Pinball by Jerzy Kosinski Page B

said, and she put her hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ve written to you, though, she said, ‘many times. I didn’t sign my letters. I closed them instead with musical notes.’
    “I felt my body jolt. My heart was racing. ‘From “The Wish,” a Chopin mazurka,’ I said, and I started to recite the lyric to the musical phrases she had sent.
If I were the sun in the sky,
I would not shine except for you;
     
If I were a bird of this grove,
I would not sing in any foreign land;
     
Only for all time
Under your window and for you alone.
     
    “Overpowered by the memory of her letters, and by the images they conjured now that she stood in front of me, I took her arms and drew her toward me, then locked my hands behind her back and put my face against hers. ‘I loved your letters,’ I said. They made me think about you constantly and wait for you more anxiously than I’ve ever waited for anyone. That was five years ago. Five years! Think what those years might have been had we met then.’
    “She took my hands in hers. ‘I looked at your hands at dinner,’ she said, ‘and thought of the time when I’d have given the whole world to feel them on my body. I had such a crush on you, on your music, on everything about you. I watched you on TV, read about you in the papers, went to every concert you gave. All I wanted was to have you fall in love with me.’
    “‘If you had only introduced yourself, you would have succeeded,’ I said. ‘I was in love with the woman who wrote those letters. I dreamt continuously about her and about the life we could have together. I would have given up everything for a new life with her.’ I drew her toward me, buried my face in her hair, pressed her body against mine. She swayed in my arms. ‘I still would,’ I said. ‘I still love her. Tell me what you want me to do so that we can be together.’
    “She hesitated, not looking at me, and reminded me that she was married.
    “‘Do you love him?’ I asked.
    “‘Love? Perhaps not, but I care for him,’ she said. ‘And we have a child.’
    “‘We could still be lovers,’ I urged her.
    “She turned her face away from mine. ‘I wrote you once that I was in love with you. I still am,’ she said, ‘but if I had to hide my love, I would feel I was perverting it, turning what’s natural into something shameful.’
    “‘Then why hide it?’ I asked, holding her tighter. ‘I don’t want to lose you again.’
    “She freed herself from my embrace and said, ‘My husband loves me. He has been very generous. Without his support I couldn’t have become who I am. I can’t leave him.’
    “As she turned to go, I blurted, ‘Please write to me again.’ Then she was gone, and the next day she and her husband left Crans-Montana.
    “I was left at first with the thrill of knowing that I had held in my arms the woman I loved, and only later did I become aware of my loss. As I waited for her to write, I fantasized about her more and more, always imagining her naked, making love to me in clandestine meetings—afterher concerts, in big anonymous hotels on New York’s West Side; in out-of-the-way hotels in Paris, Rome, or Vienna; in motels in Los Angeles; in private rooms of the secret sex palaces in Rio de Janeiro.’ But she didn’t write, and I began to spend hours on end reading and rereading her old letters. During these periods I would despise myself—my music, my whole existence—because I’d failed to have her the only time I’d had the chance. The sight of a telephone filled me with pain, but I dared not call her. Like a desperate schoolboy in love with his music teacher, I made elaborate plans to follow her, to arrange things so that we would accidentally run into each other, but I always abandoned these adolescent designs out of embarrassment.
    “A few months ago I learned that her husband had died in an automobile accident.”
    “Really?” Andrea asked, casually reaching for a hairbrush. “Then why don’t you get in