Winter stillness in the street on a cold Jerusalem morning. The hour is early; his entering the garden to check camera angles would look strange. He returns to the car and fetches the Spanish pilgrim’s staff—a white-haired man with a walking stick will cut a friendly figure even before his intentions are clear. The morning paper has been stuck in the mailbox; he can wait till the owner comes out and ask his permission for a visit in the garden to verify an imaginary reality. But the owner tarries, and waiting in a cold empty street is an undignified waste of time. He opens an adjoining gate and enters a yard, which stood empty throughout his youth until a four-story apartment house was built there. On a narrow path alongside the stone fence separating the two properties, he walks around his parents’ home, and after cutting through a tangle of bushes, he reaches a corner from which as a child he enjoyed secretly watching his parents on the patio. Despite the hour, there is a risk that someone at a rear window may wonder about the unfamiliar old man standing in a far corner, so he huddles in the bushes, gets down on his knees, and grabs the edge of the stone wall, his eyes fixed on his former family home to calculate whether Toledano and the set designer with ingenious trickery had indeed managed to turn one house into three.
Why is he hanging around here? If a whole day could disappear so easily, why try to reconstruct so distant a reality? Wouldn’t it be better to stop struggling with an unreliable memory, even if the retrospective comes to an end with an open question? But he is a Jerusalemite to the marrow, able to rest his head comfortably on a stone wall as the vine on the stones caresses his face with a fragrant tendril, and his walking stick, its tip planted in the ground, steadies him as he gazes at his parental home.
At last the door opens. An old dog comes out of the house, begins sniffing among the plants and bushes. Slowly, in widening circles, the dog progresses toward Moses but, oddly, exhibits no excitement or wonder, not a growl or a bark. Moses clucks at him gratefully, and the old dog just perks his ears and wags his tail, then urinates and turns his head loyally toward his master, who has followed him outdoors: an elderly man in a bathrobe, with a little beard like Moses’ and a similar body type. The man takes down several wet items from the clothesline, then goes to fetch the newspaper. He does not hurry back inside but pauses on the doorstep, shielding his eyes for a better look. Can it be that in the back corner of the adjacent property, amid the bushes, is a male figure that resembles him? Now a woman appears from the house, skinny, with a mane of white hair and a watering can, and she begins dousing plants that were sheltered from the rain. Although twenty years have passed since the sale, Moses recognizes the woman lawyer who had bargained with him stubbornly over every detail. In light of this recognition, he is also sure now of the identity of the other man, also a lawyer, her husband. If he is right, the couple have not only maintained his old family home as it was, with all its defects, but also remained true to each other. Have they clung to the house because of its proximity to the president and prime minister, or because they believe that the enigmatic Belgian consulate, which dominates the top of the street like a secular cathedral, enhances the beauty of their own house?
In any event, concludes Moses, a talented if tragic cinematographer like Toledano could certainly have produced three different houses from this one. He might even have placed his camera here, in this very corner, and with delicate shifts left and right, up and down, convinced the audience that in each scene, the main characters were entering a different house in a different area. But was all this done merely to save money in a low-budget film, or was there also a symbolic intention, which only the screenwriter could explain?
The two lawyers summon the dog to the warmth of their home, but before entering, the animal turns its head toward Moses and emits a brief bark, as if to say: I smelled you, don’t you dare cross the fence.
Yes, here at Moses’ family home on a cold Jerusalem morning, his retrospective is finished, and now it’s time to return to routine. As he approaches his car parked in front, he sees that the doors of the theater are wide open, and the lights in the lobby are on. Young people in coats and scarves mill toward a makeshift counter to waken themselves with coffee and bagels. Someone recognizes him from a distance and calls his name. They are actors and singers and dancers, here for the dress rehearsal of a musical play for children to be staged during the Hanukkah vacation.
“A play? By whom, about what?” Moses asks.
“Based on Don Quixote, adapted to an Israeli setting.”
“More Don Quixote?” sniffs Moses. “Enough is enough, no? The eternal hero.”
