The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (33 page)

“Don't put the cart before the horse.”

I
N THE STUDIO
, the two students have shed their clothes and are dressed in white robes. Elisha continues to brood in his corner, warming his hands on a cup of tea. But the drama coach gets him on his feet and tells him to put on a robe too.

“Why?” he complains. “You said that today I'm here only to watch.”

“Yes, watch, but not as an outside observer. If you're dressed like them, you'll participate with your body and not just by looking and inflame the jealousy in your heart at both brother and lover. This will help build the character you'll be playing tomorrow.”

The boy shrugs, skeptical, but goes to the corner, picks out a big embroidered robe, puts it on over his clothes, and returns to his place.

Ruth stacks pillows by the window and seats the Hasmonean lad on them, gently angling his head to the sky, and she asks the girl in love to remove her shoes, stand barefoot in the corner, and call in a whisper: “Simon, where art thou?”

The scene progresses, and regresses, and Ruth doesn't just instruct but demonstrates the gestures and expresses the feelings, moving from character to character. She knows the script from memory, she is free to act and explain at the same time, and toward the end of the scene, after Simon's heart acknowledges his love and succumbs, she asks the boy and the girl to draw closer, to touch and stroke, to put a head on a shoulder, and encourages them to venture a gentle kiss on the forehead and cheek. The children are embarrassed. “Ruth,” they protest, “the kids will laugh at us; we know them.” But the coach dismisses their concerns. In her youth, her school had put on
My Glorious Brothers,
and when the giggling began, the principal stifled it at once.

The day wanes and grayness descends, auguring rain. But Ruth still does not turn on the light—she takes advantage of the darkness to deepen the feelings of her actors. The visitor in his corner is fascinated by real and imaginary intimacies between the two youngsters and glances at the sorrowful doppelgänger of the young Trigano, who closely studies his two friends to cultivate pain and despair for tomorrow.

She is deliberately tormenting and abusing that boy,
he thinks, a strange, fleeting thought.

When the rehearsal is over he is careful not to applaud, and his mind has already wandered to Amsalem's idea. Can the story of the sudden parenthood of two children be told with psychological realism, or does such deviant subject matter need a different key, and if it does, who will find it?

The young actors in their white robes move about the dark studio like ghosts. Moses feels they are looking to him for a reaction, but he smiles and keeps silent. The next rehearsal is scheduled for tomorrow, and the students get dressed, put on their backpacks, and say goodbye.

The actress collapses on the pillows by the window.

“Nice work,” praises the visitor, “you give me hope.”

“Hope for what?”

“For the new film, about the children who suddenly become parents.”

“Why a movie like that?” she says with eyes closed, her face pale.

“Why not? It's a contemporary drama, in the spirit of the age. A period that's full of sex and violence among kids.”

She opens her eyes, looks at him.

“That's the spirit of the age?”

“That's what they say, that's what I hear.”

Silence. He tries again.

“It'll be like your
Glorious Brothers,
only a different kind of glory, more like infamy.”

“That's what you and Amsalem are plotting?” A shadow of derision in her voice.

“And what do you think?”

She doesn't answer. She is exhausted, can't keep her eyes open, and he knows she'd be happy if he just left, but he wants to stay, go back into her apartment.

“Let's go out and eat. . .”

“No, I'm dead, I'm going to bed, and don't you dare mention the blood tests.”

“Not another word. May I invite myself to the next rehearsal? I want to see pain and despair in Judah Maccabee, that little Trigano. You seem to be picking on him.”

“Could be.”

“Please let me drop in on the next rehearsal?”

“No, Moses, I'm sorry. You could tell the kids were excited by the presence of a film director. You're confusing them with possibilities that kids acting in a school play don't need. If you want to see the final results, you'll have to come with all the parents.”

“Which parents?”

“The parents of these children and their grandparents too. Why not? You have a grandson their age.”

