by A. G. Porta
Not only don’t they help you with your luggage, you have share a table in the canteen with strangers. One of the guests forgets his room key and a map of the city at the table where the screenwriter is sitting. A tourist, no doubt. Good day, he says before scuttling off to the buffet. The screenwriter nods with propriety, but without looking, as he bites down on a piece of bread. Lost in thought. The tourist returns with a plate of croissants, a selection of jams, and a glass of orange juice, placing them on the plastic tablecloth as he takes a seat. At the adjacent table, a couple of middle-aged women are chattering about their husbands. The screenwriter imagines the husbands are still in bed: they were all probably out late exploring the city. Or perhaps they don’t exist. They could be deceased, or perhaps they were invented so these women would have something to talk about at breakfast. Even if they do exist, the screenwriter’s sure these women would exaggerate their husbands’ attributes and achievements. They could even be describing completely different people from the ones they left snoring upstairs. A good idea for another script, he thinks, smiling with self-congratulation: two women traveling around the world together, telling each other fables about their nonexistent husbands. What might the ramifications be if their children found out, or their real husbands? They might assume they’re living double lives. Tourists: they’re a breed of their own. Where would they go, what places would they visit? he thinks. Then he murmurs: Everywhere. Before long, he starts losing interest in the two women. Once he looks away from their table, the idea for a new script seems to float away. He listens to the voices coming from the other tables. There’s always a crowd in the canteen when he comes down late to breakfast. It’s not his fault, he thinks. The screenplay determines his circadian rhythm. Are you a writer? comes a voice from the other side of the table. The screenwriter lifts his eyes. It dawns on him that he’s passed this man frequently in the corridor. He delays in responding. The tourist explains his presumption by confessing that he’s often heard the sound of a typewriter coming from his room — not that he minds; in fact, he’s glad to know there’s a writer hard at work in the room next door. It’s a romantic image, he says, that of the writer clacking away at his opus, with a cigarette perched on his bottom lip. You have to have something quite special about you to be a writer, he says. He admits he couldn’t write to save his life. He doesn’t know why, he just couldn’t. I’m a screenwriter, the screenwriter finally replies.
While the screenwriter is spending some time in the lobby going over the day’s newspapers, the receptionist signals to him from the counter, waving an envelope. It’s a similar envelope to the ones the girl sent him before. He asks who delivered it. A young girl, says the receptionist. Damn it! he grumbles. She must have come when he was having breakfast. The receptionist could have alerted him. She points to the exit. I’m afraid it’s like my own mailbox at home, she says. Any correspondence is left in a box outside. The screenwriter strikes his cane against the foot of the counter, turns, and flounces out onto the street. He looks everywhere, but there’s no sign of her. She’s gone. He goes back inside, dragging his feet and cane behind him, not noticing the receptionist’s quizzical expression following his melancholy gait, not giving a damn now for the newspapers he’d intended to finish reading. Now only the envelope matters, which he grasps tightly while he waits for the elevator to arrive. Once in his room, he goes to his desk and opens the envelope. There’s only a single page, and not much written on it. She talks about her father’s room at the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station, describing it as his center of operations. No one told her this, she writes, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out: the evidence is everywhere — on his laptop, his cell phone, his fax machine, and even in the paper tray of the printer. Her father and an associate have rented a couple of rooms that gives them a good view of the Grand Central Station. She still hasn’t figured out why they keep going there, but she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about it, since it would distract her from her writing. Who cares what her father and his associate are up to? thinks the screenwriter. Most of what he reads on the page he already knows about. But then he thinks again. Of course she cares about what her father gets up to. Maybe she doesn’t quite know how to say it — why she cares, that is — but if she thinks hard enough, searches diligently enough in her memory banks, the answer will come, and the words she needs will surely follow suit.
