No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  It is night. The young conductor is rolling a joint and wants to know if the girl will write a libretto about making love in her mother’s bed. She can try, but all she really wants to do is get her novel back on track. Her cell phone rings, she moves her index finger to her lips, indicating that the conductor should remain silent. Her mother is off on her travels, but she’ll be back for the concerts, and this, the girl presumes, is why she’s calling. . the young orchestra conductor nibbles on the girl’s toes and then continues up her leg, putting the joint between his lips, from which he takes a final drag before proffering it to the girl. During the hand-off, he teases her by blowing the smoke in her face. But she ignores him and takes a long drag of the joint as her mother begins the interrogation. First she asks if the phone call had woken the girl up. No. She was reading the greatest dramatist who ever lived. A genius, she says. Her mother tends to disregard what her daughter is reading, no matter who the writer is, or how great he happens to be. She cares only about her career as a pianist. The girl talks about the reading material her literature teacher gave her. But haven’t you already completed that course? Yes, but this is supplementary reading. You’ve already told him you want to be a writer, haven’t you. The girl changes the subject and asks if her mother has managed to track down her cousin. Her mother’s spent a long time trying to locate a certain cousin who went missing in the neighboring country’s capital years before. No, she answers curtly and hangs up. That’s new, the girl thinks. Her mother usually ignores her questions. An answer is progress. The girl and the young conductor are reading W’s magnum opus. He wants to know if she’ll write a libretto based on W and his work. Later that night, the dramatist visits her in a dream. It seems he wants to explain to her the secrets of his craft. He teaches by demonstration, his words accompanied by gesticulations, like a magician threading his hands through the air while uttering incantations, who creates a world and measures its just circumference, who molds his characters and gives them the breath of life. He talks about their diversity, each an individual, a separate creation. He mentions his audience, and the girl seizes on this with curiosity, because she wants to know if it plays a major part in the creation of his works. But he suddenly starts speaking another language, and she despairs that she will only get to hear but not understand his answer. She turns, in her dream, to the young conductor, and begs him to take some notes. But then she wakes up, and sees the young conductor is no longer by her side. She gets out of the bed to go look for him and finds him in the living room, sitting naked in an armchair watching TV, with a glass of beer in his hand. On the screen, a pornographic actress anxiously tongues an inordinately erect penis before putting it into her mouth. The girl stands beside the piano looking on, silently. How old would you say she is? the conductor asks without turning. The girl doesn’t know. Perhaps thirty-something, she answers indecisively. There’s something about mature women, he says, still not taking his eyes off the screen, and lets a few seconds go by before adding, it’s as if they exude more confidence or something. The male actor then penetrates the actress, thrusting slowly at first, then faster, before settling into a regular rhythm. The girl says she feels the same way about older men, but she’s not sure if it’s for the same reason. The girl doesn’t realize the conductor has an erection until he stands up. He brings her to the armchair and sits her facing backwards in his lap, penetrating her from behind, his eyes remaining fixed on the screen almost every moment. He even starts thrusting in time with the actor, and the girl feels he’s only using her to imagine having sex with a thirty-something porn star. She tells him about her dream, about the dramatist’s visitation, that she believes he was going to reveal to her the secrets of his dramaturgy. The young conductor isn’t listening. Mature women really turn me on, he says. You’ll find lots of mature women in his plays, she says. Then she continues by telling him about the point in the dream when the dramatist began speaking another language. The young conductor asks her if people ever have sex in sixteenth-century plays. She doesn’t answer. He imagines they’d look exactly like the girl’s mother, who’s peering down at them from a photograph next to the TV. Your mother turns me on, he says while squeezing her. The girl jumps off and tells him to go to hell. She heads for the bathroom, turning only once, but just in time to see the young conductor cum in his glass of beer. The couple onscreen appears to be only getting started.

