Pinball

  Again Donna did not react.

  “You saw Vala, the Russian bimbo he brought to the party. That’s the kind he goes for,” he said sullenly.

  “Your father certainly seemed to like her,” Donna remarked.

  “My father knows absolutely nothing about women,” said Osten. “My mother was his first and only love. He married her after cutting in and dancing one tango with her. And he couldn’t even dance! Since her death, all he cares about is music. To my father,” he said, “every Etude recording is a flashing meteor, lighting up the musical firmament and then blazing away into the future. He sees himself as the great custodian of true art. And who knows? Maybe he is.”

  Looking out the side window, speaking as intimately as if she were speaking to herself, Donna said, “You must love your father a lot, Jimmy.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Osten said, “I love him more than a lot. I would do anything to keep him happy.”

  Somehow, it was easy for long periods of time to pass between visits to his family home on Long Island. Now, as he left the city in his rented car, he realized that it had been two years since his last drive out and two years since he had met Donna. A recently completed stretch of highway shortened his trip by nearly an hour, and he arrived at Wainscott much earlier than expected. He drove up a private road lined with birches, their trunks black at the base and veined above like marble columns, and stopped at the house, a white mansion with tall, many-paned windows in its facade. He parked his rented car in the driveway between two brand-new automobiles, noting their personalized license plates: ETUDE for his father and VALA for his stepmother of less than two years.

  The main door was open, but Osten hesitated and then rang the bell before entering the house. In the hall he ran into Bruno, his father’s Viennese valet and chauffeur, who had been in service since the death of Leonore Osten, Jimmy’s mother.

  “Herr Jimmy, how are you?” muttered Bruno, forcing a smile that revealed uneven tobacco-stained teeth. Bruno’s rare moments of genuine warmth were reserved for Gerhard Osten and his youthful second wife. “Your father and Madame are on the side veranda,” he concluded stiffly.

  Before Osten spoke, he coughed to bring on his altered voice. “Thank you, Bruno,” he said.

  As he crossed the hall, which was dominated by a life-sized marble statue of Bach, he braced himself for the stress he inevitably felt in the presence of his stepmother. He could never think of Vala as a relative, and being with her made him uncomfortable.

  The veranda was flooded with sunshine and with the sound of Handel’s Israel in Egypt playing on the tape deck. His father and Vala sat reading, and when they saw him, as if on command, they both put down their newspapers. Smoothing his flat white hair and clutching at his back, his father stood to greet him. Vala quickly buttoned up the front of her housecoat.

  “Hello, Father. How are you, Vala?” said Osten, stepping forward and hugging his father. Embarrassed, Gerhard Osten stepped sideways, freeing himself from the embrace, and then uneasily patted his son on the shoulder. Vala raised her hand, as if offering it to him to kiss, and, awkwardly, Osten stepped over to shake it.

  “How have you been, Jimmy?” asked his father, sitting down and indicating a place at his side. When he had scrutinized his son’s patched jeans, blue work shirt, and faded suede jacket, he said to Vala, “He looks like a cowboy, doesn’t he?”

  Vala smiled. “But, darling, Jimmy is a cowboy,” she said in her whining voice. Even though she had come to the States at age sixteen, some ten years before becoming Mrs. Osten—during which time she had been married and divorced somewhere in Colorado—Vala had lost none of her Russian accent. Still a trifle plump, she was nevertheless quite pretty. Her slightly enlarged pupils, framed by dark eyebrows and thick lashes, gave her watery blue eyes a thoughtful expression.

  “Well, tell us, what brings you here, Jimmy?” asked his father while Bruno served coffee.

  “I just felt like seeing you both, that’s all,” said Osten, sipping from his cup of coffee. “Donna is sorry she couldn’t come with me,” he said, “but something came up at Juilliard at the last minute and she had to stay in town. She sends her love to you both.” The coffee burned his lips, but he smiled and strained for a leisurely manner. “You look great, Father. You too, Vala.” There followed an awkward pause. “What’s new with you two?”

