A. Yehoshua - The Extra

As the extra enters, the filming is halted and a gentle hand separates her from her escort and guides her to an armchair in the corner of the room, and now the camera’s eye is on her, lingering a bit on her facial features, then returning to the subject, the famous psychiatrist arguing with his parents.

This is an American film, and so the talk is mostly in English, but Hebrew slips in here and there. The father apparently understands the English of his famous son, but finds it difficult to reply in a language that is not his own, whereas the mother, who does not understand English but guesses its intent, permits herself to interrupt and defend her truth.

The professor has not been in Israel in a long while, and seems uncomfortable with the decline of his childhood home, moving about the room while talking and casually shifting an object or piece of furniture to a more aesthetic spot, lest his future viewers, mostly students and colleagues, regard his roots with scorn.

Now and then he stares at the extra, who stands in for the fateful figure of his youth, and there’s no telling whether he’s fully aware of the switch between the real and the imaginary. Can he possibly believe that this is the original woman?

The psychology students, who are well acquainted with his theories about mental disturbances in children, seek to understand from the awkward encounter between him and his parents how, out of painful and crazy youthful experiences that ended in hospitalization, such revolutionary insights arose in his mind. And contrary to a conventional scenario of such a film, the hero does not intend to settle a score with his parents, but rather to express approval of the firm hand that shook him up in his younger days.

The elderly parents, however, are gripped by a shared anxiety, fearing an onslaught of ancient blame in front of a foreign camera. The mother addresses the production crew in Hebrew, trying to persuade them of what a menace their distinguished professor was in his youth. And the father, clad for the occasion in an old suit, loosens his skinny necktie, his face waxen with shame, his eyes full of tears.

So there is no alternative but to stop filming and allow the participants to recover from their misunderstandings and find a more fitting way to deal with the hidden truth.

The room has filled up with more people, those who belong there and those who do not, and an Israeli cosmetician deftly mops beads of sweat from the burning faces of the son and his parents, and from the forehead of the extra, though she has not uttered a word. Elazar skillfully insinuates his way to Noga, whispering the encouraging news that because working as an extra in a documentary, made by amateurs to boot, is doubly chaotic, he has asked for and received payment from the producer, for who knows what will happen two hours from now — maybe the original woman will show up and Noga will have to withdraw. And he discreetly slides an envelope into her purse.

This is an independent film produced by the American psychology students, and because they lack film experience, they are assisted by students from the arts department at their university, together forming a sizable group whose work on a film biography of a man of science has included a comprehensive tour of Israel. So far, the filming and sound recording have gone well, but now, in the hero’s childhood home, in the final confrontation with his parents, there is a sense that the project is tangled up in slippery truth. It will take patience to discover why intelligent and cultured parents had their beloved son, an only child, locked up in a ward for a long time, and why, so many years later, after the son has become a renowned psychiatrist, he not only bears his parents no grudge, but praises them.

This is a quandary that needs no father’s tears or mother’s anger, or even the explanations of a son who came from overseas, but simply a time-out to change the approach and perhaps the location, alter the angle of the camera and the position of the lights, and mostly to rephrase the questions and improve communication. To this end, the professor’s wife now enters the room, an attractive American, taller than her husband, with their young son, also taller than his father. With endearing shyness they approach the Israeli grandparents, who are hard to talk to but must be loved and respected. And following the American daughter-in-law, who affectionately hugs her husband’s parents, the grandson hugs and even kisses them. Then students, too, converge on the elderly couple, squeezing their hands and patting their shoulders.

Must the extra do the same? For the moment she does not move, sensing a new lethargy seeping into her bones. Her eyes close, and in her memory flows the water that washes clean the naked, beautiful little boy, who looks at her with wonder, not hostility.

A woman about her age, plump but pretty, enters and exchanges whispers with the professor. He is excited to see her, but the two do not embrace. Then the woman grows aware of the extra staring at her, and approaches Noga, leans over her armchair and quietly introduces herself.

“Have you guessed? I am the woman you are impersonating. My presence is important to this project, but my husband absolutely refuses to have me filmed, even if it’s an amateurish student production that’ll be screened on maybe two campuses. Look out at the garden, and by the tree you’ll see my husband watching me from afar, making sure I don’t get tempted.”

“What’s he afraid of?”

“That I’ll be identified as the beautiful young girl who forty years ago was the love object of a special, unusually gifted young man — a crazy love that was so strong, in the end it poisoned her.”

“Poisoned? In what way?”

“Literally. We were inseparable, together day and night, and then, out of a paranoid fear that I was about to leave him, he began poisoning my food. It was a poison he concocted himself, his own recipe. Can you imagine? It was life-threatening and I almost died, because it took forever to diagnose what was happening to me, to realize that my lover was truly dangerous. Good thing his parents, who look so exhausted now, quickly rose to the occasion. They didn’t cover up what he did, but had him locked up in a mental institution for a good long time, almost a year, until his madness had passed, and by having him committed they saved him from the police, and he was exempt from army service, and after he completed his matriculation exams he went to study in the United States, and succeeded in having a brilliant career.”

The extra asks an odd question: “The hospitalization was in Jerusalem?”

“Why? Are you from here?”

“In theory.”

“Then you might know it was close, on Disraeli Street, the next one over. At the bottom of the street, a hospital specializing in teenage insanity, and since it was nearby, and his parents could supervise his care, they were in no hurry to have him discharged. There he was introduced to the suffering of children and young people, and probably began to develop the original ideas on which he eventually built his career.”

“And you’re familiar with his work?”

“A bit, from a distance. For all these years, he never lost touch with me, sent me his books and articles. But it would be an overstatement to say I understand them.”

“And you have children?”

“Four. And giving birth ruined my looks.”

“You exaggerate,” Noga says. “Looking at you closely, it’s easy to see how beautiful you must have been, and to understand why Granot was afraid you would leave him. I’m sorry I can’t simulate even a little of that beauty in this film.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Tell me, are you an extra as a profession or a hobby?”

“Neither. I’m an accidental extra. By profession I am a harpist, but I perform in Europe, not in Israel, and I came for a short visit to help my mother decide where to live out her old age, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.”