Pinball (33 page)

He then had her play a series of selections: the beginning of the Nocturne in F, to see whether her pedaling muffled the melody in the right hand; the Nocturne in E, which demonstrated Chopin s unique contrasts between pedaled and unpedaled sound; the Prelude in A Minor, which, except for one short passage near the end, was all without pedal; and the Prelude in B Minor, in which Chopin had initially indicated normal pedaling every second beat in bars 2 and 3—played with the left hand—but then had crossed out the markings, leaving all three opening bars in his autograph edition under one shockingly long pedaling blur.

She finished and sat looking at him like a student nervously waiting for comments from her teacher.

Being careful not to put her off, he said that he sensed in her playing two opposing forces: a desire to be free of Chopin’s written notes and dynamics so that she could improvise—an impulse she probably inherited from her jazz-playing father—and a need to be letter-perfect and to adhere rigidly to every mark on the dense Chopin scores, which certainly came from her classical schooling at Juilliard. With sufficient practice, and with her obvious talent, Domostroy went on, there was no reason why she couldn’t learn to fuse these drives and negotiate Chopin’s most difficult passages, not only with precision, but with all the ingenuity and energy of the born jazzman. To achieve this, he felt she needed to concentrate on developing greater suppleness and strength in her back, shoulders and arms, as well as in her wrists and fingers. He also offered to show her special exercises to improve her knuckle mobility, and told her frankly that she needed to practice more, not only rehearsing and polishing the Chopin pieces, but doing more exercises and scales to refine her overall technique. He-recommended to her certain exercises of Cramer and Clementi, two men who influenced Chopin’s technique and his understanding of the piano, as well as works of Czerny and Hummel and Leopold Godowski’s versions of Chopin’s Etudes, particularly his
twenty-two studies for the left hand, which contained a C-sharp minor version of the so-called “Revolutionary” Etude.

Donna listened to him carefully, and if she was surprised or hurt by any of the criticism implicit in his advice, she managed not to show it. Instead, she asked what he thought of her chance of winning at the Chopin piano competition in Warsaw. He answered with equal directness that, unless she improved her technique and increased her strength, her chances in his opinion were slight, but he added that he felt she could achieve much in a few weeks if she really worked at it.

Now she stood up, and he led her outside. It was warm and sunny, and they strolled slowly around the Old Glory, crossing the parking lot and walking until they reached the tall wire fence. Beyond, as far as the eye could see, lay a dead ghetto of burned-out tenements, black ruins scarred by broken windows and boarded-up doors, the drooping old stoops and the backyards piled high with stones and charred rubbish. They walked along a path inside the fence, and at their approach a rat scurried out of the tall grass and ran towards the ruins.

Domostroy glanced at her from time to time. In the past he had always seen her in artificial light, but here, in bright sunlight, her skin gleamed. Under the delicate lines of her brows, the long oval arches of her eyelids shone as if lighted from within, and her eyes, shaded by thick lashes, were leaf green. He kept glancing at the faultlessly etched hollows under her cheekbones, and at the subtle play of light on her lips, so full and smooth they threatened to burst open. Her beauty overwhelmed, almost stifled him; it was regal, yet unaffected, as pure as the soul within.

Someone whistled shrilly from the roof of an empty building, and when Domostroy looked in the direction of the sound he saw three members of the Born Free gang waving at him. He waved back.

“I went to school not too far from here,” said Donna as they turned to walk back. She waved at the ruins. “Those black holes were always there. I walked through
them often, alone or with other kids, playing hide-and-seek, fighting, chasing cats and rats, and often being chased by the riffraff who would come looking for skirts. I used to crawl into smelly trenches like those, waiting and waiting for my boy lover.”

They walked in silence except for the sound of chirping sparrows that foraged on the ground and in the bushes.

“One day I heard my father singing an old blues song,” she said and intoned:

“Come along—
Done found dat new hidin’ place!
I’se so glad I’m
Done found dot new hidin place!”

And I said to myself that I never wanted to go back to those pits, so I made up my mind to look for ‘dat new hidin’ place’ myself, and I knew it was going to be music. From then on my life in bondage was over.”

