Pebbles on the Stone

By Herbert L. Kaufman

Through a series of bizarre events, Igor and Sabine, musicians at the Antwerp Opera, become entangled in a web of intrigue, beginning with a brutal murder in New York. While a famous conductor guides the musicians towards a new production of Tristan und Isolde, the Opera becomes the background for international espionage. Humor and irony underline the action, which moves through Flensburg, Brussels and Zrich to New York and Washington, D.C. When will it all end? Perhaps not until the source of coded signals emanating from the opera building is found. Perhaps not until Igor can place a pebble on the stone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 10, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462834655

Herbert L. Kaufman

Herbert L. Kaufman’s multi-faceted career has included positions as professor of German language and literature at Queens College (New York), visiting professor of American Studies at Kiel University (Germany), violinist with the Alabama Symphony, and adjunct professor of music history in Antwerp University’s European Studies Program (Belgium). From 1980 to 1997, he was a violinist with the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent. In 1994, Kaufman’s play Pals won First Prize in the 25th Anniversary Playwriting Competition of the American Theatre Company in Brussels, and was produced by the ATC that same year. In 1995, Kaufman’s radio play Last Supper received the BBC’s Best Play from Europe award, and was produced and broadcast by BBC World Service Drama. Last Supper has also been published by the BBC in its anthology Radio Plays for the World. More recent works include Pebbles on the Stone, an espionage novel published in 2002 by Xlibris; and Lifelines, a Holocaust drama that was produced in Antwerp, Belgium in October 2002 by the British American Theatrical Society.

Book preview

PRELUDE

Belgium—1980

The wind whipped around the corner as a man dressed in black entered Van Eycklei. He could have taken a shortcut through the Stadspark on this cold, rainy winter evening, but at seven o’clock it was pitch dark and he preferred to take the longer route from his small studio apartment on Bexstraat. He followed the outer perimeter of the park, turning right into Rubenslei, which would bring him directly to Quellinstraat. From there he headed towards Rooseveltplaats and Italielei for another night’s work at MOCA, the Municipal Opera Company of Antwerp.

Cursing the foul weather, he held his violin case away from the wind sweeping up from the Scheldt River, hoping he wouldn’t be completely soaked by the time he arrived at the Opera. An umbrella was useless on a night like this. The street was littered with the twisted remains of abandoned umbrella frames. In a few minutes he would be on Quellinstraat, where there was at least some protection from buildings on both sides of the street, and the friendly lights of stores whose owners were still hoping for some last minute business.

Igor liked to walk. He could think. There was little to disturb him, and besides, thinking was good. He could reflect about life with no small talk to interrupt the flow. Before he knew it, he would be there. After the usual greetings and idle chatter with other members of the orchestra, Igor could settle back in his seat in the orchestra pit. The house lights would dim, the audience would quiet down, and when the opera was easy, like tonight’s Rigoletto, he could work almost mechanically. The notes and pages would glide by, and suddenly it would be time for intermission. One could do a lot of thinking. It really wasn’t a bad job—quite cozy on a night like this.

Not that he thought about anything profound. It was mostly about his own life, past and present, and what had brought him here to Antwerp. In that respect he was certainly not unique. At least a third of the orchestra musicians were foreigners like himself. Nevertheless, he thought about that a great deal. It was hard to believe that he had been here six years. Even though he was a shy person, he had made some friends in that time. In his first two years he had even attended language classes and could now speak passable Flemish, with that melodious Antwerp cadence, rather different from the Dutch spoken in Holland. So, in addition to his native Russian, the English he had learned from his years in the united States, and his high-school German, he could now make himself understood in Belgium with his fourth language—at least north of Brussels. Lately he had toyed with the idea of studying French, but how many more languages could he still learn? Besides, almost everyone spoke fluent English here. In that respect, not only the Opera but all of Antwerp was truly an international place.

