The Retrospective

One. Santiago de Compostela

ONLY AT MIDNIGHT, when they arrive at the massive, stark stone-paved plaza, bare of any statuary or fountain, its only ornament a boundary of heavy iron chains, does the director sense that his companion’s anxiety is finally beginning to wane. By the time two silver-haired bellmen hurry down the front steps of the former royal hospice for pilgrims, now the Parador hotel, the actress, who made the trip at his request, is beaming with gratitude. But after the luggage is collected, their host, undeterred by the lateness of the hour and obvious fatigue of his guests, insists on hauling them to the heart of the square so they may marvel in the stillness of the night at the famous cathedral, between whose yellowed towers saints and angels stand erect, as if in their honor. In strange but fluent English he recites the names of its builders and luminaries, taking personal pride in the size of the square that draws throngs of believers, determined to prove to his guests that the holiness of the place they have come to is in no way inferior to the holiness of the land from which they came.

Indeed, given the grandeur of the cathedral and the elegance of the adjacent hotel, the director, Yair Moses, is pleased he did not refuse the embassy’s request and has journeyed despite his age to this remote region to attend a retrospective of his films, not just as a passive guest of honor but as an active participant. Again, as in recent years, he mourns the absence of his cinematographer, who would surely have shouldered his camera by now and in the wintry glow attempted to capture the entire cathedral, or at least the pale moonlight cast upon the iron chains, or even the shadow of the broad stone steps leading into the Old Town. And if the director complained, as he used to do, about the waste of valuable film stock, the cameraman would have smiled and said nothing, since it was proven time and again that shots with no clear purpose, unconnected to plot or character, could be intercut in the editing room to enhance the imagery, and also to add, even in a purely realistic film, the mystical and symbolic touches sought by his former screenwriter.

Toledano, the cinematographer, were he still alive, would not stand still for the host’s pedantic explanations — which will have to be cut short — but would hang back and satisfy his camera, surreptitiously or otherwise, with the profile of her face, or the contour of her body, or even its silhouette. His love for Ruth had led to his death.

Perhaps it’s because of her that the director has been thinking often of Toledano, all these years after his death. For the actress, object of the cameraman’s unrequited love, has become Moses’ occasional companion, or, more precisely, a “character” given him for safekeeping. Here she is beside him, wearing a ratty fur coat, bent over and a bit clumsy but still attractive despite signs of age, and her friendly attentiveness, which looks real even when it isn’t, now stimulates the flow of words that need cutting off.

“Yes, sir”—the guest grabs the arm of the host, whose name has already escaped his memory—“your cathedral is indeed worthy of admiration. And I hope that tomorrow morning it will still be here, so in our three days as your guests there shall be plenty of time to come back and marvel.” And the director of the Archive of Cinematic Arts, a short man conceivably of Celtic stock, moon-faced and bald, smiles and humbly but firmly repeats his name, Juan de Viola, and warns against the illusion of “plenty of time.” The program of the retrospective, which the guests have yet to receive, is full; each day, at least two films will be screened, and of course there will be discussions and meals. Not only at the film archive but also at the institute itself, there is great interest in the art of cinema in the Jewish State.

AT SOME RETROSPECTIVES, two separate rooms are reserved for the director and the actress, because their Internet biographies are vague regarding the true nature of their relationship. Nonetheless, there are hosts who, based on knowledge or rumor or simply a wish to save money, provide only one room at the hotel. When two rooms are offered, the director and the actress take both and use them as they please, but if only one is available, they accept the verdict.

In this historic hotel, where every nook bespeaks an aesthetic effort to convert its pious past into elegant comfort, the guests have been given a large room on the top floor, an attic with wooden beams that support the ceiling with perfect symmetry. The furniture is old but polished to a high gloss, and the velvet curtains are festooned with silken tassels whose color matches the soft carpet. The armoires are enhanced by artful carvings, and inside them, wide shelves lie in wait alongside a wealth of padded clothes hangers. There are no twin beds, but the double bed is generous in size, made up in fresh linens with rustic embroidery. The bathroom is spacious too, its tiles scrubbed clean and fixtures chic and clever, apart from a huge old bathtub with feet, preserved perhaps as a medical exhibit, for its style and girth suggest that in the distant past it held two ailing pilgrims, not one. The discerning eyes of Ruth — who grew up in an immigrant town in the south of Israel and is always eager to stay in places that don’t remind her of her deprived childhood — confirm the beauty of the room, and without delay she gets undressed and curls up under the big quilt, ready to succumb to undisturbed slumber.

Moses — a man of middling height who in recent years has developed a potbelly, unprecedented in his family, that he counterbalances with a small, intellectual goatee — is pleased with the room and the ample dimensions of the double bed though concerned by the overbooked schedule of the retrospective. Despite the lateness of the hour, he does not rush to join the sleeping woman but takes off his shoes and moves about silently, allowing her to sink into deeper sleep. Lately he has been treating her with special tenderness — he has yet to inform her that there will be no role for her in his next film. Though it is well past midnight, he cannot rely on fatigue and takes a pill designed to alleviate anxiety. He would like to lower the heating but fails to find the thermostat, so he opens a window to let in the winter air, only to discover that the ancient cathedral had not been content with its vast stone-paved plaza and had sprouted to its rear another square of significant size at whose center, on a tall pedestal, stands a stone angel brandishing a sword at the visitor.

Moses joyfully gulps the chilly air before shutting the window and closing the dark velvet curtains so the light of dawn will not wake them, and carefully, without touching the sleeping body, he slides under the big duvet. Ruth’s family doctor has urged her, more than once, to repeat a blood test whose results were worrisome, but, despite Moses’ nagging, she keeps postponing the test. Yet when the date was set for this retrospective, Moses thought it preferable for the bloodletting to occur after their return from Spain. If it turns out there is a real problem, there’ll be time enough to deal with it later on; for the moment, it’s best to take advantage of the trip to quiet the anxiety, his more than hers.

He turns off the room’s remaining light, for only in pitch-darkness can sleep overpower his imagination. But on the wall by the bed, close to the ceiling, one stubborn point of light stays on, apparently intended to illuminate the picture hanging below it in a gilt frame or to draw attention to it, and as he deliberates the need to get up and struggle with so faint a light, he feels the sweet pull of exhaustion and curls into fetal position, stealing a glance in the darkness at two mythological characters — a bald man, his upper body naked, sitting or kneeling at the feet of a bare-breasted nymph. Then he takes off his glasses, removes his hearing aids, and falls asleep.

It was Ruth who first diagnosed his hearing loss; she noticed that in public appearances he was raising his voice and giving answers not always pertinent to the questions. Although such responses might be appreciated by courteous people who’d been touched by his films in the past, the younger generation, whose questions are more precise and demanding, are less inclined to accept irrelevant answers. Sometimes a member of the audience will rise kindly to the occasion, restating the question and perhaps supplying an answer, but such assistance, even if well intended, does not enhance the dignity of any lecturer.

