“1.3 Space is the ideal location for building the future. 1.31 Space can also be understood as the No World. 1.32 The No World is the ideal location for building the future. 1.4 Notes on triggering a war in the City in Outer Space: loss of contact with Earth; lack of basic provisions; the inability to leave the City; fight for control of storehouses, warehouses, and grocery stores that are stocked with basic supplies, water, and fuel; a single survivor — aged, alone — wanders the streets of the desolate City in Outer Space, observing the universe from behind the windows of a control room in a military base, recording his memories of the old world, the place from which he came, his impressions of the new world, which he suspects is coming to an end, doing so as if he’s writing his will; the only person who managed to survive the war; he can’t trust his own mind, he says it plays tricks on him, but with nothing else to go on he records his impressions as they occur to him. He takes up a paperback edition of W, the margins of every page covered with notes, and picks a passage at random that appears near the very end: ‘6.54 He must transcend these initial propositions, and then he will see the No World aright.’”
In the hotel lobby, he collects the little tape recorder and cassette the girl has sent him. She’s not coming tonight, so she sent him a recording of her voice instead. The screenwriter sits at his desk, smoking as he listens, with one arm resting on the typewriter. She’s describing a scene in the small theater where the Little Sinfonietta rehearses. It’s an interview, she says, for which some chairs have been arranged in a semicircle in front of a journalist. They’re talking about being young and gifted, about how much hard work is required to achieve success, and about why they insist on championing such strange and unmelodic music. They then discuss the girl’s surprising role in the piece about the clown: they mention her declamatory skills, her talent as an actress, and the journalist remarks that they’re not accomplishments for which she’s become well known. This leads to another question about hidden talent, the journalist asking her if there are any links between the brilliant composer’s No World Symphony and the work he’s heard she’s writing. At this point, the recording cuts off then begins again with girclass="underline" “No World,” she says suddenly, her voice intruding on the momentary silence, is one of those expressions like “Undead” or “Nonliving”—a play on words, or so to speak — something that derives its meaning through what it negates. Something that’s known by understanding what it is not. The screenwriter wonders about this. He associates the term “undead” with something like “the living dead.” He’s not sure whether No World refers to a kind of resuscitated world resembling ours, or to a world that exists in another dimension. Perhaps it’s really only a play on words, as she says. The screenwriter continues listening. She’s been writing her work for quite a while, she lies, and always finds something wrong with it, something that impels her to start over, be it the characters, the plot, the narrative, although never the title. The title is always the same. Her work, she says, is about someone who’s constantly on the run from something, be it extraterrestrials or even the world itself, by which she means this world, this planet. The girl says she writes about these things, about the world and all, because she’s young, and since the young lack experience, they tend to write about stuff they’re familiar with, the things they see around them everyday. The journalist then asks her in jest if she has many alien friends. I hear voices, she confesses, aware that it sounds like a cliché. She says they call her by name, except they mispronounce the first syllable, always saying “ka” instead of “k.” It’s difficult to explain, she adds. Then the recording cuts off again. Some moments later, it starts up with the girl describing what’s going on around her. After he answers each question, she says, the young conductor always looks at my mother for signs of approval. He also hears an oracular statement whose context he assumes was lost the last time the recording cut off. He rewinds the tape again and again, but no matter how many times he hears the sentence, he can’t quite understand it. “2.063 The sum-total of reality is the No World.”
He needs to see her again, but he’s not sure if she’ll keep visiting him in the middle of the night. Something’s changed. It could be the concerts she’s to give every evening, or it could be that her mother’s returned, and she’s being forced to keep up appearances. After transcribing everything in the recordings, as if it were dialogue for a scene in his movie, the screenwriter decides to take a break. He scavenges the fridge and settles for a meal comprised of last night’s leftovers. Then he lights a cigarette and turns to look for his neighbor in the building across the street. He doesn’t see her: the window of her apartment is a rectangular void. He examines the front of the building. It’s really composed of two buildings: one with balconies and the other with just windows. Most of the doors leading onto the balconies have blinds and there aren’t any flowers outside. He scans the storefronts along the street: the real-estate agency on the corner, the lingerie store, the bakery, and the shoe and handbag store that’s closed for the August vacation. The last store makes him think of his wife. He switches his thoughts back to the screenplay. The most important thing, he says, is the construction. The dialogue can be added later on. He might even get someone else to write it. He remembers the most important thing about planning a script is to know the ending before the beginning, to have a good idea of the storyline, and then to proceed by gradual steps toward that ending. Any other approach would be like running around in circles. Despite the fact he knows better, the screenwriter still tends to run around in circles. Perhaps though, he knows the end of his story better than he lets on. He moves away from the desk and sits on the bed next to the telephone. He dials his wife’s number. In all the screenplays he’s written up to this point, he’s always had the same problem: giving enough weight and meaning to each dramatic moment — or, if he manages that, giving meaning and continuity