A. Yehoshua - The Retrospective

“Will the driver have enough gas to get back?” Moses asks Manuel, who this time is taking his chances with air pollution.

“He is a veteran and reliable driver; Mother can always depend on him. He is from the area, and if he gets lost there’ll always be a roadside inn where he can get directions.”

“I haven’t seen any roadside inn so far.”

“That’s because they’re dark. Country people go to bed early, but don’t worry, if you rouse them they get up right away.”

Before long they indeed arrive at a darkened inn, and only after exiting the cab does Moses see the dim light within. By the side of the building stands a large carriage, its shafts resting on the ground, the unharnessed horses grazing nearby in a patch of soft grass. They enter a small dining hall with pots and pans hanging on the walls. In the middle is a large table, lit by oil lamps, surrounded by about ten men and women, laughing, enjoying food and drink; their colorful clothes seem like costumes. “Who are these people?” marvels Moses. “They are traveling actors,” says Doña Elvira, greeting them.

The actors recognize her and make room for her and her companions. The innkeeper, a big-bellied Spaniard, greets the cabdriver warmly and pours the visitors wine in yellow ceramic cups. But Moses refuses any drink and ignores the platters of food that arrive at the table. Ever since the failed municipality cellar scene, he has, in effect, taken a vow of fasting. His eyes again take in the driver, now outside the cab, a short, chubby man, happy and content, loved and accepted by all, eating and drinking and laughing. Suddenly Moses thinks that he knows this character, that he ran into him in the distant past, but where and when? Can it be that the driver was once an actor in some film, or did he envision him when he read some old novel?

He doesn’t ask Doña Elvira, who is engaged in cheerful conversation with the actors. Manuel urges him to eat. “We have far to go,” he says, “you will die of hunger.” But Moses resists. “No, thank you,” he says, “even if I lose some weight there will still be more than enough of me left, maybe too much.”

When they return to the cab they find the night has grown brighter. The moon risen in the east floods the skies with magical milky light. “How can it be that not far from the capital city we are in such an empty, deserted landscape?” asks Moses. “So it only seems,” answers Doña Elvira. “Many people live here, but the darkness conceals them from your sight.”

It is near midnight when the black box arrives at an old farmhouse. A large dog greets them enthusiastically and jumps on the driver, whom he apparently knows or who might be his master. A country woman holding an oil lamp emerges out from the ground floor and bows to them deeply, and from behind her peek boys and girls of various ages. The driver hugs them all and picks them up. It would seem, says Moses to himself, not all the locals go to bed early. He looks at the cameraman carrying his gear from the cab, and thinks, A fine young man. He is desperate to take pictures of the inn and the actors and the carriage and the grazing horses, but he respects my orders.

The driver leads them to the rear of the farmhouse, and on the way they pass a stable where stand a horse and a mule, like old friends, snorting at a shared trough apparently stocked insufficiently, since the horse is gaunt, a skeleton of a horse.

In a rear building, near wooden stairs that appear singed by fire, are the scorched remnants of books in leather bindings. Moses trembles with all his being: It seems I have reached a very important place.

From the upper floor comes a man of about fifty, tall, as gaunt as the horse in the stable. His face is long, his eyes are sad, a tiny beard sprouts from his chin. It’s really him. Tears fill the director’s eyes. The knight is alive. His books were burned but he didn’t die at the end of the story. Sancho Panza saved his master from deadly sanity and moved him to his house in the country, to his family and children, so he would no longer be alone in his delusions and frustrations.

The knight warmly welcomes the director and cameraman and their companions and takes them into a big room where on one wall hang an ancient helmet and spear, bent and dented over many years in battles, but gleaming with reality.

Toledano takes from his pack the old camera inherited from his father and measures the light with a meter.

Does this young man see what is going on here? Moses asks himself. Has he ever read the wonderful book? Today you can’t rely on anyone’s education.

His head is spinning, he feels his face is flushed, and Doña Elvira and Manuel are happy to see the eyes of the veteran director brimming with tears.

The two are chatting with the skinny man, and the Spanish they speak sounds different now, softer, less jarring, similar to the language he heard in his childhood in Jerusalem among the Sephardic Jews who lived there for many generations.

The chivalrous man, though he has probably not left this village for many years, is not taken by surprise at the request of the foreigner who has come from far away and scornfully refuses the payment offered by Manuel. He has no need of any payment. Even if they fill the trough to overflowing, the horse will never get fat.

He opens another door and escorts his guests into an inner room, and amid the shadows cast by the oil lamp appears a stout country woman sitting up in bed. It is hard to tell how old she is or if she is still nursing.

Toledano sets up his tripod and camera; this time he clearly needs to make do with the light of the oil lamp, for not only this house, but the whole area is without electricity, and the Israeli extension cord will be of no help.

“This is the place, this is the source,” Moses says, and he takes off his overcoat, his jacket, and then his shirt and undershirt, and he allows the elderly Doña Elvira to place the robe on him but doesn’t invite anyone to tie his hands.

“How is this?” he asks the cameraman. “Are you ready?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“Which camera do you want to start with?”

“My father’s old camera. Only film can get the nuance, digital’s not an option.”

“Then let’s begin.”

“Yes,” says Toledano, “but pay attention, Moses, I’m opening the aperture to the max and widening the lens, but you have to hold still, freeze in place, otherwise we won’t get a picture out of this, only mush.”

Moses approaches the country woman, who sits in her bed, and with his own hands he takes off her blouse and exposes her breasts. Though this is a country woman whose face is coarse and witless, she radiates a true and simple light. And Moses says to her in Hebrew, “I know who you are, you are Dulcinea, you are the fantasy, in person, the knight captured in the end.” And facing a massive breast bisected by a bluish vein, he thrusts his hands behind him and declares that only the Knight of the Sorrowful Face may bind them.

A fragrant breeze blows through the window. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Moses asks himself. If Dulcinea can feed me, it means she has borne the knight a child and the fantasy of his love is not merely the fruit of imagination. The director brings his lips to the big brown nipple, and though this is a country breast, a magnificent breast, he is unsure whether he will find it soft or hard. The woman smiles and squeezes her breast, and between his lips Moses feels a first drop of milk.

The milk is warm — strong sweetish mother’s milk with a mysterious taste, a hint perhaps of a country dish consumed by the woman. Well, then, this is the fantasy. The inspiration I craved has returned, he muses with joy , I am drinking it straight into the chambers of my heart, against the reality that strangles us. My heart is intact, my daughter checked it not long ago. If so, this is my true retrospective, a retrospective meant from the start only for me.