He tucks the gift box in his jacket pocket, pats one of the slips of paper, and decides to satisfy his hunger, selecting a restaurant not far from a big plaza. Though it is earlier than the usual Spanish dinnertime, and the waiters have not yet laid the tablecloths, he is greeted hospitably. His request is modest: a big plate of fried potatoes and a glass of red wine.
He sits at a table overlooking the plaza, where the streetlamps are not yet lighted, and eats with great gusto the potatoes browned gold in olive oil, and when the waiter, gratified by his pleasure, offers another portion, Moses happily accepts. Meanwhile the plaza is filling up with a large crowd. In the half-light, near a flight of steps, he can see the statue of a horse whose rider waves one hand in the air and holds a long spear in the other. “What’s the name of this plaza?” he asks the waiter as he arrives with the bill. Plaza de España is the reply. Moses smiles. “In which case, I’ve come to the heart of Spain—I’ve landed well.” The waiter goes on in English, but between the waiter’s accent and the absence of the hearing aids, Moses doesn’t understand a word. Once again he fears that Doña Elvira’s housekeeper will think they are used earplugs and throw them in the wastebasket. I still refuse to grant them the mandatory status of eyeglasses. The truth is that what I don’t hear is usually not important, but what I don’t see always is. He leaves the waiter a generous tip and decides it’s time to go home, since one can’t call a private home a hotel, can one? He hands the taxi driver not one slip of paper but two, and the driver reads them both and finds a contradiction. As the taxi circles the plaza all the lights go on, and Moses manages a glimpse, alongside the horse and rider, of a mule whose rider’s helmet is skewed backward. Maybe these are Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, he says to himself, and why not? This is the right place.
“I thought you’d decided to forget your atonement and disappear in the country that expelled my forefathers,” the young photographer says half jestingly, half impertinently. The house is quiet and dark. Doña Elvira has eaten her dinner and is closeted in her bedroom; Manuel and the photographer have also had their meal and now sit in the kitchen, where the housekeeper is washing the dishes. Manuel reads aloud from the book of Psalms while the young photographer corrects his pronunciation and explains obscure Hebrew words to the best of his ability.
Moses heads for the bathroom. In a spontaneous decision, he shaves off his bohemian goatee. Even a tiny symbolic beard, he says to himself, might repel a nursing woman and be a barrier between me and the breast. And in the emotion of parting with such an unmistakable symbol of his character, he cuts himself, but succeeds in stemming the blood.
5
ON THE SECOND night the Dominican doesn’t escort the Israelis on foot but rather takes them by tram to a large building surrounded by a high wall, where three figures await them at the iron gate. I’m becoming famous in Spain. Moses chuckles. Manuel introduces Moses to his friend, a former monk turned social worker in the city district, and to the night watchman of the municipal supervisory department, but not to the third person, who stands removed from the other two. Bundled in a winter coat, she now draws near and is revealed as Pero, the young daughter, the woman, the actress. Strands of blond hair poke from under her beret. The cigarette between her lips faintly illuminates her delicate, pale features, but she is wary of looking straight at Moses, who cordially shakes her damp, limp hand. Toledano introduces himself and says something to her that Moses doesn’t catch, though he notices the embarrassed smile on her gaunt face.
The building was once a prison, and after Franco’s death it became municipal offices. The watchman opens the gate and leads the five down stone steps to the prison cellar, now serving as an archive. A mythological picture, Moses says to himself, with parking tickets and citations for building violations and other peccadilloes of the citizens of the capital of Spain.
The light in the basement is feeble, and the cameraman and director understand that it will have to be significantly enhanced if they want to include the barred window, which is near the shadowy high ceiling. “Are these bars essential?” wonders Moses. “Essential?” The photographer shrugs. “Nothing is essential, but the bars in your picture will make it stronger and more credible. In many renditions of Roman Charity, the bars of the cell are visible. I think Trigano will be pleased to see bars in your picture,” he adds. Hearing the name Trigano uttered by the photographer arouses vague anxiety in Moses, as if the two had conspired behind his back.
