A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

“You don’t want me to heat up the meat for you?” You are startled by the farmer’s wife standing behind you. “Why eat it cold?”

“No, I like it this way.”

“A few minutes ago two rockets fell in Sderot, but they just sounded the all-clear, no need to worry.”

You are now alone in the arbor, dogs crouching at your feet, mist rising from the earth. Trigano has not returned from putting his son to bed. Maybe he simply lay down and fell asleep beside him. Will a finale of dining alone top off a story about a director who tried his best to appease his screenwriter?

From behind the big house come sounds of screeching wheels and the clanging of cans. The big mule, wearing a sort of dunce cap, pulls the farmer in a little cart, bringing fresh milk for the residents. Raindrops penetrate the sukkah. Someone will need to show you the way home.

You are still as stone. A veteran artist waiting for a sign that will breathe life into a new creation.

SOME TIME PASSES before Trigano finally reappears, looking at you more charitably and apologizing. It was hard getting the boy to sleep. Meeting a stranger was enough to unsettle him. So he had to explain, to sing a song, tell a story. This time none of it calmed him; his father had to lie beside him and pretend he was falling asleep. “It’s late, Moses, let’s part amicably,” he says and puts on his coat and his hat and takes a pipe from his coat pocket. “The way to Tel Aviv is simple, some seventy kilometers, but it’s starting to rain, which doesn’t bother Hamas. Let’s say goodbye.”

You don’t budge.

The abyss…

Yes, the abyss. Trigano fills his pipe and lights it. No, he can’t recall any other instance of a director and a screenwriter still troubled decades later by a scene that got canceled. And yet, an abyss. Even during the dubbing at the archive they all felt that the ending of the film was unclear and seemed pasted on. True enough, a weak and threadbare ending is no rarity in films, or plays, or books. Except that his original script had a proper, powerful ending, which was discarded out of cowardice. It wasn’t to shock the audience that he wrote the closing scene. The thinking behind it was correct and human.

“The gifted former student, a dedicated army officer, who decided out of generosity and with full awareness to give birth to a child for a couple she loved, older people from a world utterly different from her own, Holocaust survivors, suddenly realized that with this noble act she had sentenced herself to be forever bound emotionally to a child whose life she will never really know. And yet, the tragedy of the adoptive parents, and the terror that dominates their memories, will inevitably become hers too and will cast their shadow on her entire future. So she decides to renege on her agreement to give the couple her baby. But out of pain and guilt over injuring those who have waited so eagerly, she wants to prove, mainly to herself, that she is not merely rebellious and independent, but also kind. When she leans over the beggar and pulls out her breast, she is saying, in effect: Even as I go my way as a free woman, after giving up my baby to strangers, I do not turn my back on the world I have disappointed. I will care for you in your old age, I will comfort you, I will give you of myself.

“And the actress and the director, who did not grasp the human content of the scene and saw only childish provocation, also could not understand the depth and the timelessness of its theme, which enriched the arts for generations.”

“You didn’t explain it that way when you fought for the scene… not a word about that.”

“Because I myself didn’t yet know what I was tapping into. Unaware of the historical reference, I still felt the power echoing from the depths compelling me not to give up the scene. I didn’t know but I felt that the ending I invented, with all its ambiguity, was essentially a reconciliation, a potential point of departure for the next film.”

And he stops, falls silent.

“Please, keep talking.”

His look stabs you. He seems to be weighing whether you are worthy of further revelation. He looks at your plate then fills it with scraps from the table, and the dogs run to the trough near the arbor, where he tosses the remains of the meal.

“So?” And in your heart the possibility has already become certainty.

“You know or have maybe heard of the Latin concept of Caritas Romana ?” he asks.

“Of course. Roman Charity.”

“You knew? How did you—”

“Later,” you interrupt in a teacher’s commanding tone. “First tell me what about it moves you so much.”

“In the cathedral museum, I stumbled upon a reproduction of a painting of Roman Charity by an unnamed artist. It seared my heart, and I realized that even as a young man without much education, I had tapped into an ancient story about a daughter who nurses an elderly father in prison. I understood then that the early scripts I wrote for you were not created in a vacuum but issued from something deeper and wider than my own little soul. I invented something that had been invented two thousand years before, in Europe. I, who came to Israel from a small town in Africa. Juan de Viola explained to me—”

“Juan de Viola!” you exclaim. “He hung that picture in our room, over the bed.”

“Over your bed?”

“Yes, over our bed. The hotel borrows reproductions from the museum for their rooms.”

“Wonderful, wise Juan…” gushes Trigano. “I told him about the other ending, the discarded one, and he went and hung it by your bed.”

“He said nothing to me.”

“Was this the first time you came upon the image of Roman Charity?”

“Yes. Despite my bourgeois upbringing, despite the home full of books, despite the history I studied at the university—”

“Studies that gave you no historical depth. Now you can understand the root of my anger. When you canceled that scene, you also trampled my self-confidence… my faith in my intuition, in the spiritual sources of my creativity… It’s no accident that I then began to decline.”

“Decline? Just a few hours ago I sat in that wonderful class of yours. Make no mistake, I now understand well the harm I caused you. Which is why I came to you tonight as a penitent.”

“A penitent,” he sneers, “a shallow word if not accompanied by an act of atonement.”

“Atonement?” You smile. “What kind of atonement?”

“A simple atonement. I ask you, Moses, to reconstruct the lost scene.”

“What? Shoot the film over again?”

“Not a film. The film is over and done. I want a scene of the myth that inspired me without my knowing, a scene of an old man, tied up, nursed by a young woman. I want you to reconstruct Roman Charity for me. A worthy classical theme.”

“But how? One scene?”

“One shot. Just for me.”

“What, get actors?”

“A young woman, whoever she may be. But a woman nursing.”

“Nursing?”

“Yes, drops of milk must be seen on the old man’s lips.”

“You’ve gone too far…”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And the man?”

“The man? The man is the actual penitent.”

“You mean—”

“That’s the point. The old man on his knees is you.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You are the man who suckles. You are the prisoner tied up. In body and character.”

“Me!”

“Yes, who else? This is your atonement. The atonement of the director. You’ll be in the scene, tied up and half naked, kneeling before a young woman who will nurse you. Look on the Internet for Roman Charity and you’ll find dozens of pictures, and you can choose the one that suits you best.”