“And what did she decide?”
“She hasn’t yet decided.”
“And where did you leave your children?”
“I don’t have children. I didn’t want children.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because I didn’t want them to ruin my minimal beauty,” says Noga with a laugh.
The woman stiffens. Was that a malicious remark, or did it just slip out? Crushed, she stares at the extra as if she too wanted to poison her. Without another word she hurries away, past the production crew trying to persuade the parents to move from the sofa to the cozier bedroom, and past the love of her youth, who tried to poison her and now tries to block her path, but she simply touches his gray curls with maternal affection and goes outside to join her husband in the garden.
And now what? Is my role finished too? the extra asks herself, as the living room empties out and the scene switches to an inside room, to achieve a more intimate and revealing conversation. The tripods for the camera and mixer are folded up, and the monitor and lights and fans disconnected, and within minutes she is alone in the living room of a strange house.
Good thing they paid me, she says to herself, so I can disappear without a problem. She walks out of the stone house into the long, narrow street, now emptied of people. Even Elazar, who promised to drive her back, has vanished. Would he break his promise? She decides on second thought to say goodbye to the film crew, goes back inside, passes through the empty living room and heads into the kitchen, which is stocked with plastic plates and cups supplied by the production. She opens the refrigerator, inspects its contents, pours milk into a plastic cup and drinks.
From there she walks down a dark, narrow hallway lined with old books in unfamiliar languages, and enters the bathroom, whose small window is open to the garden. The husband and wife have left, and beside the tree sit the American woman and her son, chatting with one of the students. There is a bookshelf in the bathroom too, crammed with worn-out books that refuse to find their final repose in the trash bin.
Then, to her surprise, she notices that the bathtub is an identical twin of the bathtub in her childhood apartment. The same size, the same curvature, the same rusted iron feet of a bird of prey. These were two Jerusalem homes constructed before the founding of the State of Israel, Jews living in her building, and in this one, at the time, lived Arabs, but the bathtub is the same bathtub, by the same craftsman, Jew or Arab, blessed with unusual imagination.
A plethora of toothbrushes are arrayed by the sink, as if each tooth demanded a brush of its own. She feels the weight of fatigue, opens the faucet and splashes water on her face, and with the water still blurring her vision, she goes to find the filmmakers and say her goodbyes.
Voices lead her into the bedroom, where the psychology students, with the help of the film students, have constructed a more intimate scene. They have seated the elderly parents, wearing bathrobes, on the bed, with their son the professor between them. They have removed his suit but left his bow tie on, wrapping him too in an old robe. And so, with the camera pointed at them, they analyze the strange past in Hebrew.
The extra stands in the doorway and knows that the intimacy and candor may be impaired by her presence. As she plans her exit, a hand strokes the back of her neck.
“I thought you’d forgotten,” she scolds the former police commander.
“I didn’t forget you, nor will I. My daughter called, asked me to get m-m-medicine for my grandson, and I didn’t think they’d let you go so soon.”
“It turned out that way.”
“So you got a really good deal.”
“And as the agent, you deserve not just soup but a whole meal. By the way, how many grandchildren do you have?”
“One, for now.”
“How old?”
“Around the same age as your tz-tz-tzaddik.”
He takes her home to Rashi Street and wishes her a good time at Masada. If the tickets weren’t so expensive, he’d go down to the Dead Sea too.
Six voicemails from Honi await her, each more agitated and anxious than the last, all with the same message: the bus taking the extras to the opera in the desert will be leaving three hours earlier than planned.
“What were you doing wandering around at night?” he hisses when she calls him back.
“I was an extra in a documentary.”
“There is no such thing.”
“You’d be surprised.”
But he’s not prepared to be surprised. He will demand proof in two days, on the second evening of Carmen, since he has tickets.
“So if you can, Honi, bring me some literature about Martin Buber.”
“Martin Buber faded long ago into the mists of memory.”
“So retrieve him from the mists of the Internet.”