“Give it a try . . . what have we got to lose?”
The cameraman asks the guard for a ladder, takes out the extension cord he brought from Israel, and looks for a suitable socket. Without the Israeli cord we’d be lost, thinks Moses while the cameraman sets up the ladder opposite the barred window and mounts the flash on it, then looks through the lens to find the right spot for Cimon, the old father dying of hunger.
After the spot is designated the director takes off his coat and spreads it like a rug on the stone floor. Then, with expertise attained the night before, he repeats the ritual of undressing and dressing, then stacks up three thick folders of parking tickets to serve as the stool concealed by the robe, sits down, puts his hands behind his back, and waits for the young man to come down from the ladder and bind them.
The woman is frozen in place, keeping her distance. She does not remove her coat or even her French beret, merely studies the old Israeli with a blue-eyed gaze that blends anxiety and contempt. But when the light is focused on her, and with Moses sitting and waiting in his outlandish skirt, she takes off the beret and shakes out her hair, baring her tormented beauty.
“Maybe, like we did yesterday,” the monk whispers to the director in English, “we should pay the woman in advance to calm her?”
“You’re the one who needs calming, not she, but if it will ease your anxiety, take the wallet from the inside pocket of my jacket and give everyone what you promised. I hope you didn’t promise the actress a thousand euros.”
“No, no, only five hundred, she is after all an actress. Though she is also in deep distress, she is a real actress who has come to work here and not get charity.”
He counts and recounts five greenish bank notes and then hands them to the young woman, whose face reddens; she is insulted by the advance payment. She looks at the bills with anger, like someone who doesn’t know what to do with them. Then she sticks them in her coat pocket, quickly removes the coat, and unties her scarf, revealing a very white neck. But before taking off her sweater and blouse, she holds before her, like lines at a play rehearsal, the picture of Roman Charity handed her by the social worker and studies it.
Once Toledano has bound Moses’ hands, she quietly and coolly takes off her sweater and her shirt, and, since she has prepared for the role, she is not wearing a bra. Her bare breasts are shapely and symmetrical, yet arouse compassion in their absolute whiteness, as if no blood flows in them, just pure milk. Only the nipples are red, sunken, as if burned. And when she raises her arms to brush her hair from her face, Moses spots blue track marks.
He looks at the photographer to see if he has noticed the marks, gestures to ask if they will be visible on camera. Toledano gives a little nod, meaning yes, they will, but signaling encouragement. “So,” says Moses, “they brought me a junkie, no doubt about it. Her silence is deceiving.” If he puts his lips on her nipple, he will suck not mother’s milk but a drug. His face turns pale. A primal, childlike fear grips him. How good, he comforts himself, that we’ve paid her; we can make a clean break right away with no contact, but respecting her professionalism. However, the young woman, perhaps from the poison in her blood, does not sense the revulsion of the old man but sticks to the role assigned her and approaches him, no longer herself but Pero, the beneficent daughter who, according to the tale by Valerius Maximus, will now cradle the head of her manacled father dying of hunger and thirst, and nurse him with mercy.
Pleading desperately with his eyes, Moses signals to Toledano to click the camera, so the actress wil
l realize she need do nothing more and her bare-breasted presence will suffice to achieve the desired picture. The flash floods the municipal cellar with blinding light again and again. The startled woman does not budge; Moses hunches over with eyes closed tight and struggles to stand, but his bound hands hobble him and he topples to his side at her feet.
Manuel cannot believe the scene is again unraveling, but the municipal social worker rushes to the Israeli rolling on the floor, quickly undoes his handcuffs, and pulls him to his feet, and, without asking him or the cameraman but with the insight of a former monk, he motions for the woman to put on her shirt. Yet she holds back, lingers before them with bare breasts and blue arms, pleading as if for her life in Slavic-inflected Spanish. The social worker takes her hand, calming her in her native tongue.
