Pinball (24 page)

To quell any possible suspicion on the part of her husband, Leila eagerly invited him and the children to hear the young American play. Their arrival at the Apasionada—the family, governesses, and guards in three limousines escorted by
federales
in cars and on motorcycles—caused considerable stir among the hotel’s patrons.

Watching the commotion from his room and knowing that the Arabs’ arrival would lure some of the local press photographers, Osten put on dark glasses and a large cowboy hat before descending to the café, which—for the first time since he had started giving performances—was filled to capacity.

The Salems were waiting to greet him. Older than his wife by twenty years and slightly shorter in stature, Ambassador Ahmed Salem looked like a Bedouin in a painting.
With black mustache and beard, olive skin, and long aquiline nose, he presented the greatest possible contrast to Leila. As soon as she introduced them, Ahmed became the warm Oxford-educated gentleman, managing to put Osten at ease to a surprising degree. The children, who both had their father’s dark hair and olive skin, shook hands politely with Osten and in all ways demonstrated the best British upbringing. Leila’s behavior was astonishing; nothing in her manner betrayed the slightest apprehension or embarrassment. With fifteen minutes left until his show, Osten invited the Salems to join him for a drink in the hotel bar, and the owner, impressed beyond belief by these guests, promptly closed the bar to other patrons. Osten ordered drinks for them and Shirley Temples for the children, and they all sat down, the children silently eyeing their parents and Osten.

The conversation turned to music. Ahmed, who knew of Osten’s background from Leila, inquired politely about Etude Classics and then spoke briefly about his concern over the rapid Westernization of Arab musical tastes, particularly among the
muthaqqafin,
or cultured class. Leila smiled and explained that to a trained Arab ear most Western music seemed crude, for although there were only two modes in Western music—major and minor—there were as many as ten in Arab music, and a cultivated Arab traditionalist might well perceive most Western harmony as dissonance. Osten, who—because of Leila—had bought and played a fair number of Arab records, ventured to suggest as a reason for this that Arab music was. mostly monophonic, with the melody carried by a single voice or by two voices an octave apart, whereas Western music was almost entirely polyphonic, consisting of chordal progressions and harmonizing melodies.

As they talked, Osten noted the affection and respect that Leila and Ahmed had for each other. Several times Ahmed said with pride that he made no decisions, diplomatic or otherwise, without first consulting Leila, and she pointed out that Ahmed had always been her greatest source of wisdom. Ahmed said that Leila was tremendously excited about Osten’s playing, particularly his improvisational
techniques. Did he know, Ahmed asked, that an Arab judged a singer by the virtuosity of his improvisations? That was true, Leila said, and except for Goddard, whose improvisations approximated from time to time the Arab ideal, Osten alone of the Westerners she had heard seemed to have a musical sensibility equal to his finest counterparts in the Arab world.

As Osten listened to her and observed her with her husband and children, he was seized by a terrible sense of guilt. What if his few moments of passion with her had damaged Leila’s
ird
beyond repair? What if the music he was about to play, the words he was about to sing, were to give away his love for her? What if, listening to him, she were to betray her emotions, inadvertently exposing her love for him?

It was time to start the performance. As the audience applauded and he sat down at the Paganini, his eyes rested on Ahmed, who was bending toward Leila and whispering into her ear. Osten became apprehensive. What if Ahmed knew that his wife was in love with another man? What if he suspected that she had already transgressed against the
ird
and as a result had deprived him of his
sharafy
which could only mean the ultimate loss for any Arab, the loss of his self-respect?

Ahmed turned away from Leila, saw Osten staring, and waved. He had a smile on his face. Was it the smile of a man who sensed that he was losing his honor, or had already lost it, and in obedience to the ancient Bedouin law of retaliation was scheming revenge?

