The Retrospective

Five. Confession

NO DOUBT, thinks Moses, sticking the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket, this was a far-reaching retrospective, and if the Spaniards drew pleasure from the vertigo they caused me, I earned my prize. He watches Doña Elvira, who has chosen to lean not on her son the monk, whose robe billows mischievously down the marble stairs, but on the arm of the Israeli actress, who makes sure the fragile Spanish lady does not trip on the hem of her long dress.

After her feet land safely on the rain-spangled pavement, the legendary actress does not let go of the helpful womanly arm but asks Ruth to come with her to an antique store in the Old Town. Don’t worry about my mother, Manuel assures Moses, who briefly wondered if he too should not escort the prize giver to the Old Town. Everywhere in Spain people know who she is and attend to her. And he invites Moses to accompany him to the library of the cathedral to browse through one collection or another of the many treasures amassed over the centuries.

Moses politely declines the invitation. The “plenty of time” promised him on the first night was an overstatement, but nonetheless, because of his age and habits, he would prefer to take a quick nap before the long flight ahead. But he promises the Dominican that this is not a final farewell to St. James. He intends to come back, perhaps as the guest of a more balanced retrospective that does not ignore the best of his works. Or he might come on a private visit and bring his eldest grandson. In short, he jokes, he will not rush to relocate to the World to Come before returning for another look at the mighty cathedral.

At the reception desk he is reminded that checkout time has passed and he needs to vacate his room. But when he gets to the room he sees that departure has begun without him. Two African chambermaids are inside, wielding a noisy vacuum cleaner, stripping the bed, preparing to scour the bathroom. When they see him, they freeze in place, then return to work as if a light breeze had blown through the room and not an actual guest whose belongings and those of his companion are strewn everywhere. Moses infers that his presence will not prompt them to leave, so firm is the decree to ready the room for the next incumbent. He points to the door and indicates with three motions of his outstretched hands how much time he will need to get organized — a mere thirty minutes. But they brazenly reject his request, agreeing to one hand only. Five minutes, not more. He holds firm — thirty minutes, not a minute less. But the two, who seem amused by the sign language they’ve improvised with the old man, bargain as if every minute were made of gold. At the end they settle on twenty, and the two women entwine their twenty dark fingers together, to avoid misunderstanding.

“Yalla, bye,” he says as he hurries them out, a fine fusion of East and West, presumably intelligible to anyone anywhere. The two women leave, laughing, taking the sheets and towels with them, as well as the soaps and lotions, lest there remain in the room any temptations to slow down his exit.

He looks sadly at the naked mattress, stained with ancient stigmata of other men, and the room filled with cleaning materials, the vacuum cleaner hose uncoiled like a snake — an afternoon nap a lost cause. The splendid harmony of the attic, which impressed him so on the first night, is shattered. He has to start packing. First he puts his own clothes and other belongings in his suitcase, and then, absent his companion, he takes charge and carefully folds the clothes she wore during the retrospective, plus items, more numerous, that she didn’t. He carefully wraps up her boots and shoes, making sure to isolate in a plastic bag everything destined for the laundry. He takes special care with cosmetics and perfumes and small makeup implements. He does not resist the temptation to ferret through the side pocket of her suitcase, in case the results of her blood test have wandered there. But there is nothing medical in the pocket, only maps of European cities and brochures from hotels, along with My Glorious Brothers, an old historical novel Ruth intends to adapt as a Hanukkah play for her drama class. Once the two suitcases are by the door, he looks under the bed, not in vain, as her slippers have migrated into the darkness.

Had he been more focused and assertive in his desire, he reflects ruefully, he could have taken with him a sweet memory of this room, but the hidden hand of Trigano that had raised old works from the dead had surprised and confused him to such a degree that on the final night, it felt as if the former screenwriter were watching him as he slept. In any case, he has decided this is the last time he will bring Ruth to a retrospective. If she wants to ignore her illness and destroy herself, let her. He is not the man who can stop her.

His hearing aids detect faint tapping at the door, but he ignores it, gets up for a final look at Caritas Romana, now that he has come to understand the story of the bold and beneficent daughter who breastfeeds a father dying of hunger.