6
NOW THEY WON’T just hear about me in Spain, they’ll remember me. Moses wants to tease Manuel de Viola for failing him yet again in his Christian innocence but decides not to tease or blame and just sits sulkily beside the taxi driver, gazing at the empty streets of Madrid, feeling the weight of the silence of the two men seated behind him. No matter, he promises himself, tomorrow we leave for Israel. If Spain scares me, and Israel unnerves me, then it’s best I give up on a new partnership with that old dreamer and look for a realistic screenplay, something psychological, family-based. That’s what I’m still equipped to do. Moses went to him to seek reconciliation not just for himself, but for Trigano, and especially for Ruth, so they could console her with a new role. But if Trigano insists on indulging the vengeful and childish temperament he brought with him from the Atlas Mountains, he’ll end up in prideful isolation, and he will keep on teaching, as he did in the days he was an usher in that Jerusalem movie theater, what’s right and what’s wrong in the films of others but won’t create anything of his own.
In their room he says nothing to the cameraman, who has undressed and curled up on his rug. They exchange looks. Can this young man empathize with his revulsion, or does he think the old man is fooling himself?
“How many pictures did you take?” Moses asks finally. “Two for sure,” answers Toledano, “but I may have grabbed a third one.” “Did you use your father’s old camera, or the new digital one?” “The old camera.” “Please take out the film now, so I can destroy it immediately,” says Moses sharply. “Why destroy it?” says the photographer. “A pity to waste high-grade film we’ve barely used. When I develop it in Israel, I promise to destroy the pictures immediately.”
“No,” insists the director, “don’t develop any picture. Take the film out now, please, and give it to me.”
“You don’t trust me? You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you and trust you, but we are all human and can forget or be tempted. I’m not a totally anonymous person, and I have to protect my good name.”
The young man jumps from his bed in his underwear, takes the camera, rips out the film, and gives it to Moses, who holds it up to the light to wipe out anything captured on it.
Then he undresses, goes to bed, gets under the blanket, turns out the light, and says to the young man, “Thank you for your restraint and your patience. Tomorrow we’ll try to catch the first flight to Israel.” “But why?” wonders the voice in the dark corner. “Why give up? If you made an agreement with Shaul Trigano, don’t quit after two tries—you have money enough for a third. Listen, this may sound strange, but tonight, in the cellar, I had a thought that my father of blessed memory would be pleased if he knew you were trying to re-create the scene.”
“It’s not the same scene,” says Moses.
“But it’s still the true source, even if none of you knew it.”
Moses says nothing. Turns his head to the wall and closes his eyes. The delicate breasts of the drugged woman hover before his eyes. Does the money he advanced her atone for the insult, or does he owe her an apology too?
Only after he swallows the sleeping pill designated for emergencies does he manage to banish his worries and fears to the outskirts of a soul striving for unconsciousness. And since the pill is joined to extreme fatigue produced by the night’s adventures, not even the noonday sun pouring through the uncurtained window can wake him, nor is he affected by the clatter of the kitchen or the slamming of the front door. Only the gentle hand of the worried Doña Elvira lures the castaway consciousness to climb back to its owner and open his eyes.
Doña Elvira makes no apologies for the liberty she has taken, nor does she retreat from his bed, but instead brings a chair and sits beside him. A woman of ninety-four, an actress in both silent and talking films, wearing dark glasses to protect her eyes, begins to speak intimately to the foreigner aged seventy, as if he were her son.
“I know what happened to you last night. Not only did Manuel tell me; you will be surprised to hear that the young man you brought with you also tried to explain to me what happened. I think, Mr. Moses, that if you were frightened, it wasn’t because of that poor girl. Manuel, who made sure you paid her in advance, foretold the future with his intuition and wanted her to feel she had done her job. For you know there is nothing more infuriating for an actor than when he or she is stopped in the middle and told, Get out of character and get back into yourself.”
