The World’s Greatest Saxophone Player
Mark Blickley
I’m Eric Tesler. I’m here because Doctor Wandaplatt says I have to be here. And because I know this group therapy session is good for me. As Doctor Wandaplatt says, the time has come for me to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
I was in a coma for nearly five and a half years. A little over a year ago I snapped out of it. Doctor Wandaplatt says these bones are going to heal, but that my mental health is kind of shaky.
But so’s yours, right? Or else why would you be here, too, right? I’m supposed to tell you what happened to me, how I got here. That’ll be kind of easy. I spent five and a half years doing nothing but thinking about what happened.
This past year I talked to lots of people who helped me piece together the events leading up to my appearance in this hospital room. I understand what happened. I’m not sure why it happened. I don’t even know where to begin except for this typically gray, late Autumn afternoon in Rantoul, Illinois when I was twelve years old.
Now when I say it was a typical Sunday afternoon, I mean that all over town television sets were screaming out half-time scores and town fathers were critiquing football games from bar stools while their kids were in the streets pretending to be the Chicago Bears.
It was after a particularly vicious tackle on me by the Levitzki brothers that I flung down my helmet, threw off my makeshift shoulder pads, kicked Wayne Levitzki in the nuts, and trotted off into my living room where my father was lying on the couch, watching a game on TV. I stood in front of the set, blocking his view, and said, “Father, I don’t want to play football. I want to take music lesson!”
My father propped himself up on the couch, angling his way past me and yells, “For Chrissakes, can’t you call me Dad or Pop or Old Man? What’s wrong with you? Go outside and play some ball and don’t go botherin’ me again about music lessons.”
Then he launched into his, “When I was your age, I was playing half-back and defensive tackle, and damned hard, too. ‘Cept for Iggy Bolton, I was the best.”
Just as he finished that sentence my mother walked into the room. At the time she was a chain-smoking woman of thirty-seven. My mother was famous for two things. One was an enormous capacity for migraine headaches. The other was her punctuating of each sentence with a cough - which isn’t all that surprising when you consider she smoked five and a half packs of cigarettes a day.
Anyway, she walked in because she heard my plea for music lessons and was pretty sick of my whining about it. You see, I’m cursed with a photographic memory and I’ll never forget what she said:
“C’mon, Eric, give me a break. I can just imagine you honking a horn around here (cough). I’d be dead in a week (cough). I hear enough car horns from the street to last me a lifetime (cough).”
Now mind you, I never said anything about playing a horn. I didn’t know what kind of instrument I wanted to play. I just wanted to play something.
But after she told me this she starts gagging real bad. My father instinctively reached out and slapped her on the back without taking his eyes off the game.
At this time I was reading the book that was to influence me more than any other book I’d ever read. It was entitled: Beauty Knows No Pain and subtitled Biographies of Obscure Musicians Who Overcame Personal Handicaps in Pursuit of Their Art.
I remember the characters in that book as clearly as if they were my next door neighbors. I was inspired by an oboe player with asthma, a drummer with metal hooks, a midget conductor, a hare-lipped flutist, a pianist with six fingers on one hand and a seventy-two year old woman who learned to play the tuba after undergoing surgery for the removal of a lung.
My father once caught me reading Beauty Knows No Pain. I was stretched out on my bed, totally absorbed in the chapter about Maestro Arnold, the midget conductor, when my door slams opened. I panicked and tossed the book under my bed.
“Caught you,” laughed my father. “What are you tryin’ to hide from your old man?” he asked.
“Nothing, Father. You just scared me, that’s all.”
But as father approached me, grinning, he pointed under my bed. “You got somethin’ under there you don’t want me to see?”
“No, Father.”
He groped under the bed until his hand latched onto the book. Then he slapped me on the shoulder with his other hand as he pulled the book out and said “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your Ma. Us men gotta know when to stick together. When I was your age, I useta keep these playin’ cards from Japan with pictures of these gorgeous . . .”
He held the book up, frowned, and then flung it at me. “What’s this shit?”
“It’s just a library book, father.”
“Then why were you hiding it?”
“Because I knew it would upset you.”
“I ain’t buyin’ that. What are you usin’ this book for?”
“To learn,” I whispered.
“This book been exciting you, boy?”
