He turns around, puts on his jacket, and goes back to Ruth, who has wrapped herself in a light blanket as if determined to stay on her pillows and not return to her apartment lest Moses try to follow.
“So if you were right, if the retrospective in Spain was not only mine but also yours, let’s go down together to the abandoned station and see what became of our railroad tracks.”
“Why?”
“Why not? The old border is gone, and the Arab village Toledano annexed with his camera is now under Israeli control. We can get a new angle on the place we shot the film.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because we have to finish the retrospective before we can start thinking about a new film. And that’s why you have to come with me. Down there in the desert, in the darkness, I was alone with the Bedouin and his wife, but this time we’ll be there in daylight, we’ll walk by the tracks, and even go down in the wadi where I failed you as a human being.”
She perks up, but tugs the blanket tighter.
“Could you find your way around after so many years?”
“Between your memory and mine, we’ll manage. Besides, we do have a map.”
“But when? I work every day.”
“We’ll go Saturday. First thing in the morning.”
“If it’s important to you, I’ll come. Though that young girl’s pain could come back.”
He grins. “We’ll explain to her that we needed that scene for the sake of the story, that in actuality, no harm was done.”
“You explain that to her. I’m not so sure that she will understand.”
“She will understand. That deaf-mute that Trigano brought to the film was clever.”
A little smile flickers on her face, heartbreakingly pale in the darkness.
“One more thing, and don’t get angry.”
“No . . . not that again.”
“One short sentence. Please.”
“Very short.”
“If you’re sure there’s nothing wrong with you, don’t do another blood test, but why don’t we just remove your name from the tests you did and show them to Zvi, my son-in-law, so we can rest assured.”
She says nothing. Closes her eyes again.
“For example,” he says, advancing his case, “I happened to visit Galit at her radiology clinic and she, on her own initiative, took the opportunity to do a virtual mapping of my heart, and now I can relax.”
“And you weren’t relaxed before? Your heart is so relaxed it barely works.”
“Relaxed, but for no good reason. Now I have confidence in my heart, I can let it get more emotional. So you too, with one quick peek by an understanding eye, can maintain your serenity.”
“I don’t need an understanding eye, and that’s final.” She is fuming. “You promised one short sentence and you’ve already come up with five long ones. Goodbye.”
6
MOSES’ ROAD MAP is plainly outdated, giving no indication that Israeli control over the Jordanian village conquered in the Six-Day War has more recently been transferred to the Palestinian Authority. After the two enjoy a scenic drive on a fine Shabbat morning, winding on a repaved road from the Ayalon Valley into the terraced hills south of Jerusalem, in the company of cyclists serenely climbing or coasting below snowy puffs of cloud, they run into an army roadblock at the turnoff to the village. And though the barrier is splintered and essentially symbolic, Moses honors it and waits. A female police officer and male soldier come out yawning and rumpled and ask: “Where to?”
He gives them the name of the village, and they ask what he plans to do there. And though the director would like to tell the security forces about a retrospective that began in Spain and aims to end here, the car behind is honking, and they wave Moses through, warning him that Israelis visiting this village do so at their own risk.
“Should we go on?” Moses wonders after passing the checkpoint. “Is it worth the risk just for one more look?”
“Turn back now?” scolds his companion, her cheeks ruddy in the mountain air. “What’s to be afraid of? If the Jerusalem train doesn’t stop here anymore, the only way to the station is through the village, and from there we can look down into the wadi. If not now, when? Once you’re immersed in the next picture, you’ll forget the retrospective. And life is short.”
“For whom?”
“Not just for someone with a problematic blood picture, but also someone who discovers his heart is fine and capable of emotion.”
For a moment happy laughter fills the car.
He gently touches her hair. Since Santiago she is linked in his soul not only with the characters she acted in his early films but also with the bare-breasted young woman nursing her own father. And though he still believes that all shades of her character have been exhausted and that even her remaining fans and followers would be wary of his giving her a new part, he fears that if he doesn’t, he will lose her forever.
After a few kilometers, they reach the sign pointing in Arabic and Hebrew to the village, and he deliberates whether to be content with an overview from afar or to snake down a steep, narrow old road into the belly of a village that was turned from foe to friend in the editing room. Positioned not far from a sleepy Jordanian guard post, Toledano’s camera captured houses, alleys, courtyards, and animals, and sometimes villagers, who in the editing room were annexed into the Israeli film and became involuntary collaborators in the daring allegory of a nightmare screenplay. Might they run into trouble at the entrance to the village? For if the village is no longer under Israeli occupation, it will surely assert its sovereignty.
He pulls over to the side and goes out in search of a secure lookout. But Ruth, protesting the undignified vacillation, stays in the car.
A portentous cloud glides above the village, filtering sunbeams that cast a golden glow on homes and olive groves. From what he can tell, the village has grown over the years, and though he can locate the wadi and see the tracks, he can’t find the little railroad station.
