[question] I don’t want to talk any more today. Leave me.

[note: Esther Gottesfeld was overcome with understandable emotion at this point and terminated the interview, although she did agree to future interviews. rz]

Thirteen

George didn’t dare catch Rebecca’s eye. He was nearly bursting with a laugh that had begun when Ruth Zion appeared at their door ten minutes ahead of schedule with a bakery box containing the inevitable poppy-seed cake. The potential for inappropriate mirth had continued to build through the business of welcoming her, hanging up her raincoat, making coffee, chatting randomly while the coffee dripped through, and watching her fuss as she laid out her notebooks and folders and pencils and recording equipment on his work table (which had required the relocation of stacks of musical manuscripts and old copies of Scientific American). Now, with Ruth’s tape recorder switched on, the microphone cocked importantly in the middle of the table, coffee served all around in the pretty Deruta mugs he and Rebecca had picked out a couple of years ago on their trip through the Veneto the summer his Black Hole Concerto for Tuba in B flat was premiered at Spoleto (the mugs were found the same day they saw some amazing Giotto frescoes and failed to eat some disconcerting donkey ravioli), George was still at high risk for a disgraceful and inexplicable guffaw if he even thought about looking in Rebecca’s general direction. The first bite of poppy-seed cake had very nearly set him off, and it was an escaping bubble a moment later, just the one silent spasm of laughter, combined with the hilariously desiccated cake, that had caused him to inhale a lungful of crumbs and seeds, which brought on a protracted coughing fit, during which he turned red and a few tears ran down his face. Even then, even while gasping and choking and springing up to get a glass of water from the kitchen while waving away Ruth’s alarmed question about whether or not she should switch off her tape recorder so as not to waste the tape, George had to maintain a vigilant avoidance of meeting Rebecca’s amused gaze, for fear of a relapse.

“Is it too warm in here for you, Ruth?” Rebecca asked. “George likes it warmer or colder than a lot of normal people do. I’m always opening or closing the window in this apartment, so let me know.”

“No, it’s fine, I don’t mind being a little warm, and it is probably necessary for me to avoid a draft, with my asthma,” Ruth said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Shall I start?” Ruth asked when George returned to the table somewhat more composed. Ruth reminded him of the anxious, unfulfilled women who chaired committees having to do with local symphonies or museums, the sorts of organizations that invited him to speak at their annual festivals, where his music was frequently performed. The sorts of women who loved anything having to do with “the arts.” She had rewound her tape recorder and repositioned the microphone, and now she switched it back on.