  “Everything is as usual,” said Vala, stretching in her chair. “We play a little golf—”

  “She’s turning into a great golfer,” said his father. “You should come out and watch her play.”

  “I’d love to,” Osten said. He attempted a compliment. “I’m sure Vala’s a born golfer.”

  “You would not love to,” said Vala. “You don’t like golf.” To her husband she said, “Jimmy doesn’t like golf.” Then to Osten, “You said once that golf is like fishing in reverse: instead of waiting for a fish to come up, you wait for a ball to sink in.”

  “Jimmy doesn’t like a number of things,” said his father with an icy edge. “Work, for one thing. Music, for another.”

  “My studying is work, Father,” said Osten. “And I do like classical music.”

  “No, you don’t,” his father declared with some resentment. To Vala he explained, “Jimmy is not musically inclined. Goddard Lieberson used to divide all musicians into those who scratch and those who play. Well, even as a kid, Jimmy could not play piano, only scratch it, that’s all.” To his son, he added, “You’ve said yourself that you prefer language, or whatever it is that you’ve been studying out in California all these years, to music.”

  “Literature, Father,” said Osten gently. “Remember what H. L. Mencken said: ‘Next to music, prose is the finest of all the fine arts.’ My father forgets that both the piano and the typewriter have keyboards,” he said to Vala with a weak laugh.

  “I distinctly remember your saying that music was cold, that it did not express anything,” said his father.

  “I was only quoting Stravinsky.”

  “Without understanding him,” said his father. “Stravinsky was obviously paraphrasing Goethe, who saw architecture as music frozen in time, while Stravinsky saw music as time’s architecture.”

  “The other day I heard on the radio some of the recent Etude releases—the New Classics series,” said Osten in an effort to change the subject. “Quite magnificent, I might add.”

  “What new series is that?” Vala interrupted, feigning interest.

  “They’re works that were written for one type of instrument and are now being recorded on another,” explained his father, calming down.

  “How closely do they follow the originals?” asked Osten.

  His father brightened. “Even the purists agree that harmonically and melodically they’re the same. It’s the most sophisticated musical transformation, and often, freed from the mental set attached to the original solo instrument, the music emerges even purer than before.”

  “Isn’t that something like translating?” interjected Vala.

  “Yes, it is,” said Gerhard Osten enthusiastically, adding for his son, “Vala is right.” He looked at her like a proud teacher showing off his pupil. “It’s much the same, Vala, as it would be to translate Pushkin into today’s English. The important thing in such a case would be to make sure that Pushkin was not damaged. Our first concern is to preserve the great works. This new series represents our only experiment in over thirty years, but it has been enormously promising so far. It seems in a way actually to make the great works greater.”

  “So Etude is really doing well?” asked Osten, sipping his coffee.

  “Couldn’t be better,” said his father. “Nokturn Records has just renewed its worldwide distribution agreement with us. Nokturn knows a good thing. We’re staying right at the top of the classical music market.”

  “Your father negotiated the deal himself,” said Vala.

  “I certainly did,” said his father. “In the last few years, our sales have skyro
cketed, and the return rate of our albums remains the lowest in the industry.” He paused. “That’s why I was able to negotiate with Nokturn from a position of strength. And Oscar Blaystone, the president of Nokturn, has a reputation for being one of the toughest men in the business. But I knew, and he knew, that he had to meet my terms.”

  “Your father was so excited by that deal,” said Vala, “that I was jealous. I made him prove to me that he could get just as excited over me.” She turned her face to them with a doll-like expression and smiled girlishly. “And he did prove it, too,” she purred. “Didn’t you, darling?”

  Gerhard Osten looked at her adoringly. “Now, now,” he said manfully. “You can’t be jealous of Etude. I founded Etude long before you were born.”

  “I know,” she said with a pretty pout. “Music has been your love so much longer than I have!”