“So what if it disappeared?” says Ruth when Moses again suggests skipping the descent into the village. “The tracks are still there, so is the wadi, and anyway, what are you afraid of? Do the Palestinians care about you? And if they ask what it is you’re looking for, they’ll be glad to hear that we once included them as partners in an art film.”
He puts a hand on her shoulder. Ever since he watched her work with the young actors, he can’t get her out of his mind; he is worried, he wants to be good to her. And so, despite the fear of entering a place where safety cannot be guaranteed, he starts the car and heads slowly down the narrow road, braving half-filled potholes. And what was once simulated appears now in full force—a square and a well, a donkey tethered to the rusty remains of a car, chickens pecking peacefully, and also a gleaming, late-model motorcycle parked beside a top-quality tractor, with a satellite dish on every house. The locals, mainly women, look at the Israelis with no particular interest. As the two walk down to the tracks, escorted by a barking dog, the clouds sink lower and the air thickens.
But here they face a clear border. A high fence separates the village and the tracks. It is strange that in the past what was porous between enemies is now a firm barrier between neighbors.
In any case, what happened to the little train station? They ask a young Palestinian who sits on the steps of his house reading the sports section of the Hebrew paper Israel Today and learn that a few years back the villagers used the building stones of the station to expand their homes. “But until the new tracks are laid between Modi’in and Jerusalem, doesn’t the train still pass by here?” “Passes but doesn’t stop,” explains the young man, “and on Shabbat doesn’t even pass.” “So how can we get down to the tracks and walk a bit in the wadi alongside?” “It’s not possible and also not permitted,” says the Palestinian, “because it’s a border fence, so we have a bit of independence. But for you,” he adds with a sly smile, “since you belong to the other side, I’ll show you how you get
into Israel without a passport.”
He folds up the sports section and leads the actress and the director, pilgrim stick in hand, down an alley and then another, to a field of green alfalfa. Reaching what looks very much like a fence, he grabs the border with both hands, shakes it hard, and opens a wide entry.
“Well done,” says Moses, “but please close it in a way that we can open easily on our way back. Better yet, if you could wait for us here, we’re only going for a short walk, to retrieve something from the past.”
“Okay, I’ll wait for you,” agrees the young man, who seems amused by two older Israelis eager to take a Sabbath-morning stroll on a desolate railroad track near his village. “But to get back into Palestine”—he grins—“you’ll have to undergo a security check and pay a fee.”
“We’ll pay the fee”—Moses chuckles—“on condition that you not budge from here.”
The young man finds a big rock, sits down, and opens the sports pages. Meanwhile the director and the actress make their way single file along the tracks, first he in the lead, then she, stepping on the gray concrete railroad ties, trying to find the spot where the imaginary train plunged into the imaginary abyss. But it’s not so simple to reconstruct a reality that was imaginary to begin with, and the actress trips and the heel of her shoe gets stuck in a gap between the rail and one of the ties. Moses quickly grabs her and sets her aright, pausing a second before kneeling to pry out the shoe and fit it back on her bare foot. Holding her in his arms, in the here and now, he can feel the tenderness of the woman who took part in so many of his films. And even as she smiles at him with gratitude, she wants to be released from his embrace. Perhaps she suspects that it’s not her the old director desires, but rather the lithe, dark young woman whose lover had demanded she portray the character of an inscrutable deaf-mute.
“So what are we actually doing here?” Ruth asks.
Moses finds it hard to explain his urge to reconnect with the shooting locations of his early films. Does he just want to get the feel of them, or does he want to repair them?
“Can they be repaired?”
“It’s impossible,” admits the director. “But one can try calming the old anger.”
“Not anger, just disappointment.”
“And even if just disappointment,” he insists, “disappointment hurts no less.” This is why he has brought her here, to soften the disappointment.
“To soften it? How?” Her eyes flash mild disdain.
Maybe, as they walk near the village that is again beyond the border, she will understand why Distant Station could only have ended with a scene of violent rape. Even a foreign audience in a distant land was sympathetic to the film.
“The sympathy of the audience doesn’t compensate for the humiliation of the actor.”
“Hold on. I didn’t write the screenplay, I only interpreted it.”
“An extreme interpretation, far beyond what was only hinted in the script.”
“But Trigano was there with us and could have restrained me.”
“He couldn’t, because of the agreement that you could change nothing in the script once it was done and that he would not meddle in the directing once it began. His hands were tied.”
“Tied even when I, as you claim, degraded you?”
“Fine, maybe the agreement didn’t stop him, maybe that was just his excuse. But understand this: your creative partnership with him was thanks to your normalcy, your sense of proportion, on the assumption that you, as director, would impose credibility and restraint on his wild imagination, that you would calm the disquiet raging inside him, clarify the symbols that raced around in his soul. But then, as we’re filming the last scenes of Distant Station, he suddenly sees that your flexibility is not so simple. That it has a different mindset, broader margins, than he expected. He understood that the bourgeois values you brought from your Jerusalem were less stable than he imagined and that normalcy could also be violent and cruel. That’s why he didn’t want to interfere with the rape scene. He liked the idea of going to extremes with you . . . to dare more. With me, or through me . . .”
