The Retrospective

Eight. Supper with Your Former Screenwriter

YOU PLAN TO arrive in Netivot before dark, to locate Trigano’s studio more easily. If he is so insistent on estrangement from you, it’s best to show him that you’ve come not merely for your own personal agenda but to reconnect with his thoughts and imagination and be, if only for a short while, the student of your student.

In light of your recent road trips, you no longer trust the map you have in hand, so you buy a new one at a gas station. Its user-friendly design promises that this time you won’t get lost.

“Any rockets been fired at the south?” you inquire of the young man filling up your car.

And though this Israeli Arab appears indifferent to rockets not aimed at him, he says that so far as he knows, rockets are more likely to fall on the Jews at dinnertime. But it’s clear to you that he’s not familiar with the intentions of his fellow Arabs across the border in Gaza, since on the way down, long before dinner, there were radio reports about rockets falling in open fields. If so, you hope that the daily quota will have been filled before you enter the fire zone.

You are pleased to note that Netivot is no longer a peripheral village but an actual city, its status and prestige enhanced by the rocket war of recent years. Shops are still brightly lit and streets full as dusk falls, and everyone you ask knows the way to the community center. But you have arrived early. And since it would be humiliating if Trigano barred you at the door, it would be better to slip into his darkened classroom while a student film is being screened. So you sit down on a bench in a wooded park a stone’s throw from the community center, and though your hunger rumbles, you ignore it, preferring to break your fast with the scriptwriter, who as you recall is in the habit, like a Muslim during Ramadan, of eating hardly at all in daytime and enjoying a big meal at night. If you’ve made the trip down south to unravel an ancient hostility, it would be good to invite him for a generous meal, at your expense, conducive to relaxed conversation.

Sitting in the little cluster of pine trees, complete with a glimmering pond of goldfish, you watch with wonder as a multitude of night students, arriving no doubt from around the region, young and old, mainly women, park their cars side by side in the lot and go to classes and workshops at the center, which in the evening turns into a community college. Now and again muffled explosions are heard in the distance. And though a senior citizen who has sat down beside you on the bench dismisses those as “ours” and not “theirs,” you, the cautious Tel Avivian, head for the bomb shelter in the community center and are relieved to discover that the film workshop is held in the basement.

You wait awhile before sneaking into a large classroom, and you find a seat in the back row. Considering all the silver hair sparkling in the light of the projector, you will not stand out on account of your age.

You don’t yet see the man, but his voice is clear and confident, and it seems that since you parted ways his Sephardic accent has grown more pronounced, possibly to connect better with his students. The big old projector rattles in the middle of the room, presenting an amateur production shot on film, not video, perhaps to attune the budding directors to genuine shades of color. Judging from the conversation, this is apparently not the first screening of this film, since there are references to comments previously made and scenes viewed earlier. Sometimes, without turning on the lights, the teacher asks that the projection be interrupted in order to discuss fundamental issues — aesthetic, technical, or moral — and the conversation flowing in the dark indicates that the teacher can identify his students by their voices. As Trigano pinpoints weak spots and describes missed opportunities, you close your eyes and are propelled back in time, to the entrance of the Smadar Cinema in the German Colony in Jerusalem, where after the second show a student usher stands excitedly delivering his opinion of the film his mentor has just seen.

The screening is over and the lights go on, but Trigano has not yet spotted the new arrival. While reels are changed in the projector, an older woman in a headscarf and long dress stands before the class and delivers a few introductory words about her short film, an imaginary and experimental story, as she defines it, about a religious family that decides unanimously, after careful thought, to become secular. She and her husband play the leading roles, and relatives and friends play secondary roles and serve as extras. Despite the cast members’ doubts, they were all swept up by the story, and as it turned out, the imaginary heresy in front of the camera was so pleasurable it was hard to let it go and get back to reality.

The lights go down, and on the screen an unprofessional film unfolds, confused and choppy, but also bold and entertaining, and the Orthodox amateurs portraying their newfound irreligiosity play their parts with conviction and élan. All eyes are drawn to the leading character, a beautiful religious girl who lures her family to a bacchanal on the beach, and even the neighborhood rabbi who tries to hold the family is forced to give in and ends up splashing in the sea as the ultimate heretic.

As credits and acknowledgments sail down the screen, cheers break out in the classroom, and you join in. Trigano, grinning with emotion, stands up to embrace the artist with the headscarf, who in real life recoils from his male touch. And now, as he surveys his students with pride and affection, he notices you, an auditor in the back row, and his face turns dark.

AT THE END of the session he has to face the fact that there’s no escaping the old man who waits for him in the now-empty classroom.

For the moment, just a handshake. There is a tremor in physical contact renewed after an eon.

“You really stay the night here?” you wonder. “Because if the area is quiet, it doesn’t take long to get back.”

“Even when it’s not quiet, it doesn’t take long,” he says dismissively. “I took on this workshop in Netivot because we have a son in the area, in an agricultural moshav, with a foster family. So after my class I have a chance to be with him at night, and in the morning, before he goes to work.”

“This is the boy…” You hesitate as you recall distressing knowledge, forgotten in the passage of time.

“Yes.” He interrupts the hesitation and defiantly pronounces the name of his eldest child, Uriel, who years ago found a good home with a family in the moshav nearby, where he works as a packer of fruits and vegetables.

“How old is he now?” You are curious to know the age of the mentally disabled son, to measure the toll on his father.

“He’s twenty-one.”

“He’s not your only son,” you say, as if to reassure yourself.

He throws you a sharp look.

“Uriel has a brother and a sister.”

“And they?”

“His brother is in the army and his sister is in high school.”

“Oh, nice. I didn’t know.”

“It’s not the only thing you don’t know.”

“Of course. It’s been years. But you too… about me…”

“A lot less than you think.”

“We’ll see,” you say, rising to the challenge. “But what I did know about you, I remember. For example, that you postpone your main meal to the evening. If that’s still true, let me take you out to a good dinner, assuming there is a decent restaurant in Netivot open at this hour.”

His smile suggests that the personal detail preserved in your memory might overcome his hostile preference for a quick exchange of words in an empty classroom.

“You have no choice.” You continue to provoke him. “If you went on a pilgrimage all the way to Santiago to renew ties with me, you’ll have to hear me out patiently in Israel.”

“I didn’t go to Santiago to renew any connection with you,” he objects. “I went to deposit some of my films in the archive, to save them from oblivion.”

