“My picture, my picture.” Moses laughs in protest. “Please, dear lady, it’s not mine, it belongs to the hotel.”
“Of course it does, but while you are staying here, this fellow is hanging beside your bed. If his hands are tied behind his back, it means the artist wants you to know that the erotic possibilities of the situation are limited, or at least under supervision, and therefore the merciful gaze of his daughter, as depicted here, may be construed as pure, even though one can never really know the line that divides compassion from passion.”
“That says it all, señora.”
“Excuse me, sir, but might I inquire as to your profession? They did tell me over the telephone, but at my age I easily forget things that are not directly connected to my field of interest.”
“I am a motion picture director. And my companion here in the bed is a wonderful actress, a veteran of many of my films and those of others.”
“Very pleased to meet you, madam,” says the expert, and again bows politely, wedged between the bed and the wall. And Moses makes a mental note that this image—a hotel room in faint light, strewn with blankets and clothes and an open suitcase, with a tiny old lady who resembles his mother speaking to a woman in a flimsy nightgown lazing under the covers—needs to be fully re-created in one of his future films, perhaps even his next. And again the question flashes—is it possible that Trigano was familiar with a painting on this theme?
“As I was saying,” the art expert continues, “these are very delicate issues.”
“Very delicate,” agrees Moses, “and also complicated.”
“And in Caravaggio’s marvelous painting The Seven Acts of Mercy,” the expert carries on, “as with Perino del Vaga, who influenced Caravaggio, the daughter nurses the father through the bars of his prison cell, and thus, even if the man is strong and active, he is nevertheless neutralized. A magnificent painting like Caravaggio’s can even hang in a church. But in most renderings, the Roman Charity enables the daughter to be in closer contact with the father, sometimes to touch his head and shoulders, and in bolder paintings to expose her beautiful shoulders and bare the non-nursing breast. Such things generally occur only on the condition that the father’s hands are bound, although, for example, in the painting by the American artist Rembrandt Peale, early nineteenth century, only one of the father’s feet is attached to the wall by a long chain, whereas the hands are free, and one of them touches the thigh of the daughter, and they both look aside fearfully, as if to check whether someone can see them, and such a thing might justifiably raise all sorts of suspicions and speculations. Yet there are artists who, to dispel any suspicion, gave Pero a baby, to demonstrate that she is indeed, first and foremost, a nursing mother, and she includes her poor father as a second child, and only as a child.”
“The baby is her alibi,” says Moses, beginning to tire.
“Precisely, sir, you got it exactly.”
Moses turns with a smile to Ruth, still recumbent in bed, her hair scattered on the pillow, her pretty eyes glistening with tears that express her thanks for the cautious yet elegant way her companion chose to revive a banished memory that never vanished.
“But I am obligated to tell you,” expounds the expert, suddenly raising her voice, “that there are painters who gave themselves unbridled license. They preserved the heart of the story but shamelessly, gratuitously stripped not just the miserable father but the gracious daughter of clothes, thus taking a story of compassion and kindness to a most disgusting place. It’s best I not burden you with any additional names, but you know as well as anybody that art has no boundaries.”
“None, as perhaps it should be . . .”
The old woman tilts her head with mild disapproval and forges on.
“In any event, a moral artist places the act of kindness at the center, adding the erotic touch only to deepen compassion and devotion, not to contradict them, and certainly not to replace them. There needs to be a proper balance among the elements: the man, the father, his age and his physical condition. And if the man, the father, is in good shape, the binding of his hands and feet, that is to say, the extent to which he is immobilized, is crucial. So too with the nursing daughter: What is she is looking at? How does she expose the feeding breast? How much of her body is unclothed in the painting? A balance among all these should give us a human picture that is also a moral one. All this is quite apart from the quality of the composition, the perspective, the finish of the details, and the colors.”
“And this picture, my picture, the hotel’s picture, maintains this balance, in your opinion?”
