The Soloist by Mark Salzman Read Free Book Online Page A

cause undue hardship for anyone?”
    At first no one moved, then I heard a few people shift in their seats, and finally one woman coughed politely.
    “Let’s start with you,” Judge Davis said, settling back into his chair and looking at her closely. “Who are you, ma’am?”
    “I’m Janice Parks.”
    “What’s the problem?”
    She said that her husband worked the night shift at a piping factory and would have a fit if she wasn’t home to cook an early dinner for him before going to work. Judge Davis clearly did not think much of her excuse; he turnedslightly purple and boomed, “Do you understand it’s your duty to serve, Mrs. Parks?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do, Mrs. Parks?”
    “I … I guess so, maybe,” she stammered.
    “How would you feel if you were accused of something serious, and were arrested for it, but when it came time to pick a jury all the ordinary people, your neighbors, weren’t willing to do it because they had to cook dinner on time. What would you feel then?”
    She didn’t respond. “Not being able to cook dinner doesn’t sound like undue hardship to me,” Judge Davis snapped, dismissing her excuse with a wave of his thick hand, then he asked, “Who else? Who else feels they cannot serve? Raise your hands.”
    An older man writhed painfully in his seat and raised his hand. “Who are you? What’s the problem?” the judge asked again. The poor old gentleman winced and said he had just thrown his back out the day before, which made it impossible for him to sit for long periods of time. Judge Davis seemed unimpressed, but when the man produced a note from his doctor in support of his claim, he was allowed to go. Another man said he couldn’t deal with the testimony if it was going to be about murder; he was dismissed. A woman had plane tickets out of the country that she had purchased months before; she was also permitted to leave. A self-employed man, a screenwriter, described the extreme financial hardships jury duty would put him through, but when Judge Davis asked him to prove that he was currently working on a project that absolutely could not be delayed, the man said angrily, “All right, all right. Forget I mentioned it.”
    The more this went on, the more I felt my resolve weaken. Not only was my excuse of having to oversee a graduate recital fraudulent, but I was beginning to think that jury duty might be a good idea. It would force me to keep away from the cello for at least ten days, which would be the longest I’d gone without practicing for many years, perhaps even since I had first started playing. I’d tried before to take vacations from music, but my resistance always broke down after two or, at most, three days. Since I’d already handed in the semester grades, I was finished with teaching until September. There was only the Korean boy, and his lessons were at night anyway. By five o’clock no one was offering excuses anymore, so Judge Davis adjourned the court for the day, reminding us to be punctual the next morning, and then, after banging his gavel impressively, squeezed himself through a narrow door behind his desk to his chambers.
    That night I tried to work out a lesson plan for the Korean boy for our first few weeks. It was a bittersweet task; the thought of passing on to him the knowledge I’d received from my teacher both excited and depressed me. It would have been different if I had felt more warmly toward him, if only he were more expressive or more clearly enthusiastic about studying with me. But he didn’t seem to need or want my knowledge or approval. If I was going to share everything with a student, and eventually be surpassed by him, at least it should be someone I liked. At the same time, I wanted to transcend that feeling and make the most of the opportunity to teach him. It was partially for his sake, because I knew my having been a child performer would make me especially qualified to