“Yes, father.”
“When I was fourteen, this ain’t the kinda books excited me. Where’s the broads?”
“It does have an incredible story of a woman who learned . . . “
He grabbed me off the bed and dragged me into the hall.
“You’re weird,” he screamed at me. “I’m showin’ this to your Ma!”
My mother was sitting on the living room couch, coughing, as she stripped her colorful nails with a cotton swab and a bottle of polish remover. Father held the book out to her as she crushed a cigarette butt into the ashtray.
“You wanna see the stuff your son is reading?”
Mother took the book, looked it over, and put it down. She put the bottle of remover on her lap as she continued to work on her nails. I told her it was the best book I ever read.
My father became enraged. “I’m tellin’ ya, the kid don’t use both hands to turn the pages. Look at them rings under his eyes.”
Mother said, “That’s because he won’t eat his vegetables (cough).”
I thought I heard an ally so I told her all about the musician characters. She was quite interested in, or more accurately put, obsessed with the tuba player. She lighted a cigarette and kept badgering how the woman had lost her lung. I told her I didn’t remember. She asked me if I was telling the truth.
“Who cares about that old broad,” my father screamed. “Midget conductors! Whatta role model.”
Just then mother had a coughing fit. Her cigarette dropped out of her mouth and onto her lap, igniting the highly flammable nail polish remover. Flames roared up. My father and I reacted quickly and with seasoned teamwork. We successfully extinguished the fire. Mother came away with only minor burns, a scorched eyebrow, and some singed bangs.
You know, the more I thought of what these musicians had to go through to learn their craft, the more I would plead with my parents to buy me musical instruction.
Because they wouldn’t let me have music lessons, I devised a unique system of creating music. It’s the nearest I could come to musical composition.
You see, I’d take my two transistor radios, plug an earphone into each one, stick an earplug in each ear, and then tune into two different stations at the same time. One station might be playing classical, the other jazz or rock. I was always flipping the selector dials, making different match-ups. And when the two musical forms would meet inside my head, I would create a new sound that no one else could here but me.
I knew my father would rather roast in hell than have any son of his taking music lessons, so I concentrated my campaign on my mother. My mother was never a demonstrative woman when it came to showing affection. In fact, the only thing she ever puckered her lips for was a cigarette. But I knew she loved me when she finally agreed to give me the money she had been secretly saving for a chest X-ray.
It wasn’t difficult finding a music instructor. Rantoul boasted only one such man, Professor Theodore Bindt.
Professor Bindt was a tall skinny man of fifty-two, permanently bent over as a result of constipation cramps. These cramps were due to his daily staple of fried chicken. You see, the Professor’s music studio was located above a Chicken Lickin’ franchise.
Bindt was a bachelor who didn’t know how to cook, so he depended on his business neighbor for meals. It seems convenience always won out over cramps. Besides, after nine years on such a diet, he craved the grease.
At one time I thought he had self-destructive impulses because of this diet, but now I think it was just money. Inflationary times always cause men like Bindt hardship.
“Zee little brats” - that’s what he called them, would happily sacrifice their music lessons to the family budget. I’m sure these sacrifices made the dollar and fifty-six cent three piece Lickin’ Special with fries and a bun a necessity.
By the time I was ready to seek out the Professor things had gotten so bad he was forced to hock most of this instruments. I remember his studio containing trombones minus the slides, pianos without brass pedals or benches, cellos without their bows, and the electric guitars - which Bindt claimed was the only thing “zee little bastards vonted to play” were missing amplifiers.
The first thing that struck me about the Professor was his teeth. When he gave me his professional smile I noticed his teeth were the same color as the yellowed newspaper clipping taped to the wall behind his desk. After freeing myself from his desperate handshake I glanced at the clipping.
Underneath this picture of a kid taking a check form a fat man the caption read - Teddy Bindt, child prodigy, wins Rantoul’s Annual John Philip Sousa Memorial Award.
I was impressed.
Professor Bindt stood up and bent over me. “So, you vont to be a musician, eh son? Vise choice. I could tell by your bearing you have zee sensitivity for a creative instrument. Are you zinking of becoming a pianist?”
I told him I wasn’t exactly sure what instrument I wanted to play.
