No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  By the early hours of the morning, there are only a few survivors from the previous night, and they continued drinking heavily long after the girl’s mother left. At some point during the night, the screenwriter suggested the girl read S’s sonnets, and that, instead of writing, she should study the piano works of B, H, M, or C. They say you run out of time, that after the age of twenty, if you haven’t already mastered the whole repertoire, something will be lacking for the rest of your life. At some other point in the evening, the screenwriter told the girl about an early film by the director of the movie in which an angel can hear other people’s voices. He wants to listen to the soundtrack of the film. The music is ideal for his screenplay. The brilliant composer, overhearing the conversation, proposes writing an original soundtrack to supplement the one the screenwriter’s talking about. It would be a simple mathematical exercise, he says. Then the screenwriter gets the impression he must have lost consciousness for a moment, because when he comes to, the girl is no longer beside him. He must have dozed off. He checks his watch. It’s gotten late. Too late to do anything, he says, without quite knowing what he means. He doubts she’ll show up back at the hotel tonight, but what worries him the most is the possibility he ruined everything with his intrusion. A simple mathematical exercise, repeats the brilliant composer, his back against a wall at the other end of the table, his legs stretched out along the length of a bench. He’s no longer talking about the soundtrack, though. The screenwriter stopped paying attention when he started thinking about the girl, or perhaps it’s because he fell asleep. Each successive number in the series is the sum of the two that preceded it, the composer continues, and if you pick a number far enough along and divide it by the number immediately following it, the result approximates the golden ratio, or 1.618. If he hadn’t had so much to drink, the screenwriter might be able to get his head around the compositional method the young man is talking about. He’d probably even ask a couple of questions, if only to be polite, but he’s too tired, and the words aren’t coming. Besides, who said he’s even talking about a compositional method? The screenwriter has only ever heard the golden ratio spoken of with reference to architecture or painting. He decides to leave his queries for another day and, instead, feigns comprehension by nodding his head a couple of times, biding his time until the opportunity comes for him to leave without saying good-bye. The brilliant composer watches him as he skulks away, but maintains his decumbent position on the bench, too comfortable to move or even say good-bye himself, although, eventually, languidly, he raises his arm and mumbles good-bye, as if bidding farewell to a vanishing ghost. Then he takes a cough-syrup bottle filled with cognac from his pocket and empties it to the dregs. Maybe he’s had too much to drink, the screenwriter hears someone say on exiting. They could be talking about him; they could be talking about the brilliant composer; either way, the screenwriter thinks, they’re telling the truth. On his way back to the hotel, he writes a scene in which the girl and young conductor quarrel over her interpretations of the 5 Pieces for piano and the No World Symphony. It’s an argument provoked mainly by jealousy: his for the girl’s fame, hers for the young conductor’s philandering. It’s the same one from last night, the brilliant composer assures the girl, referring to the young conductor’s latest conquest, who’s been stuck to his hip all night. Perhaps what’s going on between the girl and young conductor of the orchestra is only a game, the screenwriter muses, as he imagines the girl back at the hotel with the English name, sitting alone in her room, restless, distrait, looking out the window, deep in thought perhaps, remembering the strange looks exchanged between the young conductor and her mother. He’s finding it difficult to pin down the essentials of his story. He’s certain it’s because he drank too much. But if not today, he’ll do it sooner or later, he promises himself. In an alcoholic haze, the screenwriter sees the girl and young conductor as being completely devoted to the game. After each of their battles, they probably keep a tally of all their victims, he thinks; perhaps by making notches in their instruments. The screenwriter thinks he might well be one of the girl’s pawns, but he quickly sweeps the thought from his mind, unable to imagine he’s merely the victim of a jealous tit-for-tat between young lovers. He turns to look at the streets below, dark, empty, on which he’s still hoping the numinous figure of the girl will appear. Suddenly, he hears a taxi approaching; but it passes without slowing. He raises his eyes to the building across the street, sees only a rectangular void where he hoped to catch sight his neighbor. Then, as if for the first time, he examines the front of the building and notices, as if for the first time, there are in fact two different buildings. He looks at the storefronts again: the real estate agency on the corner, the bakery, the shop selling women’s lingerie, and the shoe and handbag store that’s closed for the August vacation. He thinks about his wife again; remembers the sexy panties he bought, which are lying idle in the back of the closet. But it doesn’t matter, the girl isn’t coming.

