A. Yehoshua: The Extra

“Do you know anything about the content of the film?” she asks the retired magistrate, who sits next to her in the first row.

“Just in broad strokes. At the booking agency they are stingy with information, maybe for fear of people dropping out at the last minute. Because extras, not being actors, sometimes confuse the imagination of others with the reality of themselves.”

At dusk, two additional lights are set up opposite the jurors. A procession of robed figures enters — the prosecutor and defense lawyer and judge, who disappear into a classroom that is now the courtroom. Two burly men in indeterminate uniforms march the handcuffed defendant past the jury, back and forth. Noga recognizes her as the pretty young woman who in the morning had given her the perfumed red scarf. Her makeup gone now, her face is pale, her eyes ringed with black circles. Her clothes are gray and her walk slow, contemplative, as if she is lost in thoughts of her crime. She scans the jurors, and when she sees the red scarf on the neck of the extra, she nods her head and stops in front of her as if about to say something, but no lines have been scripted. Yet the anguish in her eyes is so credible and persuasive that Noga fearfully tugs the scarf tighter around her neck, as if this were not an actress standing before her, but a despondent fellow traveler from her past.

“What did she do?” she whispers to the retired judge after the accused is gone.

“Murdered her husband.”

“Why?”

“You’ll know when you see the movie,” he answers ironically, “if it actually gets done.”

All the actors in the trial have vanished into the classroom-turned-courtroom, but the camera refuses to let the jury go. The time has come to announce the verdict of the trial that has not yet begun.

And as determined ahead of time, the portly magistrate rises from his seat, and with a look of satisfaction pronounces the answer to the question that has not yet been asked.

“Guilty.”

His pathetic pleasure displeases the director, who asks him to do it over. Yet the veteran extra cannot suppress the joy of a tiny speaking part.

The director then turns to Noga and asks her to stand and announce the same verdict.

“Guilty,” she says, simply and softly.

The director appears satisfied and asks if she can also say it in English.

And again she pronounces the word, softly and sadly, this time in English.

The producer whispers something in the ear of the director, who asks Noga if she knows other languages.

“Yes, Dutch and a little German.”

“Then please, in Dutch and German as well.”

At first she is confused, but regains her composure and reiterates the guilt in the other languages.

SHE HAD INTENDED TO VISIT her mother two days after arriving in Israel, but Honi tried to delay it. “You came for three months, not a week, so rest, get acclimated. In two days the retirement home has scheduled an excursion for the residents, and it would be good for Ima to join them. Wait another two, three days, let her get acclimated too, and I’ll try to pick you up from Jerusalem.”

She realized that the experiment on which he hung his hopes required his constant vigilance, not only regarding his mother, but her as well. But after four days in Jerusalem, she decided to elude his control and go down to Tel Aviv without his knowledge.

When she entered the gleaming lobby of the facility she was told her mother was at a concert. At first she stood by the closed door and listened to an amateur string trio, then grew impatient, silently opened the door and stood in the back of a small, dark hall, where perhaps twenty elderly residents were concentrating on their friends, a violinist, a violist and a cellist in a wheelchair, who played a trio by Schubert, missing more than a few notes as they fiddled vigorously together. The musicians noticed as she entered, and it seemed that her stately presence made them slightly anxious, but her mother, tranquilly enjoying the musical bonus of assisted living, did not yet see her.

Finally, she too noticed the extra woman standing in the back, and urgently wished to join her, but Noga signaled her to wait, and sat down so as not to offend the musicians.

At the end of the concert her mother introduced her to one of the old women.

“This is my daughter, a musician, but she lives in Holland…”

The visitor liked her mother’s experimental one-room apartment, which though located on the street level was attached to a private patch of ground, with flowers and bushes abutting a grassy lawn. The furniture was modest but new, and the bathroom was spanking clean.

“Would you believe, Noga,” said her mother, “that I as a tenant have to water the flowers?”

“And you don’t like that?”

“The watering I like, but not the obligation. In Mekor Baruch nobody has flowers anymore.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“And besides,” sighed her mother, “if Abba could have imagined that after he died I’d end up in Tel Aviv, he wouldn’t have left the world so peacefully.”

“But you’re not in Tel Aviv, you’re in assisted living.”

“Assisted in what?”

“In tolerating Tel Aviv.”

Her mother laughed. “In the six days I’ve been here, some nice old women have befriended me, one of them from Jerusalem, who remembers me from kindergarten and insists I haven’t changed a bit, not my looks or my mind.”

“So you already have a good friend.”

“Yes, it’s easy to make friends here, but to create a solid connection you have to provide stories of illness and other misfortunes. So many amazing stories here about exotic maladies, so vividly described you imagine catching them right then and there.”

“And you don’t have a disease you can spread in return?”

“None, my child. You know I’m healthy. Also, Abba’s death was so easy and simple, people are jealous.”

“Then talk about family problems.”

“We don’t have any. We were always a normal and stable family.”

“Normal?” Noga laughed. “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“A woman no longer young, whose husband left her because she refused to have children.”

“If you refused, what’s the problem? If you were unable, I could look for sympathy or pity. I’m not going to turn you into a problem to satisfy some old lady here.”

“Then at least provoke a little anger at me.”

“Why anger at you? If the experiment succeeds and I move here permanently, what will I gain from other people’s anger at you? Your father didn’t get angry, and he didn’t allow us to get angry either. ‘We have to honor Noga’s wishes,’ he said. ‘Childbirth can have complications, even cause death.’”

“Even death? That’s what he said?”

“He not only said it, he thought it.”

“Good Abba, he couldn’t think of another way to justify what I did.”

“That’s how he tried to explain it.”

“I didn’t connect my decision to any death.”

“Of course you didn’t. I don’t think you connected it to anything at all. You didn’t want to, and that was it. That’s also how I put it to Abba. But he stuck stubbornly to his explanation. So I said to myself, if Noga’s imaginary escape from death calms him down, who am I to deny it?”

The back door leading to the porch and garden was open, and Noga noticed that the room faced the western sky, bathed now in a reddish glow.

“It’s nice here, so pleasant. Honi found you a good place. By the way, I was amazed to see how many things you threw away. All of Abba’s clothes…”

“Not just Abba’s, mine too. Honi was impressed how easily I emptied out the closets. If the experiment here doesn’t succeed, I’ll at least return to an apartment that’s light and airy. If you had been with us, we would have convinced you to throw out things of yours that were still there.”