No World Concerto (16 page)

Then she knots the shirt around her waist. The old professor’s voice bids her to pull the edges of her panties up. She obeys. But she does so slowly, teasingly, toying with both sides alternately, and pulling at the seams. Then the same voice bids her to pull the panties halfway down and leave them suspended between her thighs. Once again, she obeys. 3.203 Ka is the same sign as Ka. The female student’s no longer on the TV screen, but beside the old professor, dressing after having had a shower. He asks her to sit and watch the video with him. It’s late, she says. It doesn’t matter how late it is, he says without taking his eyes off the screen. Just stay. Onscreen, the girl is on her knees, again wetting the parts of her shirt covering her nipples. She raises her breasts with both hands, and the voice of the professor bids her to start masturbating. Then the same voice bids her to urinate between her fingers. It seems like an eternity passes before she manages to squeeze out a few drops. They trickle down her thighs and onto the white sheet covering the floor. As she eases into a steady stream, the camera zooms in on the growing puddle. The old professor hears the door close, and he moves his eyes momentarily away from the screen, his mouth half-open, as if intending to say something, perhaps good-bye. But now it’s too late even for good-byes, so his eyes return casually to the screen. A faint halo surrounds the female student’s body. But the old professor, the out-of-practice alien hunter, either cannot or does not want to see it. Perhaps he’s conditioned himself to see them only as they can be made to appear on his old daguerreotypes. 3.3 Only in daguerreotypes do extraterrestrials acquire true meaning. On the stairway, the female student thinks she just heard someone pronounce her name with a ‘ka.’” The girl rereads what she’s written and then types it up on the laptop. Now, whenever she writes in her father’s hotel room, whether she does it in the bathroom or wherever, she always transcribes what she’s done on his laptop. He doesn’t know about this, of course, and she doesn’t want to ask permission yet, in case he says no, because she hasn’t got a laptop of her own. The screenwriter thinks it’s a kind of fetish, this habit of typing up everything she writes, as if she’s reluctant to let go of what she’s done, to move forward and deal with what has yet to be done, to resist the temptation the relinquish the past, to resist the temptation to start all over again. The girl receives a phone call from the brilliant composer. Her father gets out of bed and stretches as he walks out onto the balcony to survey the Grand Central Station. The phone call is brief, formal — just letting her know the new rehearsal venue. She notes down the address in her diary. Then she collects her father’s laptop from the bathroom and furtively, deftly, places it back on the table. She goes outside to ensure he didn’t notice the sleight. But she needs a ruse — her encounter with cousin Dedalus. She notes the expression on his face. It’s like the expression one prepares before receiving bad news. He turns to look at her. But his eyes seem not to see her. It’s as if he’s listening but is puzzling over something else. Just a chance encounter, he says once she finishes her account. Then silence. His expression is routine, the kind that could be interpreted to mean anything. Then one of his many cell phones rings. He goes inside to answer it. She hears him answer it by giving his name. He enters the bathroom and shuts the door. She hears nothing more. McGregor speaking, says the girl, imitating the voice she supposes is on the other line. Despite her suspicions, the girl wishes she knew for sure who was calling. She wishes she could hear what they are talking about. She’s hardly a detective. A coincidence? There are no such things as coincidences, she says. There are no such things as chance encounters either.

It seems they lost no time finding a replacement. The girl watches them through the glass screen, chagrined. She didn’t know the young conductor’s latest conquest would be singing. In fact, the possibility never even entered her mind. She found the new rehearsal venue easily enough. Once inside the building, she walked along a corridor, looking into the other booths, some occupied, some not, which reminded her of the ones in her native city. On finding the booth the Little Sinfonietta were rehearsing in, she was shocked to see, through the glass screen, the latest conquest singing in her place — her voice almost imperceptible, distant, filtering into the corridor through the slots of the soundproof booth. The girl didn’t know she could sing. Surely this means something, but what? A coincidence? They don’t exist. Chance doesn’t exist in logic, she thinks. She braces herself before entering, looks at them again through the glass screen. She can’t tell by listening, but it looks like she’s reciting some verses. It seems they lost no time in finding a replacement. They probably planned it all along, she thinks. She has to get over it and just accept the reality of the situation. There’s no point in thinking about the hows and the whys. Whatever conclusion she arrives at will be painful. The girl enters the booth. She’s not going on tour with them, so maybe now she can just disappear, she thinks, quietly and without a fuss, just as she planned. The latest conquest is a quick study. She’s probably spent days practicing alone. The girl watches her carefully: she’s beautiful, a little older than her. During his presentation, the young conductor says she studied at one of the musical conservatories in the neighboring country’s capital. How lucky, he says while taking her hand, one of our biggest fans happens to be a soprano. Yeah, lucky, says the girl. She has a different musical background, but the young conductor says he’s sure the conquest will learn quickly enough, because now they’re going to be professionals, and everything they do will make the news — the girl’s mother and their new manager will make sure of that. As such, the latest conquest will have to learn the Little Sinfonnieta’s new motto. Marketing, it’s all about marketing, the young conductor adds, inducting the orchestra’s new member. His latest conquest feigns momentary indecision to disguise her inner jubilation.

