No World Concerto (4 page)

At night, the clack and plink of the typewriter punctures the silence of the room. The screenwriter fingers the keys, listening to the dull staccato rhythm. There’s a kind of silence, he writes, that is adorned by the sound of gentle breathing, the susurrus of two bodies ruffling the sheets, leaving their warm impressions on a bed. The screenwriter stops typing to look at the bed, to search for these impressions, for the recollection of how her skin felt, as if the sheets could preserve, even fossilize, every pore, every soft, downy follicle of hair, her blonde hair, which he wants to photograph, enlarge, and examine under a microscope. He removes his glasses, deftly cleans them with a handkerchief, and resumes his puttering on the keyboard. His writing is disjointed, haphazard, and perhaps, normally, he wouldn’t feel so inclined to write after having sex, but the élan within him impels him to keep going. The scene is set in the hotel with the English name. The screenwriter thinks about placing it at the start of the film. He can almost see it, the movie beginning, and the opening credits superimposed upon images of the hotel. A kind of prelude of sorts, to establish the mood and setting, the time period in which the story takes place, before introducing the girl and her mother. The viewer sees a group of porters completing the transfer of a grand piano from the service entrance to a large suite. These images are intercut with shots of the girl’s mother, dressed conservatively in a pantsuit and a pair of modest heels, instructing hotel employees to make space in the middle of a large living room. Seated to one side, and out of the way, an older man quietly watches the scene, perhaps in puzzlement at what’s going on around him. The girl, wearing white jeans, a white T-shirt, and white canvas sneakers with the laces removed, walks slowly behind the piano, which the porters are trundling down the hallway. Once it’s in place in the living room, the porters remove the protective padding. Their departure cues the older man, who stands up, leaves his jacket on the chair, and approaches the piano with a tuning key. The mother instructs the hotel employees to take her luggage to the car. There hasn’t been any dialogue yet; in fact, nothing more has been said than a word or a phrase to underscore the visuals. Starting now, the soundtrack will consist of discordant notes being pounded on the piano by the tuner, each note emphasized, to give the impression of something on the verge of becoming a melody, while mother and daughter say good-bye at the hotel’s entrance. It’s a procedure they’ve gone through dozens of times, having never had much to say to one another. This scene takes place before the one in which the father goes to see the girl in the little theater; perhaps a few days beforehand, and in the morning. The girl’s mother watches attentively as they deposit her bags in the trunk of her convertible. She then looks out at the traffic and notes that it seems to be picking up. As she climbs into the sports car, she says her daughter’s name, pronouncing it with a “ka.” Why would she pronounce it with a “ka”? Because the girl hears everyone pronounce it with a “ka” instead of a “k.” It’s a clue. Something so subtle she can’t share it with anyone else, because no one can understand it but her. Her mother looks at her over the rim of her sunglasses and tells her to stop talking nonsense. She then turns the ignition and looks in the rearview mirror, imprecates mildly at the traffic, and slowly pulls away, lifting her hand to wave good-bye as the car accelerates and mingles with the sea of other vehicles. “Ka” or “k”: is it so hard to tell the difference? The girl watches from the sidewalk until the convertible becomes indistinguishable, like a drop in the sea, and asks herself what could be so important that her mother had to go on another trip. Sometimes she says she goes searching for her missing cousin, Dedalus, as if, after all these years, finding him is still one of her chief concerns. While waiting for the elevator, the girl remembers his story. She’s never told anyone about him. She may have mentioned to some friends that her mother has a remarkable cousin, but she didn’t go into any details. If the brilliant composer knew his story, she muses, he’d probably dedicate one of his compositions to him. She could write a novel about him, a young man who went to the neighboring country’s capital years before, and was never heard from again. He fled to escape prosecution, she recalls. But after everything her mother’s told her, the girl believes the truth will never be known. His story features many deaths, a shooting, and even a femme fatale. The piano tuner corrects the instrument’s pitch, pounding on the keys, which emit a plangent sound, as if giving a mournfully slow rendition of the
5 Pieces for piano
. A couple of novelists had already written about those unfortunate events, although the girl would’ve taken a different approach to them. In the elevator, she thinks she may be able to write her own version of his story some day, maybe as a sequel to the book she’s currently working on. But first she has to get that one written. She’s never believed her mother’s little jaunts indicated any sort of development in the cousin’s story; she simply leaves every time under the pretext of a search she’s never undertaken. The excuse is an old one for the girl, who’s certain her mother’s real motive for absconding has more to do with expensive clothes and lovers, and perhaps, if she can fit it in, a little business on the side. She’s never told anyone about him, but perhaps she’ll tell the young conductor and brilliant composer — who’ll probably dedicate one of his compositions to him. Back in the living room, the girl asks the piano tuner to adjust the hammers and pedals for a particular composition. She’s experimented in the past with prepared pianos, putting various objects into the strings to modify the timbre of the instrument. But it seems the man isn’t quite finished yet. It’s as though he is taking advantage of his duties as a tuner and performing his own plangent rendition of the
5 Pieces for piano
. He’s taken long enough already, but he seems to want to make the process even slower, to let the music reverberate, to produce something unique, a sound that hasn’t been heard before, as a gift to all posterity, a message to be transmitted to the cosmos. The girl — his only audience — decides to leave him to his task and sits down to her diary. She writes that they pronounce her name with a “ka”; that this makes her feel odd; that she’s tried to figure out why they do it, but hasn’t gotten anywhere yet.

