by A. G. Porta
In the morning he calls the bank from the hotel. He wants to know if they can forward him part of his next pension payment. The employee tells him there was a recent deposit made to his account. This is the advance from the producer. But then he tells the screenwriter it has to be used to cover the outstanding balance on his credit card. So he’s in the black, but must be immediately put back in the red, because this employee, instead of suggesting other options, seems intent on giving him a hard time. The screenwriter can’t bring himself to write. It’s not that he’s drawn a blank, he just can’t be bothered. He has more pressing things to worry about now. He looks down at the street from his hotel window, at the storefronts he’s seen so many times before: the real-estate agency on the corner, the bakery, the shop selling women’s lingerie, and the shoe and handbag store that’s closed for the August vacation. His neighbor passes by her window, but now isn’t the time to try getting her attention. Now isn’t the time to be thinking about her. After breakfast he goes down to the lobby and reads the newspaper. On finishing, he leaves it on the table and goes out to the street, dragging his leg behind him. He gets the impression his limp has gotten worse, which would tally with the decline in his confidence, his mood, and his general psychological well-being, really. A little down the street, he stops in front of a store window, ostensibly to look at the display, but really to have a rest, and to look at his reflection in the glass. When his spirits are up, he hardly notices the limp, but now his leg is like a dead weight, and he realizes what’s happening, that he’s becoming depressed, and this is affecting not only his mind but his body as well, and he wonders whether it’s the beginning of a slow, inexorable decline. He needs to deal with this, he thinks while waiting at the traffic light to cross the street. On arriving at the café, he takes a newspaper from one of the tables, sits down, and indicates the usual with a nod of the head. The waitress acknowledges his order. A little while later, she approaches the table with tray in hand. Have you been thinking about me? he whispers to her. The waitress gives him a sideways glance and smiles. It may be an ironic smile, and she may leave him without an answer again, but the screenwriter keeps watching her as she serves the other tables; he thinks he’s made some progress at last, and that the smile indicates there’s some hope for him yet. He doesn’t have the inclination to write, but he starts listing, one by one, the names of people who could loan him some money: screenwriters and other people in the business, friends, distant relatives, simple acquaintances. He still has the odd telephone number written in his agenda, although most will have to be sought in the directory. All at once, the thought of obtaining the addresses and phone numbers he needs doesn’t seem that difficult. What began as a terrible day hasn’t turned out so badly. He thinks the day sums up his life: at times he feels capable, confident; at other times, he feels the exact opposite. I wouldn’t make much of a philosopher, he thinks, smiling. Perhaps the waitress’s smile is responsible for lifting his spirits, the glimmer of hope he received when she cast him a sideways glance. Perhaps that’s all it is, he thinks. On getting back to his room, he sets the directory beside him on the bed and picks up the telephone.
A few hours later, the screenwriter has managed to contact some of the people on his list, mainly colleagues in the trade, people with whom he’s never really been close. He asks for small sums of cash, giving the excuse that he needs to resolve a misunderstanding with the bank, and most of his relatives and close friends are on vacation, so he can’t turn to them. Taking the approach of asking a lot of people for small amounts means that pretty much everyone agreed to help him out. Now the screenwriter believes he’ll have enough to last until the end of the month, which is when his pension comes through. He can’t rely on any more advances from the producer, and he’s worried about the outstanding balance on his credit card. The conversation he had with the bank employee was pathetic, he thinks, but at this point, when everything seems to be going against him, he colors every such situation with a somber hue. He can do nothing now except wait for his friends’ donations to come through. He retrieves his glasses from beside the telephone and returns to his desk, a little more hopeful than before. He rereads the last page he wrote the night before, then continues where he left off: right after the girl spent the night with the guy she met at the nightclub. He feels satisfied at having made progress on the girl’s internal monologue. The universe as a great explosion of thought expanding outward. An instant before, there was nothing, and then, bang! — suddenly, thought began expanding its domain, encroaching on the void, invading everywhere, conquering its territories, bestowing sense and reason on what had no sense and reason because it didn’t exist. But he still has trouble imagining nothingness, the void. He can only think of it in terms of what exists. He understands the idea of nothing existing outside of the mind, that what he sees is created by the mind in the act of thinking, but he finds the idea of nothingness itself unfathomable. Such a small detail, but crucial. Something that’s accepted on faith, as received wisdom, unquestioned because impenetrable; but he wonders how, in the all-pervading nothingness, there could possibly exist a