Tonight was also a good night for thinking because the genial young guest conductor from America was not very demanding. Ed West was a nothing, just someone to beat time. He made his way through the music without disturbing anyone—singers, orchestra or the audience. But there was a more important reason why tonight was even less than routine: Sabine wasn’t there. Verdi’s opera didn’t make use of the harp, so that voluptuously shaped instrument was draped with its heavy felt cover. Yes, he thought, it really had a sexy contour. He wondered if one could recline upon the broad sounding board and feel the vibrations of a fortissimo chord. Crazy idea—the strings would be in the way. But then, everything had been a little crazy since Sabine Schönbrunn had arrived.

Beautiful blond Sabine wasn’t just another foreign musician. She had made her dramatic appearance at the first rehearsal this year to replace the retiring Arthur Van Gool. What a change it was! The poor old man could hardly see the strings or the conductor through his thick lenses any more. Sabine had earned an advanced degree from the conservatory in Cologne. To everyone’s surprise, there had been a special audition this past summer and she had been given a one-year probationary contract. She was good, though, there was no doubt about it. Everyone knew she could keep the position if she wanted it.

Igor sat back. There was a 96-bar rest coming up. No need to count the measures, he could come in on auto pilot. Ed West never gave the first violins a cue here, but Igor could listen with the subconscious part of his brain. He glanced at the empty chair where Sabine usually sat.

In the few months that she had been here, he had thought about her more and more. What a woman! He had memorized every inch of her lithe body—the long blond hair that nearly reached her buttocks, the piercing blue eyes, flawless skin, and those exquisite legs. Beautiful young Sabine. Yes, she was young, couldn’t be much over twenty-five. Igor was jealous of everyone who looked at her. He could see that there were admiring glances from the men whenever she came into the pit. And the women—well, they were jealous, too. She could wear anything and all eyes would turn in her direction. When she wore those skin-tight designer jeans, he could feel how others saw right through them the way he did. He was furious with himself for being so timid. In all these weeks he had scarcely spoken to her, except for an occasional hello. Why was he so damn shy? He wasn’t bad looking, and even at age forty-two made a pretty good appearance. Gray was beginning to show in his trim beard. Maybe he should use some coloring?

Sabine spoke fluent English, but he was sorry he hadn’t picked up more German during his years as a musician. He had even looked up her name in a dictionary. To his surprise, the words did turn out to mean something. What a fitting name: Schönbrunn. She certainly was a fount of beauty.

Damn it! The violins were playing—he had missed his entrance! Well, Ed West never noticed. He was too busy beating time.

CHAPTER 1

The white-haired man walked quickly along Broadway in the bright November afternoon sun, pulling a half-filled collapsible wire shopping cart behind him. The neighborhood was not what it used to be when Vladimir Borovsky had moved here with his son. In those days, the early 1950’s, one could still walk the streets in relative safety. But that was a long time ago. Igor was fourteen when he immigrated with his father to the United States. Fima Mendel, the boy’s violin teacher in Kishinev, had said, That boy has real talent. He’ll be a great violinist. The elder Borovsky was principal bassist in the local symphony orchestra, and it was clear that his son had inherited his talent. It was so long ago. There was something else that Igor had inherited from his father: the propensity to daydream, that activity which he considered thinking.

Vladimir looked up and realized he had passed his street. He walked back to West 112th Street and turned into the garbage-littered block towards his house on the north side, close to the corner of Riverside Drive. This portion of the block was still relatively clean, although the house had deteriorated, like most of the buildings in the area. It had been many years since there was a doorman or elevator operator to greet him. Even in broad daylight one feared the thugs and dope pushers. He went out only rarely now, perhaps two or three times a week, to buy the necessary groceries.

