The Extra (16 page)

“Honestly,” she asks her mother and brother, “you could actually tell it was me?”

“I tried not to lose sight of you,” says Honi. “After all, I came more for you than the opera.”

And the mother says, “I'm not sure I identified you, but it was nice to feel again like a young mother coming to see her daughter in a sweet costume at a kindergarten party. When you were little, before Honi was born, Abba and I didn't miss a single one of your performances, even if you had only two words to speak.”

“Two words? For example?”

“Peas and beans.”

“That's all?”

“And for that Abba took off time from work. But I'm not feeling young only because of you, Noga,” she continues cheerfully. “It's Honi too. We haven't slept in the same room since he was ten, and last night we went out together and even slept in the same bed, so I'm asking myself why you'd want to imprison such a young mother in an old-age home.”

Grimacing, Honi turns to his sister, but she smiles indifferently. He says to her, “Ima is waiting for me to have a heart attack like Abba, to be rid of my nagging.”

“You won't have a heart attack,” says his sister. “If, as you said, my heart is made of stone, yours is made of rubber.”

“Children, enough,” says the mother. “I apologize.”

They resume discussing the change of singers and try to understand why the character is more important than the person who portrays it. “At one point,” relates Noga, “I found myself near the understudy. I looked at her face, and though she was different in every way from the star who dropped out, I didn't really feel the difference between her and the original.”

The mother, who knows her son, anticipates that he is on the verge of telling Noga about the encounter with Uriah, and she places a finger on her lips to signal him that he shouldn't. But Honi pointedly ignores her, and tells his sister about the hasty meeting and the physical resemblance between her and the second wife.

Noga listens calmly, drinks what's left of her coffee and says, “I just hope you didn't tell him I was in the vicinity.”

When the mother suddenly stands up irritably, as if trying to forestall the answer, Honi keeps calm and disregards the truth: “I didn't tell him a thing. Why should I even mention you? You split up a long time ago. Who cares anymore?”

“M
AYBE FIREWORKS, THE BEST EVER
in Jerusalem, can convince you not to run away so fast from the city.” A pair of old friends, both flutists who had studied with Noga at the music academy, insisted she come to a party on the eve of Jerusalem Day.

It was held on the roof of a monstrous high-rise erected on the ruins of the old Holyland Hotel, offering a fine view of the pyrotechnic bouquets launched in rapid succession from the hilltops of the capital. Many on the roof were strangers to each other and even to the hosts, who wished to prove by their generosity that they were innocent of the municipal corruption entailed in the demolition of the hotel and the construction of these hideous buildings. But in the Israeli fashion, the guests rapidly set about establishing their connections, if not from childhood or military service, at least through mutual acquaintances.

Noga stood near the rooftop railing, sipping wine, scanning silent skies tinged by a foggy, pinkish residue of fireworks. Soon enough, as always, someone would be attracted by her solitude, and on this anniversary of Jerusalem's real or imaginary reunification would expect her to reveal her connection and talk about herself. She would surely be asked why she had no children, and why she didn't live in Israel. Would she be teased if along with her music she described her work as an extra, and threw in the strolling donkey that dropped its aromatic turds at the foot of Masada to the strains of grand opera?

The unfamiliarity on the roof has given way to the singing of old Israeli folksongs that clash with the music she carries in her heart. She decides to say good night to her friends, declining offers of a ride home. Insisting on her independence, she orders a taxi.

On Rashi Street, near her mother's building, stands a man. Can it be that even close to midnight an elderly lawyer will take the trouble to stalk her? But no, it's the neighbor, Mr. Pomerantz, in a baggy white shirt, skullcap on his head, wreathed in cigarette smoke.

“At last I run into you, Mr. Pomerantz,” she says, warmly greeting a man whose beard has grown white over the years but who remains handsome. “Ever since I got here I've been asking myself where you are.”

“Here I am,” he says with a chuckle.

