There was a saxophonist, high-cheekboned, soft-spoken, known everywhere as a gentle man. The kind of sweetness people mention as if it were a credential. But sweetness can be a costume, and in his case it often slipped when he taught. Something sharper emerged, a mocking tone, nasty impatience. He didn’t notice. Or let us say he refused to. Students drifted away. They said nothing, but stopped enrolling. This was puzzling. He kept track of who stayed and who didn’t, and built theories about their lack of commitment, their fragility. Must be their fault.

One day he received an anonymous evaluation, typed and unsigned. It described him plainly, the voice, the small humiliations, the hurried dismissals. A mirror held up in dim light. Instead of looking into it, he marched around telling anyone who’d listen about all the students who had praised him over the years, the ones who’d sworn he was a great teacher, the ones who still sent him Christmas cards. Evidence and ammunition, against the possibility any criticism like this might have merit.

The idea was too dangerous, like stepping barefoot into snow too deep to touch the ground. Long ago his father had shown him what criticism does. He was a man who flinched at every suggestion, whose own fragility arrived at the dinner table like an uninvited guest. That passed, father to son, intact, like an heirloom nobody wanted. He mistook it for wisdom. It was, of course, the opposite.