The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (34 page)

He folds up the sports section and leads the actress and the director, pilgrim stick in hand, down an alley and then another, to a field of green alfalfa. Reaching what looks very much like a fence, he grabs the border with both hands, shakes it hard, and opens a wide entry.

“Well done,” says Moses, “but please close it in a way that we can open easily on our way back. Better yet, if you could wait for us here, we're only going for a short walk, to retrieve something from the past.”

“Okay, I'll wait for you,” agrees the young man, who seems amused by two older Israelis eager to take a Sabbath-morning stroll on a desolate railroad track near his village. “But to get back into Palestine”—he grins—“you'll have to undergo a security check and pay a fee.”

“We'll pay the fee”—Moses chuckles—“on condition that you not budge from here.”

The young man finds a big rock, sits down, and opens the sports pages. Meanwhile the director and the actress make their way single file along the tracks, first he in the lead, then she, stepping on the gray concrete railroad ties, trying to find the spot where the imaginary train plunged into the imaginary abyss. But it's not so simple to reconstruct a reality that was imaginary to begin with, and the actress trips and the heel of her shoe gets stuck in a gap between the rail and one of the ties. Moses quickly grabs her and sets her aright, pausing a second before kneeling to pry out the shoe and fit it back on her bare foot. Holding her in his arms, in the here and now, he can feel the tenderness of the woman who took part in so many of his films. And even as she smiles at him with gratitude, she wants to be released from his embrace. Perhaps she suspects that it's not her the old director desires, but rather the lithe, dark young woman whose lover had demanded she portray the character of an inscrutable deaf-mute.

“So what are we actually doing here?” Ruth asks.

Moses finds it hard to explain his urge to reconnect with the shooting locations of his early films. Does he just want to get the feel of them, or does he want to repair them?

“Can they be repaired?”

“It's impossible,” admits the director. “But one can try calming the old anger.”

“Not anger, just disappointment.”

“And even if just disappointment,” he insists, “disappointment hurts no less.” This is why he has brought her here, to soften the disappointment.

“To soften it? How?” Her eyes flash mild disdain.

Maybe, as they walk near the village that is again beyond the border, she will understand why
Distant Station
could only have ended with a scene of violent rape. Even a foreign audience in a distant land was sympathetic to the film.

“The sympathy of the audience doesn't compensate for the humiliation of the actor.”

“Hold on. I didn't write the screenplay, I only interpreted it.”

“An extreme interpretation, far beyond what was only hinted in the script.”

“But Trigano was there with us and could have restrained me.”

“He couldn't, because of the agreement that you could change nothing in the script once it was done and that he would not meddle in the directing once it began. His hands were tied.”

“Tied even when I, as you claim, degraded you?”

“Fine, maybe the agreement didn't stop him, maybe that was just his excuse. But understand this: your creative partnership with him was thanks to your normalcy, your sense of proportion, on the assumption that you, as director, would impose credibility and restraint on his wild imagination, that you would calm the disquiet raging inside him, clarify the symbols that raced around in his soul. But then, as we're filming the last scenes of
Distant Station,
he suddenly sees that your flexibility is not so simple. That it has a different mindset, broader margins, than he expected. He understood that the bourgeois values you brought from your Jerusalem were less stable than he imagined and that normalcy could also be violent and cruel. That's why he didn't want to interfere with the rape scene. He liked the idea of going to extremes with you . . . to dare more. With me, or through me . . .”

“With you. Mainly with you.” Her words have moved him. “We all knew how close a bond he had with you.”

“It wasn't just a bond, Moses, it was much more than a bond, much more than the love of a man for a woman. Love wasn't enough for him. It had a purpose beyond itself. To turn me into a symbol, into a character.”

“A character?” he says disingenuously. “In what sense?”

