A. Yehoshua - The Extra

“In other words, the future here is not secure, is full of danger.”

“No.” She raises her voice. “Who am I to presume to know what will be here in the future? Who am I to decide if the danger is real or exists only in newspaper articles? My parents conceived me during a terrible, shocking war, and still the two of them didn’t presume to know. Oy, Uriah, you won’t get free of a disobedient love if you keep rehashing old stuff.”

He smiles, and she knows, as in times gone by, that tough talk on her part doesn’t deter him; it makes him want her more. He cautiously leans over the bed and tugs one of its levers, listens to the buzzing motor, watches the pillows rise. Then he turns to her and gently says:

“Then there’s no point in discussing your music.”

“Of course not.”

“Still… it’s very important to you.”

“In the right proportion. But there’s nothing about music that precludes having children.”

“So I shouldn’t even try to complain again about your harp.”

“No. It makes me angry.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s no truth to it. We talked about the harp so many times, one could write a book about it. I never saw myself as a tormented artist whose life is enslaved to her art. Bach had twenty children, and that didn’t prevent him from writing a new cantata every day. In my case all the more so, because I don’t write music but just perform it.”

“Bach didn’t give birth to them or nurse them or take care of them. His wife did that.”

“You’re being clever to escape.”

“From what?”

“From the slavery your love wanted to impose on me.”

“On you or on me?”

“No difference. To enslave me, you wanted to be enslaved to me.”

“But you could always have gotten free.”

“Only so long as we didn’t have children.”

“Why? If you wanted, children or no children, you could have gotten free of me.”

“No. Because in your anger and humiliation the children would have become hostages, and you would have harmed them.”

“Harmed them? But they’re my kids too.”

“As revenge because I abandoned you… I took pity on them by not giving birth to them.”

“But what could I have done to them?”

“Medea slew her children as revenge on the husband who abandoned her.”

“That’s mythology. What could I have done?”

“Maybe thrown one of them from the roof, and yourself too.”

“I can’t believe that such a thought ever occurred to you.”

“From the moment you began to call me Venus and not Noga, even as a joke, I understood what a dangerous place your love had reached.”

“Didn’t you tell me that your father always told you to look in the sky for the planet that belonged to you?”

“But who asked you to follow in his footsteps? No, I didn’t want to be Venus, not for you or for anyone. I was born in this apartment with neighbors around me for whom the only myth is simple, old-time religion. I wasn’t named Noga after a planet in the sky, but for a grandmother who died a long time ago. And I chose the harp not because I wanted to play in the Temple, but because not many people play it, so I knew I wouldn’t have much competition. But a young woman from a modest home and neighborhood, a pretty woman but certainly not beautiful, a reasonable and rational woman but not unusually talented, turned for you into a figure of adoration, a religion.”

“Religion?”

“Your own private one.”

“And in this religion there is no room for children?”

“They are in danger.”

He gives up, shaken and perhaps gratified by the blow she landed on him. He points to the electric bed, its sheets tangled, and asks almost in a whisper whether in the months she has lived here by herself this has been her bed.

“Not the only one. At night I wander from bed to bed.”

“And last night?”

“Last night I slept in this one too.”

“Will it bother you if I lie in it a bit?”

“But a minute ago, when I suggested you try it, you asked if I was crazy.”

“I was wrong, Noga, I was wrong.”

And he takes off his shoes and lies on the bed on his back, fiddling with the levers until he finds a comfortable position, tucks his fists under his graying head and closes his eyes, his arms like a pair of wings spread on either side.

DOES HE INTEND to fall asleep now? she asks herself, moving a chair to the head of the bed. So as not to spoil the odd serenity that has come over her guest, she speaks in a low voice, but precisely, as if playing a musical score. A mere four days now separate her and her orchestra, and the desire to clasp the harp to her heart is so strong it hurts.

“After all, we kept reexamining ourselves. When your mother was still alive, we ended up discussing it frankly with your parents. A confused and fruitless conversation. Because how could your parents express understanding for what I did if I had a hard time explaining it to myself? And because of their anger and pain, you sprang to my defense, you were afraid your parents would start hating me. But they didn’t, not only because it’s hard to hate me, and not only because they already had three grandchildren from your sister, but because they couldn’t imagine you leaving me, and in order not to poison your marriage, they decided from the outset not to hate me.”

She presses the point. “Why didn’t they believe you were capable of leaving me? Maybe because your parents, whose marriage was full of bumps and bickering, grasped the big difference between them and their son — your ability to love passionately, a love that to this day can’t die and simmers between us, amazingly enough, even at this very moment.”

“Yes,” he mutters, his eyes still closed, “which is why I overcame my indecision and came here.”

“You vacillated but you came. And even if we’ve analyzed our separation so many times that not one but two books could be written on the subject, nevertheless, after years of no contact, after you’ve remarried and had children, you go searching for me in the desert and sneak in as an extra in the uniform of a wounded soldier. So we need to clarify if this is just stubborn love or something else.”

“It’s something else.”

“Yes, so perhaps today it’ll be something else, something new. But you should know that if you surprised yourself when you came here, you didn’t surprise me. I waited for you. My mother can testify that I told her I knew you wouldn’t be content with playing the wounded extra, that you’d have the nerve to come to this apartment, that you might still have a key. I do know you. But even if you hadn’t dared to come here this morning as yourself, you should know that in my mind I am still in conversation with you. And I have thoughts that haven’t yet been expressed.”

“Those two books notwithstanding.”

“There may be the need for a third, a thin one, like a book of poetry. In Europe, when I thought of you — at rehearsals, or at concerts, since there are works with long stretches where the harpist has nothing to do except sit on her hands and count the measures while other players were making music — your image would suddenly surface, and I would reconstruct you in my mind, or recycle you, if that word better fits your ideology.”

“Both words fit.”

“And I’d be drawn back to the beginning. That party in Rehavia, how you insisted on walking me home through the Valley of the Cross, and at midnight, near the monastery, the way you kissed me. That wasn’t the first time I kissed a man, and certainly not the first time you kissed a woman, but you managed to make it momentous, because the next day, after my classes at the academy — which in those days, you remember, was near the prime minister’s house — without our having made plans, and I hadn’t mentioned my class schedule — you, in your army uniform, waited for me on your motorcycle with an extra helmet—”