Pinball

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “Or because she was in love with him,” said Domostroy.

  “In love? With a porn stud?” Andrea laughed. “She couldn’t have been, not if she cared for the Jimmy Osten sentimental type. Jimmy couldn’t be more different from Dick Longo!”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Domostroy. “Pornography and sentimentality go hand in hand. They both lie about sex. But tell me more about Jimmy and Donna.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” said Andrea. “For a biracial barcarole, they seem to be doing fine. We all wonder, though, whether the Bantu Queen doesn’t ever long for the Dick of bygone days.” She smiled wickedly.

  “Now, that’s unfair,” said Domostroy, mocking her previous tone, “making fun of Jimmy just because he might not measure up to Mr. Longo.”

  “Maybe he does,” laughed Andrea. “Maybe Jimmy has women all over the place. He’s often away, I know. Apparently he can’t stand his young bolshevik stepmother and I gather the dislike is mutual. Actually, he just got back into town.”

  “But tell me—does Donna seem happy with Jimmy?” asked Domostroy.

  “I can’t tell. Just now the frail sister is in a state of nerves over whether or not to enter the Chopin competition in Warsaw. She’s obviously tempted. And we all know what winning in Moscow did for that other Juilliard graduate—Van Cliburn!”

  The image of Donna Downes in an evening dress bowing before the formal European audience stirred Domostroy’s fantasy. How he would like to be at her side in Warsaw—a city where he had studied—the master with his apprentice, the lover with his mistress, calming her on the way to the concert hall, listening critically to her playing one last time in a practice room before she went on, making certain that her favorite piano was properly positioned on the stage, listening breathlessly to her performance, then wrapping his arms around her in the moment following her triumph.

  “You like her, don’t you?” asked Andrea.

  “Donna Downes?” he blustered.

  “Yes, Donna Downes.” There was no malice in Andrea’s voice.

  “I like her looks. Show me a man who wouldn’t!” he said, pretending he had already dismissed Donna from his thoughts.

  Andrea studied him brazenly. “Do you think Donna would make a compliant apprentice in one of your sex clubs?” she asked.

  “From what I’ve seen, Donna Downes is anything but compliant,” he replied. “Ask Jimmy.”

  “I’m asking you,” she said, and when he did not answer she continued. “What if the nefarious cyprian were to submit to you?” She spoke in measured beats. “After all, Donna is already a slave—of the white man’s music. As a onetime master of that music, aren’t you already her potential master?” She paused and stared hard at him. “Think what a sensation your black slave would be in Poland, playing the Grande Polonaise, at the Chopin piano competition!” She let her words sink in. “Why don’t you call her, Master?” she intoned like a sultry sex kitten.

  “Gladly,” said Domostroy in a purposely playful tone, “but if I do, can I count on you to keep Jimmy away?”

  “That might not be too difficult,” she said mischievously. “The way the golden neophyte looked at me in the cafeteria, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he asked me to go out with him.”

  “If you do go out with him,” said Domostroy, “just be careful of what you say! Remember who he is and that Nokturn, the company that publishes Goddard, is also the distributor for Etude, owned by his father. The music business is like a company town; “all these people are socially interconnected, and some of them might even know Goddard.”

  “You still haven’t said whether or not you plan to call Donna,” said Andrea.

  “Does it really matter?”

  She waved her hand. “It just might. What would you say if I went after her myself?”

  “Well, well. I wouldn’t have suspected you of being into women,” he said.

  “Sexually, I can be into anyone, anytime,” she said ominously. “But she just better stay out of my way.”

  “Out of your way?” Domostroy was annoyed. “If Jimmy likes you, Donna’s hardly an obstacle. And if he doesn’t—”

  “Who said Jimmy? Look, I can tell you like her, and I don’t want that black clit hanging around you, is that clear?” she said. “Until I know who Goddard is, you and I mustn’t lose touch, must we, partner?” A thin smile of mockery played on her lips. “Even though you are back at the Old Glory, I want to know you are standing by.”

  “As a one-night stand?” he asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think,” he said, pretending he thought she was still joking, “that if I were Donna, I wouldn’t fall for you.”

  Andrea sensed his mood. “But you’re not Donna,” she said. “It’s bad enough for her to be black, poor, and a woman at that. But she’s also insecure as an artist. And so our sooty dame is a sexual changeling—and a hot one at that. She’d do anything to be loved. To feel needed. To become equal—even if only in the eyes of her lover.” She was baiting him. “As a woman, I know more about that minx than you ever will. I’ll bet you anything I could have the black pearl in my bed in a minute.”

  “As a man, though, I know more about Goddard than you do,” he said, restraining his anger, “and even if he’s a veiled Arab sheikh, I doubt if he would fall for a crude American dike.”

  What Andrea had said about Donna triggered in Domostroy a memory of a woman he had known some years before, whom he had still not forgotten. He’d been at the height of his popularity as a composer and performer, and probably because his name and likeness were part of the steady media diet, a movie company had asked him to play the part of a Russian composer in an epic Hollywood film. Convinced that such an experience could only stimulate his imagination and be useful to his art, Domostroy had accepted.

