End of the Jews Read Online Free

his shoulder. Immediately, Tristan doubts it. Cat?
    The man hears, and turns. “Lady Pete,” he says, bending at the waist to shake Pendergast’s hand.
    â€œLady Les.” The professor clasps the musician’s palm in both of his.
    â€œThis your class?” Lady Les surveys the table with a dimpled smile, and Tristan grins back like everyone else. Pendergast could not be more pleased at his friend’s attention; he’s still holding on to Lady Les’s hand, as if he wants to make certain everyone sees the embrace before consenting to end it.
    â€œThanks for making the scene tonight, y’all,” Lady Les says, reclaiming his hand and tucking his thin, casually knotted tie more tightly into the vest of his rumpled charcoal suit. “I’m glad to have you here. You prick up your rabbits at what Lady Pete lays on you, now. This is my main man right here.” He tugs the brim of his porkpie hat in punctuation, or perhaps irony—and here it is, camaraderie and disdain together, the one beside the other, stratum upon stratum, the full weave of life revealing itself for an instant—then straightens and nods to the band. Behind him, the drummer counts off the song, and then a lushness spreads over the room, washing over conversation and eroding it to whispers: soft cymbals and piano, soft chocolaty bass, and then the most intimate, softest sound of all coming from the man’s horn, a tone so sweet and warm and light and airy that it feels as if he’s breathing right in Tristan’s ear.
    It is astounding that such a contraption as Lady Les’s saxophone can produce these tender notes—softness from hardness, the full weave visible for an instant more. The song makes Tristan want to move very slowly with a girl he loves hard, pressed as close to her as possible. Lady Les stands with his eyes shut and his eyebrows prancing, immobile from the neck down except for his strolling fingers on the metal pedals. His arms are rigid, holding the horn away from his body like a first-time dance partner, and the instrument curves up and connects with the corner of his mouth like a forgotten toothpick.
    The band does not pause between songs to share the titles, just swings into the next tune, as if playing only for itself. Pendergast is right: this man is something special. Tristan knows only a thimbleful about jazz music, but that only fortifies his certainty. He’s heard Benny Goodman on the radio—a Jew, a Jew, the Bronx jumps to its feet—and seen Louis Armstrong’s impossibly white teeth glinting from advertisement posters. His high school band played an arrangement of a Fats Waller novelty hit once. But this is nothing like any of that.
    Even the Benny Goodman stuff, nobody’s all that affected by it. Music isn’t so important, unless it’s the cantor singing in shul.
Such a voice
, the women say, touching their fingertips to sternums. Plenty of kids suffer through piano lessons, but only about three adults in the whole neighborhood play instruments, guitars and bugles. Whenever the bugler tries to practice, he is shouted into silence within minutes, from four directions. Tristan imagines living in a neighborhood where music thrives, where men like these emerge from their apartments at night and stand on the corners playing songs instead of craps.
    The whole room flares into applause when the band calls it quits, and Lady Les and his partners bow and step offstage, still unintroduced. Pendergast cautions his brood that class is far from over, that they will reconvene in five minutes and discuss the aims of fiction, and he leaps up from his chair to follow Lady Les backstage and wring his hand some more.
    Tristan, too, would like to speak to Lady Les, or any one of the musicians, if only so he doesn’t have to sit there like a fan. The drummer is onstage still, packing his trap set into its cases. Tristan stands, pockets his hands, and ambles