She reflected for a minute, then smiled. “You know, whenever I try to think of myself as a serious musician, I always remember a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar that was printed on a sampler my mother had in our kitchen:

G’way an quit dat noise, Miss Lucy—
Put dat music book away;
What’s de use to keep on tryin’?
Ef you practis twell you’re gray,
You cain’t sta’t no notes a-flyin’
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F’om de kitchen to de big woods
When Malindy sing.
…”

As she finished the poem he sensed a conflict in her. He could tell that she was grateful to him for today and that she probably felt she should show it by staying with him a bit longer, possibly even letting him make a pass at her. But he didn’t make a pass. Even though he wanted her, and even though, knowing that she was about to leave, he felt forlorn, he didn’t attempt to detain her. He
did not want to become her lover because of any gratitude she might have felt, and—even more than that—he didn’t want to share her with Jimmy Osten, the man in her life. Firmly—to her surprise, he imagined—he led her to her car and opened the door for her.

As she slid into the seat she put her hand on his arm. “When will I see you again, Patrick?” she asked, a bit uncertain of herself.

“Anytime you want,” he said brusquely. “Just come.”

“But I don’t want to intrude. You have your own work to do.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “Come over anytime.”

“I might take you up on that,” she said, starting the engine. “Would three times a week be too much?”

The prospect excited him, but he didn’t want her to know it. “‘We will be held accountable for all the permitted pleasures we failed to enjoy,’” he quoted the Aggada and chuckled to put her, and himself, at ease. “That’s good for a start,” he said. “When do we begin?”

“How about tomorrow?” she said, and he sensed in her eagerness to let him know that his offer to help had pleased her.

“Remember me to Jimmy,” he said.

“I will,” she said. “Though I doubt he has forgotten you!” She drove off, her hair blowing in the breeze.

His feelings in utter disarray, Domostroy walked back to the ballroom. When he turned and looked behind him, she was gone. The parking lot was empty. Even the Born Free members were no longer at their post.

Donna did not hide her visit to Domostroy from Osten. She even told him of her plans to work with the composer so that she could get as much help and advice as possible in preparation for the Warsaw competition. Osten could not challenge her right or her need to seek musical help, but he resented the fact that Domostroy was the person she had chosen to go to for it. He knew of Domostroy’s reputation and by now he was suspecting
more and more that Domostroy was the man who had photographed the White House woman and might have collaborated with her on her letters to Goddard. Finally, disturbed by Domostroy’s interest in Donna, Osten decided to investigate the composer’s motives, and one evening when he knew that Donna was with Domostroy, Osten rented a car and drove to the Old Glory.

Whenever he had driven in the South Bronx before, he had been on his way to somewhere else, but now, looking for a specific address there, for the first time he became aware of how closely the South Bronx resembled the slums of Tijuana. Except that in Tijuana, at least, the slum dwellers lived with the hope, misplaced though it might be, that their city, because it was so close to the wealthy United States, might one day grow into a metropolis and that their lives would become as new and straight as the new buildings and highways that were springing up all around them. There were no new buildings or highways, and no such hope, in the South Bronx.

He found the Old Glory and circled it once, slowing down when he saw Donna’s car parked near the entrance to the dance hall right next to an old convertible, almost certainly Domostroy’s. He knew she would be there for the whole evening, so he decided to bide his time and wait for twilight to give way to darkness.

He drove for a while through some desolate stretches, his radio blasting the latest rock blues, killing time until the moon floated out and the black walls of the ballroom turned silverish in the lunar radiance.

He parked his car outside the chain-link fence and walked into the tall grass that grew beside it, his parabolic microphone in one hand, a lighted flashlight in the other. Placing the microphone on its tripod, he aimed its dish in the direction of the light that was streaming out of the windows of the huge ballroom. He flicked on the microphone and, pressing a button, activated the machine’s tantalum wind filter, which would eliminate all unwanted outdoor sounds. Then he attached the microphone to a small cassette recorder, and as through the earplugs he began to pick up the first sounds from within the Old
Glory—either Donna or Domostroy playing Chopin on the piano—he hunkered down and leaned one shoulder against the fence.

