A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

“At least in dreams you are a generous person.”

“But now, telling it to you, I think I understand the dream. I think I brought her to protect you from the yearning I still feel for you. A pure and noble longing for, say, the big, beautiful birthmark on the back of your neck, above the spine. You couldn’t see it, so I had to bring you news of it now and then.”

Her eyes are closed. She sighs. Her face is weary. Wrinkles unfamiliar to him have been added in the years he hasn’t seen her. But when she speaks there’s a soft irony in her voice.

“I see that you still can’t get away from the retrospective.”

“Maybe. Is that a sin?”

“No sin. But you promised you would restrain yourself.”

“I’m not restrained?”

“Not really. The retrospective is still affecting you.”

She speaks without anger, without fear, relaxed and calm, her legs resting on the coffee table. She seems no longer in a hurry to have him leave.

And the sting of separation pierces his heart once more, he rises from the armchair, not heading for the door but approaching her, and he asks, with a smile, “I’m not entitled to a little reward for moving your piano and finding room for the wing and reducing your chaos?” She eyes him with gratitude. “What if for a second I took another look at your beauty mark, the one that you can’t see but that I loved from the moment I discovered it.”

Like an actress obeying her director, she slowly leans her head to expose slightly the nape of her neck, and he cautiously turns down the collar of her sweater, finds the spot, dark and oval and a bit worrisome, and brings his lips close and touches it with the tip of his tongue, and then puts the collar back in place and says firmly, “That’s it, I’m out of here, and don’t think I won’t try to talk Galit out of the barbaric idea to celebrate our grandson’s bar mitzvah among monkeys and lions.”

ON FRIDAY EVENING Amsalem again insists Moses come down to Beersheba. “There’ll be a few people at lunch we can persuade to invest in the new film, but they need to see who and how you are.” “Instead of seeing me,” replies Moses, “tell them to see my latest films.” “No,” objects Amsalem, “these are plain folks with too much money who know nothing about film but understand people, and so they want a sense of the dreamer before they start to fund his fantasies. Besides,” he adds, “my sister-in-law will be there, and she recently got divorced.”

“How old is she?”

“Forty-five. But I’m not thinking about her for you. I’m thinking about a young man with a baby, which I have a feeling would make a great story that hasn’t been seen before.”

“Everything has been seen,” says Moses, and gives him a tentative promise predicated on various conditions: how he feels, the weather, visiting grandchildren. But the next morning, as he lazes in bed with the newspapers, the producer again calls and tries to coax him to come. “A storm is coming,” protests Moses, “let’s postpone the visit till next Saturday?” “Only in Tel Aviv is a storm coming,” says Amsalem. “In the south the skies are blue, and the new highway will zip you to Beersheba in under an hour.”

Although the investments by the Amsalem-Tamir Company have never exceeded 3 or 4 percent of his films’ budgets, the wholesaler’s loyalty and faith inspire the director’s affection. For Amsalem, as opposed to the production companies and public film funds that support his projects, has a fundamental folksiness. The scent of the fruits and vegetables that made him rich stayed with him even after he broke into real estate, and despite his advanced age, he has lately begun wearing his hair in a small braided ponytail. Although Amsalem also disconnected himself from Trigano, Moses does not forget that it was the screenwriter who brought them together, and even if Trigano is gone from his life, the connection he left behind is not forgotten.

He phones his daughter to persuade her to switch Africa for Europe before he increases his bar mitzvah gift. She is taken aback. Though the Africa decision has been made, and they plan to order the tickets next week, she is willing to hear why Africa is anathema to her father. “Come, let’s talk about this in person, Abba, without Itay or Zvi. Not this morning, because people will be here. Tonight we’ll be at a concert. But tomorrow morning, at the hospital, I have a break between ten and eleven, and we can sit undisturbed in the cafeteria, and I’d also like to hear about your retrospective and the prize that Imma told me you got in Spain.”

“A small prize. Negligible.”

“The main thing is they honored you.”

He knows his son-in-law is touchy about his intervention in family matters, so he welcomes the idea of a private meeting at the hospital, especially because she could — he realizes — do an ultrasound of one or another of his internal organs and tell him what’s what.

The storm has not yet hit, but the darkening sky has further dulled the city’s spirit on this quiet Saturday, and he decides to trade the drizzle of Tel Aviv for the dazzle of the desert. And indeed, in one hour flat, following precise directions he receives en route, he finds himself looking for a parking spot amid the many cars circling the vegetable magnate’s villa.

Amsalem did not mislead him. Among the guests, merchants and middlemen and contractors, are some who are interested in his films, but first they want to get to know the director and learn where he’s heading in the next one. Before long he is sitting in the middle of a massive living room, sipping from a glass his host keeps refilling with a superior wine, providing answers to curious questioners who blend artistic naiveté and practical guile. Now and again unruly youngsters of various ages surge to the buffet, help themselves to the rich spread of savories and sweets, then lope back outside to play.

“So what’s the next picture?” asks a guest, whose financial worth Amsalem has already confided to Moses. “What’s cooking on your front burner?”

“The pot is still empty,” Moses says frankly, “and the fire’s still out.” He senses at once that he has made a mistake, for an artist who complains that the muse is snubbing him encourages people to shower him with suggestions and ideas, true stories or ones concocted on the spot. And when they see that Moses’ attention has faltered under the torrent of ideas, they press the host to bring a sheet of paper so they can write their names and phone numbers, should the director want further details. And Amsalem, old and experienced, who knows and loves his friends, is weighing his inclination to meet their request against the need to rein them in, and summons a boy, who sits alone sadly in a corner, rocking a baby carriage, to bring him paper to write down the names of those who do not want to be forgotten.

But the boy ignores the call and stays at his post. Instead, a most charming woman advances, her hair gathered in a colorful scarf. This is Amsalem’s sister-in-law, younger sister of his second wife. Moses had met her and her husband among the many people the producer invited to “his” films. Now he makes room for her beside him, and the holy Sabbath notwithstanding, she diligently writes down, in an oddly childlike hand, the names of those wishing to breathe life, and possibly money, into the dying ember. Can it be that the recent divorcée, pretty and sweet, her perfume pleasantly enticing, is why Amsalem insisted on getting him down here today? For if Amsalem had allowed himself, after the death of his first wife, the mother of his children, to marry a woman twenty years younger than he, why should Moses, ten years younger than Amsalem, not follow his example?