The screenwriter continues making progress, at times seeming more industrious than the girl. He’s now working on a scene he planned before breakfast. The girl is sitting down to a sandwich and refreshment at a downtown café. She takes her notebook from her pocket and goes over some of her notes. I’m starting a new life, she writes: the life of a writer. Unable to contain her jubilation, she looks around her timidly, in case someone might see her stupid grin. Then she thinks of her mother. Perhaps she went too far with her. She should be more accommodating, let her mother get used to the idea of the girl as a writer. After all, she takes it for granted her daughter will pursue a career she doesn’t want, that she has a certain control over the girl’s future, and is determined to tie her to the piano stool for life. Of course, this all has to change. So why does she feel so guilty? All she did was defend her own convictions. She always feels exactly the same after fighting with the young conductor. She leaves the café and heads for the cathedral. Cathedrals and large churches are perfect places for channeling extraterrestrial energy. The nearest cathedral is next to the island. It’s basically a tourist trap. All the same, a structure like that could only have been erected for one reason and that’s as a place for making contact. The inhabitants of Earth spent centuries constructing these heaps as supreme manifestations of beauty, order, and sanctity, wholly suited as places for people to gather together to exchange ideas, to worship, and to pray. They still do so, hoping to make contact. With whom? Or what? They don’t exactly know, but it doesn’t matter, they gather anyway, as if driven by some primal instinct. On the other hand, if cathedrals and churches actually encourage a relaxation of this same instinct, they’d complicate the process by which beings from other galaxies choose with whom to make contact. The girl’s concerned about knowing beforehand what building she should go to. What’s the difference between them? she wonders. How does she go about making a choice?
As she stands before an imposing altar, the girl thinks again about those great buildings — receivers of signals from space — to which servants come to pay homage, channeling those signals and transmitting their own thoughts back again. There’s a worldwide organization dedicated to this activity. What would her mother say about that? She’s not going back on her decision. She won’t take one step backward on the path she’s chosen, not even for the sake of an apology. There will be time to make amends later. When she gets back to the hotel and enters the room, she sees her father has a visitor. It seems they weren’t expecting her back so soon. A man of slender build, older than her father, sits on the sofa and looks at her over the rim of his glasses. He then stands up and offers her his hand. He’s wearing a heavy, classically-cut suit. Perhaps it’s too heavy for this time of year. My daughter, says her father to the man, without reversing the introduction. The man compliments the girl’s beauty, says she looks very like her mother. He must be thinking of her mother when she was young, she thinks while forcing a smile. She hates when people point out their resemblance. She has the impression she’s walked in on an important business meeting or something, so she politely excuses herself and goes down to the lobby to wait on the sofa. There, she takes out her diary and writes her first impressions of the old guy in the classically-cut suit, describing his clothes, his shoes, his politeness, his face — thin and kindly — his bushy eyebrows. . Then she sees the two men leaving the hotel together and climbing into a limousine. So she, without knowing exactly why, hails a taxi and asks the driver to follow them. She would have liked to know their destination, to have found out more about the old guy, about her father, but the clumsy drive
r loses their trail, so she tells him to take her to the hotel with the English name instead. She noticed the limousine was just about identical to those belonging to that hotel. But on arriving, she sees no sign of the limousine, her father, or the old guy in the classically-cut suit. She asks the admiral at the door, but he doesn’t remember seeing them. Perhaps he does know, and has been told to be discreet. The girl then figures she’ll find her mother in the dining room. Perhaps she could ease some of the tension between them, persuade her that her future is in writing, not music. She could even ask her about the old guy in the classically-cut suit, who seems to be acquainted with her. She pauses outside the dining room. Suddenly, all thought of her mother is obscured behind a fractured image of her father. He’s wearing that routine smile again, the one which could be interpreted to mean anything. Then the girl becomes disheartened. Because although she recognizes the image in her head as that of her father, she still doesn’t know what kind of man, what kind of person he really is.