Moses was thus persuaded to acquire hearing aids, which, though minuscule, cannot entirely escape the notice of keen-eyed observers, thus calling attention to his age. When he sticks the pinkish gadgets in both ears, they emit a brief tune — as if to say, At your service—and immediately amplify the hubbub of the surrounding world. Now and then, they chirp and hum as they please, perhaps because a stranger’s hearing aid has sent them a friendly signal or because some clandestine military radar is checking their identity. When one of the batteries runs down, it announces its demise with an insistent, continuous ring that can’t be ignored, and thus in social situations or in the middle of a lecture, he has to remove the device and replace its battery.

All in all, the hearing aids have been good to Moses. When he is directing, the dialogue between him and the actors and crew is clearer now, and at public events he appears focused and relaxed. In an odd way, these tiny devices have taught him that deafness is not merely a physiological issue but a psychological one too. When he forgets to stick them in his ears, he can occasionally still pick up subtle overtones in the speech of others. His prostate, which has become enlarged in recent years, has taught him a similar lesson. He and it are able to ignore each other for many hours, even after the consumption of liquids, but sometimes, for no apparent reason — the stimulus of a new idea or an emotional reaction, or a slow descent in a narrow elevator — the prostate can threaten its master without warning. In which case, if the toilet is far away or its location is unknown, there may be no choice but to dart behind a parked car or find a hidden spot among the trash bins and gas canisters of a nearby apartment building. Once, in desperation, he slipped into a private garden, where the owner lay in wait and rebuked him. “What if I were just a stray dog,” protested Moses with a smile, “would you insult a dog?” “But you’re not a dog,” retorted the man with a sneer, “and you couldn’t be if you tried.” Moses zipped up his trousers and retreated in silence, though he could have told him that at the beginning of his directing career, he and his screenwriter Trigano had made a thirty-minute surrealistic film about a jealous husband who fears his wife is cheating and so, to follow her, he masquerades as a dog. To their great surprise, the film turned out to be more than a comical sketch. The ingenious script and nuanced camera work, along with the right music, enabled the dog who played the jealous husband to exhibit credible human gestures. He still drifts through Moses’ thoughts — a big yellowy mutt, hairy and melancholy, looking more like a hyena than a dog, with drooping ears suggesting spaniel ancestry. The dog was so faithful to the director’s commands that it seemed his canine soul had absorbed the obsessions of the jealous husband. After the filming, the dog stayed on with the director — a strange companion, loyal, tormented, as if Moses had actually succeeded in imbuing him with human spirit, until in the end he recklessly crossed a road and was run over by a car.

THOUGH THE DARKNESS is total, the clock does not disappoint. It’s 7:30 A.M., not 5:00. Sleep overcame consciousness and vanquished anxiety, and if during the night a strange dream had flickered, it didn’t bother the dreamer. Yair slips out of bed and tries not to disturb his surroundings as he makes his way to the bathroom. His companion, asleep but not oblivious, instinctively occupies part of the vacated territory.

From the bathroom window, he can see people walking by the walls of the cathedral. Today is the first day of the retrospective, and it would be nice to rest a bit more before the commotion begins. Random rays of sunlight that have filtered onto the big bed cast a golden glow on the actress’s bare feet, protruding from the quilt. Moses covers them, then carefully inspects the reproduction hanging on the wall. The stolen glance at night was superficial and misleading. Perhaps the picture represents some obscure mythological tale, not of an old man’s lust for a young woman but rather of a hungry and desperate person. The old, muscular man is plainly a prisoner: his hands are tied behind him, and his naked, dirty feet have just been released from the stocks that rest nearby. His jailers have starved him so badly that he is drawn to the merciful breasts of a young nursing woman, who delicately guides his bald, sunburned head to the whiteness of her bosom.

Moses looks for the name of the artist and finds only two words in ornate script: Caritas Romana, meaning “Roman Charity,” and as if struck by a flash of distant lightning, he wonders whether Trigano knew of this strange and brazen painting hanging randomly in a hotel room in the Spanish province of Galicia. Is it conceivable that in the dawning light, by sheer coincidence, here in Santiago de Compostela, he has uncovered a secret source that long ago sparked the imagination of his former screenwriter? He was a talented young man, a near genius, but also fanatically inflexible, and because of one dropped scene, he had broken off relations with not only Moses but also his own lover, the actress, thus imposing her on the director — if not as an obligation, at least as a source of worry. Could this mythological picture have inspired Trigano to devise the crazy, provocative ending of their last film together?

The location chosen for the scene was a rundown back street not far from the fishermen’s pier in Jaffa. The drizzly weather that day complemented the somber tone of the film. The cinematographer and the soundman, the makeup artist and the lighting man, were ready to roll, and despite the out-of-the-way location, a sizable crowd had gathered to watch. In the early 1970s, shooting a feature film on location was rare in Israel, and passersby were enchanted as if by magic. Moses has not forgotten that morning after all these years, for on that day the creative covenant between him and his screenwriter fell apart. On the street corner, on a stool, sat an elderly beggar dressed in rags — a well-known thespian from the National Theater. It was particularly important for Moses that in the final scene, it was not some anonymous extra playing the part, but a familiar and respected actor who would surprise the audience in the role of a miserable beggar and be engraved in their memory. The actor, however, demanded that his character be given a touch of intellectual flair, perhaps a top hat and not a mere cap to receive donations, or a pipe whose smoke would slither from his lips. As the final directions were given, Moses could sense the old actor’s anticipation of sensual contact with a young woman’s breasts, not least because the scene would doubtless be shot several times, with the most shocking yet plausible version to be achieved in the editing room. Despite its boldness, the scene wasn’t difficult to stage. A young woman departs a private maternity clinic after leaving her newborn for adoption and wanders the streets anguished and forlorn, and when she sees the old beggar, she opens her coat, takes out a breast, and nurses him.

It’s because of the nasty fight that broke out that morning that small details stick in the memory. The long old coat Ruth wore. Her face made up to look sickly and tormented. A rusty iron door on an abandoned house, meant to be the entrance to the clinic. But most memorable is the distress of the young actress. Toledano reshot her exit from the clinic door, hoping to strengthen the credibility of her action, but Moses sensed that something was amiss. Her gestures became more hesitant and hollow, as if her whole being was in rebellion against the scene written for her by her lover, the screenwriter. At first Moses assumed she was embarrassed by the presence of curious onlookers and suggested they film the breastfeeding behind a partition. But it became clear that it wasn’t the gaze of strangers that unsettled her, since she had stripped for the camera before, and even craved it, Moses thought. Nor was she repulsed by the touch of the old actor’s lips on her breast. Her spirit rebelled against the absurdity of a young woman who, right after giving up her child for adoption, feels impelled to breastfeed an old stranger. Knowing Trigano, she decided to dodge the scene decisively, without getting tangled up in words. As she approached the street corner, tracked by the camera, she suddenly dashed into the cab of the production truck, locked the doors, and rolled up the windows.