  Nothing matters now except the writing. It’s all she thinks about since being hypnotized. Nothing else in her life makes sense anymore, and she doesn’t care how the change happened, what the trance did to her, because now not only does she know what she wants to do, she’s determined to get it done. The act of writing has become an end in itself, despite the newspapers back in the screenwriter’s native city acclaiming her success and that of the Little Sinfonietta, publishing loads of pictures, and giving her the kind of coverage usually accorded to more serious, newsworthy topics. The screenwriter knows that only a person with plenty of clout and lots of contacts could make that happen. His leg hurts, a sign it’s going to rain. Even so, he ventures outside and heads for the National Museum of Modern Art. It starts raining, so he seeks shelter in a café. Some of the customers are reading, others conversing, a few are staring at the sidewalk being spattered by rain. The screenwriter thinks he’d be able to write if he were sitting in a café in the neighboring country’s capital. He’s thought this ever since he got home. Maybe the girl will also become one of those people who write in cafés. The windows are open here, allowing sparrows to flutter in and make themselves part of the décor, gadding about competing for crumbs left on the tables or whatever the customers let fall on the floor. If the girl was here, she’d sit beside the window and admire the Museum building, which the screenwriter thinks a singular structure; she’d probably throw crumbs at the sparrows too, while rambling on about the direction her life is going in, and perhaps mention the first chapter of her book or talk about her novel as a whole, with which she’ll confess she’s at last getting somewhere. Perhaps she’d write in her diary that she no longer doubts herself because, since being hypnotized, she feels as if the scales have fallen from her eyes and her literary objectives become completely clear. The screenwriter too thinks he knows where his story should go, but he still deliberates, goes over it again and again, before committing a single thought to paper. It seems the rain’s died down, so he crosses the plaza and heads for the museum, limping slowly, so as not to slip and fall. The clouds are low, the wind cool and blustery. It might start raining again, he thinks while standing in the ticket line with a bunch of tourists, who flock to his native capital, attracted by its fame and allure. Once inside, he goes up to the floor where all the most important works are displayed. He exaggerates his limp, pauses before each painting, affecting a grave expression, while all he’s really thinking about is his script. He wants to plan it out systematically but always struggles to keep the story’s structure in mind long enough to commit it to paper. Occasionally, he gets distracted by the paintings, a few of which he finds totally bewildering. It’s clear to him not everyone on Earth has the same taste in Art, or anything else for that matter. His thoughts return to the script and the girl, whose daily routine has suffered an upheaval. Now, all she wants to do is write, anything else is a distraction. If she practices the piano at all, it’s out of a sense of professional duty, or as preparation for an impending recording session
. The screenwriter thinks of a scene he imagines will transpire later in the evening, beginning at the moment the girl arrives at the church in front of the writer’s café. She’s arriving late, the screenwriter thinks. That’s the phrase he’ll begin with, the phrase with which he’ll start his recapitulation of that morning’s events. He goes over to the museum café to sit on a balcony that offers a panoramic view of the lobby. She’s arriving late, he thinks again. A few tables down, a guy is sitting with his legs resting on a chair. He’s facing the other way, scooted up close to the railings, observing the constant procession of museumgoers entering and exiting the building. The screenwriter orders the daily special, about which the only thing special is its reasonable price. Then, before leaving, he strikes his cane hard against the floor and points it at the guy with his legs up. You’re getting that chair dirty, he says. The man puts his feet on the ground, and the screenwriter turns away, smiling. She’s arriving late, he repeats to himself, the phrase that will begin his next scene.