“Yes, all in all it is a worthy painting; the compassion and kindness are clear.”
Moses’ head is spinning. He fears the expert will not let him go, leaving him little time for a proper lunch. He takes her hand, warmly expressing his gratitude.
“Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, you are a marvelous teacher. You have provided a superb summary of the story of Roman Charity in such a short time, and if more questions arise, I can surely find the answer on the Internet here at the hotel.”
“Oh no,” she cries, “please, no, not the Internet. It is full of mistakes and foolishness. Anywhere but the Internet, please. If you need more details, sir, I am at your service. I have plenty of time. And although I am older than you”—she blushes, a mischievous twinkle in her eye—“I can still, like Pero, feed you and your companion additional information.”
4
FOLLOWING A FAST lunch in the cafeteria, the Spaniard steers his guests to the small screening room. The crowd has shrunk. “See,” remarks Moses with bitterness, “people have grown weary of my immature films and quite rightly prefer a nice winter siesta. What can I say, my friend, I fear I will leave this retrospective deflated.” But Rodrigo dismisses the complaint. The smaller audience stems from scheduling conflicts, not disapproval. He recognizes in the audience a number of wise and sensitive people, and the quality of the attendees makes up for their dearth. He escorts Moses onto the small stage.
But a few “wise and sensitive people” do not compensate for the thinness of the crowd. Besides, the director cannot shake off the suspicion that this retrospective was engineered by Trigano to compel him to defend the writer’s fantasies. Can he even remember the film they are about to show? Did it have a well-defined plot? What he recalls is a static, dreamlike atmosphere; a short, vague, hallucinatory film. A rocky desert crater in winter, filmed at night in freezing cold. He whispers to his young escort, who is ready and waiting to translate: “Believe me, I don’t have much to say.” But Rodrigo, who has not yet seen the film and has heard only a brief description from the archive director, whispers back: “If so, perhaps explain the historical context, say a few words about the function of the army reserves in Israel, for although we are located in a famous barracks, we have not been at war for seventy years.”
Moses complies, folds his arms on his chest, closes his eyes, and retrieves the distant sixties. In a deep, low voice, he describes to the Spanish audience a period that now seems almost like a time of peace: no terror attacks or assassinations, battles or revenge operations. A small democracy in the Middle East, still in its infancy. Jerusalem divided but serene. The army dormant. Peaceful Galilee towns populated by obedient Arabs, and the country’s borders marked by little tin signs.
And as he talks he notices, in one of the half-empty rows, Ruth shaking her head in disagreement. But Moses keeps at it, swept up in his private idyll, insisting on days of peace and stability, a period that has passed and will never return. It is from this point of departure that he asks the small audience to understand his antiquated film, for only a hibernating army can give rise to peace. And as Rodrigo struggles to translate, stumbling over the last sentences, Moses distractedly leaves the stage, motioning to the hidden technician to turn off the lights.
Only as the first images appear does the director realize that the color has vanished from his memory. He was sure this film was sho
t in black-and-white, and here it is in color. “Did you remember,” he tests the woman by his side, “it was in color?” “Of course,” she answers at once. “I loved this messy movie, I still think it’s one of the decent films you made, even if it went nowhere.”
“Decent?” He is thrown off by the word. “What do you mean, decent?” “In other words, modest,” she whispers, putting a finger to his lips to hush him as the first bit of dialogue is spoken. Moses studies her with affection. The morning sleep did her good: color has returned to her cheeks, and the spark to her eyes. The link he imposed on her memory between Roman Charity by their bed and the film scene she refused in Jaffa seems not to trouble her. On the contrary, it revives her spirit. Will we, he wonders, in the limited time remaining here, find passion as well?
