A. Yehoshua - The Extra

“So I’m not such an amateur after all,” she compliments herself, and hurries to find her way back to the world.

The corridors that had been desolate before the filming are now filled with new extras who arrived for the evening. She is surprised that many of them are turning to her for information, then realizes she neglected to remove her nightgown, and rushes back to her hospital room to retrieve the bag of clothes on the wheelchair, but the door is locked. If she thought that by leaving she had shut down the scene, it’s now clear that they can do without her, and she has to wait until one of the crew slips out for a smoke.

“What happened? Why’d you come back?” the crew member asks.

“In the confusion of illness and lust”—she laughs—“I forgot to take my clothes, which were hanging on the wheelchair.”

But the wheelchair is still standing between the two beds, and will be accessible only at the end of the filming. The man takes a few steps back, and after he finishes his cigarette and crushes the butt he lights a new one. “I haven’t smoked all day,” he says apologetically. But the smoke doesn’t bother Noga. On the contrary, she asks him for a cigarette and whether by chance he helped build a morgue.

He is happy to light her cigarette. A morgue? Not yet, but if the series runs as planned, he and his crew will need to build a believable set for those who die along the way.

Between cigarettes, the door opens and he darts inside to rescue her clothes so she can respectably enter reality. But until she can find the privacy to change clothes, she decides to try — in the guise of a patient — to solve the riddle of Elazar, still hoping to give him a personal memento before she leaves the country.

From time to time she looks behind her, as if being followed. Can it be Elazar, fired from the production, waiting for the right moment to join her? It’s hard to know, because as the night filming begins, the place is bedlam, crowded with people in pajamas and hospital gowns. Her brain aches and she asks around for a ride back to Jerusalem.

“At this hour? No, it’s too late,” declares a production person, “and to get out of the port you have to be checked by the border police and they might have closed up by now. But why go back? The best part is still ahead.”

“Ahead or not,” she says curtly, “my work here is over.”

“But even if you’re done, Noga”—to her surprise, he too knows her name—“wait till morning, and meanwhile enjoy an excellent dinner that would be a shame to miss.”

Indeed, why pass it up? He leads her to a medium-size hall, crowned by the original, huge warehouse beams intersecting at a great height. Extras sit at tables along with actors and crew members, some still in civilian clothes, some in pajamas and hospital gowns, some bandaged or wearing plaster casts — wounded soldiers, extras fresh from the battlefield, army uniforms soaked in blood. Everyone is joyful and merry, because the generous dinner is expertly prepared, and among the pots Noga finds the meat soup she craved. The happy mood of the diners around her suggests that this is not a random group of extras, but a gathering of acquaintances and friends. If this is so, she consoles herself, when rheumatism and calcification come to pass, when her rigid fingers can no longer coax true sounds from the harp strings, here in my homeland I’ll always have another place to work.

Eating makes her sleepy, and she feels that the doctor who lifted and carried her to the bed also strummed a forgotten string in her soul. Best to spend the night here and leave early in the morning. She exits the dining hall and looks for a suitable bed in one of the little undefined rooms on the set. In one such room, two empty beds have been made up, and she chooses the one close to the wall. She puts her clothes under the pillow, so they will be at hand when she makes her getaway. She closes the door as best she can — insofar as a thin sheet of plywood, painted white, can be considered a door — switches off the light beside her bed and the light by the other bed too.

“Go to sleep, little girl,” she tells herself in the Dutch words the flutist had taught her — just like in Arnhem when she forces herself to take an afternoon nap, to incubate, in her unconscious mind, the work she has rehearsed that morning, so that in the evening concert she can give birth to the right music.

By force of the Dutch command, she falls into a deep sleep. Despite the warm, lively sounds that never cease outside the plywood door, and although she senses now and then in her sleep that the room she has appropriated is wide open to others, who come and go, lie down and get up — the dream is still stronger than reality, and the one who carried her in his arms like an invalid and laid her down in bed and covered her with a sheet might also protect her as she sleeps from a stranger who has come in the night to lie down in the next bed.

When the first rays of sunshine filter through the giant roof beams, and silence reigns, she can see in the adjacent hospital bed a man lying on his back, his folded arms spread like wings, as if in midthought he was suddenly arrested by sleep. And because she remembers well who slept that way by her side for many years, she throws off her blanket and walks barefoot to the one who has followed her since she arrived here, her former husband, Uriah, who has turned himself into an extra.

Her heart flutters wildly as she watches the man whose hair has grown whiter since he left her. Now he has stolen his way to her in a torn army uniform and a blood-soaked bandage. And with the first glimmer of consciousness, the new extra senses the agitated gaze of his former wife and breaks out in an ingratiating smirk of apology for the terrible power of an ancient love.

STRUCK MUTE BY THE SHOCK, hands trembling, she strips off the nightgown of the imaginary patient and returns to her real clothes, and without a backward look hurries to the main entrance, but finds it locked. Immediately she heads for the back door, and this immense warehouse, which last night she saw as a metaphor for humanity, is not as huge as the wheels of her chair had imagined, for within a few minutes her legs have brought her to the rear exit, abandoned now by the large security man.

At the end of the loading dock, the rotating gate dispatches her with a rusty creak into reality — at this hour, a desolate city street — yet she believes that the wave of a feminine arm will attract an early-rising driver, and until he comes she lifts her eyes to the dawning sky, to find, as her father instructed, the shining planet, her namesake, Noga.

She arrives at the assisted living facility in Tel Aviv, and since she has not often visited her mother, she must identify herself to the guard, who is loath to interrupt the morning sleep of an elderly woman. As the smell of diapers from the nursing wing blends with the aroma of breakfast pastries and coffee, Noga knocks softly on the door, which opens at the touch of her hand. It is eight o’clock, and morning light pouring through the open porch door caresses the sleeping resident.

Noga moves a chair to her mother’s bedside and waits to see when her presence will rouse her into consciousness. It would seem that the notion of protected living has persuaded the mother from Jerusalem that even at night there is no need to lock doors and turn off lights, and so the entrance of an unexpected guest does not disturb her tranquility. Even when she hears the whispered words “Ima, I’m here,” she is not surprised, and simply asks with eyes closed, “What did I do, Noga, to deserve a visit so early in the morning?”

“Early? You’re as cozy as a bear, Ima, not locking doors or turning off lights.”