Professor Bindt clutched his stomach during a particularly fierce attach of cramps and looked around his studio. “You don’t own an instrument?”
If I’d have owned an instrument, I wouldn’t be in this room right now.
Bindt’s sister, who’s a big fan of mine, sent me the Professor’s journals four months ago. She thought they would help encourage my recovery. Obviously she hadn’t read them.
According to his journal, on the day I arrived in his studio, Bindt was in the midst of his most severe financial crisis. He had no money and no working instruments. When I told him I didn’t own an instrument, Bindt spotted a saxophone in one piece and lunged for it. And when he handed it to me he knew it was missing a reed.
A reed is a thin piece of cane attached to the mouthpiece. It’s set in vibration by the breath and is the sound producing agent for the instrument. In other words, no sound comes out of a saxophone without using a reed. If a sax has a mouthpiece, it looks like a complete instrument.
The Professor ran out of reeds because he had the nasty habit of using them as toothpicks to dislodge annoying bits of chicken that stuck in his teeth.
Anyway, I’m standing there caressing this big beautiful brass thing. I’m instantly hooked on the saxophone. Professor Bindt tells me the saxophone is one of this most expensive instruments. He says that my rental fees will be higher, but they can go towards purchasing it.
I immediately agreed.
Then Professor Bindt explained the romantic history of the saxophone - that it was invented by Aldolphe Sax in 1846 and how it is one of the few instruments that has no exotic forbear. “A complete original,” Bindt says.
A complete original.
I stood there hugging this saxophone like it was my first girlfriend. Then I carefully brought its neck to my lips, bit into the mouthpiece and blew.
Silence. I blew harder. Nothing, except the sound of me exhaling and the rumbling of my teacher’s stomach.
“What’s the matter, Professor Bindt? Is it broken or am I doing something wrong?”
Professor Bindt wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “No, no, zere’s nozing wrong. Listen, Eric, anyone can pick up an instrument and create noise. If you step on a dog’s tail, you vill create noise. But you, you’re special. I sense it. Together vee shall transcend musical tradition. Ve’ll bypass creating music for zee ear and concentrate strictly on creating music for zee soul! You must never forget zat every great musician who has achieved historical immortality is not remembered by his technical expertise, but for his soul!”
I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about so I kept staring at the yellow newspaper clipping while gently running my fingers over the saxophone keys.
“Vot do your parents zink of you taking music lessons?”
I told him they’re not too interested. I explained that my mother had given me the money for instruction, but she said that I was on my own.
Bindt clapped his hands in joy. “Vonderful! Vonderful! No outside interference.” I asked him again why no sound came out of my saxophone.
“You veren’t using your imagination, son. You tried to take zee short cut from here” - he pointed to my throat - “to here” - he pointed to the sax mouthpiece - “instead of having zee music travel from here” - he traced a line from my heart to my forehead - “and zen to here” - his finger traced the length of the saxophone.
“You were being artistically lazy, but vee shall overcome zat.”
“I’m not a lazy person, Professor. I’ll work very hard.”
Bindt squatted by my chair and put his arm around my shoulder. “It is not zat kind of laziness, my boy. It is ignorance of zee spirit of creation. You must tame zis spirit, put it on a leash, before you can qualify as an artist.”
I want you people to understand that I was lonely and Bindt was the first adult I’d ever met who genuinely seemed to care about me. I trusted him because I needed someone to trust. It’s that simple. I needed to love and trust this man. I was convinced that some cosmic force led me to pursue music lessons just so I would establish contact with this caring genius.
Despite the ridicule of family and friends, I kept to a strict daily schedule of six soundless hours of practice in addition to Professor’s Bindt’s instruction four times a week.
No one at home said anything about my mute instrument. My father was ashamed of his sax-toting son and was too angry for words. My mother thought that her X-ray money was put to good use. There were no more whines form her son or his new toy.
God, I loved my saxophone! With Professor’s guidance I entered a trance-like state whenever my lips touched the mouthpiece. I can’t describe the joy I got from playing my sax. My eyes would automatically close and I’d just drift.
Not only could I hear this rich music, but I’d see such incredible colors and visions. And the smells! Oh, the smells. It was beyond joy. Sometimes I’d capture this penetrating sorrow, but that, too, was exquisite and always left me refreshed.
