The Extra

Four

THE PREVIOUS DAY, BEFORE DAWN, Noga had waited for her ride at the intersection of Yeshayahu Street and the Street of the Prophets. Ultra-Orthodox men from Geulah and Kerem Avraham strode silently toward the center of town, taking care not to come near the lone woman. But across the street, beside what was once the Edison movie theater, a large figure sat immobile at a bus stop, the face concealed by a hat. Was it a living person? Noga suddenly trembled, for her father’s final slumber of half a year ago still weighed on her. Hesitantly, fearfully, she crossed the street, and despite the likelihood that this was merely a huge haredi who had stopped to rest, she dared to reach out and nudge the hat to look directly into the reddened blue eyes of an elderly extra waiting for the same ride.

This man is a former magistrates’ court judge, now a pensioner, and because of his height and girth he is in great demand as an extra. For many years he sat passively on the judicial bench, and is delighted to spice his later years with new and unusual roles throughout Israel. Despite his considerable experience as an extra, he has no idea where and for what role he has been summoned today. The producers, it turns out, are reluctant to reveal the destinations to the extras in advance, for fear they will back out at the last minute. For example, not everyone is fond of performing in commercials. People are pleased to take part, even in a small and marginal way, in a fictional story, but shy away from serving as meaningless extras in a quickie commercial, sometimes of a dubious nature and unworthy of the participants.

“And you, your honor,” Noga gently asks the older extra, “are you also averse to commercials?”

It turns out that the retired judge is not afraid to appear in commercials that advertise unreliable products or subjects. His son and daughter are embarrassed, it’s true, but his grandchildren are excited to see him on the television screen. “I have no enemies to ridicule me,” he jokes. “As a judge I preferred to impose fines rather than send people to jail.”

A yellow minibus pulls up, with one male passenger, about sixty years old and swarthy, who apparently recognizes her, for after the judge and Noga climb aboard, he hurries to sit next to her, and in a friendly tone mixed with a slight stutter, says, “G-good that you returned from the d-dead.”

“From the dead?”

“I mean, from the m-murdered,” he clarifies, and introduces himself as one of the extras from that night a week ago when the refugees landed on the coast.

“Really,” she says, surprised, “you were also in the old boat? So why don’t I recognize you? We sailed and landed three times.”

“No, I wasn’t in the boat with the refugees. They had me up on the hill with the p-police who shot at you. It could very well be”—he laughs with embarrassment, his stutter more pronounced—“that it was m-m-me who killed you three times, even though I felt s-sorry for you.”

“Why sorry?”

“Because in spite of the darkness and the rags they gave you to wear, you looked sweet and interesting even from a distance, and I hoped that the director would let you climb up so we could k-kill you at short range.”

“Ah, no,” she sighs with a smile, “the director didn’t have much patience for me, and every time we came back for a landing, he killed me off quickly, told me to lie still, on my belly and then on my back, so the camera could document your cruelty.”

Noga studies the extra sympathetically as he bursts into a hearty laugh. His face is narrow, sharply lined, but his gaze is soft, kindly. His childlike stutter is intermittent and unpredictable. For a moment she considers telling him that she actually enjoyed the long moments of playing dead. The spring skies shone with stars, and the sand retained the warmth of the sun. The tiny shells that pricked her face reminded her of the beach at Tel Aviv, where she and her former husband used to stroll at night.

“What did you do after you killed all of us?” Noga asks.

“We quickly changed clothes and became farmers who sh-sheltered the heroine.”

“Heroine? There was a heroine among us?”

“Of course. She was with you in the boat, a refugee whom the script spared from death and allowed to escape to a village. They didn’t tell you what the story was? Or at least the scene on the beach?”

“Maybe they did, but apparently I didn’t pick it up,” she apologizes. “That was the first time in my life I was an extra, and it was strange for me to surrender to other people’s imagination.”

“If s-so”—his stutter gets stronger—“it’s no s-s-surprise they decided to k-kill you off e-early on.”

“Why?”

“Because apparently you, as an extra I mean, weren’t a natural, and probably stared at the camera. But how did you get to us, anyway? What d-do you d-do in life? You’re not from Jerusalem?”

Though the questions are friendly, she is not quick to reply, and only after a long silence she says, “Why don’t you introduce yourself first?”

“With pleasure,” says the man. “I am such a veteran extra that they don’t hire me much anymore, because viewers will recognize me from other movies. For years I was a police c-commander, but when my little stutter, which you probably noticed, got worse, I took early retirement, and now I can make a living from my p-passions. But today, not to worry, there won’t be any shooting or deaths. Today we will sit quietly as members of a j-j-jury and listen to a trial, until one of us announces the verdict.”

“A jury?” interjects the judge, who had listened to the conversation from his seat in front of them. “Are you sure, Elazar? Here in Israel we don’t have juries.”

“True, but maybe the scene is about someplace else. These days in Israel they also sh-shoot foreign films, and anyway, sometimes there are dreamlike scenes, like in Bergman or Fellini, so why not a jury?”

The minibus picked up speed on the downhill highway from Jerusalem, but soon exited at the suburb of Mevaseret Zion. There, waiting at the bus stop, were ten or so men and women of various ages.

“Look,” said Elazar, “you can count. Including us, it’s twelve members of the jury plus one as a backup, in case somebody gets tired or quits. But why don’t you want to tell me how you ended up with us? Is it a secret, or just complicated?”

“No secret,” the harpist says with a smile, “just a little complicated.”