It’s night. The young conductor of the orchestra licks the gummed edge of a rolling paper to complete a joint. He wants to know if the girl could write a libretto for an opera about aliens and life in other galaxies: a dirge on the ultimate fate of humanity, he says, set on an ordinary day, to underscore our species’ insignificance — its nonexistence, almost — for when placed in the context of a universe of infinite space and illimitable time, what’s a single person, a single day? In other words, let it be a lament for the imminent death of all civilizations, with perhaps a few references to the philosophy of W. The girl would rather write a libretto about having sex in her mother’s bed; she’s saving the bigger ideas for her novel. When her cell phone rings, she raises her finger to her lips, indicating to the conductor that he should keep quiet. As they talk, the conductor nibbles on the girl’s toes and continues up her leg, putting the joint between his lips, from which he takes a final drag before passing it to her. She inhales deeply and responds naturally to her mother’s questions. The mother wants to know if the phone call woke her up. It didn’t, because she was reading one of her favorite science-fiction novels. It’s about someone who spends his whole life trying to make contact with extraterrestrials, she lies, alluding to one of her own ideas about someone who travels around the world setting up satellites that can transmit and receive encrypted messages. Her mother doesn’t respond. He establishes a global network that he controls from one location, where he sits and waits patiently for news from other galaxies. The mother wishes her daughter would make better use of her time, by practicing piano, for example, because all she really cares about is her daughter’s career as a pianist. Later, the girl and the young conductor make love. Perhaps there’s no need to set up a network of satellites, he says, still brooding on extraterrestrial matters. Perhaps the aliens are right here among us.

In the morning, before freshening up, the screenwriter decides to keep working on the screenplay. He can’t wait for the girl to arrive later that night to tell another story, because he needs another injection of inspiration. The hours go by agonizingly slow, although writing helps him while away the time. Enduring the passage of a long day, he says to himself, is like crossing a desert. But he’d rather keep moving than sit on the sand and wait to die. In his story, the Little Sinfonietta is still rehearsing the program they’re going to perform in the church. He clearly remembers it — located right in front of the writers’ café—, although there are dozens of cafés in the capital that bear such a name, places where hundreds of writers of every era, both famous and obscure, once sat. Meanwhile, the rehearsal takes place onstage in a small theater, where the young conductor directs the Little Sinfonietta to repeat, over and over, each movement of the composition. Most importantly, it’s the stage where the girl is singing, or speaking almost, a confusing and disturbing series of verses that give the impression they were inspired by a strange vision or hallucination, or the effects of a psychotropic pill. The screenwriter then moves to another scene, where the girl is drinking in the lounge of a fashionable bar. The brilliant composer asks her if she knows the guy on the other side of the room who seems unable to take his eyes off her. She waits until he looks away to examine his features carefully. His face seems familiar, but she can’t quite place him. Bad taste, says the brilliant composer laughing. If that guy’s your type, then you’ve got seriously bad taste, he repeats. You don’t often see guys that old in a place like this, he adds, but I suppose it really doesn’t matter. You see strange things everywhere these days. The brilliant composer apprehends all things in terms of twelve-tone music, and adheres to his conviction that every note should be made available to the composer and be used without prejudice, that every relationship between them should be conceived on a basis of equality and not of subordination. So, by extension, the guy could approach the girl and ask her to go out on a date this very night. They could even sleep together. We might do an opera about it, says the young conductor as he joins them at the bar. He can already see the music-video version: a sleazy and sordid setting, with a song and lyrics that tell the story of a guy who accidentally winds up in a trendy bar and wants a nice young girl to rescue him from his insecurity, to take him somewhere else, a place where they can dance the bolero together, or something like that.