“Eight weeks I've been living in my mother's place,” she persists, “and I haven't seen you. And you're not sick, after all, like your poor wife.”

“No, thank God, I'm not sick, and I haven't hidden from you, Noga,” he says fondly, “but most weekdays I'm not in Jerusalem, but in Judea.”

“Our Judea or the Palestinians' Judea?” she asks contentiously.

“God's Judea,” he answers softly. “For the past year I've been teaching five days a week at the yeshiva in Tekoah so I can help our son Shaya, who has many children.”

Yes, she wants to say, and I met one of them and even threatened him with a whip. But she doesn't complain.

Meanwhile, the cigarette is burning down, almost singeing Pomerantz's lips, and he quickly takes out another and lights it with the butt, which he then tramples with his shoe.

“Your father too, may he rest in peace,” he says by way of apology, “liked to stand here with me by the fence at night and enjoy a cigarette, male friendship which resulted from your mother's and my wife's fear of smoke.”

“Yes, you were good friends, even though my father was incurably secular.”

“Enough just to say secular,” he gently chides. “Only somebody in the grave is incurable. Speaking of which, Noga, have you visited your father's grave on this trip?”

“By myself?”

“What's the problem?”

“How would I ever find it? I was there only at the funeral and not at the unveiling of the gravestone.”

“I'll help you find it.”

“It hasn't been a year yet, and they say that after the thirty days, one must not visit the grave until the end of the first year.”

“It doesn't matter what they say,” he says with mild annoyance. “It's not about how much time has passed. A person who loves his father visits the grave to strengthen that love.”

“True,” she whispers.

“And so?”

“So?”

“If you are willing, we'll go to the cemetery tomorrow morning, before you return to your exile.”

“Tomorrow?” She tries to put him off. “Tomorrow's Jerusalem Day, a parade.”

“What's the connection?”

“You're right, it's irrelevant.”

“So tomorrow morning early I'll take you to the cemetery,” he says, and flips the burning cigarette into the air like tiny private fireworks and goes back to his apartment.

This Hasid has trapped me, she says to herself, not with irritation but marveling at how quickly he persuaded her to set the alarm on her mobile phone, so she could wait, half asleep, wrapped in her mother's black shawl, for two knocks on the door, like those of his grandson.

He stands at the door in the early morning, wearing a solemn expression, a black
kapota
overcoat and a huge hat that covers his sidelocks. Silently he leads her to a bus stop, and when a small bus arrives, perhaps public, perhaps private, they get on board, and it turns out that this special bus takes mourners not only to the entrance of the cemetery, but also to various sectors of graves, stopping on request.

“I would never have found this place. You're apparently an expert.”

Mr. Pomerantz bids her to stand opposite the headstone that her brother and mother had erected at the grave. A simple stone of grayish marble, and under the dates of birth and death is engraved one line: “A beloved man who gladdened every heart.”

“Lovely,” she says. “Very appropriate. How come they never told me about this line?”

Mr. Pomerantz does not reply. He stands facing the grave, surveys it with approval. No one nearby. The delicate scent of flowering bushes.

“Good that you enticed me to come here,” she says, immediately correcting herself. “I mean, suggested . . .”

He says nothing, nods in agreement and studies the inscription on the stone as if it were some complex text.

“Perhaps you remember,” she ventures, “that none of the three of us cried much at my father's funeral. Maybe you asked yourself why.”

“No,” he says, startled. “I didn't ask myself.”

“Because Abba died in his sleep, lying beside Ima. An unconscious death, with no fear and no suffering, and we felt that was what he wanted, and it was a good thing, and so we mourned, but we didn't cry.”

He looks at her kindly but doesn't respond. He picks up a pebble and places it on the headstone, then glances at his watch, but the harpist, reunited with her lost father, seeks the good graces of her unusual escort.

“Since you've brought me to the grave, Mr. Pomerantz, maybe we ought to do something else.”

“What else?”

“Maybe one of your prayers . . . so we didn't just come . . . a simple Kaddish . . .”