Except for the recorded piano sound, there was stillness all around him. Behind him, rows of burned-out buildings stretched away in silence. Before him, the vast gray floor of the parking lot shone eerily, and the Old Glory, with its arches, columns, carved surfaces, balconies, and sloping roofs, rose like a phantom castle.

He sat on the ground and expectantly moved closer. Just then, without warning, something hard hit him on the back of the head, and as he fell forward in the wet grass and his thoughts grew dim, he was conscious of harsh voices. Barely aware that he had been attacked from behind, he lapsed into darkness.

He came to, uncertain of where he was or how long he had been unconscious, his head feeling as if it were clamped in a vise. He was sitting in an old naugahide armchair next to a grand piano, and when lie looked up and saw Donna bending over him with concern on her face, at first he assumed he was in her Carnegie Hall studio. Turning his head, he saw Patrick Domostroy holding the parabolic microphone and the tape recorder, and next to him three swarthy young Hispanics in yellow caps with BORN FREE printed on them.

“Are you all right, Jimmy?” asked Donna, patting him gently on the shoulder.

He reached up and felt a lump on his head, then glanced at his hand to see if there was blood on it. There wasn’t. “I’m fine,” he said, remembering out of instinct to alter his voice.

“I thought you were a student of literature—not a spy,” said Domostroy, walking toward him.

The Born Frees flashed broad grins.

Osten looked at the floor. He felt like a kid caught stealing in a candy store, and the thought that he must appear ridiculous to Donna and Domostroy filled him with shame.

“I don’t give a damn what you thought,” Osten said
sharply. “And don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on here!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” asked Donna, recoiling from him.

“What it says,” Osten said, seizing the chance to play the deceived lover. “That you’re a cheater and a liar! Well, aren’t you?”

Donna’s face became flushed. “You don’t know what you’re saying!” she stammered. “How can you be so unfair to me—and to yourself? I’m here to play piano. Don’t you know how much that means to me? You have no right—no right—” She turned away, hiding her tears.

“That’s some guerrilla bingo set you’ve got to spy with,” said one Born Free, rolling his shoulders as he took a few steps closer to Osten.

“Why don’t you give it back to the CIA, man?” taunted another.

“You’re wasting it here, man. This ain’t El Salvador. Not yet!” gibed the third.

“Take it easy!” said Domostroy to calm the gang. “He’s not working for the CIA. He’s just spying on her.” He gestured at Donna. “She’s his girl friend.”

The gang members snickered, and Donna looked at Domostroy with reproach. “Patrick, please.”

“He’s right, Donna,” Osten interrupted, anxious to mislead Domostroy. “He’s right,” he repeated slowly, getting up. He stretched his shoulders, winced, and looked her in the eye. “I wanted to find out what was going on between you and your music teacher.” He glared at Domostroy, and the three Born Frees grinned with glee.

“You’ve got some nerve, man,” said one of them. “You were trespassing without a visa, didn’t you know that?” He looked at his pals with a wink. “This is Born to Burn country, this is abroad, man; this place split from Uncle Sam long ago, and you could get hurt by sneaking around like this. Next time we catch you, sonny boy, it will really cost you!”

“Next time I’ll know what to do with you!” snapped back Osten.

By now Donna had regained her composure. She was
no longer sad, just angry. Controlling her voice, she said, “There won’t be any next time, Jimmy. I think you better go now.” Her voice quivered with emotion as she added, “I don’t want to see you again.”

“Wait, Donna,” said Domostroy, “don’t be too hard on him.” He laid the microphone and recorder on the chair that had been vacated by Osten. “He was only trying to protect you. He was probably worried about your being out here … alone …’ His voice trailed off.

“That doesn’t mean he can follow me around and spy on me,” said Donna, glancing at Osten then quickly turning away from him and facing Domostroy and the others. “He had no right—no right whatsoever—to do that. No one does.” Her firmness seemed to leave her, and she sounded as if she might cry again, but she hastily composed herself and pushing aside a chair that blocked her way, she walked to the piano and sat down. “Let’s work, Patrick,” she said calmly as her fingers struck a chord on the keyboard.