“But since I happen to be a collaborator in these films, you dragged me out there too, whether you wanted to or not. And because of you they organized an odd retrospective for me, which came with a little prize at the end, if you can believe it.”

“I had no part in your retrospective.” The voice echoes firmly in the empty room. “And you didn’t deserve any prize for films that were my ideas, whose value you doubted. But what can I do, Moses, if people from a civilized country, no less sensitive and discriminating than you and your friends, recognize the quality of my work and are interested in preserving it in an archive, to learn from it? But I have no interest in you. If I wanted to reconnect, why go all the way to Spain, when here in Israel you’re open to everyone and running around everywhere?”

You concede the point with a smile.

“And in general,” he carries on, “from the time we split up, I never had the slightest desire to get near you again, especially when I hear about the inferior quality of your movies. But what can I do. You force yourself on me.”

“Indeed, what can you do.”

“I asked David, Toledano’s son, not to invite you — after all, Toledano didn’t draw a single picture of you. But you invited yourself, told me you needed my help, which I don’t believe you really do. And no matter how hard I tried to escape, or at least delay, you insisted and chased after me all the way here — so, please, Moses, a meal? Let’s talk here right now. It’s nice and quiet. Talk, but make it quick, what more do you want from me?”

Up against such harsh language, it might be best to preserve your dignity and walk out now, but the fatigue and hunger fortify your self-control. Beyond your former scriptwriter’s insults and anger hovers the image of the disabled son, deleted from your memory, inviting clemency for the father who does everything in his power to hurt you.

“Come, Trigano,” you say, your hand on his shoulder. “Even so… not like this… not standing, not in an empty classroom… I came to you hungry and thirsty, with goodwill, so, please, let’s sit someplace more reasonable, and the minute you tell me it’s enough, I’ll get up and leave.”

But he customarily eats his evening meal at the moshav, with the family that cares for his son.

“And you can’t include me?”

“Not sure the place would suit you.”

“Why not? Where is it?”

“A few kilometers west of here, near Netiv Ha’asarah, on the Gaza border. But don’t worry, they won’t kill you tonight.”

For a moment you freeze at the malicious spark in his eyes. Then you burst into laughter.

But he isn’t laughing. He gathers his papers, puts on a windbreaker and a white, wide-brimmed hat, and turns out the classroom lights. He bids a warm long farewell to the security guards and leads you outside, to the empty parking lot, bathed in the yellowy light of a full moon. “Follow me in your car,” he barks, “and I’ll explain later how you get back north. Make sure not to lose me, especially at turnoffs to back roads.”

“Just a minute”—you grab his shoulder—“it’s not my job not to lose you, it’s your job not to lose me.” And he stares at you, startled for a second by your powerful grip.

After the city lights disappear he leads you down narrow, desolate roads, where only military vehicles pass now and then, with dimmed lights. Though he could easily shake you on the road and be done with an unwelcome guest, he is careful not to lose you en route. He slows down at traffic lights so you can continue together when they turn green. He waits for you at the turns, signaling in advance at each one. And because he knows well the way to his son, he takes a few shortcuts, including dirt roads, heading west the whole time toward a horizon intermittently brightened by a silent flash, perhaps lightning freed of thunder, or a missile bearing its payload. And though he stays in the area merely as a guest for the night, you have faith that he too has learned to distinguish between “ours” and “theirs.” But when a flare goes off in the distance, with a boom that mimics the drumbeat on your car stereo, you are surprised to see him stop at once, jump from his car, and point at the sky, and when he sees you don’t understand, he pulls you from your seat to a ditch at the side of the road and shoves your face hard in the ground, and then a second blast, stronger and closer, shakes you both, pebbles land on your head, and when the air regains its composure, it exudes a sweetish smell of gunpowder.

When Trigano gets back on his feet you are still lying in the ditch, and you say facetiously, “What happened, habibi? You promised me that they won’t kill me tonight.”

He finally breaks into the old smile, the wise smile of the dreamer who won your heart the first time you met him. Yes, he confirms, not they. Something else. Wait and see. He brushes the dirt from his clothes and lights a cigarette; you are still in no hurry to get up. Curled amid weeds and stones you inhale deeply the smell of the earth you have not been this close to in years. Trigano may have guessed that you enjoy this moment of weakness, because he doesn’t offer you a hand but blows smoke and regards you with an ironic gaze, as if to say it’s good that the director who betrayed him should grovel at his feet.

“I don’t understand”—you hold on to a rock and get up slowly—“I was told that they always fire in early evening, not at night when everyone is home near a bomb shelter.”

“There’s no system. They fire when they feel a longing, and longing as you know cannot be controlled. It comes and it goes.”

“Longing for what?”

“Longing for fields and homes that were taken from them in 1948, and maybe also longing for our greenhouses and canneries, our nursery schools and pretty houses with red-tiled roofs we shoved in the face of the refugee shacks. They want us next to them again, so they can envy and hate and take revenge, and not only in their thoughts. Like frustrated children they fire stupid rockets that barely scratch us, to entice us to return and be at their side again.”

“But we won’t go back and settle there.”

“I hope not. Not to stay, at any rate. Enough of the goddamn partnership.”

His tough talk seems to be about more than Palestinians and Israelis. Meanwhile, out of nowhere, reserve soldiers appear, looking for the rocket’s point of impact, and when they see two men standing calmly beside cars, they shout, Yalla, this isn’t the border with Tuscany, not a good place to hang out.

Not long thereafter you are stopped at a checkpoint at the entrance to a moshav called Na’arut, and from the strange and tormented faces of the youngsters surrounding your car, you understand this to be a whole village full of foster families. For a moment, as the barrier lifts, you are inclined to waive your entrée to the moshav and forget your wish to restore the connection with such a proud and difficult man. But your concern for the character who refuses to acknowledge her illness awakens a strange desire for a new film, and you push on.

“HE WAITED for you all evening but finally caved in and fell asleep. You want us to wake him?” The speaker is a thickset farmer surrounded by a pack of silent dogs licking his boots.

This is a good-sized farmhouse at the edge of the settlement, giving out onto fields and hedged by fruit trees, with a cowshed and goat pen and chicken coop in a muddy barnyard.

“No, don’t wake him,” says Trigano, “I’m staying the night anyway, but he will leave right after supper.” He introduces you politely as “an old teacher of mine, who left his students for the film business.” The farmer, a man of your own age, looks you over sympathetically and says, “But if the teacher should change his mind, we’ll find a bed for him.”

“He will not change his mind,” says Trigano.

