No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  The screenwriter thinks, or perhaps he’s hoping against hope, that if he’s more prudent with his spending, he’ll manage to struggle out of the financial quandary he’s in. In any case, a creditable screenwriter ought to know, or at least have a good idea, how to finish the story he proposes to write. He pays for breakfast and takes a long detour to the river on his way back to the hotel. Today’s a good day, even his limp has relented somewhat, and he feels he can walk any distance with ease. He buys fruit, cheese, and hamburger buns, food that’s easy to prepare, in case he doesn’t feel like leaving his room again later when he’s hungry. The newspapers are piling up on the bed. On their front pages, he’s written notes such as: today, it rained; or, the heat was unbearable today; or, interesting article today on the star of that soccer team. He looks out the window at the building opposite, at the floor exactly level with his. It seems like an eternity since the woman showed her face. He’s not happy with the phrase, “showed her face,” and tries to think of another. “Made an appearance,” perhaps. Today’s newspaper has an article about the trafficking of radioactive material, another on the soccer star, who still hasn’t said when he’ll be returning to training, and another on the worst terrorist in history, whose lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the government for kidnapping their client on territory outside their jurisdiction. The screenwriter reads a long article about the general who succeeded in capturing him, the head of the team of lawyers who’ll be defending him, and the judge who — assuming he’s found guilty — will be sentencing him. The general is depicted as an agent provocateur, the perfect spy, a person no one’s succeeded in photographing. The screenwriter puts this newspaper on top of the pile and lights a cigarette. The kind of work the girl’s father might do, he says. He imagines him in the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station, doing whatever it is he does there — spying, monitoring. The screenwriter’s beating around the bush. But the girl’s notes aren’t very clear about it either. Perhaps her father’s been especially cautious around her, concealed his activities well, or perhaps she knows all and doesn’t want anyone else to. He exhales some smoke while standing up, goes to the bedside table, and picks up the receiver. He dials the producer’s number, listens to the rings, not counting, but murmuring to himself: money; another advance; I’d appreciate whatever you can give. Not asking for a specific amount makes his situation seem more desperate. Oh yes, it’s a magnificent screenplay, reminiscent of those legendary scripts written during the golden age. Perhaps he shouldn’t boast, he thinks while waiting for the phone to cut out — these aren’t the words the producer wants to hear. No one believes in magnificent screenplays anymore. Of course he wants a perfect script, but “perfect” for the producer doesn’t mean a work of art. It means a work that has all the qualities that betoken commercial success. That’s what people today seem to mean by words like “great,” “perfect,” “magnificent,” etc. And they all mean the same thing to the producer. So if the script is described as magnificent, it had better be with this understanding in mind. The screenwriter didn’t notice the phone cutting out, or the fact he’s gone on holding the phone notwithstanding. He hangs up and dials his home number. Fucking August, he complains. Like a Sunday protracted to the length of a whole month. A month when the world seems to come to a standstill, when no one does anything productive, when even eating may be thought a supererogation. If I hate Sundays, I fucking hate Augusts, he says while hanging up the telephone, and angrily crushing his cigarette in the ashtray.

  She prepared her question carefully: concealed the question mark, transformed it into something subtler. Her father’s busy putting his papers in order. She watches him, mentions she saw Cousin Dedalus in the crowd. He seems too distracted to notice she even said anything. So she just silently watches as he puts certain documents in order, perhaps the same documents she saw before: photographs and reports from the space agency relating to sightings of aliens and flying saucers. He holds up an old black and white snapshot of the scientist and some other people. He flips it over, sees “1st Hunter Brigade” clearly written on the back. He then puts it among some other photographs, as if the title had revealed to him its proper classification. Although she’s a little nervous, the girl feigns a lack of interest in what he’s doing, and keeps talking about her cousin. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary I keep bumping into him? Her father asks her how she could’ve picked him out in the shadows of the dimly lit church, and from so far away too. She doesn’t tell him about her sixth sense, that she’s also detected him under similar circumstances. Her father continues working away, not paying much attention to her, so she turns to her diary. She plans to go snooping through his papers later on. Why didn’t she do it earlier when she had the chance? The timing wasn’t right. She grabs the newspaper and continues scouring through the articles. She’s suddenly developed a great interest in the neighboring country’s newspapers. She always reads the one she buys her father every morning in the lobby downstairs, and others she might see in any bars, cafés, or restaurants she happens to come across. Indeed, whatever else she might be doing, whether it’s sitting down to eat or drink, taking notes for her novel, or simply relaxing, she