It’s just a coincidence, insists the young conductor. Until yesterday, no one knew she was a soprano. The girl listens, resting her elbows on the table of a dreary café. I’m not having another fight with you, he tells her. She doesn’t believe him. He’s being disarming because he’s impatient to get to a meeting with his latest conquest. He has to teach her some of the Little Sinfonietta’s repertoire before the tour. The girl looks away, dismissing what he says. She wonders if the conquest has also been learning how to play foosball. Wearily, she turns back to look at the conductor. As always, he’s wearing the Scholastic Institute’s regulation uniform, comprised of a navy-blue blazer, gray pants, white shirt, and necktie. The girl wonders how long into the meeting he’ll manage to keep them on. The next scene takes place in a squalid apartment. On the street outside there’s a neon sign flickering, phasing with an occasional breeze that parts the curtains of a window to reveal the young conductor of the orchestra lying in bed with the girl. It’s a cliché, but the screenwriter decided to include this scene in order to show the sordid conditions in which they’ve made love. The young conductor licks the gummed edge of the paper skin of a joint he’s rolling. He wants to know if the girl could write a libretto for an opera about a game, about a No World of parallel planes, where a female piano prodigy is trying to find an original way to interpret a difficult work, a prodigy who insists on using an impossible style, and who always contradicts the opinions of others. Of the people who love her, he adds. She knows he’s being sarcastic, but she kisses his chest, mechanically, unfeelingly: a kiss good-bye. She wants to get out of this shit-hole. She has no intention of writing this or any other libretto. Things have changed. She tells him calmly, matter-of-factly, and without bitterness or anger. There’s a silence. The young conductor looks at the ceiling, watches the light reflected there from the flickering sign outside. No, things aren’t what they used to be, he says while lighting the joint. The world changes, people change. His words sound hollow, phatic, spoken to fill an emptiness, to break the silence. In the darkness of the bedroom, the girl’s face flickers in and out of view with the blue light of the neon sign. Indeed, she says, but when you think about it, nothing stays the same. The young conductor mumbles an apology, the kind mumbled by someone who hardly ever apologizes, who only does so when someone he loves is threatening to leave him. But she doesn’t care for his apology. She knows that, by the end of the week, the latest conquest will have taken her place — both in the Little Sinfonietta and the conductor’s affections. Not that it matters. Not that anything matters to her now except writing. The philosopher W once wrote, “6.4 All propositions are of equal value.” If she didn’t know he was talking about something else, she’d say this proposition was false. She takes his magnum opus out from under her clothes to check that she remembered the line correctly. Then she puts the book safely in her satchel. Her thoughts drift elsewhere. She’s been promising herself for days to get rid of the young conductor and brilliant composer. Getting rid of the brilliant composer shouldn’t be a problem though. He’s no one.

A death would make sense, thinks the screenwriter, as he finishes his cigarette and faces the building opposite. For once, though, his eyes aren’t searching the darkness of his neighbor’s window, but the darkness of the sky above it. A death would add suspense. He’d planned to involve the old guy in the classically-cut suit in some sort of shady affair. The girl’s father is an expert in these dealings. He supposes the guy in the classically-cut suit is the one to kill off, but then he can’t picture the circumstances under which it would happen. Not yet, at least. He can’t see a single star in that cosmic dark from which they came. The aliens who don’t know they’re aliens. The screenwriter gives up the search and goes to the mini-kitchen. He lets the cold tap run a few seconds before filling his glass. A death would add an element of intrigue. But it doesn’t have to be a death that provides this. He postpones his decision, takes a sip of water, and leaves the glass on the sink. After a minute or two, he’s back in front of the typewriter. He can’t just turn his mind off by flipping a switch. But doesn’t he always say this when it happens to be on? The characters have independent lives. They make and break relationships, leave old paths to follow new ones. He thinks again about a possible death. The girl is on a path to a new life. In a moment, she’ll discover her father’s involved in something she hasn’t yet considered, thinks the screenwriter, who’s now rewriting a scene he isn’t satisfied with. After hearing his stomach groan a fifth time, he decides to go to the café in the plaza and grab a sandwich. The waitress doesn’t usually work nights, not that he’s even thinking about her right now. He must consider the story’s structure again. He feels rusty, like someone who’s come back to do a job after a long absence. Still, he draws up a list of key characters. There’s no such thing as gratuitousness in a movie — everything happens for a reason, exists for a reason.