  Parts of the film were shot on location in Spain. At the same time that Domostroy and the other featured players arrived in Seville, a contemporary music festival was about to begin there, in the Hotel Alfonso XIII, a spectacular relic of Spain’s architectural past. Some well-known artists and composers would be participating in the festival, and Domostroy realized with regret that his shooting schedule—from eight in the morning until late afternoon or evening—would cause him to miss many of the major group and solo performances.

  One day in the costume trailer, as he was dressing for his next scene under the watchful eyes of his barber, his stand-in, his makeup man, and the costume supervisor, Domostroy noticed a young woman outside. He recognized her as a member of the prop and costume unit and realized that she was absorbed in reading a souvenir program of the music festival.

  He had seen her several times before—she was pretty, with pale skin and delicate features—and he had been aware of her shyness, her fear of catching his stare. This diffidence put him off, and the woman, taking his aloofness as rejection, had avoided him. But he liked her looks and was particularly taken by her way of dressing; each day she wore a different dress, and each dress seemed to change her appearance, almost to the point of altering her personality.

  Later, when he spotted her eating alone in the cafeteria, Domostroy sat down across from her and asked her which of the festival events she planned to attend. Pleased by his interest, the woman answered his question and then went on to tell him that what fascinated her most about the festival was not just the music, but the presence of so many composers. To her, a shy person, composing seemed removed from actual life, and she had always wondered whether composers might be shy people too. Were they jealous, she wondered, of the performers, arrangers, and other aggressive nibblers at their work who were often more acclaimed and better paid than the composers themselves? She had just read an article in which a French psychologist claimed that musicians, who are by nature absorbed by and lost in music, are also more capable of emotional and spiritual fusion than other people—of being at one with their sexual partners. She said that she had always wanted to know just what sorts of events or ment
al states it took to inspire a composer to write music.

  In spite of her preoccupation, or obsession, with the mystery of how music was created, she said, she had never known a composer, nor had she ever met one socially. She hoped that the Seville music festival, so well attended by composers, might give her a chance to meet at least one of them.

  “You’ve already met one,” he said, attempting to put her at ease. “Me. Unless you think I’ve got a future in film acting!” he joked.

  She looked at him. “Of course I knew you were a composer, Mr. Domostroy. And I know your music. It’s just that I met you under such ordinary circumstances!”

  “Ordinary?”

  “Well, yes. There’s no mystery in our meeting.”

  He was taken aback by her frankness. “You mean there’s no mystery for you in our meeting now because you’ve met me before? Because you’ve seen me on the set of this movie?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” she protested, her face flushed. “It’s because you already know who I am, what I do, and,” she hesitated, “even how I look—under such ordinary circumstances.”

  “You are still a mystery,” he said. “I don’t know anything about you. But I like your looks a lot. Tell me, do you really look any different under other circumstances?”

  She hesitated before answering. “I do,” she said shyly. “I like clothes. I like dressing up—changing myself a bit.”

  Taking a chance on what he had only suspected about her, he asked whether her preoccupation with clothes and costumes—as evidenced by the way she dressed every day—was the reason for her choosing a job with the film company’s wardrobe department. At this, she recoiled and blushed to the base of her neck, and he quickly followed up by asking her if she had ever tried on various historical costumes. She glanced around, as if in panic that someone might have overheard him. Then, breathing quickly and still flushed, she started to rise as if to leave, but he stopped her by gently putting his hand on her shoulder. He told her that he liked her and hadn’t meant to offend or upset her. It was just that, since the first time he had seen her, whenever he imagined her—was it the composer in him?—he imagined her in disguise, in different costumes. When the woman was calm again, she asked him what sorts of costumes he had envisaged and he said that it depended on his fantasy—at different times he might see her as a violinist, a nurse, a go-go girl, or a society debutante.

  He said that, if she liked, he would introduce her to some of the composers at the festival; for each introduction, she might wear a different wig and dress and makeup. That might allow her to become different women, with new mystery and a fresh source of emotional fascination, for each composer she met.

  Each metamorphosis, he said, would also be an act of composing a new persona, not unlike composing music, a comic opera of sincerity, and it would enrich her search for the self—and her sense of self-discovery. Even if she did not win a lasting place in the imagination of any of these creative men, she would feel her momentary effect on all of them and, in the process, expand Domostroy’s own reality as well. He frankly admitted that even though he had only just then thought up the scheme, the prospect excited him and he hoped she would take part in it. He confessed that he already had an idea for capturing it in music: he would, he thought, call his piece Octaves, and it would be a series of metamorphoses of a single melody broken up and punctuated, step by step, by frequent pauses, solo voices, and silences.

  Obviously flattered, the woman did not seem disconcerted by his plan, and she meekly admitted that she often wore wigs and costumes at home, but she wasn’t brave enough to go out on dates in them. For her, by nature so shy, this could be the closest thing to becoming an actress, she said, to playing a new, exciting role each day—or even each night. She knew that some of the men in the prop and costume unit—hairdressers and makeup artists—occasionally borrowed wigs and clothes and even went out dressed as women. They had told her about their escapades, and more than once she had found herself envying their courage.