“A character,” she continues confidently, “a character who, because of her own uniqueness and regardless of the part she is playing, is able to force people to think a little differently about the world. And despite what happened in
Distant Station,
I took it upon myself to be a character, not just because of Trigano, but because I saw that you were on his side, supporting him and loyal to him. But when you both sent me out into the street after I handed over the baby, and you expected me to force an old dirty beggar to nurse from me, and you degraded me in front of the girl who was me in the past, I felt that if I didn't stop, the two of you would push me even farther. Because love that tries to go beyond a woman and make her into a character, a symbol, is a love gone wrong.”

They keep walking carefully along railroad ties. Moses listens in silence.

“That's why I tried to stop the momentum of the final scene. I wanted to test
your
reaction.”

“You only tried?”

“Yes, I only tried. But instead of offering a solution—perhaps promising that through the camera work you would inject some compassion into the scene to shield me from the weirdness—you simply switched sides and joined my refusal. You canceled the scene so fast that neither I nor you had a chance to reconsider.”

“I was quick to support you, to protect you.”

“Yes, but the support was so ferocious that it insulted Trigano, wounded him.”

“Because of his pride, his delusions of grandeur. He was sure my ‘normalcy' would defer to him and accept everything he fed you.”

“You were ready to do that scene. That was not the point.”

“Then what was the point?”

“You created in him, and in me as well, an impression that you supported me because you wanted me for yourself, wanted to take me away from him. But you didn't really want me—you certainly didn't love me then.”

Moses kicks a small stone. “That's true.”

“So you should have appeased him, suggested a compromise, calmed my anxiety, most of all. You could have tried harder and found a way to remedy the scene that was scaring me. Why didn't you try to make peace between me and him? You were the director, you were the strong one. You were the native Israeli, you controlled the production. You should never have allowed him to cut off ties with you and with me. But you wanted to exploit the argument to be rid of him once and for all, so you wouldn't have to keep dealing with his crazy ideas.”

In that case, he realizes with a shudder, the picture of
Caritas Romana
by the bed at the Parador had hit a deep nerve after all, though she hadn't said a word.

“Yes,” he confesses, “I did want to break away from him, or at least keep my distance for a while. I was afraid he was leading me down a blind alley.”

T
HEY HEAR DISTANT
buzzing, the sound of a saw or a lathe, but it gets louder, closer, and the walkers on the tracks, who assumed they were protected by the Sabbath from any trains, freight trains included, are surprised as a little yellow railcar barrels toward them from around a bend, shrieking like a bird of prey. Moses grabs Ruth by the arm and pulls her aside. “You can't even rely on the chief rabbi in this country,” he grumbles.

The two exchange a grin as an old man in coveralls, bald and heavyset, brakes the railcar and hollers: “What's going on? How'd you get here? This isn't a hiking trail! Get out of here or I'll call the police forces.” It's hard to pin down his nationality; he says “police forces” as if he's a bi-national with double protection. Moses jests, “Is it not the Sabbath, sir? You want us to inform the religious authorities that Israel Railways rides on Shabbat?” Except the railroad man doesn't get the joke. He climbs down from the railcar and waves his hands. “
Yalla, kishteh,
scat,” he commands in three languages, then gets back in the car, blows the whistle, and heads for the coastal plain.

The young Palestinian, their border guard, is still immersed in the sports section. He sees the two approaching and takes his time getting up and going to the breach in the fence. Moses hands him a hundred-shekel note with a smile and says, “Here's the fee, you can skip the security check, because we're at peace with each other.” The young man fingers the unexpected bill and yanks open the border with two hands, singing, “Peace, peace, there is no peace.” He invites the Israelis for a cup of coffee, included in the entrance fee. “Why not?” The director is enthusiastic. “We have time.”

Yes, Moses wants to prolong the Sabbath excursion. Especially since from the neat, pleasant living room, there is a fine view of the route of the Israeli railroad tracks till they vanish around a mountain bend. He sips the excellent coffee and tells the young man and his wife about the film of long ago.

