No World Concerto (20 page)

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.

She’s lucky to have found, in writing, a viable replacement for her music, because this very night, the night of the latest conquest’s live debut, the Little Sinfonietta will have discovered she’s a natural replacement for the girl. They don’t need her anymore, and they’re fed up with all the fighting — so the brilliant composer told her before hanging up, which he also did before she had a chance to respond. Seconds later, she calls her mother to confirm the news. One of the Institute’s most promising young pianists has been recruited in her place to perform the
5 Pieces for piano
and the
No World Symphony
. Now the girl hangs up brusquely. It seems the young conductor hasn’t got the guts to tell her himself. When she thinks about it carefully — the fact that they’ve treated her like this without even recognizing it was she who abandoned them first — it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. These things happen. They made the decision based on what they thought was best for the orchestra. That said, after exchanging one currency for another, you always seem to end up with less than you expected. She writes in her diary that today is different from all the other days; that she’s not as annoyed as she thought she’d be; that she feels as if a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders; but she grants that the news may still be sinking in. She’s finally finished with the Little Sinfonietta. And isn’t this what she wanted in the first place?

Why did they cancel her performance of the
5 Pieces for piano
? She calls her mother, who advises her first to calm down, to be reasonable, and then to consider why they replaced her. She’s shown herself to be quite distracted lately, even indifferent. To be ranked among the elite in the piano world, one can’t afford to be distracted, and certainly not indifferent. Be reasonable? How can she be reasonable when her own mother, and representative, is taking the side of her adversaries? Why would she want a daughter who lacks character, who just acts the way she’s expected to act? Is this the way they want her to perform too? She does a few turns around the room, trying her best to calm down. It’s time to prove to herself she’s a writer, to accept that what’s happened isn’t important, to prove she can shut herself away and dedicate all her energies to writing. She’d like to make more progress on her story about the wistful professor in the floating City in Outer Space, but she gets distracted thinking about her father. Like the screenwriter, she has the feeling she’s repeating herself, that she keeps having the same thought patterns, as if there are no other subjects to think about. Maybe it comes from being bound in a nutshell. All she basically writes about are commonplaces, silence and solitude, reading and writing, hope and patience. Sometimes she talks to her father about writing, about her future literary work, but he always falls silent because they can never get past the same fundamental disagreement. Her father is essentially a skeptic, while she believes she can change the world, that her novel will revolutionize literature. In these instances, he remains quiet while she’s at pains to make him understand. It’s probably the voices that make her feel so sure of herself, the ones that show her the way, although her father believes it’s just youthful audacity, the arrogance of ignorance, the fruits of inexperience. Frustrated by this reminder, the girl directs her thoughts elsewhere. She looks at her father, asleep on the bed, fully clothed, as if to be ready for an event that, sooner or later, is bound to occur; a sudden and alarming event that won’t allow him even a minute’s reprieve to get dressed. The act of waiting: one of those ideas on which she leans. As is her fascination with the astrophysicist who knows her mother; her fascination with her father and his associate, the patience they demonstrate day by day, hour by hour, waiting, for whom, for what? she asks herself again as she looks over at the Grand Central Station, as if the act of looking will yield an answer. She goes to the balcony, lights a cigarette, and smokes it while she broods. Then she returns to her seat in front of the laptop. At first she has trouble getting into her zone, but finding a good opening phrase is like guessing the correct password, which then opens up a portal to her
No World
. “2.225 There is ultimately but one true image. A reasonable time has elapsed, perhaps a couple of weeks, since the woman received the first anonymous call. Now she’s having an argument with her husband. She tells him an anonymous caller told her all about his affair with the female student. He’s defensive at first, insists the accusation is false, that it was made by a student, perhaps one who resented a poor grade. She’s got no idea what these little brats are capable of, he says. Some may use their precocity for getting good grades; others for avenging the receipt of bad grades; but neither sort will exercise any restraint in their machinations toward achieving their goals. But when his wife shows him the photograph, the old professor has no choice but to fess up. He then gives a vain and thoughtless excuse, asking her if she’s ever looked in the mirror and lamented becoming shriveled and old when the rest of the world seems flush with youthful skin. The woman locks herself in one of the rooms. He goes to the door and stands outside. He can hear her crying. Not that this bothers him as much as the photograph, and where it came from. He knows it’s one he took himself, in which he and the female student are posing together. It’s not especially lewd, but the two of them are lying naked on a bed whose sheets are completely white, looking at the camera, with a copy of W’s magnum opus by their side. He’s worried about how it got into his wife’s hands — if it was the work of a detective who broke into his study and filched it. He approaches the door of the room in which she shut herself, asks her softly how she got the photograph — softly, to mollify her, but only in the hope of soliciting an answer. But she doesn’t answer, she only sobs. After a while, he hears her snuffle that they were sent anonymously. The woman then emerges from the room, having seemingly regained her composure, and threatens to report him to the Academy where he teaches philosophy. You’re finished! she screams energetically. They’ll fire him. They’ll put him in jail. She’s tired of all his lies. She’s tired of him. The old professor curses at her and slams the door violently. He doesn’t even think to suspect the female student, that it was she who stole the picture from his study.” The girl goes back over what she’s written, slowly moving the cursor along to follow what she reads. The old professor lacks a sense of playfulness. If something goes wrong, he should think of it as a game. Everything’s a game. Life is only a game. “Perhaps, years later, when the old professor is even older, he’ll finally understand the mantra of ‘it’s all a game,’ and even sound it repeatedly while remembering the female student and his wife, recalling the events that drove him to leave, to flee to the City in Outer Space. Alone, in a desolate floating metropolis, careening aimlessly through space, waiting for death, with nothing to do except read and reminisce, he’ll be poring over W — flipping through a musty old copy he found in a library next door to a depot he was raiding for supplies — and while sitting in that library waiting for death, flipping through the pages of a musty old book, he’ll finally understand the mantra. He won’t know what year it is on Earth, how far from it he is, whether he’s getting closer or moving farther and farther away from it. Sometimes, he’ll go to the control room, or the government building, but he won’t know what to do, where to start, so he’ll think of the movies he saw back on Earth, the ones about the future, space travel, and all the rest, not that they’ll be of any help. If he was to go back now, perhaps the girl will not have aged; perhaps he’ll even get to hear her whisper in his ear again: Life, it’s only a game.” The girl gets up and walks nervously around the room. She looks outside, nothing: just the usual ebb and flow of people through the plaza. The screenwriter’s situation now reminds her of her own, holed away in a room, writing and staring out the window. Still sitting on the café terrace, it occurs to him that the girl will not be able to suffer her seclusion much longer. She’s too young to be waiting indefinitely for something that may not materialize. She thinks life’s a game. Delight in the novelty of living like an anchorite soon enough gives way to despair. She should be practicing the piano, working on the new sound she dreams will blaze a musical trail around the globe, but she doesn’t want to practice. She wants to avoid bumping into her mother. Perhaps she needs to take a break. Perhaps too much practice will negatively affect her performance on the recording. The screenwriter thinks it’s a bad idea. Giving up practice might upset her peace of mind. Playing the piano used to relieve the stress of a busy schedule. She may not have appreciated it, but after all the classes at the Institute, the rehearsals and concerts, the arguments with her mother, the fights with the young conductor, the piano was a release for her. It’s still raining, so the screenwriter thinks about the girl as she looks out the window. The cell phone rings. The brilliant composer is calling from a radio station where they’ve just given an interview. Since you couldn’t come, you can listen, he says curtly. She hangs up without answering. Moments later, however, she goes into the bathroom, so as not to awaken her father, and tries tuning in.