The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (37 page)

In the doorway waits the mistress of the house, a farmwoman around forty, built as solidly as her husband. The permanent look of wonder in her eyes and her slow movements suggest that she herself may have been cared for here and over the years worked her way up to caregiver. Your admiration for this place grows stronger by the minute and you greet her with a slight bow, introducing yourself by name and profession, apologizing for your unexpected visit.

As you cross the threshold you realize that this farmhouse is essentially a live-in clinic. The living room is now a dining hall, and on the walls, like pictures at an exhibition, flicker small screens with TV programs for youngsters and the not-so-young. Some of the residents gaze at you with longing, others huddle as if a cold wind has sharply blown in. Puppies trot from inner rooms and gather in eerie silence, as if their vocal cords have been plucked out.

“Uriel is sleeping,” the woman says, repeating her husband's words. “He waited for you but caved in. Should we wake him for you?”

“No, no need,” says Trigano, hugging her, “I'll be here till morning. Where should we sit? In the kitchen?”

“You said you were bringing a guest, so we set you a table in the arbor, and if it gets cold, we can light a stove in there.”

“The arbor is wonderful, and we'll see about the fire.”

“How do you control all these dogs?” you inquire of the farmer.

“They control us.”

“How many do you have?”

“We stopped counting. Don't worry, they're not all ours. Dogs from the area invite themselves over to feast on our leftovers. This little bastard,”—he snatches a little white wiry-haired dog and waves it in the air—“is a regular guest who comes every night from Kibbutz Re'im for his supper.” He squeezes the dog lovingly before tossing it back to the pack.

Trigano is at the table, tearing hunks from a big loaf of bread. The farmer hauls out an electric light with a long extension cord and hangs it in the Italian honeysuckle that luxuriates in the arbor.

“Do you remember our first short film?” you ask Trigano.

“About the husband who masquerades as a dog.”

“Is there a print of it anywhere?”

“A few years ago I looked for it.”

“For the Spanish archive?”

“No, long before I knew such an archive existed, I wanted to show it to my students, to demonstrate how best to direct animals. You were not half bad with dogs, navigating intelligently between symbol and reality, and you succeeded, the devil knows how, in getting that dog to express the jealousy and despair of the cuckolded husband. But perhaps this came naturally to you,” he continues with a grin, “because during the shoot you would boast that in your previous life you had been a dog.”

“Me, a dog?” You turn red and laugh.

“That's what you said, in your previous incarnation. Or maybe that you would be a dog in your next incarnation. I don't remember exactly, but the fact is those incarnations helped you develop an intimacy with that dog, who was quite unusual.”

“A street dog, we got him from the animal shelter. But you gave him a name in the script?”

“Nimrod.”

“Nimrod, right.” You laugh again. “A smart dog but a bit disturbed.”

“After the filming you latched on to him, kind of adopted him, until you got tired of him and he ran away from you.”

“He didn't run away, he was run over.”

“Ah, run over, you didn't tell us that.” Trigano tries to catch you out. “Maybe you were ashamed to admit that you abandoned a loyal actor.”

“First of all,” you calmly reply, “he was not privately owned but a dog belonging to the production, and second, I didn't latch on to him, he latched on to me. It's amazing though that you remember what I told you more than forty years ago.”

“Yes, Moses, you'd be amazed, almost every word of yours.”

From the tone of the answer it appears that tonight, the weight of your every word will not apply in your favor but be turned against you. Therefore, you keep quiet and stare at a pair of ducks that waddle into the arbor and are applauded by the vigorous tail-wagging of dogs awaiting the remains of the meal. Vegetables fresh and cooked, spreads and dips in many colors, fried fish, and mysterious aromatic meat.

Your own appetite has faded, despite your self-imposed fast since noon to ensure full participation in the meal. The fork falters in your hand, its small morsel dropping back into the plate. The lighting set up by the farmer exaggerates the shadows, with the moon now out of view. And you don't know whether the man who eats silently opposite you is expecting you to say something or waiting for you to go away.

How to begin?

“You know that at my retrospective in Santiago they screened
Slumbering Soldiers
? They changed the name of the film and called it
The Installation
.”

“Yes, over there they typically change the names of films.”

“At first I thought it was a meaningless title, but—”

“It's not meaningless.”

“That's right. It's a good title. I understood that only after I got back to Israel and had an odd urge to go check out the places where we shot those early films. I even went to the desert, to the crater.”

His dinner knife halts in midair. “To that same wadi?”

“It was hard to find. The landscape had changed. New roads were carved out, and at first I thought the cliffs were different. But I didn't give up, and I saw from a distance the location where we squatted for three weeks.”

“Why only from a distance?”

“Soldiers, guards, they didn't let me get close. Now, would you believe, there's a similar installation there, sealed off, big and very real. As if our wild imagination had created a reality.”

“
My
imagination.”

“Yours, that's right, but also the cinematographer's, and the set designer's, and the lighting designer's, and even the director's . . . Go check it out for yourself.”

“There's nothing to check. It's not my first metaphor to have turned into reality. What was the point of the metaphor? That a state that turns into a military installation instead of being a living, breathing homeland doesn't deserve soldiers who want to protect it. In the end they will disrespect it and fall asleep.”

“Yes, I understood that then.”

“Allow me to question that. True enough you were captivated by my fantasy, but you didn't fathom the deeper meaning that drove it. Not only in that film, but in others as well. I assisted with the dubbing in Spain, so the films would stay faithful to the proper pitch of dialogue, and I realized how many hidden symbols in my screenplays you, the director, were unaware of, even though they proved to be accurate predictions.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” he insists, “and not because of narrow-mindedness but because of the narrowness of your vision, for just like today, you were incapable of deviating from your social background, transcending your safe and steady environment to connect with the outlook of someone like me, who came from the margins of society.”

