Pinball (10 page)

Andrea prided herself on being an accomplished sexual tease. Often, in the middle of the night, when she was unable to sleep, she would select a man’s name at random from the telephone book, dial the number, and in a husky voice introduce herself as Ludmila, or Vanessa or Karen, saying that she had just woken up and that to put herself back to sleep she needed “a sexy talk.” If the man hung up, she would dial another number and repeat her introduction. She would ask the unsuspecting man to introduce himself to her, conning him into a long conversation—and more than that. Watching Domostroy in bed next to her, she would gauge by his reaction the impact of every word she uttered.

“I want you to be free with me, baby,” she would whisper into the phone, “as I am now with you. I want you to touch yourself where I touch myself. You want me to start first? I will—because it excites me. I like your voice—it makes me feel you so close. Let me guide your hands—to where you want to go—yes, that’s where I want you to touch me. Now, touch yourself, and as you do, think that your hands are mine, touch it again—and again …”

Aroused by her voice and by the fantasy of her, her telephone love partner would whisper to her words Domostroy could not hear, and as she whispered and
moaned into the phone, her breath rasping and broken, she would sprawl over Domostroy, her breasts on his chest, her face next to his, the telephone receiver in her hand the only barrier between them.

She would continue her verbal charade, at the same time licking Domostroy’s ears, kissing his lips, her free hand wedging between her flesh and his, raking and squeezing.

“Love me faster, lover, harder, deeper—faster now,” she would breathe into the phone, and listening to the sounds from the receiver, she would pull away from Domostroy, leaving him in the midst of his own excitement, and replace the receiver. “Another bastard just came on me,” she would exclaim in mock anger. “Imagine the nerve—on our first date!”

One morning, just as Domostroy was about to tell Andrea of his latest discovery, she startled him by anticipating him. “Goddard is like a writer who uses a pen name,” she said, rolling over and looking at him. “Usually such a name has no relationship to the writer’s real name, or to his life, because it is meant to be an artistic cover-up, a creative camouflage. But the other day you said you thought you know why Goddard picked that name for himself. Tell me what you think.”

“I have a clue,” said Domostroy. “As I was listening to his records, I picked out two musical themes, both of which I was sure belonged to other composers whose records I’d heard before. They were subtle paraphrases of music I thought I knew, and for days I listened to hundreds of records and tapes—old and new, American and foreign—but I couldn’t track down the sources, mainly because both of these elusive themes evoked the music of a number of past and present composers. Finally, I traced one motif.”

“To whom?”

“To—Lieberson, a man I used to know,” he answered, “who died some years ago. Lieberson was president of Columbia Records Masterworks, and he was responsible
for launching some of our finest contemporary composers, both classical and popular, as well as for bringing about the productions of
South Pacific, My Fair Lady,
and
West Side Story.
He won seven Grammy Awards, and at least as many Gold Record Awards, and he was one of the most erudite and admired men in the music industry.”

“Wait a minute,” she interrupted impatiently. “You’re talking about a corporate executive. What’s that got to do with the themes in Goddard’s music?”

Bending down slowly and inhaling her tart odor, Domostroy brushed one cheek against her inner thigh, hard and cool, and pressed the other against her mound, shaved of its hair, its flesh rippled, steamy, and coiled. “Lieberson was also an inspired and accomplished composer,” he said softly. “I’ve spent time listening to all of his work again, and he wrote a goodly amount: incidental music for
Alice in Wonderland,
a ballet, a suite for string orchestra, a symphony, settings for three Chinese poems for mixed voices, a suite for twenty instruments, a piece called ‘Complaints of the Young,’ another called ‘Nine Melodies for Piano,’ a quintet, and a number of songs to texts by Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and others. I even reread his novel,
Three for Bedroom C
. Gloria Swanson played in the film.”

“Come to the point,” she said as she moved back and trapped him between her calves, their roundness not marred by the slightest muscle bulge, their smoothness not disturbed by a single hair.

