No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  Near the hotel, there’s a second-hand clothes store, and the screenwriter decides to go inside and have a look. He never used to think of buying anything in a place like this. It’s true they haven’t always been around, he tells himself, but even if they had been, he’d never have thought to enter one, much less buy anything inside. These days, however, if he needed some pants, a jacket, or possibly a new shirt, he might see it as an obligation. Necessity can alter habits, he thinks, remembering it’s already his second visit. He doesn’t even know why he’s come into the store again, but it’s clearly something to do with his financial situation. On emerging from between rows of hangers, he notices a sign announcing, in flawless calligraphy, the sale of second-hand clothing. He goes outside and looks in the display window for a moment. Then he hobbles to the nearest metro station. He’s not traveling far, but at his pace, it would take forever. The screenwriter wants to see the Grand Central Station first hand, that curious place where the girl’s father and his associate McGregor swap vigils, waiting interminably for who knows what. He wants to see the stakeout point, try to determine why they’ve chosen it. Perhaps he should avoid the place altogether though. He knows the territory is forbidden to him. But curiosity, as usual, overrides his better judgment. Sometimes, he wonders if he only writes scripts to live the lives of his characters, beings that only exist in his dreams, people he’d like to be. The mind is a strange thing, full of oddities, he says. According to the girl, nothing exists outside it. But to live the lives of characters that only exist in the mind is to waste one’s life chasing chimeras. There are people that dedicate their lives to research; scientists, both great and minor, who work for the benefit and improvement of our species, whose discoveries are in fact useful. He tries to think of some examples: cars, refrigerators, knives, bread — food in general, he supposes. . These people don’t just make stuff up; they don’t just fabricate a loaf of bread into existence. Nonetheless, the screenwriter can’t help thinking of all the bureaucracy and political skulduggery a scientist has to deal with before he can make these amenities available to the public. Then there are those who work in the dream industry. They don’t deal with reality at all. The screenwriter realizes this is the second time he’s repeated this thought pattern, invoked ideas and images exactly as before. It must be something to do with his age. Dreams, flashbacks, fantasies, chimeras, that which isn’t real, that which once was, that which cannot be, that which he wants to be. To live together with the girl, the greatest adventure of his life. From the steps of the station, he surveys the hotel balconies on the other side of the plaza where, he imagines, the girl and her father, and maybe even McGregor, when he’s not in the station, can frequently be seen looking back. But then he thinks McGregor unlikely to be on the balcony, since he wants to avoid an encounter with the girl. The screenwriter has no way of telling which of the balconies is the girl’s, so he heads inside and sits at one of the station cafés, near the platforms. After ordering a coffee, he takes his notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket and describes in detail various things going on around him, such as the way the people move, the difference between those who pass through the station regularly and those who don’t, those who stride purposefully, their eyes fixed head, and those who look lost, who look left and right then stare at departure boards, scanning for numbers to tell them where they should go, who only deign to ask for directions as a last resort. He wants to immerse himself in those places frequented by the girl, her father, and her father’s enigmatic associate. Right now, the people in the station are like the extras at the peripheries of the shot in which he occupies the center, contemplating everything going on around him. He wouldn’t know the girl’s father if he bumped into him. He doesn’t remember ever having seen him, or the girl’s mother for that matter. They’re the type of people who get other people to take their children to school, like servants or bodyguards. The screenwriter thinks it’s immoral for parents to let strangers take a young girl to school. Near him, some travelers are boarding a train. He pays his bill and crumples the receipt into his pocket along with his notebook. Then he leans on his cane to get to his feet and wobbles slowly toward the main door. Damn leg, he murmurs, as he descends the steps, and surveys again the balconies of the hotels facing the station.

