No World Concerto

by A. G. Porta

  Youth is that condition of being without a past; old age, of being without a future. For this reason, the screenwriter thinks the girl’s character is ultimately uninteresting. He, on the other hand, has a surfeit of memories to draw upon, to crowd his horizons with, and yet he refuses to do so because these memories are mostly bad, mostly painful. So, content to languish in no-man’s-land, his thoughts always revolve around the girl. She has no past to speak of, but strangely, neither does she seem to have a future. The glittering path to fame and fortune has abruptly vanished, and now a thick mist beclouds her horizon. The future has become for her a dream instead of a reality, a hope instead of a certainty, a squinting at some indiscernible offing. And yet, the girl still has a purpose, has an aim: why not write in such a way about the future? Perhaps in reading the author her father holds in highest esteem, the girl is learning something about herself. If someone considered to be unhealthy, once a salon wit, now a bedridden recluse who lacks the strength to write a serious novel, who never showed any sign of wanting to write one, who’d rather have cultivated good manners, who seemed to hold courtesy at a higher premium than celerity of thought; if such a man could successfully disguise his commitment to his craft, his belief in his vocation, and still produce a monumental masterpiece for the ages, why can’t the girl? Youth is that condition of being without a past. Time is a dimension added to those of space, but this is not the sort of time that can be measured by a watch: it’s the girl’s own personal time, which is different. A tunnel could transport her to another instant, another day, another life. But the girl can’t predict the future, and therefore, she cannot know that on the other side of the tunnel is only misery and desolation. The telephone rings, interrupting her musings. It’s the brilliant composer calling to update her on the continued success of the Little Sinfonietta. Her replacements are outdoing her every day, he gloats. It seems he never liked the way she played. But he’ll always be grateful, he says, that she played a part in making him a recognized composer. Right now, they’re on their way to another capital, where everyone excitedly awaits their arrival. Are you still writing? he asks. She says yes. He says he thinks it’s a result of the hypnosis. What do you mean hypnosis? It seems she doesn’t even remember she was hypnotized. The hypnotist turned you into a writer, he assures her. It was from then that she began hitting false notes and missing beats in rehearsals and performances. She doesn’t remember a thing. This is all just beacuse of his jealousy. One day she’ll call him to account — him and the young conductor, whom she imagines is sitting right beside him, egging him on. The girl won’t let anything he says upset her. She remembers that, in the end, the brilliant composer is nothing to her. He could drop off the earth and she’d forget he ever existed. Before hanging up, the girl asks him to name the people who were there that night. The screenwriter then improvises a scene in which the girl is in a writing frenzy, actuated by the material she’s read about that author from a bygone era, the one her father reveres. She disconnects the phone, just in the case the brat composer decides to call again, telling herself that there’s no limit to human wickedness. She doesn’t feel like she’s been hypnotized. She stops writing and gets up to stretch her legs, to do a couple of laps around the room. After a few moments, she takes her seat in front of the laptop, and continues: “5.5561 The limit also makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary images. He’s sold all his belongings, but he wants to take one last photograph of her. He wants to take it before they come to take away the furniture, the computer, the camera, and the spotlights. Just one more, he begs her. Again, he wants her to be naked; again, wants to be the one who takes her clothes off. They’re both used to it by now, of course, but this time is special, because it may in fact be the last. The girl gets in the bath, and the old professor produces a safety razor, which he uses, along with scissors, to trim her pubic area until it’s practically hairless. He prefers it like this, thinks it looks perfect, almost angelic. He wants the camera to capture every single pore. After drying her with a towel, he goes down on her, kissing the warm pink flesh of her labia until she trembles. He wants to make love to her, but he decides to take the photograph first, because he knows he always gets his best shots when overcome with desire. She’s lets him take his photos, although she’d rather be talking about W, and the No World. 3.04 If a No World were correct a priori, it would be a No World whose possibility ensured its truth.”

