The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (24 page)

“Only the character?” Manuel continues to probe.

“If this is hard for you, we can switch languages . . .”

“No, no,” protests the monk, “you cannot imagine how the Hebrew lifts my spirit. But I ask that you help me out with another example.”

“Take, for instance, the portraits and drawings in the book you were leafing through when I came into the library. You weren't looking only for random individuals from the past out of a desire to learn what it was like then, how it looked; you searched for characters . . . something abstract that would leap out and touch you, something the artist exposed in people who sat for him. Something they embody.”

“You mean their roles?”

“The role is one way the character is embodied. But it is possible to move it from role to role, from situation to situation, from film to film, period to period, family to family. And yet we can discern its unchanging essence, which goes beyond a style of acting, more than the mannerism of an actor—do you understand?”

“I am trying, Mr. Moses, but it's not easy.”

“That's right, it's not easy to understand the dreamlike dimension that makes a certain person into a character. For example, the woman I was married to didn't understand the nature of the connection that I maintained with the character the screenwriter left me with, and although during our entire time together she was confident that I never stopped loving her, she ended our marriage.”

“Even your wife didn't understand.”

“Perhaps she did understand, but she did not want to reconcile herself to what she understood.”

“Because of the beauty of the character?”

“Her beauty? Is she still beautiful?”

“Yes, very beautiful. And you should know that the gaze of a monk, for whom the beauty of a woman is forbidden even in his thoughts, is pure and accurate. Since the separation from your wife you have been alone?”

“I am alone, but not lonely, I am surrounded by people.”

“And the character?”

Moses is pleased that his confessor feels comfortable with the concept. “The character continues to turn up in my films, but sometimes also in the films of others . . . by her wish and mine too. We are free people . . . not dependent on each other. She is her own person as am I, even when we sleep in the same bed.”

“Yes, my brother told me he put you both in one room.”

“And though he surely didn't tell you everything he was told about me, you understand that my confession is innocent of sin, and therefore, Manuel, absolution is unnecessary.”

Manuel's eyes vanish from the grille, and the rustling on the other side indicates that he is rising to his feet. Has Moses' refusal to accept absolution disappointed him so much that he has decided to bring the confession to an end?

Moses glances at his watch. No, time has not stopped. Ruth is doubtless asking herself where he's disappeared to. He reaches for the cord to get free of the booth, but the curtain fails to move. “Can you get me out of here?” he implores, and Manuel slides the curtain and opens the gate.

“Thank you, Manuel, this was an unforgettable experience,” says Moses, his head spinning.

But Manuel has turned gloomy and he neither responds nor smiles, as if he has uncovered a defect in the Israeli's confession. He grasps Moses' arm, and carefully, as if the director were feeble or disabled, helps him climb the spiral stairs that ascend to the nave of the church.

T
HE MASS IS
in progress. Surrounding the high altar are seven priests in elegant vestments conducting the service in various languages before a devoutly silent throng. And because Manuel and Moses enter from behind the altar, they cannot make their way through the worshippers without disturbing the holy rite.

“What do we do?” whispers Moses. “I can't delay much longer, Ruth is surely worried about me.”

“The character?” The word slips silently, ironically, from the lips of the monk, who turns Moses around and leads him through a maze of rooms and dark stairs to a heavy wooden door. He opens the bolt and delivers Moses into the small square where the angel stands, pointing with his sword at the Jew fleeing the cathedral.

“From here you will easily find your way back to the hotel,” says Manuel in a cool, oddly severe tone; he does not invite a farewell handshake but merely presses his palms together, then turns on his heel and disappears behind the heavy door.

I disappointed him with my inflexibility,
thinks Moses.
Was it so hard for me to accept his absolution with an eye to the future?
And he hurries from the little square to the great plaza, which is empty now.

Waiting by the hotel is the car that will take them to the airport. The driver, a directing student at the institute who has volunteered for the job, opens the trunk so the director can confirm that the three suitcases and two pilgrim walking sticks are securely there.

“But we have another few minutes, no?” asks Moses. “Just a few, not many,” says the student.

Tranquillity has returned to the hotel lobby as people have gone off, some to rest, others to pray, and from afar he espies the ethereal figure of Doña Elvira sitting alone in a corner, bathed in the soft light of a bright winter's day. He rushes to her but finds her sound asleep. A shriveled, motionless old lady, breathing so minimally it seems that air flows through her with no effort of her own. He checks to see whether Ruth's bag and coat are beside her, but doesn't find them. He goes downstairs to the rest rooms. After urinating and rinsing his face with cold water, he goes to the ladies' room, opens the door a wee crack, whistles the first notes of a tune, their longtime signal, to indicate his presence, and waits for the response. But no whistling from within completes the melody. He stays in the doorway, and, not to be suspected of sinister intent, he whispers her name and whistles the tune to the end. When one of the booths opens to the sound of rushing waters, and a big strong cleaning woman emerges brandishing a green brush, he withdraws at once.

We have some time, the airport is not far away,
he reassures himself, and he returns to Doña Elvira, who has not changed position but who now has her eyes open. She smiles and invites him to sit by her side. He is careful not to create the illusion that he has time for a real conversation, so he remains standing as he tells her about the confession taken by her son in the bishop's private booth.

The mother is not surprised by her son's misdeed.

“You made a mistake, Mr. Moses, by agreeing to confess to a monk who is not authorized to receive confession, and if Manuel also granted you absolution, you should know that it counts for nothing.”

“I didn't ask for absolution,” he says with a smile, “and I don't need it.”

But Doña Elvira continues her complaint. “Lately he has been playing around with the principles of his monastic oath and looking for needless provocations. The Dominicans will end up tossing him out of the order, and he'll come back and live with me and be even more dependent on his mother.”