There is persistent knocking at the door, but the agreed-upon twenty minutes have not elapsed. It is hard for him to part from what might have been but was not. And in the sunlight generously pouring through the window he approaches the reproduction and interprets small details he had not noticed before — the calm and contented facial expression of the nursing daughter, whom the Dutch painter had chosen to depict not as a frightened and bashful girl or a wild and defiant young woman but as a mature individual whose serene demeanor signifies confidence in her bold act of grace, perhaps because the infant that had endowed her with milk may not be her first but one of many she has brought into the world, and she knows from experience that she is not depriving or neglecting it if she also feeds its unfortunate grandfather.

But is the grandfather really unfortunate? Apart from the baldness at the center of his head — which the daughter’s steady hand maneuvers, bringing it near or distancing it, so his lips will not demand more than their due — he really does seem like a sturdy man in his prime. Although his hands are tied uncomfortably behind him, his naked back is straight and strong. No, this is not a pathetic person or an innocent victim, Moses decides, but a suspicious old character, convicted by law and serving his sentence, and if, after the gift of nursing, his jailers let him go, he will likely do further harm in the world.

The knocking on the door gets louder. The twenty minutes have passed, and what was agreed in sign language does obligate him. He puts on his coat, takes the walking stick, and opens the door. “Yalla, bye.” The African women burst into laughter, having brought as reinforcements two gray-haired bellhops. One loads the suitcases on a small cart and heads for the elevator, the other walks over to Roman Charity, takes it down from the wall, and hangs in its place a picture of pears and dark grapes.

Moses observes the switch uneasily and hurries after his suitcases. At the reception desk he asks if he has any outstanding bill and is told no, the city council is taking care of all expenses, whatever they may be. He then decides to exchange his prize check for cash so that in Israel he won’t need to share it with the bank and the state. To his pleasant surprise, in this city of believers, honor is instantly given to a check signed by the mayor, and it is cashed into notes of many colors.

“When my lady companion arrives,” he cheerfully tells the desk clerk, “please tell her that our room is vacant and her bag packed, and that she is to wait for me here.”

HE GOES OUT into the square, walks amid its chains and palaces, and finds the plaza flooded with new groups of tourists gathered around tour guides who point with sticks at the cathedral, investing every statue, tower, and alcove with significance. Moses checks his watch to see if there is time to revisit the cathedral, as he will almost certainly never have occasion to come back.

He ascends the steps and finds the great church on the verge of religious ecstasy, with the scent of incense merging with stately organ chords to announce the mass. Pilgrims flow into the pews, some kneeling, crossing themselves, and murmuring, others staring at the ornate altar and waiting for someone to navigate their faith. The confessionals on both sides of the sanctuary are occupied, and near them wait men and women who surely believe that confession in such a historic place upgrades their piety. Too bad, thinks Moses, I didn’t act on Pilar’s suggestion to try a brief confession with the director of the archive. When will I ever get another chance?

He asks someone who looks like an official beadle of the church to lead him to the library, where he finds Manuel de Viola standing at a lectern and leafing through a hefty volume.

“They evicted me from the hotel,” he says to the monk, who is delighted to see him. “So I came to bid farewell to the cathedral, since at my age, who knows if I’ll be able to come back. But why the crowds? Have I stumbled into a special holiday?”

Manuel knows of no holiday that Moses has stumbled into and thinks it is mere coincidence that several organized tour groups have arrived all at once and are attempting to perform in a few hectic hours the entire pilgrimage ritual that in the past took weeks and months. But it’s quiet here in the library, and he can show the Israeli director something of the priceless collection.

The guest is disinclined to spend the minutes he normally spends napping immersed in antique drawings. He would not, however, object to fulfilling a wish that arises every time he visits a church — to be closeted just once in a real confession booth and confess whatever comes to mind to an unseen authority. And would not the confessing of a non-Christian person, a disbeliever in divine providence, be an interesting experience, not only for the giver of the confession but for the receiver as well?

“You wish to confess?” The Dominican’s eyes light up.