  “Now, Vala, that’s not fair,” scolded the old man. He assumed the posture of an actor on stage and began to recite, his heavy German accent exaggerated by emotion: “‘Do not let sadness come over you; For all your white hairs you can still be a lover.’ That’s Goethe,” he announced. “‘He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.’ And that’s Shakespeare,” he exclaimed, proud of his memory, looking at Vala with such utter love that Osten had to turn away to hide his embarrassment and anger. How could his father—one of the world’s outstanding musical authorities and the founder of Etude Classics—so blindly worship this brainless lump of flesh? Was it simply because he was old and dried up and she was young and soft and energetic? Was it because of Vala that his father was so admiring of Goethe, who at seventy-one proposed to a seventeen-year-old? When Santayana remarked that music, though the most abstract of arts, also served the dumbest emotion, he must have been referring to the men engaged in that art, Osten thought, as much as to the art itself.

  He caught his father looking at him severely and wondered if the older man could read his thoughts. “I understand Vala’s feelings about music very well,” Jimmy said with sudden cheerfulness. “I go through the same thing all the time with Donna. To her, too, music is all that matters.”

  Vala shook her head. “If it really is all, then it’s your fault, Jimmy,” she said. “Listen to me. Black or white, young or old, ugly or beautiful—deep down, every woman wants one thing, and one thing only.” She paused dramatically, about to tell them what that one thing was, when his father broke in.

  “Donna’s an amazing girl,” he said. “No one would ever imagine that she could have such a sure understanding of the classics. She played so superbly at my party that time.” He reflected, then went on. “If she were to place first, second, or even third at the next International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, I would certainly sign her up with Etude,” he said.

  “Donna can’t make up her mind whether she’s going to enter the competition or not,” said Jimmy. “She says her interest is in music, not prizes.”

  “Shell soon realize that in today’s world, in music, as in everything else, it is success, unfortunately, that determines value,” said his father sadly.

  “She already has,” said Osten. “That’s what frightens her, I guess.”

  “As sexy as she is, I doubt if she’s frightened of anything,” said Vala. “Look at her—big bosoms, the waist* of a bug, the hips of a schoolgirl, the legs of a spider … and those lily-green eyes! I’ll bet that in any disco your Donna’s an African queen!” She paused. “And as a Chopinist she’s truly exceptional. For a black, I mean!”

  “Well, if Donna’s exceptional—for a black,” said Osten, determined not to let Vala know how annoying he found her remarks, “so are you, Vala, for a Russian, loving disco dancing as much as you do. Aren’t Russians supposed to be passionate only about classical music and ballet?”

  Vala darted an angry look at him. “Russian or no Russian, I’m passionate about just one thing—Gerhard!” she snapped, her archness making her accent all the more pronounced.

  “And that’s good enough for me,” said his father with a big smile, eager to dispel the tension. “Tell me, Jimmy, has that business,” he said, pointing at Osten’s throat, “given you any more trouble?’

  “No, I’m fine,” said Osten.

  “Are you still having regular checkups?”

  “Yes,” said Osten. “The doctor says it’s fine.”

  “What’s wrong with Jimmy?” asked Vala.

  “Nothing anymore,” said his father. “A few years ago, just after Jimmy had enrolled at that university in California, he had a tumor removed from his throat. But his voice has never been the same since!”

  “The tumor was between the larynx and the pharynx,” said Osten, addressing Vala. “Along with the nose and mouth, those are the parts of the throat that determine how our voice sounds.”

  His father glanced at his watch. “Vala and I are dining at the club tonight. Would you like to join us?”

  “Thanks, but I can’t,” said Osten. “I’m meeting Donna.” He got up. Under the watchful eye of his father, he pecked Vala on both cheeks, careful not to brush her with his body.

  His father took him by his arm, saying, “I’ll walk you out,” and in the hall he said, “The money from your mother’s trust—does the bank send it to you regularly?”