“For what you call a simple Kaddish, you have to be a man”—he chuckles—“and there has to be a minyan, but we can make you exempt on both counts. After all, when you used to play your instrument on Shabbat, I told you the priests would let you do it even in the Holy Temple.”

“Yes,” she says, blushing, “that's what you said, and that was generous and tolerant. But now I have no instrument with me.”

“No.” He smiles. “Not to play, but to recite the Kaddish with your voice.”

“But how?”

Mr. Pomerantz produces from inside his coat a laminated yellowing plastic card with the Kaddish printed in big letters. In a clear whisper she reads it line by line, picturing herself again as an extra in that Jerusalem bar, with a camera following her among the graves. When she is done, she hands back the Kaddish, which vanishes into the black
kapota
, whose shabbiness she notices for the first time.

On the stairs of their building, before they part company, she invites him into her apartment, opens her parents' clothes closet and offers him the orphaned suit. Smiling to himself, he strokes the empty black sleeve, but politely refuses the offer. “The suit is worthy and fitting,” he confirms, “and I loved and respected your father, but I suspect that the fabric is
shaatnez
.”

“
Shaatnez?
”

“Yes, Noga, a blend of wool and linen, a prohibition from which not even women are exempt.”

A
COMPLICATION OF HIS GRANDSON'S
illness has prevented Elazar, Noga's driver to the film site, from reaching the Ashdod port until late afternoon. Amid the labyrinth of poles, pulleys, forklifts and cranes that glitter in the sinking sunlight, the practiced eye of the retired police commander quickly locates the giant warehouse repurposed as a fictitious hospital, which in the weeks to come will turn into cinematic reality.

Standing at the entrance are several extras awaiting assignment, based on personal choice or the needs of the production. The “eternal extra” is recognized at once, but no one asks his preference.

“Elazar, you go to the morgue. Sorry, no way will your face appear in this series.”

“But they'll s-s-see my face as that of a dead man!”

“And when they see you're finally dead, it'll be a relief.”

Elazar sighs. “If that's your decision.”

“But you won't be bored. There'll be a story line in the morgue, a medical debate about your death, possibly ending in an autopsy.”

“Most entertaining.”

Now they ask his companion what she would like to be: a patient or the relative of one? If a patient, chronic or recovering?

Elazar jumps in: “Patient, but not critical, just ill.”

But the casting people are not about to hide such a pretty face between blankets and pillows, and so that the camera can caress her femininity, a compromise is suggested: a patient in a wheelchair, hooked up to a colorful intravenous bag.

Elazar is taken to the morgue, and Noga is led through a maze of thin white plywood partitions to an unidentified woman who asks her to change into a floral nightgown. Then she is seated in a wheelchair and taught how to operate it. Her clothes are placed in a plastic bag and hung on the chair, and an IV pole is added on, with a bag filled with blood-red fluid, its tube attached securely to her arm. From here on, she is told, she is free to go about as she wishes. They will find her when she is needed.

The night is not far off, and through the few windows, installed in the warehouse for the film production, the setting sun pours the remains of its day, a potion of copper and gold. Noga wheels herself amid medical equipment, beds and gurneys, occasionally encountering mobile cameras and fuzzy microphones. Despite its transient, improvisational quality, she finds the set to be believable and well suited to its purpose. From time to time she rolls into one of the rooms, where patients bedecked with medical devices greet the guest with friendly waves and invite her to take an interest in their imaginary ailments.

But she mainly sticks to the corridor, to check if there is a back exit from imagination into reality, and perhaps along the way to peek into the morgue and check up on the smiling policeman, missing his protective presence.

The corridor gets darker, seemingly narrower, due perhaps to some mysterious intent of its planners or merely to the evening that envelops the world. This entire huge and forbidding warehouse—it occurs to her suddenly—is a metaphor for humanity, and we are all extras in its story, not knowing if a credible and satisfying resolution awaits us at the end. If only, she sighs, it were set to the right music.