The Extra

Thirty

THE PREVIOUS MORNING, before the mother and son drove back to Tel Aviv, the three sat together on the hotel terrace, watching people float in the salty waters of the Dead Sea. They spoke about the grains of sand that had prevented the prima donna from playing Carmen after act one, and how those same grains of sand had only improved the singing of the Israeli understudy, who was showered with bravas and became a star overnight. Noga yawned and said, “Grains of sand appeared to me once in a dream. I don’t remember why.” Her brother and mother looked at her affectionately. She’ll have to take a nap in the afternoon, or she won’t have the strength to pull the donkey, who sometimes stops and will not move.

“Honestly,” she asks her mother and brother, “you could actually tell it was me?”

“I tried not to lose sight of you,” says Honi. “After all, I came more for you than the opera.”

And the mother says, “I’m not sure I identified you, but it was nice to feel again like a young mother coming to see her daughter in a sweet costume at a kindergarten party. When you were little, before Honi was born, Abba and I didn’t miss a single one of your performances, even if you had only two words to speak.”

“Two words? For example?”

“Peas and beans.”

“That’s all?”

“And for that Abba took off time from work. But I’m not feeling young only because of you, Noga,” she continues cheerfully. “It’s Honi too. We haven’t slept in the same room since he was ten, and last night we went out together and even slept in the same bed, so I’m asking myself why you’d want to imprison such a young mother in an old-age home.”

Grimacing, Honi turns to his sister, but she smiles indifferently. He says to her, “Ima is waiting for me to have a heart attack like Abba, to be rid of my nagging.”

“You won’t have a heart attack,” says his sister. “If, as you said, my heart is made of stone, yours is made of rubber.”

“Children, enough,” says the mother. “I apologize.”

They resume discussing the change of singers and try to understand why the character is more important than the person who portrays it. “At one point,” relates Noga, “I found myself near the understudy. I looked at her face, and though she was different in every way from the star who dropped out, I didn’t really feel the difference between her and the original.”

The mother, who knows her son, anticipates that he is on the verge of telling Noga about the encounter with Uriah, and she places a finger on her lips to signal him that he shouldn’t. But Honi pointedly ignores her, and tells his sister about the hasty meeting and the physical resemblance between her and the second wife.

Noga listens calmly, drinks what’s left of her coffee and says, “I just hope you didn’t tell him I was in the vicinity.”

When the mother suddenly stands up irritably, as if trying to forestall the answer, Honi keeps calm and disregards the truth: “I didn’t tell him a thing. Why should I even mention you? You split up a long time ago. Who cares anymore?”