  He slept longer than he intended, and when he woke up, he waited, as if he had nothing better to do, and now that she’s finally with him, he just looks at her, stares at her from his little nook beside the window, as if the fact that she’s now there justified all the waiting. Blindfolded, kneeling on the bed, the girl plays with herself, rubs herself through her panties, pushing them into herself, her body writhing slowly, trembling, her other arm softly grazing a nipple, as she continues masturbating, doubled over with pleasure, manipulating the fine silk between her legs, each movement of her hand eliciting a spasm. She bites her lip. Her blindfold prevents her from seeing the screenwriter, who’s looking through a crack in the curtains at the darkness of his neighbor’s window. How grateful he would be, grateful to God and all the angels in heaven, if the woman suddenly appeared. He’d fling open the curtains, as if to reveal a stage, on which the girl lies naked on his bed, masturbating for his own private delectation, and perhaps that of his neighbor, as long as she consented to play the voyeur. But the darkness in the window doesn’t change, so he goes over to the girl, who senses his approach, and the screenwriter, unable to bridle his lust, tears off her panties and buries his face in them. Before long, come the tremors, the earthquakes, and then the world collapsing beneath them.

  The only true paradises are the ones we lose. Or perhaps they’re the ones we imagine. Time and space don’t exist outside the mind, and after all, nothingness is the girl’s favorite topic of discussion, if only during those brief intervals when she feels at ease — safe from her extraterrestrial stalkers. There’s an infinitesimally small point, a point so small we’d probably need a magnifying glass, or something more powerful like an electron microscope to see it, and even then it would probably be undetectable. This is the point from which everything begins. But being undetectable, perhaps we have to trust in its existence by a leap of faith. What really matters though is not the object in itself, whether it exists objectively, so to speak, but the fact we can perceive it at all, and perception, being subjective, is as multifarious as the number of people that comprise the human race. So external reality, as any one of us perceives it, must be considered only one among many realities. Only the girl can hear the difference between “ka” and “k”; only she knows the world isn’t real, that it’s only a projection from a single point, the thoughtlet of a single mind, or — as she calls it — the big bang. In his world, the screenwriter finds it difficult to understand nothingness, whether it’s true to say “nothing” exists, or that “nothing” does not exist. He’s read something about it before. There is no difference, the girl explains, because neither is real, neither the infinitesimally small point before the big bang, nor the big bang itself. The truth is they’re a fabrication — a metaphor conceived by the mind to account for and makes sense of its own existence. The screenwriter seems to be thinking about something else she’s said. The official version, the one you read in the textbooks, is just as hard to accept, she declares: that nothingness is a miniscule point of departure loaded with matter, and that from this point the whole universe arose. If there really was nothing there, wouldn’t it be just as plausible to say this miniscule point was loaded with thought? The discussion ends. A minute passes, perhaps an hour. Every now and then, the screenwriter looks into the girl’s eyes, focusing on some point in space reflected there. The girl eventually rouses herself from semi-consciousness, as if returning from some distant region in space, climbs out of the bed, and gets dressed. Do you know my father’s been to the church? she asks, half-yawning. She draws open the curtains and looks out the window, scanning the streets for the shadow that persistently stalks her. He doesn’t come to hear me play, she says while lighting a joint. People change, he says while reaching to partake of a drag. Well, maybe, she says while proffering him one.

  She’s going to be late. She spent most of the day writing before going for a long walk in the city, wandering here and there, not sticking to a specified route, because the only thing on her mind was writing. As always, she’s going to be late for rehearsals. With the church closed to the public, the young conductor’s going over some final details with the other musicians, reviewing some tricky passages they haven’t been performing very well the past few days. Then the girl’s mother arrives and reads some reviews to them from the city’s major newspapers to them. She glosses over any negative comments and gushes about the critics’ unanimous praise, about the length of the queues outside the church, which she says exceeded everyone’s expectations. The girl’s surprised her mother kept this news from them until now. There will be even more coverage because of this, she predicts, more critical acclaim, and many more lucrative offers. This is a turning point in all your careers. The girl’s mother is always talking business. Even when she seems to be discussing music, she’s thinking business. The girl peeks out to watch the people taking their seats. Although they don’t say it, the girl knows perfectly well what the young orchestra conductor and brilliant composer want in life: an opportunity to triumph on the stage, to alter the course of modern music, to be thought revolutionaries by future generations who’ll speak of their influence in terms what came before and what came after them: ambition is as old as life itself — as old as desire. And the girl’s desire is to be a writer. She