  This last scene has turned the screenwriter on. So he goes looking for the envelope with the photographs and examines them one after the other. He remembers when the girl used to visit him all the time, back when she bowed to his every whim. Now, incomprehensibly, the nightly visitations have come to an end. A few months ago she wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. Because no one was following her, he sighs. He returns the photos to the envelope. If she came back — if he could believe, for even an instant, that she’d be visiting this very night. . But then he remembers his appointment with the black prostitute. He goes to the kitchen to see if there’s anything to offer by way of a drink. Nothing strong enough to tempt her. He goes down to the street to a store that’s open until midnight. He’s not worried about cash now that he’s managed to secure an advance. He buys a couple of bottles of liquor and heads back to the hotel. On the way, he remembers the beginning to a novel everyone in the world must know: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” It’s definitely one the girl’s father would recognize.

  It’s like trying to catch smoke in his hands, compiling all this information that’s destined to disappear, that will at best form part of the film’s subtext, probably: something existing below the waterline, the greater part of the iceberg. The prostitute takes a seat. He’d like to believe she knows what he’s talking about. This stuff moves in parallel with the other stuff, the stuff that actually winds up on the screen. Well, not really on the screen, technically, because they aren’t images, because the script is more about how the narrative gets told. The screenwriter isn’t explaining it all very well. He’s had too much to drink, and he’s getting tongue-tied. He remembers the book about screenwriters and looks for a section that might explain better what a subplot is. When he finds what he’s looking for, he reads it aloud slowly, to make sure she understands. The author writes that the subplot usually contains the most important elements of the main storyline, but that the protagonist isn’t directly involved in it. Instead, a deuteragonist of the story becomes the hero of the subplot, with a supporting cast of major and minor characters. While the main plot advances the action of the story, subplots explore the main themes. He leaves the book on the nightstand. What he’s trying to say is that it’s a difficult sketching in all the different characters’ stories while sticking to the essential idea of the screenplay. What he’s trying to say is that he’s only doing this because he’s lost his bearings and is trying to find a way to end his story. What he’s trying to say is that he’s writing because he wants to express what it’s like to truly be alone. What he’s trying to say is that he knows there’s nothing special about his predicament, and that the prostitute must hear the exact same story every single night of the week. She lies down beside him and watches him as he speaks, pretends to show interest in what he has to say. “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” he whispers while staring at the ceiling — seeing, instead of white plaster, an image of the girl kissing another man. He’d like to see who the man is; he’d like to be the one responsible for his existence, as he is with the characters he sketches on index cards. But the longer he looks, the more the man’s face appears to be that of the young conductor, until, eventually, that’s the only face he can see. The black prostitute looks at the clock. She thinks it’s about time they got down to business. The screenwriter asks her how much she’ll charge to stay the night. Not to have sex, not even to listen to him whine about his sad old life, but just to sleep next to him — only that — just so he can feel the warmth of her body next to his. She complai
ns about the lack of air conditioning in the room. He suggests they leave the window open during the night. The prostitute kisses him on the cheek, then on the lips, before telling him the amount it’ll cost. Although he can’t afford it, the screenwriter thinks it’s a reasonable price. Space and time, he wants to say, that’s what distinguishes one scene from another. He thinks she brings him luck, so he tries to think of a sentence or two he can start up with again the next morning, something to ensure he doesn’t stay up all night thinking about what he’s going to write. “The girl returns to the hotel after a long walk and immediately gets to work. She must resolve the question of her hypnosis.” It’s not bad. He recites it to the black prostitute, who seductively whispers it back to him. Then they recite it together a couple of times, and he asks her to remember it when they awaken, because he’s had too much to drink, and he’s afraid he’s going to forget it. The next morning, when he wakes up, he can’t remember having fallen asleep. Then he tries but fails to remember exactly when the black prostitute left.

