A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

They had to reshoot the scene three times to get the right camera angle, the right light, and the precise mood. This was not the first time that Ruth had bared her body to the camera, and she usually did it easily and calmly. But in this scene, sadness and loneliness shrouded the breathtaking nudity. Maybe it was the small, neglected room contrasted with her beauty, or maybe the pensive, disappointed gaze directed at the camera.

In the studio, made to resemble a hotel room, Toledano and the soundman were with him. But because the scene was supposed to take place mostly in silence, Moses decided to remove the soundman and do the sound himself, thus making it easier for Ruth to undress. But Toledano, who had been in love with Ruth since childhood, grew more excited by the moment, as did the director, and thus it happened that the nudity, lasting no more than ten seconds, shimmered with intense eroticism even after Ruth was wrapped in the sheet.

Now the Bedouin woman disappearing in the darkness blends again with the actress of his film, and he himself stands before her naked, for he knows that he wants and can bring relief, and he does.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, when he’s sure she’s awake, he calls to ask how she is.

“You again?” Ruth is surprised to hear the voice of someone who has just spent three nights beside her in the same bed without incident. “And I thought you wanted a little time off.”

“Time off for what?”

“Time off before I get the news that there won’t be a part for me in your next film.”

He is uneasy. “That’s an original way of putting it, but it’s not so; in fact, there might be a part for you after all in my next film. The concept is barely in gestation, but when I think of it I also think of you, not as a fictional character but as a real character.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“In other words, not as an actress but as an assistant director. Because the main roles would be for young people, boys and girls. And who’s got more experience than you in teaching acting to children?”

“Assistant director?”

“Not just an assistant, but a partner. You would decide how it would appear in the credits of the film. That’s a long way off, though. Meanwhile, I’d like to visit you sometime at your studio to watch you direct children, to get a feeling for how far one can go. This has to be a daring film. And as you know, I have used children very little in my films.”

“What’s the story?”

“Too early to say. I told you, Ruth, for now it’s just a seed in my mind, or more correctly in Amsalem’s mind. He invited me to a party at his villa in Beersheba on Saturday, where he let me in on a strange drama taking place in his family.”

“What happened?”

“Slow down, let me go at my own pace. Not on the phone, and not in a hurry. I’d like to visit your studio, see the kids and how you direct them, then we’ll think together.”

“It’s a small studio. Three kids at most in a class. But if you insist”—she sighs—“how can I refuse.”

“You can’t refuse me, and see, I haven’t said a word about blood tests.”

“Wise of you.”

“Why? You took them?”

“I didn’t take them and I won’t. See, you’re at it again.”

“I’ll say no more.”

“Good.”

“Not good, but I’ll say no more. Meanwhile… I have a story for you. An amazing story.”

“The retrospective brought you back to life.”

“Not life, just curiosity. Yesterday, at Amsalem’s, at the edge of the desert, I was thinking about Slumbering Soldiers and had an urge to see the crater where we filmed it. And guess what: Amsalem not only remembered the place, but encouraged me to hop over, because it’s not so far away on today’s roads. So I said to myself, What have you got to lose? It’s a chance to complete the retrospective, when will you next be going south? You remember how during the shoot we would take the shiny tarp off our installation and go in there and cook, sing, play games?”

“It was a fun production.”

“Exactly, that’s why I went back there. On the way, not to get lost, I picked up a Bedouin with one of his wives. It was almost dark by the time we got there — and you won’t believe it, imagination turned into reality: a military camp, reserve soldiers, but no sleeping soldiers, very much awake they were, so awake they didn’t let us go in. Nevertheless, and this is the whole point, beyond the roadblock, in the distance, in the twilight, what do I see? An installation.”

“The installation?”

“The same one.”

“The same one?”

“With a dome on top, like in our film, but bigger, a solid dome, maybe something connected with the nuclear reactor that isn’t far away, something meant as a warning. And the soldiers, like in the film, they may not even know what they’re guarding. I said to myself, How wonderful, our hallucination turned into reality, back then we had a touch of prophecy—”

“We? You?” Her sudden outburst cuts him off. “You know it all came from him… from Shaul… from Trigano.”

“Trigano started it, planted the first seed, but we were partners and believers who made his hallucination come true. A crazy story, no?”

“Maybe for you, not for me. Even when we were children I could sense he had these intuitions, almost like prophecy, that in the end made him arrogant, rigid, even cruel…”

“Exactly.” Moses picks up her words. “Rigid and cruel, and he paid for it.”

“We all paid for it, not just him. But let’s not go there now. Just tell me about our building, the original one, the Nabataean or Turkish one… did you find it?”

“No. It got dark, and they didn’t let us into the camp, and they practically held us for questioning, because they couldn’t understand why we were there in the first place. So I didn’t push it. In any case, when the army takes over a wadi, what’s going to be left of an ancient building?”

“It’s buildings like that, the truly ancient ones, that they take better care of in this country. But enough, Moses, I have to get up and get going.”

THAT SAME MORNING, he drives to the hospital to persuade his daughter, before it’s too late, to divert the bar mitzvah trip from Africa to Europe.

He waits for her, as arranged, in the hospital cafeteria, but Galit phones and asks him to come up to the ultrasound and CT department, because her schedule was switched. “You came all this way, Abba, so let’s spend a little time together and try to understand why Africa annoys you. I warn you, though, you can’t convince us to change our plans, but we can make a date for dinner at our house.”

Despite her precise directions, he gets lost amid wings and departments, finally arriving at a locked door with a red light flashing above it. Given no choice, and disinclined to absorb someone else’s radiation, he waits for his daughter on a bench in the corridor, squeezed among patients waiting for tests and patients waiting for test results. He has never been here before, for it was only two years ago, after working for years in private clinics, that Galit was given a senior post in the ultrasound and CT institute of this major hospital. Though he is proud of her promotion, he remains disappointed that she quit her medical studies midway because of her pregnancy and hasty marriage to a fellow med student, whom she supported while he completed his studies. During the first years of her marriage, her father tried to coax her to finish medical school, even promising regular financial assistance, but to no avail. With all her family responsibilities, she finally gave up on medicine and settled for the technical side of things, and perhaps to justify that concession she quickly had another baby. And though she is successful in her work, and perhaps even loves it, Moses believes that it was her parents’ divorce that prompted her to hook up in her youthful prime with a fairly unimpressive man and thus fix what was broken in her childhood home.