The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

said. “That’s the rule. You shoulda told me straight off. There wouldn’t have been no problem then.”
    “You didn’t ask,” Pozzi said.
    “Yeah,” the man mumbled, almost talking to himself. “Well, maybe I forgot.”
    Without saying another word, he opened both doors of the gate, then gestured to the house behind him. Nashe and Pozzi returned to the car and drove on through.

4

    T he doorbell chimed with the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. They both grinned stupidly in surprise, but before either one of them could make a remark about it, the door was opened by a black maid dressed in a starched gray uniform and she was ushering them into the house. She led them across the black-and-white checkered floor of a large entrance hall that was cluttered with several pieces of broken statuary (a naked wood nymph missing her right arm, a headless hunter, a horse with no legs that floated above a stone plinth with an iron shaft connected to its belly), took them through a high-ceilinged dining room with an immense walnut table in its center, down a dimly lit corridor whose walls were decorated with a series of small landscape paintings, and then knocked on a heavy wooden door. A voice answered from within and the maid pushed the door open, stepping aside to allow Nashe and Pozzi to enter. “Your guests are here,” she said,barely looking into the room, and then she closed the door and made a quick, silent exit.
    It was a large, almost self-consciously masculine room. Standing on the threshold during those first instants, Nashe noticed the dark wood paneling on the walls, the billiard table, the worn Persian rug, the stone fireplace, the leather chairs, the ceiling fan turning overhead. More than anything else, it made him think of a movie set, a mock-up of a British men’s club in some turn-of-the-century colonial outpost. Pozzi had started it, he realized. All the talk about Laurel and Hardy had planted a suggestion of Hollywood in his mind, and now that Nashe was there, it was difficult for him not to think of the house as an illusion.
    Flower and Stone were both dressed in white summer suits. One was standing by the fireplace smoking a cigar, and the other was sitting in a leather chair holding a glass that could have contained either water or gin. The white suits no doubt contributed to the colonial atmosphere, but once Flower spoke, welcoming them into the room with his rough but not unpleasant American voice, the illusion was shattered. Yes, Nashe thought, one was fat and the other was thin, but that was as far as the similarity went. Stone had a taut, emaciated look to him that recalled Fred Astaire more insistently than the long-faced, weeping Laurel, and Flower was more burly than rotund, with a jowly face that resembled some ponderous figure like Edward Arnold or Eugene Pallette rather than the corpulent yet light-footed Hardy. But for all those quibbles, Nashe understood what Pozzi had meant.
    “Greetings, gentlemen,” Flower said, coming toward them with an outstretched hand. “Delighted you could make it.”
    “Hi, there, Bill,” Pozzi said. “Good to see you again. This here’s my big brother, Jim.”
    “Jim Nashe, isn’t it?” Flower said amiably.
    “That’s right,” Nashe said. “Jack and I are half-brothers. Same mother, different fathers.”
    “I don’t know who’s responsible for it,” Flower said, nodding in Pozzi’s direction, “but he’s one hell of a little poker player.”
    “I got him started when he was just a kid,” Nashe said, unable to resist the line. “When you see talent, there’s an obligation to encourage it.”
    “You bet,” Pozzi said. “Jim was my mentor. He taught me everything I know.”
    “But he beats the living daylights out of me now,” Nashe said. “I don’t even dare to sit down at the same table with him anymore.”
    By then, Stone had extricated himself from his chair and was walking toward them, drink still in hand. He