The entrance hall seemed all the darker as he came in, still blinded from the dazzling sun. Vladimir groped his way to the elevator and pushed the button. Fear gripped him, as always when he was alone here. Would somebody come into the hall while he was waiting? Would there be someone in the elevator when it arrived? Maybe there was a person waiting for him, ready to attack when he got out on the fifth floor. He was now so filled with fear that he couldn’t even think. Also, the smell of garlic that permeated the hallways nauseated him. After what seemed like an eternity, the elevator arrived. Empty! He stepped in and pushed the button for the fifth floor. Slowly the door closed, the elevator inched its way up. On his floor he peered into the hallway. Quickly he stepped out, dragged his cart to apartment 5-E and opened the three locks. Once inside, he threw the bolts and leaned against the door, listening to the pounding of his heart. There was much to fear, not only from the city’s muggers.

Relieved to be back in his living room, he sank into his favorite chair, a worn overstuffed piece. It always took him a while to recover, and it seemed that it took longer and longer as the years went by. Suddenly he realized that he had forgotten to check his mailbox downstairs by the elevator. Well, he couldn’t go out now, even though there might be a letter from Igor. Perhaps later, or tomorrow.

Vladimir Borovsky’s apartment was what one might expect. The furniture was old and dilapidated. In fact, it predated the time when they had arrived in America, for a good deal of it was in the apartment when he and Igor had moved in. The previous tenant, an elderly widow, had died, and her daughter and son-in-law were only too happy to sell almost everything to the inexperienced émigrés, the Borovskys. Even thirty years ago it wasn’t worth much, and the intervening years had not been kind to the place in general. New York landlords had long ago stopped putting paint clauses in their rental agreements, and it was hard to remember when the rooms had had a fresh coat of paint. The plaster was cracked along every wall from floor to ceiling. The windows were grimy, the few old rugs threadbare.

While both he and Igor had become American citizens, the father had never really become assimilated. His English, unlike his son’s, still bore heavy traces of his native Russia.

At least the smell of garlic could not compete with the acrid smoke from Vladimir’s tobacco. He had finally recovered from his shopping ordeal and lit his crusty pipe. Squinting through the thick, white smoke, he could see far back into the past again. Yes, it was long ago, but for Vladimir it was ever so much more real than the present.

He had first met Katerina Ivanovna through friends. They had often gone to cafés after the symphony performances. Not only was she beautiful, but also full of life, vivacious, and a brilliant student at the university. Vladimir, who had attended the conservatory and knew little beyond his music, was fascinated by the range of her interests: history, science, politics, the Revolution. She seemed to have opinions about everything, and her thoughts were based upon factual knowledge. She was truly a new woman. An orphan, Katerina Ivanovna had charted her course with the help of scholarships always available to those who the government thought were of potential use to the State.

For her part, she was attracted to the shy musician. He was like a little boy; his brown eyes had a kind, bashful twinkle in them, and he was so naive. You ought to read more, she would say, as she gave him another batch of books to take to his flat, which was hardly more than a room with a hot plate. Six months later they were married in a brief civil ceremony. There were no complications, since Vladimir’s Orthodox Jewish parents were both dead. No recriminations from either side. As might be expected, even for someone so young, Katerina Ivanovna was appointed to a good post almost immediately upon graduation. She joined the Communist Party and the couple moved to a new apartment, part of a huge housing complex where space was available to citizens loyal to the State.

Within the year Igor was born. Although he was a good baby, his mother was not quite as patient with his upbringing as she had been in trying to educate Vladimir. True, she loved the child, but even in those first years, his father was more actively involved with him … .

Vladimir’s pipe had gone out and his exhausted mind had found refuge in sleep. The late afternoon sun slanted through the barred windows and, except for the relentless ticking of the old mantel clock, there was utter silence in the apartment on West 112th Street.

*    *    *

Jean-Paul Duvel had much on his mind this morning as he sat over a second cup of coffee in his elegant villa in Wilrijk. It was one of those thatched-roof houses, much in vogue, with an exterior designed to recall a time long past, but with the conveniences of today hidden within. His gaze went out over the expanse of green extending beyond the glass-enclosed sun room at the rear of the house. The morning papers, which he usually tried to skim before going to the office, lay unopened this day. His mind was elsewhere. It was exhausting, the ever present nagging of hundreds of problems connected with running the opera company.