  The screenwriter works all afternoon but is unable to produce a single line. It’s been years since he’s written a screenplay, and now he’s trying to rediscover his voice. Bewildered, he asks himself what advice he’d give if he were one of his students. He thinks he’d suggest sticking to his guns, not abandoning the idea too soon. It’s quite like the notion of a certain bishop centuries ago who said nothing exists outside the mind. The screenwriter hasn’t done the research, it’s just something he remembers hearing somewhere, and perhaps he has the wording all wrong. His students wouldn’t care about the wording in any case. The point is not to give up on a promising idea too readily. Like twelve-tone music. After all, deep down, it’s just another method, a different approach to musical performance and composition. And, although the screenwriter thinks his method a little erratic, he’d like to achieve similar distinction in his writing. His writing hasn’t always been erratic, but he reassures himself that the change isn’t because of his age. The problem is his current situation. He no longer has the freedom he used to have. The screenwriter grows more anxious with each passing hour, scribbling over and over, supposing twelve-tone music was never invented. But he can’t stop thinking about the girl, whose imminent arrival he nervously anticipates. After dining on some fruit, he opens the windows to rest his feet on the ledge as he finishes his coffee and decides to roll a joint. He notes the evening temperature is pleasantly mild. The lights in the building opposite are going on and off like a switchboard, and although it happens completely at random, the screenwriter watches in amazement, as if something extraordinary was going on, something with purpose and meaning. The effect is hypnotic, soothing: a symphony of color, he’d say, if he wasn’t more interested in catching sight of anything resembling a female figure in one of the windows. Then he looks down at the empty street. Maybe she won’t show up, he thinks. He can’t expect an assignation every night. But he wants to make love to her tonight. He turns off the lamp and watches the play of light and shade on the building across the street, the subtle grayish nuances between them, as his eyes adjust to the room’s obscurity. He sees everything more clearly, but nothing new. And yet, the fresh evening air has a calming effect, so he decides to lie down and have a rest that before long turns into a nap. He wakes up in the middle of the night covered in sweat. He dreamed about the woman in the building across the street. Her light had suddenly come on, and he couldn’t help staring as she drifted naked past the window. He watched and waited for some seconds in case she walked past the window again, but her light went out, and with that, he felt the thread of his story was lost. What a stupid dream, he thinks. It should never have caused him to break out in a sweat. He washes his face then goes to the window and parts the curtains. Although it’s dark, he sees the building clearly, illumined by the lampposts on the streets below and the apartments whose lights are still on. He carefully counts these apartments and notes their position, promising himself to check if the same ones have their lights on every night. But what’s the point? he wonders, knowing how feeble an excuse he’d give: curiosity, something to do for the sake of doing, something to ease his anxiety. Unable to sleep, he decides to call his wife. After waiting for five rings, he hangs up indifferently. Then he asks himself why he agreed to write the screenplay. Money. The word money keeps cropping up. But it makes the world go round, he says aloud while staring at the ceiling. It’s not that he feels incapable of writing the script, but the other characters — those musicians — only matter to him in relation to the girl. He remembers when things were different, when he was young and ambitious, back when he was only st
arting out as a screenwriter. He reflects on an old cliché: he may have been poor, but at least he was happy; a sad cliché reinforced by the false belief that wealth and security will one day compensate the loss of youth and felicity. The fact is he’s just as poor now as he was back then. Every so often, an old friend will take pity on him and allow him to assist on a project — to revise some greenhorn’s script, or write dialogue for an older character, which a young writer may find difficult or even impossible to do. This tends to happen when a script doesn’t have a single interesting scene. So a producer decides that adding more dialogue should solve the problem. Of course, this is the same as beating a dead pony. As long as the scene’s interesting enough, it doesn’t really matter what the characters are saying. On the other hand, the screenwriter counts himself lucky he still has the strength to write, or at least believes he has, and that his producer friends still have confidence in him. But how could he not have strength to write? He’s a professional, after all. And he acts like a professional too, even when he’s forced to listen to these tedious musical pieces, which lack anything resembling classical harmony and seem to go on interminably. He writes in his notebook: According to the girl, the twelve chromatic intervals into which a scale is divided are used indiscriminately in the atonal system, with no single tone predominating. If he could adapt these ideas to his screenplay, a very different movie could emerge. He goes back to the bed and rests his head on the pillow. Yes, maybe he could create something new, although he suspects practically everything’s been said already. But he may still come away from the project with something interesting to tell his students — if he ever has students again, that is. Is he really interested in the girl’s talent? He can’t deceive himself: besides the screenplay, all he cares about is her body. Or is it her company? Or the hope of a new life?