always has a newspaper at hand. Her father wants to know why she doesn’t buy all the newspapers together at the kiosk and stop all the running around. She doesn’t answer but instead asks her own question, trying her best to conceal the question mark: Dad, what if all the churches and cathedrals were really centers for transmitting and receiving messages to and from space? Her father doesn’t think it’s a bad idea. She might be able to use it in her novel. The girl returns to the newspaper. She’s looking for some news on the scientist. She has a bad feeling any news will be a confirmation of his death. But there’s nothing about the scientist in today’s papers. So the girl decides to go out and lock herself inside the rehearsal booth with the young conductor’s latest conquest and help her with some of the pieces she’s having trouble with; in fact, the very same pieces the girl performs as a clown. Afterward, back in the hotel, she continues her story about the female student, although it’s not really her story at all, but that of the old professor of philosophy, the alien hunter who hasn’t even got a license to hunt. The female student only represents an idea, albeit the main idea of the story. “2.221 What the no picture represents is its sense. The female student walks breezily along the street, unaware that the young guy she cold-shouldered back in class is following her, a potential witness of her assignation with the professor.” The girl looks up from the computer screen. She catches her father watching her. But he quickly lowers his eyes to the newspaper. Who knows what’s going on in his head? “2.222 The agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity. After some time has elapsed — perhaps only a few hours or so, because the female student’s classmate isn’t a dolt, and was quick to figure out what was going on — the professor’s wife receives an anonymous phone call. She hangs up, and sits down slowly — as if sinking, but hesitatingly — into an armchair, her expression transitioning as she sits, becoming forlorn; her open eyes letting fall two tears, unsynchronized, which run unevenly down her cheeks. It’s not the first time her husband’s cheated on her. He’s been having affairs with women almost from the day they were married. Some were even close acquaintances. She wasn’t expecting him to change. At his age, most people have learned to rein in their desires, to control their rage, moderate their passions, but with him, it seems, old habits die hard. It seems he’s entered a strange phase in life, a desperate clinging onto what he imagines is slipping away — his youth, his vitality, his sexuality — and he overcompensates for the growing lack instead of rationing what’s left, like most people. It’s as if he believes it’s his last winter, and wants to burn down the storehouse to experience a final day of summer. Now that she thinks about it, he’s been acting strangely the past few months. But, then again, perhaps she’s only thinking this because she’s jealous. Maybe he’s had enough of her. It could be
as simple as that. Even so, for the woman, it’s nothing new. What really disturbs her is the fact he’s having a relationship with a minor: a student of the Academy. She doesn’t know why, but she thinks there’s something different about this one, despite the fact she’s so young. She’s probably not even the first teenager he’s had. Maybe she’s thinking as a mother would, imagining what she’d do if she discovered her daughter was having an affair with an older man — a much older man; a retired much older man who gives classes to supplement his pension.” When her father finally goes out, the girl searches the hotel room for his documents. The room isn’t very big, so it doesn’t take her long to realize her father took them with him. She can’t even begin to guess where he might have gone, or why he took the documents. She should’ve paid more attention. All she can do is lament another lost opportunity and return resignedly to her writing. Her vocation should preclude her being distracted by what goes on around her anyway. She considers the old professor’s wife. “There’s no doubt about it. What the anonymous voice just told her is the truth. But she hasn’t decided what to do about it, so she’s going to keep quiet. She won’t even mention a word about it. 2.224 It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false. When the old professor finally gets home, he finds his wife taciturn, so he suspects something isn’t right. She gives the excuse that she has a terrible headache. Later, in the kitchen, he resolves to break the silence by asking about her day.” The elevator stops on the landing, and she hears the sound of McGregor’s footsteps approaching in the corridor — slowing, hesitating as they pass the girl’s door, before receding as they proceed toward his room. The girl listens as he secures the latch of his door, thinking about their inevitable meeting, a man with whom she’s only ever exchanged a few words on the telephone. But she won’t leave anything to chance. She’s already let too many opportunities slip through her fingers, so she intends to plan the meeting exactly. She’ll interrogate him about the cathedrals, railway stations, and airports. The idea of using cathedrals as meeting points isn’t a bad one, but there wouldn’t be any privacy. The young conductor thinks if aliens really are among us, maybe she should try arranging a meeting by putting an ad in a newspaper. She returns to her writing. She needs to persist if she’s to continue making progress. She still has to consolidate the relationship between the female student and old professor — two beings from another galaxy. They must come from another galaxy. It wouldn’t make sense if this wasn’t the case.