Other actors recognize the director and flock to him as bears to honey. Among them, a tall young man with a little beard who will apparently dance the part of the Knight of the Sorrowful Face. A few of them have heard about the prize and congratulate him. “Small prize,” he says, thinking, That does it, I’ll have to declare it, but I can reduce it by deducting my expenses, maybe Ruth’s too.
A young and pretty actress, who years ago studied in Ruth’s class for children, brings him coffee and a bagel and asks what he’s doing in Jerusalem at such an early hour. Preparing for a new film? What’s it about? Has the cast already been chosen? Would he like to watch their rehearsal? No new film, just some vague ideas. He is too tired to attend the rehearsal. When the musical begins its run, he will bring his oldest grandson to see it and his sister too, Moses’ little granddaughter.
The group is called inside, and the lobby empties quickly. Moses gets ready to move on, but the cafeteria worker who is collecting the dishes says, “What’s the hurry? Finish your coffee.”
4
HE KNOWS THAT Hanan, the husband of his ex-wife, gets up late in the morning; at night he usually works on his music. To avoid exchanging pointless pleasantries with his successor, Moses phones Ofra during morning hours.
“I just got back from Spain and I’m returning your call,” he says to her on his mobile.
“How are you, my dear?” she asks.
“Doing my best.”
“I was so happy about the prize.”
“Be only a little happy, it’s a tiny prize.”
“In any case, it’s encouraging. They gave you a retrospective too.”
“A strange retrospective, drilling deep down. But you didn’t leave me a message because you wanted to encourage me.”
“Why not? Absolutely. But also to clarify something about Itay’s bar mitzvah.”
“Clarify what?”
“Not on the telephone, Yairi—let’s meet this evening.”
“Where?”
“At home.”
“Not at home. You know I don’t like being a guest in an apartment that used to be mine.”
“You’re not a guest. You are always the former owner and not a guest. And besides, Hanan is abroad and I’m alone.”
“Alone? Even worse. Better we should meet elsewhere.”
“Why?”
“Remember what happened a few years ago when we were alone in the apartment? I hassled you and lost my self-control and it ended in an ugly scene that hurt us both.”
“But that was years ago. You’ve gotten over me since then. I’m a woman of sixty-three.”
“Sixty-four.”
“Almost. And you’re pushing seventy.”
“I’m already there.”
“Then why get worked up about an old lady like me? You especially, always surrounded by beautiful actresses.”
“No beauties,” he growls, “it’s all fairy tales from the tabloids.”
“Perhaps not beautiful. But good, talented women who undoubtedly like you. Come on, this time let’s meet at home. It’s important to me, and you’ll control yourself. And I will too. Apart from Itay’s bar mitzvah, I have a few things here that require a good eye and smart advice.”
“Like what?”
“No, not on the phone. Come. Early in the evening. For an hour, no more.”
“Even an hour will be hard for me.”
�
�It won’t be hard. I promise you. We’ve both told the whole world that we’ve stayed good friends.”
“True. Which is probably my mistake.”
The first sounds of music waft from the theater to the lobby. Little by little, they interweave with the delicate lilt of a woman’s voice. Dulcinea. He smiles to himself, briefly tempted to drop in on the rehearsal, maybe discover new acting talent, but then decides no, give the play a chance to take shape, and if the reviews are good take the two grandchildren to see how Don Quixote can be revived in the twenty-first century. He walks out into the plaza and is blinded by the strong Jerusalem light. Conversations with his former wife are painful and exasperating; each time he feels a longing for her. He should not have given in. Following such an invasive retrospective, a meeting in close quarters with the wife of his youth, in their old apartment, will most likely be distressing. To his dying day, he will not be able to decide if his divorce was necessary. Years have gone by, and she has remarried, and he even likes her husband a little, a middling musician, younger than she is by three years, who still dreams of writing music for one of the former husband’s movies.
