Pinball (22 page)

And how could a defamed rock star ever successfully prove to anybody that the reporter who defamed him did not believe in the truth of his own reporting? One day, however, while struggling through James Joyce’s inscrutable
Ulysses
for one of his literature courses, Osten came across a little song that the character Stephen Dedalus remembers:

I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.

If only, Osten thought, he could find a way to write and sing rock music and have it known while he would remain unseen—better yet, unknown—by his audience! That would be the ideal life.

Knowing what it would mean if he ever told his father that he considered making a career as a rock performer, Osten kept his thoughts smothered, at the same time growing more and more frustrated. What added to his concern, was the knowledge that Etude Classics was slowly heading toward bankruptcy. Having driven the big saloon singers out of the recording studios, rock was also causing mayhem in the classical music business—all the more reason why Osten couldn’t approach his father. Finally, almost in despair, he decided to seek the advice of his father’s closest friends—Goddard Lieberson and Boris Pregel.

Both were most extraordinary men. When Jimmy Osten first met them, Lieberson was already president of Columbia Records and Pregel president of the New York Academy of Sciences. In addition, between them, the two men served on the boards of directors and boards of
trustees of at least a dozen major corporations, foundations, and institutions. Together they wielded tremendous influence. There was literally nothing about music, the music business, or any contemporary composer, performer, or talent, that Lieberson—who was a composer, author, technical innovator, and businessman combined—did not know; and everything he knew, he knew with the intimate knowledge of those blessed with talent themselves. Older than Lieberson, Pregel was a gifted composer, pianist, inventor, and businessman who was a major shareholder in uranium companies in Africa, Europe, and North America.

The two men had a number of characteristics in common: love of classical music, ready talent for composing and performing, formidable business acumen, and rare executive ability. Both men were handsome, with charming personalities, accessible generally yet sufficiently imposing when they needed to be. Both epitomized financial success. Both made New York their home, but in order to break the city’s frenetic rhythm, both maintained peaceful retreats to which they could escape for recharging—Lieberson to the hills of New Mexico, Pregel to a lake in Switzerland. Both men considered Gerhard Osten a most valued friend, and they were protective of Jimmy Osten.

Although Lieberson and Pregel were worldly, affable, and confident, equally at ease in intimate conversation and at a podium in front of a thousand people, their friend Gerhard Osten, by contrast, seemed to shrivel in public. Almost anyone could intimidate the shy man—from his own secretary to a postman routinely asking for his signature on a special delivery letter. And whereas, to a great extent, Lieberson and Pregel had both sacrificed their composing and their other private interests for what they deemed to be matters of significant public concern, Gerhard Osten, who had never shown musical talent himself, continued at best to be a kindly supporter of a few talented composers, somewhat ill at ease in his corporate position as head of the modest firm of Etude Classics. In the course of the friendship of these three men the enterprises headed by Lieberson and Pregel grew and flourished,
but with time it became clear that Etude Classics was headed for disaster. Lieberson and Pregel both held some stock in Etude, and to save the company and bail out their friend, they offered him long-term loans, but he refused them out of pride, declaring that the firm eventually would right itself.

Just about that time, Jimmy Osten called on Goddard Lieberson to ask for advice.

He saw him in the presidential suite at CBS, where Lieberson had lunch served for the two of them, and while they ate without speaking, Osten played his tapes. Lieberson, at the peak of his long distinguished career, recognized an indisputable talent. He knew immediately that Jimmy had the ability to turn the ungraspable into an artistic as well as commercial reality, and so he spoke to him seriously and tenderly about the consequences of sudden success—how it would change his own, as well as his father’s, life. As Jimmy Osten listened, the concept of the New Atlantis sprang into being.

Jimmy Osten then visited Boris Pregel in his office at the RCA Building. He observed, on shelves along one wall, a simple display of fluorescent products which he knew to be the result of Pregel’s long research in the field of radioactivity. In the quiet privacy of the somber room, Pregel sat with his eyes closed and listened first to what Osten had to say, then to his music.