“To try it, to get a taste of this ancient and venerable practice. In churches in Israel it’s hard to find a priest who is not an Arab, or at least a supporter of Arabs, and therefore the confession of an Israeli Jew is likely to get tangled in a political debate that would undercut its simple humanity.” As an artist, Moses has been wary of trying psychotherapy, out of concern that it would burrow too far into his meager unconscious and extract childhood lies and secrets that even in old age spur him on and nourish his creative work. For the psyche is a nest of vipers: you pull out one snake, and its friends are dragged along with it. But a short confession, offered by chance in a foreign country before boarding an airplane, might restore his soul.

“A fine wish for you, but hard to fulfill. If my brother were here, he would be happy to be your confessor.”

“Then why not you, Manuel? You strike me as trustworthy and attentive, and besides, there’s little chance we’ll ever meet again. So let’s do a confession in Hebrew, as in the early days of Christianity, and I’ll concentrate on my professional sins so as not to interfere with our friendship.”

“Ah, my friend,” Manuel says with a clap of his hands, “I am a monk, not a priest, and I cannot grant absolution to anyone.”

“Absolution?” Moses is taken by surprise. “I don’t need absolution, nor do I believe in absolution that does not follow an act of atonement — which no one else can perform in my place.”

“If you want just confession”—Manuel smiles—“let’s sit down at the table, and please, speak slowly.”

“No, no, not here,” objects Moses, “what I want is a confession in a real booth, tiny and dark, with a curtain and grille, opposite a hidden face that enables total freedom. But now, as I walked through the church, I saw that the booths were full and the lines were long.”

Manuel promises to try to find a suitable confessional on the lower floor, for everyone who comes to Santiago is something of a pilgrim, and it would be a shame if Moses returned to his homeland with an empty soul.

Manuel goes out to look, and Moses regrets embroiling such an amiable fellow in his scheme, a man of goodwill, if a tad disorganized. The flight to Barcelona is four hours from now, and the airport is not far away, but because the bags are ticketed to Israel, they are suspect by definition and must be checked well in advance. Meanwhile, Ruth will return to the hotel and be worried by his absence, so he decides to wait for only ten minutes, and if Manuel has not returned, he will leave him a note of apology next to the open book.

It is a volume in Latin, printed in the early nineteenth century. Its text is minimal and illustrations plentiful, some in bright colors and others in black-and-white. Portraits of priests and bishops and cardinals in decorative vestments, each according to his role and rank — apparently clergymen who served in the cathedral, which appears in faint outline in the background of each picture. Inserted at times among the men of the cloth is a man of temporal power — a patron or prince, or a tall gaunt knight wearing a helmet and sword with a small goatee, perhaps a distant relative of Don Quixote. And now and then, a band of armed soldiers, clad in billowy riding pants, preceded by a handsome young man tooting a hunting horn. Less often, he happens upon a well-fed noblewoman reclining in the parlor of her home, or a thin, sad young woman sitting on a horse, and on the next page a portrait of just the horse, and beside it a tall dog, gazing purposefully into the distance. Moses turns the pages drowsily, looks again at his watch. The desire to sit in the confession booth seems childish and unnecessary. Really, why bother with reality? In his next film, he can stick a confession scene in the script and tell the set designer to reproduce a booth, with a curtain and grille, so that during production, between takes, the director can enter it at will and confess to someone he deems worthy.

The sound of rapid footsteps. The door opens and the radiant face of the monk appears. A confessional has been located on the lower floor, actually the personal booth of the local bishop, intended for visiting priests and monks who wish to confess to him. Manuel has received permission to admit the foreign confessant, but so as not to provoke a theological controversy, he has not disclosed his non-Christian identity, though he does not fear its exposure, since his life’s mission is to be a subversive monk: this is the new word he uses to guide his actions. In Madrid he received a special dispensation to assist immigrants and refugees of dubious identity and illegal foreign workers, among them even pagans. His heart is gladdened by the mere possibility of taking confession in Hebrew from a Jew who denies the existence of any God, so he has now decided, on his own authority, to violate another principle: though he is not a priest but just a monk, he is prepared to grant absolution, and he announces this so Moses will feel free to confess with complete openness.

Moses laughs. He doesn’t need absolution.