At this time in the afternoon, there’s very little activity in the hotel with the English name. The girl is walking through the lobby — her eyes in the middle distance, fixed on nothing in particular. She looked for her mother in all her usual haunts — the garden, the dining room, the salon beside the café—but she couldn’t find her anywhere, so she decided to go up to the room. If she doesn’t feel inspired to write, she’ll dedicate a few hours to piano practice. She knows perfectly well how the young conductor wants her to play — to stick to the score, emphasize every note — but she doesn’t think the music sounds right performed this way, and they’re both far too stubborn to ever come to a compromise. Nevertheless, when all’s said and done, he isn’t the one who’s got a recording career to boast about. If she’s going to give up the piano, then she wants to go out with a bang: indeed, her final recording will be the culmination of all her musical ambitions, and it will leave a lasting impression on all who hear it. So she doesn’t need anyone telling her how to play. She’s developed a characteristic style, and whatever the composition, future generations will immediately recognize the performer when they hear her unique interpretation of it. In her last recording, though, she’s going to go beyond even her own characteristic style. As the elevator approaches, she takes a last look around the lobby and sees, at the reception desk, a man she’s seen several times before. There are no such things as coincidences, she murmurs. The screenwriter sees the scene unfolding as follows: the girl approaches the man slowly, timidly at first, but accelerates, gets more assured, the closer she gets; meanwhile, behind her, the elevator door opens with no one inside, and remains still a moment, like a gaping mouth. If it had eyes, it would see the girl accosting a man wearing a dark gray summer suit, a blue linen shirt, unbuttoned at the top, and no tie. He looks about fifty, his thin face wizened by the years. He turns his head, and their eyes meet momentarily. He squints at her to see if he knows her, but then turns back to the desk after convincing himself he doesn’t. The girl, on the other hand, doesn’t slow her pace, but continues walking toward the man she knows as cousin Dedalus, who’s waiting for the receptionist to hang up the phone and attend to him. Seeing him up close, she thinks he looks a little chubbier, but also more elegant, than he does in the old photos she’s seen of him. Also, his hair’s somewhat thinner, with some streaks of gray, but the most striking difference she notices is in his bearing, his apparent self-assuredness. Over the years, the girl’s constructed a very different image of him based on her mother’s photos of him, in which she remembers he looked disheveled, gawky, like a man lacking in confidence. Not anymore. He invites her to sit with him in the salon. His voice sounds familiar, but the girl doesn’t want to waste time trying to remember when and where she heard it last. My Mom will be delighted to see you, she says. She tells him her mother’s spent years searching for him and that she’ll be overjoyed to have finally found him. But the cousin shows little enthusiasm about the prospect of meeting her mother, and seems more interested in getting to know the girl. He’s never had the chance to meet a celebrated pianist, let alone a child prodigy. I’ve seen you before a few times around the city? says the girl. But I wasn’t sure who you were. He looks at her, surprised. The girl knows she shouldn’t put off telling her mother of this discovery, but getting the chance to talk to her cousin alone is too tempting, so she agrees to join him when he suggests they go for a walk. In the next shot, the two are shown strolling on a bridge, and it seems some time has passed, for they both look more relaxed in each other’s company, chatting casually as they cross over to the other side of the river. She regales him with details about her performances with the Little Sinfonietta, and explains that it’s called the Little Sinfonietta both because the number of musicians is small and because the musicians are all child prodigies; all, that is, except the young conductor. But he was quite precocious in his day. Then she tells him how much she wants to be a writer, repeating the same story she’s told again and again to whoever will listen. She thinks getting started on her literary opus hinged on her finally making the momentous decision to abandon music and begin a new life. She would’ve liked to write the next part of her cousin’s story but she didn’t know how to begin. It’s difficult, she admits, writing about someone she doesn’t know. But perhaps now that she’s finally met him. . she’s being sincere, opening up, because she feels she can confide in him. She’s writing about the No World, she tells him: roughly speaking, it’s a story about aliens who don’t know they’re aliens. Cousin Dedalus is reminded of Leon Kowalski, a replicant