A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

“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.

THE 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.”