“Yes it is,” he said. “An alto. It’s seen a good deal of the world with me.”
“How much would you want for it?” I finally got up the courage to ask, while in my mind I’d already begun to borrow from everyone I knew on the site, in the offices, in benefits and loans. Where else could I try, where else. My thoughts were racing like a hunting dog, because I was certain all the money I’d be able to borrow would not be enough. He also seemed to be wondering what he should ask:
“How much? How much? How do you know I want to sell it? Things like this aren’t for sale. Sometimes all that’s left of your whole life is what you didn’t sell.”
And he said to me that if I wanted, after work or on Sundays I could come by, to his warehouse, and we could play. Or rather I would play, he would listen. It’d be better for me than vodka or cards. Especially as I couldn’t play that much yet, and a saxophone has as many secrets as a person. Some of them he’d show me, others I’d have to discover on my own — not that he was trying to keep anything from me, it’s just that he himself hadn’t managed to unearth them.
“How much would that cost a month?” I asked.
“It won’t cost anything. You’ll play and I’ll listen. I can’t play myself, as you can see. I’m barely up to this job. It’s only thanks to good people, a few still exist. I’m not well, I don’t have long.”
And that was how it began. First he hammered it into me that the saxophone isn’t just a tool for playing music. You won’t get anything out of it by being angry or mad at it, or by sulking. It needs patience and hard work. Conscientious hard work. If you want the saxophone to join with you like a soul with a body, you yourself have to open up to it. If you don’t hide anything from it, it won’t hide anything from you. But at every deceit of yours it’ll dig its heels in and not give an inch. It won’t go any higher or lower, however much you blow your lungs out. Actually, your lungs won’t be enough, you’ll be playing but it will be lifeless. You have to play with your whole self, including your pain, your tears, your laughter, your hopes, your dreams, everything that’s inside you, with your whole life. Because all that is music. The saxophone isn’t the music, you are. But I’d have to try, really try, he kept repeating to me, if I wanted to hear myself in the saxophone. Because only then would it be music.
I have to tell you, I was even afraid of that thing. What kind of saxophone was it, I wondered. I played the company instrument, that was a saxophone too, but I didn’t feel any of what he was talking about. And to begin with I played much worse on his sax than on the company one. Actually, you couldn’t really call it playing, we mostly just practiced scales. That is, he told me what to do, I practiced. On and on, nothing but scales, up and down the whole range of the saxophone. It made me mad, but what could I do. Then he brought some sheet music and we started doing exercises and short extracts. He never let me play any piece of music in its entirety, I only practiced separate parts over and over, and it wasn’t till later that he let me put the parts together. Also, often he’d make me play one sound till I ran out of breath, then he’d have me repeat it time and time again till he’d say, Good enough.
I’d go to him after work, and not leave till night had fallen over the site. Afterwards I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I’d be playing things over in my mind, then often I’d dream about them. One time he told me I was holding the mouthpiece wrong, and it was making me blow more than I needed to. My lips weren’t in the right place, I was pressing them too hard to the mouthpiece and air was escaping out the sides of my mouth. We have to change that. Another time it was that I was fingering too heavily, my fingers were too stiff, they needed to be loose, I should only touch the keys with the very tips of my fingers. And my fingertips should be so sensitive that they’d feel a sunbeam if it touched them. Because when I played, I wasn’t supposed to touch the keys, I was supposed to touch the music. Those hands of yours are like turtles, your joints are clumsy. Keep practicing. See here, at the end they need to bend at a right angle. Practice at work as well. Though it was from work that my fingers were that way, because electricians don’t much need to move their hands.
Sometimes I used to doubt whether he really had been a saxophonist, or whether he just sat in that warehouse of his and out of boredom imagined that he’d played the sax, like he could have imagined that he was anything other than a warehouse keeper. Maybe he did play a bit at one time, hence the saxophone, but all the rest was wishful thinking. Someone like that can put themselves through hell, then try and drag other people into their hell with them.
He never once took the saxophone in his hands to show me how one thing or another should be played, since I was doing it wrong.
“I would show you, but how?” he would say. “With one hand? I can barely write chits. As you can see.”
But in that case, how could he know something was wrong? Not like that, play it again. Oh, he knew, he did. It was only years later that I came to understand.
I went to him every day for maybe eight months, then I got sick of it. I started coming every other day or so, though he would stay back in the warehouse every evening, waiting for me. Why didn’t you come yesterday, why didn’t you come the day before yesterday. It’s been four days. You haven’t been since last week, and I keep waiting here for you.
I would explain that there’d been an emergency, that we were having big problems with a repair, it’d be another few days yet. Or that they’d kept us later than usual on the site because of something or other. That the previous week we’d been doing contract work, because we were behind schedule. I made up excuses, and he seemed to understand.
“Yeah, that’s how things are on a building site. That’s how things are.” He would just ask a while later: “So, is the work back on schedule?”
“Not exactly,” I’d mumble.
“Your work might be, but getting yourself back on schedule won’t be so easy,” he’d say, a note of reproach in his voice.
Then one time, though I’d only skipped a single day, he said:
“Evidently I was mistaken.”
That stung, and I was on the verge of saying I wouldn’t be coming anymore when he spoke again:
“There’ll come a moment when you won’t be able to play and work on a building site at the same time. Not just yet, but at some point you’re going to have to make a choice. For now, just drop out of the band. At least let them stop ruining you.”
“What do you mean, drop out?” He’d actually made me jump.
He leaped up and started clumping around the warehouse. I’d never seen him so worked up.
“In that case, play all you want with them. Some people can’t see further than the tip of their nose. Play all you want. You all love the applause, that’s the fact of it, whoever’s doing the applauding and why. Plus you get overtime.”
That really needled me. I told you they gave us two hours of overtime each day. But that wasn’t why I was in the band. That wasn’t why I’d put in more effort than almost any other kid when I was in school. That wasn’t why I’d saved up for a saxophone, taking food out of my own mouth. He’d really touched a nerve. And I stopped going to him at all. I thought to myself, how long do I have to listen to him saying, Not like that, not like that. You’re not doing it right, not doing it right. Play it again, play it again. If he’d at least have praised me just one time. And on top of everything else he wants me to drop out of the band.
I left without a word, but let me tell you, I was clenching my fists so hard my hands bled. For several days nothing went right at work. I burned a transformer — myself, an electrician. He wants me to drop out of the band, kept running through my head. Drop out of the band. When that band was my only hope. Not to mention that we were more and more successful. Not long before, we’d been shifted half time to the band, we only worked half time on the site. Plus, in a few weeks we were supposed to play at a masked ball for some bigwigs. They chose us over who knew how many other bands. We all thought it was something to be proud of. Not just for the band but the whole site, management, and all that.