  At night, there are scarcely any tables available, but the screenwriter scours the café terrace and eventually manages to find one. So he sits down, and waits to be served. He still doesn’t understand the significance of the aliens for the girl. He considers whether she herself might be an alien hunter. But there wouldn’t be many female hunters, he speculates, before dismissing the idea completely. Yet another ideation about which she daily obsesses, like the voices she thinks she hears, or the shadow that stalks her at all hours of the night, or the necessity to write. He thinks about the scientist, his radio telescopes roving the heavens for signs of intelligent life. Unlike the scientist, the girl must think along different lines. He’d almost say in terms of a game. What if things could be done much more simply? If they were still among us, perhaps a simple announcement would suffice. The right announcement need only contain a few key words to be understood, perhaps in code, since it would be naïve to publicize communications directly. Maybe they’d use special magazines with a limited circulation instead of popular newspapers. But the girl needs to get to the bottom of some mysteries before committing to a rigorous search. She doesn’t want to lose track by attacking on too many fronts simultaneously. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to finish her book while doing recitals and preparing to record the 5 Pieces for piano. If she incorporates her search for extraterrestrials and her attempts to make contact with them into her writing, she’ll end up with a kind of detective novel. But she shouldn’t blur the line between her real-world obsessions and the things she considers only fiction. Still, combining two endeavors in this way could save her some time and effort. The screenwriter now sees the waitress on the other side of the terrace and is surprised when she seems to notice him at almost the same moment. It’s the first time she’s held eye contact with him for longer than an instant. Perhaps it’s a sign, a golden opportunity, he thinks, and yet the waitress continues avoiding his table. He knows by now she won’t come to take his order unless he signals her, and it needn’t be an elaborate gesture. Moments later, she approaches, and the screenwriter can’t help himself: What time do you get off work, beautiful? She keeps walking, pretending she hasn’t heard him. If only you knew what you were missing, he says aloud, while reaching for the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. You’d swear I was a goddamn alien. ., he adds as he puts the filter between his lips.

  He’s seen it dozens of times in X-rated movies. Sometimes, it’s done with two men and a woman; sometimes, two women and a man; he’s only rarely seen three men. Instead of hearing about it from the girl’s lips, the screenwriter would rather be watching from behind a screen, or by applying his eye to a peephole. Even a photograph would be better than a verbal account of her sexual encounter with the young conductor and brilliant composer. She asks him to imagine her naked on her knees, straddling the young conductor, while the brilliant composer probes her from behind with his tongue. They begin slowly, gently, gradually becoming more frenetic, while their breathing gets heavier, their moans louder, until their movement, breathing, moaning, seem to synchronize, as if they were performing one of the brilliant composer’s pieces, in which each has their own part to play, but all have the same end in mind. The girl plays with the young conductor’s penis, occasionally putting it in her mouth, and the screenwriter imagines her doing so wildly, hungrily, as if her life depended on it. The brilliant composer maintains his position behind her, holding her legs with one hand, since she keeps moving about uncontrollably, while using his free hand to pleasure her. Finally, she gets on her back and lets the other two cum on her face. And thus the performance concludes. The screenwriter can’t take any more. A mixture of love and anguish is causing his stomach to churn, and he feels like throwing up. He hasn’t felt this sickness in years, he thinks, this pain. And yet, he searches her features, replaying in his head the scene she just described. The two of them lie back on the sheets. Weren’t you fighting with them? he asks her. The girl says they were all drinking and taking drugs when it happened. Perhaps they were taking revenge on me, she speculates, although she says it without conviction.