Moses instantly empathized with her action. Notwithstanding the disruption and the time and effort spent in preparing the location, he told Toledano, who had so looked forward to this scene, to turn off the camera, shut down the lighting, dismantle the track. And since in those days Moses was both the director and producer, he hurried to inform the beggar from the National Theater that the scene had been canceled and paid him right there in cash, the full amount. He still remembers the hot flush of insult on the face of the rejected actor, who had once played classic roles in the theater but in recent years couldn’t find a job and thus needed something, however marginal, that would revive his reputation, or at least his self-worth. First the actor wanted to know if the actress was repulsed by him, and after Moses assured him that he wasn’t the issue, it was the credibility of the scene, the actor let fly a curse, flung the burning pipe into the top hat, and demanded a taxi. A year or two later, reading the actor’s obituary, Moses wondered if the shock he had dealt him that drizzly morning had perhaps hastened his death.

At first Trigano refused to accept the violation of his script and tried to convince his lover to reverse her decision. But since she knew it was in his power to subdue her rebellion, she decided to ignore him. She covered her face with her hands and refused even to lower the window. Trigano slammed his fist on the glass as if to break it. And Moses, trying to forestall further violence, took quick responsibility for canceling the final scene. Let’s find a different ending, he suggested, something more heartfelt and plausible, a scene that conveys simple compassion, not intellectual provocation. And though he knew he was wounding the pride of his partner and former student, he got carried away and complained about the boring nonsense he’d had to direct lately, the sick and twisted situations he was increasingly expected to bring to life. He deliberately chose extreme language—boredom, not difficulty; nonsense, not oddity—that would undermine the self-confidence of his young collaborator. Trigano, who had been Moses’ loyal and beloved student, had convinced him that together they could create visionary art, something utterly new, and persuaded him to switch from teacher to filmmaker. And now, suddenly, the teacher had denied not only the artistic value of his student’s work but its moral quality.

Trigano bore the offense with a quiet hatred that undermined any chance of continued collaboration. True, creative differences had flared up between them before, arguments over characters and relationships, the content and style of dialogue, camera angles that had been spelled out in the screenplay. But a good partnership had endured, resulting in six films, admittedly unprofitable but unique and original and praised by those whose opinions mattered. But when the actress rebelled in the last scene of the seventh film — a scene that for the writer was the very point of the film — and the director not only made no effort to get her back in front of the camera but supported her action, Trigano quickly tore their collaboration to shreds. For it had been agreed that the screenplay could be discussed and debated during the writing process, but once the shooting started, the director was to honor the script.

And even though many years have gone by with no contact at all between the two, Moses still feels the stump of amputation, and he believes the screenwriter feels it too, even if he is too proud to ad- mit it.

After all, once they parted ways, Moses continued to make feature films, first from screenplays written by others and later, as success favored him, from scripts he wrote himself based on original ideas or adapted from books. Whereas the screenwriter’s output was confined to short, esoteric films, and then, when his new collaborators proved incompetent and saddled the productions with financial problems, he stopped making films altogether and went into teaching.

Sometimes Moses feels a vague desire to get back in touch, but he never does. Reconciliation after a serious breakup is harder than smoothing feathers after an argument. When they ran into each other at public events, at festivals or symposia, they barely exchanged more than a few empty words. Moses had at first believed that Trigano left him because of the affront to his professional dignity, but when he saw that the writer had left his friend and lover too, Moses understood that Trigano’s pride was injured not only by a director’s excessive indulgence of an actress repulsed by a twisted script but also by the extreme kindness of another man to a distressed woman whom Trigano regarded as his own. For had Moses not truly melted at the sight of a frightened female refusing her breast to an old street beggar, he would never have dropped a scene he was previously willing to direct — one never seen on the screen before. Toledano, the cinematographer, in love with Ruth, had adjusted the lighting and the camera so the moment at the end, when the beggar’s head touches her breast, would project the nuanced eroticism, the sense of longing and nostalgia characteristic of Ruth’s performance in those days.

Now, contemplating the picture of Roman Charity, Moses dismisses the possibility that Trigano had known about this painting, or another one like it, when he came up with his scene. Shaul Trigano had been a pupil in his class, and he was the type who relied more on imagination than knowledge, which in his case was spotty. Besides, Trigano had not described an old prisoner, hands bound behind him, who can’t touch the woman dispensing kindness, but rather an old beggar on a street corner who grabs like a baby for the breast that feeds him.

WITH THE FIRST glimmer of consciousness, Ruth expands her conquest of the big bed, assuming a diagonal position that sends a clear message: Don’t come back to bed, my friend. Other companions might have sought an alternative interpretation of the angle — such as Come, I wait upon your pillow—but Moses’ stricter reading had been proven right in the past. He doesn’t go near her except if she asks, and she doesn’t ask unless he gives her a sign that he is willing and able to respond. In essence she is not a partner but a companion; more precisely, a character who reappears in his films because he feels obligated to take care of her. They’ve never lived under the same roof, and she has a social world of her own, where she stays in touch with friends and lovers. She has a modest income from her work as a drama teacher for children, so she is not dependent on movie roles given her by Moses or any other director. But lately, despite her long experience and lingering beauty, she is not exactly in demand. And as she is unfit for the theater, since she can’t remember long stretches of dialogue, Moses has been trying to find her smaller parts in his films, and he recommends her for others. It would be a shame if her career ended in commercials for insurance companies or organic foods. Her intellectual resources are not deep. She came from a religious background, and in her father’s house, not one unholy book sat on the shelf, and all the record albums were Jewish folk songs. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father, a tall, silent man who was a respected rabbi in their village of Debdou, in eastern Morocco, left his community to make aliyah to Israel, where to support himself and his only daughter he became a farm worker. Therefore, when Trigano began to take an interest in her and plan her future, her father wholeheartedly turned her over to the energetic young man, who persuaded his girlfriend to drop out of high school, believing that whatever he learned and knew would be hers too. Moses doesn’t want to turn on the light but opens the curtains a bit to take another look at the picture, to decide whether to call it to Ruth’s attention, possibly awaking painful memories, or let her discover it for herself. But the winter sun is in no hurry to visit the westernmost province of the Iberian peninsula, and in the faint gathering light, Ruth’s diagonal position has exposed her legs, which are rubbing each other to keep warm. He takes the quilt and carefully covers them. All these years later he still remembers the praise once accorded them by an old painter who came three times in one day to see the first film she starred in.

That was in the 1960s, in a small movie theater in north Tel Aviv that specialized in unconventional art films, mostly foreign, some of them without subtitles. But ambitiously avant-garde Israeli films unable to make their way into the bigger theaters were also welcome to try their luck, which is how Moses and his collaborators came to show their film there.

In most of his early films, Ruth had significant roles, since as the scriptwriter’s girlfriend she was available to work for free. The director and cinematographer were curious to feel out the audience, so they would sneak into the first screenings, with no expectation of favorable response. These were modest films, made under primitive conditions. Yet at their core lay an intense and arresting surrealism that attracted sophisticated viewers.

The very first showing of the aforementioned film was at three in the afternoon. A few viewers walked out in the middle, but a man with a hat planted firmly on his head watched attentively till the end. He came back for the first evening show, the hat again conspicuous as the lights went down. At somebody’s request, he removed it, revealing a big and shiny pate. Moses and Toledano were determined to find out what drew this man to watch the film twice in a single day, but he slipped out of the hall in darkness before the film was over. To their astonishment, he turned up at the third showing, at nine that night, and sat down in the back row. This time the director and cinematographer blocked his path before the lights went up and asked what compelled him to watch so unpolished a film three times in a single day.

