The saxophonist

When the audience was silent and the spotlight shone on him, he lowered his eyes onto that saxophone and blew in it as if to whisper a negotiation, as if to beg it not to let him down. He blew until the begging began to sound like a silent tear, an expression of pain. The piano began to play , acknowledging his plight and urging him to express it, assuring him that it was alright to shed the tear and that it oughtn’t be silent. Together they cried in co-ordination as dancers on the ice, as lovers look into each other’s eyes. Like broken eye contact, the saxophonist went louder, dividing the crowd into two, those that listened and those that played with him.

He told his story, loudly and bitterly until something broke when the guitar began to play. The three instruments played together as if to celebrate a broken heart’s freedom, the lights shone brighter and the saxophonist looked up to the audience as if to communicate  the end of deep sorrow and the peak of joy. The veins were visible on his neck but he blew harder into the instrument, working with his fingers, beckoning the guitar and the piano, screaming out for joy and falling at the dimming of the lights into a solo storytelling.

The other two quietened as if to urge him to walk alone the way one would let go of a child’s hand when they are ready to walk solo. Again it sounded like a whisper, this time not a negotiation, I couldn’t quite make it out. It was like a silent whisper that was becoming quieter with every blow. Now I could make it out. It was a resignation. It suddenly went louder like a cry for help then dissolved back into a whisper. He lowered his eyes to the instrument once again, blew into it one last time and silence befell once and for all. He bowed and walked off the stage still in silence. The audience had died with the song and they couldn’t feel their hands.

The applause that came five minutes later caused the ground to vibrate and the drums to shake as though they would play themselves. She clapped with the crowd, clapped from the bottom of her stomach as she felt a shiver of impression running down her. She hadn’t understood before the power of music but now she did. She’d felt in it the present, she’d moved with it and all its emotions. She’d understood a story of  love and betrayal. She understood it even better because once upon a time, she knew the man behind the music. Nothing seemed different about him now except that now she understood through his music what in the four years they’d been together, he had never uttered by mouth nor by action. He told an audience of a thousand people all the secrets he had never told her when they were alone. He told the world the story of them together and them apart, of their joy and sorrow and love and hate, of how she lied and said sorry and how he forgave and took her back, of how he left her in the cold and never returned again. He whispered into that saxophone the tears he’d never shown her and the anger she never knew. He had whispered those tears right into her ear and now they flowed through her eyes while she stood there and clapped.

It didn’t matter to her that the tears rolled down her cheeks. It didn’t matter because he was gone and she was alone even in the midst of the crowd and she would be alone when the crowd dispersed and she drove past Ruby street knowing that she couldn’t turn into it anymore.