The twilight fell. The older man’s face was dimly illuminated by the light emanating from the objects on the shelves. Composer turned scientist in the atomic age, Boris Pregel now seemed an alchemist from ages past, about to transmute experience into advice. “Success estranges,” he said quietly at last, then added, “and great success banishes. Be prepared for that.”

In the long silence that followed, Goddard was born.

The Apasionada was not a popular hotel, and even during the steamy evenings of late spring its restaurant and terrace café were only half full. The patrons paid little
or no attention to the Paganini console standing on a slightly elevated platform in one corner of the terrace, and Osten, from his second-floor room in the hotel, could see the terrace and judge when it was crowded enough for him to descend and begin his set.

Billed on the hotel’s board as “Paganini Electronico,” his show consisted of about a dozen pieces played on the console, all presumably to demonstrate the versatility of the instrument. He would start out with standard American pieces, mostly rock, country, and pop, all well known to his audience from being played on radio and television. He had practiced them at length at the New Atlantis and had programmed various versions into the Paganini’s computerized memory system. This allowed him to play full recorded arrangements at the touch of a finger, or to play backup arrangements and sing along himself; he could even improvise again, over his own recorded improvisations, and record as he went along. Moreover, he could add or subtract his recorded vocals, other instruments, and audience reactions at will in the event that he might want to recombine these sounds in any of a thousand ways. He found the console particularly reassuring for these first public performances, for he was still uncertain of his live singing voice; if he felt insecure, he could turn off the mike and lip-sync to his own voice without the audience’s even knowing it.

As soon as there were twenty or thirty people on the terrace; Osten would start preparing himself. Even though he was thoroughly convinced that no one would ever identify his voice as Goddard’s, he always felt a shiver of apprehension. Each time he went down to start his show, as small and indiscriminate as his audience was, it still posed an awesome challenge: it openly, face to face, judged his performance, and he had never been judged like this before.

During his first few days at the Apasionada, he found it difficult to remain detached from the audience. If guests fidgeted or talked loudly while he was performing, if waiters served drinks or rattled change, or if anyone got up and left without glancing at him, he was distracted. In
such moments his self-assurance, tenuous at best, would flag, and he would switch the Paganini over to prerecorded music and contribute only the lightest touch of improvisation to the musical fabric. But with each performance, as he sensed greater freedom within himself—and less fear—he felt the audience’s attention grow more focused and their reaction more freely expressed as well.

Every day he was tempted to call Leila at her villa, but he waited, hoping to catch her just as she was sufficiently settled in to be a bit bored by the sea, the beach, and the children. Also, he knew himself well enough to know that he had to have more practice, more self-control, and more of the conviction that he had something to offer before he could even bear the thought of her being present in the audience.

After his show each night, he would stroll through the crowded streets of Tijuana and then veer off and walk alone in the fetor and decay of one of the shantytown areas, where children begged him for money and pubescent girls stared invitingly until he lowered his gaze; where men, women, and children were mere specks in a human volcano of hunger and denial on the brink of eruption. Walking among them, he was no more a rich tourist but, rather, a solitary wanderer exiled for a time from his past. He would think of the New Atlantis then, his private island of creativity and invention that sheltered him from most human misery; and he would realize with sadness that, three centuries after Francis Bacon and his idyllic House of Sounds, the world for many was still a sty, and that all the music of the world, past, present, and future, could not shelter for an hour even the weakest child of that one shantytown in Tijuana.

He wondered if music—rock, at least—could nourish their emotions, make these people feel better and stronger and bigger. What if all of rock was a pretense, a collective scream from the spoiled children of the rich industrial nations: “a bridge over troubled water” to Paul Simon, a “safe kind of high” to Jimi Hendrix? And what if the whole rock culture was nothing but hype, perpetrated by record companies and rock stars themselves—“a communist band
run by a capitalist board,” as Ray Thomas had called it? “I have American ideas—I love money,” Alice Cooper had said. “I have one basic drive on my side that they can’t defeat—greed,” Frank Zappa had seconded. And Charlie Pride had added, “I believe music is just like buying and selling groceries. Or insurance, or anything else.” Was there more to rock than making money—and a great deal of noise—by means of drug-induced group hysteria?

