No World Concerto (33 page)

The girl hasn’t written in a while. She doesn’t smoke habitually, but she lights a cigarette and looks out the window at the nondescript landscape. She still prefers the view from the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. Her father is reading, surrounded by a number of cell phones. Some things haven’t changed in their environment — the phones, the fax machine, and the interminable waiting to which both of them have become inured. The girl’s managed to write a few lines, but she’s still not happy with them. They’re about the discovery of the woman’s body by her son, and the subsequent police investigation of the female student’s role in the crime, or perhaps even to the philosophy professor’s flight to the City in Outer Space, a city once ravaged by war, far removed from human contact, and certainly inaccessible to those pursuing him, but at the same time a prison to which he’ll have condemned himself forever. But the girl finally decides most of the details are irrelevant and scraps them. Sometimes it’s best to omit certain scenes, not to over-explain, let the reader connect the dots. Isn’t that the way things happen in real life? Isn’t it true that some things only occur in the mind and can’t be shown on the page? She smokes her cigarette, observing a landscape that can only be described as very different from the view from the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. Now and again, her father receives a call on one of his phones that he answers in a low register. The girl also receives a call she’s been expecting, answers it in a low register both to imitate and mock her father, before grabbing her jacket and satchel and fixing herself up in the bathroom mirror. I’ll be right back, she says. Her father lifts his eyes from his newspaper, which he rests on his knees. His face is expressionless, or perhaps it’s a routine expression that could be interpreted to mean anything. Won’t you be warm dressed like that? he asks. Once on the stairway, the girl hides the gun in the small of her back, behind her jeans. Then she goes outside, looks left and right to check that nobody’s following her — not that anyone could possibly recognize her through her disguise — before hailing the first cab she sees, from which she alights at the corner of the boulevards. She’d prefer to walk the remaining distance, as if this was a long established ritual, to have a few more minutes to herself before confronting her destiny. While climbing the hill close to the place where the famous writer once lived, the one whose name everyone knows, even the people who no longer read his books, the girl once again gets the same feeling she’s had since arriving in the neighboring country’s capital, the feeling that she’s being followed. She stops in front of a window and sees Cousin McGregor approaching from some meters away, barely concealing his presence. The girl decides to ignore him, and continues on her way. Perhaps he’s the one who’s been following her the whole time, she snickers. Perhaps he’s one of those alien hunters who don’t know they’re aliens. When she reaches the café, she stops at the door to look for the screenwriter, who she finds sitting in the same place he’s been writing, smoking, and drinking coffee the past few days. The typewriter, shifted to his left toward the edge of the table, leaves just enough space for the screenplay that rests beside it. For once, he isn’t typing, and there’s no paper in the carriage. The frenetic activity she saw him exhibit the last time has vanished, the determined glower has contorted into a look of serenity. He’s looking through the window at the waitress moving between the tables and chairs on the terrace outside. It’s only now he really feels the loss of opportunity as he sees her smiling. He thinks he could’ve made her happy. He lowers his eyes to count out some change on the table. He feels like calling his wife. Although he realizes it’s pointless, he still likes to experience the satisfaction of vengeance. He no longer hates her, no longer resents her in any way, but he calls her out of habit, and because the feeling of revenge has to be fed. By contrast, when he thinks about the girl, he remembers only lost opportunities. The vague hope to one day run away with her, to travel the world next to that young body that so willingly surrendered to him, next to that soft, perfectly tanned skin, covered in delicate down, which he’d so like to photograph again. But he knows none of it will ever happen. The screenwriter reckons his life is coming to a sardonic sort of end, and he doesn’t even know if it was worth living. Perhaps the writing made it worthwhile, because he seems to believe writing and living are equally important. He knows now that he’ll never be going anywhere with the girl, that there’ll be no voluntary exile, so he’s learning to live his life one day at a time, something they don’t teach in any