“Of course not,” you confirm, bending over to the friendly dogs, who sniff and lick your shoes and trouser cuffs, and suddenly you have an idea: accept the farmer’s offer and stay the night to pursue the dramatic meeting. You can tell that despite the circumstances that forced Trigano to turn from an artist into a teacher, his vitality is undiminished, his wit and originality intact. If you get access to him and show compassion for his suffering, reconciliation will become more possible.

In the doorway waits the mistress of the house, a farmwoman around forty, built as solidly as her husband. The permanent look of wonder in her eyes and her slow movements suggest that she herself may have been cared for here and over the years worked her way up to caregiver. Your admiration for this place grows stronger by the minute and you greet her with a slight bow, introducing yourself by name and profession, apologizing for your unexpected visit.

As you cross the threshold you realize that this farmhouse is essentially a live-in clinic. The living room is now a dining hall, and on the walls, like pictures at an exhibition, flicker small screens with TV programs for youngsters and the not-so-young. Some of the residents gaze at you with longing, others huddle as if a cold wind has sharply blown in. Puppies trot from inner rooms and gather in eerie silence, as if their vocal cords have been plucked out.

“Uriel is sleeping,” the woman says, repeating her husband’s words. “He waited for you but caved in. Should we wake him for you?”

“No, no need,” says Trigano, hugging her, “I’ll be here till morning. Where should we sit? In the kitchen?”

“You said you were bringing a guest, so we set you a table in the arbor, and if it gets cold, we can light a stove in there.”

“The arbor is wonderful, and we’ll see about the fire.”

“How do you control all these dogs?” you inquire of the farmer.

“They control us.”

“How many do you have?”

“We stopped counting. Don’t worry, they’re not all ours. Dogs from the area invite themselves over to feast on our leftovers. This little bastard,”—he snatches a little white wiry-haired dog and waves it in the air—“is a regular guest who comes every night from Kibbutz Re’im for his supper.” He squeezes the dog lovingly before tossing it back to the pack.

Trigano is at the table, tearing hunks from a big loaf of bread. The farmer hauls out an electric light with a long extension cord and hangs it in the Italian honeysuckle that luxuriates in the arbor.

“Do you remember our first short film?” you ask Trigano.

“About the husband who masquerades as a dog.”

“Is there a print of it anywhere?”

“A few years ago I looked for it.”

“For the Spanish archive?”

“No, long before I knew such an archive existed, I wanted to show it to my students, to demonstrate how best to direct animals. You were not half bad with dogs, navigating intelligently between symbol and reality, and you succeeded, the devil knows how, in getting that dog to express the jealousy and despair of the cuckolded husband. But perhaps this came naturally to you,” he continues with a grin, “because during the shoot you would boast that in your previous life you had been a dog.”

“Me, a dog?” You turn red and laugh.

“That’s what you said, in your previous incarnation. Or maybe that you would be a dog in your next incarnation. I don’t remember exactly, but the fact is those incarnations helped you develop an intimacy with that dog, who was quite unusual.”

“A street dog, we got him from the animal shelter. But you gave him a name in the script?”

“Nimrod.”

“Nimrod, right.” You laugh again. “A smart dog but a bit disturbed.”

“After the filming you latched on to him, kind of adopted him, until you got tired of him and he ran away from you.”

“He didn’t run away, he was run over.”

“Ah, run over, you didn’t tell us that.” Trigano tries to catch you out. “Maybe you were ashamed to admit that you abandoned a loyal actor.”

“First of all,” you calmly reply, “he was not privately owned but a dog belonging to the production, and second, I didn’t latch on to him, he latched on to me. It’s amazing though that you remember what I told you more than forty years ago.”

“Yes, Moses, you’d be amazed, almost every word of yours.”

From the tone of the answer it appears that tonight, the weight of your every word will not apply in your favor but be turned against you. Therefore, you keep quiet and stare at a pair of ducks that waddle into the arbor and are applauded by the vigorous tail-wagging of dogs awaiting the remains of the meal. Vegetables fresh and cooked, spreads and dips in many colors, fried fish, and mysterious aromatic meat.

Your own appetite has faded, despite your self-imposed fast since noon to ensure full participation in the meal. The fork falters in your hand, its small morsel dropping back into the plate. The lighting set up by the farmer exaggerates the shadows, with the moon now out of view. And you don’t know whether the man who eats silently opposite you is expecting you to say something or waiting for you to go away.

How to begin?

“You know that at my retrospective in Santiago they screened Slumbering Soldiers? They changed the name of the film and called it The Installation.”

“Yes, over there they typically change the names of films.”

“At first I thought it was a meaningless title, but—”

“It’s not meaningless.”

“That’s right. It’s a good title. I understood that only after I got back to Israel and had an odd urge to go check out the places where we shot those early films. I even went to the desert, to the crater.”

His dinner knife halts in midair. “To that same wadi?”

“It was hard to find. The landscape had changed. New roads were carved out, and at first I thought the cliffs were different. But I didn’t give up, and I saw from a distance the location where we squatted for three weeks.”

“Why only from a distance?”

“Soldiers, guards, they didn’t let me get close. Now, would you believe, there’s a similar installation there, sealed off, big and very real. As if our wild imagination had created a reality.”

“My imagination.”

“Yours, that’s right, but also the cinematographer’s, and the set designer’s, and the lighting designer’s, and even the director’s… Go check it out for yourself.”

“There’s nothing to check. It’s not my first metaphor to have turned into reality. What was the point of the metaphor? That a state that turns into a military installation instead of being a living, breathing homeland doesn’t deserve soldiers who want to protect it. In the end they will disrespect it and fall asleep.”

“Yes, I understood that then.”

“Allow me to question that. True enough you were captivated by my fantasy, but you didn’t fathom the deeper meaning that drove it. Not only in that film, but in others as well. I assisted with the dubbing in Spain, so the films would stay faithful to the proper pitch of dialogue, and I realized how many hidden symbols in my screenplays you, the director, were unaware of, even though they proved to be accurate predictions.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” he insists, “and not because of narrow-mindedness but because of the narrowness of your vision, for just like today, you were incapable of deviating from your social background, transcending your safe and steady environment to connect with the outlook of someone like me, who came from the margins of society.”

“Nonsense, Trigano. I was the one who took care of your story, the continuity of the plot, the credibility of the characters, the proper flow of cause and effect. How can you say I didn’t get the hidden meaning of a work in which every scene was my doing?”