It seemed that he could never get his head above water. There were always budgetary matters, and the newspapers and politicians had not been sympathetic in recent months. Times were not so good. The growing worldwide financial crisis was leaving its mark on Europe and, in particular, on the arts. It was especially noticeable in Belgium, a small country where the government was desperately trying to reduce a constantly growing deficit. Yet money, as important as it was, was not always his primary worry. Despite the struggle to balance income and expenses, he felt he was still able, even though just barely, to juggle that equation for the moment. No, it was the sum of all the other troublesome questions that drained him of energy, and his lethargy over this morning’s coffee was the culmination of recent artistic problems.

Like so many other officials, Duvel was a political appointee. Certainly he was a connoisseur of the arts and had, in fact, done some writing of his own. He even attended concerts once in a while, although opera had never been his favorite art form. When the possibility of an appointment as General Director of the Opera was hinted at, it seemed to be the chance he had been waiting for, an opportunity to say goodbye to the dull routine of one of Antwerp’s most prestigious and stuffy law firms. At least he could mix with the country’s leading figures and personalities in society and the arts. What he hadn’t reckoned with was the bickering, the fighting, the envies—in general, the childish nature of his people. What made for juicy reading and gossip in the newspaper was, for him, one big headache. There was one crisis after another, and this morning’s emergency meeting of the board of directors had a list of urgent matters on its agenda long enough to take up the whole day. He had even begun to take positions on artistic questions, although in this area he felt inadequate and he tried not to show it.

Duvel glanced at his Rolex. He couldn’t postpone the inevitable any longer. It was 9:30 and the meeting at the Opera was scheduled to begin in thirty minutes. He lifted his heavy six-foot, four-inch frame and walked out to his Mercedes convertible. He swung out of the driveway and made his way along Prins Boudewijnlaan into town. At this time of the morning it was no more than a fifteen-minute ride to the Opera, hardly enough time to organize his thoughts and consider his opinion on a number of major decisions that had to be made. First, there was the matter of whether MOCA should make a guest appearance in Rotterdam with its new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. There were two new productions of Wagner this season, the other being Tannhäuser. But the latter was impossible to take to the much smaller stage in Holland. There were also other problems connected with Tristan. They would have to make some changes in the sets, even for that one. Then there was the necessity of reducing the orchestra, because the pit in Rotterdam was too small for the massive instrumentation in Wagner’s score. The Artistic Director was violently opposed, one of the few times he had taken a definite position on anything. Others on the board were of a different opinion. The singers for this production were excellent, a cut above the usual at MOCA, and the conductor Jürgen Brinkmann, a guest from Hamburg, would make a phenomenal difference with the orchestra. This was going to be a Tristan to remember. It was also a truly international production under an English director who was making history with a radical interpretation of the medieval legend. As of this moment, Duvel was undecided. There were those, including himself, who questioned whether the publicity value was worth the cost of moving his company, including sets, musicians and technicians, for a single performance in Holland, a country not particularly noted for its interest in opera, let alone Wagner. But that was not all. The Minister of Culture had recently made another inflammatory speech about waste at MOCA—never mind that the house was almost always sold out. For him, opera cost too much for the return involved, it was as simple as that.

Duvel drove his sleek silver roadster into the dim underground parking lot and switched on the headlights in order to steer the vehicle into his reserved space. There was not much time left now. All too soon he would have to face them. In his mind he was practicing his speeches, his eloquent statements, pro and con, about various problems. But in reality, he didn’t know what to do about them, either, and his eloquence would only serve as a cover-up. He was feeling the weight of his own inadequacies more than ever. Maybe they could postpone the decision on Tristan for another week.