school, something that isn’t learned in any one place, but everywhere at once. Some people don’t have enough time for it to be otherwise, he thinks. Perhaps it’s just a question of focus. He’d like to know what he meant to the girl, what she was feeling when they made love, when his fingers sought relief in the touch of her skin, and every time he removed her clothes and photographed her. To know, the screenwriter murmurs, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray and raising his eyes, seeing her image appearing and moving toward him, stopping as he repeats the words, to know, as something is repeated because it’s unreachable, because it’s hopeless, to mark with the tip of his tongue the impossible skin of an impossible image, because his fingers cannot reach it, to know. . three ellipsis points taking leave of his mouth at the moment she starts firing one, two, three bullets into his chest. Sometimes, time seems to stand still, he thinks. It’s an absurdity, a false perception, something that cannot really be, like all those things that don’t exist outside the mind, but while experiencing that false and absurd sensation of stillness, the image of the girl remains, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, the gun held weakly in one of her hands, looking at, although perhaps not seeing, the screenwriter slumped on the floor next to the table. There’s a profound silence, no one in the café even budges, although some people in the plaza have heard the sound of gunfire. The waitress slowly places her tray on a table and sits down, covering her mouth with one hand, not believing what’s just transpired, watching the thick dark shadow under the screenwriter’s body spreading like oil spilled on the floor. Cousin McGregor then appears, as if out of nowhere, as if he were an angel from heaven, or the one in the movie the screenwriter liked to remember when he was still alive, the one who heard other people’s voices, their thoughts as well, perhaps those of everyone on Earth, an angel who used to go by the name of Cousin Dedalus. He approaches in an unhurried manner, calmly, with the seamless air of a professional who’s accustomed to scenes like this. Anyone would say he’d always been there, just waiting for the right opportunity. He disarms the girl and checks the screenwriter’s vitals, or lack thereof. Then he stands and flashes his wallet, announcing loud and clear the word police, before taking the screenplay from the table and grabbing the girl and half-dragging her away from the scene of the crime.

Some time goes by, hours perhaps. The girl is looking through a window at the sky, blanketed by clouds, at the leaden landscape, the scarcity of verdure, at the single road in front of her, empty, and at a small beach beyond it, where black waves break in a grayer shade of white. A place well off the beaten track, it would seem. Then she sees a man walking on the sand with his dog, and by the road, a couple of nurses heading in the opposite direction. It’s not long since she awoke. The last thing she remembers is her mother giving her a pill to calm her down. Then the silence, the white noise, the cosmic radiation: she has the impression that if she lets her mind go blank in a quiet place, she can hear a noise in the background that is the whisper of the cosmos. It’s not the voices, the ones that pronounce her name differently, but the thought underlying them, the same thought that’s been constructing itself and expanding in the surrounding nothingness over the course of eons. But right now she’s not in the mood to try and formulate a theory of how an object located nowhere, that’s surrounded by nothing, can be growing continually and expanding. She is sure though, that the cosmic radiation she hears in the silence vindicates any such theory. She’s always attributed it to the effects of alcohol or the pills she used to take. The girl isn’t experiencing any particular sensation just now, save a malaise associated with the vague memory of a dream. She’s not thinking about hypnosis, but she still doesn’t feel like writing. To create a parallel between her No Reality and the work she’s been writing, she intended to have the old professor commit suicide. “6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.5 The riddle does not exist. If a No World can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.” The girl spends some more time looking out the window before returning her attention to the room. There are various newspapers stacked on a chair, not one of which mentions the death of the screenwriter. The information still hasn’t filtered through to the press. She sits on the bed. The effects of the tranquilizer are slowly wearing off, but she still feels a little sluggish. She goes into the bathroom and reacquaints herself with the now familiar image of herself with dyed hair and circles under her eyes. She splashes her face with water to wake herself up and sits on a