The screenwriter takes a look out the window. An ambiguous dawn: it has yet to define itself against the horizon. He places his glasses on the table and stands up. He needs to take a break. He lights a cigarette, takes a sip of water, and prepares the coffee. Perhaps he’s found what he’s looking for: a scene that will grab an audience’s attention. He considers the new character he’s added: someone who could end up being central, or peripheral; who could feature throughout the story, or vanish at any moment — he doesn’t know yet; with a face not unfamiliar to the girl, although she can’t quite place it. He takes another look out the window. Still, it’s only a subplot. It’s early, and his neighbors haven’t gotten out of bed yet. He showers and goes down to the canteen for breakfast. He doesn’t read the newspaper afterward in the lobby, as is customary, but decides to go back to his room and continue working. The girl sleeps badly and rises late. She jots a few notes in a notebook, scribbles the outlines of conversations, and drafts some possible beginnings to impossible chapters. Then she answers a phone call. McGregor speaking, says the voice on the other end, which then asks for the girl’s father.

He’s not staying in this hotel, she says. A while later, after ordering breakfast to her room, she practices the
5 Pieces for piano
and then some parts of the
No World Symphony
, the brilliant young composer’s first opus, which she transcribed for piano and will be performing in her home city in a few days’ time. That afternoon she goes to rehearsals. She uses the hotel’s chauffeur service, and amuses herself on the journey to the theater by trying to guess which pedestrians are aliens. First, she thinks, she must determine what features distinguish them from normal human beings. The chin perhaps, or the eyes, the ears, or maybe a special aura about them. . While the driver parks the car, the girl notices, in the crowd, the guy she saw the night before in the trendy bar in town, the one who couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’s tall and dark, around her father’s age, has a receding hairline, and is wearing a black suit. He’s looking at the façade of the theater where the Little Sinfonietta rehearses, as if deciding whether or not to go inside. Then he turns and heads up the sidewalk, disappearing into the crowd. It seems he decided not. The screenwriter sketches some ideas about the possible relationship between this character and the girl. He can almost see him, like a ghost that’s yet to finish manifesting itself. During the rehearsal, the girl finds it difficult to concentrate, still intrigued by the man she saw outside, whose face she can’t quite place. The screenwriter feels comfortable leaving the story at this point. He fixes his hair in the bathroom mirror and picks out a jacket from the wardrobe — he’d feel naked without it, in spite of the heat — and, before long, he’s cantering on the sidewalk, with his conscience clear and a spring in his limp, for having started the day so well. He decides to digress from his usual route and discovers a classical music store. The young woman who attends to him is kind and good-natured. She asks if he’s looking for anything in particular. The screenwriter tells her he’s writing a script about the father of twelve-tone composition, and asks if any of his works are available. The saleswoman turns out to be an expert on dodecaphony and she persuades the screenwriter to buy four compact discs — his most representative works, she says — and her attractiveness convinces him they’re going to be a great help. He likes the way the way she pronounces “dodecaphonic” and, in a strange attempt to impress her, also buys one of the books she recommends. At the cash register, he smiles at her and she responds in kind. With his new purchases in hand, he decides to browse in the jazz section because he has a feeling the girl’s father is a fan of the genre. The screenwriter is well enough acquainted with jazz to be able to cite a number of musicians off the top of his head, so instead of buying anything, he simply takes note of some works he’s half-forgotten, and repeats them to himself as he heads for the exit. On reaching the door, however, he changes his mind and goes limping back to the saleswoman. From a distance, she looks pretty, he thinks, and has a decent body. He imagines her in a tuxedo jacket. The store uniform certainly puts a damper on her style. Maybe she’s like the girl and prefers dressing completely in white. She may be a few years older than the girl, and quite a few pounds heavier, but the screenwriter’s not going to give up on a potential hook-up over the matter of a few pounds. He asks her when she gets off work: he’d like her to tell him more about “dodecaphonic” music. After examining him top to toe, she says there’s more than enough to learn from the merchandise he bought. I bet you’d do anything for a part in my movie, he mutters as he leaves, you just don’t know it yet.