small point of concentrated thought. Where does it come from? When he tries to understand nothingness, he thinks back to the period before he conceived of even the slightest notion of what his script would be about. But there isn’t any single idea in any story that slowly expands as if from a miniscule point somehow existing in the period before it was itself conceived, and which ends up growing into a fully formed screenplay. It makes no difference if the miniscule point consists of matter or thought. So thinks the girl. Although she hardly slept, she feels as if a load’s been taken off her shoulders. On the street, she deliberates at a metro station before deciding to continue on foot. The hotel isn’t far, but she decides to stop at a café anyway, and plan her next movements. Her writer’s instinct is directing her to plan her day out properly. She orders a coffee and a glass of water, and downs another one of those pills that keep her awake and alert. But this reminds her again of those dickhead former friends of hers. She immediately dismisses the thought, because she’s closed that chapter in her life: no more negative thinking, no more calling up bad memories; instead, she’ll devote the next paragraph or so to her adventure with the guy she met at the nightclub. She doesn’t need more than that. She finds the meeting with him was beneficial, although she can’t say exactly why. Perhaps the cold night air had served as a sort of freezer, slowing down her thoughts sufficiently for her to develop her No World idea. The guy seemed interesting, but she doesn’t remember his name. She’d have liked to write it in her diary. And now what? she wonders. After her failure to meet any aliens, she should probably go back to her father’s hotel, get her things, and go home, just as she planned. She should also go to the hotel with the English name and say good-bye to her mother. Before leaving the café, she reads in a newspaper that the star of her favorite soccer team is training alone. It’s the first time she’s read anything relating to the player in one of the neighboring country’s newspapers. There’s other news, but the girl doesn’t have it in her to concentrate on any more reading. She no longer thinks about the scientist in the classically-cut suit, and she doubts she’ll find a report as to whether or not she was hypnotized in any of these newspapers. Maybe she should go see a doctor. She recalls that her mother wanted her to see quite a distinguished one. She smiles because she believes mothers never truly understand their children. Then she reconsiders going to the hotel with the English name to say good-bye. It’s the first time in a while that she hasn’t checked the classifieds section. In the next scene, the girl is looking out the window of a taxi, scrutinizing the faces of people walking the streets, and examining the store fronts and monuments, as if she were leaving the city forever, and is trying to record a lasting image of it. Then she opens her bag and takes out her cell phone, thinking a video would provide a better record. The taxi stops in front of the hotel with the English name. There are no such things as coincidences, the girl murm
urs on seeing her mother from a distance, hand in hand with the young orchestra conductor who, for once, isn’t wearing his Institute’s uniform. They’re strolling at a leisurely pace, as if they’re just getting back from a long walk, absorbed in what looks to the girl like a private discussion. The girl tells the driver to keep the meter running while she stays in the taxi watching them, trying to read their lips, to interpret their gestures. The young conductor beams a smile at her mother, who in turn, blushes, beguiling him with a youthfulness she doesn’t possess. But she suddenly catches sight of her daughter, and quickly releases his hand, before making a move toward the taxi. Here, the screenwriter intends to have a jump cut to the moment just after the girl has told the driver to put his foot on the pedal and ignore the gesticulating woman on the sidewalk, the moment just after she stops looking at her mother and fixes her eyes on the road ahead, pretending she doesn’t see her, doesn’t hear her calling her name. Why does everyone pronounce her name with a “ka”? she wonders, her eyes still fixed on the road ahead. It seems the young conductor’s found a replacement for the maid, someone else to read passages from W while he’s having sex with his latest conquest. She wonders if her mother dresses for the occasion, or whether she performs in the nude, wearing only a necklace, a pair of silk stockings, and high heels. These might throw into relief some aspect of her character the conductor finds appealing, especially if she wears them while reading random passages from W’s magnum opus. Then again, perhaps all that’s thrown into relief is her nudity. Moments later, her cell phone rings. Why did you leave? asks her mother without preamble. I’m going home, the girl says before hanging up and returning the phone to her bag. Damn game, she mutters. Every so often, something happens to remind you of it. She thinks everything’s happening according to some hidden plan, and that, one after another, she keeps falling into traps that are set for her. Why the preceding scene? If everything’s a game, her mother must also be involved in it. When was this ever not the case? Where the hell have you been? asks a voice in the lobby of the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. The girl quickly turns. It’s Cousin McGregor, who’s been waiting some time for her. We’re leaving, he says. Let’s go. We’ve already checked out of the rooms.