A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

But when he wakes up in the morning, her singing in the shower is louder than the roar of the water, and her hungry voice propels him from under the covers, in words not unlike his own: “Let’s get down there fast, before other people eat it all.”

As he emerges from the bathroom, she is dressed and made up, looking at the reproduction that hangs on the wall. But there is still no sign that the scene that repulsed her so in her youth and caused her to rebel against her lover triggers any memory. Moses, however, resolves not to give up. If not today, then tomorrow, he says to himself. I will not let her leave Santiago without reconnecting her to the repulsion that inflicted years of obligation and worry on me.

“Something wrong?” She is troubled by his look, but he waves her off, echoing her warning: “Let’s hurry down, before others leave us hungry.”

A new escort has been assigned for the second day of the retrospective. He waits now at the entrance to the dining room, the young teacher, handsome and refined, who at yesterday’s lunch complained about the absence of abstraction and symbolism in the later films of the Israeli. His name is Rodrigo Bejerano, and although his English is not as lush or fluent as Pilar’s, his thoughts are more complex and interesting. Moses invites him to breakfast.

Bejerano teaches the history of Spanish cinema at the film institute, but his field crosses borders; he is also an expert on French and Italian films of the postwar period. And he admits to being surprised by the three Israeli films screened yesterday.

“Why?”

The Spaniard tries hard to find the right words. “The determinism of the absurdist plot,” he says finally. “I couldn’t believe that in the end, Mr. Moses, you would actually plunge the train into the abyss.”

“It was not I,” says the disingenuous director, “it was the village people.”

“Still…”

“So what could we do? Be content with just a threat?”

“Yes, why not? There is great strength in restraint, in a threat that merely hovers, an irrational threat that one can imagine but that does not spill blood quickly and sow destruction easily… After all, in that period, not long after World War Two, you were not alone in this genre. Not only in Europe, but even in the Far East and Middle East, there blew an absurdist and surrealist wind. Take for example Egypt, your close neighbor. A few months ago we screened some old Egyptian films, underground films, surrealistic, but their grotesque and absurd elements were gentle, much less violent than yours.”

“The Nile relaxes them,” suggests Moses. “The Egyptians are always certain of their water sources; their surrealism as a result is less vulgar.”

The Spaniard’s eyes open wide, then he smiles, as if he’s heard a joke, but when the Israeli’s expression remains serious, he tries to digest the answer, and a moment later he asks Moses if he really thinks the absurdist genre reflects national character or geography.

“No doubt about it,” says Moses, putting down his knife and fork to avert the temptation to talk with his mouth full. “Don’t forget, we belong to an ancient people; for us, absurdity and surrealism are second nature, and so, when our art blends reality with a surrealistic spirit, or just bends it in an absurd direction, it needs a shot of violence, an overdose of imagination, because only then can art be distinguished from the absurd reality. You want only a free-floating threat? Our daily lives are filled with threats, which is why we cannot limit ourselves in a film to the threat to a speeding train — we have to actually throw it off the cliff.”

The young teacher closes his eyes to ponder the answer, his handsome face burnished by the glow of the copper pots and pans hanging on the wall. And then — after Moses picks up knife and fork — Bejerano wears a mischievous look as he challenges the director with a new hypothesis.

“If so, is it also possible to interpret the naturalistic detail in your recent films as a sort of inverted surrealism, a surrealism of calm reality?”

Moses chuckles with satisfaction.

“Let’s assume… maybe… why not? That interpretation is yours and remains your property. I never get involved in interpretation of my films and I am willing to allow any interpretation, provided it’s not an attack in disguise.”

Ruth is silent, dreamlike, not following the conversation. She is no longer eating what she piled on her plate in the first ravenous minute and has pushed it half full to the center of the table. Now she seizes her tea with both hands, presses the warm cup to her cheek, its pallor only thinly veiled by makeup.

In her absent-mindedness, can she still appreciate the delicate beauty of the young man sitting opposite her, or does this sort of thing no longer interest her? Over the years of their collaboration, Moses learned to gauge every shift in her mood. Even when she was not in front of the camera, or in his field of vision, he felt he knew what was on her mind. And now, in the dining room, despite the lusty singing in her morning shower, he can sense a depression setting in. Is the picture of Roman Charity slipping into her consciousness, an old memory giving rise to new melancholy?

“And today?” he asks Rodrigo. “Which films are being shown today?” The young man, unlike Pilar, does not need to pull a list from his pocket but quotes from memory the Spanish titles of the two films designated for today, quickly improvising their English titles.

Moses also asks about the film to be screened the next day, but Bejerano doesn’t know; de Viola had given him only the list for today. In any case, the final decision is based on the experience of the day before — the reactions of students and teachers, the nature of the discussions, and the level of interest displayed by the wider audience. For the institute is not just an art-film house but a center of learning, and a retrospective here is not only part of the students’ curriculum but also — please forgive the presumptuousness — an opportunity for the artists themselves to reconnect with their past and understand it better.

A waitress in a purple apron arrives and asks Moses to go to the reception desk after breakfast for a brief word. He assumes it has to do with the picture hanging by his bed, and since he would rather receive the information with Ruth not present, he doesn’t wait till the end of the meal, but agrees to go at once, asking Ruth to guard his near-empty plate.

His assumption is correct. The quick response of the hotel staff to an unusual request by a guest apparently stems from its tradition of caring for weary pilgrims. The clerk on duty, after seeing the picture for himself, located in a nearby town his former art history teacher, and to the best of his ability described on the telephone its content and style. On the strength of his report, the teacher offered a strange story of the picture’s background and even suggested the names of several possible German or Italian painters but said she could determine the identity of the artist only after actually seeing the painting. There are two options: invite the expert to the hotel, or send her the picture and hang another, less troubling one in its place. Moses immediately rejects the second possibility, and reminds the man that the picture does not bother him at all, quite the contrary; it connects with an important private memory…

“A private memory?” The hotel clerk is somewhat taken aback by the leap into the modern era.

“I mean the memory of a film I once made.”

In the end it is decided to bring in the art teacher, who can probably arrive within three hours.

On returning to the dining hall, he finds that Ruth has vanished. “She said,” the Spaniard explains, “that she forgot to take her medicine, and also that she would not be visiting the museum, but not to worry.”