“Because you couldn’t identify with a rebellion that sought to undermine fundamental values you grew up on and held holy. In the Spanish archive I took another look at your mother. Behind the weak and lonely old woman she was supposed to be in our film, one can sense a tough and self-confident personality, a high-ranking administrator in the Treasury Department.”

“State comptroller’s office.”

“Better still. But already then, during production, I could detect the rigid value system this Jerusalem lady had imposed on you. Even after you switched from being a son to being a director, you didn’t shake free of your loyalty and submissiveness and were careful to protect her honor—”

“Not so,” you interrupt, “you are wrong — out of pure hatred for me. At the archive, where I didn’t understand a word of dialogue, I noticed other things, important things, beyond words, and contrary to what you think, I was brought to tears to discover how far I had gone to belittle my mother, all because of the script, and how generous she was in humiliating herself.”

“Really,” he says sarcastically, “to tears? You are actually capable of tears?”

“Only if they’re real.”

“The moment has come, Moses”—he leans in close to your face—“for you to understand that your reality, then and now, is shielded and pampered. What you consider humiliation is a pale shadow of humiliation. What you didn’t understand as a young teacher you certainly won’t understand now, at the end of your career. But it’s not the past that makes you chase me here.”

“Not only.”

“Anyway, why aren’t you touching your food? Go on, start eating, or there won’t be any food left. And if you think the food here isn’t clean because of all the animals running around, I promise you not a single dog is allowed in the kitchen.”

“It’s not the food, Trigano, it’s you…”

“Me?” He laughs. “You still get upset by what I say or don’t say? At your age and position in life the time has come to be indifferent to the person who gave up on you long ago.”

“What does it have to do with my age?”

“Because on the road, when the missiles landed and I shoved your head into the ground, I saw something in your ear. What was it? Cotton?”

“A hearing aid. I have another one in the ear you didn’t look at.”

“In that case, let me give you some advice. If people like me annoy you, pull out the gadgets. Believe me, I’d be happy if I had access to such simple disconnection.”

You put down the knife and fork. Fold the napkin and sit up straight. For a second he seems unnerved.

“Thanks for the advice, Trigano, good of you to dispense it at no cost. I’ll give it serious thought. Meanwhile, point me to the toilet.”

A HARD FEELING. The hope over renewed contact is subsiding. Trigano was not an easy person when young, and over the years he has grown more complex and bitter. Is he taunting you so you’ll get up and leave, or does he want to open an old account, want you to stay? It’s past eleven, and you find yourself crossing the main room, now empty. The screens on the walls display a newscaster from Israel Television who oddly resembles an American president. In a maze of corridors and rooms you find three bathrooms, all in use, the residents now being readied for bedtime.

“If you really need to, you can come in,” offers a female caregiver who is bathing a grown youth in a tub. “I’ll step out, and the boy won’t mind.” You smile your thanks but retreat; it still matters to whom you expose yourself. But as urgency mounts, you hurry outdoors, toward the fields. In a patch purplish in the night, past a vegetable garden planted with large cabbages, between tall, tousled bushes not recently pruned, a big-boned horse stands still, regarding you with the sad look of a philosopher as you unburden yourself before him with tremendous relief.

When you return to the arbor table, you find a reddish soup that arrived in your absence and Trigano slurping his with gusto.

“You found what you needed?”

“Everything was occupied, so I went out to the field.”

“Well done. Best that a man hang loose under the starry skies.”

“And next to a quiet horse.”

“A mule, not a horse,” Trigano corrects, “his name is Sancho Panza, and he pulls the children around the moshav in a cart.”

“I see that you’re also a good friend of the animals.”

“I try.”

“How long has your Uriel been here?”

“Almost four years.”

“And your wife doesn’t visit?”

“She comes once in a while, but for her, the visit is harder.”

“Who is your wife?”

“A woman.”

“I hope she’s not a secret.”

“Every woman is a secret, my wife as well. Years ago she was a student in a class of mine. Toledano met her before he died. From the time Uriel was born, she was totally devoted to him — he became the focus of her life at the expense of his brother and sister. Our whole family became disabled. But since we moved him here, she was liberated from her obligation or her guilt and she found herself another mission.”

“Is she also involved in film?”

“No, God forbid, she has no connection with art. She is a healthy soul, with a stable mind.”

“And what’s her new mission?”

“Tell me, Moses,” he snarls, “does my wife really interest you, or are you sticking to small talk because you’re afraid to get to the point?”

He’s right. Going in circles and trying to soften his hostility by showing interest in his life doesn’t merely fail to draw him closer but apparently alienates him further.

“I came to talk about Ruth.”

“Why not eat something first? You said you came here hungry.”

“I want to talk about Ruth first.”

His face darkens; he looks to the side.

“I want you, Trigano, to help me save her.”

“I don’t believe you came down just for her.”

“For her and maybe a new film.”

“Look, Moses”—he sounds serious now—“you went to all this trouble for nothing. I warned you that there was no point in our meeting. But you’re stubborn, so I’m telling you again flat out, I can’t give you anything because I don’t want to give you anything.”

“Don’t give, just listen. I want to tell you about Ruth.”

“I put her out of my mind a long time ago.”

“Be that as it may, she was your childhood sweetheart and for years your lover and partner. Look, my wife and I also split up years ago, but I never refuse to listen to her and I care about her.”

“Your wife is your wife, and my lover is my lover. There’s no connection. But before you go on, put something in your mouth, the people here will be insulted if you don’t touch a thing.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sort of nauseous. I lost my appetite.”

“The place turns you off?”

“Not the place. You… you’re tough.”

“You haven’t heard anything yet.”

“I want to talk to you about Ruth.”

“Make it fast. The night is short and I’m tired.”

“She’s sick and doesn’t want to admit it.”

A little smile crosses his lips, as if he is pleased by the news.

“Sick with what?”

“I don’t know what the illness is, but I sense it and I’m almost sure. Her doctor has been pestering her to repeat some blood tests, which apparently were bad, but she decided to ignore them.”

“Just like her to ignore them, not because she’s afraid of the results, but because she believes that ignoring a problem makes it go away. Wait a minute, what does ‘I sense it’ mean — you’re living with her again?”

“No, definitely not. And I never did. I don’t know what you know or others told you, but after you left her I didn’t want to live with her. What I felt was a responsibility toward her, an obligation to the character we used, we built, we believed in — you first and foremost as the creator, but also I as the director, and also the cinematographer and the others who worked with us. So when you left, she had to have protection, or call it what you will. Because who knows better than you the world she came from? That world could offer no cure for the breakdown you caused her. And if I hoped that Toledano’s love would win her over and free me from her, I turned out to be wrong.”

