The Extra

Fourteen

ELAZAR WAS UNDETERRED. The next day he phoned and asked her to join him in the late evening at a bar, where a scene was to be shot for an Israeli film requiring several middle-aged extras to supplement the regular younger crowd. This was no more than a pleasant evening on the town, he added. The scene would be simple, not long, and would be shot without fancy direction or cinematic effects, the extras would blend in anonymously, the camera would be hidden. The extras would be asked to act naturally like the rest of the crowd, drink, listen to the music and chatter away to their heart’s content. They would not be paid. The production would cover the cost of drinks; the night on the town constituted the pay.

They made plans to meet on the street, near her building, but he arrived early and came up to the apartment on the pretext of checking out the bathroom window and testing the strength of the drainpipe that the boys had used to enter the flat. Then he checked the front door and offered to come back and install an interior bolt, and also to put a new lock on the bathroom window, but Noga was reluctant to make improvements in the Jerusalem apartment before the resolution of the Tel Aviv experiment. She put on simple high-heeled shoes, donned the red scarf — her new favorite — and hurried him out the door.

To her surprise, he said that the bar was just around the corner and suggested they walk over. “You don’t mean,” she said, “there’s such a place in my haredi neighborhood.” A mysterious smile crossed his lips. He said, “You’d be amazed what one can discover not far from home.” He led her into the nearby shuk, the Mahane Yehuda market, its alleys and passageways washed clean, the shops and vegetable stalls silent and shuttered. The smells of smoked fish, spices and cheese lingered in the night air along the route to a structure flanked by two torches of friendly fire, with a nighttime crowd gathering inside, and no telling who was a regular patron and who a mere extra.

“You ever go to the shuk at night?”

“Not by day or by night. My brother set up an open account at the grocery near the apartment so I wouldn’t have to elbow through the shuk to find cheap tomatoes.”

“Cheap tomatoes?” he said, feigning umbrage. “Kindly do not condescend to the shuk. It’s much more than cheap tomatoes. This bar, for one, is a wonderful restaurant during the day.”

They went down some stairs as music rose from underground, a former storage cellar tastefully made over with small tables and banquettes, and in a rear alcove, an accordionist belting out old favorites.

Now, as they sit close together, partly in the role of extras and partly as themselves, she is aware of the man’s desire to succeed where previous men have failed. And though this stammering policeman has a wife and grown children, even a small grandson, and has no need for another child, he will not give up on the pretty, dimpled harpist, and tells her about upcoming jobs, such as a television series set in a hospital, complete with doctors, nurses, administrative staff, labs and of course patients, requiring many extras to supplement the professional actors, who suffer and agonize, die or get well, depending on the plot.

The accordion lets fly a Gypsy tune. Even if most of the assembled are strangers to one another, a breeze of intimacy blows among them.

“Can you tell, based on your experience, who here is an extra, who a customer, and who an actor?”

“No,” he admits. “Even with my experience, it’s hard, because I don’t know where the camera is, so I can’t tell who’s aware of it and who’s not.”

She smiles, understands, slowly sips her beer and says softly:

“I must say, you’re really something.”

“So what do you say about the hospital show?” he asks, encouraged. “It’s a long series, so they’ll need some chronic extras. I’m already signed up, and if you extend your stay in Israel, you could make a fair bit of money.”

“I didn’t come here to make money, only to enable my mother to try out assisted living, and I have no intention of extending my stay longer than necessary. The Mozart Concerto for Harp and Flute is waiting for me in Arnhem, and my fingers are trembling with desire for it.”

He cautiously places his hand on her fingers as if to feel the desire, and his stutter breaks out:

“S-so if not the hospi-pi-tal, maybe someth-thing else, short and special.”

“That sounds better.”

“Where they need extras with m-musical f-f-feeling.”

“That’s me.”

“It’s a production of Carmen, d-down in the d-desert at Masada, and they need extras to be G-G-Gypsies, but it would be without pay.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there’s transportation, and staying in a g-good hotel, and of course seeing the opera for free three times.”

“It sounds attractive. And you’ll be there?”

“No, because for this opera they need only f-f-female extras.”

“Then it sounds even more attractive.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes I get weary of men.”

Crestfallen, he turns silent.

“What now?” she ventures.

“What now what?”

“Carmen—”

“Tell your brother to sign you up,” he interrupts, and says nothing more.

After a long while the production assistant rescues them from awkward silence, informing them that their job as extras has ended but they are free to stay until closing time.

“Excu-cuse me,” says Elazar, grabbing the young woman’s arm. “Now you can tell us where the c-c-camera is hiding.”

She smiles. This is a deep secret, but the need for secrecy has expired. She points at the ancient domed ceiling, and perched up above, like a strange bird of prey, is a black camera with a big shiny eye.

“You needn’t walk me home, I know the way,” says Noga as they leave the Mahane Yehuda market, which at this late hour is already showing signs of awakening. But the defeated extra doesn’t stop. As either an escort or a follower he keeps walking, watching her heels strike the silent pavement, until her steps halt a fair distance from the building, signaling the final boundary of the shared evening. He hesitates, his humiliated desire still stinging, and suddenly he looks at her and wants to know how many strings her harp has.

“My harp?” She is taken aback.

“Yours… or in general.”

“Why?”

“To know y-y-you better.”

She laughs, then explains that a concert harp has forty-seven strings, with a range of six and a half octaves, almost as many as a piano. Thus it is possible to play pieces on the harp that were written for the piano, and vice versa.

“So the whole difference is that the piano is lying d-down and the harp is standing up?”

“That’s the small, unimportant difference. The essential difference is in the sound.”

“Why? They both have the same strings, from the guts of animals.”

“Not necessarily. Some strings are made of nylon or metal.”

“Metal…,” he mumbles.

“Of course,” she says, spurred on by his late-night curiosity. “Besides the strings, the harp also has seven pedals.”

“P-p-pedals? Why?”

“To produce additional tones and halftones.”

“How many?”

“A hundred and forty-one altogether.”

He is lost in thought, as if digesting the great number, then studies the harpist with a mixture of wonder and compassion, and declares, “You need to be very coordinated.”

“Yes, coordination, that’s the word. If I miss the right string or pedal, the whole orchestra will notice the mistake.”

“And how long have you been playing the harp?” The former policeman continues his interrogation.

“From quite a young age.”

“And because of the music, you c-c-couldn’t have children.”

“I couldn’t?” She recoils. “Who told you that? I could have, but I didn’t want to,” she says, firmly repeating what she had told him when they first met.

“How do you know you could have?”

“Because I know. I know. My former husband also understood, which is why he left me.”

Darkened streetlights surround them. The moon is gone. No one to be seen. It is the hour of deepest sleep, even in this neighborhood.

“I understand,” he whispers, nursing his humiliation. “I–I understand y-you…”

And still he refuses to leave.

“So would you like me to come tomorrow and install the bolt, so the children—”

“Thank you,” she interrupts. “For now there’s no point in investing anything in that old apartment, and I’ll control the children on my own.”

By now the pain of rejection is turning into anger.

“If you never had ch-children, how will you know how to control them?”

“Precisely because I didn’t have children.”

His laugh is short and bitter, and as he disappears into the darkness, she fears that his fondness for her has come to an end.

In the apartment the bathroom light is on. Did she forget to turn it off, or did the little tzaddik slip in during the night to relax in front of the TV?