After three dubbed films he is used to the Spanish. Without understanding a word, he at least finds it natural on his actors’ lips. Ten men about forty years old, from cities and towns, factory workers and teachers and clerks, leave their families to go to an army camp and sign for weapons and equipment, because, after assuming they’d been forgotten, they were called up for reserve duty. With practiced hindsight, Moses zeroes in on the film’s weakness. The color erects a barrier between the realistic opening and the fantastical and hallucinatory things to come. Too much detail in the scenes showing the reservists leaving their homes, saying goodbye to wives and children, getting their equipment, telling jokes. A film that seeks to convey intimacy with soldiers who abandon their mission and spend long days in deep sleep must, from the start, go with shades of black, white, and gray alone, the colors of dream.
Sluggishly moving onscreen are older men, heavy and balding, who have not made peace with the reserve duty they have been dealt. Slack-shouldered and befuddled, they shed civilian clothes and put on old uniforms, examine with revulsion the gear and weapons from the past war, and shake years of dust from army blankets, and the director wonders if in these opening scenes, one can already see the seeds of his obsessive attention to detail. He recalls that he intended to ask the actors to improvise freely before the camera, drawing on their experience as reserve soldiers. But Trigano stood firm, fiercely defending his script: Only what is written will be spoken, with nothing added.
Was the quick transition from colorful city scenes to the monotonous yellow desert detrimental to the film? In a very long shot, the small truck carrying the reservists looks like an ant inching into a pothole on a heat-bleached road. It cautiously makes its way down the slope of a small crater to an ancient Nabataean ruin, which the cameraman and set designer came upon when scouting locations. To convert it into a military installation whose nature and purpose no one could guess, they wrapped it in shiny silver sheets, adding a profusion of colorful cables that suggested a giant prehistoric beetle. To ensure the site’s safety and security, the reservists get down from the truck and go to work, unloading cartons of field rations, setting up the water tank towed by the truck in a patch of shade under a desert bush. Since their longtime commander is late to arrive, a replacement is designated at the last moment, a minor bureaucrat in civilian life who spreads a blanket on the ground and goes to sleep.
In light of the film’s failure at the box office and the disappointment among more than a few of the director’s friends, Moses now asks himself why he had not insisted that the screenwriter strengthen the film with a solid plot, beyond the provocative allegory of slumber at a secret military installation. But now that history has debunked the illusion of peace, a group of soldiers who slumber with a clear conscience in front of a vital military installation is a strong image, at least for the director who considers it anew at a screening in a distant land.
Moses insisted that the reservists in the film all be amateur actors, and he recruited them himself from local drama clubs, preferring men who had served in combat units and knew their ways, so their sleep would make a strong, realistic impression. Right now they’re examining the installation, which they must guard without ever being told what it is, and as they ponder its purpose they also prepare for their first night under the stars and light a campfire.
It’s quite likely, Moses muses, that some of these amateurs, who were then ten or fifteen years older than he was, have since died, and those who are still alive may or may not remember the bizarre movie that must have frustrated them when it became clear that the script afforded no gripping conflict or complex situations, no opportunity to hone their acting skills, that it merely demanded their presence, day after day, night after night, in front of a camera that absorbed their slumber. Like actual reservists, they left work and family, agreeing to go down to the desert without pay for a few days of shooting, and now they were asked merely to act fatigued. He and the cinematographer had tried to cover up the feeble plot with flames and flying sparks and faces flickering in the silver cover of the installation, along with unforgettable shots of the desert by day and by night. Will this audience appreciate their beauty?
Moses attempts to assess the reaction of the few viewers scattered among the rows of seats. True, he does not yet hear whispering, coughing, or fidgeting, but he assumes the audience will be indifferent to this film and perhaps hostile. He steals a glance at Ruth, whose eyes are fixed on the screen in anticipation of her entrance as an elusive Bedouin woman, dressed in black and wearing a veil, spying on the sleeping soldiers. After Ruth’s impressive role as a deaf-mute in Distant Station, Trigano was tempted to bestow a new disability on his beloved, making her lame or even blind, but Moses vetoed it and they compromised on a veiled Bedouin woman who slips through the night like a ghost.
