The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (16 page)

Trigano's intention to end the film with the killing of the young woman worried Moses. If you have a mature citizen, a family man and successful businessman, called up for a short stint of reserve duty and thrust into a situation of no clear and present danger, he said to Trigano, it will take an extreme directorial feat to convince an audience that his murderous rage is believable. But Trigano would not give up on the death of his Berber. Only after their final breakup did Moses understand that it was probably the writer's great love for Ruth that impelled him to drag her in his scripts into situations of loss and humiliation, so the evil realized on the screen would return to real life drained of vitality, which was his way of protecting her. Meanwhile, between scenes, a unique friendship developed between the two lovers and Foxy, whom the scriptwriter and the actress fondly dubbed the “killer officer.”

With a pang of discomfort, Moses watches two members of the audience slipping sheepishly out of the hall. True enough, he wasn't sure whether to stage the murder at night or by day, or whether the girl should be aware of the threat or remain proud and aloof until the moment she died. And the fatal shot—should it be at close range or from far away? Should she die theatrically, or should he make do with a modest bloodstain on her garment? Trigano began to make suggestions, but Moses objected to his interference and in the end banned him from the filming of the scene. “Just as I don't hover over your desk when you're writing, I don't want you standing behind the camera while I'm directing,” he told him firmly.

Did the cinematographer's fervor for Ruth also render the director suspect in her lover's eyes? The cameraman and his assistant pleaded with Moses to keep the scriptwriter at a distance, as “his wiseass intellectualism will only trip us up.” But in the Spanish screening room, in the company of maybe a dozen foreign viewers, Moses can suddenly feel the pain his young collaborator suffered when he was prevented from witnessing his loved one's murder.

“We'll tie you up at dawn on a cliff,” said the cameraman to the actress, “but in your death you'll be even more beautiful than in life.” Indeed, on the day before the filming, the cinematographer climbed onto an east-facing cliff just before sunrise to check the light from every angle. The following evening, he sent his assistant and the soundman up with the equipment. In the dead of night he led the two actors and the director to the spot, and there applied makeup, his own concoction, to the actress and waited for the glimmer of dawn to illuminate the contours of her face, which would appear uncovered for the first time when the impact of the bullet to her heart knocked off her veil.

All the scenes leading to this one had already been shot: the repeated expulsions of the Bedouin woman from the installation, the rebukes and warnings, including a forced march back to her family's encampment. Her father had warned and threatened her and would have also tied her up, except he knew she would escape and return to the Israeli watchmen, believing that she too belonged at the secret installation.

The final pursuit of the Bedouin girl by the officer had been filmed over and over, in daytime and at night, leaving only the final showdown on the rim of a cliff—a respectable citizen, an angry and exhausted commander, versus a young and delicate but strong-minded woman, whose joyful laughter now heightens the screen. Moses knows this laughter was not in the original script but was born of his inspiration. Laughter meant to trigger the rage of the officer, who apparently imagines that the woman is trying to seduce him and fears that he might succumb to the passion of this desert creature. He pulls the pistol from his pocket and fires in the air, but the laughter, free and young and mocking, demands another bullet to silence it, and a third bullet so the actress, persuasive and credible in her pain and collapse, will not rise again.

When Trigano saw the scene in the editing room, he had to admit that it had gone well. The sunrise, enhanced by artificial lighting, gave a mysterious greenish tinge to the bloody confrontation, with the young actress dropping to her knees before breathing her last. “You produced a glorious absurdity, like Camus in
The Stranger
,” Trigano complimented the cinematographer and director while still resentful over being barred from the set. He of course knew about Toledano's deep feelings for Ruth, who was their shared childhood love, but he never regarded him as a true rival. Now, for the first time, he suspected that his former teacher's heart might be joining them.