Twenty-Seven
THANKS TO THE EARLY DEPARTURE, her eyelids droop repeatedly on the ride, her head bobs, and she arrives at Masada asleep. With her in the minibus are six other extras, a few of them former singers in the opera chorus, arriving today to reinforce the ranks of their former colleagues, not with their voices but with their presence.
To the women’s surprise, the bus doesn’t take them to the hotel but heads straight to the opera site at the base of Masada, where the sounds of rehearsal are heard.
The singers, dancers and chorus, all in street clothes, mill about the enormous stage, a wooden floor with built scenery supplemented by the natural landscape. Dirt paths run between two small hills planted with low plastic olive trees and artificial flowering bushes. The director and his assistants, wielding bullhorns, prompt the chorus members, who burst loudly into song and quickly stop. The orchestra, in its pit in front of the stage, missing some of its players, is under the baton of a young assistant conductor while the illustrious maestro, a man of three identities, gathers strength in his hotel room.
The seven women extras are greeted by an assistant director who instructs them as to their positions and movements. In the first scene, taking place in Seville, their job is to give the audience a sense of agricultural surroundings, so that while the singing of the tobacco factory workers grows louder, they as farm women will walk along the paths between the two hills, two of them with pitchfork and hoe, three bearing bushels of fruits and vegetables, and the two others, on either side, leading small wagons drawn by donkeys.
“Real donkeys?”
“Why not? In Europe they sometimes put elephants and horses on the opera stage.”
The assistant director asks Noga if she would be willing to lead a donkey hitched to a small wagon carrying a few children, since no self-respecting opera production can do without children.
“What if the donkey gets wild?” Noga asks.
“It won’t get wild. Its owner is sitting here on the side, and he guarantees its good behavior.”
And indeed, near the hill stands a little two-wheeled cart, an elderly donkey harnessed to it, ruminating on the state of the world.
Noga approaches the animal, and as a sign of affection she gently folds one of its big ears, smiles at the owner and asks if he has a kurbash.
“Kurbash?” The man is amused by the Arabic word uttered by a Jewish woman. “No need, this is the most polite donkey in the world.”
He rises and wraps the reins around her hand.
“Here, now you can take him up the hill so he’ll get used to you, and I’ll walk beside you.”
When they are up on the hill the assistant conductor gives a sign to the orchestra and chorus, the assistant director motions to Noga to take the donkey down the hill to the stage, while on the opposite hill the other extra walks her donkey down, accompanied by the two extras carrying the pitchfork and hoe, and the remaining three carrying the bushels of fruit and vegetables—proof positive for the opera audience that the Seville of that time was most fertile and lively.
The rehearsal exhausts the orchestra and the choir. The same passage, again and again. The singers playing Carmen, the Lieutenant and the
Corporal warm up their voices in their dressing rooms while three understudies perform onstage, to coordinate the movements of the chorus and dancers. The director and assistant conductor are pleased at last, and everyone is sent off to the hotel to rest, except the seven extras, who arrived late and require fine-tuning for the upcoming scenes—the entrance of the toreador, the smugglers in the hills, the packed crowd at the bullfight arena.
After the rehearsal, waiting for the minibus to take them to the hotel, the seven women flee the blazing sun into the pit, scattering among the empty chairs.
Most of the musicians have taken their instruments with them, but the big ones, impractical to carry, remain in place, among them, of course, the harp, draped in a blue zippered cover. At first Noga observes it from afar, then draws closer. A guard stands on the conductor’s podium, enjoying a meal spread out on the music stand. At first she considers asking permission, but decides the guard won’t care, and might take her for one of the musicians. She silently goes to the instrument, pulls the zipper of its cloak partway down and lightly touches the strings, which respond with a quiet sigh. Eight weeks have passed since she last touched a harp. She is dizzy with longing.