stool, staring at the wall tiles. She’s hungry. She looks at her watch. It’s mid-afternoon. Then her mother enters, who’s still pronouncing her name with a “ka.” The girl’s ready to go home, but her mother insists she wait. Wait for what? she asks, since she’d already been waiting for what seemed like an eternity in the hotel room by the Grand Central Station, and now she’s waiting again in this inn in the middle of nowhere that hasn’t even got a decent view. Perhaps her father, mother, and the cousin are still waiting to meet up with the aliens. You passed out; you were probably suffering from shock, her mother says before assuring her they won’t be waiting much longer. See, the bags are all packed, she says, pointing to the luggage by the door. She’s just waiting for a phone call and then she’ll load them into the car. Meanwhile, she picks up the phone and cancels any commitments the girl may have in other capitals around the world. The girl’s mind is beginning to clear. She could’ve sworn those commitments had already been canceled. The girl once again asks her mother about the astrophysicist in the classically-cut suit. He seemed to know her. But her mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and although the girl realizes it’s a faux pas to broach the subject, she’s determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. He died in the hotel in which he lived the final years of his life, says the girl, and her father must’ve gone to the funeral, perhaps the cousin too. There’s a long silence. It doesn’t seem like her mother is going to say anything. Before we go anywhere, you ought to make peace with your friends, she finally says. Her mother seems to believe the girl should reconcile with the part of her life that was real. Make peace? asks the girl. Those people are the least of her concerns right now. In fact, they’re no concern at all. She hates them, and she figures they’re the only ones who have nothing whatsoever to do with extraterrestrials. After a while, mother and daughter leave the room together and go down to the lobby of the inn, a small inn used mainly for rest and recuperation, located on the neighboring country’s coast. Have you contacted the aliens or are you still waiting? the girl asks. Her mother looks at her, concerned. From where are you getting these obsessions? Is this how you earn your living? the girl asks, suspecting both her parents are members of the same organization. Her mother doesn’t answer. She seems to be ignoring her daughter, but any member of a secret organization should have a number of answers prepared for such occasions. Just stop it! her mother demands. Then, in a nearby café, her mother hands her an envelope from the young orchestra conductor and brilliant composer. It’s for you, she says. The girl takes it and puts it to one side, not bothering to open it, and continues eating her meal. There are also things the girl refuses to talk about. When she’s finished eating, she picks up a newspaper and looks for any news on the star of her favorite soccer team, or perhaps something on the death of the screenwriter. Instead, she sees an article on the scientist in the classically-cut suit. She’ll read it later, she thinks. She doesn’t want her mother finding out. Then her mother’s cell phone rings, which she answers, then pretends not to have a good signal so she can take it outside. The girl uses the opportunity to open the envelope. Inside is the photo of her standing next to the guy she met in the nightclub. It wasn’t even a week ago, yet it seems like forever. I should’ve shot him, she says offhandedly, guessing at his ultimate fate. Along with the photo, there’s a clipping of an ad by the guy in which he offers his sexual services. So that’s what it was, she murmurs. On the back of the photo, there’s a dedication next to the one she wrote that simply says: “a gift from your friend.” Voices. . she murmurs, remembering the game and her underdeveloped theory of the cosmos. I heard voices. The girl smirks as she tears up the photograph and clipping into several small pieces. For a nobody, the little shit has certainly upped the ante, she thinks, referring to the brilliant composer. He’s an utter deviant, and whatever talent he possesses has been warped by this quality. It’s evident in all his compositions. She imagines him responding to the guy’s ad, meeting up with him. . perhaps I’ll kill him next time, she says aloud as her mother reenters the café. What did you say? her mother asks. Oh, nothing, the girl says, watching her mother sit down opposite her. The girl would like to know if her mother’s finally made contact, but she remembers the question wasn’t well received before, so she stays quiet. Perhaps her tactfulness is an effect of the tranquilizer, or that she’s finally beginning to distance herself from such things. Perhaps this is another way of saying everything’s a game, that life, from beginning to end, is only a game.