He starts the ignition, pulls away from the curb, and the car phone rings. It’s Amsalem, who has read the e-mail warning and pledges not to talk about the prize with anyone, but anyway, how much was it?
“Not important. Not much.”
“Every shekel counts. Don’t be embarrassed.”
Moses names the amount, and Amsalem is shocked. “That’s not a prize, that’s just a symbol,” he tells the director. “To fit the symbolic films you screened for them. With an amount like that, you sure mustn’t let the state stick its fingers in.”
A few years back, Yaakov Amsalem turned eighty, but he is still alert and forceful. Even though he kicks in only 3 percent of the production budget, mostly by providing food for the cast and crew, he considers himself one of the producers, a partner among partners. He walks on the set freely, demands from time to time to look through the camera. Above all, it’s important to him to pepper the director’s brain with the basics of human existence. Actually, he was the one who proposed the idea for the potato film, which was a surprising hit. Now he feels the time is ripe for a new film, and he wants to be in on it.
While driving out of Jerusalem, Moses tells him about the retrospective and mentions that Trigano had contrived it from behind the scenes. Amsalem has, in fact, lost touch with the man who ushered him into the film business, but he remembers Trigano’s old screenplays, which he had thought overblown, until Israeli reality began to catch up with them. Yes, odd that after many years, with some words he’d picked up from Ladino-speaking neighbors, Trigano finds this archive in Spain, at the end of the earth, and they honor him. And it’s just like him, Trigano, to ignore the director; why should he forgive him for an old insult? Back in those days, Amsalem knew the uncle well, the brother of Trigano’s mother, an unsuccessful wholesaler in the produce market but a decent man; he didn’t live much longer than Trigano’s father but while still alive devotedly helped raise the boy. Hasn’t he told Moses about the uncle before? Trigano loved him. He was a sweet man and had a good singing voice, but when he got emotional, he would stutter. Despite the stutter, he served as a cantor in the synagogue, if only at afternoon prayers, when the place was all but empty. The congregants loved him but feared the stutter would prolong the prayers and so would prod him to go faster. Who knows, maybe it was because of his uncle’s stutter and humiliation that Trigano invented that little animal, which would run around the synagogue and make a mess.
“Susana.”
“Yeah, Susana,” says Amsalem with a booming laugh. “Susana, that’s right.”
“But Trigano didn’t invent her, he borrowed her from a story by Kafka.”
“Kafka? Who’s Kafka?”
“A world-class writer, and even you, Amsalem, who dropped out of grade school should know who he is and remember his name.”
“If you say so, I’ll remember.”
“There are many animals in his stories, all interesting. By the way, I wonder what your Bedouin did with the animal after we finished shooting.”
“Do I know? He set her free, or ate her, or gave her to his dogs.”
“Because in ancient Egypt, and I learned this only in Santiago, a mongoose was considered a holy animal, embalmed just like the Pharaohs.”
“So maybe the Bedouin embalmed her, and when you come to see me in Beersheba on Saturday we can make a pilgrimage to her grave.”
“Who says I’m driving to Beersheba on Saturday?”
“It’s important not just for me but for you too. Come for lunch, and we’ll give you a room to rest in after the meal, so you won’t miss your nap. It will take you an hour at most from Tel Aviv to Beersheba on a Saturday, and there’ll be some interesting guests, a young couple, special people, who might help us get the next film going. Enough, friend, get over it, the retrospective is behind you, stop picking at it. We’re not young, and if we still have a little energy left, let’s look forward and not back.”
5
MOSES DOES NOT ignore the admonition of the veteran producer, even if the man holds only a 3 percent share of his films. Instead of going straight home, Moses visits his small office, to see what the world wanted of him in his absence. His secretary congratulates him on the prize, and he decides not to snap at well-wishers because of its small size but instead just nod humbly and offer polite thanks. Not much is new in the small office, which gets bigger during every new production but in between films only keeps the embers burning. He gathers up anything that seems vital, fills a plastic bag with screenplays and also novels and stories that seek adaptation to film. Finally he adds a few DVDs of short clips sent by actors or cinematographers who wish to impress him with their work. Then he invites the secretary to lunch to find out what’s new among his competitors.
