A. Yehoshua - The Extra

“And what did she decide?”

“She hasn’t yet decided.”

“And where did you leave your children?”

“I don’t have children. I didn’t want children.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I didn’t want them to ruin my minimal beauty,” says Noga with a laugh.

The woman stiffens. Was that a malicious remark, or did it just slip out? Crushed, she stares at the extra as if she too wanted to poison her. Without another word she hurries away, past the production crew trying to persuade the parents to move from the sofa to the cozier bedroom, and past the love of her youth, who tried to poison her and now tries to block her path, but she simply touches his gray curls with maternal affection and goes outside to join her husband in the garden.

And now what? Is my role finished too? the extra asks herself, as the living room empties out and the scene switches to an inside room, to achieve a more intimate and revealing conversation. The tripods for the camera and mixer are folded up, and the monitor and lights and fans disconnected, and within minutes she is alone in the living room of a strange house.

Good thing they paid me, she says to herself, so I can disappear without a problem. She walks out of the stone house into the long, narrow street, now emptied of people. Even Elazar, who promised to drive her back, has vanished. Would he break his promise? She decides on second thought to say goodbye to the film crew, goes back inside, passes through the empty living room and heads into the kitchen, which is stocked with plastic plates and cups supplied by the production. She opens the refrigerator, inspects its contents, pours milk into a plastic cup and drinks.

From there she walks down a dark, narrow hallway lined with old books in unfamiliar languages, and enters the bathroom, whose small window is open to the garden. The husband and wife have left, and beside the tree sit the American woman and her son, chatting with one of the students. There is a bookshelf in the bathroom too, crammed with worn-out books that refuse to find their final repose in the trash bin.

Then, to her surprise, she notices that the bathtub is an identical twin of the bathtub in her childhood apartment. The same size, the same curvature, the same rusted iron feet of a bird of prey. These were two Jerusalem homes constructed before the founding of the State of Israel, Jews living in her building, and in this one, at the time, lived Arabs, but the bathtub is the same bathtub, by the same craftsman, Jew or Arab, blessed with unusual imagination.

A plethora of toothbrushes are arrayed by the sink, as if each tooth demanded a brush of its own. She feels the weight of fatigue, opens the faucet and splashes water on her face, and with the water still blurring her vision, she goes to find the filmmakers and say her goodbyes.

Voices lead her into the bedroom, where the psychology students, with the help of the film students, have constructed a more intimate scene. They have seated the elderly parents, wearing bathrobes, on the bed, with their son the professor between them. They have removed his suit but left his bow tie on, wrapping him too in an old robe. And so, with the camera pointed at them, they analyze the strange past in Hebrew.

The extra stands in the doorway and knows that the intimacy and candor may be impaired by her presence. As she plans her exit, a hand strokes the back of her neck.

“I thought you’d forgotten,” she scolds the former police commander.

“I didn’t forget you, nor will I. My daughter called, asked me to get m-m-medicine for my grandson, and I didn’t think they’d let you go so soon.”

“It turned out that way.”

“So you got a really good deal.”

“And as the agent, you deserve not just soup but a whole meal. By the way, how many grandchildren do you have?”

“One, for now.”

“How old?”

“Around the same age as your tz-tz-tzaddik .”

He takes her home to Rashi Street and wishes her a good time at Masada. If the tickets weren’t so expensive, he’d go down to the Dead Sea too.

Six voicemails from Honi await her, each more agitated and anxious than the last, all with the same message: the bus taking the extras to the opera in the desert will be leaving three hours earlier than planned.

“What were you doing wandering around at night?” he hisses when she calls him back.

“I was an extra in a documentary.”

“There is no such thing.”

“You’d be surprised.”

But he’s not prepared to be surprised. He will demand proof in two days, on the second evening of Carmen , since he has tickets.

“So if you can, Honi, bring me some literature about Martin Buber.”

“Martin Buber faded long ago into the mists of memory.”

“So retrieve him from the mists of the Internet.”

THANKS TO THE EARLY DEPARTURE, her eyelids droop repeatedly on the ride, her head bobs, and she arrives at Masada asleep. With her in the minibus are six other extras, a few of them former singers in the opera chorus, arriving today to reinforce the ranks of their former colleagues, not with their voices but with their presence.

To the women’s surprise, the bus doesn’t take them to the hotel but heads straight to the opera site at the base of Masada, where the sounds of rehearsal are heard.

The singers, dancers and chorus, all in street clothes, mill about the enormous stage, a wooden floor with built scenery supplemented by the natural landscape. Dirt paths run between two small hills planted with low plastic olive trees and artificial flowering bushes. The director and his assistants, wielding bullhorns, prompt the chorus members, who burst loudly into song and quickly stop. The orchestra, in its pit in front of the stage, missing some of its players, is under the baton of a young assistant conductor while the illustrious maestro, a man of three identities, gathers strength in his hotel room.

The seven women extras are greeted by an assistant director who instructs them as to their positions and movements. In the first scene, taking place in Seville, their job is to give the audience a sense of agricultural surroundings, so that while the singing of the tobacco factory workers grows louder, they as farm women will walk along the paths between the two hills, two of them with pitchfork and hoe, three bearing bushels of fruits and vegetables, and the two others, on either side, leading small wagons drawn by donkeys.

“Real donkeys?”

“Why not? In Europe they sometimes put elephants and horses on the opera stage.”

The assistant director asks Noga if she would be willing to lead a donkey hitched to a small wagon carrying a few children, since no self-respecting opera production can do without children.

“What if the donkey gets wild?” Noga asks.

“It won’t get wild. Its owner is sitting here on the side, and he guarantees its good behavior.”

And indeed, near the hill stands a little two-wheeled cart, an elderly donkey harnessed to it, ruminating on the state of the world.

Noga approaches the animal, and as a sign of affection she gently folds one of its big ears, smiles at the owner and asks if he has a kurbash .

“ Kurbash? ” The man is amused by the Arabic word uttered by a Jewish woman. “No need, this is the most polite donkey in the world.”

He rises and wraps the reins around her hand.

“Here, now you can take him up the hill so he’ll get used to you, and I’ll walk beside you.”

When they are up on the hill the assistant conductor gives a sign to the orchestra and chorus, the assistant director motions to Noga to take the donkey down the hill to the stage, while on the opposite hill the other extra walks her donkey down, accompanied by the two extras carrying the pitchfork and hoe, and the remaining three carrying the bushels of fruit and vegetables — proof positive for the opera audience that the Seville of that time was most fertile and lively.