He writes their names in the order he remembers them: the young conductor of the orchestra, the brilliant composer, the mother, the father, Cousin Dedalus, McGregor, the old guy in the classically-cut suit. . who else? He thinks a few moments. He knows he’s forgetting someone. He gives up. Besides, he’s almost completely worn out after two days’ almost uninterrupted writing. Once back in his room, he turns on the TV and lies back on the bed. He wonders if the girl will surprise him by showing up tonight. No. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up. On the screen, the most notorious terrorist in history is appearing before the bench — his hands cuffed, dressed completely in white, smirking.

She’s convinced they follow her. The feeling is always there, but for some reason, is more pronounced whenever she visits him. After finally managing to evade them, she goes to the window and peeps through a chink in the curtain just wide enough to see the dark, empty street below. They could be paparazzi, or a detective hired by her mother. They could be alien hunters who’ve found a way to detect her secret halo, who know her real name is Ka and, perhaps, that she came from a distant planet also called Ka. She has a feeling she’s being watched, that strange eyes are scanning her every inch. The screenwriter’s read somewhere that eyes have some sort of an effect on the objects they regard. Like the visual equivalent of echolocation used by bats. This is what produces our perception of distance, our consciousness of where an object or person really is, since it’s only an image, an illusion that appears on our retinas. But this process must also have an effect on the person or object perceived, which is why the girl senses she’s being watched, because she may have developed the ability to detect the movement of eyes on her body, by a kind of sixth sense. The screenwriter reads a series of descriptive passages the girl narrates in the third person. He reads slowly, sub-vocalizing the rhythm of each phrase, as if trying to uncover something new in the words, perhaps because he wants to estrange himself from what he wrote, as if he were in fact considering something she’d written herself: “3.31 I call any part of an image that characterizes its sense an expression (or a symbol). On the bed, the old alien hunter talks about youthful skin — dispassionately, as a dermatologist would, or so it would seem — while running his fingers slowly down her back and up her thighs and moving them stealthily toward her breasts. When he speaks about young women’s skin, he has the air of an expert, and expatiates as if it was the most important topic in the world. The female student knows exactly what he’s up to, but acts as if she doesn’t, acts interested in his discourse — as if she’s never heard anything so intriguing in all her young life — because she wants to seem innocent, inexperienced, for that’s the way he likes to think she is. He wants to know if she’s going out with someone. He must’ve asked her a dozen times by now, and every time her answer’s been the same. Yes, she says again, knowing he wanted the other answer, knowing a No would put his mind at ease, and a Yes would only make him suffer. 3.313 In the limiting case, the image becomes a constant, the expression becomes a proposition. Now, in the City in Outer Space, the old professor shudders in recalling that moment. Now he writes only to record his memories. If anyone ever finds this great floating spaceship, this City adrift in Outer Space, they could reconstruct his life on Earth with his words, including his version of the war. He likes to dream of such an outcome to ease the passage of the years, to make sense of his life as a survivor alone in a desolate city, to make him believe the record of his experiences will not have been written in vain, whatever the number of intervening centuries. But he knows it’s an absurd fantasy.” The girl returns to the window to peer through the chink in the curtain. The screenwriter begs her to stay. She doesn’t usually smoke, but this time it’s she who lights a cigarette and puffs at the ceiling. I’ll take care of you, she hears him promise. And you’ll be able to write as much as you want, he says while moving a stack of paper away from his desk. She keeps looking out the window. There’s a man down there at the corner — a guy she’s seen before, standing in the very same place; at the very same time, perhaps. But the shadows are obscuring his features. It’s probably just some guy waiting for someone. But then she remembers the time, and wonders who or what he’d be waiting for in the early hours of the morning. Maybe she didn’t manage to evade her stalkers after all. Maybe her fate has already been determined and they’re waiting for the right moment to move in on her. The screenwriter promises to protect her. What do you want more than anything else in the world? he asks her. She doesn’t answer him, doesn’t take her eyes off of the window. It’s a stupid question. She’s rich and already has everything he can offer and much more. Besides, what she wants more than anything else in the world no one can offer her. She must create it herself. The screenwriter suddenly feels distant from her, that he doesn’t know anything about her. He doesn’t know what else, besides writing, could possibly satisfy her. Outside the Institute, they’ve only ever been together in a dingy hotel room, or posing in a few random photographs. He tries for a moment to recall where else they might have been together. Of course, there was the night of the concert, the dinner afterward, and the running around the city with her and her retinue. But that doesn’t count, he thinks. It wasn’t a very good night. I’ll teach you everything I know, he says, breaking the silence, the great writers, their works, everything. We can even read them aloud together — it’ll be great — just promise you’ll stay. She ignores his supplication and keeps looking coldly out the window at the man on the street corner. She doesn’t even blink when the smoke rises up from the ashtray and drifts into her eyes, passing her face undisturbed, as if she were holding her breath, in case displacing the plume might give her away. You’ll have nothing to do but write, he ventures. We’ll just shut ourselves in this room forever. It will be our own little paradise.