The Extra

Twenty-Six

“WAITED FOR WHAT?”

“To make you a rare offer, with decent pay, in f-foreign currency, but you need to give an answer right away — y-yes or no.”

“Yes or no to what?”

“To be an extra, for a few hours this evening, in a documentary now filming in Jerusalem.”

“An extra in a documentary? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

“Absolutely. In a documentary, we expect real people and not actors and extras. But sometimes there’s a p-p-problem that calls for the assistance of an extra.”

“Meaning what?”

He tells her about a group of American students making a film about a professor from their university, an American psychiatrist originally from Israel, named Granot. This man grew up in Jerusalem, and as a youth was hospitalized for a while in an institution for the mentally ill, after which he went to study in the United States, where he became a prominent professor and thinker in his field. To put together this film portrait, focusing on Granot’s theories and ideas, his students decided to take him on a sort of “roots” journey to Jerusalem, to meet with his elderly parents, family members and some friends, so that stories about his youth will flesh out and add color to the portrayal of his character and thinking. And of course the filmmakers hope that a few swords will be crossed and scores settled, typical of encounters with parents and relatives.

“So why do they need an extra?”

“In p-p-principle everything will b-b-be r-r-real,” he stutters copiously, taking a deep breath to recover and regain control of his speech. “Except for the one important character, who was supposed to come to the shoot at his parents’ home, a girl the professor was involved with in his youth and apparently was hospitalized because of her. Just this morning she canceled her participation under p-p-pressure from her husband, who vehemently objected to his wife appearing in this kind of slightly psychiatric film. But the director feels it would be a shame not to have her in it, so they decided to bring in an extra in her place, to be present at the encounter even if she said nothing, and perhaps the professor would want to say something to her, anything, because this documentary doesn’t have a written script. It’s all spontaneous and r-r-real.”

“Very strange.”

“Yes, even for a veteran like me. In any case, this afternoon the casting agency called me and others for help in finding a w-w-woman more or less your age who would be a stand-in for a r-r-real woman.”

“Who is not supposed to say or do anything?”

“Of course, this is a true-life film, and no one has c-c-control or advance knowledge of what will happen.”

“Which could end up as a complete fiasco.”

“You’re right, but you still need to give an answer, yes or n-n-no, otherwise they’ll find s-s-someone else.”

“How much are they paying?”

“Three hundred dollars for a few hours. Very respectable for a silent e-e-extra. Apparently their university has a lot of money, or the professor is important. So, yes or no?”

She studies the policeman’s face. Is he telling her the whole story, or leaving out some important detail?

“All right, Elazar. My adventure with those two little boys unnerved me, I doubt I’ll get any sleep tonight, so why not impersonate some character, a real one for once, and be well paid? But on one condition: they drive me there and back.”

“But of course,” he says happily. “I’ll t-take you both ways, because I’m curious to see how they’ll cook you into the meal.”

She laughs. “And don’t you, as the confidential adviser, need to be paid?”

“I don’t need monetary compensation. But if you invite me for a bowl of soup before you return to Europe, I w-w-won’t refuse. So let’s check and make sure they haven’t already hired someone.”

He dials his cell phone, puts it close to his ear and speaks almost in a whisper in simple English, his happy eyes stammering too:

“It’s o-o-ours. I mean, y-y-yours.”

Midevening now, and Jerusalem is slowing down. In a matter of minutes Elazar drives her to the Talbieh neighborhood, which boasts the president’s house, the residence of the prime minister and the Jerusalem Theatre, just up the street from the former leper hospital. For the fun of it, he circles twice around Salameh Square, then heads down Marcus Street, ending up at a long and narrow street named Lovers of Zion, lined for the most part with old, stately houses made of stone.

In the garden of such a stone house with a front porch are gathered a few people whose connection with the film is as yet unclear. Elazar whispers to her that this was once the home of a philosopher with a big white beard, Martin Buber by name, and cannot resist telling her a story about how the police were once called in because of a demonstration that blocked the street — a crowd of students, friends, neighbors and sundry admirers who had come to congratulate the professor on his eightieth birthday, and sang and shouted, floated balloons and threw their hats in the air. And when a policeman asked Buber if he needed help, he replied, in a heavy German accent, “You can best help me if you leave at once, so no one will think I need police protection.”

Beside a green gate stands a camera tripod along with lighting equipment. In a large, brightly lit living room, on a well-worn sofa, in the soft breeze of a small fan, an elderly couple sit side by side, looking anxiously at a lens pointed at them like a machine gun by a tall American student, while a fuzzy microphone, affixed to a long pole held by a slender young woman, floats above them. The protagonist of the film, Professor Jacob Granot, a man in his fifties with curly gray hair in a black suit and bow tie, stands facing his parents and looks doubly anxious, both for the good name of the parents who had him put away in his youth, and for the truth itself.

As the extra enters, the filming is halted and a gentle hand separates her from her escort and guides her to an armchair in the corner of the room, and now the camera’s eye is on her, lingering a bit on her facial features, then returning to the subject, the famous psychiatrist arguing with his parents.