  “The girl returns to the hotel after a long walk and immediately gets to work. She must resolve the question of her hypnosis.” Sainted woman, thinks the screenwriter of the black prostitute, who used red lipstick to write the sentences on the bathroom mirror. He’d have had a hard time getting started, but now the words are flowing uninhibited. The same can’t be said for the girl, who seems to have run aground on account of not knowing whether or not she was really hypnotized. After getting back to her father’s hotel room, she lay down on the bed. She couldn’t sleep, thinking about the hypnosis; and then later on, wasn’t able to write more than a few miserable lines in her notebook. On the other bed, her father is lying back on a couple of pillows, reading the newspaper. The girl would like to know how long he’s going to go on waiting, but when she asks him, he just shrugs his shoulders and continues reading. Now he’s talking on one of the telephones, whispering so the girl doesn’t hear, although he doesn’t bother leaving the room. His eyes move around the hotel room as he listens, but fix on a particular point on the floor when he speaks. Occasionally, he seems to be looking straight at her, but is actually looking through her. At other times, he inspects his own reflection in the wardrobe mirror, running his hand through his hair once or twice. The girl hears him say something about money. Then there’s a pause. The girl shrugs her shoulders and leaves her father to it. She starts wondering again about the alleged hypnotism, on what night it could’ve happened, and who might’ve been present. She takes a deep breath — something she seems to do a lot, these days — and goes into the bathroom so as not to be distracted by her father’s phone call. She’s unable to hide her preoccupation with his business, and she doesn’t want her father to notice this. She’s annoyed that the brilliant composer has managed to paralyze her work on the novel, although she’s loath to admit he’s the one responsible. She splashes some water on her face and stares at her reflection in the mirror. She’s still getting used to her dyed hair. She puts on her sunglasses so her eyes don’t betray her agitation. Then she stands perfectly still, not making a sound, and tries to eavesdrop on her father’s conversation. She’s used to him always whispering about business and such, but there’s something different about this call. Perhaps she’s beginning to figure things out. She doesn’t close the bathroom door, because while she doesn’t want her father knowing there’s something wrong, that she may have been hypnotized, and that this is the only reason she’s been writing all the time, neither does she want to pretend there’s nothing wrong. She looks in the mirror again. Her expression is dour, sour, but she doesn’t care. She leans against the sink and continues listening, continues looking at the reflection she doesn’t recognize. She has no idea what he’s talking about now because he’s speaking another language. She tries brushing her hair behind her ears, but it’s too short, so she finds it keeps returning to the same place. She then examines her roots, thinking she’ll have to dye them too. Besides her identity, the metallic blonde will also conceal her few gray hairs. She wonders what she’ll look like when she’s old. Her father hangs up the phone. She dries her face with a towel, wondering about how to ascertain whether or not this alleged hypnosis took place. She knows the game’s also part of her reality, that her relationships with the young conductor and brilliant composer, and even the screenwriter, are all directed by it. But she gets the feeling something’s not as it should be, and perhaps now, for the first time, she’s seriously considering where reality is located. Does it exist outside the mind? Always the same question. Sooner or later, in one form or another, the answer will be revealed to her. The idea has its charms, for if nothing exists outside the mind, or to put it another way, if everything that happens outside the mind is unreal, and whatever does exist depends solely on that mind’s creative whim — then nothing has any meaning, and everything’s just a game. Isn’t this the same conclusion she arrived at before? The girl’s thoughts are beginning to fold in on themselves, and she’s feeling disoriented. She sits down. Her father’s voice brings her back to reality. Reality? Hasn’t she just formulated a valid argument negating it? All the same, she could say it’s situated somewhere on another plane, or in a different dimension, although looking at a lie from another angle doesn’t make it any less of a lie. Her father tells her the star of her favorite soccer team has finally returned, and is to face disciplinary action. The girl approaches him. The words “disciplinary action” worry her. She gets the newspaper to find out more. Besides, she’d like to check if her ad is still in there, and if it’s gotten a reply yet. She then calls the brilliant composer and apologizes for overreacting, for letting what he said about her replacement’s performances on the piano upset her, for getting riled up when he told her how much progress the young conductor’s latest conquest is making, and for playing the martyr when he said she was wasting her time with all the writing. It’s not her fault, he tells her. All your troubles started after you were hypnotized. So you shouldn’t feel responsible. She challenges him to prove it, demands that he show her the evidence. He hangs up.