to a series of moments, to a series of scenes, acts, and finally to the whole story. In times of crisis, it helps him to encapsulate the problem as just that. He listens until the fifth ring, then hangs up. He’s surprised, but he would’ve liked her to answer this time. He returns to his surveillance of his neighbor’s window. He’ll go crazy if he doesn’t see the girl. He flicks his cigarette butt into the darkness, grabs his coat, and goes downstairs to hail a cab. The girl’s mother doesn’t know him. They’ve never met because she’s never accompanied her daughter to the Scholastic Institute. In the doorway of the church, he introduces himself as her literature teacher, telling her he’s on vacation and was reading about the concerts in the local newspaper, so he decided to drop by and say hello. The girl’s mother lets him through. He won’t be allowed meet the musicians until after the concert, but he agrees to join her in the reserved seating area. During the girl’s performance, the screenwriter occasionally jots in his notebook. He waits until the intermission to inform the girl’s mother that he’s writing a screenplay about talented young musicians. She thanks him for encouraging her daughter to read that actor cum dramatist cum impresario from the end of the sixteenth and beginning of seventeenth centuries whose works she now devours like a cormorant. The screenwriter chalks it up to his duties as a teacher, and justifies the girl’s excesses by arguing that literature can take possession of the soul, has the power to render one positively demoniac. Her mother asks that he recommend another author now, as the girl’s possession by this particular demon is taking its toll, She hints specifically at a contemporary of the dramatist, a novelist who lacked the use of one arm. The screenwriter applauds her choice, says there is much to be learned from him about the human condition: he writes about love and deceit, madness and sanity, dreams and wakefulness, life and death — the whole gamut basically — giving us a veritable portrait of the world. We take it for granted now, but no one had written about these things before, described them so exhaustively and in so much detail. People haven’t changed much in the last three thousand years, and perhaps this writer’s greatest accomplishment is that he managed to etch all our absurdities into a single novel, transformed all our frailties into a work of fiction. Despite his encomium, the screenwriter doesn’t mention his reservations about this novelist’s greatest work, for he doesn’t want to contradict the mother, because, in fact, he believes the novelist’s most famous protagonist is something of a wastrel — what with all his pointless wanderings about and endless searches for new adventures. Perhaps he feels slightly embarrassed about voicing such criticisms, considering some of the sillier aspects of his own script. But the screenwriter shrugs away his insecurity. His conversation with the mother has come to an end anyway, and his blushes have gone unnoticed. After the concert, the girl’s mother takes the screenwriter to meet the musicians. The young orchestra conductor and brilliant composer greet him warmly. The girl, on the other hand, goes pale. He turns to look at the young men’s smiling faces, and notes the contrast with her cold and distant aspect. The screenwriter gauges their reactions and starts wondering if the young men even knew he was in the neighboring country’s capital. They discuss the concert, most notably the affect on the audience of a well-known pianist reciting verses in a clown suit. The girl is the star of the show, although she barely takes any notice of the fact. Maybe this is what captivates the audience, the screenwriter thinks. The discussion moves on to poetry, the kind that’s subversive, irreverent, and needless to say, unrhymed, but which nonetheless has an energetic rhythm that sustains itself through the work. What a fine poet the clown’s creator was! although he’s completely unknown to the laity. They discuss experimentation, for which the brilliant composer has a stronger predilection than the rest. Composers, it would seem, have a natural bent for trailblazing, and true artists must experiment with new approaches, investigate new ways to advance their vision. Since the screenwriter was once a teacher at the Scholastic Institute, he knows a thing or two about music, about the importance of certain musical parameters such as volume, pitch, and tempo, and he tries discussing them with the brilliant composer whenever he has his ear. The composer complains about the difficulty of premiering a new work. The screenwriter proposes he imagine twelve-tone music was never invented — no serialism, or any of it. But the girl’s mother interrupts the discussion by suggesting they all go to dinner. During the meal, the screenwriter continues taking notes, and accompanies the group afterward when they head to a trendy café. They are joined by some people that are unknown to the girl and the rest of the group as well. They’re probably friends of the concert promoters, says her mother, unconcerned. Among them are patrons, musicians, variety acts, a hypnotist, and the young conductor’s latest conquest. The girl waits until her mother’s back is turned, then approaches the screenwriter. If you intrude on my life one more time, you’ll never see me again. The hypnotist puts a young man into a trance — a circus performer who said he’s been having trouble with one of the numbers in his show. She commands him to make no more mistakes, snaps him back to reality, and then requests he perform the routine. Although he doesn’t have his equipment, he tries to improvise with some coffee spoons, performing a juggling act while blindfolded, which everyone applauds. The young conductor of the orchestra proposes the girl be hypnotized next, because she’s under a lot of pressure to achieve great things in her life. The girl goes along with it, since everyone’s laughing and having a good time. She tells the hypnotist she wants to be a great writer. So the hypnotist puts her in a trance, and while in that state, assures her and everyone present she’s going to be a great writer. This in spite of the fact she’s not yet written anything of note. The girl awakens and asks what happened. Nobody responds, except the young conductor who tells her she had a little fainting spell, nothing more.