A. Porta - No World Concerto

She dances alone under the flashing lights, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the shelves of bottles behind the bar. It’s Friday, so there are quite a few people on the dance floor, although it isn’t the busiest hour yet. The girl is moving like a zombie, hardly aware of what she’s doing or where she is. She looks around the dance floor at the people around her, at the other girls in the club — both those who are dancing and the ones sitting down — biding her time, waiting for something to happen, wondering when this meeting is going to take place, a blind meeting she probably should’ve avoided. How will she be able to recognize him? She’ll wait a while longer before leaving. She slows her dancing down until it appears she’s only half-heartedly following the music’s rhythm. Leaning on the bar, the cousin is watching her every movement. Perhaps he followed her because he has something important to say. She considers the possibility her father sent him to look out for her, like a guardian angel or something, but then she dismisses the thought, thinking her father would never go to such trouble for her sake. She decides to offer him a smile, but her smile quickly fades when she sees him vanish in the darkness between the flashing lights. She continues dancing. Sometimes she believes the human race has a destiny it can’t even begin to imagine. A destiny she can hardly begin to imagine herself. Perhaps they’re not even humans, although that’s not important right now. After wasting enough time pottering around the dance floor, she collects her bag from the cloakroom and goes back outside to lean against the bonnet of a car. She should probably be getting back. She wants to plan her route precisely this time; she’s sick of walking the streets using only her gut as a guide. A guy sits next to her. He smiles while taking out a hanky and wiping the sweat from his brow. She remembers having seen him on the dance floor. Light from the club’s entrance is flooding the sidewalk, which is swarming with young people — some entering and exiting, some hanging around chatting and smoking. The bouncer looks at her for a moment, but he’s busy dealing with the people walking in and out of the club. To one side, a group of friends are debating whether to go somewhere else. Near them, two girls are repeatedly kissing one another on the cheeks. The girl counts five kisses before deciding to leave them to it. The largest group of people seems to be waiting for someone, who finally emerges from inside the club, and after briefly checking his fly is closed, joins the rest of his party, which then swarms as a single unit down the street. This isn’t the best place for dancing, says the guy who’s still sitting beside the girl. He looks at her carefully and points out her striking resemblance to that famous pianist. How did he recognize her with her new clothes and hair? He tells her he went to one of her concerts, and says that her features haven’t changed all that much. It seems she should start wearing her sunglasses at night, she thinks. A cap and scarf wouldn’t go amiss either. She asks if he was one of the group that accompanied the musicians when they went barhopping after their concerts. He was not. The only thing he wants to talk about is the voices. He too hears voices, and that’s the reason he replied to her message. What are they like? she asks, disappointed. The guy launches into his explanation, saying he often hears them call him by a different name, but when he wakes up, he can’t recall what it was. Then it happens in your dreams? the girl asks. She says she hears them all the time, asleep or awake. She hears them pronounce her name with a “ka” instead of a “k” sound. He says it’s probably an honest mistake. August is a horrible month. It must be even for aliens. There’s nothing special about this guy, or the voices he thinks he hears. He shouldn’t have bothered replying. Since he only hears voices in his dreams, maybe they should arrange to have a meeting there, because that’s the only place they’d ever hit it off. August is a horrible month for everyone, whatever the city. They remain seated on the car, talking about aliens and music. He doesn’t think the voices come from another galaxy, and he doesn’t understand why she expects to receive any further contact, aside from him. As regards music, he knows next to nothing, so the girl ends up having to launch into a screed about twelve-tone serialism and why it’s so important. She also tells him what it’s like to be a so-called child prodigy, and how people try to exploit her as a brand. It’s getting late, but something keeps her from going back to the hotel just yet. Maybe it’s the companionship. Perhaps that’s all she’s been looking for. At least her head no longer feels like it’s going to explode. And that’s a good sign. There’s a bitter wind blowing, so the girl buttons up her jacket. The guy offers to make her coffee back at his place. It’s not far. She never really developed a taste for coffee, but she doesn’t mind having some anyway. The pills are already keeping her wide-awake, so it’ll hardly make a difference. If she were present, the girl’s mother would have lost no time pointing out the fact that the guy’s wearing imitation-brand clothing: a polo shirt, unbleached cotton pants, and a pair of moccasins. Casual and cheap. She grins for having thought of it. She wouldn’t dare ask him what brand they’re supposed to be, but she can smell an imitation from miles away, which is about the distance separating them in terms of class. It’s something she inherited, in a sense, a mindset she grew up with, starting when she was an infant, to be aware of all the differences, both glaring and subtle, between people like her and people belonging to the lower classes. But she’s made a promise to herself to combat this mindset and resist all thoughts proceeding from it. The guy lives in a small apartment located in a tiny square at the end of a residents-only passageway off the street. He turns on the lights and walks along a narrow corridor. The floor consists of a series of wooden planks set lengthwise under their feet. It seems strange at first, but then she considers it homey. The girl tells him she wants to be a writer, and that’s the reason she gave up music, because to be a writer is all she really wants in this life. After a few minutes, or perhaps it’s an hour, he’s sitting with a coffee, and she a bottle of beer and what’s left of a slice of cake. She was going to tell him she’s at a crucial stage in her career, having discovered the source of her literary impulse in a hypnotist’s swaying pendulum, but she decided against going into it. He’d like to know what it is she writes about, so she explains to him the plot of her No World . She tells him about an angel that isn’t really an angel; about an old professor and his female student; about invisible aliens who keep watch on their charges, who either don’t know they’re aliens or ignore the fact. The angel isn’t really an angel, but another alien who, like the others, is invisible, but invisible in the sense that it doesn’t truly exist, not as something that occupies space and is made of matter