“Nonsense, Trigano. I was the one who took care of your story, the continuity of the plot, the credibility of the characters, the proper flow of cause and effect. How can you say I didn't get the hidden meaning of a work in which every scene was my doing?”

“Because you couldn't identify with a rebellion that sought to undermine fundamental values you grew up on and held holy. In the Spanish archive I took another look at your mother. Behind the weak and lonely old woman she was supposed to be in our film, one can sense a tough and self-confident personality, a high-ranking administrator in the Treasury Department.”

“State comptroller's office.”

“Better still. But already then, during production, I could detect the rigid value system this Jerusalem lady had imposed on you. Even after you switched from being a son to being a director, you didn't shake free of your loyalty and submissiveness and were careful to protect her honor—”

“Not so,” you interrupt, “you are wrong—out of pure hatred for me. At the archive, where I didn't understand a word of dialogue, I noticed other things, important things, beyond words, and contrary to what you think, I was brought to tears to discover how far I had gone to belittle my mother, all because of the script, and how generous she was in humiliating herself.”

“Really,” he says sarcastically, “to tears? You are actually capable of tears?”

“Only if they're real.”

“The moment has come, Moses”—he leans in close to your face—“for you to understand that your reality, then and now, is shielded and pampered. What you consider humiliation is a pale shadow of humiliation. What you didn't understand as a young teacher you certainly won't understand now, at the end of your career. But it's not the past that makes you chase me here.”

“Not only.”

“Anyway, why aren't you touching your food? Go on, start eating, or there won't be any food left. And if you think the food here isn't clean because of all the animals running around, I promise you not a single dog is allowed in the kitchen.”

“It's not the food, Trigano, it's you . . .”

“Me?” He laughs. “You still get upset by what I say or don't say? At your age and position in life the time has come to be indifferent to the person who gave up on you long ago.”

“What does it have to do with my age?”

“Because on the road, when the missiles landed and I shoved your head into the ground, I saw something in your ear. What was it? Cotton?”

“A hearing aid. I have another one in the ear you didn't look at.”

“In that case, let me give you some advice. If people like me annoy you, pull out the gadgets. Believe me, I'd be happy if I had access to such simple disconnection.”

You put down the knife and fork. Fold the napkin and sit up straight. For a second he seems unnerved.

“Thanks for the advice, Trigano, good of you to dispense it at no cost. I'll give it serious thought. Meanwhile, point me to the toilet.”

A
HARD FEELING
. The hope over renewed contact is subsiding. Trigano was not an easy person when young, and over the years he has grown more complex and bitter. Is he taunting you so you'll get up and leave, or does he want to open an old account, want you to stay? It's past eleven, and you find yourself crossing the main room, now empty. The screens on the walls display a newscaster from Israel Television who oddly resembles an American president. In a maze of corridors and rooms you find three bathrooms, all in use, the residents now being readied for bedtime.

“If you really need to, you can come in,” offers a female caregiver who is bathing a grown youth in a tub. “I'll step out, and the boy won't mind.” You smile your thanks but retreat; it still matters to whom you expose yourself. But as urgency mounts, you hurry outdoors, toward the fields. In a patch purplish in the night, past a vegetable garden planted with large cabbages, between tall, tousled bushes not recently pruned, a big-boned horse stands still, regarding you with the sad look of a philosopher as you unburden yourself before him with tremendous relief.

When you return to the arbor table, you find a reddish soup that arrived in your absence and Trigano slurping his with gusto.

“You found what you needed?”

“Everything was occupied, so I went out to the field.”

“Well done. Best that a man hang loose under the starry skies.”

“And next to a quiet horse.”

“A mule, not a horse,” Trigano corrects, “his name is Sancho Panza, and he pulls the children around the moshav in a cart.”

“I see that you're also a good friend of the animals.”

“I try.”

“How long has your Uriel been here?”

“Almost four years.”

“And your wife doesn't visit?”

“She comes once in a while, but for her, the visit is harder.”

“Who is your wife?”

“A woman.”

“I hope she's not a secret.”

“Every woman is a secret, my wife as well. Years ago she was a student in a class of mine. Toledano met her before he died. From the time Uriel was born, she was totally devoted to him—he became the focus of her life at the expense of his brother and sister. Our whole family became disabled. But since we moved him here, she was liberated from her obligation or her guilt and she found herself another mission.”

“Is she also involved in film?”

“No, God forbid, she has no connection with art. She is a healthy soul, with a stable mind.”

“And what's her new mission?”

“Tell me, Moses,” he snarls, “does my wife really interest you, or are you sticking to small talk because you're afraid to get to the point?”

He's right. Going in circles and trying to soften his hostility by showing interest in his life doesn't merely fail to draw him closer but apparently alienates him further.

“I came to talk about Ruth.”

“Why not eat something first? You said you came here hungry.”

“I want to talk about Ruth first.”

His face darkens; he looks to the side.

“I want you, Trigano, to help me save her.”

“I don't believe you came down just for her.”

“For her and maybe a new film.”

“Look, Moses”—he sounds serious now—“you went to all this trouble for nothing. I warned you that there was no point in our meeting. But you're stubborn, so I'm telling you again flat out, I can't give you anything because I don't want to give you anything.”

“Don't give, just listen. I want to tell you about Ruth.”

“I put her out of my mind a long time ago.”

“Be that as it may, she was your childhood sweetheart and for years your lover and partner. Look, my wife and I also split up years ago, but I never refuse to listen to her and I care about her.”