No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  It is well after midnight, and the screenwriter is speculating about the No World. What does No World mean? It’s not the first time he’s asked the question. The girl no longer remembers the answer; that is, if she ever really had the answer. What does No World mean? she asks herself in turn. Where does a game lead to in the end? Perhaps it leads to the young orchestra conductor, the screenwriter thinks. For him, the girl’s writing is very arid, too descriptive and plain, and he doesn’t know how to encourage her without lying. They’ve just made love: slowly, at his pace. Sometimes they do it more energetically, the way she likes it, sometimes not. The screenwriter feels as if his soul has climbed up to heaven and is looking back on Earth. Lying on the bed next to the girl, looking pensive, he slides his left arm under her nape and just looks at her, examines her fringe of hair, short and flat against her brow, and so he delicately displaces it with his fingers. The early morning silence breezes in through the half-open windows. You’ll end up preferring him to me, the screenwriter whispers, meaning the young conductor, speaking so softly his voice almost peters out entirely. No I won’t, she says, the after-silence stretching out indefinitely. You’ll want somebody younger, the screenwriter insists, holding his breath. He wants to know what will happen when he gets even older. What do you want to happen? she asks, her eyes glued to the ceiling. He shrugs his shoulders feebly, unable to answer her. There’s a prolonged silence as she turns to look at him, unwavering, not moving a single muscle in her face. I’ve told you I’ll always love you, she says. The screenwriter wishes he could believe her, that she’d promise her undying love, give her word to never abandon him. But then, in a moment of lucidity, he remembers that only desire matters, there can be no room for sentiment. They say old age vitiates desire. But he doesn’t see it that way. His life is a torment, and he supposes it’ll always be a torment: rest, repose, who’d want that? Maybe it’s a different kind of desire, the desire for peace — more complex, but also more self-evident. Well, perhaps. She lights a joint and hands it to him, then gets up and starts dressing by the side of the bed. She puts her notebook in her satchel and takes a quick look outside, searching for the inconspicuous shadow that often lurks near the hotel’s entrance. An hour has passed, maybe two, and the murmur of engines paused at the traffic lights is getting louder by the moment. The city’s stirring. Don’t go, he implores her as she heads to the door, his hand reaching weakly, vainly, for hers.

  Sometimes she feels like a fool, writes the screenwriter in a margin of his notebook, listening to the girl’s inner voice, which is torturing her with that idea. Sometimes she feels like the angel in the film, that she can hear other people’s voices, not only when they speak, but also when they think, convinced she’s eavesdropping on their most intimate thoughts and desires. During these moments, the screenwriter listens to the girl’s inner voice, as plain as if it were a voiceover, saying it doesn’t matter that she has exceptional talent, she’s still a fool. She always feels this way after an argument with the young conductor. She knows she shouldn’t allow herself be carried away by these jealous rages, but by the time she remembers this, it’s already too late. As she gets dressed, the telephone rings, and the young conductor, lying naked on the bed, answers it, his eyes remaining on the girl, engrossed by her body. Listening to what the young conductor’s saying, she guesses that the caller is the brilliant composer. In fact, she’d have known by just listening to the young conductor’s tone of voice. She wouldn’t even need to use her sixth sense, which allows her to perceive all that’s hidden around her, to hear other people’s thoughts, detect when someone pronounces her name with a “ka.” They’re talking about irregular sound waves, which they both agree are harsh on the ears, about the difference between dissonance and consonance, about mathematics, acoustics, and all the rest of it. She takes the book by W from the nightstand and walks out, not forgetting to slam the door behind her. Maybe she’s overreacting; maybe it’s the pills; or maybe it’s just her personality. “3.04 If a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose possibility ensured its truth.” She asks herself what this could mean. Possibly nothing. She walks the streets aimlessly, alone. She inadvertently overhears a conversation by a couple in a café. The man, reading his newspaper, lifts his head to pass a comment about the news. We really don’t belong on this planet, he says solemnly. The woman nods in agreement, drops her cigarette to the ground, and crushes it under the sole of her shoe. The girl walks into a bookstore, passes several tables laden with books, not looking for anything in particular, but she thinks she should start reading other authors, besides the great dramatist and the genius who revolutionized twentieth-century literature. Once again, she gets lost wandering the streets before finding her way again, and decides to head for the bars with the foosball tables. She wouldn’t mind challenging one of the players, or even joining someone else’s team. She watches for a while, but they’re too focused on the game to notice her. As for the screenwriter, Sunday passes by without his even noticing. He went for a walk by the river and then relaxed in the afternoon. He called his wife a couple of times, and watched TV as he waited for the girl. Later in the night, he typed up a scene he’d already written longhand, in which she has an argument with the young conductor and then wanders the streets aimlessly before heading for the bar with the foosball tables. All of a sudden the girl becomes anxious, believing someone’s following her. Perhaps alien hunters have zeroed in on the voices she always hears. All they have to do is narrow the range of their sensors, adjust their frequency, and then it’s only a matter of time before they get to her. The screenwriter turns off the light and looks over at the building opposite as he undresses for bed. He can’t get the girl out of his head. Finally, though, his exhaustion overtakes him, and at precisely the moment he thinks he’s discerned what direction the story will take, his lids give way, and he’s lost in the oblivion of sleep.