And why not? It will be given even if not urgently needed now. Moses can save it for the afterlife. Dominican absolution in a bishop’s booth in the historic cathedral may come in handy in the World to Come, should he discover that it exists.

They descend more stairs, passing the tomb of Saint James, where pilgrims crowd for a touch of the sacred stone, and continue through a maze of hallways to a quiet chapel with a dark booth in the corner. But Manuel’s subversion is not complete. Because he is unwilling to have the aged confessant kneel before him, he turns the tables — he opens the booth, moves aside the red leather curtain, and gently seats Moses on the chair of the priest, while he kneels to hear the confession from behind the lattice.

TO CONFESS FOR the first time in his life in the depths of a magnificent cathedral just prior to a flight back to Israel is very naughty, downright anarchic. What’s not yet clear is what to confess to.

He decides on a brief, symbolic confession, a training confession, so that if he ever wants to stage such a scene in a movie, say a detective flick or a comedy, he can boast to the actors that he’s directing from personal experience.

The booth in the bishop’s chapel is unlike the booths Moses has seen in churches. This one is plush, almost luxurious. The curtain is made of leather and not cloth, and the inside walls are also upholstered in leather, as in a recording studio, to muffle the voices as much as possible. On the seat lies a plump leather pillow, and, remarkably enough, the screen separating the confessor and confessant is not metal but is also made of leather, punched through with holes, so it seems as if myriad eyes are peering from the other side. The overbearing scent of the leather, redolent of the sweat and tears of generations of sinners, makes Moses a bit nauseated, as if he were trapped inside a hippopotamus. But Manuel’s voice is soft and courteous.

“Here I am listening to you, Moses, you may say whatever comes to mind.”

“Thank you, Manuel. My confession will be short and to the point. Also, I don’t want to keep you too long in that uncomfortable position.”

“Please don’t think about me. Think about yourself.”

“Do you remember the film screened this morning at the municipality before the ceremony?”

“A most interesting film.”

“Do you know what your mother said about it?”

“Verily, she praised it.”

“In fine words, but noncommittal, and she had strong reservations about the ending, thought it was vague and meaningless.”

The darkness of the chapel intensifies that of the confessional, and the eyes of the monk disappear intermittently from the grille, but his voice expresses regret. In recent years his mother has been disappointed by all endings of films, plays, and novels; she even rejects the final scenes of older, classic films, surely for a personal reason: her own approaching end. Moses is in the company of respected directors and screenwriters and should not take her words personally.

Moses smiles and pauses before continuing.

“But this time, Manuel, your mother is right. This morning, having seen the film for the first time in many years, I understood the weakness of the final scene — it does not relieve any of the tensions that have built up.”

“If so,” says the voice behind the screen, with relief, “you are not angry with my mother?”

“Rather than getting angry over justifiable criticism, a serious artist should be angry with himself.”

“But in those days you were a young beginner, so why be angry with yourself?”

“Because the evasive ending of the film did not come from inexperience. The film had a different ending, a truer one, but I rejected it.”

“Ah…”

What am I doing in this grotesque and suffocating darkness? Moses asks himself. Maybe I should leave it at what’s been said and go back to Ruth?

Except the Dominican, yearning to grant absolution, holds on to the confession so as not to lose the confessant.

“And if you had the right ending, why did you give it up?”

“The actress was frightened, and I, instead of calming her and letting the screenwriter, her lover, convince her to play the part he wrote for her — I supported her refusal. You probably want to know what the original ending was.”

“But of course!” replies Manuel, excited.

“You remember the film: the heroine hands her baby to a social worker, who hurries off so the mother will not have time to regret her action and change her mind. And instead of aimlessly walking, lost in thought, to the beach, the heroine was to have left the clinic and wandered the streets — then, lost and guilt-stricken and exhausted, she would spot an old beggar on the street corner, approach him, toss him a few coins, and ask him to forgive her for what she had done. When she realizes the old man has no idea what she wants of him, she would suddenly throw open her coat, unbutton her blouse, take out her breast, and compel or seduce the beggar to suck the milk intended for her infant child. That was the scene I canceled.”

“Alas,” murmurs Manuel, but he regains his composure and consoles Moses, tells him not to flagellate himself. Sometimes life is more important than art.