This is an American film, and so the talk is mostly in English, but Hebrew slips in here and there. The father apparently understands the English of his famous son, but finds it difficult to reply in a language that is not his own, whereas the mother, who does not understand English but guesses its intent, permits herself to interrupt and defend her truth.

The professor has not been in Israel in a long while, and seems uncomfortable with the decline of his childhood home, moving about the room while talking and casually shifting an object or piece of furniture to a more aesthetic spot, lest his future viewers, mostly students and colleagues, regard his roots with scorn.

Now and then he stares at the extra, who stands in for the fateful figure of his youth, and there’s no telling whether he’s fully aware of the switch between the real and the imaginary. Can he possibly believe that this is the original woman?

The psychology students, who are well acquainted with his theories about mental disturbances in children, seek to understand from the awkward encounter between him and his parents how, out of painful and crazy youthful experiences that ended in hospitalization, such revolutionary insights arose in his mind. And contrary to a conventional scenario of such a film, the hero does not intend to settle a score with his parents, but rather to express approval of the firm hand that shook him up in his younger days.

The elderly parents, however, are gripped by a shared anxiety, fearing an onslaught of ancient blame in front of a foreign camera. The mother addresses the production crew in Hebrew, trying to persuade them of what a menace their distinguished professor was in his youth. And the father, clad for the occasion in an old suit, loosens his skinny necktie, his face waxen with shame, his eyes full of tears.

So there is no alternative but to stop filming and allow the participants to recover from their misunderstandings and find a more fitting way to deal with the hidden truth.

The room has filled up with more people, those who belong there and those who do not, and an Israeli cosmetician deftly mops beads of sweat from the burning faces of the son and his parents, and from the forehead of the extra, though she has not uttered a word. Elazar skillfully insinuates his way to Noga, whispering the encouraging news that because working as an extra in a documentary, made by amateurs to boot, is doubly chaotic, he has asked for and received payment from the producer, for who knows what will happen two hours from now — maybe the original woman will show up and Noga will have to withdraw. And he discreetly slides an envelope into her purse.

This is an independent film produced by the American psychology students, and because they lack film experience, they are assisted by students from the arts department at their university, together forming a sizable group whose work on a film biography of a man of science has included a comprehensive tour of Israel. So far, the filming and sound recording have gone well, but now, in the hero’s childhood home, in the final confrontation with his parents, there is a sense that the project is tangled up in slippery truth. It will take patience to discover why intelligent and cultured parents had their beloved son, an only child, locked up in a ward for a long time, and why, so many years later, after the son has become a renowned psychiatrist, he not only bears his parents no grudge, but praises them.

This is a quandary that needs no father’s tears or mother’s anger, or even the explanations of a son who came from overseas, but simply a time-out to change the approach and perhaps the location, alter the angle of the camera and the position of the lights, and mostly to rephrase the questions and improve communication. To this end, the professor’s wife now enters the room, an attractive American, taller than her husband, with their young son, also taller than his father. With endearing shyness they approach the Israeli grandparents, who are hard to talk to but must be loved and respected. And following the American daughter-in-law, who affectionately hugs her husband’s parents, the grandson hugs and even kisses them. Then students, too, converge on the elderly couple, squeezing their hands and patting their shoulders.

Must the extra do the same? For the moment she does not move, sensing a new lethargy seeping into her bones. Her eyes close, and in her memory flows the water that washes clean the naked, beautiful little boy, who looks at her with wonder, not hostility.

A woman about her age, plump but pretty, enters and exchanges whispers with the professor. He is excited to see her, but the two do not embrace. Then the woman grows aware of the extra staring at her, and approaches Noga, leans over her armchair and quietly introduces herself.

“Have you guessed? I am the woman you are impersonating. My presence is important to this project, but my husband absolutely refuses to have me filmed, even if it’s an amateurish student production that’ll be screened on maybe two campuses. Look out at the garden, and by the tree you’ll see my husband watching me from afar, making sure I don’t get tempted.”

“What’s he afraid of?”

“That I’ll be identified as the beautiful young girl who forty years ago was the love object of a special, unusually gifted young man — a crazy love that was so strong, in the end it poisoned her.”

“Poisoned? In what way?”

“Literally. We were inseparable, together day and night, and then, out of a paranoid fear that I was about to leave him, he began poisoning my food. It was a poison he concocted himself, his own recipe. Can you imagine? It was life-threatening and I almost died, because it took forever to diagnose what was happening to me, to realize that my lover was truly dangerous. Good thing his parents, who look so exhausted now, quickly rose to the occasion. They didn’t cover up what he did, but had him locked up in a mental institution for a good long time, almost a year, until his madness had passed, and by having him committed they saved him from the police, and he was exempt from army service, and after he completed his matriculation exams he went to study in the United States, and succeeded in having a brilliant career.”

The extra asks an odd question: “The hospitalization was in Jerusalem?”