“With you. Mainly with you.” Her words have moved him. “We all knew how close a bond he had with you.”
“It wasn’t just a bond, Moses, it was much more than a bond, much more than the love of a man for a woman. Love wasn’t enough for him. It had a purpose beyond itself. To turn me into a symbol, into a character.”
“A character?” he says disingenuously. “In what sense?”
“A character,” she continues confidently, “a character who, because of her own uniqueness and regardless of the part she is playing, is able to force people to think a little differently about the world. And despite what happened in Distant Station, I took it upon myself to be a character, not just because of Trigano, but because I saw that you were on his side, supporting him and loyal to him. But when you both sent me out into the street after I handed over the baby, and you expected me to force an old dirty beggar to nurse from me, and you degraded me in front of the girl who was me in the past, I felt that if I didn’t stop, the two of you would push me even farther. Because love that tries to go beyond a woman and make her into a character, a symbol, is a love gone wrong.”
They keep walking carefully along railroad ties. Moses listens in silence.
“That’s why I tried to stop the momentum of the final scene. I wanted to test your reaction.”
“You only tried?”
“Yes, I only tried. But instead of offering a solution—perhaps promising that through the camera work you would inject some compassion into the scene to shield me from the weirdness—you simply switched sides and joined my refusal. You canceled the scene so fast that neither I nor you had a chance to reconsider.”
“I was quick to support you, to protect you.”
“Yes, but the support was so ferocious that it insulted Trigano, wounded him.”
“Because of his pride, his delusions of grandeur. He was sure my ‘normalcy’ would defer to him and accept everything he fed you.”
“You were ready to do that scene. That was not the point.”
“Then what was the point?”
“You created in him, and in me as well, an impression that you supported me because you wanted me for yourself, wanted to take me away from him. But you didn’t really want me—you certainly didn’t love me then.”
Moses kicks a small stone. “That’s true.”
“So you should have appeased him, suggested a compromise, calmed my anxiety, most of all. You could have tried harder and found a way to remedy the scene that was scaring me. Why didn’t you try to make peace between me and him? You were the director, you were the strong one. You were the native Israeli, you controlled the production. You should never have allowed him to cut off ties with you and with me. But you wanted to exploit the argument to be rid of him once and for all, so you wouldn’t have to keep dealing with his crazy ideas.”
In that case, he realizes with a shudder, the picture of Caritas Romana by the bed at the Parador had hit a deep nerve after all, though she hadn’t said a word.
“Yes,” he confesses, “I did want to break away from him, or at least keep my distance for a while. I was afraid he was leading me down a blind alley.”
7
THEY HEAR DISTANT buzzing, the sound of a saw or a lathe, but it gets louder, closer, and the walkers on the tracks, who assumed they were protected by the Sabbath from any trains, freight trains included, are surprised as a little yellow railcar barrels toward them from around a bend, shrieking like a bird of prey. Moses grabs Ruth by the arm and pulls her aside. “You can’t even rely on the chief rabbi in this country,” he grumbles.
The two exchange a grin as an old man in coveralls, bald and heavyset, brakes the railcar and hollers: “What’s going on? How’d you get here? This isn’t a hiking trail! Get out of here or I’ll call the police forces.” It’s hard to pin down his nationality; he says “police forces” as if he’s a b
i-national with double protection. Moses jests, “Is it not the Sabbath, sir? You want us to inform the religious authorities that Israel Railways rides on Shabbat?” Except the railroad man doesn’t get the joke. He climbs down from the railcar and waves his hands. “Yalla, kishteh, scat,” he commands in three languages, then gets back in the car, blows the whistle, and heads for the coastal plain.
The young Palestinian, their border guard, is still immersed in the sports section. He sees the two approaching and takes his time getting up and going to the breach in the fence. Moses hands him a hundred-shekel note with a smile and says, “Here’s the fee, you can skip the security check, because we’re at peace with each other.” The young man fingers the unexpected bill and yanks open the border with two hands, singing, “Peace, peace, there is no peace.” He invites the Israelis for a cup of coffee, included in the entrance fee. “Why not?” The director is enthusiastic. “We have time.”
Yes, Moses wants to prolong the Sabbath excursion. Especially since from the neat, pleasant living room, there is a fine view of the route of the Israeli railroad tracks till they vanish around a mountain bend. He sips the excellent coffee and tells the young man and his wife about the film of long ago.
They are amazed to learn that an Israeli feature film was shot near their home before either of them was born, and they relish the mischief of the cinematographer who crossed the border and stole their village, but they are unsettled by the plot, the act of terrorism that Israelis perpetrate on their own people for no reason, without politics or war.
The Retrospective Page 26