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CHAPTER 1

The Saddest Instrument

Is the saxophone. Nobody understood this better than Milo David, a man constantly gripped by sadness and all its sundry frequencies. Times

are when nothing stands between a man and his misery except a faint, unintelligible sound which he read somewhere was called a “skronk”—a harsh, brassy squeak that evoked metal, wooden reed, and air being pushed to their physical extremes. Milo felt that it was the sound that embodied his soul, a sound that captured all the grotesque beauty of the world around him: the roar of traffic, the clashing voices from the wet market nearby, the din of the neighbors’ TV and radio in full blast. The saddest. And therefore, the most savage. Because nothing is more terrifying than solitude pushed to the brink. And nothing is more terrifying than genius that has gazed into the edge of madness. If his sanity were a big hunk of concrete, the slaves pushing it came in the form of milky crystal bits. He had gazed deep into the saxophone and found an immensely dark soundscape.

That morning, like almost all mornings of the past five years, Milo David contemplated suicide, helped in no small part by cigarettes and a savage hangover. But how? Frightening amounts of cheap liquor, nicotine, downers, and amphetamines are sure indications of a man who has no intentions of staying long on earth. But each time he glanced at the aging saxophone resting on a corner of his room, he would always decide, “Not today.” To see the world through the bottom of a gin glass. To see the world through the opacity of an aluminum foil wrapper. To perceive patterns in the swirl of this morning’s vomit. To fall under the hypnosis of tranquilizers. That seemed to be his overriding philosophy. A destructive one, yes, but he believed

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the music would finally redeem him. It would save him from the neighbors’ maddening noise. Oh, how so much he wanted to just ram down their doors one hot day, yank their TV off their tacky plastic cabinet while hopefully, they were tuned into Wowowee and hurl it outside their window. He imagined that sound of plastic and glass shattering on the busy street below. It would be one of the most beautiful sounds he’ll ever hear in his life.

His head felt as if being jackhammered from both sides. He couldn’t even remember what happened at the gig last night. Maybe he was brilliant, or maybe he simply jerked off all over the club, that is, if he could even remember where. Moments like these, he would be seized by paranoia. Was I a drunken jerk to everyone? Did I hit the notes right? Was my zipper open as wide as the barangay hall again? A flange of guilt always seized his mornings, helped in no small part by the tragic absence of coffee in his sorry excuse for a kitchen. He wasn’t as poor as to not be able to afford coffee, but Milo was the kind of guy who’d constantly walk into a convenience store and completely forget what he was supposed to buy—except cigarettes, two to three packs to be exact. Coffee, deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, canned food. For some reason, he would be briefly convinced that these weren’t exactly essentials, or that he could pick them up again at Aling Rose’s sari-sari store for much less. The problem is that he would come home extremely late when all the stores were closed, and only scandalously barking dogs heralded his lurching arrival. It became a cycle. When overcome with an artificial sense of order and purpose for the day, he’d make a mental grocery list of things to purchase from the remainder of last night’s budget, half of which always went to beer and cigarettes—the two things essential to his existence. This usually happened when he stared at the cracked and filthy bathroom mirror illuminated from above by a sad incandescent bulb. Milo felt a slight sense of alarm at the sight of sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones, the bloodshot eyes, and teeth bearing an onset of decay. He recoiled at the smell of his own breath, which he simply thought could be masked by smoking more cigarettes. Better to reek of smoke than stale saliva and festering fish, he believed. Nothing like nicotine to mask the bad stuff. What he might not realize was that the atrocious odor came from within his body, from a stomach stewing into disgusting mulch in its own gastric juices—the kind of smell brought only about by perennial starvation and not talking for extended periods of

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time. Each time he put the saxophone reed into his mouth, he would flinch at the smell of his own spit. Not exactly an enjoyable procedure considering how important it was to thoroughly wet the reed, like a cigar, or even candy to produce the necessary sound. His solution: more cigarettes.