Numberless clouds climb over the horizon and invade the coast, imparting a leaden aspect to the day. Evening falls. On the shore, whooping seagulls are swooping overhead, while an army of Boy Scouts are marching up the road, holding their standards aloft and proud, flapping though not flagging in the eye of the wind, together out-singing the squadrons of gulls, and whistling brave defiance at the clouds. The one farthest behind, who looks less than ten years old, is wearing a bandana decked with skull and crossbones. Standing next to her mother’s convertible, the girl watches them while thinking about the strange memory, as of a half-forgotten dream, adulterated by a sedative, which gives her the feeling she’s waking up from something both old and new at the same time. She takes a seat in the car and starts reading the article about the scientist, while her mother oversees the transfer of their luggage. Among his documents, they discovered proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Apparently, he dictated in his will that the news be disclosed in the event of his death. The girl recognizes the photos accompanying the text. She’s seen them on more than one occasion. Another interesting detail, the scientist was found dead in the same hotel her father and the cousin were staying in, in front of the Grand Central Station. Tell me if I’m dreaming, mumbles the girl carefully, so her mother doesn’t hear. She needs to be independent, to get her own place. She’s a writer, if only because of hypnosis, yet it’s still the only thing she wants to do in life. She doesn’t know what to do with her career as a concert pianist. A career that wouldn’t have been possible in the first place were it not for her mother’s connections; she probably even owes her reputation as a prodigy to her mother making a few phone calls. She returns to her previous thought. Is it possible her father and the cousin now take turns staying in the scientist’s room? That they moved out of the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station because they no longer had any hope of their objective being met on the station platforms? There are still a lot of questions to be answered. She drops the newspaper at her feet and tries to concentrate on ridding herself of these strange obsessions that color her whole world. She has to change her life, free herself of these burdens. She shouldn’t waste another second speculating about what her parents are up to, and she doesn’t want to hear another word about the young conductor or the brilliant composer. In life, in reality, she’ll encounter them again under a different name, under the collective epithet, the plagiarists. It fits them like a glove. She should change the title of her novel to incorporate the word, plagiarist. They’ve stolen practically everything from her. Everything except money. When her mother starts the car, the girl keeps her eyes on the distance, focusing on the scouts’ rucksacks, listening to the sound of their singing redoubling as they approach. The one farthest behind, who looks less than ten years old, is wearing a bandana decked with skull and crossbones. She too would whistle and sing if she could, if she was in the mood, if she could rid herself of the obsessions that have colored her reality for so long. Certain characters cross her mind, the old screenwriter, her father, the cousin, but she doesn’t think they’ll prove to be any different from her mother, the young conductor, or brilliant composer. Then she looks sideways at her mother, wondering if it isn’t she who’s really pulling all the strings, that she’s only using the vague title of business executive as a front. The girl feels that she’s surrounded by strange beings; she’d almost say beings from another world — remembering the phrase she heard one day in a café. Let’s imagine we’re talking about beings from a No World. A No World located in this one, if we must be specific: a heaven, hell, or purgatory, to which these beings have been sent, coming from other galaxies; perhaps it’s a heaven for some and a hell for others, and, as such, without differentiating them, it’s possible to see, living together, both the condemned being punished for their sins and the blessed being rewarded for their virtues. The girl hasn’t the slightest doubt about which group she belongs to. She deserves no better for the way she’s behaved. But who knows. . Then, the girl imagines a conversation with her father, a conversation modeled after those she’s had before, in which he promised her that, one day, he’d give up his rotten job and dedicate his life to writing. She isn’t surprised. He’d have no problem finding things to write about. She suggests he write an autobiographical novel, a fictional account of his life. There’s nothing more interesting than that. Of course, she says this thinking about the astrophysicist and the aliens, about the cousin and her mother, about the long vigil — the reason for which they’re still concealing from the girl. Must there always be a reason? she wonders. Her father then suggests, sarcastically, that she should write his biography, although this would be the very opposite of what a great writer would choose to do. Better yet, she should ghostwrite his autobiography, and give it the title:
Daddy’s Autobiography