But the movie doesn't end there. It goes on for another twenty minutes, which had been erased from the director's memory. For the script is determined not to let the officer get away with it, but requires him to cover his victim with stones, dismantle his gun, and throw the pieces into the abyss, and only then to return to his soldiers and snuggle into his sleeping bag. And since the wandering girl had an independent way of life, it takes several days for her family to notice her absence. In the meantime, the killer officer has tightened the disciplinary screws on his soldiers, concocting new military chores and tedious ceremonies. A flagpole is erected and a flag raised to the sound of the bugle. At the pre-dinner lineup he reads out passages from the Bible in a clear, charmless voice, as if giving orders, and if he thinks someone isn't listening, he tosses pebbles at him. After the meal he sings long-forgotten Zionist songs, accompanied by a harmonica-playing soldier. And though at the morning lineup every soldier is checked for unshaved stubble, the commander has grown a beard, so when two military policemen arrive looking for him, they need to check the photograph against his face more than once before slapping on the handcuffs and putting him into the same green jeep that he, the authority figure, had driven down to the desert.

The director, watching his long-neglected work, is duly impressed by the precise mix of haughtiness and insanity on the prisoner's face. Was this expression a product of scrupulous directing, or did it arise from within the actor? Or could it be the fading of the original print, which sat abandoned for many years in an anonymous drawer? But Moses well remembers the closing scene and is still proud of it. The installation twinkles in the light of the dwindling campfire, while the guards have all returned to their deep soldierly slumber.

T
HE APPLAUSE IS
guarded but lasts long enough not to qualify as insulting. When the lights go on, one member of the audience gets up from his seat, turns to Moses, makes a two-fingered V for victory, bellows a brief
Bravo!,
and flees the hall. Yes, better an abridged reaction than a tiresome ritual of Q&A, says Moses to himself, but Bejerano insists on proper procedure and rises to invite the director to the stage to fulfill his duty at the retrospective held in his honor.

Moses sighs discreetly and heads down the aisle. He spots Ruth, her eyes teary. He hugs her warmly, strokes her hair. “See,” he says with affection, “we gave you a nice powerful death back there. Believe me, that kind of scene makes it worthwhile to transfer the movie to DVD so Israelis too can appreciate what we did with primitive equipment forty years ago.”

She nods and grasps both the director's hands, squeezing hard. Does she feel a new threat, is that why she is so upset about her death scene? As he gently works free of her grip, an old man gets up, skinny and hunched, clad in a black suit and red bow tie. This is Don Gomez, explains Bejerano to Moses, a distinguished member of the faculty who years ago served as dean, a theoretician of cinema whose articles are published in important journals. And because the Israeli film has prompted new thoughts, Don Gomez asks his young colleague for permission to come to the stage and say a few words.

Moses approves the request at once. The straightforward and independent reaction of a theoretician is preferable, in his view, to any other discussion. He gestures grandly to the elderly teacher, who removes his hat and goes onstage while Moses stays with Ruth, holding her hand to calm her, asking that Rodrigo translate.

Translation is not simple. The erudite old man has many thoughts, not all of them germane to
Slumbering Soldiers,
and he takes advantage of the right of first response to deliver a learned lecture to his assembled friends.

Rodrigo tries at first to translate faithfully the complex thoughts of Don Gomez, rapidly expressed in a hoarse voice tinged with pathos. But the limits of his English become quickly apparent, and he gives up. “Leave it be,” says Moses, “listen to him and tell me if his overall position is positive or negative.” “Absolutely positive,” the young Spaniard hastens to assure him. “He was very impressed by your military installation and the system of symbols it generated, and he also appreciates the courage it took to make a film with such an airy plot, free of dramatic effects.” “In that case”—Moses settles into his chair—“I have no further need of translation. For a veteran like me, the main thing is a friendly review and not the reasons that justify it.”

O
NLY AT
5:30 are they liberated from the hall. The scholarly old man lost track of time, and the discussion heated up and ran on forever. Meanwhile, Pilar came in to inform Rodrigo that the plane from Madrid carrying Juan de Viola's mother and brother has been delayed and that the screening of the film based on the Kafka story would be postponed for two hours at least; the guests should rest in the office of the director of the archive.