He was evasive at first but then quickly complied, introducing himself as a painter. He thoroughly analyzed scene after scene, listing its strengths and weaknesses, and though his reservations were substantial, he also offered encouragement. The filmmakers were intrigued: If the film had so many flaws, why see it three times in one day? The painter hemmed and hawed, but finally admitted that it was because of the young actress, who had so moved him that he came back to engrave her image in his mind, for who knew when he would again see her on the screen? Strange words of praise, as he had not spared criticism of her acting, yet he came back, drawn by her charms. The cinematographer asked for a fuller explanation, if only to know how to capture that magic in the future. Whereupon, with precise professionalism, the painter proceeded to describe the nature of the sensuality that had spoken to him, sketched her facial structure in the air with his hand, detailed the shifts of expression in her eyes, marveled at the lightness of her gait, her ease as she sat down, and, above all, the perfect form of her “heavenly legs.” Those were the very words he spoke in the darkness as the last lights went out in the lobby of the movie theater. Moses was disgusted by the libidinal enthusiasm of the old, foul-smelling man. But the cinematographer hung on every word, as if in the future he would be able to translate the artist’s professional lust into perfect lighting and camera angles.

Was that the moment that sparked Toledano’s secret love for the actress who was bound body and soul to the scriptwriter? For even after Toledano married, he would often remind Moses, half seriously, of the keen observations of the “man with the hat,” to guide him in the staging of scenes that preserved the magic. Years later, when Trigano abandoned Ruth, the cinematographer remained faithful, and if there were no jobs for her in films by Moses or others, he would find work for her in commercials, where he was free to film the fading magic from every conceivable angle. One day, when he attempted to film her from a cliff as she lay nearly naked on the beach below, he carelessly lost his footing and crashed to an untimely death.

THE BLACK VELVET curtain grows lighter, and hunger too makes its demands. Ruth is an inveterate night owl, late to bed and late to rise. But since this retrospective will require long hours of attendance, it would be good to hurry up and use the morning to explore the city of pilgrimage. Moses is careful not to touch the sleeping woman, but he draws the curtain back and opens the window too, so that light and air will wake her. And when he emerges from the bathroom, fragrant with cologne supplied by the hotel, he finds her curled under the covers with smiling eyes, and since she knows how addicted he is to sumptuous hotel breakfasts, which in recent years have become the most satisfying benefit of his travels, she urges him to go to the dining room and not wait for her. Lately, Yair Moses often imagines his meals in advance, and in his pursuit of a precise naturalistic style, he prolongs the eating scenes in his films, insisting that real food be served, colorful and appealing, not sterile replicas, and he instructs the cameramen to shoot close-ups of full plates and wineglasses, not just long shots of the dining table. Within scenes he sometimes has actors cut short the dialogue and improvise personal reactions to the food. You are not dogs, unable to express opinions of what they eat, he likes to tease the actors, but intelligent beings who need to understand not only what comes out of your mouths but also what goes in.

He himself, though, prefers to eat in silence. As the years have gone by, he has become increasingly convinced of the value of being alone and keeping to a daily schedule. He is content to embark on flights of imagination and planning, especially at a sumptuous breakfast, a feast for the eyes and palate, such as he has discovered in the dining room on the ground floor of the historic hotel. A small sign by the entrance informs guests that this same dining hall was in operation during the Renaissance, serving the weary pilgrims who lodged at the royal hospice and those who cared for them. The waitresses’ traditional attire arouses interest along with appetite. He looks around for a table suitable for a lavish but introverted meal, and then a woman, thin as a bird and not young, approaches him tentatively and informs him that she has been sent by the film archive and institute to be his guide for the day.

If he asks her to wait for him in the lobby, his meal will be hasty and unsatisfying. But neither does he want her to watch as he gorges himself alone, so he urges her to join him. “Before my companion arrives,” he tells her, “come advise me on the fine points of Galician cuisine, so I won’t miss the best or be tempted by the worst.” She is embarrassed by the invitation, but since the flimsiness of her physique enables Moses to steer her with a light touch to the multi-tiered buffet and shove a big plate into her hand, she cooperates, naming the local dishes, listing their pros and cons. And as Moses, acting on her recommendations, piles his plate with tiny pigeon eggs and pickled fish in bluish brine and golden pastries shaped like shells, she too talks herself into an ample plateful of the same. The name of the birdlike adviser is Pilar Carballo, who identifies herself as a teacher of animation at the film institute. Despite her tiny frame, or because of it, she turns out to be an energetic eater, or maybe she arrived at the hotel especially hungry. In shared pleasure, they eat their fill, and to ensure orderly consumption, he asks many brief general questions about the institute and its personnel, the city and its residents, so his guest may reply at length and in detail while he continues to eat. Pilar is happy to oblige and also spells out the plan for the day.

The schedule, as promised, is jam-packed: First, a visit to the cathedral, which considering its importance is worth additional visits. From there, a courtesy call on the mayor, who has promised to attend one of the films at the Israeli’s retrospective. From the mayor’s office, back to the cathedral to see its museum, and then, time permitting, a taste of the Old Town. At noon, a lunch-and-study session with teachers from the institute and employees of the archive. At three, the screening of the first film, followed by discussion; at six, the second film and discussion; at nine, the third film, plus discussion. Around midnight, top off the day with a meal at a superb restaurant.

“No, that’s enough.” Moses touches the little bird’s hand. “Did you all forget how old I am?”

“How could we forget?” she counters with a cheerful smile. “We studied your biography.” As proof she produces from her handbag a folded sheet of paper with an old photo of Moses, along with his resumé in Spanish.

“No,” protests Moses, “midnight is much too late for a gourmet meal. Let’s work it in between the second and third screenings.”

“Impossible. In a restaurant like this, the break between the two films would barely be enough for a first course.”

“So there’ll be only a first course, and maybe a quick dessert. What can I do, Pilar? It’s how I was brought up. Nights are for sleeping, not eating.”

She shrugs, as if to say the nights in Spain are long enough for both eating and sleeping. Suddenly she shifts her gaze, eyes flashing, and rises to invite Ruth, wandering among the tables, to join them. “Here’s your companion,” she says, in keeping with his resumé. “How charming to meet such a lovable character in person and not just on the screen.”

The two hug and kiss as if they were childhood friends. Moses has observed in recent years that Ruth is quick to throw her arms around anyone still excited to meet her, maybe to seize the connection before she is forever forgotten. Moses puts his napkin on his plate and hangs his scarf on the chair to indicate imminent return, and hurries back to the room, which Ruth has tidied up. He inspects Roman Charity, still hoping to discover the name of the artist, but to no avail.

Before returning to the dining room, he inquires at the reception desk about the reproduction of the painting hanging by his bed. Who was the artist, when was it originally painted, and in what museum may it be found? The desk clerk writes down his room number and the location of the picture and asks him to describe it, and Moses obliges.

“If the picture is disturbing to you, sir, we can replace it by this afternoon—”

“No, on the contrary, I like it, it’s very nice, but also quite intriguing.”

