Pinball

  “I study writing,” he said, “in California.” Then, for fear she might leave him at that news, he added, “But I have enough money,” and he reached into his pocket.

  She stopped his hand. “I know you do. You already bought Paul and me champagne tonight.”

  Touched by his sincerity, she stared at him for a moment with a gentle smile on her lips. “How about going to play at my place?” she asked.

  “Where is it?” he asked, afraid she might say Harlem.

  “Carnegie Hall,” she whispered.

  “Carnegie Hall? The Carnegie Hall?” He thought she was joking.

  “You heard me.” Her hand played now with his thigh.

  “They let you work out of Carnegie Hall?” he asked, watching her intently.

  “I prefer to work in. I use an artist’s studio there,” she explained. “Didn’t you know, boy, there are over a hundred of them living there?”

  “Who’s the artist?” he asked, afraid she might be setting a trap for him.

  “A pianist. From Juilliard.”

  “And where is the pianist now?” he asked.

  “On a date with a stranger. That’s why you and I can play there. Don’t worry.” She convinced him she was safe and, arm in arm, the two of them left the Goddard Beat.

  In a taxi, driving down Broadway he tried to kiss her, but she wouldn’t let him. “Later,” she whispered. “Give us time, boy!” At Carnegie Hall, he followed her to the side entrance. A night porter scrutinized him as they got into the elevator.

  She opened the door of the studio, turned on the lights, then dimmed them instantly. A large piano dominated the room. The rest of the furnishings consisted of a large double bed, a desk covered with musical scores, a bookshelf, a radio-phonograph console, and several objects of African art—tribal masks, fetish figures, and beaded bags.

  “What sort of music does your friend play?” asked Osten, amused to be going through his first experience with a whore in the modest Carnegie Hall studio of a Juilliard music student.

  “Guess.”

  “Is your friend—black?”

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  “Then—is it jazz piano?” he asked.

  “Jazz? Now what ever made you think of that?” she said, teasing him. “No—my black friend doesn’t play jazz! Guess again!”

  “I give up!” he answered with a straight face.

  “How about you? Do you play anything else but that?” she asked, touching his groin.

  “A little,” he said and sat down at the piano. It was open, and almost involuntarily his hands fell on the keys. Unwilling to entertain her with a rock tune she was bound to know, he struck a few chords, then, to impress her, he awkwardly played a short passage.

  She stood next to him, and when he finished he put his arm around her thighs and tipped her onto his lap. Aroused by her nearness, he started to kiss her neck and nuzzle her shoulder.

  “Schubert’s Quartet number fourteen. Right?” she asked. “Also known as Death and the Maiden.”

  Astonished, he slowly pulled back. “I don’t believe it! How did you know that?” he asked.

  She got up and straightened her jump suit. “Black magic. What else?” she said, pointing at the fetishes.

  It occurred to him that she could have heard the passage played by the Juilliard student. He started to play another piece.

  “Debussy. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” she said, and he stopped. “You play it well, boy!”

  He stood up and closed the piano, suddenly glad that throughout the evening he had spoken to her only in his altered voice, for her musical ear might have unmasked him.

  “Where did you learn music?” he asked.

  Speaking in a southern drawl again, she replied, “Why? Ain’t it right for a little ol’ black girl to know what the white folks play?”

  “You told me you were—”

  “I told you the pianist who lives here is out on a date with a stranger,” she said in a firm voice. “Well, you’re the stranger. And this is where I play.” She sat down at the piano and began to play, then stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

  “Chopin’s Barcarole,” he said, reciting like a music student in front of his teacher. “A tender nocturne with two main phrases that render the piece two-souled, like a dialogue of lovers. The modulation to C-sharp major evokes their kissing, petting, and lovemaking. The gently rocking rhythm of the bass solo suggests they may be making it in a boat—a gondola, perhaps.” He smiled. “You should have played at least up to bar 78, when they get it off together …”

  She looked at him with unmitigated surprise. “Now how come you know all that, boy?”

  “Now how come you can play like you do, doll?” he said, imitating her.