“Because she found him too feminine.”

“Feminine? Why? Do gentleness and patience have to be feminine? I don’t agree.”

“You can agree or not, but even in kindergarten Debdou needed someone manly, someone cruel and hard to please, because only then could she feel she had earned his love.”

“Someone like you, for instance…”

“For instance.”

“And someone like me?”

“You’re a dubious case; the narcissism in someone like you, so sure he is an artist, erodes manhood over the years, and even if he runs to the toilet and manages to control every drop, his manhood needs more validation than that.”

And he laughs.

“I came to talk about Ruth,” you repeat patiently. “She’s ill and needs to be convinced to let us at least find out what the illness is.”

“But if you don’t live with her, why are you investigating her illness?”

“Even if I don’t live with her, I can still tell she is deteriorating. You should know that I brought her along to my retrospective.”

“I knew that.”

“Who told you?”

“De Viola told me you asked that she be invited.”

“You’re still in touch with him? You have no more films to deposit with him.”

He ignores your question.

“There, in Santiago,” you press on, “during the three days of the retrospective, I saw new symptoms. Weakness she had trouble overcoming, chronic fatigue. Sometimes watching herself on the screen she dozed off, and in Circular Therapy, it took her a while to recognize herself. We were staying in the same room, I could see this up close.”

Temperatures rise in the arbor. “Yes,” he says. “I know that room.”

“Not exactly a room.”

“Right, an attic they reserve for guests of the municipality, with wooden beams and a window that faces the plaza at the rear of the cathedral.”

“Exactly,” you say uneasily. “With a stone angel waving a sword or a spear.”

“A sword, not a spear.”

The revelation that the former scriptwriter had slept in the same room, and lain in the same bed, strengthens the hope that the intimacy, rebuilt and reimagined, could lead to reconciliation.

“I was not considered an honored guest, nor did they give me a prize, or a fee for coaching the actors,” continues Trigano, “but they did treat me to a nice stay at the Parador.”

You very nearly bring up the Caritas Romana hanging on the wall, but you resist, so as not to awaken ghosts.

“By the way,” you add, “this wasn’t the first retrospective where they made a false assumption and housed us in the same room. And the bed, which you surely noticed was big and wide, was still not so big for a man not to sense what the woman lying beside him was feeling.”

You mean to hurt him, in the hope that causing him pain will bind him to you, that jealousy might diminish cynicism.

He looks you in the eye now, seriously.

“Look, Moses. I regret I agreed to bring you here, because you are about to insult a woman who is important and dear to me.”

“Which woman?”

“Have you not noticed that the farmer’s wife is also in treatment here?”

“So?”

“That’s why you have no confidence in the food she cooks.”

“No, why do you say that? Your confidence is more than enough for me.”

“But you told me you came here hungry, and if I read correctly in an interview you gave to some newspaper or other, in your recent films, which of course I didn’t see and don’t intend to, you make sure that the meals are real, long and full of detail, and that the characters relate to what they are actually eating—”

“You read correctly.”

“So there mustn’t be a gap between art and life.”

“You think so?”

“Sometimes.” He laughs.

“I have nothing against this meal,” you say, snatching the wisp of goodwill that suddenly surfaces between you. “Here we are, sitting opposite each other at the dinner table, and if I were here not as a guest but as a director, I could stage an attractive scene lasting a minute or two. I would ask the cinematographer to pan this unusual arbor and try to capture the velvety darkness enveloping its greenery, and from there I would encourage him to zoom in among the plates and bowls on the table to convey precisely the lively colors of the food. From time to time, I would want to spice the dinner scene with a few quick takes inside the kitchen and the dark rooms of the patients, so some fear and mystery can trickle in. That would underscore the dramatic tension between the skinny, younger man who crackles with hostility and disdain while gobbling the food ravenously, and his interlocutor, an emotional old man who pokes his fork into one dish and another but doesn’t eat a thing. This contrast alone, without a word spoken, as in a silent film, would build tension that requires a payoff and gives the producer hope of filling the theaters.”

He listens attentively but doesn’t smile, not even a little. “Because the producer is what matters,” he mutters.

“And all this,” you say, sticking to the scene, “comes before we get to the heart of the matter. Reconciliation between a teacher and a student after many years.”

“No reconciliation. And I’m not saying another word until you put something in your mouth.”

“In that case,” you counter, “I’ll start with the red soup, if it hasn’t got cold.”

“It’s tomato soup that was cold to begin with, and spicy.”

You dip your spoon into the fragrant red puree dotted with white specks, bring it to your lips, swallow a spoonful and then another, and suddenly your mouth is on fire and the spoon falls from your hand.

“Great soup. Don’t worry,” you tell him, like a child to his mother, “just resting. I can’t help it if my excitement at seeing you kills my appetite.”

“You, Moses, still get excited?” He reverts to mockery.

“Excited, and confused.”

“Confused? The one who should be confused here is me, as I picture the two of you in a bed I slept in. My heart is calm and cold — though I know where you want to lead me, there’s not a chance that I’ll go there. Anyway, objectively, don’t you think it’s pathetic to travel on a winter night to a dangerous area looking for a man you haven’t seen or talked to in many years, all to tell him about the imaginary illness of a woman who has become meaningless to him?”

“It’s not an imaginary illness, believe me, Trigano, it’s real.”

“In what way real?” He reddens. “In that she refuses to play along with the patronage you offer?”

Finally. You knew that Trigano could not conceal indefinitely the root of his pain and jealousy, and you try to maintain a gentle and patient demeanor.

“Again you misinterpret my protectiveness, or call it what you will. Because as I told you, it began as professional care and not personal, and if at times it involves the closeness you’re thinking of, it happens naturally in the course of working together. Which is why there are always boundaries.”

“Nice and decent, but not true.”

“True… believe me.”

“Okay, why not? Really, what do I care how you interpret your patronage and what you do with her and what you don’t do.” But he is still angry. “A scene of two adults, lying in the same bed, and the man senses, without any attempt at touching, just from the edge of the bed, the hidden malady of the woman. I wouldn’t buy such an absurd premise even in a work of literature.”

“Not even in symbolic stories like yours?”

“They have nothing to do with this.”

You change the subject and tell him about the first night, about Distant Station, which the Spaniards turned into The Train and the Village—how astonished you were to discover that the village girl at the center of the plot was a deaf-mute.

“And you forgot that?”

“Evidently.”