5
THE BOND BETWEEN the scriptwriter and his beloved grew stronger during the shoot in the desert. Since they knew each other from childhood, their relationship had earlier resembled love between cousins, but after the success of Distant Station they came to believe that their partnership also involved an artistic mission, and the fact that a former teacher had made it a reality heightened their self-importance, and their love as well. And so, during the filming of Slumbering Soldiers, Trigano never once left the location, yet he made sure not to intervene in the directing or cinematography, for he knew that everyone, by the terms of the agreement, would be faithful to his script. But at night, when cast and crew rolled up the silver sheeting and went to sleep inside the ancient Nabataean structure, the screenwriter and actress would disappear with their sleeping bags behind a nearby hill, their laughter echoing within earshot.
But the little screen at the film institute doesn’t feature broken memories, only an old movie driven by its own obsessions. The melancholy moon, whose countenance Toledano managed to capture on the silvery cover of the installation, whitens the faces of the reservists, grown men who nibble the leftovers of their meal before spreading their sleeping bags on the ground and zipping them closed in a way that makes it possible for the camera to move from soldier to soldier. Even the guards who are to patrol the premises are too lazy to leave the campfire. Their conversation dies down, their eyes gradually close. And then, at the top of the crater, appears the thin silhouette of the Bedouin woman, who moves silently as if moonstruck. And for the first time in the film—which so far has been free of background music—the sound of a flute, which from now on will accompany the performance of the veiled woman in black.
“Even now,” whispers Moses to Ruth, who is entranced by her night-walking character, “I can’t understand how I was talked into directing such a movie. How I agreed to build a whole film around the idea of sleep, of slumbering soldiers yet.”
“I also didn’t understand how he managed to drag you into this one. I was easy, I was ready to play any foolishness that came into his head. I had total faith in whatever he wanted. Look how I’m running barefoot over rocks and thorns for the three of you.”
“The three of us?”
“Not just the two of you—Toledano also insisted that in all the night shots I go barefoot, even when my feet weren’t in the frame. It’s a good
thing that among the guys you brought was a nice older man, a former army medic. Every night after the filming, he would help me take care of the cuts and scratches. All you cared about was my savagery.”
“Savagery?”
“Yes, Shaul intended that I not be some pathetic Israeli Bedouin trudging by the roadside, but someone strong, wild . . . Sometimes, you remember, he would call me Debdou, the name of the Moroccan village I came from with my father. He would also insist, in jest or seriously, that my family had traces of foreign blood. The jaw, the height of my tall father of blessed memory, and especially the yellow-gray color of my eyes he thought could come only from a foreign Sahara tribe, because that color didn’t exist among the Jews . . . That’s how he would talk, the lunatic.”
And she suddenly bursts into loud laughter.
Looks of disgust and fury are directed in the darkness at the creators of this slow and impenetrable film. This time of his own volition, Moses scurries a few rows behind.
A foreign tribe . . . He laughs to himself in his new seat. I never grasped the extent of Trigano’s wishful thinking. There’s truth to her claim, that the chance to realize his assorted fantasies about the girl he loved was what got him into writing film scripts to begin with. So this is not just some pathetic Israeli Bedouin woman . . . He insisted the young nomad be free, not dependent on anyone, able to wander about, perhaps as a figure of reconciliation, between enemies who in the 1960s had begun to realize they were trapped in a vicious circle of bloodshed.
It’s now clear to Moses that the soldiers’ reckless slumber serves to protect their sanity from crazy adventurism. Like the sleep of the railroad supervisor in Distant Station, the slumber that spared the midget god from giving the stationmaster a clear answer—earning the acclaim of perceptive reviewers—maybe the prolonged sleep currently onscreen will also be praised, for people believe that slumber oscillates between nothingness and creativity.
The Retrospective Page 11