exists, anyway, because it’s simply the creation of a single overriding consciousness. The difference being that this angel is unable to imagine the existence of other angels, and for this reason, other angels are invisible to it. She tells him about the war in the City in Outer Space, and the survivor who must face the prospect of being alone for the rest of his life, his only possessions being a tape recorder, a copy of W’s magnum opus, and a gun. She’s certain that her music, which he hears constantly while walking the desolate streets alone, provides some solace. She’s certain it helps to calm this terrible vision he has of a universe that seems to be expanding one day and contracting the next. The constructions of the mind are the constructions of the No World. The No World is all that is the case. The guy thinks her explanation is rather like her notion of a difference between “ka” and “k,” and he really doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s reminded of a movie in which an angel on Earth listens to other people’s conversations, perhaps hearing their thoughts as well. He finds the idea interesting that nothing exists outside the mind, that everything’s constructed by a single consciousness. Then he asks her what No World means. She hesitates to answer, as the idea’s still a work in progress. Finally, she says the No World must be understood as a sort of game. A game that creates a reality parallel to ours, and which, in essence, is identical to ours, just seen from a different frame of reference. The No World, just like everything else, could simply be a dream. No World is simply a name for the all-encompassing thought, the thought of which all things ultimately consist. All that is the case, she adds. Then she explains that, in the beginning, there was only nothingness, and that this nothingness was all-encompassing, except for a single point of concentrated thought, too small to be seen by the naked eye, perhaps too small for an electron microscope to detect. Then, in a timeless instant, this point exploded, and in the explosion, thought began expanding outward, creating a universe that exists only within its own solitude, although it appears so real that it eventually created beings who were convinced it was real, that they were real, and so convinced were they, it was inconceivable to even admit to the possibility that all they saw around them, all they knew and loved and hated, was only a product of thought. These beings eventually thought other universes into existence, universes filled with other people, which they called unreal, fictitious, while always refusing to admit to the possibility that what they saw around them, all they loved and hated, was also unreal, fictitious; always refusing to admit to the possibility that the constantly expanding universe they lived in was just a mind that thought them into existence. The girl could tell him more about the No World, but she thinks she’s said enough, and he accepts this without further comment. Then a minute goes by, perhaps more, either way, it’s too late to beat around the bush, so they decide to go to bed. They have sex, but it doesn’t go well, because she wants to do it fast, while he’d prefer to go at his own pace. This always happens when she pops those pills. It’s nothing new to her. In any case, she acts as if there’s nothing wrong. But she thinks it’s strange she’s now heard them whispering in another language. She tries to get some sleep, but his bed is just a mattress on the floor, and his nightstand just an upside-down fruit box. It occurs to the girl that her mother wouldn’t spend a minute in this place. She doesn’t know why she’s suddenly thinking of her mother. At dawn, they lie in silence under the covers. The windows are open, and the girl watches the shadows of wind-stirred branches moving on the plaster molds of the ceiling. She listens to the silence outside, very different from her father’s hotel room, the incessant din of the Grand Central Station. She’s not looking at the guy, although she can tell he’s also watching the shadows on the ceiling. When a day begins to dawn, there’s a certain point at which the darkness and the light seem mixed in equal proportion. It’s a magical moment, although it only lasts a few seconds — yet she’s able to prolong it by closing her eyes and recalling it once it passes. In the bed, the girl closes her eyes and recalls that moment again, a moment few people ever get to see, she thinks, because they’re always asleep when it happens. Then she falls asleep herself and starts dreaming about a foosball table, a formation of two defenders, five midfielders, and three strikers. She struggles to control the positions of the players and loses every game she plays. Then she’s explaining to her new friend that, in her native country, the foosball tables have three defenders, three midfielders, and four strikers, and she goes wandering the streets looking for one exactly like it. A stranger approaches her and says that, in his native city, they have the best foosball tables in the world. When she awakens, they have sex a second time, with no better results than the first. While she showers, he smokes a cigarette. She asks him if she knows of any foosball tables with the three-three-four formation. He says he doesn’t remember, he’s not a habitual player. The girl eats breakfast quickly; she’s in a hurry. She couldn’t say what exactly has changed since last night, but right now she wants to be alone. He’s happy to go without breakfast and has a couple of cigarettes instead. She opens her satchel, takes out the gun, and slips it between her jeans and the small of her back. Their eyes meet momentarily. I’ve been getting death threats, she lies. He keeps watching her, feeling a little threatened himself. There’s something strange in his look. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you, she jokes, at least not today. Before she leaves, he takes a quick Polaroid of the two of them, reaching out his arm to snap them both, their heads tenderly touching in the same frame. The girl writes on the back of the photo the same message that brought them together. “I hear voices. 1. The No World is all that is the case.” Then she writes the date and signs it “Ka.” In the photo, they appear together under the door-frame, with the mattress on the floor in the background. To her relief, the guy doesn’t ask for her number, nor does he ask to meet up again. So after they say their good-byes, the girl leaves. The screenwriter lifts his eyes from his typewriter, a little surprised by how dark it’s become, and deduces it must be quite late. He’s spent hours immersed in his writing, but before going to bed, he lights one last cigarette. He needs to relieve the strain in his neck. He turns off the light and stays seated a while, observing the windows of the building opposite. Some are still glowing with signs of life; others are stygian black. The No World is just another way of trying to replace the external world with a replica, but it’s a replica that acts like a photographic negative with an image on it, but which disappears entirely once it’s developed. He’s hungry. When will the money arrive? he wonders.