She’s so tired, she could sleep for two days straight, so she decides to call him on the phone instead of visiting. He likes older women, she says, referring to the young conductor. That’s why he always has a photo handy whenever we have sex — a photo of my mother, or some other woman. Sometimes he likes to have an older woman present. The screenwriter wants to know if the older woman joins in or just watches. The girl says she only watches. The screenwriter needs to know where, and under what circumstances. She’s a hotel employee, the girl replies timidly. He wants to know every lurid detail. The woman watches while reading aloud random passages from the philosopher, W’s, greatest work — something like “2.063 The sum-total of reality is the No World.” The woman usually only watches and reads, but occasionally she lends a hand. Sometimes she’s naked; sometimes she’s dressed in her uniform. It all depends. Depends on what? pants the screenwriter. On how much she gets paid.
Sundays are strange, thinks the screenwriter, who’d rather every day was a Monday, Tuesday, or a Thursday, but never a Sunday. The silence on the streets bothers him, and all the closed stores only dampen his mood further. He puts on his navy-blue blazer and looks in the bathroom mirror. It may seem an odd quirk, but it’s important for him to leave the jacket unbuttoned so it isn’t pulled tightly around his waist, since his stomach has been growing outward for some time. At his age, most men have lost the svelte physique of their youth. In exchange for the loss though, he tells himself he’s gained in stature, become more distinguished. He can’t remember when he bought the jacket, but he doesn’t feel the need to continually change his wardrobe in order to keep up with fashion. Nowadays it would take several seasons for his clothes to begin looking outmoded to him. He runs his fingers through his hair, which is still plentiful after all these years, more so than many younger men’s, and he reckons that this, along with his deportment, is what makes him attractive to women. Moreover, his sage old professor’s aura makes him respectable in the eyes of younger students, who’ve always perceived him as something of a bohemian. Maybe I’ll teach again someday, thinks the screenwriter, amusing himself with the notion, assuming he ever reaches the paradisiacal destination to which he wants to travel with the girl. With his free hand, he touches his pocket to check he has his notebook, and then taps his cane against the floor. The carpet deadens the blows, as if deadening his thoughts. The only true paradises are the ones that are lost, he recalls. It’s a phrase by the author who uses time as a lens, the actor and audience together, in an attempt to recover a world that all but disappears as soon as the actor leaves the stage, and the audience disperses. Not at all surprising coming from an asthmatic recluse who shut himself away in a room with cork-covered walls in order to prevent the outside world intruding; an ailing melancholic who drowned himself in the depths of solitude. Sundays are strange, the screenwriter thinks as he looks down on the street from his window. The woman in the building opposite must be up by now. He’d call her, if he had her number. There’s no harm in striking up a friendly conversation with one’s neighbors. Maybe he’ll look it up in the phonebook one of these days. At the café in the plaza, he drinks his coffee, contemplating the way the neighborhood stretches away and disappears on the horizon. A couple of tourists are sitting in the bar on the other side of the fountain, next to a man about his own age, whom he’s seen before. He’s a regular who usually reads his paper there in the morning. If someone took a photograph of the two of them together, they’d capture a peculiar scene, a snapshot of two people who don’t know what else to do to with their free time. Which reminds the screenwriter of the author the girl’s father admires so much, of those long monologues wending their way through memories of former times, recalling the outdoor excursions and social gatherings of high society: a beautiful, distant epoch, which someone like the girl could scarcely appreciate. The girl would’ve been a wonderful success in the salons. She’d be doing what she already does in the concert halls. Although concerts are more impersonal, being beholden to sponsors, promoters, and impresarios instead of a single patron. At any rate, it’s Sunday, and it takes a great effort for the screenwriter to get up and leave. He doesn’t for a moment suspect the man on the other side of the fountain is anything other than an incorrigible reader like himself; he doesn’t suspect, for example, that he might be following him; and even if he did, he’d never in a million years suspect the real motive. That the reason he’s being followed is the girl.
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.