No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  We cut to a scene in an office where the girl is sitting impatiently with the young conductor, brilliant composer, and her mother. The young conductor’s latest conquest is also present, but at this point, there’s nothing new in that. The office’s glass walls make visible a large space where journalists, editors, and other employees are buzzing around like drones. The screenwriter pays without tipping, and makes his way back to the hotel, sticking to the narrow, winding streets that might otherwise be described as confining, labyrinthine, for he wants to empathize with the girl, confined in that office with people she dislikes. He walks slowly, leaning on his cane, the newspapers folded under his other arm, thinking about the girl, about the old guy in the classically-cut suit, the cathedrals, and the Little Sinfonietta, before deciding to stop at an ATM. He inserts the card and enters his PIN. He can’t believe his balance; his account’s almost empty. He takes out enough to survive on for the next few days, and then goes looking for a telephone booth. He wants to ask the producer for another advance, but no one answers the call. He checks the time. Perhaps he’s gone out. He calls the office, but again no one answers. Most businesses are closed for vacation in August, but he decides to try again later. He hangs up and continues to the hotel. If the producer asks to see part of the script, he’ll have to send him something more than sketches for a series of scenes. He’ll have to structure them better, arrange them in a sequence, and type them up. When he reaches the hotel, he stands in front of it for a moment, remembering the far better hotels he’s stayed in before. But duty presses him to forget about this. So he wobbles through the door and proceeds through the lobby, following the frayed track in the carpet that leads to the elevator. On entering his room, he wastes no time in sitting at the typewriter and cleaning up the scene where the girl finds out about the scientist’s illness. Then he tries calling the producer again. He sits at the edge of the bed listening to the rings, until the phone cuts out and he puts it back on the hook. Then he grins mischievously, as a bad guy would in the movies, picks up the phone again, and calls his own house. He waits five rings before hanging up. He stops smiling, remembers the pressing duty he’s already postponed too long, and returns to his post at the typewriter.

  During the interview, the young conductor and brilliant composer act as if their partnership with the girl is destined to go on forever. The girl, on the other hand, is withdrawn, unable to get the article about the old guy in the classically-cut suit out of her head — a guy she discovered was a scientist, an astrophysicist and expert researcher into the possibility of life in other galaxies, a scientist who may in fact be on his deathbed. So she ignores all the questions, lets the others answer them. In fact, she doesn’t participate in the interview at all. The interviewer is a music journalist with a special interest in the Little Sinfonietta, who happens to work for one of the neighboring country’s leading newspapers. So, according to the girl’s mother, the interview is crucial for promoting the tour. The young conductor of the orchestra says you can never be too young to be a conductor, a composer, or a performer. Then he says the individual roles aren’t important in themselves, but that all three must work together if any one of them is to succeed. The girl observes the scene while listening to him sensationalize their story, a story like so many others, about a bunch of unruly kids who have a certain special something about them, a certain aura that sets them apart from other kids, other people. The kinds of kids who are sent to the Scholastic Institute so they can be with other special kids, other people who’ve been labeled exceptional, gifted. The term’s been overused, even abused. What teenager doesn’t believe he’s going to change the world, that all his ideas are great, original? Everyone thinks they’re special at our age, but the young conductor of the orchestra would like to believe that, in our case, it’s a fact. So he affects a grandiosity and self-assurance to give the journalist a visible manifestation of the fact — rattling on about the avant-garde, about how we’ve been, at one time or another, Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and even all three at once, since ours is perhaps the era when the vanguard finally comes to fruition; blathering on about how we have the best of everything, the best age, the best education, the best future, the best opportunity to achieve success, even glory. The girl’s eyes move from the young conductor to her mother, who knows he’s exaggerating, but is nonetheless mesmerized by the future star’s adept handling of the interview. Perhaps our time’s finally come, she hears him say. Then the girl turns to look at the latest conquest, sitting over there, imitating the journalist’s posture, his actions, taking her own notes. The journalist then asks the girl how she came up with the idea of throwing the clown’s nose into the crowd. The girl is stumped. That was perhaps the only spontaneous moment of the entire concert. She eventually says she’s getting sick of having to repeat the same performance over and over, like a ritual. It didn’t seem authentic. The others look at her, stupefied. Anyway, there was an urgent need to bring in extra noses, since the first offering to the crowd set a standard for the rest of the performances, but she’d have preferred to do something different every night instead of ritualizing that one spontaneous act. She thinks, for example, that she could’ve done a performance wearing the jersey of the soccer team she supports, with her favorite player’s name on the back. Then, after the concert, she’d exchange shirts with someone in the crowd. Number ten, she adds, a controversial player at the moment. The reporter isn’t aware he’s been in the news for refusing to return to training. Perhaps he doesn’t even know who the player is. A controversial player for a controversial young woman, her mother must be thinking. There are other questions, but the girl stops paying attention because she feels that the group is just reaffirming its commitment to a future of exploitation, of doing what’s expected of it, the same as so many young men and women in the past who were threatened by their parents with disinheritance unless they abandoned their dreams, did what they were told, married who they were told to marry. No writer who’s worth her salt would ever abandon her dreams for lucre. So she remains silent, happy to let the time run by until the end of the interview, thinking that it’s all just part of a game — quite a pretentious one, but a game nonetheless. But just as all this is going through her mind, the journalist interrupts her rumination: I’ve read somewhere, or maybe someone told me, that you say you can hear voices: I don’t mean like the one you’re hearing now, of course, but voices from another world.

