While waving to the audience at the end of the second part, the girl spots her father sitting next to a pillar. It’s strange. He usually doesn’t attend her concerts, especially when they’re abroad. The girl spends the intermission debating whether or not to go out and talk to him. Then someone announces the third part is about to begin. It’s the part in which she sings, or recites almost, a confusing and disturbing series of verses which give the impression they were inspired by a strange vision or hallucination, or the effects of a psychotropic pilclass="underline" at least according to a modern interpretation. During her recitation, the girl looks out at the auditorium, her voice, enveloping, bewitching the audience, creates an atmosphere of unease. Dressed as a clown brandishing a bloody knife, wandering in a desolate landscape covered in craters, it’s not quite clear what she’s looking at exactly, because she seems completely focused on the lyrics she’s reciting, a seemingly interminable series of lyrics. Perhaps she’s looking for her father in the audience, or maybe, unconsciously, for the young conductor’s latest conquest, who hasn’t left his side in days. The girl’s won over the crowd, and she gets the impression the performance has gone as well or better than on previous nights. There are even people outside on the plaza who couldn’t get in. After the concert, the girl takes her father to the writer’s café opposite the church. He’s going to be in the neighboring country’s capital for longer than he expected. I needed a vacation, he tells her. A vacation? she asks, detecting a lie. Well maybe it’s also something to do with work, he admits. They sit at the bar and discuss the concert program together, keeping well away from the other musicians, especially the young conductor and his latest conquest, who are sitting at a table in the back with the girl’s mother. The girl’s father can’t make heads or tails of the repertoire, but he deduces from the audience’s reaction and the critical reception that there must be something to it. He finds it odd she performs in a clown suit. What did you imagine the concert would be like? she asks him. But he doesn’t know, he’s never seen this side of her before, he’s only ever thought of her as a pianist. Is there really an audience for this kind of music? Are other musicians the only ones who attend these kinds of concerts? Is this the kind of music musicians are writing nowadays? The girl points out the fact that many parents have brought their pianist children to see her play so they can follow her example. Maybe it’s all the publicity that attracts them, all the hype, a false image created by the newspapers. They move on to other subjects, both of them endeavoring to avoid an argument: she not mentioning her recent literary afflatus, he putting his friendliest side forward — this being his daughter’s special night; she not admitting the real reason the night was special — that her father finally showed up; and he not realizing his daughter feels this way, or perhaps choosing to ignore it. A woman approaches the girl and asks her to sign a concert stub. Her father says he’s staying in a hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. Maybe he’ll visit her again another day. As he leaves, he pauses at the doorway to say good-bye. She goes over and kisses him, embraces him. She would’ve liked to go to dinner, to be rescued from the nightmare awaiting her back inside. Are you on duty? she asks, noticing the bulge on his hip. He smiles in a routine manner that could be interpreted in any way, with an expression that could be said to express absolutely nothing.
The screenwriter doesn’t think he’s forgotten anything important. He extinguishes his cigarette and takes a deep breath, puts his glasses on the desk next to the typewriter, leans back and closes his eyes. He allows some time to pass by, enough to accommodate a daydream, before opening them again to examine a few photos of the girl. He took them a while back, well before his trip to the neighboring country’s capital. He goes through them slowly one by one, scrutinizing every detail. ONE: a photo of the girl posing nude, seated at the piano. A classic pose and well captured. TWO: a photo of the girl posing nude with her arms crossed standing next to the piano. Perhaps it’s the way the light hits her face, or the way she’s standing — a pose he’s seen her enact when fully-clothed — or the music she played that day, the notes that still resound in his ear, but he doesn’t know, can’t determine what it is that makes this photograph so special to him. THREE: a photo of the girl posing nude, stretched out on the piano. Her white skin contrasts exquisitely with the black lacquered finish on the instrument. FOUR: a photo of the girl posing nude, blindfolded, clenching in her teeth one end of a piece of ribbon, which passes between her legs and up along her back; the other end in her hands, clutched tightly above her head. FIVE: a photo of the girl posing nude, a piece of ribbon around her neck, which passes between her legs, tying her wrists behind her back. SIX: a photo of the girl posing nude, standing in the tub, holding a vessel over her head which she tips slightly, letting a trickle of water fall on her face. Also in the picture, seen from behind, is her old teacher, naked, kneeling on the ground, passing a sponge over her body. SEVEN: a photo of the girl posing nude in front of a large canvas on which she’s painting with a thick brush; beside her are two bottles of paint, one blue, one yellow. There’s paint everywhere — on the ground as much as on the canvas, and all over the girl’s body, especially her arms and legs. She’s covering every inch of the canvas with writing — disconnected phrases about nothingness, “ka,” space and time, and so on. They’re fine photographs, the screenwriter thinks as he goes through them. They may be a little crude, and perhaps a professional could tell at a glance they’re the work of an amateur, but they’re still quite good. He had a famous photographer in mind when he took them, one who’s well-known for his images of domineering women, always depicting them as being cold and aloof. The girl couldn’t pull it off though, she needs a few more years on her, but there’s something about her attitude, the look in her eyes, which suggests she has the potential. Maybe that’s her strength. He regrets not taking a photo of her wearing the tuxedo, the silken black necktie, and her mother’s high heel shoes, the latter perhaps a little too big for her. A photograph in which she’s almost nude, he thinks, but not quite.
Do you know what I think about before I fall asleep? the girl asks on the other end of the telephone. He doesn’t know. Aliens, she says. The screenwriter looks at his watch. Only an hour before he goes to bed, but he likes listening to her voice. The girl can’t sleep. She feels she should be writing, despite the fact she’s not getting anywhere with it. Instead, she records her ideas and impressions, filling whole pages of her notebook. Inspiration is impending, so close she can almost touch it, and she can’t possibly go to sleep until she does. So she decides to go over everything again: the plot, the argument, the characters, their attributes, every detail and all the links between them. She hasn’t assimilated enough to begin writing yet: the details of her story must be fully digested first, fully incorporated, as it were, for they must become a part of her. The screenwriter listens to her patiently. Why extraterrestrials? he asks himself. It’s neither new nor original. Though her idea is as original as things get, he thinks, referring the girl’s notion that every living thing on Earth is an alien but doesn’t know it. The screenwriter’s annoyed at having to waste so much time discussing sci-fi hokum; it’s a genre no one takes seriously. Literature shouldn’t be divided into genres anyway, he thinks. There should only be good books and bad books. Science fiction! he grumbles to himself, as the dawn starts peeping timorously into the room. If these beings exist in another galaxy, continues the girl, they’d have to travel faster than the speed of light, since it takes thousands of years for light to reach us even from the nearest star. Who knows, perhaps these beings experience time differently, perhaps a thousand years isn’t such a long time for them, and covering such distances may in fact be commonplace. They’ve probably found a way to move freely through the universe, perhaps by using a doorway or portal, like in the movies, portals connecting far-flung regions of the cosmos through wormholes tunneled in the fabric of space-time. In the movies, they call it a gateway to the stars, or something like that.