When he gets back to his apartment, he removes the laundry from the dryer and folds it. He inspects the bed sheets that swallowed up a day of his life and decides to wash them too. For a moment he weighs whether to phone Ruth, but he chooses to leave her be, not to plant any false expectation of a new role. We’ve had more than enough of that, he thinks while making his bed with fresh sheets. After a short nap, he sits down to surf the Internet. He easily locates the story of Roman Charity and, despite the warning of the elderly expert, clicks on a bonanza of images of the daughter and father, whose essence was ably captured in that quick lecture by his bed at the Parador.
Now he takes a look at a few clips from actors and cinematographers, and at the same time, barely straying from the screen, he looks at script synopses, some no longer than a single page. As a high school teacher he perfected an efficient technique for checking homework and tests that resulted in instant evaluation of their quality. And because the world of film inspires many people to float glib ideas and fantasies on the assumption that others will make them work, he has learned how to skim and select, without fear that something good will elude him. So when Ofra phones as evening falls, to confirm their meeting, he looks with great satisfaction at the heap of discarded pages at his feet and says: “If there’s no choice, I surrender to you as always, but only for a short time.”
He sees Ofra at family events or social gatherings, where relatives and friends look on with approval and relief at their easy and amicable interaction. What had belonged to him he either took or discarded, and if some forlorn bit of mail insists on going to the address he left fifteen years ago, it’s fine if it waits for him with his grandchildren. As a matter of principle he is unwilling to be a guest in his former home, and when he sees the red mailbox he himself had installed many years ago at the entrance to the building, a fragment of his name still lingering there, he feels demeaned. The Spanish retrospective has apparently sapped his resolve. Amsalem is right when he says he should stay away from her. He eschews the elevator and slowly climbs from floor to floor, to see which of the old neighbors still live in the building. B
ut when he gets to the fourth floor, he stops on the last stair. The thought that the wife of his youth awaits him alone in his former apartment arouses tension and trepidation.
It appears that Ofra has seen him from the window, for she opens the door before he reaches it. Yes, she too is surely emotional and confused and perhaps regrets insisting that he come over. Not looking at her directly, he mumbles hello, pulls her close, and plants kisses on her forehead and cheeks, so she’ll be intimidated from the start and not entangle the soul that is still tied to hers.
Disaffected but oddly satisfied, he observes his former domicile, which looks even sadder and messier than the last time he was here. Ofra grew up as a spoiled only child, and her parents would clean up her clutter with patient love that they bequeathed to her first husband. But now she must deal with not only her own chaos but also that of her husband, the artist, a musician who apparently believes that chaos stimulates creativity.
To make room for a grand piano, the harmony of the living room has been violated. The sofa was shoved in the wrong place, and a computer and printer are permanent guests at the dining table. Old newspapers, so hard to part with, are stuffed under the coffee table, which is decked out with plates of savory cookies and dried fruits. But when Ofra offers him coffee, he insists on making his own, to prove to her and to himself that till his dying day, he will not be thought of as a guest in a home that rejected him. Embarrassed, she tries to prevent him from entering the kitchen, and with good reason, since the disarray in the living room is but a pale prologue to the anarchy of the kitchen. He switches on the electric kettle with the cracked handle and chooses a yellowish cup he once loved, but its cleanliness is suspect so he takes a glass mug instead and waits for the water to boil. And she stands beside him, small and tense, smiling uneasily; her face is properly made up, but her hair, gone gray, is not dyed well, or maybe she has stopped dyeing it. The coffee jar is not in its assigned place; she has to find it for him. “You still don’t sweeten your coffee?” she asks softly. “Never,” he says and opens the fridge where, amid the scary proliferation of staples and leftovers, he sees not one milk carton but three. He will not ask the lady of the house which is the most recent but will check the expiration dates and then whiten his cup with the milk of his former wife.
The Retrospective Page 20