“Very true,” says the director.
“But you were afraid not of the woman,” continues Doña Elvira, “for how much could she hurt you, at your age? You, sir, permit me to interpret you, are frightened each time by the subject, by Roman Charity. The fear is understandable, because on second look this strange story—even though so many important artists drew inspiration from it and honored it for hundreds of years—this story remains perverse. Your screenwriter has no right to demand it of you. And yet, despite everything, it pains me that you will go back to your country empty-handed, that all of us here will give up on the picture.”
“All of us?” he asks, startled, his white head resting on the pillow. “You care?”
“Of course I care. And it pains me that Manuel, whose achievements as an itinerant monk are so meager, will feel that he failed you too. Also the young man, who has gone to buy film to replace the roll you exposed yesterday, will feel disappointed, though he is just a technical person.”
“A cinematographer is not just a technical person. In my profession I came to realize, time and time again, that everything depends on the cameraman.”
“Perhaps not everything,” Doña Elvira corrects him, “but a great deal.”
Silence falls. Not since his childhood has a woman more than twenty years his senior sat by his side as he lay in bed with his head on the pillow. What does this old lady want from me? Maybe, at my age, instead of a young girl nursing her father, an elderly mother should offer me her withered breast?
Moses smiles at her contentedly. “Yes, Doña Elvira, I hear you.”
“I think we must continue, not despair. Manuel wants to succeed, the cameraman wants to take pictures, your screenwriter wants to make peace. And it is also not good that the nice lady, your companion, should stay ill and without a role.”
“I see you’re on top of things. And if everybody wants this so badly, what choice do I have?”
“The scene, the picture, must be revived and immortalized, and I know exactly where this can be done without frightening you. My son Manuel, because of his obsession, is always looking for people in distress—foreigners, the sick, the unemployed—but a woman in distress, expecting kindness from you, cannot give you any Roman Charity. I prefer simple, happy people who combine the authentic with the classical, naturally and without fear.”
“You are persuasive, but I don’t really understand.”
“Give me a little time to explain it to you in actions, not words. Don’t hurry to leave Spain. Let me surprise you with something worthy of your talent, but as a very old woman, I can’t surprise you with what will be, only with what was.”
He tries to rise from the pillow, but his head feels like a block of lead.
�
�Good.” He surrenders. “I am in your hands, but only till tomorrow.”
7
THOUGH HUNGER AND thirst wake him as a rule, he is neither hungry nor thirsty now, and he sleeps soundly. At five in the afternoon Manuel shakes him firmly: “Come, Mr. Moses, we’re going, and this time the journey is longer.”
He responds to the call, rises, washes his face, puts on his clothes, and still feels no hunger. “Let’s eat and drink on the road, no point in wasting time,” he says.
Doña Elvira has called for her favorite cab—a boxy black one, London-style, easy for humans whose limbs have gone brittle to climb in and out of, and the seating is capacious, so passengers sitting face to face are compelled to be convivial, to exchange witticisms.
Manuel wears his monk’s robe with all its accessories, and Doña Elvira is wrapped in a robe of green velvet she may have worn in one of her past roles as a femme fatale. The taxi sails away with the four of them, navigating the streets of Madrid and escaping the city by side roads—shortcuts that are sometimes unpaved—bringing them at nightfall to a rural area where buildings are few and far between, planted on large plots of land that in the past were probably flourishing estates and that today look desolate and abandoned. The buildings are big and dark, with occasional glimmers of light that might be electric or oil—the electrical poles are now fewer in number—and the narrowing and winding roads don’t cross any railroad track or highway with a gas station or cafeteria to stop at. Now and then, it’s possible on this clear winter’s night to spot, on a distant hilltop, the vanes of a windmill, moving slowly, like the wings of a giant, languid bird.
The Retrospective Page 35