He nods, says nothing. As darkness pervades the studio, he recalls the musty smell of the confessional booth in the cathedral. There, behind the leather lattice, opposite the monk who spoke to him in ancient Hebrew, his heart opened wide. He had forgotten to tell the monk about the time he nearly married her. He didn't, and not because he feared the revenge of Trigano, but because he was afraid of shackling himself to a character who would appear and reappear in his work. But that happened anyway, without his marrying her.

He stands up, absent-mindedly reaches for the pointed walking stick he bought her in Santiago, approaches the woman sprawled by the window, and says: “They were like a dream, the three days in Santiago.”

“How so?” She is surprised. “I remember every minute of the retrospective they put on for you and, actually, for me too.”

“Of course,” he affirms warmly, “it was a retrospective for us both.”

“Why a dream, then?”

“Because our three nights in one bed passed by like a dream.”

“The dream was yours, Moses, and in a dream you have no right to get near me.”

“Why? Because you saw the rape scene in the wadi and your old anger came back?”

“Not anger, disappointment,” she explains. “I understood that with the savage violence against the deaf-mute girl you made Trigano's darkest fantasies come true. So I was disappointed in you, in the young man you were then, a teacher and educator who was prepared to throw away his values and surrender to someone else's story—to hand over a young woman, barely an actress, to an actor who used the camera as an alibi for his lust. And Trigano, who was at your elbow the whole time to protect his script, was pleased with your submissiveness as a director, which encouraged him to go to extremes with me in his screenplays from then on.”

He turns around, puts on his jacket, and goes back to Ruth, who has wrapped herself in a light blanket as if determined to stay on her pillows and not return to her apartment lest Moses try to follow.

“So if you were right, if the retrospective in Spain was not only mine but also yours, let's go down together to the abandoned station and see what became of our railroad tracks.”

“Why?”

“Why not? The old border is gone, and the Arab village Toledano annexed with his camera is now under Israeli control. We can get a new angle on the place we shot the film.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because we have to finish the retrospective before we can start thinking about a new film. And that's why you have to come with me. Down there in the desert, in the darkness, I was alone with the Bedouin and his wife, but this time we'll be there in daylight, we'll walk by the tracks, and even go down in the wadi where I failed you as a human being.”

She perks up, but tugs the blanket tighter.

“Could you find your way around after so many years?”

“Between your memory and mine, we'll manage. Besides, we do have a map.”

“But when? I work every day.”

“We'll go Saturday. First thing in the morning.”

“If it's important to you, I'll come. Though that young girl's pain could come back.”

He grins. “We'll explain to her that we needed that scene for the sake of the story, that in actuality, no harm was done.”

“
You
explain that to her. I'm not so sure that
she
will understand.”

“She will understand. That deaf-mute that Trigano brought to the film was clever.”

A little smile flickers on her face, heartbreakingly pale in the darkness.

“
One more thing, and don't get angry.”

“No . . . not that again.”

“One short sentence. Please.”

“Very short.”

“If you're sure there's nothing wrong with you, don't do another blood test, but why don't we just remove your name from the tests you did and show them to Zvi, my son-in-law, so we can rest assured.”

She says nothing. Closes her eyes again.

“For example,” he says, advancing his case, “I happened to visit Galit at her radiology clinic and she, on her own initiative, took the opportunity to do a virtual mapping of my heart, and now I can relax.”

“And you weren't relaxed before? Your heart is so relaxed it barely works.”

“Relaxed, but for no good reason. Now I have confidence in my heart, I can let it get more emotional. So you too, with one quick peek by an understanding eye, can maintain your serenity.”

“I don't need an understanding eye, and that's final.” She is fuming. “You promised one short sentence and you've already come up with five long ones. Goodbye.”

M
OSES' ROAD MAP
is plainly outdated, giving no indication that Israeli control over the Jordanian village conquered in the Six-Day War has more recently been transferred to the Palestinian Authority. After the two enjoy a scenic drive on a fine Shabbat morning, winding on a repaved road from the Ayalon Valley into the terraced hills south of Jerusalem, in the company of cyclists serenely climbing or coasting below snowy puffs of cloud, they run into an army roadblock at the turnoff to the village. And though the barrier is splintered and essentially symbolic, Moses honors it and waits. A female police officer and male soldier come out yawning and rumpled and ask: “Where to?”

