She decides to skip her appointment with the screenwriter. She can’t afford to waste any more time, she needs to write. She tiptoes in, so as not to awaken her mother. Luckily, there’s a large living space separating their bedrooms. Her head’s spinning, but she’s looking forward to waking up in the morning and practicing her new magisterial interpretation of the 5 Pieces for piano. But then she checks her enthusiasm, reminded that there’s nothing magisterial about her current situation. She thinks about her writing, about not wasting any more time, for if the actor cum dramatist cum impresario of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was as prolific as he was, she must strive to be prolific too. Not that she valorizes quantity over quality, but she has no qualms about starting a new phase in her life this very day, about finally sitting down to begin her magnum opus, a work destined to be considered among the pinnacles of world literature. She reads a passage from another great work, a play by the dramatist, in which the protagonist, while in a cemetery, is presented with the skull of a man he knew. By contrast, the twentieth-century writer who revolutionized literature speaks of metempsychosis. She’s read that the word signifies the transmigration of souls, which corresponds with her own idea of beings on Earth that don’t realize they’re aliens. She’s drunk, and perhaps still under the influence of those pills, which would explain why she thinks she’s now having a vision. An unclear vision, mind you, one she’d have difficulty putting into words. But there it is. She writes in her notebook: “No World. Chapter One.” She’s lost count of how many times she’s written these same words, although now she thinks she’s onto something. After a while, she finds herself writing about the usual things.
There has to be a good reason for migrating to another planet. The girl’s researched various motives, but none were satisfactory: beings whose existence and that of their whole civilization depends upon their finding another planet to settle on, having exhausted the resources of their own; beings who are running away from other beings; beings with imperialistic motives; beings who want to plunder other planets for resources. She asks herself if there’s anything novel about her characters being the unwitting colonists of another planet, being born there and subsequently losing all contact with their home, their past, all memory of their origins; and of having, at most, only a few chosen ones among them with the ability to hear strange voices now and then. She remembers reading somewhere that life on Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. Why her, why is she able to intuit the truth? Is there really a fissure, a point of entry to a forgotten past, which only the chosen ones have access to? If someone from a distant planet wanted to make contact with the inhabitants of Earth, they’d choose the most sensible place. “3.41 This is the logical place. 3.411 The geometrical and the logical coincide in one place.” The girl draws up a list of possible contact zones: cathedrals, stadiums, railway stations, airports, skyscrapers. . in other words, places where large numbers of people gather. Why not a less crowded place? Because the alien hunter would surely target these places in order to interrupt any attempt to communicate, sever any link to the home planet. It’s possible that what he does is forbidden, but at the same time, there are certain inhabitants of Earth who’d condone his actions, for they wouldn’t tolerate aliens living among them. Some time passes, and the new day announces its arrival, dappling some flecks of light on the girl’s face as she lies fast asleep on the bed, her notebook having fallen on the floor. On awakening, she remembers what she’d written the previous night about beings from another world, but then the image of the young conductor dancing with his latest conquest pops into her head. Maybe she dreamed it. She starts breathing heavily, urging herself to control her emotions, but just when she believes herself at ease, something triggers a new panic. She gets out of the bed, wanting to know the time, guessing it must be late, very late. It’s midday in fact, and she hasn’t written a thing, and she won’t be able to write anything now either, because she’s dying of a hangover. A noise in the background like an engine running monopolizes her attention. She takes the notebook from the floor. She’s having a hard time focusing on nearby objects and is unable to read what she wrote during the night. After examining the pages more closely, however, she feels gratified at having written so much: not only did she fill many pages, but the handwriting on those pages is very small. Her mother left a note on the piano. She’ll see her at the church tonight. The girl hurriedly dresses, almost stumbling, and runs out the door to grab a taxi. She directs the driver to take her to the place where the young musicians are staying. She finds that the brilliant composer appears to have lost his mind, or perhaps he’s taken a few too many of those pills, because all he’s doing is repeating the same phrase again and again, over one of his compositions playing in the background. Disturbing the peace, changing what happened before, changing what happens within, he exults repeatedly. From the door, the girl notes the deplorable condition of the rooms he shares with the young conductor of the orchestra. The latter hasn’t slept in his bed, the only one that’s still made up — a pristine monument to a night of lovemaking with his latest conquest. It’s the vanguard’s duty to be unsettling, to disturb the peace, to alter musical convention note by note, declaims the composer. Next to his bed, a computer and tape recorder are playing a piece of music he’s programmed: thudding noises, the occasional sound of breaking glass, the din of an approaching tornado. Apparently, it’s the sound of foosball balls going down a tube. He’s entitled the piece
game 1-3-3-4, a reference to the arrangement of the players on a foosball table. That sound is only the groundwork for the piece. Disturbing the peace, changing what happened before. . he repeats, saying he intends to write an opera to explain what it all means. The girl has a massive hangover. Standing in this rat’s nest is taking an enormous toll on her, although the brilliant composer looks an even more pitiful sight than she. The whole idea of his project seems utter nonsense. Perhaps if he incorporated some piano passages to consolidate the medley of different sounds, it might be more comprehensible. She asks herself why she believes this, but at the moment she doesn’t want to think about the reasons, probably because she knows it’s to do with a silly personal bias, or a jealousy so pronounced, so nettlesome, it could bring on a rash. The brilliant composer has strewn the whole place — including his bed, the nightstand, the chairs, and floor — with newspaper clippings and pages of sheet music. The clippings are all about the Little Sinfonietta. He’s hopped up on those pills, she thinks. The most common of the clippings is a photo of the girl throwing her clown’s nose into the audience, which became quite a popular image in the newspapers. The pages of sheet music are covered variously with letters, numbers, straight lines, circles, and other geometrical shapes; nowhere does there appear a conventional symbol of notation. If he’s with his latest conquest, is there a chance he’s disturbing someone else’s peace? asks the composer, snickering, as he stretches himself out on the young conductor’s pristine bed, beckoning her to follow.