 

“Why don't you lie down here,” says Moses to his companion, “on the sofa; my head is spinning from our crazy movie, I need to walk it off. Also, tomorrow night we'll be on our way back to Israel, and it's still not clear to me what this institute is and how the archive works, I need to sniff around a bit. Lock the door, or you might be surprised by some young filmmaker eager to confess to his priest.”

Again, he yearns for that Berber girl who has come back to life, and he embraces her gently, runs his lips lightly over her forehead and neck, and says, “Just know you were and still are an extraordinary actress”—and quickly goes to hunt through the halls. He cannot find the men's room and heads outside into a huge parking lot. Winter clouds have darkened the late afternoon, so he doesn't fear for the good name of his native land as he urinates between two cars, casting his gaze skyward. Soon the rain will wash away the little puddle, leaving not a trace of his visit. In addition to the white lines marking the parking spots, he notices, there are blurry lines painted on the asphalt, long and diagonal, yellow and red—traces of bygone drills of infantry soldiers or armored corps or artillery. He will ask de Viola what happened here during the civil war. The Spaniards have indeed become a peace-loving nation; they have blithely converted a military facility to an arts institute. When we filmed
Slumbering Soldiers,
Moses wonders, did we actually believe that our wars would someday be over?

He marches along one of the red stripes. A cold wind pelts his face with drops of rain, but he soldiers on to the middle of the field, stands there at attention, perhaps at the spot where the base commander had surveyed his troops, and imagines he hears the roar of the ocean. But the strong wind chases away his illusions of grandeur and he has to retrace his steps.

He returns to the institute by an entrance that leads to a lower floor, where he finds the postproduction labs he visited yesterday, the big editing room with the latest equipment, and the sound studio, with happy voices inside.
This must be where they dubbed my films,
he thinks. Carefully he opens a door and finds a room with two projectors and recording equipment and two technicians managing them. At a round table sit young people with script pages in their hands, among them two Asians, an older man, and a young woman. The dubbing director, perched in a high chair and orchestrating the activity, greets the visitor and identifies him by name.

“I didn't mean to interrupt,” mumbles the director, pleased to be recognized. “I just wanted to know if this is where my films were dubbed.”

“Here, Mr. Moses, there is no other place. I hope that the voices we transplanted into your characters sound right.”

“Definitely.”

“These are our actors, students at the institute. And the gentleman there is a famous screenwriter from Vietnam, Mr. Ho Chi Minh, and the lady is his interpreter.”

“Ho Chin Lu,” corrects the writer, rising from his chair.

“Of course. For the next month we will be preparing a retrospective of Vietnamese films about love affairs between men from the North and women from the South, and vice versa, from the time of their endless wars.”

“Interesting and also important.”

“Amazing films, difficult and painful. What can you do, wars provide great film material.”

“Damn wars,” snaps Moses.

“Of course. But they must not be forgotten.”

“No doubt,” mutters Moses, and draws closer to the dubbers. “When you dubbed my films,” he says to the group, “was there an Israeli here to advise you?”

“Your screenwriter.”

“In other words—” says Moses, his heart pounding.

“Of course, Shaul Trigano. About a year ago he was here in the studio for quite a while. He explained a lot of things, acted them out, made us laugh. A sharp man. Very original.”

“So Trigano was here?”

“It wasn't you who sent him, sir?”

“No, no . . . the idea was all his.”

“A blessed idea . . . We were very taken by your early films . . . especially the one based on the Kafka story.”

“In Our Synagogue.”

“Did Kafka really write this story about Jews in Israel?”

“About Jews in general.”

He roams the floors and corridors until he finds the room Ruth was supposed to have locked herself into. Its door is open, and lights and voices welcome him. De Viola has brought the guests from Madrid, opened a bottle of red wine in their honor, and all of them, Ruth and Rodrigo included, are laughing, glasses in hand. Moses bows slightly to the mother, Doña Elvira, a beautiful actress, age ninety-four, who has come to grace the retrospective with her presence, joined by her younger son, Manuel, a tall Dominican monk, about forty-five years old, a golden cross dangling on his white robe.