“The point is that Goddard paraphrased a whole section of one of Lieberson’s works.”

“Big deal,” she interjected. “Everyone paraphrases. In my piano literature course I just learned that in the ‘Fantaisie Impromptu,’ Chopin, who so massively and unashamedly borrowed from Polish folk music, also paraphrased an impromptu by Moscheles that had been published by chance in a volume along with Chopin’s Opus 15 nocturnes. Chopin was so ashamed to acknowledge his indebtedness to Moscheles, that for twenty years he refused to publish his masterpiece. “Like any other artist, the composer transforms the already existing forms,
motifs, techniques into a new musical entity,” she lectured him. All Goddard did was paraphrase one musical passage from a piece he might have heard anywhere!” She was disappointed. “That’s not enough to be a meaningful link.”

“I agree, that’s not enough,” he said, kissing her, his tongue tracing the folds and curls of her flesh, roughing it, pressing and withdrawing.

His touch sent shivers through her, and her breathing came in rasps; with her eyes closed, turning her head from side to side, she twisted her body.

He stopped, then said softly, “There is another link. Guess what Lieberson’s first name was?”

“Why?” Pushing her hands against his shoulders, she stopped twisting.

“Just guess,” he said.

“Victor. No, wait: Hector.”

“Wrong.”

“What does Lieberson’s first name have to do with Goddard?”

“A lot,” said Domostroy, “because Lieberson’s first name was Goddard.”

Sweeping the hair off her face, she sat up.

“What?”

“Goddard Lieberson.” He stared at her.

“That’s unbelievable,” she said. “Could it be a coincidence?”

“Coincidence? First Lieberson’s name, then his music! That’s a connection, not a coincidence.” Domostroy paused. “But what can the connection be? When Goddard Lieberson was in his heyday, our Goddard was probably like you, Andrea, a teenager in high school.”

She sat and thought. “You said that Goddard had paraphrased the themes of two composers. One is Lieberson. Have you traced the other oner”

“Not yet,” said Domostroy.

A few days later, as if checking on his progress, Andrea said, “Did you find the other theme that you thought Goddard paraphrased?”

“For the life of me I couldn’t place the composer or the piece,” he said. “There was something bright and evanescent about it, a bit foreign and old-fashioned, in the vein of the late-nineteenth-century Russian Romantics—Borodin, Balakirev, Mussorgsky. Yet I had the strange feeling that I had heard the piece played by the composer himself at some time or other, which meant it had to be much more recent. Then it hit me. Goddard got that motif from Boris Pregel, another composer I knew—as I knew Lieberson.”

“Boris Pregel? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him—or of anything by him.”

“He was also somewhat before your time. Pregel was born in Russia, and starting at the age of six, he was trained by his mother, who was an excellent pianist and singer. He later studied music at the conservatory in Odessa, but then he switched to engineering and escaped to the West—to France. Then he came to the United States. Like Lieberson, Pregel became known, not for his music, but for other reasons—in his case, primarily as a great expert and inventor in the field of atomic energy. And he was an enormously successful entrepreneur, dealing in uranium and other radioactive materials. For his achievements and service to mankind, Pregel was made president of the New York Academy of Sciences, and he became one of the most decorated men in the world, right up there with De Gaulle, Eisenhower, and the Pope.”

“What about his music?” Andrea asked.

“It was first-rate,” said Domostroy. “In the Russian Romantic tradition. His ‘Romantic Suite,’ his Fantasy in D Major, and many of his other works were performed in America and in Europe, by the Rome and Milan symphony orchestras under D’Artega.” He halted. “Strange how things come back,” he said. “I’d forgotten that D’Artega, the conductor, also acted. He played Tchaikovsky in the film
Carnegie Hall.”

“You know all kinds of musical tidbits, don’t you?” she said, impressed.

“Stick around, and so will you,” said Domostroy. “For example, Boris Pregel’s songs, like Lieberson’s, were usually settings for works by well-known poets.”