  It’s cold for an August morning, and the low clouds are moving swiftly, threatening rain. Near the hotel, there’s a secondhand clothes store, and the screenwriter decides to go inside and have a look around. He never used to think of buying anything in a place like this. It’s true, these kinds of stores haven’t always been around, he tells himself, but even if they had been, he’d never have entered one, much less bought anything inside. These days, however, if he needed some pants, a jacket, or possibly a new shirt, such a place could be his only port of call. Necessity can alter habits, he thinks. He’s beginning to run low on money, and one of these days he’ll have to phone the producer to request another advance. He walks down the aisle, past rows of shelves and clothing racks. He notices his leg hurts: a sign it’s going to rain. He exits the store, spends a few moments looking in the window before walking down the street to board the metro. He isn’t traveling far, but his limp makes it seem like a million miles. He should avoid the hotel where the girl’s staying, that’s a no-go area. Curiosity, however, overrides his better judgment. On getting off the metro, the wet street tells him it’s been raining. He looks up at the sky, searching for any indication it might rain again. The air is still quite cool for early August. He returns his eyes to the ground and continues wearily on his way. He knows the girl is staying at one of the best hotels in the capital. Her mother always puts her up in it. It has an English name, and the doorman, dressed like an admiral, cheerily salutes him whenever he passes by. There’s no one at his hotel to hold the door open or carry his bags, much less drive him to the café. Such are the differences between people who have everything and guys like him; palpable differences, which are never adequately described by the girl when she tries to give an account of them, differences which are only felt by him when he takes a stroll through her reality. But when they’re in bed together, sharing ideas and feelings, these distances vanish, he thinks. Sometimes he asks himself if he isn’t writing screenplays to live his life through his characters. The mind is filled with strange things, he reflects, content with this ambiguous response. But if this trul
y was his reason for writing, it would mean he’s wasted his life. There are so many people who dedicate their efforts to doing something useful, he thinks, like making cars, refrigerators, knives, bread. . while others are working in the dream industry. They don’t make anything that’s real; all they do is provide opportunities for people to dream their lives away by living in fictional realities that are depicted onscreen or in a book. It’s no different than providing drugs, narcotics, to both divert and stupefy the public at the same time. In turn, he thinks, these creators of dreams, whether through screenplays or novels, are dreaming themselves in the act of writing, so it seems the lie goes full circle. He sits in one of the armchairs of the grand lobby that separates the hotel’s café from its restaurant, picks up a menu, and goes over the prices — all outside his budget no doubt. He should’ve dedicated himself to something more remunerative. He might have a decent pension by now, or even be rich like the girl’s parents. Instead he’s wasted his time, he thinks, and has been unable to scrape together enough money to spend even a day in the least expensive room of this hotel. He orders a coffee, the cheapest option, although it costs as much as a full breakfast at his own hotel, lights a cigarette while taking his notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket, and describes in detail the movements of the barman. Then he describes the chairs, the carpet, the magnificent garden outside the windows, and the features of the hotel guests passing by. He wants to immerse himself in the places the girl frequents. For him, these guests are like extras in his film. He spends some time absorbing the full splendor of this place, and finds he can