  The screenwriter remembers he hasn’t eaten, so he makes a couple of sandwiches and eats them at his desk while rereading some passages and taking notes. Once finished, he rests a while before freshening up and going out. He’s still thinking about the girl’s interview. Fucking spoiled brats, he thinks, annoyed at the kinds of kids who are given everything on a silver platter, who hardly do any work and still succeed, who achieve their dreams without breaking a sweat. He’s well acquainted with the type. They were once his students. He grants that they’re special, uncommonly talented, but talent isn’t enough. There’s no merit, no accomplishment, if it comes too easily, he thinks. He leans on his cane and starts limping toward the fountain in the center of the plaza. He prefers people like the girl’s father, guys who had to struggle to achieve their goals, who had to kick down doors, not have them opened for them; the kinds of people who would lie, cheat, and steal, if necessary, to succeed. But then they have children, mollycoddled brats who are given the freedom to do whatever they wish, to cast aspersions on the world while playing musical games like dodecaphony, or whatever, who invent silly terms like “No World,” who have parents that allow them to sulk through a very important interview, who didn’t have to shed a drop of their own blood for the fortune they’ll eventually inherit. Who’ve never experienced suffering, he concludes. What would he have written about if he didn’t have this script about musical prodigies? The screenwriter contemplates the café terrace on the other side of the plaza. The barmaid notices him watching, but continues cleaning the table before hurrying back inside. W
hat would he have written about if he was free to choose? He doesn’t know. Maybe screenwriters were treated differently back in the golden age, had more freedom. The golden age, he repeats aloud, addressing the fountain. Might there be any truth to such myths? He likes to think so. At least it’s something to believe in, periods in history far better than the present one, which the world won’t see the like of again, something to look back on when there’s nothing to look forward to. He wonders if, sometime in the future, there will be a golden age he’ll be too old to appreciate, too set in his ways to understand, or too blind to even recognize. Where are the myths about today, for example? He smiles to himself. There can’t be a golden age happening now. If a golden age stuck its head over the parapet, the marketplace would shoot it off. Maybe he’s deceiving himself, maybe he’s living in the middle of a golden age, and he’s the only screenwriter everyone’s ignoring, because he’s considered unfashionable, unmarketable, by those who think he’s only an old retiree who supplements his pension by teaching a bunch of brats, some of whom are not only gifted but rich — twice blessed, in other words — as if having one or the other isn’t enough. Maybe he truly despises these kids, resents them. He doesn’t want to think about it. He turns his attention to modern cinema, which he feels he knows less and less about every day. Perhaps it’s because he hasn’t been paying attention, or hasn’t been keeping up, or whatever — he can’t think of the right phrase. Perhaps his preoccupation with the past has caused him to fall behind, made him antiquated, and he hasn’t the strength or desire to catch up. Besides, it would be an uncomfortable transition, to suddenly return to the present. He can’t cope with sudden changes. Unlike the girl’s father: an old agent asleep in bed who is suddenly awakened by a phone call, a knock on the door, or a gunshot, or something, and finds he has to immediately adapt to this alarming situation. It’s an old movie cliché that’s been used again and again, to good effect, over the years. The screenwriter doesn’t want to think of himself as an old cliché that still has its uses. An out-of-shape soccer player, rather, that’s lost his passion, his instinct for the game, and is consequently at the point of retiring. He’d liked to have written about two old detectives who come out of retirement to solve a cold case that’s been obsessing them for years: men who live in the past, in their memories. It’s an old idea, about which he couldn’t even manage a first draft. Why? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know why he began thinking about those old detectives just now. If he hates these gifted kids so much, what is it he finds so enchanting about the girl? Not only is she rich, and a paragon among child prodigies, she’s also famous: thrice blessed. He should hate her more than all the rest, but he doesn’t, he isn’t able. Is there only so much hatred one can harbor for a person before it somehow short-circuits? All he knows is it’s a contradiction. He circumambulates the plaza. When he passes the café, he notices there aren’t many customers, and he can’t see the waitress, so he decides to pass it by. He needs to do some thinking anyway, and he prefers to walk while doing so, and he won’t stop until he resolves the contradictions in his story, and he assumes they can all be resolved during a single stroll. Two retired detectives remembering the old days. An idea no one today would touch with a barge pole. But what about the guy who agreed to produce the screenplay he’s writing now? Contradictions, he murmurs while walking to the hotel.

