The Extra

Forty-Three

ONLY NOW, AFTER THE PHONE CALL with her mother, does it register that the encounter with her former husband rattled her so much that it’s hard for her to be alone in the apartment, and she hurries to the workers’ restaurant in the shuk and sits facing the entrance to see who comes in. But Elazar doesn’t appear, and the black camera on the ceiling is inert, the angle of its lens unchanged since her last visit. On her way back she buys some spices, to season the farewell meal she plans to cook the next day for her mother’s homecoming. But in the apartment, instead of napping on a blazing afternoon in one of the three beds that will soon no longer be hers, she changes from her sandals into sneakers, shaking out the sand from the Judean Desert, and makes a return visit to the little police station.

In the dimly lit station sit the same bored policewomen, and what was unknown in the past about the man who hurriedly broke contact remains unknown in the present. She gently pats the heads of the Mandatory lions, faithful to their post after so many years, and walks down Jaffa Road toward Zion Square, to see the building that, if memory serves, long ago housed the conservatory. But the original building, whose studios had been connected by an outdoor portico accessed by shiny stone steps, has vanished, and instead of asking passersby who won’t know the answer, she goes up Ben-Yehuda Street, the heart of the Jerusalem Triangle, to the street named for the British king whose son gave up the throne for the love of a divorcée, and walks past the circular synagogue en route to the Gymnasia, her high school. She sits down in front of a café and looks at the wide steps leading into the school, where sometimes the principal himself would stand to chide latecomers. It was here, as a freshman, that she became serious about classical music and learned to appreciate what she was playing, and after school hours, in a classroom with chairs inverted on tables, she learned to distinguish the unique sound of the harp amid the energetic fiddling of the other strings.

Her thoughts keep returning to Uriah, a married man and father of two, who mourns and yearns for the child not born to him. But what’s the value of such yearning if he lacks the patience and curiosity to look for just a moment at the childhood harp that, he insists, was the source of all his woe?

A week after she’d arrived in Jerusalem, she visited the Academy of Music, which in her day was in the process of moving from its home near the prime minister’s residence to the campus of the Hebrew University at Givat Ram. There she met two of her former teachers, who were happy to know that her love of music had not merely endured but flourished. First off, she wanted to know if there was a harp available for her to practice on from time to time. But her teachers didn’t think it dignified that she wait around between lessons so she could play a student harp. Take some sheet music and play in your imagination, they said, you’re enough of a professional to do that. Now, as she is about to leave Jerusalem, she is drawn back to the academy’s previous building, for another look at the spot where an enraptured young man waited for her, helmet in hand.

Since Lovers of Zion Street is not far from there, she continues on to the home of the parents of the youth who tried to poison his girlfriend so she would never leave him. Unlike that busy night of filming, the house is silent now. Only an old mother is visible through the kitchen window.

She walks downhill to the end of Lovers of Zion and over to the parallel street and stands before the gates of the former mental hospital, now a church, where the parents had installed their son to pacify his demons, thereby enabling his illustrious career overseas.

This journey on foot does not tire the harpist. On the contrary, it gives her pleasure. Her flexible sneakers add spring to her step, and the advent of the Jerusalem evening tempts her not to head home but to go on to Emek Refaim for a look at the first rented apartment she lived in after getting married. Was it really thirty-two steps that Uriah had to carry the heavy harp up and down for her? Old streets have been widened and familiar buildings renovated, so she cannot find the place at first, and when she does it looks different, but she’s sure the number of steps is the same. She can’t find the light switch on the stairway, so she climbs in darkness and counts. And yes, these are difficult stairs, steep and angular, unlike the friendly stairs in her parents’ building, where, when she’d get home from the Gymnasia, a gentle, handsome Orthodox boy would be waiting for a heart-to-heart talk.

Twenty-six steps and not thirty-two lead to the door of the old apartment. In which case, she thinks, scowling, why does a person who always prided himself on his precision need to add six stairs to embellish his suffering for the sake of her instrument? She heads back down, again counting the stairs, to double-check the number.