at last appreciate the pomp and circumstance surrounding the girl’s concerts. The girl represents a financial investment. This kind of outlook shouldn’t be scoffed at; after all, a concert pianist is essentially an industry on legs. A young waitress, impeccably dressed in a jacket and pink skirt, serves the screenwriter his cup of coffee. She smiles at him, unlike the waitress at the café in the plaza; to get a smile from her would be like drawing blood from a stone. This waitress’s smile is natural, candid, sincere. . The screenwriter’s at a loss for other adjectives. He’d love to go on a date with her sometime, but somewhere far away from here. Of course, he doesn’t even try asking her out. He knows it’s not a good idea. Instead, he just reciprocates a smile and thanks her for her kindness. She’s too young to be the waitress the girl was talking about; the one who recites random passages from the philosopher W’s magnum opus while watching her and the young conductor having sex. To his right, sitting in one of the armchairs, a guy is chatting to a young woman. Both are dressed elegantly. They’re more than likely talking about money, he thinks, some business deal perhaps, or maybe they’re exchanging ideas about all the great sex they’re going to have later, he thinks, again feeling a little dispirited. Their world is simply too far removed from his own. If a writer doesn’t make enough money to lead this kind of life, he’s better off choosing another career. The screenwriter is living proof. If he were young, and could start all over, he’d do something else. This is one of the reasons a writer or screenwriter will abandon literature or the cinema and dedicate his life to business, he thinks. There are real-world examples of this. They never again show the same interest in poetry, art, or whatever their métier may have been. If the girl gave up her career as a pianist to become a writer, it would be a kind of reversal of this scenario, though. As for him, it’s too late for a career change. When he dies, he thinks, he will have wasted his life. He tries to think of an analogy, and can only come up a case of someone wasting a bumper-car ride, spinning around and around without ever moving from the starting point. He thinks of all the time not spent on furthering his career. Time wasted on attractive young students, or on grooming this or that shy starlet. If he ever returns to teaching, he promises to tell his students the truth about this dirty business: that all they can expect from becoming a writer is a life of frustration and staying in cheap hotels. To hell with writers and to hell with screenwriters, he declaims to himself through gritted teeth. He gets back down to work. He must get something done after spending an arm and a leg for the privilege of drinking a coffee at the hotel with the English name. What goes through the girl’s mother’s head when she’s thinking about her daughter? Money, the screenwriter decides while looking through the windows at the magnificent garden outside. He wouldn’t recognize the girl’s mother if he ran into her, though. He doesn’t remember ever having seen her, or the girl’s father for that matter. They’re the type of people who pay someone to take their children to school, like servants or bodyguards. The screenwriter thinks it immoral for parents to allow a stranger to take their young girl to school. In the distance he sees some patio umbrellas and white wooden tables on the freshly mown grass. Nobody’s sitting outside because it’s just rained. But it seems the rich prefer to eat indoors anyway. The screenwriter pays his bill and crumples the receipt into his pocket along with his notebook. He then leans on his cane to get to his feet, and wobbles slowly toward the door. He could manage a swifter exit, but he wants to enjoy this moment, prolong it, so he memorizes every step like a series of snapshots. As he passes the reception desk, some hotel employees greet him sympathetically. He’d say his age, his bearing, and his cane are all complicit in making him worthy of their deference.