  The first thing he does in the morning is call the producer. Money, another advance, I’d appreciate whatever you can send, he keeps repeating to himself, as if every time he calls he needs to persuade himself of his desperate situation in order to sound more convincing. Oh it’s a magnificent screenplay, he murmurs, I’d say it’s as good as anything written in the golden age. Then, he changes his mind. His insecurity always causes him to change his mind. But he doesn’t think the producer wants to hear about the golden age, and he doesn’t want any magnificent screenplays either, unless, by “magnificent,” the screenwriter means a guaranteed box-office hit. In fact, nothing would delight the producer more than talking about a potential box-office hit. The screenwriter knows he’s gone through this scenario before, had the same thoughts about money and the producer the last time he tried to call him. He hangs up and goes down to have breakfast. Afterward, in the lobby, he’s reading in the paper about a Nobel Prize winner who’s died. The screenwriter doesn’t recall ever reading his works. But there are so many great books that reading them all would leave him with little time to do anything else in life. After perusing the personal ads, he gets up and limps to the elevator. Damn leg, he grumbles on the way to his room, impatient to get back to his writing. Today, the girl’s wearing sunglasses. It seems the circles around her eyes, which the screenwriter finds so endearing on a teenager’s countenance, are now looking particular
ly bad to her. She’d prefer not to linger on the events of the past few days. She likes to think they were part of a game; that everything’s part of a game; the game of the world, the universe perhaps, but a game nonetheless. She’s repeated this same mantra ad nauseam. Everything’s a game, life’s a game. If nothing exists, or if nothing is true, then why not think of it as a game? Her theory’s plausible. She could return to the hotel and speak with her father, offer to help him, but she has her own plans. She wanders the streets of the neighboring country’s capital immersed in her usual thoughts about her novel, about her mother, and the young conductor. . She should’ve gone to rehearsals but was too lazy. So she goes into a library instead, and walks past books of every sort, from well-thumbed new releases piled up on tables near the front, to dusty old classics on inconspicuous shelves in the back. She’s baffled at not knowing any of the fashionable authors. Their new books are always announced with fanfare and tickertape, because in the neighboring country’s capital, there are authors who sell in the hundreds of thousands. The girl has certainly not sold so many records. She wonders which contemporary authors she should read, how to separate the grain from the chaff. She’s always avoided reading her contemporaries. But a writer should know the works of other writers, both old and new, develop a kinship with both the past and present. She doesn’t recognize any of their names. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, a means of avoiding a contest with the living. It’s easier if the opponent’s already dead. She takes a book from a shelf and reads the beginning: “One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch. .” Then she reads the beginning of another: “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” There’s a writer whose name has a K or Ka, and he happens to be one of the most important writers of the century; who knows, perhaps the voices she hears are directing her on a literary path, pointing out new things for her to read, new approaches to writing, new perspectives on literature in general. This writer may in fact be an extraterrestrial. She checks a book with a photograph of him, but it must’ve been retouched, because she can’t decide whether or not she sees a faint halo around him. She reads the beginnings of several more books before leaving the store and continuing on her way, a way without a particular end, for she hasn’t one in mind — the way of a vagabond, in other words. A foosball bar would be an end, she thinks, but she can’t think of any that are nearby. She starts walking in the direction of the river, but then changes her mind and turns back. Maybe she should just go to rehearsals after all, shut herself away in a rehearsal booth with the Little Sinfonietta and the young conductor’s latest conquest. She doesn’t know why she mentioned the group and the conquest as separate entities. It seems the girl still can’t accept her as a member of the group, as she’s yet to even set foot onstage. Perhaps she’s more of a member than the girl at this point — or at any point for that matter, for the girl has never really conformed to the role of orchestra member. Being the concert starlet she is, perhaps she thinks she’s different from the rest. Perhaps she didn’t want them having too great an influence on her. She can’t remember who was responsible for inducting her — her mother, the young conductor, or the brilliant composer: it was probably all of them, but she always felt that being an orchestra member stifled her individuality and creativity. The girl is at a counter writing a personal ad to be published in all the major newspapers. She has trouble with the text of the message, though, because it should be phrased in a way that disguises its meaning to all but the intended recipients, a code that only the aliens are able to decipher. She decides to leave it as simple as possible, and writes: “I hear voices. 1. The No World is all that is the case.” Then she debates whether to sign it K. or Ka. She hears Ka instead of K, hears the difference between them, perhaps it’s a clue. She signs her name Ka. At the exit, next to a window, a shadow tries passing her unnoticed. The girl walks into its path and the hairs on her arms bristle, detecting a presence. Suddenly, she has the feeling again of being followed. She decides, once and for all, to get to the bottom of the mystery, so she turns around and goes back to where she felt the presence. She then considers if it’s ill advised to confront an unknown entity unarmed. But it doesn’t matter. When she reaches the agency window, the unknown entity’s already vanished. For how long has it been following her? she wonders as she heads for the next block to hail a taxi. The rehearsal space isn’t far, but she asks the driver to take a detour. When she passes the classifieds office again, she can’t help darting another glance at the window. A few meters further on, she sees cousin Dedalus strolling casually while reading a newspaper. She watches him, wondering if he’ll catch sight of her. But he doesn’t see her — or if he has seen her, he’s doing a good job pretending he hasn’t.