At night, the clack and plink of the typewriter punctures the silence of the room. The screenwriter fingers the keys, listening to the dull staccato rhythm. There’s a kind of silence, he writes, that is adorned by the sound of gentle breathing, the susurrus of two bodies ruffling the sheets, leaving their warm impressions on a bed. The screenwriter stops typing to look at the bed, to search for these impressions, for the recollection of how her skin felt, as if the sheets could preserve, even fossilize, every pore, every soft, downy follicle of hair, her blonde hair, which he wants to photograph, enlarge, and examine under a microscope. He removes his glasses, deftly cleans them with a handkerchief, and resumes his puttering on the keyboard. His writing is disjointed, haphazard, and perhaps, normally, he wouldn’t feel so inclined to write after having sex, but the élan within him impels him to keep going. The scene is set in the hotel with the English name. The screenwriter thinks about placing it at the start of the film. He can almost see it, the movie beginning, and the opening credits superimposed upon images of the hotel. A kind of prelude of sorts, to establish the mood and setting, the time period in which the story takes place, before introducing the girl and her mother. The viewer sees a group of porters completing the transfer of a grand piano from the service entrance to a large suite. These images are intercut with shots of the girl’s mother, dressed conservatively in a pantsuit and a pair of modest heels, instructing hotel employees to make space in the middle of a large living room. Seated to one side, and out of the way, an older man quietly watches the scene, perhaps in puzzlement at what’s going on around him. The girl, wearing white jeans, a white T-shirt, and white canvas sneakers with the laces removed, walks slowly behind the piano, which the porters are trundling down the hallway. Once it’s in place in the living room, the porters remove the protective padding. Their departure cues the older man, who stands up, leaves his jacket on the chair, and approaches the piano with a tuning key. The mother instructs the hotel employees to take her luggage to the car. There hasn’t been any dialogue yet; in fact, nothing more has been said than a word or a phrase to underscore the visuals. Starting now, the soundtrack will consist of discordant notes being pounded on the piano by the tuner, each note emphasized, to give the impression of something on the verge of becoming a melody, while mother and daughter say good-bye at the hotel’s entrance. It’s a procedure they’ve gone through dozens of times, having never had much to say to one another. This scene takes place before the one in which the father goes to see the girl in the little theater; perhaps a few days beforehand, and in the morning. The girl’s mother watches attentively as they deposit her bags in the trunk of her convertible. She then looks out at the traffic and notes that it seems to be picking up. As she climbs into the sports car, she says her daughter’s name, pronouncing it with a “ka.” Why would she pronounce it with a “ka”? Because the girl hears everyone pronounce it with a “ka” instead of a “k.” It’s a clue. Something so subtle she can’t share it with anyone else, because no one can understand it but her. Her mother looks at her over the rim of her sunglasses and tells her to stop talking nonsense. She then turns the ignition and looks in the rearview mirror, imprecates mildly at the traffic, and slowly pulls away, lifting her hand to wave good-bye as the car accelerates and mingles with the sea of other vehicles. “Ka” or “k”: is it so hard to tell the difference? The girl watches from the sidewalk until the convertible becomes indistinguishable, like a drop in the sea, and asks herself what could be so important that her mother had to go on another trip. Sometimes she says she goes searching for her missing cousin, Dedalus, as if, after all these years, finding him is still one of her chief concerns. While waiting for the elevator, the girl remembers his story. She’s never told anyone about him. She may have mentioned to some friends that her mother has a remarkable cousin, but she didn’t go into any details. If the brilliant composer knew his story, she muses, he’d probably dedicate one of his compositions to him. She could write a novel about him, a young man who went to the neighboring country’s capital years before, and was never heard from again. He fled to escape prosecution, she recalls. But after everything her mother’s told her, the girl believes the truth will never be known. His story features many deaths, a shooting, and even a femme fatale. The piano tuner corrects the instrument’s pitch, pounding on the keys, which emit a plangent sound, as if giving a mournfully slow rendition of the 5 Pieces for piano. A couple of novelists had already written about those unfortunate events, although the girl would’ve taken a different approach to them. In the elevator, she thinks she may be able to write her own version of his story some day, maybe as a sequel to the book she’s currently working on. But first she has to get that one written. She’s never believed her mother’s little jaunts indicated any sort of development in the cousin’s story; she simply leaves every time under the pretext of a search she’s never undertaken. The excuse is an old one for the girl, who’s certain her mother’s real motive for absconding has more to do with expensive clothes and lovers, and perhaps, if she can fit it in, a little business on the side. She’s never told anyone about him, but perhaps she’ll tell the young conductor and brilliant composer — who’ll probably dedicate one of his compositions to him. Back in the living room, the girl asks the piano tuner to adjust the hammers and pedals for a particular composition. She’s experimented in the past with prepared pianos, putting various objects into the strings to modify the timbre of the instrument. But it seems the man isn’t quite finished yet. It’s as though he is taking advantage of his duties as a tuner and performing his own plangent rendition of the 5 Pieces for piano. He’s taken long enough already, but he seems to want to make the process even slower, to let the music reverberate, to produce something unique, a sound that hasn’t been heard before, as a gift to all posterity, a message to be transmitted to the cosmos. The girl — his only audience — decides to leave him to his task and sits down to her diary. She writes that they pronounce her name with a “ka”; that this makes her feel odd; that she’s tried to figure out why they do it, but hasn’t gotten anywhere yet.
It’s night. The young conductor of the orchestra licks the gummed edge of a rolling paper to complete a joint. He wants to know if the girl could write a libretto for an opera about aliens and life in other galaxies: a dirge on the ultimate fate of humanity, he says, set on an ordinary day, to underscore our species’ insignificance — its nonexistence, almost — for when placed in the context of a universe of infinite space and illimitable time, what’s a single person, a single day? In other words, let it be a lament for the imminent death of all civilizations, with perhaps a few references to the philosophy of W. The girl would rather write a libretto about having sex in her mother’s bed; she’s saving the bigger ideas for her novel. When her cell phone rings, she raises her finger to her lips, indicating to the conductor that he should keep quiet. As they talk, the conductor nibbles on the girl’s toes and continues up her leg, putting the joint between his lips, from which he takes a final drag before passing it to her. She inhales deeply and responds naturally to her mother’s questions. The mother wants to know if the phone call woke her up. It didn’t, because she was reading one of her favorite science-fiction novels. It’s about someone who spends his whole life trying to make contact with extraterrestrials, she lies, alluding to one of her own ideas about someone who travels around the world setting up satellites that can transmit and receive encrypted messages. Her mother doesn’t respond. He establishes a global network that he controls from one location, where he sits and waits patiently for news from other galaxies. The mother wishes her daughter would make better use of her time, by practicing piano, for example, because all she really cares about is her daughter’s career as a pianist. Later, the girl and the young conductor make love. Perhaps there’s no need to set up a network of satellites, he says, still brooding on extraterrestrial matters. Perhaps the aliens are right here among us.