  “I learned it at Juilliard.”

  “And I at home.”

  She walked over to him, and pressing her breasts against his chest, steered him slowly toward the bed. When he felt his legs touch the edge, he tried to pull her down but she resisted.

  “What was a boy who knows Schubert, Debussy, and Chopin doing at the Goddard Beat?”

  “Looking for his barcarole,” he said. “What was a classical pianist doing there?”

  “Meeting a faun,” she said. “Paul, the guy you saw me with, is a music agent, and I guess I’m a prelude lie might take out some afternoon to meet music publishers and shop for a label.”

  “Don’t waste your faun’s afternoons anymore,” said Osten. “My father owns Etude Classics.”

  Music was thus the springboard of Osten’s initial infatuation with Donna. He saw her as his redeemer, the first person with whom he could be himself—without feeling severed from the other side of his being, where, as Goddard, he existed alone, hidden from view.

  She was also the first black person he had known intimately. Everything about her—from the shape and color of her body to her middle-class South Bronx background to her spontaneous love of music—seemed exotic to him.

  Soon after their first meeting he took Donna to a black-tie reception in his father’s Manhattan apartment. It was an annual event and that year it was to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Etude Classics.

  There were about eighty people there, including the Etude executives, many of the composers and performers published on the Etude label, and assorted music critics. The appearance of Donna in a low-cut gold lamé gown with a slit skirt left the staid, distinguished company gasping.

  Because this event was so important to his father, Osten had attended it every year since boyhood, and as the only child of the company’s founder and president, he was known to most of those present. It was at one of these parties that, as a teenager, he had first met Goddard Lieberson and Boris Pregel, the two men whose views on life and art were to influence him long after both men were dead. As a rule, however, most of the guests were boring—doubly so, inasmuch as they were on their best behavior. Osten took a special delight in passing among them with Donna—the only black woman at the party—on his arm.

  Introducing Donna to his father, he was amused to see the old man’s obvious consternation at the sight of her breasts bared to the nipples by the low-cut gown. Then he took her on a round of the other guests, noticing with pleasure their unsuccessful attempts to hide their shock.

  As he and Donna moved through the crowd, Osten saw Patrick Domostroy, a man he had met several times at his father’s parties. Domostroy’s music, as well as his concerts, had once been highly successful, but some years ago the man had stopped composing and now he lived in obscurity, surfacing only from time to time.

  Middle-aged, skinny, wrinkled, and balding, Domostroy moved through the room like a starved vulture. His voice had a hint of some foreign accent, and everything else about the man seemed foreign as well—his gestures, his quick glances and frenetic way of talking, his clothes forcefully sporty, his manner overly at ease. He was accompanied by a blue-eyed, puffy blonde much younger than he. When Domostroy saw Donna, he stared at her with
such intense curiosity that Osten spontaneously stepped in front of her, as if to shield her from the man’s sight.

  As for Domostroy, he had met Jimmy Osten on two or three occasions—always in the presence of Gerhard Osten and his guests and associates—and although they’d never exchanged more than a few words, Domostroy had found Osten’s remarks about his father’s company, and about music in general, uniformly naive. He also found the young man’s stare annoying and his manner wishy-washy and ineffectual. The kid was a boring wimp. Mentally Domostroy called him the Lukewarm Noodle. He would have certainly avoided him now, had it not been for the young woman Osten was with. The black woman was unusually beautiful and statuesque; she was also self-possessed, graceful, and her patrician air made Domostroy wonder whether he might not have misjudged Jimmy Osten, or at least nicknamed him incorrectly.

  When Osten and Donna passed nearby, Domostroy seized the opportunity to meet her. Osten made the introduction reluctantly, and when Donna recognized Domostroy’s name and thanked the composer for the pleasure his music had given her, Osten regretted the encounter even more.

  Domostroy made no effort to hide the impression Donna had made on him. Ignoring Osten, he looked into her eyes and said, “Had I known you would like my music, I would have written twice as much.”

  “You still can,” she said, flirting.

  “I’m flattered,” said Domostroy, “and surprised. I wouldn’t expect you to like my music.”

