He wasn’t expecting her. The reason, perhaps, is that he’d only just arrived in the capital. The real reason: he didn’t want to delude himself. She floats over the threshold like a ghost and ambles through the room, pausing in front of the writing desk. She rests her hand on his typewriter momentarily and glances around, examining all four corners of the screenwriter’s new abode, before going to the window and peeking through a chink in the curtain — which she quickly pulls shut, and then declares she’s being followed. She’s not certain of course, nothing is certain in this life, but she’s had this feeling for days now. She sits on the edge of one of the beds. She can’t stay long, the rehearsal lasted longer than she expected. She came to this country’s capital to be part of a youth orchestra called the Little Sinfonietta, and to record the 5 Pieces for piano by a famous composer of twelve-tone music. Although she’s a celebrated pianist, her real obsession is writing. But she rarely has the time for what she considers to be her true calling, and even when she finds the time, she’s unable to concentrate, due to her chronic suspicions of being followed, so her work in progress remains at an impasse. She came to see his new room, to examine the desk where the screenwriter will ply his trade. He watches her silently, longingly. He’d give anything to make her stay the whole night, to feel her body’s warmth next to his, to be safe in the cocoon of their desire, and then the tender moment afterward when she would rest her head upon his breast, and tangle his graying chest hair between her fingers. But she seems nervous, and the screenwriter suspects she’s taken caffeine pills to help her stay awake. The sex is strange when she’s too wired, he thinks, she has no patience, just wants to get it over with as quickly and as roughly as possible. They say little, although, occasionally, they mention the voices she hears, and her impression that they pronounce her name with a “ka” sound. Voices from another world, not like the ones the screenwriter hears, or like the movie he recalls; they don’t speak with the accent of his inner voice, nor do they sound like the voice she affects when reciting the twenty-one poems of that other twelve-tone composition, and though they call out to her, they’re not human voices, and who knows what it is they want to say, or why they pronounce her name with a “ka.” He watches her as she paces around the room. They begin to discuss literature, particularly the most revolutionary writer of the twentieth century. Sometimes I have trouble following you, she says. His work still impresses her, although the novelty has long since worn off. Perhaps it’s because he always changes his approach, the standard that defines his whole idea of literature, and therefore hers, is never quite the same. It’s too dry. No, she can’t quite put her finger on it. Luckily, the novel came with a reader’s guide, although it did little to help her penetrate its difficulty, and this, paradoxically, is what has made the novel famous. Maybe the thing that jars you the most in a novel is when it’s not clear if the narrator or one of the characters is speaking, so the reader mistakes the narrator for one of the characters or one of the characters for the narrator, something the novelist has no control over, and hence both chance and contingency are given literary form, allowing for a multiplicity of possible narrative voices and possible characters that can all be confounded together in an infinite number of possible scenarios, without the reader knowing where they came from or where they’re going, without her knowing more, perhaps, than their names. The reader may be taken aback at first, but after a few pages, sometimes by degrees, sometimes spontaneously, she begins at last to grasp what’s going on. The screenwriter doesn’t see the danger in reading other writers’ works, except in getting too involved in them, in overly assimilating, imitating, which stymies one’s developing a distinctive style. The girl spots the silhouette of someone waiting on the street below. She imagines a detective, or maybe a jealous lover keeping tabs on his fiancée; it could even be a spy or a policeman. He thinks she’s too young to talk about developing a personal style. Perhaps, in all her sixteen years, she’s read very little.
Perhaps she isn’t familiar enough with the spectrum of different styles and languages that constitute his literary world. But the screenwriter is fully aware of his own shortcomings. To be a writer requires more than just desire, one has to want it more than anything else in the world. She made a promise to herself. Her musical talent wouldn’t interfere with her writing, despite her making little progress on her No World, the work she writes and rewrites, having never progressed beyond twenty pages, saying something always prompts her to start over, to change the theme, the diction, even the structure. The screenwriter thinks youth ideal for self-discovery, the waiting ends when one finds one’s true vocation. This may not apply to the pianist, but it certainly does to the writer. It’s a game they play, in which sometimes he plays the tutor, sometimes the lover. He gives her advice on reading, tells her to focus on the twentieth century’s most revolutionary writer, but he also recommends the great dramatist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, whose works he insists have set the standard for everything written after them. She must read as widely as possible to cultivate a proper sense of what will stand the test of time. But being selective is not naïve reductionism, he says. The alternative is to read many more books than is feasible in a single lifetime, and of the making of books there is no end. So the girl reads everything he recommends, between each visit, each of her rehearsals, and each abortive attempt at her No World. But I don’t see the point, she complains. He says young women today are spread too thinly between school and extra-curricular distractions to develop as artists, especially the so-called musical prodigies. She kisses his forehead. There was a message from the Principal on my mom’s answering machine, she says, referring to the Principal of the school at which the screenwriter taught. It was from a week ago, ten days at most — before he embarked on his trip. He looks into her eyes; she delays, smiling mischievously, getting ready to leave, until the moment of her exit when she says, But don’t worry, I deleted it.
The screenwriter forgets all about the woman in the building opposite, and her sons, who must have finished their dinner by now. Only the girl occupies his thoughts. He imagines her in a theater, sitting on a stool in the middle of a stage, surrounded by five other members of the Little Sinfonietta, reciting the same stanza over and over. The rehearsal might have gone quite differently of course, but this is how he likes to imagine her. He feels incapable of writing now. He needs her to be near him, speaking to him, for when she speaks, he takes what she says as dictation, which is why she’s the protagonist of his script, but he also wants to keep her close-by, to prolong the time he has with her, a time during which he no longer feels the ache of her absence, a time that seems to contract with each visit. He writes his characters’ initials on a blank page, with line strokes of varying thickness radiating from each, representing all manner of links and associations. He organizes himself and tries to gather his thoughts, but all he can think about is the girl’s next visit. He goes to the window and looks down on the fading rush hour, the traffic lights, and the windows above the sidewalk across the street. He makes out the light of a TV in the darkness of the woman’s apartment, and he imagines her children seated before it as she’s washing the dishes in the kitchen. Although it’s past their bedtime, he makes allowances for their staying up so late since it’s vacation time. When he returns to his seat, it doesn’t take long before he’s fantasizing again, before he’s affecting industry by jotting a few halfhearted notes on a card now and then. Some of his characters are gifted musicians. He’s well acquainted with the type: the girl, the young orchestra conductor, and the brilliant composer and accompanist for the Little Sinfonietta had all been his students once. The Scholastic Institute at which he taught wouldn’t settle for second best. The screenwriter thinks his movie is structured in concentric layers like an onion, but when his spirits are low, and he can’t concentrate, he finds it impossible to distinguish between the layers. Maybe he’s just tired, he thinks, attempting to justify abandoning his desk and going to bed. But he stays seated for a while longer, thinking of the layers, incomplete, indistinguishable, trying to cut the onion, bleary-eyed, purblind, until he finally gives up. Again, he removes his glasses to massage his eyes, to relax them on the middle distance beyond the window. The woman in the building opposite has turned out the lights and he stares into the darkness of her window. He’s procrastinating. He thinks about the onion again. Then the girl — she’s probably tired by now, at the point of sleep, but still burning with ambition all the same, still determined to be a writer who’ll accomplish great things. He wonders about the voices in her head, always calling out to her, never silent, and about her persecution complex — like her ambition — ever restless. A thing of little consequence to others, perhaps, but for the screenwriter, at least, it’s a beginning.