The Extra

Forty-Five

AFTER NIGHTS OF WANDERING among beds, the sleep she’d hoped for on the flight to Amsterdam was unsettled and spotty, and in the morning, on the bus from the airport, her eyes were fixed on the great green fields and the plentiful water, as if she were visiting the Netherlands for the first time.

Three months ago, the landlord’s son helped her carry the two suitcases down the narrow, winding stairs, but today she does without his help, to avoid a long conversation with the landlady, who will be curious to know the outcome of her mother’s experiment with assisted living.

Her attic apartment consists of two rooms, small but comfortable. And since she has lived there for quite a while, it’s easy to spot any changes that took place in her absence. The three houseplants stand in place and have been tended properly, and the kitchenette is sparkling clean. But there’s a whiff of suspicion that the landlord’s son, or possibly her friend the first flutist, took advantage of her absence and came to sleep, alone or otherwise, in her bed.

So she rips off the sheets, shoves them in the washing machine and, before putting on new ones, lies down on the bare mattress and tries, eyes closed, to make orderly sense of her memory of Israel. But the passion for her instrument propels her instead to the musicians’ café by the concert hall, where after a couple of double espressos her mind is fixed on the waltz in the second movement of Berlioz’s Fantastique.

As it turns out, it is not this piece that awaits her, but another one, richer and more complex. This is the news about to be delivered by Herman Kroon, the orchestra’s general manager, who is happy that “our Venus” has returned, and clenches between his teeth, unlighted, the pipe Noga bought for him in the Old City, trying to get a taste of the Holy Land. Before telling the musician about the program change, he is curious to know what the elderly mother has decided, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Where is it better to live out her old age?

“Jerusalem,” the harpist says quietly. “My mother returned to her old apartment, and I knew that would happen.”

The man’s face brightens. He is a Flemish bachelor of seventy-five, tall and nattily dressed, who after his retirement from the cultural affairs department of the city of Antwerp was chosen as administrative director of the Arnhem orchestra. When his tenure in Holland is over, he too will likely return to his old apartment in the gray Belgian port, and is thus encouraged by the decision of a distant, unfamiliar widow of similar age.

Noga asks about the response to the Mozart double concerto that was stolen from her.

“People still love Mozart,” says Herman with an evasive smile. “Mozart is easy for them.”

“I wasn’t asking about Mozart,” she says sharply, “but about reactions to the performance.”

Herman remains evasive. “Your loyal friend Manfred is a virtuoso, and so Christine, whom I brought in from Antwerp, did the best she could not to get in his way. Don’t be angry with her. She is surely not to blame.”

“Not her,” whispers Noga, deciding to leave it at that.

Only now is she struck by the silence around her.

“Where is everybody?”

“The orchestra is playing tonight in Hamburg. They’ll be back tomorrow, and rehearsals begin in three days’ time.”

“And we’ll start with the Berlioz?”

“No, Noga, here’s good news for you. The Fantastique has been canceled.”

“Canceled?”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s what you call good news for me, Herman? Why was it canceled?”

“Because we’ve played it so many times. Also, we don’t have the budget to double the timpani again and add three more contrabasses and bring all the noisy toys the Frenchman required to describe the torments of his love.”

“And what’s instead?”

“Instead of Berlioz we chose another French piece, something mature and subtle, and this is the news that will please you personally. Instead of the little waltz for harp in the second movement of the Fantastique, you and Christine will have the full dialogue between the wind and waves in Debussy’s La Mer.

“La Mer!” she rejoices. “Oh, Herman, you’re so right, this is wonderful news, consolation for the three months I didn’t play with you. The harp is almost the main player.”

“The two harps.”

“Of course. Both of them.”

He admires the pretty musician’s dimpled cheeks as she glows with happiness. Taking a wad of tobacco from a box on his desk, he tamps it into the twisting pipe from Jerusalem, but has difficulty lighting it.

“This is a young and modest pipe,” he pronounces, taking up his old pipe, which readily responds. “But I won’t give up on it.”

“Where did you get the idea to replace the Berlioz with Debussy?”

“You won’t believe it — from very far away, the management of the Kyoto orchestra. While you were in Israel we got an unexpected offer from our embassy in Japan for an exchange of orchestras with Kyoto, and when we mentioned Berlioz, we sensed a polite hesitation, because the Fantastique had been in their repertoire the previous year, so they came up with an original notion, expressed in an inspired fashion. Here, listen to what they wrote us: ‘You, the Dutch, have wrestled with the sea and succeeded in taming it and even conquering it to some extent, whereas for us Japanese the sea brings destruction and death. Therefore kindly perform Debussy’s La Mer for us not only as musicians but as experienced conquerors of the sea, and maybe through your performance we too can learn how to contend with the sea that surrounds us.’ Strange, no?”

“Strange and profound.”

“Yes, well, Debussy’s Impressionism was inspired in part by Japanese art, and on the cover of the original score of La Mer from 1905 was a huge wave, a tsunami, by the Japanese printmaker Hokusai.”

“I didn’t know that, haven’t seen it. When’s the picture from?”

“Hokusai lived from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. There were devastating tsunamis then too, it would seem.”

“Wonderful,” says the harpist, “wonderful. La Mer is a piece that will lift my soul. When do we leave?”

“In ten days’ time. Dennis returns tomorrow from America, and will rehearse the orchestra and conduct the performances. And so, our Venus, your vacation is over.”

“It was hardly a vacation, but if you insist, you can call it one.”

