A. Yehoshua - The Extra

“We need you in a specific scene that will be happening soon, and then you can decide what you want to do.”

“What kind of scene?”

“Permit us not to reveal it in advance, because the director wants to create a surprise, to capture an initial, spontaneous look, frightened, maybe shocked.”

“Shocked by what?”

“No, please, I’ve already said too much, but you can be sure we won’t ask anything that an extra like you can’t handle. We only want your presence as a disabled patient who enters her hospital room and is suddenly agitated by an intimate scene.”

“Intimate?”

“I just let slip another unnecessary word. Intimate in the broadest sense of the word.”

“But wait. I came to tell you I was leaving.”

“We heard you, and we’re sorry to see you go, but only after we finish this scene.”

“Why don’t you find someone else to be shocked?”

“Because you’re the best, in terms of age, looks and especially your cultured quality. You’re a musician, no?”

“A harpist.”

“So please, Noga,” the young man sweetly pronounces her name, “don’t say no.”

She agrees halfheartedly. A makeup artist rushes over and cleans her face and neck of the day’s sweat, and with a thin brush tries to revive lines of beauty that had faded or were forgotten, and an assistant brings her a cold beer and snack, and above her head the IV is switched from red to blue, and the young man with the tag stands behind her and wheels her expertly to the center of the giant warehouse.

“If the intimacy you’re talking about is happening in the morgue,” she warns, “you should know I have a good friend there.”

“The morgue? Where’d you get that idea?”

“There’s no morgue in this hospital?”

“I haven’t heard of it, but maybe”—the young man laughs—“we’ll need something like that later on, for the victims of the film shoot.”

Now she is troubled and unsmiling — where have they sent Elazar? But there is no way back. Her chair comes to a halt in front of a heavy door, tightly shut, on whose other side a scene will take place, or is taking place, that is meant to frighten her.

Silence. Not a sound from beyond the door. The young man grabs the handles of the chair as if fearing a last-minute refusal. A few minutes pass, the door opens and a doctor exits, visibly upset. He is about forty, wearing a white gown and a stethoscope around his neck. Obviously an actor, not an extra.

His handsome face is serious, almost tormented, and she sees something familiar in his look, of humiliation, of passion crushed by hatred. He notices the wheelchair-bound extra in a nightgown, nods cordially and moves down the corridor. The door opens again and a man comes out, older and bearded, with an ID tag and a small walkie-talkie attached to his belt. The young man who wheeled her takes the man aside and whispers in his ear, and the older man turns to Noga, takes her hand and introduces himself as the director of the series. “I know,” he says, “that you were reluctant to do the scene we’re about to shoot, and I thank you for agreeing to do it. Rest assured that we won’t involve you in anything undignified. Who knows, you might change your mind after this scene and stay with us for the duration.”

“No. I’m sick of all this.”

The director touches her arm gently, as if she were a child. He approaches the actor, pulls him aside for a confidential talk, but a sharp musical ear can overcome the distance. “She’s tough,” grumbles the actor. “She doesn’t inspire me… not a bit of passion in her. All technical.”

The director goes back into the room to have a tête-à-tête with the actress, leaving the actor with the extra at the closed door. The hem of his gown brushes the wheel of her chair, and he nervously plays with the stethoscope, putting it suddenly to the test. He plugs in the earpieces and smiles sheepishly at the extra, who fears for a moment that he wants to listen to her heartbeat. But the make-believe doctor wishes to examine only himself, undoing the buttons of his gown and running the disk over his bare chest. He closes his eyes as he strains to interpret the beating of his heart, but when he sees the smiling extra, he stops and mumbles, something about the chilly actress he will soon have to make love to, and then the door opens and he is summoned inside.

Deep silence. The young assistant standing behind her, quiet and attentive, grips the handles of the wheelchair. Noga’s eyes close in despair. What is happening to me in Israel? she wonders. How, in just a few weeks, have I turned from a professional musician to a movable movie extra? Where will my mother and brother wheel me next in their pointless experiment?

The door opens and the director comes out and silently rolls her inside, navigating the cables, cameras, monitors and lights, stopping at the edge of the action.

“So, Noga,” he calls her by name, “you’re a disabled patient. You’re returning to your room, to your bed. Please wheel yourself in there, just two or three meters, and stop, taken aback, shocked if possible, because in the next bed, something is happening that you didn’t expect, and you definitely don’t like, and the camera will tell us what you’re thinking and feeling.”

She does as he says, wheeling herself into a dark, scrupulously replicated hospital room with two beds, an empty one for her and a second bed, and alongside it the doctor, who can no longer restrain himself. He rips away his stethoscope, and instead of checking the heart and lungs of the half-naked patient, he brushes her sternum with his lips and kisses her breasts and shoulders, all with the complete consent of the patient, perhaps in the belief that the touch and kisses of a licensed physician will speed her recovery. As the astonished extra tries to distinguish between the lust of the actor and the lust of the man, she hears a whisper behind her: “Get closer, so they’ll know you’re there.”

The doctor, now alarmed by his deed, comes to his senses and stands upright, his bare chest heaving inside the open medical gown. With a savage gaze he studies the disabled woman who has intruded on his passion, and with no warning, in a brisk and aggressive turn, he tears her from the wheelchair, lifts her in his arms and carries her to the vacant bed, laying her down and quickly covering her body and face with a sheet. And as she wonders whether that action was scripted or is a spontaneous move by an imaginative actor, the voice of the director shouts “Cut!” followed by the cheers of the crew.

Someone hurries to remove the sheet and help her out of the bed, as if she were in fact disabled and needing assistance. The actress — a young, slender woman with big, beautiful eyes — waves at her warmly from the next bed, as if they were partners in an adventure, and begins to dress, slowly and carelessly.

“Should we do that one again?” the cameraman pipes up.

“No,” shouts Noga, “I’ve done my part. I don’t work here anymore.”

The extra’s declaration halts the filming. Someone wheels in a tea cart stocked with sandwiches and bottles of juice and soda, and the hungry crew scatter around the set, eating and drinking, talking only about themselves. As Noga is having her makeup removed, the actor comes over and says, “I hope I didn’t hurt you.” “No,” says Noga. “At first you scared me, but I also felt your fear that I would report you to management.”

She is determined to get out of there and heads for the exit, but the director intercepts her, grateful for her participation. “Thank you. We got from you what we hoped and more,” he says. “What were you hoping?” she asks tartly. “We were hoping for just anger and pity,” he says. “And when the doctor surprised us too and carried you to the bed, we were afraid you would resist, but were happy to see you act with dignity and wisdom.”