  It’s Saturday, in the early hours of the morning. The girl gets back to the hotel in a bad mood. She feels like she’s wasted valuable time with the Little Sinfonietta. Sometimes, she feels like a fool. It’s usually when the young conductor’s nearby. She’s started fighting with him again. If he thinks she’s going to change the way she plays, he’s a bigger fool than her. The 5 Pieces for piano and the No World Symphony are different compositions and they should be performed differently. Both the young conductor and the brilliant composer are wrong. She finds her father sitting in a chair, talking on the telephone. Judging by his tone, she guesses McGregor is on the line. One of his legs is resting on the bed, which is half-covered with newspapers and other documents, and on which two cell phones lie, waiting forever, it seems, for a call that never comes. At the head of the bed is a pistol inside a leather holster. It’s not the gun her father usually carries. The girl knows this, of course. She likes to think of it as a game, guessing whose gun it is. Her father also passes the time playing games — whether in the hotel room waiting for a call, diverting himself with a newspaper or two, or in the station bar when he’s on watch, scrutinizing the faces of people walking past. Life’s full of these little games. It would be unbearable if this wasn’t the case. If something goes wrong, the girl recalls, it only has meaning when it’s considered part of a game. If she’s said it once, she’s said it a thousand times to the young conductor and brilliant composer, when they were still her friends. What is a game? she asks, as if to the female student. It’s dark outside, although light from the plaza still reaches the balcony. If she turns out the light, her silhouette on the opposite wall stretches to the ceiling. It’s never quiet here. It’s too near the station. It doesn’t matter, though, the girl’s not tired. Not going to get some sleep? her father asks. But sleep’s the last thing on her mind. She shakes her head, putting the possibility to bed, and goes to the laptop to write. “3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. 4. A thought is a proposition with a sense. The game isn’t a true proposition, thinks the female student. The game is just another way of imposing meaning on something that has no meaning. It’s like trying to perform the part of a certain character that could be the female student herself. To become that character in every sense, to breathe the same air, think the same thoughts, live every instant of one’s life just as that character would. The female student feels she’s an actress, and that she’s playing a certain part. It’s not theater, though, but a way of life. The character speaks with her voice, but it’s as though she herself were something other than the character she embodies. She immerses herself in the character and identifies with her. Some people do this by gathering around tables and performing from a script. But for others, this isn’t enough. They need a stage and props to help them bring a character to life. The female student, on the other hand, prefers to just live permanently in her role: on the metro, at the beach, even here, lying next to the old professor. One moment it’s W, the next Ka. The game then acquires a dimension we didn’t know it had. It’s not that difficult to play, but the amount of pleasure and pain one derives from playing is potentially unlimited, she thinks. There are no pieces to move, no cards to be dealt, no dice that need to be rolled; all one need do is acknowledge that life is a game, and that everything is part of that game. To live such a life is to play.” The girl comes out of her trance, leans back in the chair, and yawns. She looks over at her father, thinks about him and McGregor on their interminable vigils. Who are they waiting for? she wonders, before rephrasing, On whom do they wait? And going further, What type of game are they playing? And further still, what part does the scientist play in it? She doesn’t have an answer for any of these ques
tions. The girl will also have to play. What part does all their waiting play in the game?