Moses is touched by the candid and endearing complaint. “But my confession to Manuel is not a provocation, for I, as you recall, am not a Christian or even a believer, just a person.”

“Not a Christian?” For a moment she seems confused, but her memory quickly recovers and locates the proper identity of the Israeli director. Yet she does not give up entirely. “Not a Christian, but why not a believer?”

“Because that's how God made me,” declares Moses with a triumphant look and a shrug of helplessness, “and I have neither the power nor the authority to change His will.”

She laughs. “Then come sit with me,” she says. “But first get me a blanket.”

“I'll sit for just a minute,” he says and covers her shoulders with the blanket that lies folded beside her. “We should already have left for the airport, but Ruth has disappeared.”

Doña Elvira shrugs.

“She didn't come back with you?”

It turns out Ruth went on her own in the Old Town, to look for more presents.

“And you came back on your own? When was that?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

“But she knows that we are supposed to leave at three for the airport.”

“And what time is it now?”

“One minute to three.”

“If she knows, why should you worry?” says Doña Elvira serenely. “In this city she is safe.”

“Why should I worry?” he challenges the old lady, as if he had entrusted her with a little girl, and he rushes to the front desk to see if there is a message for him.

But no message has been received.

He leaves the hotel and, skipping down the few steps, goes out into the great plaza, then hurries across to the first alley of the Old Town and stops. What now? Where to look?

She does have her passport and plane ticket with her, and she knows the time of the flight, and he has a fleeting suspicion that she is deliberately late, that she wants to part from him here at long last, this place where Trigano's spirit has come and gone. As though the confession he has just made has risen from the depths of the cathedral and drifted to her in the Old Town, and she knows that there will be no role for her anymore in his work.

He goes back to the hotel. “What's going on?” the student asks. “We're late, and there's traffic on the road to the airport.” Moses leans on the car. “We'll wait a little longer. My actress seems to have a hard time saying goodbye to this wonderful place.”

“If she doesn't get back,” says the student, “we have to remember to take her suitcase out of the trunk.”

“You're right.” He grins at the future director and points to her suitcase, feeling vaguely vengeful. “Take it out now, and one of the walking sticks, and put them over there, and before we leave we'll ask the porter to take them back into the hotel.” Suddenly he adds, “If you want to be a movie director, you ought to practice trips to the airport, because in every film today there's at least ten minutes of driving to or from an airport.”

The student laughs.

It's three thirty.
No,
he tells himself,
this is no mistake or forgetfulness, but a deliberate act.
She knows how anxious he is about time, knows about his punctuality, his sense of responsibility. However, the two of them are independent souls. Even when they are in bed together, they are like two actors supervised by a director and cinematographer and sound and lighting people.

“That's it, we should go,” he says to the student as he finally accepts her absence. “Let me just leave her a message at the hotel.”

When he returns to the car he can see in the distance, in the waning afternoon light, the missing woman strolling through the great square.

“I thought there would be another cathedral farther down, so I kept going,” she says.

He gazes into her eyes.

Many times he told Toledano, and subsequent cinematographers he worked with, to point the lens straight into her eyes, to reveal, from within her yellow-green irises, the inner world of the character.

six

T
HE TAXI DRIVER
seemed to recognize Moses' companion, and the director gave him her address only, as if it were his as well. But when they reached her building in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood, Moses said to the driver: “Hang on to my suitcase and walking stick until I get back. I have to help the lady, no elevator.”

“You need a hand?”

“No, thanks, I can manage.”

They climb the stairs slowly, turning on the timed stairwell light three times. The director lugs the suitcase up the stairs, slides it along the landings, and when they get to the fourth floor, he doesn't leave Ruth until her door is opened and the apartment light switched on and he is sure that the world left behind three days ago has remained intact.

“Should I help you turn on the main valve?” he asks at the top of the stairs as they enter her apartment.

“No need,” she says, “I was too lazy to turn it off.”

“You want to get flooded again?”

“What can I do, it's so hard to reach.”

Since the founding of the neighborhood at the end of the nineteenth century, the apartment has been renovated many times, but its main valve is still buried deep in a kitchen cabinet, requiring getting down on one's knees and crawling to reach it.

“That's enough.” She hurries him off with a slight laugh. “The driver will think you ran away and left him with a stick and an empty suitcase.”

The timer in the stairwell has gone out again, leaving only backlighting from the apartment. On the flights from Santiago to Barcelona and then to Israel she slept peacefully. Before landing she added color to her cheeks with new cosmetics purchased between flights, so her face is radiant. And the passion that was blocked for the three days quivers inside the man who stands before her.

“One last thing . . . one more . . .”

“No.” She presses a finger to his lips. “No need for another test. Believe me, I'm healthy. And if I die, it won't be your fault.”

He puts his hand on her forehead to feel her temperature, then his lips, to double-check, and holds her close. She smiles and kisses his eyes and forehead. They stand this way for a moment, embracing in the stairwell. Once he was taller than she was, but he has shrunk with the years and their height is now the same. Finally she enters the apartment and closes the door after her, but he lingers a bit by the adjacent apartment, its door decorated with colorful stickers. This is the studio where she gives acting classes to children.
Despite everything,
he comforts himself,
there's always something pure and lovely between us. We've accomplished something rare.

The driver's head rests on the steering wheel in sleep so deep that Moses needs to knocks on the windshield to wake him, gently, so as not to scare him. The driver rubs his eyes vigorously, as if to tear away not just cobwebs of sleep but the remnants of a dream, and he gapes at Moses as if he were a new night rider with no baggage who happened into his cab.