  They’ve called him a beacon, the creator of the modern world, and the inventor of the human. His characters are kings, princes, soldiers, clerks, impostors, witches, murderers, et al. He limns the whole spectrum of human society — the high and the low, the wicked and the good: specters of the No World, as the girl would say. He shows us heaven and hell exist within us and without, and teaches us that appearances can often be deceiving. The dramatist par excellence surpasses every other writer we know. His wit, energy, and scope of invention bespeak a man of illimitable intellect and boundless creative power. He’s the greatest comedian, the most sublime tragedian of them all, and as someone once said of his characters, the secret to their depth, their humanity, is their ability to overhear themselves, and in doing so, to change. For all these reasons, therefore, he has to be read. In the end, he gave up poetry and the theater, dying three years later. Perhaps of unemployment. There are people who can’t bear not having a job, the screenwriter says. Later, in the middle of the night, he asks the girl to read to him some fragments from her diary. She’s thought about giving up writing; if she hasn’t done so yet, it’s because only in writing does she feel alive. She opens her diary and leafs through its pages, chooses a passage about her walk back to the foosball bars; then one about loneliness, about her feeling like she’s a writer although she doesn’t write; and another about the futility of trying to evade her extraterrestrial pursuers. The screenwriter listens to her voice, deems it firm, assured, if slightly monotonous, and looks at her face, the movement of her lips, the way her hands grip the diary. She once wrote that everything whirls around her at great speed, that her rehearsals are only a game, her writings only a game, even her life’s only an elaborate game in which events seem to succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, all her arguments with her mother and the young conductor, all her disappointments in love, are just part of this elaborate game. She’s written that everyone pronounces her name with a “ka,” and that this is a way of giving meaning to something that has no meaning. It’s like being on drugs all day, she thinks. Perhaps she’s been searching high and low for the face of her cousin Dedalus. Perhaps she hopes to see him again. The screenwriter believes there are secrets we should keep to ourselves, that they shouldn’t be confessed, except perhaps to a diary. The girl reads aloud, her head pillowed against his graying chest, speaking of her father, of the neighboring country’s capital, and of herself. She feels more like a writer than ever, she says, and that she often imagines discovering her mother in flagrante with a secret lover. She turns on the TV and flips through the channels. On the news, there’s talk of other places in the world where people don’t know the game exists. She turns the TV off and goes to the piano. She wa
nts to set her performance apart from everyone else’s. Perhaps she’s found a way to do so by slowing it down. But she can’t really trust herself after taking so many pills — a strange distrust, since the young conductor insists the pills will enhance her emotional states, and raise the level of her performance to near genius, which will compensate for the foibles of youth and inexperience. There aren’t too many hours left until concert at the church in front of the writers’ café, and there isn’t enough time for her to find a way to make her performance unique. After thinking about it, though, she believes she’s already found a way, but the young conductor and brilliant composer aren’t satisfied with it. Yet, she shouldn’t doubt herself. She lies down naked at the foot of the bed and writes again until she falls asleep. She awakens to the faint light of dawn streaming in the window. She dreamed she was driving around in a yellow convertible, and she recalls how it gleamed, the way things only do in dreams, and the way it seemed to glide so smoothly, silently along through the outskirts of the city, with the young conductor in the driver’s seat, and the brilliant composer sitting beside him, while she was in the backseat standing up, reciting a poem, playing the part of the cosmic clown. On the sidewalk, people had stopped to listen to her, and she saw the face of her cousin among them. She then asked the young conductor to stop the car, but it seemed as though the words never reached his ears, and Cousin Dedalus vanished among the pedestrians, who all dispersed, continuing on their way to nowhere in particular, dropping into the margins of her dream. It seems strange to her now that the car drove so smoothly, as if gliding over a thin layer of oil, strange that she noticed the one face among so many others. She’d like to decipher the meaning of the dream, but she can only guess that it must have something to do with the concerts and her obsession with finding her cousin. After a while, feeling a little weary, she stops reading from her diary and gets out of bed. The screenwriter smokes a joint as she gets dressed. Will you come back tomorrow? he asks. Tomorrow’s opening night, she says. No it’s not, he says, tomorrow’s just a momentary blip in the boundless expanse of time; right now, tomorrow’s but a barely perceived premonition in the brain — not a psychic premonition, but a forecast, as of the weather, and the weathergirl’s frequently wrong. She takes the joint from between his fingers and takes a deep drag before returning it. She goes over to the window and opens the curtains to looks down on the deserted streets. What do you see? the screenwriter asks, the question half-muffled, his face half-buried in the pillow. She doesn’t answer. She finds it difficult to describe the figure she sees lurking almost imperceptibly in the shadows. It’s the same figure she sees every night, like having a recurring dream. Maybe she’s only imagining it. Maybe it’s nothing.