  “Yes, same as always,” said Osten.

  “And is it—” his father halted “—enough?”

  They were outside now. “I manage fine,” said Osten.

  His father opened the car door for him. “You may as well know,” he said, “that almost all I make goes to support Vala and me.” His father hesitated again. “She recently redid the duplex in the city, you know, and you wouldn’t believe what it cost me—new carpets, wallpaper, stereo, and so on. And at Etude we’ve been socked with all the new union scales and upped royalties.” He was speaking quickly, as if to preempt any time there might be for questions.

  As Osten waited for his father to finish, he realized how unhealthy the old man looked. His skin, covered by a network of veins, was yellow; his lips had a bluish tinge; the whites of his eyes were bloodshot. Osten felt a sudden urge to take his father in his arms and kiss him on the forehead, to cuddle against him as he used to do when he was a boy.

  As if sensing this, his father took a step back. “Vala has been very good to me,” he said. “Very sweet. No one else could have replaced Leonore.” He lowered his voice. “And that’s why you should know—” he stopped, his eyes downcast “—that when I … go, I intend to leave everything to her. Everything,” he repeated, looking up, hoping to solicit agreement.

  “I understand,” said Osten, swallowing the wave of bitterness rising in him. “I understand.” He got into the car and started the engine. “Take care, Father,” he said through the window as he pulled away.

  Once on the road, Osten recalled the phone conversation he had had with his father the day his father told him how happy he was that Vala had accepted his engagement ring and that they planned to marry within a month. Osten had responded with forced enthusiasm. He was sure, he said, that young as she was, Vala would make an inspiring wife.

  “You would be amazed if I told you how well Vala and I have hit it off,” said his father, lowering his voice. “Believe me, those who say that age, makes a difference should see Vala and me … when we’re alone.”

  “I’m sure Vala is sweet and understanding—” said Osten.

  “I’m not talking about sweetness and understanding,” interrupted his father. “I’m talking about love, physical love, I have even tested her love for me,” he went on, like an adolescent bragging about his exploits.

  “You tested Vala’s love?”

  “That’s right,” said his father. “And chemically at that!” He paused, then announced proudly, “I came across an amazingly clever device! Mood Undies!”

  “What are Mood Undies?” Osten asked patiently.

  “Panties. Girls’ bikini panties.”

  “What do they do??
??

  “They don’t do—they test.” His father chuckled. “They test excitement. Sexual arousal, that is. Each pair has a little heart sewn on the front—you know where!” He chuckled again. “The heart is treated chemically, and as you—” he hesitated, searching for words “—are intimate with your lady and her mood changes, so does the color of the heart! A little scale next to the heart shows just how hot she feels for you! If the heart turns blue, it means she is feeling really excited; if it turns green, she’s just playful; brown means she’s only mildly interested; and black—well, she’s cold about the whole thing, physically cold, I mean. You understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” said Osten. For a moment he was touched by his father’s naiveté, his unflinching belief in things American—even when they were so patently absurd. But then he squirmed as he imagined his father in bed with Vala. He saw them kissing and cuddling in the darkness; then he saw his father suddenly turn on the light, put on his glasses, and bend down, gray-white, wrinkled, and flabby, over Vala’s curvaceous body to peek at the color of the heart and read the scale.

  “Well,” continued his father, “by now we’ve used at least a dozen of these Mood Undies, and each time, guess what color the heart showed?”

  “Blue,” said Osten.

  “Right! Every single time.” His father let out a high giggle. “And it’s scientific,” he reassured his son. “None of that Goethe and Erika apple of your eye’ stuff—lovers finding true love in each other’s letters. As long as Vala keeps her heart blue, I won’t be blue!” He was speaking exultantly. “You should try Mood Undies on Donna,’ he whispered. “It might be interesting to know…!”

  “I’m awfully happy for you, Father,” interrupted Osten. “And for Vala. I already like her a lot,” he added quickly, knowing it would please him.