Milo took off his shirt and gazed at the skeleton in the mirror, its semblance of skin already assuming a sickening pallor, compounded by the crudely executed tattoos on his chest: a dragon bending awkwardly over bony contours. On his right bicep crawled a pattern that resembled a barbed wire juxtaposed with the letters of the alibata. On the left, an Aztec sun, his rationale for which remained largely vague except that it looked cool and sinister. He stared at the mirror for minutes, flexing a shoulder every now and then for effect, and, in a weird stroke of vanity, turning his head sideways to study his profile. But it was the ribs that struck him as alarming. He affirmed: today, I’ll be stuffing myself silly with the good stuff from Mameng’s carinderia—adobo, inihaw na liempo, sinigang, balumbalunan, all the rich dishes he hasn’t tasted in ages. Not for lack of money, but from lack of appetite, oftentimes chemically induced. From his torso, he returned his gaze to his face. After a few seconds, he absentmindedly attempted a smile that appeared more like a grin. That it was toothless struck him as both funny and sinister. His first instinct was to reach for his tragically bristled toothbrush, only to realize, grasping the wrinkled tube, that he was all out of toothpaste. He wanted to moisten his lips, but when he opened the faucet all that came out was a loud, hollow metallic gurgle. �

Then there was Cora, his former wife of two and a half years. Thinking back, that marriage had been a bad idea. Apart from the fact that they were both unprepared, much of their relationship was marked by sparks of petty squabbling. Fresh out of college, they were living together and jobless, except for Milo’s occasional showband rackets. Cora drank, and Milo was heavy into meth. Perhaps they were both under the throes of insobriety when they decided to get married at the Quezon City Hall, and strolled to Kowloon House for a modest little dinner that included neither side of their parents and family members. Only friends, most of them Milo’s, whose wedding gifts came in the form of little plastic packets in crystal bits.

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They said that a baby was always a sign that the world must go on. This one was the complete opposite, although the birth of Milo’s son Jaco, named after the famous bass player from Weather Report, was a genuinely happy moment. So happy that a few months after, Milo actually stopped smoking meth and, surprise of surprises, stopped drinking and smoking. For a surprisingly lengthy period of time, it was a relatively harmonious existence, but the fights still broke out occasionally especially when money was involved. And money has always been a particularly thorny issue for Milo—who regarded it as an icepick pressed into his pride whenever she brought the subject up.

Months after, a heated argument ensued when Cora found out that “Jaco Pastorious” was a legendary but notoriously neurotic jazzman—but that morning, some prior screaming happened over milk for the baby. Of course, the unspoken was inevitable: they had no money. Do you want your son to grow up a nutcase—like you? And besides, you play the saxophone. Why name your son after a bassist? Are you on dope again? Or is your brain just fried?

Milo, who had been trying his best to stay sober for weeks, finally snapped. How dare she talk about the Great Pastorius like that! I mean, come on, Milo reasoned to himself, this was a guy who totally gave his life to music—a true genius who revolutionized the electric bass, and it didn’t matter what instrument was at issue here, although it could be said that Cora’s shrill brand of sarcasm might or might not have broken the straw. The next thing Milo saw was his right hand whirling like a ping-pong topspin—half-knuckle half-palm—that landed on her cheeks. Maybe it was the devil, yes, the devil made him do it, flamed no doubt by those weeks of tortuous abstinence. She packed her bags, left with the baby and to stay with her parents in Kamuning—a neighborhood, a house that occupied a special place in his heart if only for that fact that it was within crawling distance from Pepe Smith’s. Hours after she left, Milo still felt strangely calm and centered, without the slightest note of remorse, although his hands were tremulous as he tried to light one nervous cigarette after another. He had decided to further wear out his cassette copy of the Juan dela Cruz Band’s Super Sessions where Pepe Smith barks about not bringing an umbrella as rain started to pour but he’s packed enough medications to fortify himself

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against sickness. With P300 in his pocket, he hopped on a jeepney and went over to Dax’s house while contemplating this nugget of lyrical brilliance.

A few months after, Cora would not answer his calls, the majority of which were made under psychologically unpleasant circumstances.

About the Author

Lourd Ernest H. De Veyra has published three books of poetry. He is the lead vocalist of the spoken-word jazz-rock band Radioactive Sago

Project.

This is his first novel.