The Extra

Nine

THE DAY DWINDLES SLOWLY, the jury still sitting in two rows at the back of the gymnasium. Sometimes the camera closes in on their faces, sometimes it pulls back, at other times it seems to disappear entirely, though it is always there. “Please don’t be upset we’re keeping you so long,” a cameraman apologizes, “but this trial is important to the film, and the changing light outside, which in the film changes within minutes, will indicate that you’ve been here all day, listening carefully, and only in the evening are you supposed to deliberate and render your verdict.”

Other extras, not from Jerusalem, are scattered around the gym along with actors, from scenes that have been shot and scenes that will be, but the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the witnesses and the woman defendant are not yet present, presumably still rehearsing.

“Do you know anything about the content of the film?” she asks the retired magistrate, who sits next to her in the first row.

“Just in broad strokes. At the booking agency they are stingy with information, maybe for fear of people dropping out at the last minute. Because extras, not being actors, sometimes confuse the imagination of others with the reality of themselves.”

At dusk, two additional lights are set up opposite the jurors. A procession of robed figures enters — the prosecutor and defense lawyer and judge, who disappear into a classroom that is now the courtroom. Two burly men in indeterminate uniforms march the handcuffed defendant past the jury, back and forth. Noga recognizes her as the pretty young woman who in the morning had given her the perfumed red scarf. Her makeup gone now, her face is pale, her eyes ringed with black circles. Her clothes are gray and her walk slow, contemplative, as if she is lost in thoughts of her crime. She scans the jurors, and when she sees the red scarf on the neck of the extra, she nods her head and stops in front of her as if about to say something, but no lines have been scripted. Yet the anguish in her eyes is so credible and persuasive that Noga fearfully tugs the scarf tighter around her neck, as if this were not an actress standing before her, but a despondent fellow traveler from her past.

“What did she do?” she whispers to the retired judge after the accused is gone.

“Murdered her husband.”

“Why?”

“You’ll know when you see the movie,” he answers ironically, “if it actually gets done.”

All the actors in the trial have vanished into the classroom-turned-courtroom, but the camera refuses to let the jury go. The time has come to announce the verdict of the trial that has not yet begun.

And as determined ahead of time, the portly magistrate rises from his seat, and with a look of satisfaction pronounces the answer to the question that has not yet been asked.

“Guilty.”

His pathetic pleasure displeases the director, who asks him to do it over. Yet the veteran extra cannot suppress the joy of a tiny speaking part.

The director then turns to Noga and asks her to stand and announce the same verdict.

“Guilty,” she says, simply and softly.

The director appears satisfied and asks if she can also say it in English.

And again she pronounces the word, softly and sadly, this time in English.

The producer whispers something in the ear of the director, who asks Noga if she knows other languages.

“Yes, Dutch and a little German.”

“Then please, in Dutch and German as well.”

At first she is confused, but regains her composure and reiterates the guilt in the other languages.