“But the critics at the time singled out the deaf-muteness as a daring and original element in the script. It was the only way the villagers could support a diabolical plan without incriminating themselves. Her disability created a twilight zone where meanings were confused and outcomes were blurred. Like linguistic obfuscations created by sly politicians to fool the masses and manipulate them at will.”

You acknowledge the powerful originality of the deaf-muteness in this film but give yourself some credit too, as the director who was able to elicit from the wild, confused gesticulations of a young woman a strange, alluring eroticism.

“Yes”—he is caught up in your words, eyes blazing—“yes, both I and the Spaniards who did the dubbing could feel it when we worked on those scenes. A strange eroticism floating in the studio…”

“In Spain Ruth told me about your sister, who was her model for the character.”

“You didn’t know about my sister?”

“You never mentioned her. Maybe you were embarrassed by her.”

He averts his eyes.

“Maybe…” he says. “In those years I avoided exposing my personal life.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No. She couldn’t keep going after my mother died.”

“I’m sorry…”

He says nothing. Regards you with caution. The thread of conversation has snapped, and he wonders what you’re after.

“I’m afraid of causing you pain,” you say, almost in a whisper.

“Cause me pain? How?”

“You surely remember the final minutes of the film, when she is dragged into the bushes. I was amazed to see how savage and violent it was, how far I let it go, even compared to movies today. I was filled with compassion for the living character, the real one, sitting beside me in the hall.”

He tenses in his chair, his eyes narrowing, his hostility entangled in the web of your story.

“Yair Moses, I have no interest in an account of your feelings or your lust.”

“You’re wrong, this is not about my lust but about her illness, which is why I am here. You wondered how I could sense her illness if I don’t live with her — well, when we got back to the Parador after the screening, she crashed, fully dressed, in her coat and boots, onto that big wide bed, and sank into an unhealthy long sleep. It was as if a dead woman were lying at my side. I took off her clothes and her boots, knowing that she couldn’t feel me. And then, though I had never, ever forced myself on her, not even a light touch, I held her feet and covered them with kisses — just her feet — and by the heat and dryness of the skin I could tell she was sick.”

A strange, evil smile distorts his lips. He gets up as if possessed, then calms down. Pours himself some wine, and pours some in your glass too. He sips it slowly, ceremoniously, looks at you as if you are someone he is seeing for the first time.

“Your lips are that sophisticated?”

“Apparently…”

“Maybe your loneliness, Moses, has bent you completely.”

“Maybe.”

“So why don’t you tell me what really brought you here, so we can say goodbye?”

“A simple request. Pick up the phone and tell her you found out, from me or whoever, that she is neglecting her blood tests, and this is of concern to you — you can phrase it however you think is right — because, though many years have passed since you parted, you still care, and though you are certain, or you hope, that the test results will be reassuring, in any case it’s better for the truth, any truth, to come out earlier rather than later.”

“Bottom line?”

“Bottom line, you’re asking her to get another blood test, if only for your sake.”

“For my sake?” He stretches out the word, as if shocked and insulted. “For my sake?”

“Yes, for your sake. That way you might convince her. And if you want, you can add ‘in memory of our old love.’ I leave that to you.”

“Our love?” he retorts in a hoarse whisper, as if you’ve invaded a vipers’ nest.

“Yes, your love. I still remember its intensity and its joy. That’s why she’ll listen to you. You’ve remained an authority figure for her. Every time your name comes up, I can feel the awe she has for you. More than awe, admiration. I am asking you to talk to her… preferably in person, but it could be on the telephone. If that’s too hard for you, write her a letter. There’s nothing easier.”

“That’s enough!” He raises his voice. “You don’t expect me to believe you came here for her.”

“For her, but also for myself and for you.”

“She does have a son… a grown man. Why don’t you talk to him?”

“Because he’s the alienated, childish hedonist type, and it never dawned on him that he should be taking care of his mother. He has no influence on her at all… Believe me, Trigano, there’s a good reason I took the trouble to come here.”

He gets up, walks a few paces, then comes back and stands facing you.

“Listen carefully: No chance! Never! Not by phone or in writing or any other way. You should know that this request is repugnant and insulting — it’s as if all feeling has gone from the world.”

“But it’s feeling I’m talking about.”

“These are synthetic feelings, created in films like yours so the producer can massage them any way he likes, not real feelings that torment a man until his dying day.”

“His dying day?”

“Yes, Moses, even if your puny imagination cannot grasp it, I must not get near her, not even talk to her from afar, so I don’t burn her and myself out of sheer rage and hatred.”

“Even now?”

“I don’t count the years, time doesn’t affect me. Look, quite a few years after I broke up with her — I was already married — I went to see one of your films, whose title and content I have since deleted from my memory. You gave her a supporting role, and in one scene, I wonder if even you can recall why, maybe as an added turn-on for your kind of audience, you put her all alone, at twilight, in a hotel room where she was supposed to be waiting for someone who didn’t come, or was late, and she slowly took off her clothes and wrapped herself in a sheet and lay alone in the bed, and her face wore sadness that I’d never seen before.”

“I think I can locate that scene for you.”

“No!” he screams. “Don’t locate anything for me.”

“To explain—”

“No, shut up,” he shouts, “don’t locate and don’t explain and don’t interrupt, just shut up, or else I’m going to leave you here to the dogs.”

His face is twisted in pain. You are not offended but smile uncomfortably.

“Someone told me about the film,” he says, caught up in an angry memory. “Or I may have seen her photograph in some ad, and in a moment of weakness I said to myself, Let me see what became of her, that Debdou, and I went in and sat in the dark, I didn’t even tell my wife I was going to see the film. And as she lay there on the bed, naked and wrapped in a sheet, I wasn’t thinking about the cinematographer, the lighting man, the soundman, or the director in the room, only the loneliness and pain looking straight at me, and all at once my passion for her came back, I had a erection from longing and sadness, and I climaxed, and I rushed out of the theater, wet and wounded. I then understood that if I wanted a life, I had to make sure this connection remained broken forever, until the day I died. Perhaps now even you, Moses, can understand why I don’t care whether she’s a real or imaginary invalid or how her blood tests turn out. Actually, and this is the truth, I also don’t care whether she lives or dies… So don’t ask anything from me. She betrayed a deeply rooted relationship, she broke a covenant. You also betrayed me, because when I asked you to be the director of my screenplays, I believed that the screenplay was not just one element among many but the highest purpose of the film. And suddenly you betrayed me. Except you didn’t owe me anything. She betrayed the calling I created for her; my art was born from her and for her. In primary school, in fact in kindergarten, I picked her out as someone who could make a daring dream come true. Not because of her beauty. Believe me, it wasn’t because of her beauty. Her beauty was a passing, temporary detail of my vision. I felt the absurdity she radiated, the surrealistic mixture within this ragamuffin child of an old rabbi who brought her to Israel from a village at the edge of the Sahara.”