Walking the short distance from the garage to the stage door, he was soon greeted by the doorman, who interrupted his munching of a delicious croissant with a quick swallow of coffee from his thermos. Frank ran out of his glass booth, gesticulating wildly—a message from Mijnheer Verbaendert, the Artistic Director. "He said it was extremely urgent; you’re to go to his office before, you go to the meeting in the board room."

Duvel stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor, where Marc Verbaendert’s private office was located. He glanced at his watch: it was ten past ten, already late, he thought. What crisis could Marc have come up with now, he wondered. His mood was darkening; this was not going to be a good day. Duvel didn’t like to delay the start of a scheduled board meeting too long. It was all right to keep the city officials and prominent citizens waiting a little—just long enough for him to dash in, out of breath, and give the impression that here was a director who was constantly in demand. To be more than a few minutes late, however, merely looked like inefficiency.

When Duvel stepped out of the elevator, Verbaendert was already waiting for him, his face flushed with excitement. "We’ve got problems, Jean-Paul, I mean real problems! Duvel looked at him, perplexed. What was new about that? Besides, Marc was always greeting him with real" problems. Was there any other kind? Yet there was something in Marc’s demeanor this morning that kept him from making a sarcastic remark. His Artistic Director was extremely agitated, almost beside himself. Duvel hadn’t seen him so worked up since the accident last year, when the stage hands had let a rehearsal piano roll off the stage into the pit. Luckily there were no musicians below and nobody was hurt—just one demolished piano and a hole in the floor.

Listen, there are two Americans in my office. As if one weren’t enough, Duvel thought. They’ve got an incredible story about spies, Communist agents, at the Opera! I said that was crazy, insane. I thought maybe they were playing a joke on me, but one of them showed me his identification. It seems genuine. They want to speak to us privately, said it was urgent—couldn’t wait. I told them to stay in my office and I would go find you. I’ve been waiting here to tell you.

The two men stood in the passageway transfixed, staring at each other in silence. Duvel felt he was going to be sick. That second cup of coffee burned in his stomach. Verbaendert was already relieved; he had unloaded the problem and now the thing was a shared responsibility. What else did they say? JeanPaul whispered.

Nothing. They said they’d speak to us both together.

Well, I guess we’d better go in and see what it’s all about.

They turned to enter the office, when Duvel remembered the meeting and the board members waiting on the floor below. Even though this was Belgium, it was really too early in the day to pacify them with beer. Tell Patricia to serve them coffee and offer our apologies, he suggested. "She can say we have an emergency, a long-distance call from England, something about a sick guest singer. They won’t like it, but it’ll give us a few minutes’ time.—Oh, and have her order some nice koffie koeken for everybody, also."

They entered the office and Marc whispered the instruction to his secretary. She gave him a knowing look, though she seemed disappointed that she couldn’t be in the office to overhear what was going on. Well, Marc would tell her later tonight, she knew. There wasn’t anything he kept from her. Walt Brennan and James Higgins had been sitting on the soft leather sofa in Verbaendert’s office for more than twenty minutes, patiently waiting to speak to the two leading men of the Municipal Opera. It was going to be an extremely difficult matter. At this stage of the investigation it was impossible to determine the extent and nature of Communist infiltration in the important port city of Flanders. The two men said nothing to each other, occupying the time by reading through opera brochures advertising the current season’s productions. There was no way of knowing whether this office was secure. Brennan had purposely spoken to Verbaendert in the hallway outside, before they had entered his office to wait, and then only in general terms, in order to explain the reason for this urgent meeting.