“What makes you think I’m flagellating myself?”

“Is it not the regret over canceling that scene that makes you seek confession?”

“No, I have no regret, only a desire to understand. And in this retrospective, I’ve come to understand that I didn’t cancel the scene out of consideration for the actress but because of the opportunity to sever the connection with the one who conceived of it. I did it in order to distance myself once and for all from this strange and alien spirit that had hypnotized my work in the early years.”

“Señor Trigano…” Manuel pronounces the name.

Moses is alarmed. “You know him?”

“Only his name.”

“How?”

“My brother spoke his name.”

“And what did Juan say about him?”

“Not much…”

A long silence.

“And?”

“He depicted him as a private person trapped in his own thoughts… a unique soul, but hardened by pride.”

“What else?”

“My brother admitted to you that it was Trigano who initiated the retrospective in your honor. If, as you say, he is now an alien spirit for you, why do you feel guilty about severing your partnership with him?”

“And why,” Moses says half seriously, “is it necessary to talk about guilt in every confession?”

“There always needs to be a little guilt,” replies the monk apologetically, “a minor sin, a tiny error… because if not, why have absolution?”

“But I told you, I have no need for absolution. Your brother Juan has a keen eye for people. If I had succumbed to the ideas and fantasies of that man, I would have slid to a place of no return.”

“Slid?” The Spaniard tastes the Hebrew word.

“Slipped… sunk… descended… entangled myself in revolutionary, pretentious stories intelligible only to the cognoscenti, which would have brought me to the point of surrendering my directing to Trigano too.”

But the Dominican, troubled that his confessant shows no regret, now tries cautiously to cross the thin line between the professional and the personal, to deepen the confession.

“If you wished to distance him,” he ventures, “perhaps it was because you wished to get closer to the woman so she would be under your wing alone?”

“The opposite… the exact opposite,” Moses answers, after a brief silence. “Like everyone in my crew, I had strong feelings for her, but we all knew that she and Trigano were soul mates. So when he broke with me, I was sure he would take her with him. I wanted him to, but he punished her and me, left her to me as a character for whom I had to take responsibility.”

“A character?”

“I mean, not as a woman, but as a character.”

“As a character?” The monk strains to understand. “A figure that resembles another figure?”

“Yes, a character.”

“As a character of whom?”

“Like a character in a book, a novel, or a character in art,” fumbles the confessant, “characters you see in a stained-glass window. A character who is herself, but not only herself.”

“You mean symbolic? Who symbolizes others?”

“Not necessarily. Not always others. Also not an archetype. A real person, an individual, but one who has something else around her… a frame of sorts… a halo… an emotional aura… as in a dream. After all, Trigano also brought her to us as a character. A character from whose very existence a story flows. So when she rebelled against him, and he gave her up and left her to others, to me, he handed her over not as an actual woman but as the character of a woman.”

Deep silence from beyond the grille. Just the muffled moan of organ music drifting from above.

“Yet when he left her, he punished himself more than he punished you,” the monk suggests to his confessant.

“His art was more important to him than his loved one.”

“And she?”

“She?”

“Or you?”

“I?”

“Has she stayed with you since then as a character alone?”

“As a woman, she had friends, and still does.”

“Just friends?”

“I mean, also lovers… they come and go. She even had a son by one of them.”

“And you?” Manuel dares to step over the fence that has utterly collapsed.

“Not to be tempted by her solitude, I hurried to get married. Besides, her spirit isn’t a good fit with mine, she comes from a wilder place. But I couldn’t abandon a character who sought a place in my work.”

“Only the character?” Manuel continues to probe.

“If this is hard for you, we can switch languages…”

“No, no,” protests the monk, “you cannot imagine how the Hebrew lifts my spirit. But I ask that you help me out with another example.”

“Take, for instance, the portraits and drawings in the book you were leafing through when I came into the library. You weren’t looking only for random individuals from the past out of a desire to learn what it was like then, how it looked; you searched for characters… something abstract that would leap out and touch you, something the artist exposed in people who sat for him. Something they embody.”

“You mean their roles?”