It will be difficult to find a quick answer, but the desk clerk promises to forward the question to the director of the cathedral’s museum.

On his way back to the table, Moses asks the waitress for another cup of coffee. At the table, the two women are deep in conversation. “All right, then,” says Moses, “let’s get going and see the cathedral.”

“But wait,” insists Ruth, “which films were picked for our retrospective?” Linking herself, as usual, to Moses.

“What’s the difference,” Moses says in Hebrew, “we know our own films.”

“But if we have to explain, or defend them…”

“Defend?” Moses pats her arm affectionately. “You mean discuss them. But even if we need to defend them, so what? We won’t know how to defend what we created?”

Pilar pulls out a piece of paper with the titles in Spanish of the three films to be screened that day, improvising their translation into English, and the visitors do not recognize a single one. “You’re sure these are ours?” asks Moses with a laugh. “Or did you bring someone else’s films by mistake?”

It turns out that here in Spain, foreign films are freely assigned titles that appeal to the local audience. It takes a bit of wit and ingenuity to excavate the old titles hiding behind the new. There has been no mistake. These are indeed Moses’ films, from the dawn of his career, forgotten films made in full collaboration with Trigano.

“Why did you pick such ancient films of mine?”

“For you they are ancient,” says Pilar, “but not for us. We have silent films here in which the mother of de Viola, the director of our archive, performed as an actress.”

“She’s still alive?”

“Barely. But if she feels well enough, she will personally present you with the award you’ve been promised.”

“IF THESE ARE today’s films,” says Moses to Ruth as they walk into the giant square, whose majestic emptiness in daylight is no less glorious than its nakedness at night, “we won’t be able to go shopping during the screenings. We’ll have to sit in the dark and try and remember the details, or we won’t be able to answer the audience’s questions intelligently.”

The day is cold and bright. The plaza is lined by imposing palaces, which Pilar identifies by name — Palacio de Rajoy, where the mayor will soon receive them for an official visit, and the former Colegio de San Jerónimo, today the Institute of Galician Studies, whose rector, says Pilar, hopes to honor them with his presence at one of the screenings. And of course the massive cathedral itself, built atop a Romanesque church, its towers looming above a grand quadruple flight of stairs, the battered, greenish steps leading to the entrance. An aficionado of European cathedrals, Moses enjoys the novel experience of a long climb from ground level to the towering church. At the northern face of the cathedral stands a statue of Santiago, Saint James, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and the patron saint of Spain; his sacred remains migrated to this place and since the Middle Ages have attracted pilgrims from all over the world who seek blessings and healing.

Therefore, in contrast to many European cathedrals, where often one finds only an African or Korean priest celebrating the Mass for a handful of foreign workers and a few local women, here the cathedral is crammed with tourists, who upon entering are transformed into pilgrims; they kneel and make the sign of the cross, sing sweet hymns at masses performed in small chapels. Near the stairs leading to the crypt housing the relics of the saint, believers wait patiently in line, hoping to draw strength from the dry bones.

Because the birdlike emissary of the archive is not sure if Jews draw strength from a competing religion, she leads them instead alongside the pews, pausing occasionally at statues and explaining their significance.

One cannot help but notice the brisk activity in the confessional booths. Along the interior walls, on both sides, the booths are arrayed one after the next, many more than generally found in cathedrals. Remarkably, even at this early hour, the confessionals are manned by priests in robes, some hidden behind a curtain, others on view awaiting prospective clients, immersed in books that through the lattices of the booths appear to be novels rather than holy scriptures.

Moses is impressed by the vitality of the religious rite of confession, which he had naively assumed was on the decline. “Decline? Not in Spain,” Pilar replies, “and surely not in this cathedral.” She blushes, her eyes glinting with mischief. Perhaps the visitors from Israel wish to confess?

“I don’t rule it out,” Yair Moses says with a smile, “but I would first need to put my sins in order.”

“In order? How so?”

“Separate personal from professional sins, for which I would need a priest who is also an expert in film. But is it possible for a priest to take confession from someone who is neither a Christian nor a believer in God?”

“It is possible for him to take confession from such a person, but he cannot grant absolution,” answers Pilar confidently, “and don’t be surprised if you find a priest here who also understands film.”

“Then I’m ready to confess,” Ruth chimes in, attracted by the idea of confession at a safe distance of a few thousand kilometers from home, though it is unclear whether her fractured English could express her sins adequately.

The animation teacher smiles faintly, steering the pair toward the large altar at the front. Here, too, one last confessional, isolated and closed, apparently in use. Pilar asks the two to wait until the curtain is opened, and after a huge red-faced man emerges, wiping away tears, she approaches cautiously and pulls from the darkness a short priest in a big robe. His face brightens at the sight of the Israelis, and he cordially inquires whether their hotel room was comfortable and their breakfast satisfactory.

Ruth recognizes him and speaks his name, but Moses is still grappling with the fact that Juan de Viola, their host and the director of the film archive, is also an ordained priest.

“Films and the Church?”

“Why not? If painting and sculpture, music and poetry, choral performance and theater have been nurtured for centuries under the wing of the Catholic Church, why not include their younger sister, the seventh art? What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing wrong at all,” says Moses, “but it is odd that I was not warned in advance that my retrospective was organized by a religious institution.”

“Warned?” says the priest, flaring his robe with mild irritation. “And if you had been warned, you would not have honored us with your presence?”

“I would have come.”

“And why not? Especially,” says de Viola, “since the municipality and the government are partners with the institute and archive, which also receive contributions from private individuals. My mother, for one, who in her youth acted in silent films by Luis Buñuel, is a generous contributor. This is why the bishop has freed me from certain obligations, to enable me to join the administration of the institute and make sure that my family’s assets are squandered only on worthy causes.” He winks.

A friendly and unusual fellow, thinks Moses. On the third day, before we leave, perhaps I’ll make a small confession in his booth.

“And your mother,” says the director, leaning closer to the priest, enthralled by the notion of an ancient actress from the silent era, “your mother also lives here in Santiago?”

No, his mother lives in Madrid. She is ninety-four, sharp of mind, though her body is infirm. She knows about the Moses retrospective and is one of its financial backers, and if she feels up to it, she will attend the prize ceremony on the third day. She is even familiar with a few of Moses’ films and believes in his future.

“My future?” Moses blushes. “At my age?”

“‘When the future is short,’” the son quotes his mother, “‘it becomes more concentrated and interesting.’”

They cross the big square on their way to the mayor. About thirty sanitation workers are staging a demonstration, banging pans and blowing whistles, lustily shouting rhythmic protests and waving red flags. Two bored policemen stroll calmly beside them, making sure the demonstrators do not overstep some invisible line apparently agreed upon. Yet every so often, the agreement gives way to rage, and one of the protesters bursts forth with his whistle. As the policemen casually approach him, he retreats with equal ease.

On the magnificent steps of the municipal palace, Moses realizes he left his hearing aids at the hotel. A simple courtesy call should not be a problem, provided he sits close enough to the mayor and tilts his head at a certain angle, but what if the chambermaid thinks they are used earplugs and tosses them into the wastebasket? For a moment he considers asking his hosts to wait a minute on the stairs while he runs to the hotel, but the actress, always sensitive to his anxieties, calms him. “I have brought them, though you seem fine without them.”