In the course of several sessions in Brussels over the past two weeks, it had been decided that only the General Director and the Artistic Director would be informed, and that it was necessary to impress upon them the need for maximum—indeed, absolute—secrecy. It wasn’t going to be an easy matter. Complicating things even more was the fact that the principle of need to know had to apply. That is, no individual was going to be given more information than required at any given point. The operation had been painstakingly prepared in Washington over the past several weeks and was to be initiated with the arrival of Higgins and Brennan in Belgium. Jim, today wearing a blond wig and darkly tinted glasses, was perfect for the assignment. Brennan, who had served as an aid to the United States staff of NATO in Brussels for the last six years, had been called to Washington in order to meet Higgins and be briefed on the operation. Although Brennan considered himself to have a natural talent for languages—he spoke fluent French, Dutch and German—he was more than impressed with the Department’s choice of Higgins. Jim not only knew the three important languages of the region with absolute fluency, but was also an expert in a dozen local dialects, particularly those of northern Belgium.

Actually, James Higgins was a native New Yorker with rugged good looks. Now thirty-eight, he had a graduate degree in electrical engineering from City College, a division of the rambling urban City University of New York. He had graduated summa cum laude, having a brilliant scientific mind and an uncanny ear for the sounds of languages, an ability that bordered on the miraculous. His memory for the retention of sounds, the nuances of dialect, was a natural gift. He took every language and linguistic course available and, these soon being exhausted, he was given permission during his undergraduate studies to audit the language seminars available at the university’s Graduate Center. At graduation a government recruiter had persuaded him to join the staff of the special language school in Monterey.

CHAPTER 2

Ronald Mitchell, the English guest director for this season’s new production of Tristan und Isolde, had gathered his cast about him for the first general meeting. He felt it was imperative that they be informed and, more importantly, convinced about the appropriateness of his ideas, radical as they at times might be. Unfortunately, the members of the orchestra, as usual, had not been invited to the meeting.

Mitchell was an intense man in his early forties, thin, already quite bald with long strands of hair reaching down to his shoulders. His appearance was that of an aging 1960’s hippie. His standard attire was the combination of a bulky old sweater and a pair of faded, thin jeans. One wondered how he broke the new ones in, for they were always well worn, but without a doubt his very own. He was highly intelligent and verbal, with a keen eye for the dramatic picture on stage. He was certainly one of the most gifted contemporary directors. From New York to San Francisco, opera fans were still talking about his shocker of last season, a wild reinterpretation of one of the most sacred operas in the repertory, Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. The composer’s sister wrote the libretto, and ever since it was first performed at the Hoftheater in Weimar on December 23, 1893, it had been a worldwide Christmas classic, popular with both children and adults.

Certainly the psychological interpretation of fairy tales was nothing to get excited about, especially not since Freud. But really, even the cosmopolitan audiences in New York balked at the superimposition of sexual intercourse between Hänsel and his sister, while the chorus of fourteen angels gathered around the heaving couple, forming a picturesque tableau at the end of the second act. The most avant-garde critic had to admit that the incestuous relationship angle made it difficult to bring your child to the annual Christmas performance. But Ronald Mitchell remained undaunted.

He insisted, as he was explaining to his new cast in Antwerp this morning, on the right—no, the duty—of every artist to inject his personal vision, that is, interpretation, into the work of art. According to this ardent director, it was the only way to keep the work vital. What he wanted his cast to understand (although the critics never wanted to understand this, no matter how many times he had explained it in interviews and talk shows) was simply this: we are not here to shock the public, to create a scandal, even though this may be a by-product of a reinterpretation, but rather to make the audience see the traditional work as having multi-level possibilities. Of course everyone in the cast knew about Mitchell’s theories. What they wanted to know this morning was, specifically, what he was going to do with Tristan!

Then the bombshell came: King Mark of Cornwall, in Mitchell’s view, is upset with his nephew Tristan, a Cornish knight, not because he is having an affair with the Irish princess Isolde, the uncle’s intended bride. No, something much more multilevel than that. It seems that King Mark is really gay and after the nephew himself. Isolde has simply gotten in the way! The cast sat dumbfounded. This would certainly put Antwerp on the operatic map, although no one was sure whether it should be done this way. Mitchell concluded by saying he would start work next week. Have a nice day!

The day did not look promising for Duvel