They are amazed to learn that an Israeli feature film was shot near their home before either of them was born, and they relish the mischief of the cinematographer who crossed the border and stole their village, but they are unsettled by the plot, the act of terrorism that Israelis perpetrate on their own people for no reason, without politics or war.

“This could actually be true?”

“Yes, that's what we thought at the time,” says Moses, “with no political conflict, just out of human loneliness and emptiness.”

The hosts nod in agreement. Yes, they know people like that. In their village too.

“In any case,” says Moses, pointing at Ruth slumped wearily in an armchair, “she is to blame, she's the one who incited the villagers, she bewitched them with her beauty.” And he details the deeds of the deaf-mute girl in the old film.

The hosts are excited. There is a deaf-mute woman in the village today, but she is old now. If the Jews would like to meet her, they can bring her.

“Why not?” says Moses. The chance to burrow into another retrospective tunnel appeals to him. But his companion motions him to stop. She's worn out. It's time to go.

The Palestinian sees them to their car and asks hesitantly if the film was a hit. His wife, who works in a law office in Bethlehem, thought that the village might be entitled to a share of the profits.

Moses laughs. “Are you mad? You're talking about profits from a film made more than forty years ago.”

“Why not?” says the young man. “What's forty years? Our account with you has been open for more than a hundred years, and will surely last a hundred more.”

Ruth gets into the car. Moses waves his hand dismissively and gets in too. But as Moses turns the key, the Palestinian opens the door on the driver's side. The sunlight on his face uncovers a spark of enmity.

“The movie did well with the critics, but at the box office we only had losses,” Moses says, attempting to reassure him. “But tell your wife that if we're opening accounts, we can also sue you for losses you dealt us a hundred years ago.”

M
OSES SUGGESTS THEY
continue on to Jerusalem, but Ruth objects. “Enough,” she says, “for me the retrospective is over, and I urge you to end yours too. In any event, please take me back to Neve Tzedek.” She emphatically pulls a familiar lever, moving her seat to make room for her legs. Then she unpins her hair, leans her head back, shuts her eyes, and turns off.

She is ill, no doubt about it,
he thinks as he glances away from the road at her face, which seems distorted by pain.

Is she asleep or only pretending? He's not sure, but in any case he refrains from speaking and pilots the car smoothly on the open Sabbath roads. Light rain taps the windshield as he navigates the narrow streets of Neve Tzedek, and carefully, so as not to startle his passenger, he stops quietly in front of her place and waits for her to wake up. The redness in her eyes indicates that her sleep was real and deep. She sees her building, straightens her seat, and says with a smile: “You're a good driver.”

He gets out of the car too, though it is clear he is not invited in. It's hard for him to part from her because of the sudden hostility she displayed toward him. So he drags out a few extra minutes and asks about the new portrait of her he saw on her table. Who drew her? How did it come about?

She hesitates, then whispers: “Toledano.”

“Toledano?” Moses is taken aback. “I didn't know he drew.”

“As a hobby. Without telling a soul. Mostly he drew portraits of friends based on photographs. Sometimes he would make miniature drawings of scenes he had filmed.”

“Wonderful.” Moses snorts. “He never so much as hinted to me about it. It's as if the art of cinematography wasn't enough for him, he needed to supplement it with another art.”

“Yes, it came to light only recently.”

“He never told you . . .”

“Hid it from me too . . . from everyone, used to draw in the film lab.”

“How did this portrait suddenly get to you?”

“His son David gave it to me.”

“David? Really? The family stopped boycotting you?”

“The boycott was only his wife. Against me and also you, and basically the rest of us. She blamed me for his accident, but she was also angry with you.”

“Very angry, because I didn't keep you away from him. As if I were able to do such a thing. Tough woman, a wounded lioness, wanted no contact at all. Even at the cemetery, at anniversaries of his death, she demanded I stand on the side, till I got tired of it and stopped going. So how did the anger suddenly come to an end, what happened?”