  “Because I’m black?” asked Donna.

  “Yes—and I’m white,” said Domostroy, frankly staring at her. “It’s a matter of different rhythmic intensity.”

  Osten felt the blood rushing to his face. “This is idiotic,” he said, turning to Domostroy and lowering his voice in anger. “Are you also going to talk to Donna about the Negroid natural rhythm?” He could barely restrain himself. “Come on, Donna, let’s go.” He took her arm, but she resisted.

  “Wait a minute, Jimmy,” she said, lifting her arm from his grasp. “Mr. Domostroy is right. To me, rhythm is not a musical exercise inhibited by bar lines, but an impulse—my body’s own natural percussion. My ancestors were African slaves who communicated from one slave ship to another with Atumpan and Ashanti talking drums. And even though my father was a jazz pianist, the first musical instrument he taught me to play, when I was still a child, was an mbira, a thumb piano with simple metal reeds and a gourd resonator—”

  “—discovered in South Africa by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century,” interjected Domostroy, “and misnamed by them the Kaffir.” He paused. “Could you, by any chance, be the daughter of Henry Lee Downes?” he asked her.

  “Yes, I am,” she replied. “I was a late child. My father died when I was fourteen. Did you know him?”

  “I heard your father play,” said Domostroy. “He was a great jazz virtuoso. He could make the piano sound like a bell or a horn.”

  Donna gave him an amused look. “It’s kind of you to say that, Mr. Domostroy, but what to you is probably just black history,” she said, “is to me a living rhythm—a music like no other.” She turned to Osten and said playfully, “When Mr. Domostroy listens to his past, I’ll bet he hears Elizabethan madrigals. I’m sure a Steinway was the first musical instrument he saw at home as a boy.”

  “Indeed it was,” agreed Domostroy. “My mother’s grand piano. She was a concert pianist.” His eyes met Donna’s. “You are as articulate as you are beautiful, Miss Downes,” he said. “Are you a dancer?”

  “That’s enough, Domostroy!” said Osten.

  “I’m not a dancer, Mr. Domostroy,” Donna said calmly. “Though I like to dance.” She pointed at the grand piano behind them. “That’s my Kaffir now.”

  “Then by all means,” said Domostroy, studiously disregarding Osten, “play it!”

  “Donna, let’s go!” said Osten. “He can’t order you around,” he added, almost snarling.

  “As long as I’m ordered to play, I don’t mind,” said Donna, her eyes returning Domostroy’s challenge as she went and sat down at the piano.

  There was a hush, and the guests opened a circle around her. Gerhard Osten, arm in arm with the blond woman Domostroy had left in his care, walked over to his son. “This is hardly the time for dancing,” he said quietly.

  The blond woman leaned over and, squeezing the older man’s arm, said, “But, Mr. Osten, that might be fan!”

  “Don’t worry, Father,” said Osten. “Most of the guests here wouldn’t know how to dance!”

  His father cleared his throat and smiled nervously. “Jimmy, I want you to meet Miss Vala Stavrova,” he said.

  Osten and the woman shook hands.

  Domostroy, standing next to Osten’s father, put in, “Miss Stavrova is originally from Russia—the country of classics!”

  “Yes. But I love dancing rock ‘n’ roll,” said Vala Stavrova in a high-pitched voice. “Is she a rock singer?” she asked, pointing at Donna.

  Donna started to play, and the sound of Chopin’s Scherzo in C-sharp Minor filled the room.

  “Remarkable,” said his father, watching Donna play. “Incredible, in fact. Who is she?”

  “Donna Downes, Father,” said Osten, speaking low. “I introduced you to her.”

  “Of course you did. Where’s she from?” asked his father.

  “From New York,” Domostroy cut in.

  “Where did she learn to play like that?” asked Gerhard Osten.

  “Donna is a student at Juilliard,” said Osten with finality, hoping to silence the conversation.

  “I would never have expected her to play Chopin!” his father continued.