“The role is one way the character is embodied. But it is possible to move it from role to role, from situation to situation, from film to film, period to period, family to family. And yet we can discern its unchanging essence, which goes beyond a style of acting, more than the mannerism of an actor — do you understand?”

“I am trying, Mr. Moses, but it’s not easy.”

“That’s right, it’s not easy to understand the dreamlike dimension that makes a certain person into a character. For example, the woman I was married to didn’t understand the nature of the connection that I maintained with the character the screenwriter left me with, and although during our entire time together she was confident that I never stopped loving her, she ended our marriage.”

“Even your wife didn’t understand.”

“Perhaps she did understand, but she did not want to reconcile herself to what she understood.”

“Because of the beauty of the character?”

“Her beauty? Is she still beautiful?”

“Yes, very beautiful. And you should know that the gaze of a monk, for whom the beauty of a woman is forbidden even in his thoughts, is pure and accurate. Since the separation from your wife you have been alone?”

“I am alone, but not lonely, I am surrounded by people.”

“And the character?”

Moses is pleased that his confessor feels comfortable with the concept. “The character continues to turn up in my films, but sometimes also in the films of others… by her wish and mine too. We are free people… not dependent on each other. She is her own person as am I, even when we sleep in the same bed.”

“Yes, my brother told me he put you both in one room.”

“And though he surely didn’t tell you everything he was told about me, you understand that my confession is innocent of sin, and therefore, Manuel, absolution is unnecessary.”

Manuel’s eyes vanish from the grille, and the rustling on the other side indicates that he is rising to his feet. Has Moses’ refusal to accept absolution disappointed him so much that he has decided to bring the confession to an end?

Moses glances at his watch. No, time has not stopped. Ruth is doubtless asking herself where he’s disappeared to. He reaches for the cord to get free of the booth, but the curtain fails to move. “Can you get me out of here?” he implores, and Manuel slides the curtain and opens the gate.

“Thank you, Manuel, this was an unforgettable experience,” says Moses, his head spinning.

But Manuel has turned gloomy and he neither responds nor smiles, as if he has uncovered a defect in the Israeli’s confession. He grasps Moses’ arm, and carefully, as if the director were feeble or disabled, helps him climb the spiral stairs that ascend to the nave of the church.

THE MASS IS in progress. Surrounding the high altar are seven priests in elegant vestments conducting the service in various languages before a devoutly silent throng. And because Manuel and Moses enter from behind the altar, they cannot make their way through the worshippers without disturbing the holy rite.

“What do we do?” whispers Moses. “I can’t delay much longer, Ruth is surely worried about me.”

“The character?” The word slips silently, ironically, from the lips of the monk, who turns Moses around and leads him through a maze of rooms and dark stairs to a heavy wooden door. He opens the bolt and delivers Moses into the small square where the angel stands, pointing with his sword at the Jew fleeing the cathedral.

“From here you will easily find your way back to the hotel,” says Manuel in a cool, oddly severe tone; he does not invite a farewell handshake but merely presses his palms together, then turns on his heel and disappears behind the heavy door.

I disappointed him with my inflexibility, thinks Moses. Was it so hard for me to accept his absolution with an eye to the future? And he hurries from the little square to the great plaza, which is empty now.

Waiting by the hotel is the car that will take them to the airport. The driver, a directing student at the institute who has volunteered for the job, opens the trunk so the director can confirm that the three suitcases and two pilgrim walking sticks are securely there.

“But we have another few minutes, no?” asks Moses. “Just a few, not many,” says the student.

Tranquillity has returned to the hotel lobby as people have gone off, some to rest, others to pray, and from afar he espies the ethereal figure of Doña Elvira sitting alone in a corner, bathed in the soft light of a bright winter’s day. He rushes to her but finds her sound asleep. A shriveled, motionless old lady, breathing so minimally it seems that air flows through her with no effort of her own. He checks to see whether Ruth’s bag and coat are beside her, but doesn’t find them. He goes downstairs to the rest rooms. After urinating and rinsing his face with cold water, he goes to the ladies’ room, opens the door a wee crack, whistles the first notes of a tune, their longtime signal, to indicate his presence, and waits for the response. But no whistling from within completes the melody. He stays in the doorway, and, not to be suspected of sinister intent, he whispers her name and whistles the tune to the end. When one of the booths opens to the sound of rushing waters, and a big strong cleaning woman emerges brandishing a green brush, he withdraws at once.