  It’s Wednesday, in the middle of the night. She’s still afraid they’re following her, so the girl drops in on the screenwriter when he least expects it. She reminds him she’s going through a white phase: her wardrobe has only generic white pants and T-shirts. The screenwriter almost forgot this detail. She refuses to wear anything else. Maybe he read it in a previous draft of her novel, or heard it when she read to him from her diary. She says brand-name clothing is a thing of the past for her; she only wears white canvas shoes with the labels and shoelaces removed. She’s shed her regard for fashion and conformity, she says, trying to sound convincing. They don’t matter anymore. She then expresses her concern about her favorite soccer player, who’s taken an extended vacation and will miss the next big game. The screenwriter feigns his surprise, for he’s already read about it in the newspaper. It’s been a long time since she last kicked a ball herself. Soccer’s one of many hobbies she sacrificed for the sake of her music and for writing. Schools for gifted kids tend to encourage their students to discriminate between subjects that are worthy of study and those they deem to be trivial. Nevertheless, the girl never stopped supporting her favorite soccer team. What would you do if you were his coach? she asks the screenwriter. He knows he’d have fired him, but he doesn’t dare say it. Instead, he dodges the question by asking her what she thinks her father would do. She mulls it over. Why are you interested in my father? There’s something intriguing about him, he says. She smiles. But who is my father? she wonders as he watches her expectantly. My father is someone whose business dealings have made him very rich in a very short space of time, someone who never takes time off, except for a few days here and there during the course of a year. But she has no idea what he does with his time, what his line of work is. No one does. Like her, he wanted to be a writer when he was younger, but he didn’t have the conviction, the perseverance necessary to become one in the end. On the other hand, he shows enormous dedication when it comes to reading that great swan song of nineteenth-century fiction, a book written by a novelist and cartographer of memory who turned jealousy into an aesthetic of stolen time. This is one of the reasons she has no qualms about telling her father she wants to be a writer, she says, although the screenwriter knows she’d hardly have any trouble telling the whole world. And yet, he’s the very model of an absentee father. Her mother’s the same, despite being the one who takes care of her. The girl knows her mother would rather take care of a successful company. But as for her father: he takes little interest in his daughter’s life, especially since the separation, and he only follows her career as a pianist from a distance. He still frequently asks about her training for the soccer team, as if every time he receives the same answer, he cheerfully eradicates it from his memory. A light goes on across the street; the screenwriter can’t help glancing over. A naked woman passes by a window. He’s afraid of losing the thread of the girl’s story, but he keeps looking in case she walks past again. She doesn’t, and the light goes off. From his spot next to the writing desk, he watches the girl stretched out on one of the two beds — naked, her eyes closed, talking to him as if she was orating, as if she was reciting a passage from her book, a book she’s unable to write. Isn’t he worried about who you might be sleeping with? the screenwriter asks insistently. No, he doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about his daughter falling into the arms of an unscrupulous roué, the screenwriter muses. But all fathers should be worried about this. After all, the world’s filled with those kinds of people.

  The screenwriter’s schedule is all over the place: perhaps the principles of atonality have begun sinking in. He’d been working from dawn until late in the morning then went to the kiosk to buy a newspaper from his native country. Now, he’s sitting at the café in the plaza. He gets the impression that, here in the neighboring country’s capital, there are people who spend all day in the cafés — some reading their newspapers, others who bring their offices to the tables along the sidewalk. The waitress continues ignoring him, so the screenwriter takes his notebook from his jacket pocket. He also utilizes the café as a temporary office, although he drinks his coffee while he works, unlike some others, who only work while drinking their coffee. After considering the difference between these two options, he asks himself if he’d be able to make the café his permanent workplace. It’d be cheaper than renting an office or an apartment. He takes a look around. Maybe he’d feel uncomfortable, be distracted by all the noise and bustle. A few meters in front of his table, a guy is unloading bottled drinks from a truck; a little farther on, he sees a dry-cleaner’s van, and beyond that, a girl in uniform cleaning the fountain in the center of the plaza. There’s no doubting it, he’d never be able to concentrate here. He can only do so now because of the one idea that happens to be preoccupying him. Supposing twelve-tone music was never invented, the girl says to her father, what do you think would exist in its place? He doesn’t know what to say, why would anyone care about such things? The girl’s fingers putter aimlessly along the piano keys, as if probing for something new and original. She’s abandoned her piano practice and seems to be having a hard time keeping the conversation going. The screenwriter is trying to pin down the father accurately, but his character’s elusive. In summary, he seems to be a man who no longer believes in anything or anyone; a character who, over a long period of time, has given up a lot of ground, bottled up his pride, suppressed his ideas, compromised his principles, become passionless, and were he pressed to admit a belief in anything at all, he’d say it was money. Now that he’s rich, maybe he’s becoming regretful; maybe the past is beginning to catch up with him. The screenwriter scribbles the idea in his notebook, although he doesn’t know whether he’ll end up using it. Perhaps it’s time to lay the groundwork. McGregor speaking, he writes down in a flurry. For some reason, the girl answers a phone call intended for her father. And so the stranger introduces himself: McGregor speaking. The screenwriter closes the notebook, sighs contentedly, and asks the waitress for the check, giving her one of his very best smiles. She continues ignoring him. She’ll come around yet, he tells himself, and leaves a generous tip. You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, he murmurs as h
e gets up to leave, and pushes the chair back in its place.