I had tapped that special place Professor Bindt assured me I’d find. I know it sounds strange but the vibrations inside my instrument shook spirit and released these . . . these . . .
Gershwin once said he had more tunes in his head than he could put down on paper in a hundred years. With Professor Bindt’s revolutionary approach, a musician didn’t need a hundred years to complete his vision. Music isn’t marks on a paper or grooves on a CD or even the noise from the instrument. It’s here. Inside your head.
The saxophone supplied a structure. It channeled my musical energies. I may have played without a reed, but Professor Bindt taught me all the fingering and breathing techniques any saxophonist needs to be accomplished on the instrument.
Look, anyone can play an instrument. Only a select few can compose, can create art. The Professor’s teachings didn’t limit me to the sounds a saxophone could make. When my saxophone took off, it wasn’t an instrument, but instrumental in producing a music no single woodwind, or even orchestra, could reproduce. It was energy and love and anger.
when I was seventeen, Professor Bindt died. My last meeting with him is forever burned in my memory. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. I walked up to his studio for my lesson. He wasn’t there. That was quite unusual, but I knew he was probably downstairs at Chicken Lickin, having a snack.
I remember shielding my eyes as I looked through the Chicken Lickin’ window, trying to spot the Professor. When I couldn’t locate him, I went inside. I surveyed the entire restaurant. Professor Bindt wasn’t there.
I spotted Lickin’s manager. “Excuse me, has Professor Bindt been here today? I have a four o’clock appointment. He’s never been late. I’m worried.”
This skinny guy in a shiny red jacket tells me that I have a right to worry. He said that the night before, Professor was eating his dinner at the table he always eats at when he sort of squealed and collapsed.
I grabbed the manager by the lapels. “What happened? Where is he?!”
The Chickin’ Lickin’ chief pleaded with me to calm down. Then he tells me that he thought Bindt had choked on a chicken bone or something, but that nobody had heard him gag.
“Where is my Professor!” I shouted.
By now the entire restaurant had turned in our direction. I released my grip on him. He recovered his breath and told me he had called an ambulance. As far as he knew, Bindt was at Rantoul General.
When I walked into the hospital room, I saw a Doctor fidgeting with some life support equipment attached to the sleeping Professor. When the Doctor asked me if I was a member of his family, I told him I was the sick man’s son. He then informed me that Bindt had suffered heart failure and had been slipping in and out of consciousness for sixteen hours.
My saxophone was slung over my shoulder. I caressed it as I looked down on my ghostly white mentor.
“I think it’s important you’re seeing him now,” said the Doctor. He stared at my saxophone and asked if I played. When I nodded he told me that he had played sax in his medical school band. He said he was a real big fan of Bird’s.
“Bird? What birds?”
“Bird. Charlie Parker. You know, Bird. The greatest sax player who ever lived, with the possible exception of Red Gorky, Junior. After your visit please report to Nurse Pinkley at the reception desk to fill out the proper forms, okay?” Then the Doctor patted me on the arm and left me alone with my spiritual father.
I leaned over my comatose instructor and pleased with him to lie. “Don’t die, Professor. Please don’t die.”
I held out a small paper bag I had brought with me. “I guess you can’t hear me, Professor. But I brought you a gift. It’s soup. Chicken soup. Want some? C’mon, Professor Bindt, eat some soup. Please?”
Bindt didn’t respond so I removed the container from the bag and waved the soup underneath his nose. His eyes popped open.
“Atta boy, Professor.” I began feeding him with a plastic spoon. Most of the soup spilled down Bindt’s chin, but his eyes were wide with anticipation.
“Can you speak, Professor Bindt?” He moved his mouth but all you could hear were groans. “Take it easy, Professor. Maybe you shouldn’t try to speak. Save your strength.”
Bindt began clenching and unclenching his fist while his mouth moved stupidly. And then I heard a hoarse whisper, “Wrong . . . wrong.”
“What’s that? What did you say, Professor?”
“Wrong,” he choked out.
“Am I doing something wrong?” I asked.
“Me . . . wrong.”
“Yes, Professor?”
“Need . . . money,” he said.
“Don’t worry about money. Just concentrate on getting better.”
Bindt raised his clenched fist. “Me . . . wrong . . . need . . . money.”