The guard watches her. What is he protecting, the instruments or music itself? She can see from afar her donkey standing serenely. Its feed bag of barley must be empty by now, for the donkey is not nibbling but gazing toward Masada. She too lifts her eyes to the ancient mountain, whose desolation has outlived its myth. She then completely undoes the zipper and strips the harp of its cover, sits in its shade, pulls and hugs it with both her arms and, without hesitation or tuning, as if her concert has begun, plays the Saint-Saëns Fantaisie.
She plucks the notes vigorously, to overpower the desert wind, and their ring in the wilderness is richer than in any concert hall. The guard steps down from the podium but is reluctant to interrupt her, as the six extras slowly awaken to the music and gather around to watch her fingers up close and her feet on the pedals.
She does not smile at them, or even look. Focused on the blue and red strings, she is amazed how precisely the melody flows through her fingertips, not a single mistake or dropped note. From time to time, by force of habit, she glances at the empty podium, as if unaware that no orchestra is playing beside her.
When she is done, her fellow extras loudly applaud. “Why are you an extra if you’re such a talented harpist?” one of them asks.
“Actually, I am a harpist and not an extra,” she says, and tells the story of her mother’s experiment with the old folks’ home.
“When will she decide?”
“In less than a month. That’s how long I gave her.”
Finally the minibus arrives to take them to the hotel. She shares a lovely room, with a view of the Dead Sea, with one of the older extras, a former singer in the opera chorus, and the arrangement is a pleasant one. They talk about music and life, and her roommate sings a few phrases from Carmen to demonstrate that her dismissal from the chorus was unfair.
The performance begins at nine, and the singers, musicians, dancers and production people have all arrived by seven. As the distant sun, setting beyond the mesa of Masada, casts delicate stripes of light on the darkening Dead Sea, the musicians tune their instruments and practice their solos. Noga, hidden behind her hillock, dressed like a nineteenth-century country girl, stands beside the donkey, now adorned with a colorful blanket, a little bell tied around its neck. The donkey’s owner sits to the side, smoking, surrounded by children. “How many children do you want for the cart?” he asks Noga and smiles.
“How many can your donkey pull?”
“He can pull four, but the opera needs a couple to run after the cart, to give some energy. Look, we dressed them like Arabs from old Andalusia.”
The children have been costumed with colorful scarves and embroidered blankets, and several are wearing shiny boots. And for the price of the donkey rental the man threw in various other adornments for everybody.
They finally decide on the division of children. Two will sit in the cart, three will run after it.
“Are they all brothers and sisters?” asks Noga.
“Some are, some aren’t,” answers the Arab.
A little before eight, a strong searchlight is beamed at Masada, and the myth returns to life. Tiny lights switch on at eight-fifteen atop dozens of music stands, as the players warm up with their instruments. In the distance, a roar of buses, ferrying the audience to the site.
At five after nine, the tall conductor with the tripartite identity—Jewish, Arab and Italian—arrives, clad in a jacket like a Protestant minister’s, with a small skullcap pinned to his hair lest it fly off during his stormy performance. Noga had heard gossip in the Arnhem orchestra about his style of conducting, and today she will be able to witness the ecstasy with her own eyes.
The stage lights go on and the sounds of Carmen rise from the pit and flood the air, and though the music is famous and familiar, its beauty continues to astonish. The extras are given a sign, and Noga takes hold of the halter and leads the donkey, wondering if his long ears appreciate the music.
The two Arab children in the cart wave to the delighted audience, of whom they were supposed to act unaware. The three on foot hum to themselves. They cross the stage from north to south, intersecting the path of the empty cart rolling from south to north. While the tobacco workers jostle each other with female abandon, the walking donkey defecates on the stage. Outstanding, Noga says to herself as the fresh aroma strikes her nostrils. Every moment here is a gift. She will entertain her friends in the Arnhem orchestra with stories of her wonderful turn as an extra. Meanwhile, she prods the donkey to pull the cart with the children to the far side of the hill, where, amid the tempest of music and banging of drums, she detects the modest part of the harp.
