The Extra

Thirty-Six

NO ONE WAS LURKING in the dark apartment, yet her restored calm was marred by mild disappointment. Did her panicky response in that little hospital room turn him off for good? Is the “ancient bleeding love” merely a presumptuous projection of her mind on his? And if Uriah persists, how will he know his time is limited and in a few days she’ll be beyond his reach? Suddenly angry, she wants to phone her brother, but realizes he’ll probably make her even dizzier. Thus the best path to relaxation is to make dinner and watch a good film on television.

But her sleep is restless, as in the first days after her arrival, and she divides it among the three beds. In the morning she calls her mother and brightly announces, “I’ve changed my mind, Ima. I’m not putting any more pressure on you, and even if you decide to return to Jerusalem, don’t cut the time short on my account. No reason you should pass up even one good meal you’ve already paid for, or one hour of deep sleep Tel Aviv provides you. I take it all back, Ima. Let’s the three of us honor the experiment till the end. In any event, rehearsals of the Berlioz will start only the day after I get back.”

“And Uriah?” the mother remembers. “You’re no longer afraid of him?”

“Apparently he’s given up. And even if he comes, what could he want? Just to mourn the past.”

She no longer bothers with the bolt, and sometimes, when she goes out, she just closes the apartment door without locking it, and evenings she stays home, on the assumption that a man clinging to an old love would prefer to arrive in the dark. So it goes, day after day, as she counts them off before her departure from the city of her birth, dry days with cool nights. From time to time she walks around in the shuk, of which she’s grown fond on this visit — maybe in hopes of running into Elazar, who three days after his disappearance had stuck a note on her apartment door.

When she saw the sheet of paper from afar, she laughed. Was the bleeding love making do with a piece of paper? But as she held the page, the handwriting was unfamiliar.

Dear Extra,

I haven’t risen from the dead, because I wasn’t there. The people at the entrance didn’t know how to get rid of the eternal extra, so they sent me to a morgue that didn’t exist.

Even after I realized that they had tricked us into separating, I didn’t give up on you, until I saw you rolling around in a nightgown in a wheelchair, and I thought, Why get in the way of my extra enjoying herself? and I started following you from afar. But then I got an urgent call from a real hospital in Jerusalem: the sick grandson I told you about had been hospitalized and wanted his grandfather. So I rushed over there without saying goodbye, and I’ve been at his bedside for two days, and when he says, Saba, you mustn’t move, his command carries more weight than a police superintendent’s. And I’m pleased to say that there are encouraging signs, but for the duration, I’m at his side.

Nevertheless I grabbed a minute and hopped over to say goodbye, because I remembered that in the coming days you’ll be flying away. And so, dear Noga, I’m done forever with being an extra. The fictions we enjoyed together were my swan song. And even if they build a morgue at the port, I’ll not be there. So when you go back to playing your harp in Europe, think well of the eternal extra of the past, who sometimes got stuck when he spoke, but his thoughts were clear and pure. All I wanted from you was friendship, and am grateful that I received it.

She is pleasantly surprised by the candid and fluent text, free of hesitations or erasures. And yet she wonders, clenching her fists: How will I slake the old desire that arose in Jerusalem? Is there really nothing left for me but to wait for the flutist who betrayed my concerto?

And at night, in her disappointment, she again wanders from bed to bed until, as in her high school years, she satisfies her desire in the bed of her youth.

Morning light bathes the big kitchen of her parents’ apartment, where, still drowsy, she sits in a nightgown, slowly eating a soft-boiled egg, half listening to a concert on the classical station of Israel Radio, when Uriah arrives, shaved and combed, in jacket and tie. “I was on my way to work,” he explains with disarming nonchalance, “and I thought, why not say hello to her before she vanishes again.”

And as if he had never pretended to be an extra in a torn army uniform, his head in a bloody bandage, or hadn’t silently crept into the adjacent bed at midnight, he now stands smiling and serene, no embarrassment or apology, surveying the apartment he knows well from the years of his marriage, struck by how shrunken it seems.