And at this moment, as if on cue, the dogs under and around the table get up, stretch, and vigorously wag their tails.

“And so you will allow me, Moses, not to believe that you came to see me only because of her. I don’t remember you as someone who cares about other people. There’s always a back pocket in your mind, and in the pocket there hides a slippery frog that will soon jump at me. Do you want to shift the caregiving responsibilities to me, because you no longer have a role for her?”

The agitated dogs drown out his voice, barking and howling for dear life.

THE MOTHERLY FARMWOMAN comes with the news that Uriel has woken up and is asking for his father. “Should I bring him to you, or will you go to him?” “He should come here,” says Trigano, “let him sit with us awhile. Dress him warmly.”

“We’ll also get Shaya to light the stove. But I see, Trigano, your teacher doesn’t like my cooking.”

“The food looks so beautiful,” you say in your defense, “it’s a shame to ruin it by eating.”

“Ruin it, please,” she pleads, “that’s what my food expects from people, otherwise only the dogs enjoy it.”

You laugh. “Yes, of course, soon. I’m just so emotional meeting with my student, whom I haven’t seen for over thirty years, I forget to eat.”

“If you haven’t seen each other for that many years, you couldn’t have met Uriel.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a good thing he woke up, so you can see this special boy before you leave. I’ll bring him, and you should put some food in you. If you don’t like your tomato soup cold, I can make it boiling hot.”

“This soup is just fine. See, I’m going to eat it now.”

“He’ll eat, he has no choice,” promises Trigano, who puts on his white hat. “If he doesn’t eat, we’ll keep him here as a patient.”

The dogs trail behind the woman as Trigano moves chairs to make room for his son.

You dip the spoon into the thick red liquid and play with a wild idea: Should you ever be tempted, in your old age, to make a horror film, you can trick the killer in the last scene and serve him a red soup mixed with blood. You are saved from the soup by the dogs who dart excitedly between the father and son, who arrives in a wheelchair. Uriel is a small young man in army work clothes. A knitted cap flops on his head, hairs are plastered to his forehead, his eyes are innocent and blue, bright with yearning for his father, who rushes to hug him and wheel him to the table. “Abba, Papa, Daddy, Papi, Babo, Père,” gushes the son, the drool from his lips absorbed by a bib tied round his neck.

“Uriel, I’d like you to meet my old teacher.”

“My old teacher,” parrots the son, quickly specifying, “sabba, nono, opa, grandpa.”

You rise to embrace the boy. “Yes, Uriel,” you say, “I am also a sabba,” and the young man is excited to discover a grandfather. His legs are splinted in some sort of Inquisition-style apparatus that helps him control involuntary movements and be aware of his body, but his arms return your embrace, and with great affection he kisses your hand, not letting you go before resting his head on your chest. “Sabba,” he repeats with warmth and wonder, a mischievous glint in his pure blue eyes, the glint there once was in the eyes of your screenwriter.

“That clear blue he got from his mother,” you both state and inquire as you gingerly free yourself from the lad’s embrace.

“Not from his mother. From the blue skies that stretch above the desert of his ancestors,” his father says, either joking or provoking.

“What is it? Brain damage?” you ask cautiously.

“Yes, to a degree.”

“From the birth, or from the pregnancy?”

Trigano takes off his hat and looks at you strangely.

“Earlier, Moses, before the pregnancy.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning… meaning…” he repeats scornfully, “meaning, there are moments, call them delusional, but at the same time very real, when I regard my son’s injury as an extension or a consequence of the injury you caused me.”

“That’s absurd!”

“You know and remember that everything that you think is absurd, I think has value and meaning. Yes, you too, indirectly, are to blame for what happened to this child.”

“I am?” You recoil.

“That’s right, but you won’t understand what you’ve just heard and you’re better off not trying. There’s just one thing you’ll take away from this in any case. You’ll understand why I avoid you, and why, when you force yourself on me, as you are doing now, it’s torture.”

“Such a thought is not only absurd, it’s despicable, total madness.”

“Exactly, madness.” He happily seizes the word. “You’re right, total madness, sweet, private madness… superfluous madness but nonetheless real… madness that commands respect. But enough. We’ll stop now. They’re bringing us a stove.”

The old farmer pushes a jerky baby carriage containing an old oil stove, its flame already burning, and a woolen blanket. “I came to warm you up a little,” he announces. And while Trigano wraps his son in the blanket, the farmer shoos the dogs away from the table to make room for the stove.

“If the feet are warm,” he declares, “the whole body is warm.” He collects dishes from the table and puts them in the carriage and scolds you: “You, sir, the teacher, will come to regret you didn’t eat. Soon our neighbors might send us a little red alert, you’ll have to drop everything and run to the shelter.”

In a whirl of emotion your heart aches for the wounded creature wrapped by his father in the blanket, now resembling a newborn with his flattened drooping head, and you rise, stand up straight, and make a strange little speech to the farmer:

“Yes, your wife already chastised me, but I beg for more time. I am paralyzed by the meeting with this man, a former student, the most brilliant and original of all my students, which is why I chose him as my partner at the beginning of my career, until he ripped asunder our partnership in a ferocious argument, which we are trying to arbitrate now. Please tell your wife not to give up on me.”

And upon concluding your speech, as the astounded gaze of the brilliant student impales your back, you exit the arbor with head held high and stride through the main house, across the big living room with the little screens sporting a seventies singer in black-and-white, down corridors where breathing and snoring blend with the sound of sighs, and though the toilets are vacant, you prefer a visit to the old mule out by the big cabbages, now that you know the mule’s name, and he cocks his head with curiosity as you urinate, slowly and thoroughly, and the subversive notion enters your mind to get in your car and leave, for surely a soldier can be found at a nearby junction who will be happy for the ride and point you in the right direction.

THE HONEYSUCKLED ARBOR, all lit up, looks from a distance like a purplish installation with a perforated dome. Two big dogs hunch over a small trough, politely dividing its spoils, the leftovers from Trigano’s dinner. And within the arbor Trigano is patiently feeding his son soft rice scooped from the tomato soup. Has he guessed your thoughts of escape? For he gives you a friendly, open look, as though he shed his anger the minute he slammed you with his absurd accusation.