He gives them the name of the village, and they ask what he plans to do there. And though the director would like to tell the security forces about a retrospective that began in Spain and aims to end here, the car behind is honking, and they wave Moses through, warning him that Israelis visiting this village do so at their own risk.

“Should we go on?” Moses wonders after passing the checkpoint. “Is it worth the risk just for one more look?”

“Turn back now?” scolds his companion, her cheeks ruddy in the mountain air. “What's to be afraid of? If the Jerusalem train doesn't stop here anymore, the only way to the station is through the village, and from there we can look down into the wadi. If not now, when? Once you're immersed in the next picture, you'll forget the retrospective. And life is short.”

“For whom?”

“Not just for someone with a problematic blood picture, but also someone who discovers his heart is fine and capable of emotion.”

For a moment happy laughter fills the car.

He gently touches her hair. Since Santiago she is linked in his soul not only with the characters she acted in his early films but also with the bare-breasted young woman nursing her own father. And though he still believes that all shades of her character have been exhausted and that even her remaining fans and followers would be wary of his giving her a new part, he fears that if he doesn't, he will lose her forever.

After a few kilometers, they reach the sign pointing in Arabic and Hebrew to the village, and he deliberates whether to be content with an overview from afar or to snake down a steep, narrow old road into the belly of a village that was turned from foe to friend in the editing room. Positioned not far from a sleepy Jordanian guard post, Toledano's camera captured houses, alleys, courtyards, and animals, and sometimes villagers, who in the editing room were annexed into the Israeli film and became involuntary collaborators in the daring allegory of a nightmare screenplay. Might they run into trouble at the entrance to the village? For if the village is no longer under Israeli occupation, it will surely assert its sovereignty.

He pulls over to the side and goes out in search of a secure lookout. But Ruth, protesting the undignified vacillation, stays in the car.

A portentous cloud glides above the village, filtering sunbeams that cast a golden glow on homes and olive groves. From what he can tell, the village has grown over the years, and though he can locate the wadi and see the tracks, he can't find the little railroad station.

“So what if it disappeared?” says Ruth when Moses again suggests skipping the descent into the village. “The tracks are still there, so is the wadi, and anyway, what are you afraid of? Do the Palestinians care about you? And if they ask what it is you're looking for, they'll be glad to hear that we once included them as partners in an art film.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder. Ever since he watched her work with the young actors, he can't get her out of his mind; he is worried, he wants to be good to her. And so, despite the fear of entering a place where safety cannot be guaranteed, he starts the car and heads slowly down the narrow road, braving half-filled potholes. And what was once simulated appears now in full force—a square and a well, a donkey tethered to the rusty remains of a car, chickens pecking peacefully, and also a gleaming, late-model motorcycle parked beside a top-quality tractor, with a satellite dish on every house. The locals, mainly women, look at the Israelis with no particular interest. As the two walk down to the tracks, escorted by a barking dog, the clouds sink lower and the air thickens.

But here they face a clear border. A high fence separates the village and the tracks. It is strange that in the past what was porous between enemies is now a firm barrier between neighbors.

In any case, what happened to the little train station? They ask a young Palestinian who sits on the steps of his house reading the sports section of the Hebrew paper
Israel Today
and learn that a few years back the villagers used the building stones of the station to expand their homes. “But until the new tracks are laid between Modi'in and Jerusalem, doesn't the train still pass by here?” “Passes but doesn't stop,” explains the young man, “and on Shabbat doesn't even pass.” “So how can we get down to the tracks and walk a bit in the wadi alongside?” “It's not possible and also not permitted,” says the Palestinian, “because it's a border fence, so we have a bit of independence. But for you,” he adds with a sly smile, “since you belong to the other side, I'll show you how you get into Israel without a passport.”