“Yes, my guardian angel,” says Moses shakily, “sometimes I can manage without them, but it’s better to have them with me.”

She removes the hearing aids from her bag and sneaks them into his hand, so as not to reveal his disability to strangers. But he no longer considers people who know his biography, and honor him with a three-day retrospective, to be strangers, and he sticks the devices in his ears in front of Pilar and the priest, noting with a touch of irony: “This way I can better hear the possibilities for my short but concentrated future.”

Good thing he has improved his hearing, for the mayor, Antonio Santos, a thickset man and as short as the priest, turns out to be amiable and curious, and to the joyful sounds of the sanitation protest, he shifts the routine courtesy call into a serious interview.

“I’ve read your bio,” he says in Spanish, waving the printout from the Internet with the blurry photo, “but I ask that you expand on it a bit.”

A surprising and flattering request, and though simultaneous translation by Pilar requires that he pause every few sentences, Moses expands a good deal, and looking over the great square of pilgrimage on this dazzling morning, he unspools his life story, the full director’s cut, outtakes and all.

He was born into an upstanding, educated Jerusalem family before the outbreak of the Second World War. After the establishment of the State of Israel, his father and mother both went to work for the state comptroller’s office, in which capacity they spent most of their time scrutinizing the faults and failings of the new government. At work, the mother outranked the father, who reported to her, and so at home, as compensation, she served and coddled him. Yair Moses was an only child, and he learned from his parents that every politician had a little back pocket filled with secrets worth investigating. His parents insisted that after his military service he pursue higher education that would enable him to follow in their footsteps and be useful to society. At first he studied economics and accounting, but then, breaking free of his parents, he switched to philosophy and history, and ultimately got a teaching job at an elite Jerusalem high school, the same one he had attended as a youth. He had no trouble controlling his students. If a teacher maintains a cool distance and occasionally erupts in spontaneous rage, students are careful not to defy him. In those days he still lived at home to save on rent, and his parents would pester him to go out at night to get free of his dependence on them. But as an only child, accustomed to solitude, he didn’t tend to seek the company of others and often found himself wandering about Jerusalem or going to see a film alone, never thinking he might someday want to make motion pictures and certainly not believing he had the capacity to do so.

Then, after three or four years, there appeared in his eleventh-grade class an unusual student whose creative originality and aura of self-confidence deflated the standoffish pose of the teacher. This talented young man was from a small town in the south of Israel, formerly a transit camp for Jewish immigrants from North Africa. While still in elementary school, the boy had lost his father, and was sent to a vocational school in the hope he would find employment as an auto mechanic or factory worker and support his mother. But the power of his imagination and ideas prompted his teachers to put him on an academic track, and a modest scholarship was arranged so he could attend a first-rate school. It was under the influence of this student who happened to land in his class that the teacher of history and philosophy became a film director.

“A student?”

“Who later became my screenwriter.”

“This fellow…” murmurs the mayor, perusing the bio sheet, looking for the name.

“I don’t think you’ll find him there,” Moses quickly comments, “he was the writer in only my very first films.”

“The marvelous ones…” whispers the priest to himself.

“And perhaps may again be in the future,” graciously suggests the mayor.

“Perhaps…” softly repeats the actress, closely following the detailed story she knows so well and will soon be part of.

“In the future?” Moses chuckles. “But the future is so short and concentrated…”

“If a student turns a teacher of history and philosophy into a film director,” says de Viola, “it proves that students can revolutionize the lives of their teachers, not just the other way around.”

Of course, the director continues, but if the connection had existed only in the classroom, it’s doubtful even so special a student would have had such an influence. The student’s stipend was small and he had to work. He found a job as an usher and janitor at a local movie theater beloved by Jerusalemites for the caliber of its films and its location in a pleasant, formerly Arab neighborhood outside the shabby city center. In those days — because Ben-Gurion, the legendary prime minister, prohibited television broadcasting in the young country lest hard-working citizens waste precious sleeping time — people went often to the movies. Moses would usually go to a second show, and he’d bump into the usher on entering and leaving. It wasn’t right to give only a passing nod in the evening to a student so active and intelligent in the morning, and Moses was agreeable when the young man wished to hear the teacher’s impressions of the film just seen and, even more, to offer the teacher his own opinions.

Given the advantage of being an usher, who sees a film many times, the boy achieved a deep understanding not only of what went on in films, but also of what went wrong, of missed opportunities. He knew how to link what he learned in the morning with what he saw and heard in the evening, and so Moses, to encourage him, would engage him in late-night conversation about the movie just ended.

The protest songs outside grow louder, but the mayor stays on track. Patiently, almost like a therapist, he asks his guest to continue. In recent years, ever since his wife left him, Moses has avoided personal disclosures, but he is won over by the interest in his professional development on the part of a mayor of so famous a city. The hearing aids pick up every word, and Pilar’s translations of questions and answers seem accurate in rhythm and tone. And while she translates, he feasts his eyes on the mayor’s office, on whose walls, amid portraits of the city’s mayors and other dignitaries, hang pictures of hunting scenes, replete with straining dogs and bleeding stags, and young women in states of undress, adding a splash of sensuality to the severe vista of the cathedral outside. Now and again, he exchanges a tender glance with Ruth, who follows the conversation, eagerly anticipating the moment when she will appear in the story.

And there is no doubt that she will.

The late-night discussions with the student involved close analysis of the films — of characters and plot, ideas and emotions, questions about what touched the viewer’s heart and what left him cold and sometimes angry and disappointed, what provoked laughter and what brought a person to tears, what was believable, what seemed arbitrary, what would surely be remembered, and what was eminently forgettable.

This is all about Trigano, de Viola explains to the mayor, who nods as if he actually recognizes the name, and for a moment Moses is alarmed that the name of the screenwriter he broke off relations with so many years ago has come up here, in this strange and distant place, but he quickly reminds himself that Trigano’s name appears in the credits of his early films. Relieved, he continues to speak well of him.

“Yes, that’s his name, and although he was younger than me by almost ten years, I found nothing wrong in the intellectual connection between us in those nighttime conversations, particularly because the boy never tried to exploit this connection to gain privileges in the morning. In class, he continued to meet his obligations, was as well behaved and focused as ever, answered questions concisely and to the point, with none of the excitement he displayed at night. Slowly I sensed that the young man was not content to analyze and understand films made by others but was dreaming of making films of his own. And so I was therefore not surprised when at the end of his last year, he asked me to help him make a short eight-millimeter film about the school, to be shown at the graduation ceremony.”

