Free No World Concerto by A. G. Porta Page A

are also photographs of some people posing beside what appear to be flying saucers. But they don’t look like beings from outer space, and perhaps they’re only witnesses who were photographed after giving their statements. There are also photographs of men in uniform, some wearing shirtsleeves and neckties, standing around a rectangular table inspecting a large map. Later on, when she’s back in her room at the hotel with the English name, the girl writes her father’s alias in one of her notebooks. She then tries but finds it difficult to get some rest, thinking about the guy whose face she can’t quite place, and those provocative photographs, as if they’re somehow calling to her, pronouncing her name with a “ka.” It all has to mean something. There are no such things as coincidences. Perhaps her father’s name, the one she knows him by, is also an alias. She says both names aloud repeatedly and tries to determine which one suits him best. When matched with his picture, the new name sounds strange at first but, little by little, she starts to get used to it. She then puts the notebook away. She has an interview with a journalist and a session with a photographer later, and she still has lots of work to do.
    The screenwriter finds he must resist his tendency for writing stories with duplicitous characters, the kinds with fake identities that usually feature in police-procedural dramas or spy movies and that become hackneyed through overuse, for he’s written about such characters before and he doesn’t want a rehash. The girl’s head is seething with information and she needs to relax. She decides to read something by this actor-dramatist the screenwriter recommended, a figure so central to the literary canon that everyone else seems to simply orbit around him, and so, according to the screenwriter, she could certainly learn a thing or two from him, assuming his greatness doesn’t prove so daunting that the girl is intimidated into silence. Perhaps she should read something more to her taste, he thinks, science fiction, say, but the screenwriter would prefer it if, from the beginning, she was reading only those works that have set the standards of literature. After spending some time reading, she feels the urge to write, but is somehow unable. The most she can do is smudge a page or two of her notebook with a few brief notes. She’s still wondering if the alias she discovered is in fact her father’s real name. This produces in her an immense desire to reveal her discoveries to the young conductor of the orchestra, but he’s already left with the other musicians. Maybe it’s for the best. These kinds of secrets shouldn’t be shared with anyone. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken care to leave her father’s room before he returned. Sometimes she feels she’s imprisoned inside a tower of gold, a room with a piano in the center reminding her constantly of her inescapable fate to be always and only a concert pianist. This was probably her mother’s intention anyway. The girl does some piano exercises while waiting for the journalist and photographer, both of whom eventually arrive at the same time. She receives them together while seated at the piano, answers the journalist’s questions while allowing the photographer to gather some shots of her puttering at the piano keys. At night, she goes searching for the young conductor in all the usual haunts, particularly those bars that happen to have foosball tables. She eventually gives up on the idea of showing up suddenly and surprising him, and decides to just call him on the phone. When they finally meet up, they end up having an argument because she catches him hitting on another girl. Then, after some hours, when the storm has blown over, and the new day dawns serenely over the river, the screenwriter decides that the camera should track slowly through the morning mist before alighting on the three friends seated together on a bench, their voices