  On the first night of the festival, Domostroy invited the woman to a café which was frequented by local musicians. Many of the visiting artists also were there, and a number of them recognized Domostroy and waved to him or came over to chat. Several spoke enthusiastically about compositions of his that they had played, and Domostroy could tell that the woman was impressed by these tributes.

  The following day she told Domostroy that if he still liked his idea of introducing her in disguise, she was prepared to go along with it. She had chosen three outfits and had even picked out the accessories—wigs, coats, scarves, shoes, handbags, and jewelry.

  Domostroy told her he was delighted, and that night he looked over the list of participants in the festival program and selected three composers he had met at various gatherings in the past. He promptly called them all and arranged to meet them at different times.

  The first was an American, known primarily as a composer of serious pieces, but also as a songwriter. He was in his fifties and had lived most of his life in Minneapolis, where his wife had died recently. They met in the hotel bar, and the man seemed glad to see Domostroy. As they ordered a drink and began to talk, Domostroy saw the prop girl enter the bar.

  If he had not known in detail what she would be wearing, he would never have recognized her. The curly blond wig fit faultlessly; a fine makeup job discreetly altered her lips and eyes; the borrowed black silk dress elegantly outlined her girlish waist, and a padded bra made her small, firm breasts look substantially fuller. Long gloves, an alligator bag, and high-heeled shoes completed the lofty image. Playing her role well, she glanced around as if in search of someone, registered slight disappointment, turned to leave, then suddenly feigned surprise at noticing the two men. She approached their table and spoke to Domostroy with astonishing assurance and poise, reminding him that she had once had the pleasure of meeting him at a benefit concert in London. Stunned at her effortless manner in carrying off the deception, Domostroy muttered some words of apology for not having recognized her sooner, and then he introduced her by her assumed name to the American and invited her to join them for a drink. Politely she agreed and proceeded to prove herself as accomplished in her conversation as in her disguise. She talked knowledgeably and at length—thanks to the reading material Domostroy had given her—about music, the subject she said fascinated her above all others.

  At what seemed the right moment, Domostroy excused himself and left. On the following day, when he asked her if she had succeeded in leaving her mark on the composer, she replied distantly, saying only that the composer had asked to see her again.

  More intrigued than ever, Domostroy proceeded with the other introductions. The first was to a Soviet composer-conductor who was touring Western Europe by himself, having left his wife and three children behind in Kiev. For this meeting the woman came disguised as a loquacious redhead, a college student on vacation in Spain. Again she talked convincingly about her main interest—the history of musical form—and in an hour’s time she had the Russian captivated. Domostroy pleaded a previous commitment and soon left the two of them alone.

  The final candidate Domostroy chose for her was a recently divorced middle-aged German, a distinguished composer of chamber music and the author of a lengthy study of the physics and development of the entire family of stringed instruments. For him the woman had become a midwestern music critic who was covering the festival—a trim, luscious, full-breasted brunette who wore silk blouses and tweeds—and the German turned out to be by far her simplest conquest.

  Soon all three composers were pursuing her, and Domostroy was amazed at how expertly she managed to keep all three relationships—and disguises—going. Several other composers had complimented Domostroy on the beauty of the three women they kept seeing in his company; one of the men came to the movie set seeking them on his own, and was disappointed not to find even one. Meanwhile, in the evenings, on her way to one romantic rendezvous or another, she would often stop by Domostroy�
��s room and let him check out her wardrobe and makeup or coach her in appropriate dialogue. As to her amorous progress with the three men, she was reluctant to be specific. She would only say that they all seemed to be intensely interested in her and that she was pleased by the success of her disguises.

  Throughout the time of her adventures, Domostroy wondered how truthful the woman was being with each of the men. Had she told any of them about her game of disguises? Had she admitted to wearing a wig, for instance?

  Aware of Domostroy’s curiosity, as if to tease him, the woman began to hint that she had gone to bed with all three of his candidates. At such moments, her manner itself was a disguise, and it intimidated him. In perfect control, without a trace of her timid self, she would stare into his eyes and watch his slightest move, as if she expected to find some dissembling in his voice and look and manner.

  Under her scrutiny, he broke, admitting to her that he wanted very much to know more about her and her conquests of the three men. When she answered him, she was no longer cryptic. In a voice quite empty of emotion, she described in minute detail how she let each man make love to her without ever letting any of them fully undress her. She also told Domostroy that during these simultaneous love affairs, she felt herself to be an entirely different woman with each man, but that the three men now appeared to her as one and the same man. With the American, she said, she was inventive and demanding, and she would usually straddle him to bring him to orgasm; with the Russian she was docile and submissive, almost in a trance, and she would let him excite himself by rubbing against her; with the German she was fresh and innocent, and she would tease him until he begged her to let him rip off her clothes. She would often go from one fever to the next, right in the same hotel, during the same afternoon or evening. Because sex, like music, was sensual and direct, she said, she had the feeling that she was the composer and they mere performers of her sexual music.