At first it appeared that Moses’ role in this short film would be limited to oversight of the budget provided by the school. But he soon found himself offering advice, getting involved on the artistic side. In the end, the work was widely praised, so much so that this amateurish film, lasting all of ten minutes, was Trigano’s admission ticket to the film unit of the Israeli army. During the years of his military service, he would come in uniform to visit his teacher, to tell him of his activities and consult about the future. Also in the film unit were a cinematographer and a lighting man who were both, like Trigano, North African immigrants from Israeli development towns, and Trigano tried to interest them in working with him after they were discharged. But his friends were ready to collaborate only if somebody serious supervised his fantasies — in short, they demanded a senior partner who would see to the proper management of the production. Trigano invited his teacher to join his young group. It’ll bore you to repeat yourself year after year, Trigano said. You can have a real connection to young people only by working with them, not from a teacher’s podium. But Moses imposed a condition: If he was a partner, he would not be just a bookkeeper and production manager, he would also participate in the creative process. Trigano would dream up the plot, make up scenes, and write the dialogue, and Moses as director would bring Trigano’s vision to life. Why not? The screenwriter overflowed with ideas, and his friends took care of camera work and lighting, but they needed a leader, a man whose authority people were glad to respect.

Pilar translates, and the mayor and the priest regard the old man fondly — but Moses is suddenly sick of talking about himself.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, to be brief, I took leaves of absence from teaching and joined these young people, whose enthusiasm swept me onto the path that has become the center of my life. During my first leave we were able to complete our earliest project, a short and unusual film that to my surprise was well received, and so we began right away to plan another. And after my confidence as director grew — and as I read the memoirs of famous directors who started making movies without special training — I gradually reduced my teaching hours, then finally quit, with no regrets. And though he had become my close collaborator, my former student made sure to maintain polite boundaries and treat me as if I were still his teacher, perhaps a surrogate of sorts for the father he didn’t have growing up. He decided that he and his friends wouldn’t call me by my first name, only by my family name, and I also addressed them by their family names, as in the classroom, and it was more or less agreed that everyone in the group would call the others by their last names, including the lady who sits here before you, who in those days was the writer’s very close friend.”

“You also called him Moses?” de Viola asks Ruth, who sits next to him with her legs crossed, her colorful woolen scarf brushing the hem of his robe, her eyes twinkling as she tries not to miss a word.

“Yes.” She laughs. “Even now, Moses is like a teacher to me.”

“But how did you come to belong to the group back then?” asks Pilar. “According to your biography, you were still a child.”

“Whoever wrote my bio was generous about my date of birth,” says Ruth, “but by now, believe me, I’m tired of hiding my real age. Besides, my connection with Trigano began when I was still a child. I grew up with only a father — my mother died in childbirth, and my father got help from the neighbors, including Trigano’s family. I am in fact younger than Trigano, and when I was in elementary school, he would create roles for me in little skits that he wrote, and it sometimes seemed that he was inventing these stories just for me. And so when he put together the group, I was naturally a part of it. I wanted so much to be an actress that I dropped out of high school. Now I’m over fifty, and I still don’t have a diploma.” Suddenly, she falls silent.

“What was that first short film about?” the head of the archive asks Moses. “We know nothing of it.”

The director begins to answer, but Ruth beats him to it.

“It was a film about a jealous dog.”

“A dog?”

“A dog.”

“Just a dog?”

“No,” Moses quickly explains, “it’s about a jealous man who disguised himself as a dog to secretly follow his cheating wife.”

“But in the film, there is also a real dog?”

“Yes, of course, the dog who played the husband.”

“A metaphorical dog, as in Buñuel’s Chien Andalou?”

“A real dog, not metaphorical.”

“The film still exists?”

“No. Film preservation was so bad then, all that’s left is a sticky pile of celluloid.”

“You should know, Mr. Moses, that we at the archive are able to resurrect even films that have been given up for dead.”

“This film you could never resurrect.”

The windows of the office are rattled by trumpet blasts and the pounding of drums. The sanitation workers have brought in musical reinforcements, finally snapping the mayor from his tranquillity. With a wave of his hand he summons his aides. Moses seizes the moment and rises to his feet, poised to take his leave. He is unaccustomed to talking at length about himself, especially to foreigners whose intentions have yet to be made clear. The others also get up. “Maybe you should advise him to raise their pay,” he jokes to Pilar as the mayor gives orders to his staff. “After all, in such a holy city, sanitation workers are little angels.”

But Pilar furrows her tiny brow, disinclined to translate for her mayor the advice of so foreign a guest.

THEY EXIT THE municipal palace, and Moses hurries toward the sanitation workers to congratulate them on their spirited performance. And in light of the day’s crowded schedule, he suggests that Pilar postpone till tomorrow the visit to the cathedral museum, and that before the meeting with the institute teachers, they take a walk in the Old Town. It is a great pleasure to wander aimlessly in narrow streets that suddenly become little plazas with statues, to peek into hidden gardens. The pure, refreshing air reddens Ruth’s cheeks, and her eyes shine. Outside of Israel she does not expect to be recognized; she can walk around relaxed, without wondering if someone will come up and ask if it’s really her.

The souvenir shops here are so numerous and well stocked that it seems sinful not to take home some knickknack, proof for their twilight years that the trip to Santiago was not just a dream. Moses chooses two traditional walking sticks of blackish bamboo, each with an iron tip to stick in the ground for support, and topped by a big reddish shell, the shell of Saint James, in honor of the angel who steered the shell-shaped ship bearing the body of the saint to the shores of the village of Padrón.

“What do I do with a stick like this?” She laughs.

“You can lean on it when I’m no longer at your side.”

When they return to the hotel they find de Viola in civilian clothes, waiting beside his small car. They quickly deposit the walking sticks with the desk clerk, who has not forgotten the request to clarify the source of the painting Caritas Romana hanging by the bed but also reiterates his offer to replace it with another, more modest picture. “Certainly not,” insists the visiting Israeli, “this picture is important to me personally.”

The director of the archive was gratified by the conversation in the mayor’s office. It’s good that foreign artists honor the city fathers, since unlike the locals, the guests cannot be suspected of ulterior motives. Spread under the sharp blue sky, the vast pilgrim plaza is empty now. The sanitation workers have gone for their siesta, and a bored lone policeman waits for them to come back.

The drive to the film institute takes a while. It is located outside the city limits but exploits its famous name to attract students and visitors. The car heads west, toward the Atlantic coast.

During the reign of Franco, a native of the region of Galicia, the building that now houses the institute functioned as an army barracks. Located in an open area that offers a plethora of parking spots, it provides ample space — three screening rooms of varying size, dining halls, studios and classrooms, and dormitories for students. Even so, exchanging the stately old palaces and glorious cathedral for the nondescript quarters of his retrospective depresses the Israeli director a bit.

In the staff dining room, a large table has been set, around which a small group of senior faculty await him, men and women of various ages. As he feels their warm welcome, his mood improves, and after everyone present introduces himself by name and specialty, a simple but generous meal is served, with vestigial flavors, or so it seems, of army food.

De Viola doesn’t want to waste time with small talk. Having seated those who know English well next to those who do not, he taps a knife on his wineglass without waiting for dessert and poses a question of aesthetics so urgently that Moses almost suspects it was the sole purpose he was invited to a retrospective at this provincial archive.