The performance ended at midnight, but the participants did not arrive at the hotel until two in the morning. In the lobby, a message from her brother awaited her.
“Noga dear: Yoni is sick, and Sarai won’t want to leave him alone or with Ima. I tried to sell the tickets, but sworn enemies of opera swarm all around me. So Ima and I will come tonight to see Carmen and the extra standing by her side, to cheer you both on and shower you with praise.”
Twenty-Eight
THE NEXT DAY THE DESERT wind grew stronger, and on the opera’s second evening grains of sand fluttered from the little hills onto the stage. During the first act, Carmen felt the sand scratching her throat and damaging the quality of her singing, and so during intermission, despite attempts by the production crew to lubricate her voice with remedial concoctions, and despite assurances that the evil wind would die down, she refused to continue performing her role in the second act, for fear that her professional reputation would be tarnished. In art, she decreed, there are no excuses or allowances, and she demanded to be driven back to the hotel. It would now take time to bring in the understudy and prepare the audience, not only for a change of voice, but for a different version of the opera’s title character.
Honi and his mother arrived at the Dead Sea in late afternoon, and since their hotel was far from Noga’s, they did not manage to see her before the performance, but the three agreed to meet for lunch the next day, before their drive home. “I do realize,” Noga told them on the phone, “that you came to this opera for a donkey dragging two little kids in a cart, but try to enjoy the music too.”
They did. Honi forgot to bring his binoculars, but borrowed opera glasses from the woman sitting next to him, and through smudged lenses he searched for the family extra. Once he located her, he handed the glasses to his mother, but at that very moment the donkey blocked her daughter’s face and all she could see was the cart with two children.
At the intermission they decided to stay in their seats, but when the announcement came that the interval would be prolonged because of the change of cast, they joined the mass migration to the snack bar area and restrooms.
The restrooms are the portable kind
—narrow but efficient booths side by side, not designated by gender, so the traffic moves relatively fast. Even so, when Honi and his mother arrived, there was a long line, and Honi brought a chair for his mother from the snack area to sit on while waiting.
The private time with his mother in the desert afforded Honi the opportunity to apply final pressure in favor of assisted living near him. Noga is scheduled to return to Europe in three weeks, so the decision must be made. But the mother, who had guessed his intentions, made up her mind not to be pressured on this outing, and not to respond to Honi’s hints that the choice of Tel Aviv was a fait accompli.
As he approaches his mother to indicate that she is next in line, she points to a woman of about forty, waiting in a different line, and says, “Take a good look. Doesn’t she remind you a lot of our Noga?” “How so?” he says. “The shape of her head,” says the mother, “and the way she’s putting her hair in a bun. Also the way she stands.”
Before he can respond, a toilet stall becomes vacant and the woman disappears within, and as the line gets shorter, a well-built man, his hair flecked with gray, exits a stall, and Honi, his heart pounding, recognizes his sister’s former husband.
“Uriah!” he calls out, as if afraid the man will avoid him. “Uriah!” he calls again, almost pleading.
The mother is taken aback. Just a moment ago she spotted a woman who looked like her daughter, and suddenly the ex-husband appears in the flesh. But her turn has come, and she heads for the toilet.
Honi tightly embraces his lost brother-in-law, and without asking how he is doing, quickly describes the current experiment in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“Where’s Noga? Is she here too?”
Honi laughs. “Here, but not with us. Onstage.”
“In the orchestra?” Uriah’s face lights up. “She has a job in Israel?”
“No, not yet,” says Honi, and with a cryptic, slightly sheepish smile he tells the story of the extra.
Meanwhile, toilet doors open and close, and the woman who reminded the mother of her daughter exits a stall and touches Uriah with a smile, and Uriah, with odd hesitation, introduces his wife as if she were a stranger. The loudspeaker announces the start of the second act, and the former husband abruptly ends the encounter before Honi can introduce himself to the second wife and shake her hand.
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