A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

Given the advantage of being an usher, who sees a film many times, the boy achieved a deep understanding not only of what went on in films, but also of what went wrong, of missed opportunities. He knew how to link what he learned in the morning with what he saw and heard in the evening, and so Moses, to encourage him, would engage him in late-night conversation about the movie just ended.

The protest songs outside grow louder, but the mayor stays on track. Patiently, almost like a therapist, he asks his guest to continue. In recent years, ever since his wife left him, Moses has avoided personal disclosures, but he is won over by the interest in his professional development on the part of a mayor of so famous a city. The hearing aids pick up every word, and Pilar’s translations of questions and answers seem accurate in rhythm and tone. And while she translates, he feasts his eyes on the mayor’s office, on whose walls, amid portraits of the city’s mayors and other dignitaries, hang pictures of hunting scenes, replete with straining dogs and bleeding stags, and young women in states of undress, adding a splash of sensuality to the severe vista of the cathedral outside. Now and again, he exchanges a tender glance with Ruth, who follows the conversation, eagerly anticipating the moment when she will appear in the story.

And there is no doubt that she will.

The late-night discussions with the student involved close analysis of the films — of characters and plot, ideas and emotions, questions about what touched the viewer’s heart and what left him cold and sometimes angry and disappointed, what provoked laughter and what brought a person to tears, what was believable, what seemed arbitrary, what would surely be remembered, and what was eminently forgettable.

This is all about Trigano, de Viola explains to the mayor, who nods as if he actually recognizes the name, and for a moment Moses is alarmed that the name of the screenwriter he broke off relations with so many years ago has come up here, in this strange and distant place, but he quickly reminds himself that Trigano’s name appears in the credits of his early films. Relieved, he continues to speak well of him.

“Yes, that’s his name, and although he was younger than me by almost ten years, I found nothing wrong in the intellectual connection between us in those nighttime conversations, particularly because the boy never tried to exploit this connection to gain privileges in the morning. In class, he continued to meet his obligations, was as well behaved and focused as ever, answered questions concisely and to the point, with none of the excitement he displayed at night. Slowly I sensed that the young man was not content to analyze and understand films made by others but was dreaming of making films of his own. And so I was therefore not surprised when at the end of his last year, he asked me to help him make a short eight-millimeter film about the school, to be shown at the graduation ceremony.”

At first it appeared that Moses’ role in this short film would be limited to oversight of the budget provided by the school. But he soon found himself offering advice, getting involved on the artistic side. In the end, the work was widely praised, so much so that this amateurish film, lasting all of ten minutes, was Trigano’s admission ticket to the film unit of the Israeli army. During the years of his military service, he would come in uniform to visit his teacher, to tell him of his activities and consult about the future. Also in the film unit were a cinematographer and a lighting man who were both, like Trigano, North African immigrants from Israeli development towns, and Trigano tried to interest them in working with him after they were discharged. But his friends were ready to collaborate only if somebody serious supervised his fantasies — in short, they demanded a senior partner who would see to the proper management of the production. Trigano invited his teacher to join his young group. It’ll bore you to repeat yourself year after year, Trigano said. You can have a real connection to young people only by working with them, not from a teacher’s podium. But Moses imposed a condition: If he was a partner, he would not be just a bookkeeper and production manager, he would also participate in the creative process. Trigano would dream up the plot, make up scenes, and write the dialogue, and Moses as director would bring Trigano’s vision to life. Why not? The screenwriter overflowed with ideas, and his friends took care of camera work and lighting, but they needed a leader, a man whose authority people were glad to respect.

Pilar translates, and the mayor and the priest regard the old man fondly — but Moses is suddenly sick of talking about himself.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, to be brief, I took leaves of absence from teaching and joined these young people, whose enthusiasm swept me onto the path that has become the center of my life. During my first leave we were able to complete our earliest project, a short and unusual film that to my surprise was well received, and so we began right away to plan another. And after my confidence as director grew — and as I read the memoirs of famous directors who started making movies without special training — I gradually reduced my teaching hours, then finally quit, with no regrets. And though he had become my close collaborator, my former student made sure to maintain polite boundaries and treat me as if I were still his teacher, perhaps a surrogate of sorts for the father he didn’t have growing up. He decided that he and his friends wouldn’t call me by my first name, only by my family name, and I also addressed them by their family names, as in the classroom, and it was more or less agreed that everyone in the group would call the others by their last names, including the lady who sits here before you, who in those days was the writer’s very close friend.”

“You also called him Moses?” de Viola asks Ruth, who sits next to him with her legs crossed, her colorful woolen scarf brushing the hem of his robe, her eyes twinkling as she tries not to miss a word.

“Yes.” She laughs. “Even now, Moses is like a teacher to me.”

“But how did you come to belong to the group back then?” asks Pilar. “According to your biography, you were still a child.”

“Whoever wrote my bio was generous about my date of birth,” says Ruth, “but by now, believe me, I’m tired of hiding my real age. Besides, my connection with Trigano began when I was still a child. I grew up with only a father — my mother died in childbirth, and my father got help from the neighbors, including Trigano’s family. I am in fact younger than Trigano, and when I was in elementary school, he would create roles for me in little skits that he wrote, and it sometimes seemed that he was inventing these stories just for me. And so when he put together the group, I was naturally a part of it. I wanted so much to be an actress that I dropped out of high school. Now I’m over fifty, and I still don’t have a diploma.” Suddenly, she falls silent.

“What was that first short film about?” the head of the archive asks Moses. “We know nothing of it.”

The director begins to answer, but Ruth beats him to it.

“It was a film about a jealous dog.”

“A dog?”

“A dog.”

“Just a dog?”

“No,” Moses quickly explains, “it’s about a jealous man who disguised himself as a dog to secretly follow his cheating wife.”

“But in the film, there is also a real dog?”

“Yes, of course, the dog who played the husband.”

“A metaphorical dog, as in Buñuel’s Chien Andalou ?”

“A real dog, not metaphorical.”

“The film still exists?”

“No. Film preservation was so bad then, all that’s left is a sticky pile of celluloid.”