A. Yehoshua - The Extra

The principal conductor and musical director, Dennis van Zwol, strides into the room, straight from the airport, and is greeted with polite applause. He is a bald, chubby man of about sixty, with blue, froglike eyes, a strict and erudite musician whose ample sense of humor softens his pedantic demeanor. He ascends the stage in jeans and a red sweater and sits down beside Herman, surveying his musicians with amusement. When he spots the harpist, he waves to her warmly. So, she whispers to herself, why not, he’s friendly, likes a good joke, and they say he also loves receiving gifts.

The next morning the rehearsals begin. There are no parts for the harp in the Haydn symphonies, so she sits in the hall and watches. After a short break, some of the strings leave the stage, and their places are taken by percussionists, including a few playing strange instruments. The conductor calls for a young composer, a man of around thirty with a ponytail, to take his place on the podium, to lead the first encounter with his provocative cacophony.

Van Zwol chooses to sit next to Noga in the auditorium and inquires about her vacation.

Blushing, she insists on repeating what she said to Herman: “It was not exactly a vacation.”

“Then what was it?”

“Something complicated and surprising. I myself still don’t understand what it was.”

“And your mother?”

“She decided to stay in Jerusalem.”

“And you are satisfied with her choice?”

The question reflects an unexpected sensitivity, and she tries to offer an appropriate response.

“From this distance, what good would my worrying do her?”

The conductor nods sympathetically, and she elaborates.

“My father died nine months ago. He and my mother were inseparable, dependent on one another, and who knows if they enjoyed that or whether their devotion had become oppressive. I think the sudden freedom my father granted my mother is exciting for her, and she may be afraid to curtail that freedom with the rules and activities of a retirement home.”

Van Zwol nods gravely even as he winces at the wild sounds emanating from the stage, which are interrupted by the tapping of the baton as the young composer attempts to explain to the players ideas that gave birth to his music. Although it is Van Zwol who will conduct this piece in concert, he does not intervene, in order to give the musicians the chance to experience the new composition through the passion of the composer himself.

He meanwhile drums with his fingers on his knee a different, hidden melody that enters his mind. And she again says to herself, Really, why not?

She turns to him, blood rushing to her face. “Maestro, I brought you an unusual gift from Jerusalem, something you might find useful.”

“A gift?” He is surprised. “Oh, my dear Venus, I do have a weakness for gifts, but on condition they are inexpensive and small and just symbolic, because that way I am not obligated to give gifts in return.”

A quake of anxiety seizes her as she leans over and produces the whip from her bag, wrapped in a shawl of her mother’s and tied with string.

He recoils. “What is this?” he asks. “It doesn’t look like a small gift.” But his lust for gifts overcomes his resistance, and he carefully undoes the string and shawl, releasing the strong scent of leather that has whipped the bodies of many beasts.

“What is this?” The conductor is shocked.

“It’s a whip I bought from a Bedouin in the Old City, a whip that tamed and drove camels in the desert, and I thought, Maestro, that it might also be good for taming and driving us musicians.”

The froggy blue eyes of the Dutchman light up with great amusement, and he raises the whip to his nostrils.

“I don’t believe it… You thought about me all the way in Israel.”

“Why not? I’m a musician in your orchestra.”

“True. And you thought I need to strengthen my conducting not only with a baton but a whip?”

“In a symbolic way, Maestro. Only symbolic. It’s a symbolic gift, the kind you like.”

“Marvelous,” he murmurs, and extends the whip along the empty seats to measure its length, apparently tempted to whip something or somebody.

“But why symbolic?” he asks, studying the pretty harpist warily. “Why only symbolic? Why not whip someone who ruins the tempo or misses notes or comes in at the wrong place?”

She is alarmed.

“No, no, Maestro, it’s a symbolic whip, only symbolic, otherwise the musicians will blame me.”

But the maestro continues to marvel.

“Where did you get the idea to bring me a whip?”

“As it happened, I bought it for myself, to protect myself from the neighborhood children who were breaking into my mother’s apartment to watch television, which was forbidden in their homes.”

“Television is forbidden? Why?”

“Because according to our religious people, it corrupts values and draws the children away from Torah studies.”

“Yes,” rhapsodizes the Dutchman, “your religious people have it exactly right. Television is evil and corruptive, and you did well to whip their children.”

He clasps the Bedouin whip to his breast like a beloved infant.

“Symbolic… symbolic,” he mutters, “and I have the urge to whip this young man on the podium who is driving our orchestra crazy with his music.”

She laughs. “No, no.”

With great feeling he takes her hand and lifts it to his lips, gathers up the whip, takes it with him to the podium and embraces the young composer, who has just concluded his Melancholy Arabesques with a blast.

“Bravo,” he says, “but it still needs polishing.”

The percussion players vacate the front of the stage for the string players arriving from the wings. The two harpists take their positions behind the harps, the timpanists tune their drumheads, the other percussionists strategically arrange their instruments, the French horn players remove their slides and shake out the spit, the oboists and bassoonists choose the right reeds and adjust them. Gradually they all finish leafing through the scores, and quiet descends on the stage.

The conductor taps the music stand with his baton and begins the little lecture he likes to deliver when starting a new piece.

“At the end of the nineteenth century, France lost a war to Germany but won the culture war. Paris became the capital of the European artistic avant-garde, the city where the painters Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas created Impressionism, while French poetry thrived in the Symbolist vein.

“Claude Debussy, born in the year 1862, was revolutionary in his style and became the greatest painter of music and a leader in the Impressionism of sound, though he complained that ‘imbeciles,’ as he called them, categorized his music as Impressionist, confusing painting and music. Debussy established a new concept of tonality in European music. With his fertile imagination he rebelled against the strong German influence in classical music and turned to exotic areas of influence, taking non-European scales and musical colors from the Far East, also borrowing from Spanish dance, and experimented boldly with instruments that seldom had central roles in classical music, writing, for example, complex parts for the harp.”

Van Zwol points his baton at the two harpists and smiles broadly.

“Symbolism in literature also influenced Debussy,” continues the conductor, “and he wrote program music, giving symbolic and literary titles to his compositions, and strove with elegance and sensitivity to evoke the complexity of nature and humans, first and foremost to fathom the soul of woman.”

“We would like to have more specific details,” says Ingrid, a beautiful French horn player. “Also personal ones if possible.”