In the hotel, Osten woke at dawn one morning and had his breakfast as usual, alone on the hotel terrace. Then he drove through the streets as they slowly filled with traffic, reached the highway, and sped along the arid coast of Baja until he came to the turnoff for Rosarito Beach. The little town was still asleep when he arrived.

The Rosarito Beach Hotel was the town’s largest. As Osten stopped at its gate, the night guard was blowing droplets of morning mist off the polished visor of his cap. He yawned when Osten asked him for directions to the Villa Scheherazade, and he yawned several more times as he gave them.

As Osten drove to the villa, he could see its marble terrace and lush garden on top of the red cliff and the silhouette of a servant cleaning the large swimming pool. When he approached, he saw
three federales
guarding the villa, their cars and motorcycles parked discreetly in the bushes. They saw him, too, and as he passed the gate without slowing down and continued along the road, two of their dogs strained on their leashes and barked. While two of the
federales
watched him through binoculars, the third spoke into a walkie-talkie.

Osten stopped at the far end of the road, got out of his car, and surveyed the villa. The breeze had picked up, and he could see the Lebanese flag flapping on the villa’s highest turret. Two men carrying trays crossed one of the terraces, and in a corner room someone opened a window.

He kept on watching in vain. Somewhere within the stucco walls of that building was Leila, still asleep or waking up or taking a bath. He thought of her nude; nature in its most finished stage.

He also considered his predicament. Even though
Leila seemed unapproachable, she had nevertheless yielded herself to his music. He could not deny that his music already had possessed what now he wanted to possess himself.

He returned to Tijuana and decided to give himself two more days to smooth out his performance. Then he would call Leila and invite her to come and hear him.

He was hesitant to telephone her for fear that she might have reconsidered her promise, but when he finally brought himself to call, she sounded pleased and enthusiastic, almost elated, and she said she would try to come that evening. She would be alone, she said, but she might return another night with her children and her husband.

He calmly gave her the name of the hotel and directions for finding it, and only after she hung up was he seized by the full realization that in a few hours he would see her again. Instantly he was beset by self-doubt. What if she found his performance inept or unoriginal—or just plain bad? And what if some Mexicans in the audience made fun of his versions of the two Mexican songs? Even if Leila was attracted to him, her attraction might not survive a display of mediocre art or a ridiculous—perhaps even ridiculed—performance. A further dilemma tugged at him: if he sounded too much like Goddard, she might either recognize him or take him for a cheap imitator; if he didn’t sound as good as Goddard, she might not be moved.

He had to compose himself before starting his performance, for the knowledge that Leila would be in the audience had triggered in him a new wave of doubt: why, he fretted, did he feel the need to seduce a woman by his performance when up until now he had, as a strict matter of principle, detached from his life the impact of his performance as Goddard? Was it the man or the artist in him who needed a guarantee of success?

Given Leila’s position in life, he could not hope for a binding relationship with her. What, then, was the nature of his need? What was it he wanted from her? A quick
sexual encounter that would only reduce her, a woman who affected him as no other ever had, to the level of a mindless groupie? A long-term sexual liaison disguised as friendship? But why would she—beautiful, young, married to a man in the public eye—want to strike up a friendship with an ordinary American student? How would she explain that to her husband, her family, her friends? Unless—he hesitated at the thought—unless she came to harbor some idea that he might be Goddard. Yet if she did, and if she confronted him with it, was he ready to admit to this other identity? Up to now, he had always discovered himself through his gut reactions—and his reactions more often than not surprised him. Now, for the first time, he was concerned with extracting a moral truth from himself: was he ready, for the sake of the love of a woman who was another man’s wife, to end the separation of his life from his art, the creation of which had been an art in itself, as original and exciting in its design and execution as his music?