Osten started to play and then sing, and as the patrons in the room grew wilder in their applause with each ensuing number, he saw Leila’s children lose their composure and move happily to his beat. Ahmed continued to smile encouragingly, but Leila, knowing that she and her husband and children fell under the steady gaze of the bodyguards,
the federales,
and the customers at neighboring tables, remained impassive; only her eyes traced Osten’s every movement.

When he sang the first of the two Mexican songs, he could see her lips moving ever so slightly, forming the
words he had written for her. Listening intently, Ahmed stared straight ahead. What if he knew the songs as well as Leila and noticed that Osten had changed the lyrics? What if—even though Ahmed’s Spanish was far from perfect—he understood at a single hearing the meaning of Osten’s lyrics?

As before, there was a riot of applause, and to calm the audience down, Osten began to intone the opening phrases of the other Mexican song. As a surprise for Leila, he had woven into his arrangement a tender Arab motif from one of the Arab records he had studied. He played it first on what sounded like a single instrument, repeating it several times without variation according to the Arabic mode; then he sang it a number of times and picked it up once again with the solitary instrumental voice. Watching her carefully, he could see that the Arab melody had caught her off guard, rendering the familiar sad words even sadder for her, and as she listened to it, he saw tears welling up in the eyes that stared into his. He could also see that she was unaware of Ahmed’s eyes resting on her face. Shifting his gaze rapidly from Leila to Ahmed, Osten saw an expression on the other man’s face that filled him with dread.

At the end of the performance, Osten went outside to speak to the Salems. He thanked them for coming, and Leila thanked him in return and lowered her eyes. The children shook his hand. Ahmed’s warm smile was back on his face as he thanked Osten for inviting them and said he hoped Osten would visit them soon in Mexico City. When Osten suggested that they might even get together again in Tijuana or Rosarito Beach, Ahmed, his smile still open and generous, said that unfortunately such a meeting would not be possible since he and his family were leaving for the capital the following day. When she heard what her husband had said, Leila lifted her eyes to his face; she could barely contain her feelings, but she said nothing. Osten’s heart raced; only a day before she had assured him that she and her family would remain in the Scheherazade for another week.

A wave of childish anger, of adolescent jealousy, surged
within Osten. In an instant Ahmed had reduced him to the position of spectator, powerless in the face of his own private drama; a bystander, unable to follow and be close to Leila, the woman he loved. If ever, Osten thought, he were to perform in public, even once, as Goddard—anywhere in the world—whether in tourist-jammed, poverty-ridden Tijuana, Mexico City, or even war-torn Lebanon, he would command crowds the likes of which Ahmed Salem had never imagined. Then it would be Goddard who would have the police escorts and the retinue of servants and the hosts of beautiful women—Leila among them!

Osten’s mouth went dry, and he smiled. In a voice as firm as his handshake, he thanked Ahmed for the invitation, saying that, for a while at least, his studies would keep him in California. Sweetly he kissed the young girl’s cheek and patted the boy on the arm, and then, as if his entire life were contained in the fingers of his right hand, he extended it to Leila. With trembling lips she thanked him for his music and his company. The bodyguards opened the limousine doors, and the Salems got in, waving as the
federales
rushed to their cars and motorcycles and revved them up. Amid a squeal of sirens, under the admiring stare of the crowd, the limousines and motorcycles pulled away one by one. In another moment the onlookers had dispersed, and Osten stood alone at the entrance to the Apasionada. He felt empty, devoid of emotion. He believed he would never again see Leila Salem.

In the two years and more since their parting he had made no effort to get in touch with Leila for fear of ruining her life. And even though she had his address—care of his father at Etude Classics, New York—he had had no word from her. Not long after his encounter with her, he had met Donna, who for a time had distracted him from the memory of Leila. Now, sitting alone in a sublet New York apartment, he wondered where Leila was and whether she had heard Goddard’s latest album—the one with the
Mexican songs on it. Had she been curious to know how those songs had come to Goddard’s attention and why he had chosen to record them? As a foreigner living in Mexico, did she know enough about the American record business to be aware that the company that published Goddard’s records also distributed Etude Classics? If so, might she assume that, thanks to his father’s connections, he had been able to submit her two favorite songs directly to Goddard—also her favorite—who had then included them on his next album?