He stopped and reflected. “There’s one tidbit that I would like to know: how did Goddard happen to pick up motifs from both Goddard Lieberson
and
Boris Pregel? I can’t figure out the connection.”

“Maybe he just liked their music,” said Andrea.

“Still, what a coincidence! Even when Pregel and Lieberson were alive, their music was not widely known. Most people wouldn’t be familiar with the work of either one, much less both. I wonder if our Goddard’s family was somehow connected to them. Could Goddard possibly have known both Lieberson and Pregel?”

“Why not?” she cried, excited. “Goddard might be a young corporate executive, a sort of contemporary Lieberson or Pregel! Could that be the connection?”

“I doubt it. For one thing, Lieberson and Pregel were hardly typical executives. Both were creative artists and intellectuals, men with extensive education, exposure, worldliness.”

“Do you think that in his way Goddard is up to their standards?”

“Definitely not. They were both talented and accomplished musicians. Despite what Nash and the other critics say, our Goddard has no real understanding of the piano; his music is elemental, flat, without depth; his treatment of rhythm, harmony and melody is a synthesized mishmash. In my opinion, he has also failed to develop as a singer: his voice remains as ordinary as his repertoire. He can’t darken his vowels, and for volume he depends entirely on electronic amplification.”

“At least he doesn’t merely try to entertain,” said Andrea. “Goddard writes to broaden his audience’s musical experience. That’s why they love him. That’s why he’s not just another rock star. He’s an innovator, like Gershwin.”

“The mass public is by nature indiscriminate and gullible,” said Domostroy. “Easily influenced by mass media,
it cannot distinguish between what’s authentic and what’s merely believable, between originality and sham novelty. At best, Goddard is a mildly gifted singer and a clever electronic-music improviser, that’s all. Chopin once said that nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning. But Goddard has no meaning to hide. Instead, he has cleverly hidden himself in his music! His invisibility is still his greatest asset.” He looked at Andrea and saw that his words had annoyed her. “Innovator or not,” he continued in a gentler voice, “his music alone will not tell us how he linked himself to both Lieberson and Pregel. But perhaps the files of Columbia Records—or the New York Academy of Sciences—will.”

Andrea read the letter. “It’s wonderful,” she sighed, “and so moving. If I were Goddard, I would certainly want to know the woman who had written it.” She read it again, slowly, her lips moving as she lingered over each word. Then she looked up. “Do my sexual feelings have to be spelled out in such detail?”

“What you say about sex in this letter has to work like the sustaining pedal on the piano. It has to keep you resonating in his fantasy.”

“I wish I had written it,” she murmured sweetly. “It’s beautiful.”

“It will come from you,” said Domostroy.

“Yes, but the signature will be my only contribution.”

“It won’t be signed,” said Domostroy. “And there won’t be any return address on it.”

“Why? If the letter is telling the truth—”

“Truth needs no signature,” said Domostroy, taking the letter from her. “If he’s convinced by what you say, not knowing who you are will intrigue him all the more. He’ll count the days until you write again—and hope that the next time you write, you’ll sign your name so that one day he’ll be able to meet you.”

“Can one letter do all that?” she wondered aloud.

“I doubt it. But several—let’s say five—might,” he
said. “Long ago, during my
Sturm und Drang
period,” he continued, “when I had received enough fan letters to know how similar they all were, I received one unusual one. The writer, a woman, said she knew me only from my work and a few concert and television appearances, but her analysis of my music was so acute, as were her perceptions of my needs and longings—the undercurrents of my life, which I’d never talked about with anyone—that I was flat-out enthralled.

“If, without meeting me, she had detected so much of my innermost being, you can imagine how tempted I was to let her study me face to face, with no emotional or professional niceties to mask the encounter. But when I reached the end of the letter, I realized with dismay that she had not signed it, or rather, that she had signed it only with a musical phrase from Chopin. I assumed that she had simply forgotten to add her name, and I earnestly hoped that, in spite of not hearing from me, she would write again.