“Why? Are you from here?”

“In theory.”

“Then you might know it was close, on Disraeli Street, the next one over. At the bottom of the street, a hospital specializing in teenage insanity, and since it was nearby, and his parents could supervise his care, they were in no hurry to have him discharged. There he was introduced to the suffering of children and young people, and probably began to develop the original ideas on which he eventually built his career.”

“And you’re familiar with his work?”

“A bit, from a distance. For all these years, he never lost touch with me, sent me his books and articles. But it would be an overstatement to say I understand them.”

“And you have children?”

“Four. And giving birth ruined my looks.”

“You exaggerate,” Noga says. “Looking at you closely, it’s easy to see how beautiful you must have been, and to understand why Granot was afraid you would leave him. I’m sorry I can’t simulate even a little of that beauty in this film.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Tell me, are you an extra as a profession or a hobby?”

“Neither. I’m an accidental extra. By profession I am a harpist, but I perform in Europe, not in Israel, and I came for a short visit to help my mother decide where to live out her old age, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.”

“And what did she decide?”

“She hasn’t yet decided.”

“And where did you leave your children?”

“I don’t have children. I didn’t want children.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I didn’t want them to ruin my minimal beauty,” says Noga with a laugh.

The woman stiffens. Was that a malicious remark, or did it just slip out? Crushed, she stares at the extra as if she too wanted to poison her. Without another word she hurries away, past the production crew trying to persuade the parents to move from the sofa to the cozier bedroom, and past the love of her youth, who tried to poison her and now tries to block her path, but she simply touches his gray curls with maternal affection and goes outside to join her husband in the garden.

And now what? Is my role finished too? the extra asks herself, as the living room empties out and the scene switches to an inside room, to achieve a more intimate and revealing conversation. The tripods for the camera and mixer are folded up, and the monitor and lights and fans disconnected, and within minutes she is alone in the living room of a strange house.

Good thing they paid me, she says to herself, so I can disappear without a problem. She walks out of the stone house into the long, narrow street, now emptied of people. Even Elazar, who promised to drive her back, has vanished. Would he break his promise? She decides on second thought to say goodbye to the film crew, goes back inside, passes through the empty living room and heads into the kitchen, which is stocked with plastic plates and cups supplied by the production. She opens the refrigerator, inspects its contents, pours milk into a plastic cup and drinks.

From there she walks down a dark, narrow hallway lined with old books in unfamiliar languages, and enters the bathroom, whose small window is open to the garden. The husband and wife have left, and beside the tree sit the American woman and her son, chatting with one of the students. There is a bookshelf in the bathroom too, crammed with worn-out books that refuse to find their final repose in the trash bin.

Then, to her surprise, she notices that the bathtub is an identical twin of the bathtub in her childhood apartment. The same size, the same curvature, the same rusted iron feet of a bird of prey. These were two Jerusalem homes constructed before the founding of the State of Israel, Jews living in her building, and in this one, at the time, lived Arabs, but the bathtub is the same bathtub, by the same craftsman, Jew or Arab, blessed with unusual imagination.

A plethora of toothbrushes are arrayed by the sink, as if each tooth demanded a brush of its own. She feels the weight of fatigue, opens the faucet and splashes water on her face, and with the water still blurring her vision, she goes to find the filmmakers and say her goodbyes.

Voices lead her into the bedroom, where the psychology students, with the help of the film students, have constructed a more intimate scene. They have seated the elderly parents, wearing bathrobes, on the bed, with their son the professor between them. They have removed his suit but left his bow tie on, wrapping him too in an old robe. And so, with the camera pointed at them, they analyze the strange past in Hebrew.

The extra stands in the doorway and knows that the intimacy and candor may be impaired by her presence. As she plans her exit, a hand strokes the back of her neck.

“I thought you’d forgotten,” she scolds the former police commander.

“I didn’t forget you, nor will I. My daughter called, asked me to get m-m-medicine for my grandson, and I didn’t think they’d let you go so soon.”

“It turned out that way.”

“So you got a really good deal.”

“And as the agent, you deserve not just soup but a whole meal. By the way, how many grandchildren do you have?”

“One, for now.”

“How old?”

“Around the same age as your tz-tz-tzaddik.”

He takes her home to Rashi Street and wishes her a good time at Masada. If the tickets weren’t so expensive, he’d go down to the Dead Sea too.

Six voicemails from Honi await her, each more agitated and anxious than the last, all with the same message: the bus taking the extras to the opera in the desert will be leaving three hours earlier than planned.

“What were you doing wandering around at night?” he hisses when she calls him back.

“I was an extra in a documentary.”

“There is no such thing.”

“You’d be surprised.”

But he’s not prepared to be surprised. He will demand proof in two days, on the second evening of Carmen, since he has tickets.

“So if you can, Honi, bring me some literature about Martin Buber.”

“Martin Buber faded long ago into the mists of memory.”

“So retrieve him from the mists of the Internet.”