“We welcome you with pleasure and interest and thank you for taking the trouble to travel so far to your retrospective,” begins de Viola, “a retrospective where we shall screen primarily films from the early period of your creative work. We will discuss them one by one after each screening, but a general question has arisen regarding the sharp stylistic shift that took place in your films. It seems to us, Mr. Moses, that in the past two decades you have turned your back on the surrealistic and symbolic style of your early films and have become addicted to extreme realism that is almost naturalistic. The question is simple: Why? Do you no longer believe in a world of transcendence, in what is hidden, invisible, and fantastical, so much so that you are mired in the mundane and the obvious? For example, in the film Potatoes, which you made five years ago, your main characters eat lunch for sixteen minutes.”

“Eighteen minutes,” Moses corrects him, impressed that a stranger in a distant land is such an expert on a recent film of his, “if you count the two minutes I made the audience watch the table being cleared and the dishes washed.”

“True,” proclaims the priest triumphantly, “I even remember the hesitation of the Arab waiter as he wondered whether to empty the plate into the garbage can or salvage the leftovers in a container for the poor of his village. Yet this long meal scene is within a film that is not especially long. One hundred and twenty minutes?”

“One twenty-three,” notes the director for the record, again with a smile.

Whereupon a young teacher, pale and handsome, raises his hand to push de Viola’s question further.

“There is a feeling, sir, that in your latest films, the material aspect has assumed supreme importance, and not necessarily out of a new aesthetic. As if you are sanctifying the materialism of the world or succumbing to it, whether in lengthy cinematographic takes of locations and landscapes or in the physical appearances of people. You slow down movement and employ extreme close-ups to dwell on the most banal things. Sometimes the camera spends an entire minute following the gesticulation of a speaker without showing his face. Sometimes, in a long dialogue scene, we see just one of the speakers; the other we only hear. Does not such naturalistic realism smother any possibility of mystery, of rising to a higher vision? Have you permanently broken away from the strange, the absurd and grotesque, the elements that were so important and well developed in your early films?”

Moses has heard such sentiments in his home country as well as abroad, though here the questions seem tinged by a certain antagonism. And as the English speakers finish translating for their friends, there is a murmur of general agreement, after which the room falls silent in anticipation of an answer. The director exchanges a quick glance with his companion. Trusty Ruth, her eyes sparkling, knows the answers to come. And Moses feels that despite the many years that have gone by since Trigano first introduced her to him as his friend and lover, her beauty has not faded, and it holds a clear advantage over the looks of the two chic young teachers sitting alongside her.

For a moment Moses considers rising to his feet, to add force to his response, but the female hand placed gently on his knee keeps him in his seat.

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen”—he smiles serenely—“I am familiar with this contention and taste its hint of bitterness. Yet in recent years I have witnessed a new phenomenon among filmgoers, especially those considered intelligent and perceptive. I have a name for this phenomenon: the Instant White-Out. People are closeted in cozy darkness; they turn off their mobile phones and willingly give themselves, for ninety minutes or two hours, to a new film that got a four-star rating in the newspaper. They follow the pictures and the plot, understand what is spoken either in the original tongue or via dubbing or subtitles, enjoy lush locations and clever scenes, and even if they find the story superficial or preposterous, it is not enough to pry them from their seats and make them leave the theater in the middle of the show.

“But something strange happens. After a short while, a week or two, sometimes even less, the film is whitened out, erased, as if it never happened. They can’t remember its name, or who the actors were, or the plot. The movie fades into the darkness of the movie house, and what remains is at most a ticket stub left accidentally in one’s pocket. A man and a woman sit down a few days after seeing a film together and try to squeeze out a memory of a scene, the face of an actor, the twist of a plot, but they come up with nothing. The movie is erased from memory. What happened? What changed? Is it because the TV shows dancing before us on dozens of channels reduce feature films to dust in the wind?

“Amazingly enough, live theater, no matter how weak or shallow the play, always manages to leave some impression. Of course, people don’t remember every turn of the story, and whole scenes are forgotten, but there’s something about the tangible reality of the stage or the living presence of actors that sticks in the memory for years, and like a locomotive it can pull a whole train out of the darkness. Therefore, in honor of the art of cinema, I have decided to combat forgetfulness by means of the staying power of materialism.

“I’ll give you an example. Three years ago, I saw a Korean or Vietnamese film about a village girl who gets pregnant and is determined to have an abortion but there’s no one she can trust not to expose her shame to the community. Eventually she convinces a young boy to help her, and by primitive, life-threatening means they succeed in aborting the fetus. But while the girl is writhing in pain, the director doesn’t back off; he forces the young man to look at the dead fetus, at four or five months of development, that lies on a towel in the bathroom. At first the camera lingers on the frightened face of the boy looking at the fetus, and then the director moves the lens toward the fetus itself, and suddenly the screen is filled with a creature, smeared with blood, that appears to be not an artificial prop but the real thing, an actual fetus. The camera stays on it for twenty seconds, which seems endless. Many viewers squirmed in their seats and averted their eyes, but I decided to meet the director’s challenge, and I saw, in that bloody mass, the image of a primal man, something in the chain of evolution, that looked dimly back at me and filled me with deep sorrow but also with strange excitement.

“The following day, I went to see the movie again, this time freed from the suspense of the plot. And when the bloody fetus on the bathroom floor again spoke to me of humanity brutally nipped in the bud, it was clear that despite the film’s simplistic story and amateurish acting, I would remember it to the end of my days. And I told myself that if I wanted a movie of mine not to be quickly erased from memory, I needed to strengthen it with something along the lines of this fetus.”

“Fetus?” says Pilar, as she leans to whisper translation to two teachers.

“Fetus as a symbol, a metaphor,” Ruth explains to her, knowing well both the story and its conclusion.

“Therefore,” continues Moses, “in recent years I have been using two cameras, and even three, to explore the realm of reality in search of the fetus that can never be forgotten. First I collect available morsels of reality, rare or commonplace, and then my scriptwriters and I choose the ones that can be strung together into a story.”

A tense silence falls among the film teachers, who try to fathom the depth of thought and technique while also eyeing the chocolate cake that has been placed in the middle of the table. Darkness deepens in the narrow windows, and for a moment Moses imagines he hears an echo of his words in the roar of a nearby ocean.

But when the housekeeper brings the coffee, the tension lifts. The visitor looks around with a reassuring smile, as if he’d been jesting all along, and those present respond in kind. Idle conversation has begun, a packet of slim Spanish cigarillos is passed around. Moses takes one, sucks the smoke with pleasure.

Prior to the screening, de Viola takes his guests on a quick tour of his little empire, the film archive that occupies the chilly basement of the barracks. First they visit the film lab, dominated by an old-fashioned editing table, still apparently in use, with film on its reels. Then they go to the modern editing rooms and see the big AVID computer and a row of screens. From there, they head for the up-to-date sound studio, where the dubbing is done, and then the director of the archive leads them down a narrow, chilly passageway, and on its shelves, instead of shells and bullets, are reels of old celluloid film. Before they ascend from the cellar, the host takes them for a peek at a small museum of the history of the barracks. Amid pictures on the wall of officers who killed one another in the Spanish Civil War dangle a few rusty pistols from the same era.

“Can they still shoot?” asks Ruth.

“Can they?” The priest laughs. “Maybe, but at whom? The dead are dead. And the living want to keep on living.”