did, your mattress was the best place. You slept on your mattress, squashed it with your body, who would have suspected there was money in there. When I added to it from the new month’s wages, I’d often have to search the entire mattress to find it.
I really was tempted to borrow some back. I’d take it out, unwrap it, and wrestle with myself that maybe after all I could. I mean, of course I’d return it. Maybe I’d even give it back with interest for however long it was till the next pay day. One time. I swear I’ll give it back. Just this once. Nothing’ll happen. When all’s said and done it’s my money, I’m borrowing from myself. It’d be a whole other story if I was borrowing from someone else. I’d be borrowing from myself, so I wouldn’t even have to explain if I just took something for a week or a month, because it certainly wouldn’t be any longer. Did I really not trust myself to that extent? My own money and I didn’t trust myself? Let me at least count how much I’ve saved. Though I already knew how much. I’d count it every month when I added more. But what was the harm in it, I’d count it, since I wasn’t going to borrow anything anyway. True, counting it doesn’t make it more, but it cheers you up that at least it hasn’t gotten any less.
I’d count it, smooth out any wrinkled notes, sort it into piles of hundreds, five hundreds, thousands, wrap each pile with a single note. Then I’d divide it all up again, but this time not according to denominations but in equal amounts. If I thought there weren’t enough piles I’d reduce the size of each amount so there’d be more. You know, there’s something in money that when it sucks you in it becomes hard to spend it on anything at all. I even started to worry that later I’d be reluctant to spend the money on a saxophone.
One of the electricians fell from a pole and broke an arm and a leg, and they put me in his place. I became a full electrician even though I hadn’t finished my whole training period. So I was earning more, which meant the saxophone was getting closer and closer. They began letting me do overtime and take on private jobs. I wasn’t putting up poles anymore, but installing wires on the poles. And you put in the most overtime on those poles. Everything was way behind schedule and a directive came down that things should be hurried along. So there was a lot more overtime to be had. Before the pole was put up you had to fix glass or porcelain insulators on the top. Then you’d go up and string the wires, attaching them to the insulators.