A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

In their room he says nothing to the cameraman, who has undressed and curled up on his rug. They exchange looks. Can this young man empathize with his revulsion, or does he think the old man is fooling himself?

“How many pictures did you take?” Moses asks finally. “Two for sure,” answers Toledano, “but I may have grabbed a third one.” “Did you use your father’s old camera, or the new digital one?” “The old camera.” “Please take out the film now, so I can destroy it immediately,” says Moses sharply. “Why destroy it?” says the photographer. “A pity to waste high-grade film we’ve barely used. When I develop it in Israel, I promise to destroy the pictures immediately.”

“No,” insists the director, “don’t develop any picture. Take the film out now, please, and give it to me.”

“You don’t trust me? You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you and trust you, but we are all human and can forget or be tempted. I’m not a totally anonymous person, and I have to protect my good name.”

The young man jumps from his bed in his underwear, takes the camera, rips out the film, and gives it to Moses, who holds it up to the light to wipe out anything captured on it.

Then he undresses, goes to bed, gets under the blanket, turns out the light, and says to the young man, “Thank you for your restraint and your patience. Tomorrow we’ll try to catch the first flight to Israel.” “But why?” wonders the voice in the dark corner. “Why give up? If you made an agreement with Shaul Trigano, don’t quit after two tries — you have money enough for a third. Listen, this may sound strange, but tonight, in the cellar, I had a thought that my father of blessed memory would be pleased if he knew you were trying to re-create the scene.”

“It’s not the same scene,” says Moses.

“But it’s still the true source, even if none of you knew it.”

Moses says nothing. Turns his head to the wall and closes his eyes. The delicate breasts of the drugged woman hover before his eyes. Does the money he advanced her atone for the insult, or does he owe her an apology too?

Only after he swallows the sleeping pill designated for emergencies does he manage to banish his worries and fears to the outskirts of a soul striving for unconsciousness. And since the pill is joined to extreme fatigue produced by the night’s adventures, not even the noonday sun pouring through the uncurtained window can wake him, nor is he affected by the clatter of the kitchen or the slamming of the front door. Only the gentle hand of the worried Doña Elvira lures the castaway consciousness to climb back to its owner and open his eyes.

Doña Elvira makes no apologies for the liberty she has taken, nor does she retreat from his bed, but instead brings a chair and sits beside him. A woman of ninety-four, an actress in both silent and talking films, wearing dark glasses to protect her eyes, begins to speak intimately to the foreigner aged seventy, as if he were her son.

“I know what happened to you last night. Not only did Manuel tell me; you will be surprised to hear that the young man you brought with you also tried to explain to me what happened. I think, Mr. Moses, that if you were frightened, it wasn’t because of that poor girl. Manuel, who made sure you paid her in advance, foretold the future with his intuition and wanted her to feel she had done her job. For you know there is nothing more infuriating for an actor than when he or she is stopped in the middle and told, Get out of character and get back into yourself.”

“Very true,” says the director.

“But you were afraid not of the woman,” continues Doña Elvira, “for how much could she hurt you, at your age? You, sir, permit me to interpret you, are frightened each time by the subject, by Roman Charity. The fear is understandable, because on second look this strange story — even though so many important artists drew inspiration from it and honored it for hundreds of years — this story remains perverse. Your screenwriter has no right to demand it of you. And yet, despite everything, it pains me that you will go back to your country empty-handed, that all of us here will give up on the picture.”

“All of us?” he asks, startled, his white head resting on the pillow. “You care?”

“Of course I care. And it pains me that Manuel, whose achievements as an itinerant monk are so meager, will feel that he failed you too. Also the young man, who has gone to buy film to replace the roll you exposed yesterday, will feel disappointed, though he is just a technical person.”

“A cinematographer is not just a technical person. In my profession I came to realize, time and time again, that everything depends on the cameraman.”

“Perhaps not everything,” Doña Elvira corrects him, “but a great deal.”

Silence falls. Not since his childhood has a woman more than twenty years his senior sat by his side as he lay in bed with his head on the pillow. What does this old lady want from me? Maybe, at my age, instead of a young girl nursing her father, an elderly mother should offer me her withered breast?

Moses smiles at her contentedly. “Yes, Doña Elvira, I hear you.”

“I think we must continue, not despair. Manuel wants to succeed, the cameraman wants to take pictures, your screenwriter wants to make peace. And it is also not good that the nice lady, your companion, should stay ill and without a role.”

“I see you’re on top of things. And if everybody wants this so badly, what choice do I have?”

“The scene, the picture, must be revived and immortalized, and I know exactly where this can be done without frightening you. My son Manuel, because of his obsession, is always looking for people in distress — foreigners, the sick, the unemployed — but a woman in distress, expecting kindness from you, cannot give you any Roman Charity. I prefer simple, happy people who combine the authentic with the classical, naturally and without fear.”

“You are persuasive, but I don’t really understand.”

“Give me a little time to explain it to you in actions, not words. Don’t hurry to leave Spain. Let me surprise you with something worthy of your talent, but as a very old woman, I can’t surprise you with what will be, only with what was.”

He tries to rise from the pillow, but his head feels like a block of lead.

“Good.” He surrenders. “I am in your hands, but only till tomorrow.”

THOUGH HUNGER AND thirst wake him as a rule, he is neither hungry nor thirsty now, and he sleeps soundly. At five in the afternoon Manuel shakes him firmly: “Come, Mr. Moses, we’re going, and this time the journey is longer.”

He responds to the call, rises, washes his face, puts on his clothes, and still feels no hunger. “Let’s eat and drink on the road, no point in wasting time,” he says.

Doña Elvira has called for her favorite cab — a boxy black one, London-style, easy for humans whose limbs have gone brittle to climb in and out of, and the seating is capacious, so passengers sitting face to face are compelled to be convivial, to exchange witticisms.

Manuel wears his monk’s robe with all its accessories, and Doña Elvira is wrapped in a robe of green velvet she may have worn in one of her past roles as a femme fatale. The taxi sails away with the four of them, navigating the streets of Madrid and escaping the city by side roads — shortcuts that are sometimes unpaved — bringing them at nightfall to a rural area where buildings are few and far between, planted on large plots of land that in the past were probably flourishing estates and that today look desolate and abandoned. The buildings are big and dark, with occasional glimmers of light that might be electric or oil — the electrical poles are now fewer in number — and the narrowing and winding roads don’t cross any railroad track or highway with a gas station or cafeteria to stop at. Now and then, it’s possible on this clear winter’s night to spot, on a distant hilltop, the vanes of a windmill, moving slowly, like the wings of a giant, languid bird.