who appears in the opening scenes of a famous sci-fi movie. She didn’t know who or what Leon Kowalski was when she came up with the story, although she’s found out since. Her cousin thinks it resembles the idea in the sci-fi movie about replicants believing that false, implanted memories — memories extracted from other people’s minds — are a genuine record of their own past experience. During the walk, he shows the girl houses where some of the greatest writers of the century once lived. The writer who revolutionized twentieth-century literature lived in this city for years, he tells her. His knowledge greatly enhances her perception of the neighboring country’s capital. This must be an interesting route through the city for a writer, he says. She’s flattered he refers to her as a writer. He hardly says anything about himself, and when he does, it’s only because she’s dragged the information out of him. He repeats to her something she already knows: that he adopted the sobriquet Dedalus because of his admiration for the writer who revolutionized literature; that from his youth, he’s been signing his letters and anything else he writes with that name. But he says nothing about his life during his exile in the neighboring country’s capital. The girl mentions her mother’s interest in finding out what happened to him. There’s an awkward silence. Then the girl remembers Ka, her impression that some people pronounce her name with a “ka” sound, and that this could be the way it should be pronounced. He asks her how she can tell. She doesn’t know how she can tell. You seem to have very acute senses, but listen, what’s the difference between “ka” and “k”? She doesn’t reply right away. He gets the impression he’s delving into the secrets of a hidden order. Ka, she eventually says, is a tutelary spirit or genius or guardian angel who is born with us and who’ll take care of us after we die. That’s the definition I found in an encyclopedia. The cousin doesn’t recall the idea being used by any other famous writer, but he likes it. A tutelary spirit or genius or guardian angel that looks after us, he repeats to himself, as if trying to memorize the definition. The screenwriter sees the scene as being a single, extended dolly shot, the camera in front of the two characters, receding as they advance, but always keeping the same distance away from them as they walk together and talk — the cousin looking here and there, the girl looking only at the cousin. The scene behind them changes continually, showing many different people walking with them, past them, in front of them, and many different buildings, streets, and bridges, which the viewer may recognize as belonging to
the neighboring country’s capital. The girl wants to know about his exile. She asks him if, after so many years, a person in exile might not get used to the condition, if it might not become routine. The writer who revolutionized twentieth-century literature was an ex-pat virtually his whole life, who styled himself an exile. Cousin Dedalus rejects the comparison. But is he not a writer too? she asks. He responds evasively. So she starts talking about her father, who would respond in a similar way if he was asked a similar question. The cousin becomes silent, looking straight ahead, seemingly lost in those same memories the girl is so determined to dredge up. Her father likes this novel about a guy obsessed with solitude, jealousy, and the passage of time, while her teacher has advised her to read the dramatist par excellence and the writer who revolutionized literature. The girl supposes her cousin would agree with her teacher, but to her surprise, he shows no preference for either option. Instead, he suggests she find her own path. They stop walking as he points to a building, saying one of the great female writers from the beginning of the twentieth century lived there. This city has always attracted great writers, he says, both male and female. Do you think your passion for writing is fugitive, like your father’s, something that will cool over time? he asks. Not a chance in hell, she says. She’s only one step away from finally abandoning the piano for the pen. He then asks her if she’d like him to accompany her to the concert tonight. She tells him her mother will be there. He excuses himself and says he just remembered he had a previous engagement. He won’t have many more opportunities to hear her play live, she says. She’s resolute about giving it all up for literature. He smiles. One day you’ll have to tell me all about this No World, he says while walking away. She stands at a corner watching him, overjoyed at having had the opportunity to spend a few hours with her cousin Dedalus, that legendary member of her family about whom the girl has always wanted to write, a man who’s spent years hiding from the authorities in the neighboring country’s capital. Yet she can’t stop thinking about his voice, about where she might’ve heard it before. And what was he doing in the hotel?