“Not shrunken,” she replies, calm. “Honi threw out some old pieces of furniture, so Ima wouldn’t long for them in Tel Aviv at th-the—”

“The old folks’ home,” he says, rescuing his ex-wife from the stammer that suddenly seizes her. Not looking at her directly, and careful not to touch a thing, he is mesmerized by the apartment, drawn into the living room and bedrooms as if he were a buyer or broker and not a man come to mourn his humiliation. But Noga knows well that despite the confident façade, the jacket and tie, the briefcase that hasn’t budged from his hand, despite “on my way to work,” he is agitated by the uncontrollable adventure he has just plunged into.

“Yes, the old folks’ home,” he says, almost defiantly, as if it were the source of evil. “And for the life of me, Noga”—he is still careful not to focus his gaze—“I can’t understand why your brother, in such a quick, random encounter next to the toilets, after years of absolutely no contact, had to involve me in your mother’s old folks’ home and the question of yes or no. Obviously, it’s no.”

“Meaning?”

“That she won’t leave Jerusalem.”

At last he looks straight at her, and a beloved face sets her heart pounding.

“And maybe she’ll want to surprise you too?” She smiles.

“Me? What have I got to do with this?”

“Well, you’re here.”

“And all his small talk about the old folks’ home was just a pretext, so he could tell me you were here in Israel.”

“Why a pretext?” she says, defending her brother. “No pretext, just a simple explanation so you’d understand why your ex-wife appeared as an extra on the opera stage, and not be shocked when you saw her there.”

Uriah considers this.

“But why did he need to call attention to your performance?”

“He didn’t need to, no,” she confirms. “It was a big pointless mistake. Honi shouldn’t have mentioned my existence. Better he should have talked about the music, asked you whether or not you enjoyed act one.”

He senses the irony that has evolved over many years of separation, and concedes:

“I saw no trace of you in act two.”

“But I was there!” She raises her voice. “At first I was a smuggler and even carried a sack, and ended up with the chorus at the bullfight.”

“And I wasn’t sure if Honi was just pulling my leg.”

“No, Uriah,” she says, still defending her brother, “Honi wouldn’t pull your leg. Not a chance. He loves you. You know how he mourned over you and got angry with me when you were compelled to leave me.”

“Yes, I assumed he was serious, and so the next night I came back, because I still wanted to see you on the stage.”

“What? You came back to the opera at Masada?”

“But not in the audience. I sneaked onto the stage.”

“The stage? No way. Sneaked in from which side?”

“From the north, Noga, the north. I circled around the orchestra and got close to your little hill and followed one of your Bedouin kids with binoculars…”

“Mine?” She laughs. “How so?”

“In the cart pulled by your donkey.”

“Again mine.”

“Lucky kids. And what kind of extra were you, anyway? A Gypsy woman?”

“Gypsy woman smuggler in act two, but with the children and donkey I was just a simple country girl.”

“And you really did look young, younger than I remembered you.”

“Too bad you didn’t come out on the stage. They would’ve found a part for you too.”

He stares at her coldly.

“The conductor spotted me and got security men to remove me.”

“And then?”

“I went home.”

“But why? If you came without your wife, you could have waited for me and said hello.”

“Why? I had more than enough of you in my life, so why look for you at intermission? I also told myself that maybe a story that wasn’t ours but someone else’s was my chance to understand what was still blocked. In fact, when I saw them wheeling you around in your nightgown with an IV dangling over your head, I felt what I didn’t dare to feel all those years I was with you — that you, Noga, are essentially a crippled person. You have a defect, and so there’s no point blaming you or being angry with you. Even when you’re playing music and apparently acting normal, the sickness is nesting deep inside you. And so the question remains: why, after my decision to let go of you forever, do I come back to you again, in your childhood apartment?”

“I don’t get it either. But if you can let go of your briefcase for a second and dare to sit down, together we might discover something new.”