THE BASS SAXOPHONE by Josef Škvorecký

spoke to him with respect, a respect for the teaching profession and for a teacher’s erudition, wisdom, and justice that he had acquired from his elderly parents in his childhood and had passed on to his own children. But the schoolteacher was disdainful.
    “I give up,” he said again, wearily.
    “Don’t do that,” said the draftsman’s wife. “It isn’t hard at all.”
    “No, I give up. It doesn’t make sense for me to guess if you think up things that you don’t even know if they’re something to eat,” said the schoolteacher. Once more they tried to persuade him. The fat lady was close to weeping in her impatient pleasure in the game. The schoolteacher, almost black with rage by now, finally gave in and immersed himself again in fruitless thought. It had the external form of something almost Aristotelian, but it was nothing but the gray, impotent pounding of a sledgehammer on an empty anvil.
    “Is it … a car?” he finally came up with.
    The hot-shot broke into a rude laugh. “Are you stupid or something?” Everything that he felt for the schoolteacher burst out of him, openly anddirectly, without restraint, with the supreme honesty that is perhaps the sole virtue of young hot-shots such as he, apart from a strong fidelity to an ideal. “You ever hear of anybody eating a car, for cripes’ sake?”
    “Watch your language, you!” the schoolteacher snapped at him. *
    “C’mon,” said the hot-shot, “you don’t have to be so touchy. I didn’t say anything all that bad, did I?”
    “I’m not playing,” said the schoolteacher, indignantly making it clear that he was offended. “I don’t have to let myself be insulted.”
    Supported by a new wave of protest, I entered the fray. “Look,” I said, “it’s just a matter of thinking your questions over, logically, understand?”
    The schoolteacher stabbed me with his eyes. “I said I’m not playing,” he repeated.
    “But that would be a shame,” squealed the manager’s wife. “You wouldn’t want a disgrace like that!” She had characterized the situation precisely, she was still a little child who couldn’t see the Emperor’s new clothes.
    “Let our friend here explain it to you,” said the draftsman’s wife, indicating me. “You don’t want to be a spoilsport.”
    The schoolteacher muttered something under his breath.
    “You have to start from general terms,” I said, “and get increasingly specific as your questions give you more information, understand?”
    The schoolteacher didn’t say anything.
    “Do you see?” I said sweetly. “Start out with something very general, the best is to localize the subject, and then get more and more specific until you determine, shall I say, the exact coordinates.” I glanced at him. He didn’t understand at all. “The best of all is to find out at the very outset whether it is abstract or concrete.”
    The schoolteacher was silent.
    “So try it. Pose an initial inquiry,” I babbled, “and try to localize the subject.”
    The schoolteacher moved his lips in hatred. “Is … is it black?” he said.
    The hot-shot guffawed, laughed so hard his spidery legs lifted off the floor and nearly kicked the schoolteacher in the nose.
    “That is a very specific premise,” I prattled affably, “and it cannot tell you anything about the localization. Localize, localize!” I kept on.
    “Is it …” said the teacher dully, “is it a train carriage?”
    “Ah, no, it’s not.” I raised my eyebrows. “And that doesn’t tell you anything about the localization either.”
    The hot-shot whinnied. “Dammit, so ask where it is already!”
    The schoolteacher glared at him. “I asked already.”
    “Yeah, but how! You can’t ask ‘Is it here or there?” ’ he mimicked — very successfully — the inane melody of the schoolteacher’s questions. “You have to say ‘Is it here?’ or ‘Is it … is it …” ’ he searched his mind quickly for something clever. The only thing