  “Why not?” asked Domostroy, leaning toward him. “Have you forgotten, Gerhard, that Chopin and Liszt were the favorite composers of the black pianists in New Orleans and Sedalia at the end of the last century?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Gerhard Osten, “because I never knew. Interesting. What do you think of her?”

  “I think she’s a beauty,” Domostroy answered, his gaze still on the pianist.

  “I mean her playing.”

  “So far, quite competent,” said Domostroy, “but she hasn’t come to the hard part yet—the switch from chords to finger work. When Chopin wrote the piece, he knew that most pianists would never make the switch in time, so he called for an improvisation.”

  They listened. When Donna came to the difficult running passage of the scherzo, her left hand skimmed brilliantly up four octaves, then gently lifted. She executed a split-second break between one beat and the next, settled into an avalanche of quavers, hesitated, then came rolling back down the four octaves, separating each note from the next with metronomic precision.

  “She’s a gifted Chopinist,” said Domostroy. “You’d never guess it from her looks, would you?”

  In Osten’s car on the way back to Carnegie Hall after the party, Donna asked, “Did you like the way I played?”

  “I’m not good at judging friends,” he said. “But everybody seemed to love it. My father—”

  “Your father told me how surprised he was that I played Chopin,” she said. “Did you hear him? In fact, everybody told me how surprised they were by it—meaning that black and Chopin just don’t match! Only Patrick Domostroy told me that I played the piece like a professional—including that impossible free-time passage that Chopin marked in the score with an X.”

  “You better watch out,” said Osten, “Domostroy looked as if he’d like to score an X on you.” He pressed down on the accelerator and they speeded up. “I didn’t like the way he talked to you.”

  “He said I used the soft pedal exactly the way Chopin indicated.”

  “How?” asked Osten, a bit annoyed by her enthusiasm.

  “My own way!” she said and laughed. “To encourage free interpretation, Chopin never marked the use of the soft pedal. He said fingers, not a pedal, created a pianist’s touch. Chopin was the first pianist who understood the distinct and separate physical attributes of each of the
fingers. Domostroy also said that I even managed to evoke Chopin’s al.”

  “What’s al?”

  “A spiritual enigma—pain and rage smothered by melancholy—an emotional trademark of Poles, or any people oppressed for long periods of time. al permeates all of Chopin’s work. Domostroy said that because I’m black, al will probably color all of mine as well.” She hesitated. “What kind of man is Domostroy? You obviously can’t stand him.”

  Osten shrugged. “I guess he’s a bit off—like Chopin.”

  “Chopin was a great composer and a virtuoso performer,” Donna reminded him. “His music is all that matters.”

  “Let’s say Domostroy leads a double life,” said Osten. “He lives alone in a shut-down ballroom in the South Bronx; at night he plays in some crummy Mafia-run pinball dive; and in the wee hours, when everybody else is in bed, he prowls the streets in that old jalopy of his.”

  “Why?” she interrupted.

  “Why what?”

  “Why does he do it? Maybe he has a reason.”

  “He’s obsessed, that’s the reason,” said Osten.

  “So was Berlioz. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written his Fantastic Symphony. So were Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner. So were a lot of other talented men.”

  “Domostroy is a sex nut,” said Osten contemptuously. “I once read an old New York magazine profile of him. They called him the Jekyll and Hyde of the music scene. At night he drives around in disguises—you know, phony mustache, goatee, big hat—and stops off at all kinds of odd places—underground couples parties, secret societies, encounter sex clubs. Once he was followed for hours by New York City police detectives who, after he had made some fifteen stops in such strange places, took him for a dope pusher and gave him and his car a thorough search and found nothing but some of his old music sheets! They were furious for the time they lost! He’s like some sort of satyr, off on a perpetual witches’ sabbath.” He paused to let her react to what he had said, but she kept stubbornly silent. “Even during his heyday, Domostroy used to go for the mondo weirdo: the freaks, the psychos, the whores, even the sex changes. I think he even photographed them—as a hobby. I hate to think whom he goes after—and whom he gets!—now that he’s nobody. No decent piano bar or nightclub will have him anymore.”