“Please don’t make yourself upset. Is there anything you want me to do?”
“Go,” he croaked.
“I’m not leaving you , Professor Bindt. I’ll never leave you.”
“Go,” he insisted.
I hugged Bindt. “As sick as you are you still try to spare me from anything that’s not connected with beauty. I won’t leave.”
He spit chicken soup in my face.
“You don’t like the soup? I’m surprised, Professor. I got it from your favorite deli. I’ll get you whatever you need. Just try to relax.”
“Ears . . . ears . . . “ he whispered.
“What’s that about ears, Professor Bindt? Can’t you hear me?”
“Me bad . . . need money.”
“What’s money got to do with anything? You’re not bad because you don’t have a lot of it. That’s what you’ve always taught me. You’re an artist, a pure artist, and you’ve made me one, too. I love you for that.”
Bindt used his last remaining bit of strength to pull himself up. He glared at me and said, “I confess.” I asked him if he wanted me to get a priest to hear his confession. He shook his head.
“No . . . you . . . you . . .” Professor Bindt let out a death rattle and fell backward with his mouth open.
“Come back! Come back here, Professor Bindt! You can’t leave me! I won’t let you!” I buried my face in his neck and cried. Then I started pounding his chest with my fist, trying to pummel his heart back into motion. “It’s too big to stop beating. Too big. Too big. C’mon, beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.”
I quit pounding on the dead man’s chest. As I reached over to close Bindt’s eyes my saxophone slid off my shoulder and hit the Professor in the face. I put the mouthpiece between Bindt’s lips and positioned his still warm fingers onto the keys. I tried not to cry. I tried to think clearly and responsibly.
I told Professor Bindt that he would remain alive as long as I lived. “I’m dedicating my life to the completion of your vision. I’m dedicating my life to our art.”
And then, the Professor lets loose with a really humongous death rattle. Every bit of gas that was trapped inside that corpse had to have been expelled. It both frightened and excited me. And the smell wasn’t too pleasant, either.
My saxophone was still inside his mouth. This meant my sax had captured Professor Bindt’s final breath! It was no longer a musical instrument, but a monument to his genius and devotion!
“I won’t let you down ever. I swear!”
Strange. I tried to close Bindt’s eyes but they wouldn’t stay shut. Believe me, it’s not like in the movies. They kept popping open. He stared up at me with a mixture of terror and anger that gave me nightmares for years and years.
The autopsy attributed his death to a cholesterol induced stroke. I was devastated. I dropped out of school and drifted around Chicago trying to peddle my sax to the clubs. But no one would listen to me.
To tell you the truth, I almost packed it in. But every time I picked up a phone to call home, I’d remember the Professor, eyes half shut, lips twisted, conducting me with a half-eaten chicken leg.
By the end of my first few weeks in Chicago, I was tired, hungry and broke. I slept on park benches at night. But I did have an interesting artistic experience early on in the Windy City. It was quite late at night and I was sitting on a park bench, gently polishing my saxophone.
A wino staggered by. I shot him a quick look and continued cleaning my sax. I prayed he’d go away. but instead of leaving he stuck his face right up to mine and said, “You gotta use elbow grease, boy. Don’t be lazy.”
I told him to keep moving. Then he says, “They’s a sayin’ round this city that if you rub that thing hard enough, a genie’ll appear.”
I ignored him.
“You don’t believe it?” He extended his hand to me. “Hi, my name’s Eugene, but friends call me Genie.”
I asked him if he was going to make some magic.
“Hell, no, I ain’t making no magic. You’re the one supposed to make magic with that thing.” He points to my saxophone.
I smiled and told him I hope to. Then he asked me if I had any money. When I told him I didn’t, he asked me if I had a song. I shrugged. “Maybe.”
The wino got ticked off. “I said you got a song? Don’t give me this maybe shit.”
“Yes, I have a song, Genie.”
“Good,” he says. “You also got yourself a partner.”
“Why do I need a partner?”
Wino shook his head. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“Genie. You’re a genie, right?”
“Damn straight,” he said, “and my magic is in my feets.” And then Genie breaks into an earnest, if somewhat clumsy dance. Without his history of booze, I could easily imagine him a dancer of merit.
After Genie danced his dance, he paused to catch his breath. “How’s that? Did I pass?”