. The girl would never write anything with such a title, but she stays quiet, because she doesn’t see any point in contradicting him. What are you thinking about? interrupts her mother, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The girl breaks her reverie for a fraction of a second to glance at her mother before looking straight ahead again without answering. She recalls that character of that screenwriter’s, the young college chick, who went around collecting the beginnings of novels. In a similar way, one could go around collecting the endings of novels. The girl would love to find something to work with in this. She tries remembering some of the endings that have impressed her most. She remembers one in particular, by someone who, had he been a novelist instead of a gangster or a spy, might have pleased her father immensely. As for his favorite writer, the author of jealousy and solitude, she’s not sure which ending her father would choose. The novel has numerous volumes, and some of the endings to those volumes are pages long, during which the author may describe a particular house, a particular street, a garden walk, the scent of a shrub, a person’s gait, memories of events that took an instant to transpire, experiences that took an instant to experience, while, for the reader, unfortunately, those instants seem more like years. Cousin McGregor, on the other hand, can only offer something pitifully pithy: “. . and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” But the girl’s trying to remember another ending, one her father mentioned to her before, which goes something like: “. . it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you.” It’s the kind of ending she’d love to have for her own novel. She smiles, thinking about the phrase, tries changing the voice: I’m certain you were never going to write your autobiography. . The girl laughs; it reminds her of the dead screenwriter. Perhaps he actually finished his screenplay before he croaked, but that’s immaterial, because at the end of the day, the only work that matters to the girl is her own. Doesn’t she want to be a writer? Well, she has a good story at her fingertips: the last days of the screenwriter, with maybe a few passing references to those former friends of hers. No one will believe these things really happened, so she’ll write it, but using the screenwriter’s voice. The novel will be a homage to that last photo he never got to take of her, in which she’s dressed in a tuxedo, or perhaps just wearing the jacket, double-breasted but unbuttoned, with a bowtie around her neck, and wearing her mother’s high-heel shoes, which are clearly too big for her: a novel in which she appears ostensibly naked. In a way, it will be a continuation, the second part of the story about Cousin Dedalus she was so anxious to write, but in which he’ll no longer be the protagonist. A novel that will write itself as it’s being read. Whether she was hypnotized or not, she’s resolute about pursuing her vocation, and for that, she has all the time in the world. The constructions of the mind are the constructions of the No World, she tells herself, as she grabs her notebook and tears out the pages of her former scribbling, one at a time, until she reaches a blank page, and inscribes her new title at the top. Perhaps she could imagine the stories succeeding one another in concentric circles, like the layers of an onion, or like those old Russian dolls, a series of stories within stories. Or perhaps she should think more along the lines of two mirrors reflecting each other, an effect that’s always bothered her, but the more she thought about it, the more she imagined that this infinite regress would still take the form of a spiral, a spiral folding in on itself, for when it remains on the mirror’s flat plane, this gives it the appearance of having concentric circles, although the circles grow smaller and smaller ad infinitum, but if pulled outward from that invisible, infinitesimally small center, it would assume the shape of a cone. She has yet to decide which concept will serve her best; it doesn’t really matter, as long as she doesn’t renew her futile obsession to write a dodecaphonic novel. But there’s no rush, she can begin anytime, or choose to postpone things a little longer. It’s the same as with those voices she hears calling her from the other side of the universe, pronouncing her name with a “ka.” It’s a secret she’s not sure will ever be revealed, although she doesn’t really care, because she’s learned how to be patient, how to wait. When the revelation does occur, though, she expects it will be in the form of a discovery, definitive proof that there really is something outside the mind, a hypothetical reality existing somewhere in the great beyond. A single thought expanding outward, creating a nebulous galaxy without a definite shape, because it’s immaterial, ethereal, something resembling God, in other words, something that doesn’t physically exist, although it’s capable of creating a world, a whole universe around itself, and even of envisioning a brain, something with weight and extension, in which it suspends its disbelief and imagines itself contained, a brain that can draw upon the space between stars — just as the initial thought drew upon the surrounding nothingness — to create its own universe and invent itself. She takes a look in the side-view mirror in case anyone’s following her. Although perhaps it’s more out of habit, as she’s no longer afraid of the alien hunters. The sedative’s practically worn off, and she’s feeling alive again. Her mother stops at a traffic light before they enter the town center, peers beneath her sunglasses, and reads the heading written on the otherwise blank page. What was it you said the No World meant? she asks. The girl doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have the time to be answering stupid questions because she has the story at the tips of her fingers, and, moreover, she knows that when something’s struggling to break free, she needs to give it an outlet. So she leaves a space after the title, and begins writing: “The screenwriter stands with his luggage, facing the hotel, having just gotten out of a taxi, thinking he ought to know, or at least have a good idea, how the story he intends to write is going to end. .” Her mother suspects something’s wrong. I think you should take a break, she says. All this writing can’t be good for your health. “6.41 The sense of the No World must lie outside of it,” the girl continues, not paying the least attention.