  The screenwriter goes over the scene in which the girl discovers the guy in the classically-cut suit is in fact a seriously ill scientist. The girl reads about him in the newspaper as she waits for her mother to collect her for the interview. It seems a little different compared to the article she saved in her diary, so she goes to a kiosk to check what the other newspapers have to say. Her mind races as she riffles through the pages, wondering what this guy was doing with her father just before he fell ill. She doesn’t expect the newspapers will tell her. Each newspaper sketches its own portrait of the man, although they all agree in one respect, that he’s an old eccentric who, in recent years, had withdrawn almost completely from public life. The girl doesn’t remember her article saying this. In fact, she thinks it said quite the reverse. The screenwriter senses the girl’s fascination with the man: a fascination they share, although their thoughts hardly converge in any other way. The scene then blurs into three or four parts he can’t quite distinguish. He looks at his watch. It’s late, and he’s sleepy. What’s the girl doing right now? Perhaps sitting beside her mother in a taxi; or beside the young conductor in that small theater, wondering what would’ve become of them had twelve-tone music never been invented; or beside the brilliant composer, who repeats the same answer he already gave to the question, whatever it was. She could even be helping to train the new conquest, demonstrating for her on the piano in exchange for answers to personal questions. But whatever it is she happens to be doing, her thoughts are the same, for she’s only thinking about those newspaper articles, and the strange feeling that’s suddenly come over her. She used to unload her agitation on the young conductor and brilliant composer, but now that those relationships have ended, she feels alone, and has no one else in the world to confide in. She imagines being strong, capable of creating layers of protection against the unknown entities lurking in the shadows, entities she senses could leap out at any moment. She feels uncomfortable, has lost her focus. The church is full, as usual, but she doesn’t see anyone she knows. It’s a magnificent church, with a high belfry for communicating with other civilizations, although it looks far less imposing compared with the large cathedral towers. For an instant during her recital, she thinks she sees her cousin Dedalus flashing by, like lightning that was absorbed into the crowd, and she wonders whether she just imagined it, although she does remember inviting him on the day they met. She searches for her mother’s face in the audience, who might be able to corroborate what she saw, but she can’t find her in any of the tiers. Her thoughts turn again to the gravely ill scientist. The articles stress his condition has worsened, which means he must have already been sick when she met him. She’d have liked to talk to him about the cathedrals transmitting and receiving messages to and from space. One of the articles speculated on why he retired from public life and abandoned his cutting-edge research to become a recluse. Something prevents her from talking to her father about it — a gut feeling, or something like it, tells her not to do so. Others obtain an advantage over you if they know too much about what goes on in your life. She’ll admit to any foibles he might deem typical of a teenager, and update him on the musical career he shows little interest in, but nothing more. There are no such things as coincidences, she says to herself, not knowing why she’s said it again: a proposition that’s become a platitude.

  He can no longer stand the solitude. Once again, it seems, the girl won’t be coming, and even the disturbing dream he had only hours before has now left him. She thinks they’re following her, so she must be breaking her usual routines. She’s probably sorry she can’t make it. After primping himself in front of the mirror, he takes his jacket out of the closet. He’d feel naked without it. It’s a sultry night, perhaps too warm to go cruising, but his desire burns even hotter. As he closes the door behind him, he smiles to himself. They say old age vitiates desire. His whole life he’s been hearing such lies. As the elevator descends, he taps the floor with small impatient strokes, thinking he’d strike anyone in the street who got in his way. He’ll restrain himself, though, because of his cultivation, his manners, his savoir-faire: the kinds of things they used to teach in school, which no one teaches anymore. Or perhaps the real reason he’ll restrain himself is fear. He walks in the direction of the boulevards until he manages to hail a taxi, telling the driver to take him to the street where he first met the black prostitute. A few meters above the sex shop, he finds her leaning at the entrance to the stairway, as if she’s been waiting for him. He greets her with a hug, tells her how miserable his life is, that he no longer understands the world, and that the world no longer understands him. She strokes
his hair, and asks him about his work. She’s asked him the same question before, but it doesn’t matter, she knows why he came: to be disburdened, to be allowed to repeat the same story as before about himself, the same rant about the rest of the world, until he’s satisfied, or until she can’t bear to listen anymore. After telling her how he became a screenwriter, he starts talking about the old days, how they’re invariably better than the new ones. Then he talks about the screenplay he’s writing. Do you know why I called it No World? She has no idea. Because the world we’re living in isn’t real. It doesn’t exist. You and I don’t exist. Is that what you mean by No World? she asks. But the screenwriter isn’t listening to her, or perhaps he doesn’t want to be waylaid during a monologue, or perhaps he’s still trying to figure out why the girl apposes those two words, what exactly she’s referring to. So he ignores the prostitute’s question because he doesn’t know the answer himself. And it doesn’t end there, he says, continuing as if she’d never asked it, there’s also the matter of truth and falsity. Let’s imagine nothing around us is real. The screenwriter pauses, allowing her time to conceive of the scenario, but the prostitute instead takes advantage of the pause to ask him if No World is the definitive title for his movie. He nods his head, says it’s a title he borrowed, but then insists nothing is definitive in this life. She keens pityingly, combing his gray hair with her fingers.