A. Yehoshua - The Extra

As darkness falls, Uriah heads east, gliding toward Jericho and a half-moon flanked by a trio of twinkling stars. At the Beit HaArava junction he turns south, and in less than an hour he can see the beam of light sweeping across the mountain of the ancient suicides. He has no admission ticket, and no intention of spending more money on this opera, so before reaching the main parking lot he swerves onto a dirt road and bounces along, circling the opera venue until he is blocked by large rocks. He switches off the headlights and engine and walks past the stage, planning to hide behind one of its adjacent little hills, natural or artificial, he can’t quite tell. From there, he will train his binoculars on the woman who refused, despite her love for him, to give birth to a child.

As a former combat officer in the Israeli army, he strides with confidence, and the tragic mountain of Masada helps him navigate accurately. He can hear the musicians tuning their instruments. But will the security guards, if there are any, know that this man with a bit of gray in his hair isn’t trying to sneak into an opera he saw last night and whose tunes he can hum, but just wants to look at one extra, with whom he has an unsettled score?

Silently he approaches the northern hill and the sound of laughing women. Now a hush, and then the audience of thousands explodes in applause for the conductor. Within a few seconds, ethereal music drifts in his direction. He inches closer, chooses an observation point and kneels down, and through the binoculars of the Ministry of Environmental Protection he observes the country girls of Seville, one of whom stands by a donkey hitched to a cart containing two little children, who wave to the crowd they are supposed to be unaware of. His heart pounds as he recognizes his former wife gripping the halter, out of context in peasant costume but still the same woman who could not be persuaded to have children with him, despite his undying love for her.

The music pulls her and the cart across the stage toward the opposite hill, and so as not to lose her, he advances slightly, careful not to enter the field of vision of thousands of eyes focusing on the stage, and thinks he has succeeded.

But from the commanding heights of the podium, the tall conductor is stupefied to spot a gray-haired man not connected with the plot, and as he dictates the tempo with crisp, stormy movements, and crouches and leaps to bring Bizet’s music to life, he also threatens the foreign invader with his baton, tries to shoo him away. But Uriah does not budge. Rock solid at the edge of the stage, he tracks the country girl who crosses paths with another cart and vanishes behind the second hill. And as he is considering whether to follow her, he is seized by two young security guards and removed from the area.

“Please, sir,” says one of the guards, not unkindly, “if you have no money for a ticket, then listen to Carmen at home. Don’t spoil the magic for others.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

For a moment the guards conspire to confiscate the fine-looking binoculars, but after the man introduces himself as a supervisor of environmental protection who has come to make sure Masada doesn’t turn into a garbage dump, they drop the idea.

Before the end of act one he heads back toward Ma’aleh Adumim. On the uphill road from Jericho the cell phone vibrates close to his heart, and he says gently to his wife, “Go back to sleep. I’m almost home.”

THE PREVIOUS MORNING, before the mother and son drove back to Tel Aviv, the three sat together on the hotel terrace, watching people float in the salty waters of the Dead Sea. They spoke about the grains of sand that had prevented the prima donna from playing Carmen after act one, and how those same grains of sand had only improved the singing of the Israeli understudy, who was showered with bravas and became a star overnight. Noga yawned and said, “Grains of sand appeared to me once in a dream. I don’t remember why.” Her brother and mother looked at her affectionately. She’ll have to take a nap in the afternoon, or she won’t have the strength to pull the donkey, who sometimes stops and will not move.

“Honestly,” she asks her mother and brother, “you could actually tell it was me?”

“I tried not to lose sight of you,” says Honi. “After all, I came more for you than the opera.”

And the mother says, “I’m not sure I identified you, but it was nice to feel again like a young mother coming to see her daughter in a sweet costume at a kindergarten party. When you were little, before Honi was born, Abba and I didn’t miss a single one of your performances, even if you had only two words to speak.”

“Two words? For example?”

“Peas and beans.”

“That’s all?”

“And for that Abba took off time from work. But I’m not feeling young only because of you, Noga,” she continues cheerfully. “It’s Honi too. We haven’t slept in the same room since he was ten, and last night we went out together and even slept in the same bed, so I’m asking myself why you’d want to imprison such a young mother in an old-age home.”

Grimacing, Honi turns to his sister, but she smiles indifferently. He says to her, “Ima is waiting for me to have a heart attack like Abba, to be rid of my nagging.”

“You won’t have a heart attack,” says his sister. “If, as you said, my heart is made of stone, yours is made of rubber.”

“Children, enough,” says the mother. “I apologize.”

They resume discussing the change of singers and try to understand why the character is more important than the person who portrays it. “At one point,” relates Noga, “I found myself near the understudy. I looked at her face, and though she was different in every way from the star who dropped out, I didn’t really feel the difference between her and the original.”

The mother, who knows her son, anticipates that he is on the verge of telling Noga about the encounter with Uriah, and she places a finger on her lips to signal him that he shouldn’t. But Honi pointedly ignores her, and tells his sister about the hasty meeting and the physical resemblance between her and the second wife.

Noga listens calmly, drinks what’s left of her coffee and says, “I just hope you didn’t tell him I was in the vicinity.”

When the mother suddenly stands up irritably, as if trying to forestall the answer, Honi keeps calm and disregards the truth: “I didn’t tell him a thing. Why should I even mention you? You split up a long time ago. Who cares anymore?”

“MAYBE FIREWORKS, THE BEST EVER in Jerusalem, can convince you not to run away so fast from the city.” A pair of old friends, both flutists who had studied with Noga at the music academy, insisted she come to a party on the eve of Jerusalem Day.

It was held on the roof of a monstrous high-rise erected on the ruins of the old Holyland Hotel, offering a fine view of the pyrotechnic bouquets launched in rapid succession from the hilltops of the capital. Many on the roof were strangers to each other and even to the hosts, who wished to prove by their generosity that they were innocent of the municipal corruption entailed in the demolition of the hotel and the construction of these hideous buildings. But in the Israeli fashion, the guests rapidly set about establishing their connections, if not from childhood or military service, at least through mutual acquaintances.

Noga stood near the rooftop railing, sipping wine, scanning silent skies tinged by a foggy, pinkish residue of fireworks. Soon enough, as always, someone would be attracted by her solitude, and on this anniversary of Jerusalem’s real or imaginary reunification would expect her to reveal her connection and talk about herself. She would surely be asked why she had no children, and why she didn’t live in Israel. Would she be teased if along with her music she described her work as an extra, and threw in the strolling donkey that dropped its aromatic turds at the foot of Masada to the strains of grand opera?