  The screenwriter returns late from his morning stroll. His body clock is off because he stayed up working until the early hours of the morning. After buying his country’s newspaper on the corner of the boulevard, he drank coffee at the café in the plaza, went for a stroll along the river, and dined in the afternoon. Now, he takes a short break before sitting at his desk to resume writing. He thinks about the young orchestra conductor and the brilliant composer, characters that should feature more prominently. But something always thwarts him when he sets out to concentrate on them. He opens the window and glances unconsciously at the building across the street. The days are becoming repetitive, each one resembling the next, and it occurs to him that maybe his characters should perceive the passage of days similarly. He has a god’s eye view of the sunset, of the people passing in the street below, and he wonders about the girl, about what she may be doing at this moment. Maybe she’s at a rehearsal; maybe she’s reading the philosopher W with the young conductor of the orchestra. Or perhaps they’re kissing. Or perhaps she’s kissing someone else entirely. For the screenwriter, the thought of the girl kissing someone else is arousing. He sees her neglecting her piano practice to work on her novel instead, scribbling away fervidly, and is reminded of himself when he was young, back when he first set out to become a screenwriter, when he too would neglect anything and everything for the sake of his work. Things haven’t turned out great for him, not as great as he expects they will for the girl. He’s written some good screenplays for movies that passed in and out of the cinema without notice, but he’s also written some truly awful screenplays, ones he’d like to forget, for movies that passed in and out of the cinema without notice. The woman in the building opposite passes her window; he raises his arm to attract her attention. He has no idea what he’ll say to her, but he’s come to regard her as something of an old acquaintance. But she doesn’t see him, and he lowers his arm. He’s had some success with women, he thinks. His marriage may have been a disaster, but he’s had some success with other women. The screenwriter is sitting on his bed staring at the telephone. It takes a concerted effort to resist the impulse to call his wife. He distracts himself with the newspaper, goes over the personals, and reads the articles he’d been saving for later that evening. The screenplay once more obtrudes upon his thinking, but he turns the page, determined to concentrate on his reading. There’s a photo the girl will get a kick out of, he tells himself: the star of her favorite soccer team on some distant beach doing tricks with a ball to impress a bevy of onlookers. He’s done pretty okay with women, he muses to himself in another lapse of concentration, because the type of work he does confers on him a certain intellectual cachet. He believes himself reasonably attractive, but he knows this alone isn’t enough. So he puts on airs, affects a cerebral pose to appear more interesting than he is. He puts the newspaper to one side, lies back on the bed, and looks at the ceiling. He knows what it is to be a failure. He’d liked to have experienced success, to know what it feels like to triumph at something. What does it mean to be a winner? He can’t define it without reference to money and women. Years before, he’d have been able to sublimate his belief, qualify it by succeeding at various other things, but at his age, he can no longer deceive himself. Most people want success, but only a few ever manage it, because only a few people have the necessary strength, the self-confidence — indeed, the necessary selfishness — besides so many other qualities, to succeed; qualities the screenwriter sees in the young orchestra conductor, a character he’s yet to fully develop, but who’s shown indications of being someone who knows exactly what he wants, the kind of person who could go far in the music world, or in any world he chooses for that matter. He sees him as a winner, a precocious young man with a talent for bringing together disparate notions, and with a gift for getting along well with others. The future abounds with opportunities for such a character. A pity his role is so small, almost an extra compared with the girl’s. And yet, he must worry about success as well, about money, which will probably come much later for him, when he’s no longer young, after years of dragging himself on and off stages, having become jaded with women, and can only vaguely remember his salad days. What does it mean to be a winner? It only intimidates the girl — her fear of mediocrity, of writing like everyone else, of becoming complacent, selling out for fame. . but she’s already famous. Perhaps she doesn’t appreciate it since it happened so soon; or perhaps the piano’s become a millstone around her neck. Maybe if she wasn’t so well known. . the truth is he doesn’t know what it means to be a winner. Maybe luck has something to do with it, he finally says, as his eyes begin to close, not wanting to see himself as the loser of a long-distance race he began so long ago.