The gathering dusk prompts the lighting of the street lamps, and the colors of fruits and vegetables glisten in the storefronts on Emek Refaim Street. Baby carriages cross the street in midblock and hold up traffic. Men look at her for long moments, and she imagines herself again as an extra, only this time without a camera or director or story — standing by herself and for herself. She would like to further explore this pleasant, secular neighborhood, but she needs to start packing her bags and prepare for her departure, and the light rail is far away, so she hails a taxi and asks the driver on the way home to stop for a moment in the Valley of the Cross. But the driver doesn’t know where he can stop in a valley paved long ago with fast roads, yet he does know where the monastery still stands, and how to approach it.

“Exactly. Get as close as you can, stop for a bit, then continue.”

And he does, and for a few minutes she and the cabbie look at the old, dark monastery, a little light burning in its tower.

Did I forget to shut off a light? she asks herself as the taxi turns into her street and she spots a light in the apartment — or could it be the little tzaddik misses me?

As she enters the kitchen, Uriah stands up. His face is tense and tormented, and the fluorescent light intensifies its pallor. The jacket he wore in the morning is gone, in its place a faded but familiar sweater.

“Wait,” she says. “Before you apologize—”

“Explain,” he corrects her.

“You should know that I just got back from our rented apartment in the Greek Colony, and I counted the stairs twice that you complained about this morning, so you should know that it’s not thirty-two steps but twenty-six.”

“You forgot to add,” he says calmly, “the stairs inside the apartment.”

“Inside the apartment?”

“Beyond the front door there were six more steps.”

And in a flash the six interior steps come back to her, padded with old carpeting, and small pictures on the wall that she believed added a special charm and enhanced their marital intimacy.

“Yes, you’re right. I forgot.”

“Not by chance, not by chance,” he mutters. “But it’s unimportant, and I only wanted to explain—”

“Don’t explain. I knew you’d hold on to the key my parents gave us, and had no doubt you’d be able to pick it out among all your other keys. Which is why I told my mother three days ago, ‘Uriah won’t need to ask permission to come in here.’”

“But I wanted to ask permission, only you weren’t here. So I thought I’d simply leave the key.”

“And stay around to protect it.”

“Only because this morning I promised to let you know when the time had come.”

“Which time?”

“The time I would tell my wife everything I hid from her.”

“And what did she say?”

“She cried. The anger and shock dissolved into a long cry.”

“And you?”

“I cried with her.”

“You’re an honest man. You’re a faithful husband. It’s a shame I lost you so easily. But how did you explain to her the fever you’ve been running ever since Honi told you I was here?”

“I said I’d given you up a long time ago, but was furious about my unborn child.”

“Yours, or ours?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Any child of yours, wherever he comes from — I’m taking him.”

“But what would such a child give you, if you’re not a part of him? You already have your two children.”

“He will give me what will be in him of you. It doesn’t matter what — a birthmark, a dimple, the shape of an ankle, maybe a smile, hair color. Little things, physical and mental, that you might not even be able to identify, but they are precious to me, which your music had stolen from me.”

“The music?”

“The playing.”

“And what did your wife say about this child?”

“She cried.”

“And didn’t say anything?”

“No. But I know that if she believes that this would quell my fever and restore my calm, she would be ready to adopt a child of yours to raise along with our kids.”

“And that way she would merge herself with me.”

“Perhaps.”

“But there is no such child, and there won’t be one. You understand. You know.”

“I know and understand.”

“It’s too late.”

“I know that too. Actually I feel it.”

“If you know everything, why did you come?”

“To return the key to your mother and keep my promise to tell you that the time had come and I didn’t hide anything from my wife.”

“And you still didn’t think to look at my childhood harp, which you ran away from this morning, and which Honi will throw away tomorrow or the next day.”

“Wrong again. I took off the cover and looked at it, to try and understand its power.”

“And did you?”

“I saw a unique and unusual instrument, a primitive shaatnez, a hybrid of harp, guitar, banjo and more. I can see why your father, who knew nothing about music, wanted to get it for you, not in a music store but an antiques shop. It can’t make music now, many strings are missing, and those that are left are loose and bent, so how could I understand why it enslaved you?”

“You can’t. And neither you nor I can resurrect the dead, so go back to your wife and don’t torment her anymore with the illusion that you can turn back the clock.”