We have some time, the airport is not far away, he reassures himself, and he returns to Doña Elvira, who has not changed position but who now has her eyes open. She smiles and invites him to sit by her side. He is careful not to create the illusion that he has time for a real conversation, so he remains standing as he tells her about the confession taken by her son in the bishop’s private booth.

The mother is not surprised by her son’s misdeed.

“You made a mistake, Mr. Moses, by agreeing to confess to a monk who is not authorized to receive confession, and if Manuel also granted you absolution, you should know that it counts for nothing.”

“I didn’t ask for absolution,” he says with a smile, “and I don’t need it.”

But Doña Elvira continues her complaint. “Lately he has been playing around with the principles of his monastic oath and looking for needless provocations. The Dominicans will end up tossing him out of the order, and he’ll come back and live with me and be even more dependent on his mother.”

Moses is touched by the candid and endearing complaint. “But my confession to Manuel is not a provocation, for I, as you recall, am not a Christian or even a believer, just a person.”

“Not a Christian?” For a moment she seems confused, but her memory quickly recovers and locates the proper identity of the Israeli director. Yet she does not give up entirely. “Not a Christian, but why not a believer?”

“Because that’s how God made me,” declares Moses with a triumphant look and a shrug of helplessness, “and I have neither the power nor the authority to change His will.”

She laughs. “Then come sit with me,” she says. “But first get me a blanket.”

“I’ll sit for just a minute,” he says and covers her shoulders with the blanket that lies folded beside her. “We should already have left for the airport, but Ruth has disappeared.”

Doña Elvira shrugs.

“She didn’t come back with you?”

It turns out Ruth went on her own in the Old Town, to look for more presents.

“And you came back on your own? When was that?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

“But she knows that we are supposed to leave at three for the airport.”

“And what time is it now?”

“One minute to three.”

“If she knows, why should you worry?” says Doña Elvira serenely. “In this city she is safe.”

“Why should I worry?” he challenges the old lady, as if he had entrusted her with a little girl, and he rushes to the front desk to see if there is a message for him.

But no message has been received.

He leaves the hotel and, skipping down the few steps, goes out into the great plaza, then hurries across to the first alley of the Old Town and stops. What now? Where to look?

She does have her passport and plane ticket with her, and she knows the time of the flight, and he has a fleeting suspicion that she is deliberately late, that she wants to part from him here at long last, this place where Trigano’s spirit has come and gone. As though the confession he has just made has risen from the depths of the cathedral and drifted to her in the Old Town, and she knows that there will be no role for her anymore in his work.

He goes back to the hotel. “What’s going on?” the student asks. “We’re late, and there’s traffic on the road to the airport.” Moses leans on the car. “We’ll wait a little longer. My actress seems to have a hard time saying goodbye to this wonderful place.”

“If she doesn’t get back,” says the student, “we have to remember to take her suitcase out of the trunk.”

“You’re right.” He grins at the future director and points to her suitcase, feeling vaguely vengeful. “Take it out now, and one of the walking sticks, and put them over there, and before we leave we’ll ask the porter to take them back into the hotel.” Suddenly he adds, “If you want to be a movie director, you ought to practice trips to the airport, because in every film today there’s at least ten minutes of driving to or from an airport.”

The student laughs.

It’s three thirty. No, he tells himself, this is no mistake or forgetfulness, but a deliberate act. She knows how anxious he is about time, knows about his punctuality, his sense of responsibility. However, the two of them are independent souls. Even when they are in bed together, they are like two actors supervised by a director and cinematographer and sound and lighting people.

“That’s it, we should go,” he says to the student as he finally accepts her absence. “Let me just leave her a message at the hotel.”

When he returns to the car he can see in the distance, in the waning afternoon light, the missing woman strolling through the great square.

“I thought there would be another cathedral farther down, so I kept going,” she says.

He gazes into her eyes.

Many times he told Toledano, and subsequent cinematographers he worked with, to point the lens straight into her eyes, to reveal, from within her yellow-green irises, the inner world of the character.