turns from the audience toward her two colleagues. Perhaps it’s an innocent question, perhaps it’s a part of the game, but she wants to know what she should do about her literary ambitions. Nothing, they say. Just focus on the music, play the piano, maybe you could write librettos for the brilliant composer. The girl believes they should be the ones writing librettos for her. She’s the only star among them. But she shouldn’t be worrying about this now, all this squabbling and pointless rivalry, when there’s a concert to perform. The young conductor says accidental elements should be included in the music, for, although submerged, they form part of a unity in which each decision, each act, has intended and unintended repercussions, but the unintended shouldn’t be eliminated because they’re accidental, because everything works together toward the same end, which is to evoke the one meaning, one image, one thought that encapsulates the work. Just like in the game. The girl believes this can be accomplished only in two things: fiction or insanity. She wonders if this kind of thinking will prevent their ever playing foosball together again, or being happy the way they used to be: used to be, she can barely remember it now. Maybe he’s just being sensational, has all her mother’s talk of marketing and promotion on the brain. All the girl wants to do is go back to her hotel room and write. About what she doesn’t know, she just wants to write. She peeks out at the audience again. There are people of all ages. Some are fans, others came to see what the fuss is about, but they all want to be wowed by the precocious young musicians, and by the girl, the starlet. Children whose parents hope they will emulate her sit upright in their seats, waiting excitedly, and the girl smiles sardonically at the prospect of one of them succeeding her. She recognizes a couple of familiar faces in the first row,
including the young conductor’s latest conquest. The brilliant composer remarks on the Little Sinfonietta’s popularity. Maybe they didn’t come just to see the clown’s nose, he sneers, but are actually interested in the music.

  While waving to the audience at the end of the second part, the girl spots her father sitting next to a pillar. It’s strange. He usually doesn’t attend her concerts, especially when they’re abroad. The girl spends the intermission debating whether or not to go out and talk to him. Then someone announces the third part is about to begin. It’s the part in which she sings, or recites almost, a confusing and disturbing series of verses which give the impression they were inspired by a strange vision or hallucination, or the effects of a psychotropic pill: at least according to a modern interpretation. During her recitation, the girl looks out at the auditorium, her voice, enveloping, bewitching the audience, creates an atmosphere of unease. Dressed as a clown brandishing a bloody knife, wandering in a desolate landscape covered in craters, it’s not quite clear what she’s looking at exactly, because she seems completely focused on the lyrics she’s reciting, a seemingly interminable series of lyrics. Perhaps she’s looking for her father in the audience, or maybe, unconsciously, for the young conductor’s latest conquest, who hasn’t left his side in days. The girl’s won over the crowd, and she gets the impression the performance has gone as well or better than on previous nights. There are even people outside on the plaza who couldn’t get in. After the concert, the girl takes her father to the writer’s café opposite the church. He’s going to be in the neighboring country’s capital for longer than he expected. I needed a vacation, he tells her. A vacation? she asks, detecting a lie. Well maybe it’s also something to do with work, he admits. They sit at the bar and discuss the concert program together, keeping well away from the other musicians, especially the young conductor and his latest conquest, who are sitting at a table in the back with the girl’s mother. The girl’s father can’t make heads or tails of the repertoire, but he deduces from the audience’s reaction and the critical reception that there must be something to it. He finds it odd she performs in a clown suit. What did you imagine the concert would be like? she asks him. But he doesn’t know, he’s never seen this side of her before, he’s only ever thought of her as a pianist. Is there really an audience for this kind of music? Are other musicians the only ones who attend these kinds of concerts? Is this the kind of music musicians are writing nowadays? The girl points out the fact that many parents have brought their pianist children to see her play so they can follow her example. Maybe it’s all the publicity that attracts them, all the hype, a false image created by the newspapers. They move on to other subjects, both of them endeavoring to avoid an argument: she not mentioning her recent literary afflatus, he putting his friendliest side forward — this being his daughter’s special night; she not admitting the real reason the night was special — that her father finally showed up; and he not realizing his daughter feels this way, or perhaps choosing to ignore it. A woman approaches the girl and asks her to sign a concert stub. Her father says he’s staying in a hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. Maybe he’ll visit her again another day. As he leaves, he pauses at the doorway to say good-bye. She goes over and kisses him, embraces him. She would’ve liked to go to dinner, to be rescued from the nightmare awaiting her back inside. Are you on duty? she asks, noticing the bulge on his hip. He smiles in a routine manner that could be interpreted in any way, with an expression that could be said to express absolutely nothing.