A. Porta - No World Concerto

True paradises are of the mind, he says aloud while strolling along the empty streets, past all the closed storefronts and other establishments, which give the neighborhood an eerie atmosphere. He’ll have to head toward the city center if he wants to meet anyone. Even the bookstores are open on Sundays in that part of the city. He takes the metro and heads toward the noise and commotion of the city center, where he spends the afternoon roaming through empty, uninviting streets or darting through excessively crowded ones. He doesn’t know the secret of why some streets are busy and others not. He looks around for potential exteriors for some of his scenes, but he doesn’t find anything special, so he goes to the cinema archive where they’re showing a movie by the director of the film in which an angel is able to hear other people’s voices, not only when they speak, but also when they think, the spoken and unspoken thoughts of everyone on Earth. The featured film is a much earlier work, one that’s held up well over the years, although the screenwriter finds the music the most striking thing about it. He’d almost forgotten how startling it actually is, and when the movie’s finished, he leaves the theater humming the main theme. It has an unsettling rhythm, like something that’s always approaching but never quite arrives. He’d like to use it in the No World . Is that what he’ll call his script, No World ? He’d never seriously considered it. Up till now, it didn’t have a title, and he knows this one belongs to the girl. But he still has time to decide. Now, as he goes over the scenes in his head, it seems inevitable they’d be accompanied by the music he just heard. As night falls, he heads back. There’s no place to sit at the café, which is once again thronging with tourists trying their best to prolong the late summer evening, so he passes it by, a little wearied from all his walking, and continues down the street until he reaches a pizzeria. He’s not hungry, perhaps it’s because he’s so tired. But he resists the urge to go back to the hotel, orders a plate of food, and starts thinking about the girl. At his age, he doesn’t need the extra calories. He needs only her. He’d like to be near her. He checks his watch automatically, as if to figure out how much time is left until he sees her, takes his notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket, and goes over some of his notes for a scene in which she appears with her father and the other musicians of the Little Sinfonietta.

The screenplay is quite inane really, but he’s not watching the movie for the quality of its script. The only thing he wants to see in a porno is women fucking. He could spend hours watching the same scenes. One day, perhaps, his circumstances will force him to branch into the genre. He never used to think about the future the way he does now. His pension doesn’t amount to much without the added remuneration from teaching. Goddamn money, he complains. Yes, he could do it, write proper screenplays for porn. But they don’t pay for shit, he thinks, and he’s heard it’s really hard work, that they demand a script per day or something like that. He doesn’t know if he could produce decent writing at that rate. He probably couldn’t. It runs against his idea of the proper pacing needed for achieving quality work. He imagines the working method: arriving early on set; making up a script on the spot, preferably one that makes use of the set another group has just finished using; dashing it off, and presenting it to the waiting director. He’s never worked like that. He’s touched up another person’s screenplay, extemporized new dialogue to satisfy the whim of a producer, but he’s never started from scratch using someone else’s set. He isn’t sure he could improvise to that extent. I suppose you should just throw yourself into it, he says to himself. Once in the thick of it, you’ll learn quickly enough. He can see himself sitting in a corner dashing off the final parts of a script while the actresses are drinking coffee and the director deliberates about how to conduct the day’s shoot. The long and short of it is there’s not much dialogue to write, and the actors have neither the time nor the acting skills to memorize and deliver their lines the way he’d want. It can’t be much different from churning out scripts for TV shows, although in TV, writers tend to work in teams. The screenwriter considers the scene that’s playing out on his TV set: an attractive, respectable-looking woman enters a shoe-repair shop, limping, shows the broken stiletto heel to the cobbler, and requests he fix it immediately. The screenwriter once toyed with the notion that his scripts punctuated different stages of his life; like his offspring, each child belonging to a different era, with its own individual memories, specific mental states, favorite colors, lovers. . yet, for the line of work the screenwriter’s considering, such complicated entities would have to be conceived on a daily basis — different sets, eras, mental states — a different lover every day? — how could he take stock of all that? Yet, he’s still thinking about a possible career as a porno screenwriter: arriving early on set; making up a script on the spot that can employ the sets of other films; perhaps he’d come up with a story on his way to work, or while drinking coffee in the café on the corner; perhaps he’d have written one the night before, after sleeping with one of the actresses. There’s a new idea running through the screenwriter’s head that seems brilliant to him, and quite original, an idea to rival even the great dramatist’s work, something he himself might have written had he lived at a different time. Amorous scenes between a king and queen talking at length about their eccentric son’s future — about whether they’ll end up having him murdered somewhere far from their kingdom — while they spank each other, revealing to the audience another side to the familiar story. He’s even thought of the title he’d give to a series of such films: Hidden Scenes from so-and-so’s Work . Or if he changed the author and work in question: Leon Kowalski, the Hidden Years of a Replicant . It would be a matter of putting false memories into the mind of a movie character, although of course it wouldn’t make a difference if the memories were true or false. It’s all the same in fiction. The screenwriter puts the matter aside for the moment and continues watching the TV. The lady has finally made her way to the back of the shoe-repair shop. Looking closely, one can clearly see a halo of light around her body. The screenwriter doesn’t understand why no one else can see that she’s an alien.

It is well after midnight, and the screenwriter is speculating about the No World. What does No World mean? It’s not the first time he’s asked the question. The girl no longer remembers the answer; that is, if she ever really had the answer. What does No World mean? she asks herself in turn. Where does a game lead to in the end? Perhaps it leads to the young orchestra conductor, the screenwriter thinks. For him, the girl’s writing is very arid, too descriptive and plain, and he doesn’t know how to encourage her without lying. They’ve just made love: slowly, at his pace. Sometimes they do it more energetically, the way she likes it, sometimes not. The screenwriter feels as if his soul has climbed up to heaven and is looking back on Earth. Lying on the bed next to the girl, looking pensive, he slides his left arm under her nape and just looks at her, examines her fringe of hair, short and flat against her brow, and so he delicately displaces it with his fingers. The early morning silence breezes in through the half-open windows. You’ll end up preferring him to me, the screenwriter whispers, meaning the young conductor, speaking so softly his voice almost peters out entirely. No I won’t, she says, the after-silence stretching out indefinitely. You’ll want somebody younger, the screenwriter insists, holding his breath. He wants to know what will happen when he gets even older. What do you want to happen? she asks, her eyes glued to the ceiling. He shrugs his shoulders feebly, unable to answer her. There’s a prolonged silence as she turns to look at him, unwavering, not moving a single muscle in her face. I’ve told you I’ll always love you, she says. The screenwriter wishes he could believe her, that she’d promise her undying love, give her word to never abandon him. But then, in a moment of lucidity, he remembers that only desire matters, there can be no room for sentiment. They say old age vitiates desire. But he doesn’t see it that way. His life is a torment, and he supposes it’ll always be a torment: rest, repose, who’d want that? Maybe it’s a different kind of desire, the desire for peace — more complex, but also more self-evident. Well, perhaps. She lights a joint and hands it to him, then gets up and starts dressing by the side of the bed. She puts her notebook in her satchel and takes a quick look outside, searching for the inconspicuous shadow that often lurks near the hotel’s entrance. An hour has passed, maybe two, and the murmur of engines paused at the traffic lights is getting louder by the moment. The city’s stirring. Don’t go, he implores her as she heads to the door, his hand reaching weakly, vainly, for hers.