“Pass what?” I asked.
“The audition. Will you take me on as a partner?” I asked him again why did I need a partner? Genie plopped himself down on the bench and offered me a sip of his Thunderbird wine. I declined.
“Look, kid, I make my livin’ dancing. But it’s gettin’ harder and harder to turn some change these days. All those damn hippies been cuttin’ into the action. People losin’ interest in the solo performer. All they wants is the spectacular. The spectacle.”
“So what’s that got to do with me, Genie?”
“Ain’t you got no vision, kid? I need music for my show. We’ll be partners. I can dance to anything. We’ll do a sixty-forty split.”
“With you getting the sixty, huh, Genie?”
“Course. I’ve scouted the best locations. I know which corners are jumpin’ any hour of the day. Besides, I been performin’ in Chicago for nearly thirty years. People know me.”
I was feeling bold. So I asked him if I was paying for his reputation. He told me, “Don’t be so smartass. Maybe you ain’t even any good.”
I grinned. “Maybe.”
“I told you to lay off the maybe crap. Let’s see what you got.”
I explained to Genie that I had already played today, that I haven’t missed a day of practice in years. He just shrugged and said, “I could say the same thing about drinkin’. So what?”
“So listen to this!” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tore into an imaginative pulsating rhythm. Next thing I know Genie’s snapping his fingers and I heard him say, “I get it, man.”
Boy, he starts dancing like mad. Over the bench, under the bench, on top of the bench. Just kicking and swinging his arms like a man possessed. It ended when he hurled himself against the bench, smashing the wine bottle in his back pocket.
The explosion of broken glass and the wino’s scream jolted me back to reality. What I saw was Genie sprawled out on the bench, whimpering.
“What happened, Eugene? Are you alright?”
“No, I ain’t alright. You broke my bottle!” He held out a handful of wet, broken glass.
I couldn’t believe it. I hugged my saxophone. “You mean I got up that high?”
“To hell with your high! What about mine? I ain’t got nothin’ to drink.”
I pulled a dollar out of my pocket. Genie snatched it out of my hand. “You’re a dangerous man,” he said. “You had me jumpin’ and twitchin’ like a worm with a match underneath it.”
I was delighted with my fiery performance and told him so. “You’re a cruel son-of-a-bitch,” he said, as he walked away, pulling shards of glass from him rump.
I got real good at shoplifting. I managed to survive by sleeping in bus terminals and hustling my sax on the sidewalk.
The breakthrough came one freezing night in the Chicago Greyhound Bus Terminal. I was having a restless night - no matter what I did I couldn’t get comfortable. Professor Bindt always maintained that great musicians needed plenty of sleep. He’d say, “you can’t perform for zee gods if you’re denied zee sweet embrace of Morpheus.”
Since I was unable to sleep, I took a stroll on the upper platform where they kept the buses. I was hoping the exhaust fumes would make me drowsy.
A chartered bus pulled in and unloaded a group of yawning musicians carrying expensive instrument cases that filled the air with the obnoxious smell of fresh leather. These musicians were followed by a short, fat man in a three-piece suit.
He was scribbling something into this book and growling at the bus driver, demanding to know if the driver’s superiors “were aware how rudely their employees treat the manager of the Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble.”
When I heard who he was, I ran downstairs and squatted on the curb outside the Greyhound building and began playing my sax.
I heard a band member say, “Check out the Road Runner dude.” Another guy asked me if I was gigging for the Lung Association. Then someone else laughed, “Beautiful, Jim, beautiful.” But I was just warming up, saving my best stuff for the manager.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tapped out a rhythm with my shoe. When the band manager noticed his men crowding around the sidewalk, he shouted at them to “get your butts over to the hotel.”
As the crowd broke up, he caught a glimpse of me sitting on the icy sidewalk playing my sax. He reached over and shook me. “Hey, kid, watcha doin’?”
I couldn’t believe it! It was the first time I’d ever been interrupted during a performance.
He asked me if I was serious. I said yeah. Then he asked me how long I’d been at it. I told him I’d been playing for years but was having a rough time.
He laughed and said, “No wonder.” Then he stared at the tip of my saxophone and wit this smirk asked me, “You ever notice anything a bit peculiar ‘bout your style?”