“I won’t insist if you tell me exactly what happened,” says Herman solicitously. “But vacation or not, now it’s back to work. First of all the music library, to organize the scores for the various instruments, and at the same time check on Debussy’s Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane.”

“The Sacred and Profane Dances for harp and strings!” she shouts. “Herman, I am beside myself, I’m so happy. You mean I can be a soloist in Japan?”

“For now these are ideas — they still need to be discussed. But if you were upset about the Mozart you missed, here are two Debussys to console you.”

Herman reaches for the Jerusalem pipe.

In high spirits, she hurries to the library and finds the score of La Mer: a pocket-size version with small print. She skims rapidly through the three movements: “From Dawn to Midday on the Sea” to “Play of the Waves” to “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” and happily confirms that both parts for harp are rich and varied, sometimes in unison, sometimes in conversation. She rushes back to the orchestra’s main office and gets the key to the basement storeroom. The heavy instruments in storage — the bass drum, xylophone, two contrabasses and an enormous tuba — cast shadows in the sparingly lighted room. Her harp had made the trip to Germany, but the second harp, the old one, stands cloaked in its pinkish case. With great care she uncovers it and begins tuning the strings. It’s not easy to tune the elderly harp, whose presence is needed in but a few compositions alongside the first harp, but she doesn’t give up until all forty-seven strings are proven ready.

This harp, built in the nineteenth century, was a gift to the orchestra by a provincial gentleman who thought he was donating an antique of great value, which was not the case. Despite its regal frame, painted several times over in reddish gold, the wood is quite ordinary, and worms that feasted on it over the years have left little holes that sometimes muffle its tone. But now she holds it close to her heart and for a full hour warms up her fingers with fast and slow glissandi, also improvising her own little melodies. Only after she is warmed up and her yearning has been satisfied, her thoughts turn to her mother, alone in the Jerusalem apartment. Will the new “wealth” she acquired in her imagination help her acclimate without regret to the solitude she chose?

Noga exits the basement and walks out to the street as night slowly falls in the Netherlands. A fine European rain sweetens the air. She goes back to the musicians’ café, where the owners greet her fondly. Her sojourn in Israel to assist an elderly mother has raised her stock in the eyes of the Dutch; they all have parents or relatives whose dilemmas of old age will involve them, or already do.

“She returned to her old apartment in Jerusalem,” Noga announces triumphantly.

Only natural, declare the restaurant owners, and a longtime waiter offers his approval: “Hard to give up Jerusalem.”

Noga corrects him: “It’s easy to give up Jerusalem, but Tel Aviv is too expensive.”

While she enjoys some of her favorite foods, she entertains the woman proprietor, who has sat down beside her, with tales of her adventures as an extra.

“And you didn’t play for three months?”

“Only once, for just a few minutes — in the desert, by a historic mountain covered with ruins.”

That night she phones Jerusalem, but there is no answer. She calls Honi to ask about their mother. He knows nothing, hasn’t called her since they parted the night before. “If she insists on Jerusalem, she should enjoy it however she likes,” he snaps. “You and I have done our part.”

The next day she works for hours at the music library, organizing all the parts in the piece. She makes sure no instrument is left out, carefully marks the cues and phrases for each one. At twilight she returns to the orchestra’s office, carrying in her arms a sizable bundle of scores, and sees the weary musicians get off the bus that has brought them home from Germany and help each other unload instruments from the truck that followed. She watches from afar as her harp is slowly wheeled to the storeroom, but does not yet approach it. Everyone is glad she is back. The aged flutist overflows with affection and calls over a tall, pale woman with hard eyes and a bitter smile. This is Christine, her understudy. Belgian, from Antwerp, French by tongue and temperament, awkward in English and Dutch.

“Your harp, it has a strong sound,” she informs the Israeli. “I tried to play it gently.”

“Thank you,” says Noga, extending her hand to the woman, whose belly, under a light pastel sweater, signals early pregnancy.

“And what is happening with your mother?” asks the harpist who took her place in the Mozart.

“Yes, what did she decide?” chimes Manfred.

Other musicians, despite their fatigue and eagerness to get home, want to know what an old mother in faraway Jerusalem has decided.

These Dutch people have no other worries, Noga thinks, chuckling to herself. Their wars ended seventy years ago, and they glow with self-satisfaction. They knew when to give up their colonies in Southeast Asia and have been spared the new wave of terrorism. The euro is stable, their economy is strong, and unemployment is low — so all they have left to worry about is my mother.

“She decided to stay in Jerusalem,” she tells the musicians gathered around her, “which I expected all along.”

In the evening there is still no answer in Jerusalem, and the daughter leaves a voicemail message: “Where’s the new heiress?” She immediately phones her brother, who spoke with the mother in the afternoon, and reports that now she’s complaining that because of the experiment they imposed on her, she barely saw her daughter in those three months. From now on, will she have to meet her only in films?

Her mother calls that night. Yes, she’s been spending time in town, with friends in cafés, going to movies, but the Uriah story has stayed with her. “Your visit, Nogaleh, still hovers over me like a dream. You were in Israel for three months and I barely saw you. I did learn from you to wander at night from bed to bed, but my sleep is hardly sound.

Noga tells her about the change in repertoire, the trip to Japan and about The Sea of Debussy, which in French sounds identical to la mère, the mother. “So in Japan,” she consoles her mother, “I’ll be playing you on my harp.”

“At least that,” sighs the mother, ending the conversation.