  On the café terrace, the screenwriter orders a coffee. It’s raining, so he decides to sit beneath the awning and write. It’s ten in the morning, and the street’s almost empty. Perhaps it’s only for the time being. He observes the activity around him, and over at the café on the other side of the plaza. Some people are walking with their umbrellas; others don’t seem to mind getting wet. Summer rain’s different, he thinks. Tepid rain doesn’t bother them. Besides, many don’t have far to go. Perhaps they’re taking a shortcut through the plaza. How does he know this? He doesn’t. He’s guessing from their clothes, the way they’re walking, the expressions on their faces, and he further guesses they might be going to get something to eat in one of the several sandwich shops and snack bars around. . His leg’s no longer bothering him, but he decides to stay under the awning along with all the tourists and wait for the rain to subside. The air is fresh; the noise of the rain against the pavement is pleasing to him. Yes, he’ll spend the time writing. Once again, the image he focuses on before beginning is the girl’s. The story is his own invention, but he knows he borrows heavily from the girl, from the stories she tells him, from the extracts of her novel she reads to him or that get delivered to his hotel, with commentaries scribbled in the margins, which he incorporates into his own narrative. It’s dawn. The girl’s looking out from the balcony, standing almost exactly where she was the previous night while observing the front of the Grand Central Station, as if deliberating whether or not to go there and search for whomever, or whatever, her father and his associate are waiting for. She goes inside and writes in her diary until the noise of the traffic and people outside grows to the point of distraction. At some point in the night, her father left, and took the laptop with him. He never gives her an explanation for his sudden disappearances, and she never has any idea where he goes. When he eventually returns, she notices more newspapers folded under his arm. He hangs his jacket on the back of a chair and leaves the laptop case to one side. He looks tired, as if he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. He routinely asks the girl how her writing’s going, because he thinks she likes it when he asks. But without waiting for a response, he lights a cigarette, lies back on the bed, and stares listlessly up at the ceiling. The girl takes stock of their relationship: a relationship at once strange and fascinating, she thinks, worthy of being written about, or depicted on the big screen. She doesn’t know why, but she has a profound sense that she’s living in one of those defining periods in history. Writing is beginning to dominate her life more and more, and now she finds herself at the cusp of an issue she hasn’t dared to mention yet, but which she hoped would eventually be resolved. If she had to describe how her father is passing his time, she’d start by saying he waits. She doesn’t know what for. He just waits — as ash falls on the bedspread, and he brushes it away with his hand; as he reads the occasional newspaper, or takes the occasional look around the room; as he occasionally ventures to the balcony to look at the Grand Central Station opposite, before coming back inside, somber, resigned, because all he can do is wait. He passes time like the screenwriter, in other words, who locks himself away in his room, and spends all day strapped to a writing desk, typing, in order to get nowhere with his script. The girl’s father reads a newspaper, then another, and another. The kiosk in the station sells newspapers from all over the world. Occasionally, he picks up the tome of his favorite author — the one obsessed with jealousy and lost time. Appropriate for someone who has nothing else to do with his time but wait. At times, the girl is sitting near him writing in her diary, or typing away on the laptop. They hardly ever speak to one another, each engrossed by their own work. If words are exchanged at all, it’s only on general terms, school, the concerts, the weather, and generally about her, never him — although she knows that he’s only passing the time, that he and his colleague McGregor are waiting for something to happen, for someone to make an appearance, perhaps someone who will be arriving after a long journey, having come from somewhere far away, unaware two predators are lying in wait, planning an ambuscade. Who knows, perhaps it’s another scientist. The girl delights in speculating about the possibilities, in writing about them in her diary, perhaps with a view to incorporating them in her novel. Indeed, she can’t stop thinking and writing, especially when her father’s in the room, for his presence renews her fascination. She doesn’t think it trivial that the man in the classically-cut suit happens to know her mother. A seriously ill scientist, according to the newspapers, an acquaintance of her parents, and a longtime acquaintance at that, for he recognized in the girl’s features the face of her mother when she was young. Occasionally, the girl’s father receives a phone call from McGregor, and he always goes to the balcony to speak to him, looking down at the plaza, as if addressing him directly. But the girl knows this isn’t possible. In her imagination, McGregor always calls from the station platforms when he’s on his watch. Then, when her father hangs up, he just resumes waiting. The girl never asks him why. By now she has the good sense to know what not to ask. Occasionally he connects the laptop to the phone line and checks his emails; occasionally he even sends a few. Later on, the girl continues writing her story about the old professor of philosophy, the hunter of aliens who also spends his time holed up in various rooms around a desolate city, such as an abandoned control room, where he thinks about the past, looking through windows that offer him a view of the stars. And while she writes, we don’t know if she’s completely focused on her narrative, or distracted, throwing an occasional sidelong glance at her father, with the hope of exploring the laptop’s classified files, and uncovering a trove of secrets. She’s tried before of course, but every time the system demands a password, which every time she fails to guess, and so is left only to imagine what untold stories are waiting to be unlocked. She comes out of her trance, sees her father asleep on the bed, fully clothed, so she goes over to search through the newspapers for the strange announcement that caught her attention the day before.