A Treatise on Shelling Beans (26 page)

On each instrument they painted an identification number to show it was official property. Just like they had on all the desks, office machines, telephones, equipment, towels, everything that was company property. Each of us had to sign a list to say we’d been given such and such an instrument to use, and that we’d be responsible for it. They also bought us company outfits so we’d all look the same: gray suits, white nylon shirts, neck-ties all the same color and the same pattern. The outfits were kept in a closet in the social department, we had to sign them out whenever we had a show. The only things of our own we had were our shoes and socks.

After that, for several months the instructor came and we rehearsed with him two, sometimes three times a week. After work, it goes without saying, because they only let us off overtime. And so we wouldn’t lose out, they added two extra hours each day for the rehearsal. To tell the truth, after a couple of rehearsals we didn’t really need the instructor, each of us knew more than he did. There was a cement mason, a welder, a tile layer, a crane operator, an office worker, and another electrician, and aside from me they’d all played before in various bands. One had been in a military band, another one had played at a spa resort, one had been a street musician during the war, or before the war. One of them had studied for a time at a conservatory, one was an organist, and one of them had a father who played fiddle at the opera, and his father had taught him to play even better than him, he said.

They chose me because I was the only one who’d come forward as a saxophonist. You know, in those days the sax wasn’t a regular instrument. You didn’t often see one in a band. Elsewhere in the world sure, but not here, not in company bands, especially from a building site. Though it was precisely the saxophone that made us so successful. Those guys have a saxophone – it gave
us an advantage over other bands. Pretty soon we started getting invited to play here and there, on other sites, factories, army units. And not just for dances, but other things too, we were asked to perform at celebrations, anniversaries, holiday events.

Let me tell you, our band often did more for the site than management. So you don’t think I’m just saying that, one time we did a special event at a cement works. Maybe you know how things were with cement in those days. With everything else too, it’s true. But on a building site, without cement you couldn’t do a thing. You’d sometimes have to beg for every ton of it, organize parties for the cement works management or their workers’ board, remember the name days of this or that person, which people were important and who made the decisions, bring gifts. Or send telegrams, call. And when nothing helped, who to call higher up, though that was always the least help of all. The site would grind to a halt and stay that way.

They asked me to perform solo on the saxophone especially for the wife of the director of the works, because it happened to be her name day or maybe birthday that day. And they announced that I’d play solo for her, the rest of the band was only going to do backup. I didn’t want to do it, I told them I’d never appeared solo before. But then I thought to myself, when it comes down to it it’s a challenge. She was sitting in the front row, next to the director, she was a decent-looking woman, a brunette I remember. I started playing, I saw she was beaming, so I went all the way. I finished my solo, and the place was dead, there wasn’t even the faintest applause. It was only when she jumped to her feet in the front row and started clapping without looking around that the whole room burst into applause, some of them clapping even louder than her. After that there weren’t any more problems with cement. At most the delivery would be a day or two late. And the whole band got bonuses.

That was later, after he and I had gone our separate ways. You know, the warehouse keeper. It happened because there was a performance at our site, it was some holiday or other, a few people got medals, a bunch of certificates
were handed out. The next day I went by the warehouse for some item, and as he was writing out the chit he said in a kind of hurt voice:

“You were all over the map. You’ll never be a real band. You don’t play well together, you’re not that good.”

It got to me, because who was he to say things like that. Some warehouse keeper. The room had rung with applause, it was even louder than after the director’s speech, everyone congratulated us, people kept shaking my hand, and here was this warehouse guy. I thought, I’ll just get the part I need and I’ll say something to him as I’m leaving. But all of a sudden he softened up.

“You, you have something. But with the saxophone, don’t go getting any ideas. You’ll be wasted in a band like that. They’ll clap for you, sure they will, because who ever heard a saxophone out here in the countryside.”

I did a double take. Where had
he
heard a saxophone? It was then he let on that he’d been a saxophonist, he’d played for many years before the war, and in lots of different bands. I was dumbfounded, because on the surface you wouldn’t have given ten cents for the guy, as the saying goes. I forgot that I’d come for the part, and honestly, to this day I can’t remember what it was. I just wondered, should I believe him or not?

Words didn’t come easily to him, you could see he had to force them out. Two or three of them, then a break, with big gaps in between, as if he had trouble joining them together. Or maybe that was just my own impression, because I couldn’t get over the idea that the chit was being signed not by some warehouse keeper but by a saxophonist. From what he said, he’d played every kind of sax, though most often an alto. Then when he started listing the places he’d performed, I have to say I thought I was dreaming. Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and those were just the capitals, he’d worked in all kinds of other cities. He’d traveled in any number of countries. He started naming the venues he’d played, and I thought he must be making them up. The Paradise, the Eldorado, the Scheherezade, the Arcadia, the Eden, the Hades, the Imperial. I wanted to ask him what all the names meant, but I was too shy. Because he might think,
And you want to be a sax player? Oh yes, he also performed on a passenger ship sailing to America. I stopped wondering whether he was telling me the truth or not, because the very fact that the saxophone can take you all over the world like that was making me think differently about it.

Once again I got the idea of maybe beginning to put money aside from my wages on the first of the month, or at least a part of what I spent on vodka. I couldn’t play a company saxophone for the rest of my life, after all. And what if I moved to another site and there was no band there? One day I was back in the warehouse to pick up something or other, and as he leaned over the chit he asked:

“Do you have your own sax?”

“No, just the company one. I saved for one once, but then the currency change happened. I was thinking about starting to save up again.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. He finished writing the chit, and didn’t utter another word.

I thought, probably he reckons there’s no point, because there might be another change of currency. And a currency change is like death, you always end up not having enough time. He must know life.

A couple of weeks went by, then one day I was passing the warehouse when he shuffles out and calls me:

“Come over here!”

“I don’t have time now. I’ll swing by later.” I really was in a hurry.

“No, now. Later’s usually too late.”

“Is it something urgent?” I could see there was a case lying on his desk.

“Look inside,” he said.

I opened the case, my heart pounding, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“A saxophone,” I said, though it was like I still didn’t quite believe it.

“A saxophone,” he said. “I went home Sunday and brought it back. Why should it go to waste?”

“It’s golden,” I said. I felt I was trembling.

“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: