THE BASS SAXOPHONE by Josef Škvorecký Read Free Book Online Page A

them there is always a tiny drop of horror in you, terror and fear. She forgot about me and I was silent, she talked on and in the gray light of the rain her eyes shone with a sort of feverish, unhealthy, unnatural enthusiasm, and I was silent and watched those eyes and she noticed it and the feverish shine faded and I shook off the strange evil enchantment of that magic rainy moment too, made a sarcastic face and said, You don’t mean to say you want to devote yourself to black magic? Why, it’s the epitome of Evil and you’re striving to attain Goodness. And she dropped her gaze and said, Not any more I don’t want to, but once I did. When? I asked. When I couldn’t stand it any more, she replied, when I began to feel God didn’t hear me, that He’d turned against me. I wanted to ask the Evil One for help, to — to help me get rid of him. And did you? Did you make those concentric circles with consecrated chalk? I asked. No, she said, God was protecting me. I understand now that God is constantly testing man, and many people don’t pass the test. But why does He test them? I asked. To see if man is worthy of the supreme grace of being delivered from everything physical, to see if he’sready. But man never asked God to create him, I said. By what right does God test him? God has the right to do anything, she said, because God is Love. Is He supremely merciful? I asked. Yes, she said. Then why did He create man? Because He loved him, she said. And why did He create him, then? Why did He send him into this world full of suffering? To test him, to see if he is deserving of His grace, she explained. But isn’t He torturing him that way? I asked. Why didn’t He just leave him alone from the outset, if He loves him? Or, once he created him, why didn’t He go ahead and create him perfect right off? Ready for eternal bliss? Why all the martyrdom of the pilgrimage from Matter to Spirit? Oh, you’re still imperfect, she said. You reject the truth. I don’t reject it, I said, but I want to have proof. And if not proof, then at least logic. Logic is also the work of God, she said. Then why doesn’t God use logic Himself? He doesn’t have to, she said. Some day you will understand. Some day everyone will understand and everyone will be saved. But don’t talk about it any more, please, she said, and her eyes again had the look of a little animal in the woods, afraid of losing that one certainty of forest freedom; so I stopped talking about it and went over to the piano; Emöke came and leaned against the top and I began to play “Riverside Blues,” which she liked, and then I sang “St. James Infirmary,” and the schoolteacher came overfrom the light and darkness of the Ping-Pong room and stood behind Emöke and I was singing
    I went down to Saint James Infirmary
    For to see my baby there
    Stretched out on a cold white table
    So sweet, so cold, so fair
.
    And the pentatonic melody born of that basic human sorrow that can only end in a convulsive lament — the sorrow of two people who are parting ways forever — slid into Emöke’s heart and she said, That’s a beautiful song. What is it? It’s a Negro blues, I replied, and Emöke said, Yes, I’ve heard that Negro people are very spiritual people, I heard them sing some religious songs on a record, one of the men at the office has records from America. Ah, I said, blacks are lecherous rascals, but they’ve got a great sense of music. It just seems they’re that way, she retorted. They are spiritual people. And I played and sang some more, and when I had finished, the schoolteacher said, “Come on, beef it up a little and put some life into it, a little jive so we can cut a rug, right, miss? This is Dullsville, not a vacation!” So Emöke laughed and told me to give up my place at the piano, and she sat down and started to play with sure, naturally harmonizing fingers, a slow but rhythmical song that held the distant echo of a czardas, the pulse of Hungarian