An anguished thought that he might never meet anyone like her again prompted him to call Nokturn. He went out to a public telephone on the street and called Blaystone, telling him to instruct the secretaries who read Goddard’s fan mail to be on the lookout for another letter from the White House.

Almost before Osten finished his sentence, Blaystone said that two such letters had already arrived, and he asked for delivery instructions. Wildly excited but attempting to sound calm, Osten told him to have all the mail sent immediately by company limousine to the Forty-second Street entrance of the Public Library, where a messenger would be waiting. He reminded Blaystone to take the usual precautions regarding the secrecy of the delivery. Then he phoned Donna to say he would be late picking her up, got into his rented car, and drove to the library.

“You were wise to abandon the pianist in you,” the White House woman had written in her first letter. “Instead of merely transposing from the piano to other instruments as the old masters transposed from the violin and the human voice, you compose with the whole orchestra in mind. Just as Chopin revolutionized piano technique, you have revolutionized the use of the synthesizer. Did you do it so that you could compose, perform, and record with no one else’s help?”

She was right. He had abandoned the piano, the instrument his mother taught him to play, when he found that it restricted him. She was also right about his use of the synthesizer. But the words “so that you could compose, perform, and record with no one else’s help” had
disturbed him. Even though it was common knowledge that many big rock stars in the United States and England recorded their music on private equipment—several of them had complete sound studios in their homes—no music critic had ever suggested that Goddard composed, performed, and recorded alone. Most of the critics who reviewed Goddard’s music seemed to agree that he must have worked with a few carefully selected performers who valued their income too much to reveal the source of it. One of the writers claimed to have learned from an unnamed though reputable source that while recording his songs Goddard sat in the recording studio behind a oneway mirror so that he could see his band without ever being seen by them.

Passing himself off as a messenger, Osten ran over to the Nokturn limousine and collected the letters. Then he got back in his car, drove a few blocks, and parked at the curb. He opened the new White House letter and started to read it through quickly.

“I have listened to your last album again and again,” she wrote, “and the Spanish-language songs seem to have been inspired by actual events. Is it possible that you sang them first in public, for someone particular in the audience—someone you loved—or someone you may even still love? A married woman perhaps? You could have sung almost anywhere, I suspect, without being recognized, though I think of Tijuana as a likely spot—or was it San Diego, somewhere near the Hotel Del Coronado? Did either of these places play a role in your life? And is the
arabesque
woven into one of the refrains a dream out of the Arabian nights you and your love spent together?”

In a sweat, he stopped. What if—his heart began to beat rapidly at the thought—what if Leila was the woman who had written these letters? Yet, if Leila thought Jimmy Osten was Goddard, wouldn’t she respect the camouflage of her friend and, fearing that any communication of hers might fall into the wrong hands, pretend that she did not know who he was? But what if Leila had talked to someone about Jimmy Osten’s music—someone she trusted—and that person now suspected who Goddard was and was
determined to excite his imagination to the point where he would reveal himself?

But if Leila ever suspected that he was Goddard—and nothing in her behavior had ever indicated that she did—would she share her suspicion with another person before writing or talking to him first? On the other hand, how could anyone else—a stranger who knew only Goddard’s music—come so close to the truth? He resumed reading, terrified yet tempted to know more.

“I have come to the conclusion that Goddard Lieberson and Boris Pregel were both important in your life—so important that you adopted the name of one and make occasional musical references to the compositions of both as some sort of homage. Since both men are dead, I suppose it is useless for me to speculate on whether they knew of your secret life and perhaps even assisted you in planning for your invisibility. I have familiarized myself extensively with the work and accomplishments of both these men, and I am in the process of learning more—much more—about their lives, trusting that somewhere along the line in my research, finding out about them may lead me to know more about you—in the event that you and I ever brush shoulders.”