“What’s this, Trigano,” you joke, “these dogs were trained in table manners?”

“When they are castrated they are well-mannered,” he answers, “but do sit down and start eating. There is culinary pride here, so it’s important to the lady of the house that accidental guests eat and praise her.”

“I have praised her. By the way, does Uriel usually need to be fed, or is this a treat on a special night?”

“A treat, but I’m helping. He knows how to eat, but needs a bit of prodding.”

“What kind of work does he do here?”

“He works in the packing house of the moshav, sorting fruits and vegetables. He has a good eye for potatoes and onions, sees what will go bad quickly and what will keep longer. They’re so happy with him, they even give him a small salary, right?”

“Two hundred shekels,” Uriel burbles cheerfully.

“Is treatment here expensive?”

“The state will subsidize anyone willing to get treatment in a place close to the border.”

“That doesn’t eliminate anxiety for his well-being.”

“Obviously. On the other hand, the caregivers here are good and dedicated, and there are plenty of bomb shelters.”

The whole time, he keeps feeding his son, who opens his mouth wide like a baby bird and tilts his head from side to side, his eyes fixed on you, listening to your conversation. You flash him smiles but don’t speak to him, for you are afraid of saying something that will embroil you in an answer you won’t understand. It turns out your smiles disturb him; he tugs at his father’s ear and whispers at length, in choppy bursts, and his father nods his head vigorously to signify both understanding and agreement.

“What’s he saying?”

“He’s worried about you, wants you to stay here. He says we should make a bed for you.”

“Ah, Uriel, how good of you to be concerned about me.”

“Yes, from the care and love that he gets from everyone, he has learned how to give to others. By the way, apart from the wadi of Slumbering Soldiers, did you look for any other locations from those films?”

“Yes, my parents’ house. But I looked only from the outside, to figure out how we managed to turn it into three separate houses.”

“And that’s all?”

“No. I also took Ruth to that Jordanian village Toledano annexed and we went down to the railroad station and the tracks and the wadi of the train wreck. Because when I saw the film in Spain, it seemed like the station wasn’t a real one, that we built it, like the installation in Slumbering Soldiers.”

“No, it was a real train station.”

“Right, but today you won’t find it. The people in the village took it apart stone by stone. But the stretch of track built by the Turks is alive and well. And the railcars are still running, and the train to Jerusalem still crawls by but doesn’t stop. You see, Trigano, in the twenty-first century, your international express is still an Israeli fantasy.”

“Which makes it doubly powerful.”

Silence.

“Did you also go to Kafka’s synagogue?” He snickers.

“It’s gone. You tore it down in your script, no? But I have faith that the old animal found herself another synagogue, where she still runs around between the ark and the women’s section. But the women of today aren’t scared of her.”

Now at last you share a laugh.

“When I saw that mongoose on the screen at the Spanish archive,” you go on, “I was impressed all over again by Toledano’s talent for catching her at exactly the right moment.”

“Don’t dismiss your own role in taming the shrew,” Trigano says with a thin smile. “You do have a talent for directing animals. Maybe that should be your true calling in the few years you have left, a director of animals.”

“It’s too late,” you say, keeping your cool. “I’m too old to start a new career, especially without Toledano’s help. He could have become an important cinematographer, had it not been for Ruth driving him crazy.”

“He drove himself crazy.”

His son listens, smiling, as if sensing the irony between the lines.

You pour yourself some wine and stare at the food still left on the table, weighing where to begin.

“At the film institute, when I saw the Kafka movie,” you say, “I asked myself why you picked that story. Even though it’s an abstract Kafka story, with no defined time or place, it’s still about an old synagogue in Eastern Europe, in a very old community drenched in memories of pogroms and foreshadowing Holocaust terror. By the way, who played the rabbi? A wonderful actor.”

“Really wonderful.”

“How did he end up in our film? I never saw him again anywhere on the screen. It wasn’t you who brought him in?”

“No, I don’t think so…” He’s avoiding the question.

“There were moments he looked like Kafka himself.”

“Maybe he was Kafka himself,” he says, not smiling.

“Another thing, why did you move the animal to an Israeli synagogue? I tried to explain the intention to the Spanish, but I don’t think I succeeded.”

“Why do you struggle to explain to other people things you yourself don’t understand?”

You patiently ignore his words and continue.

“And you had no desire, after you dubbed our films, to visit the places where we shot them?”

“One place. I go there sometimes, but you forgot about it long ago.”

“You mean—”

“That’s right. A green iron door by the old port in Jaffa. The gate of the pitiful clinic.”

“There I didn’t go.”

“Why not? It’s the door I go back to. Sometimes it suddenly changes color, then returns to the original.”

“The door did stay in the film. You see the heroine coming out of it sadly after giving up the baby for adoption. Only her scene with the beggar Yehuda Gafni was canceled.”

“And you insulted him too, and profoundly, when you canceled that scene.”

“What could I do? He was pissed off because I took away a steamy scene where he was to suck the breast of a young woman.”

“No, Moses. Please. Don’t reduce everything to your own level. That was an important scene that you didn’t understand, and don’t even today, and you had no problem dropping it so cavalierly, not asking permission from the one who invented it.”

“Please”—you are angry now—“don’t twist what actually happened. It wasn’t me. The woman you had such a deep connection with is the one who was disgusted by the scene you wrote for her. I am not a director who is prepared to crush the heart of an actor to satisfy the disturbed imagination of a writer.”

“And in all the movies you’ve made since, you of course never imposed any kinky situation on your characters.”

“I tried not to. But today, the actors are swept up in the mood of the times and have grown daring and uninhibited, so they pull me to all kinds of places.”

“After you killed the scene and fired the actor, I went to his house to apologize. You know what he said?”

“No.”

“He didn’t say a thing. He just cursed you.”

“I’m not surprised. Though he actually should have cursed Ruth, not me.”

“No, just you.” Trigano tightens his lips. “You were the one in a hurry to ruin it all, never giving me a chance to talk her into it.”

“But how could you do that? Didn’t she lock herself in the truck and refuse to look at you?”

“That was none of your business. She was mine, not yours.”

“Yours? What do you mean? Private property?”

“No, no. You saw, I could relinquish everything private and personal I had with her. What I mean is that I created her character, shaped it from within her, gave it substance and motivation and words. And if at the end of the film she rebelled, then what the hell drove you to get between us? Why didn’t you let me stifle her rebellion?”

“Stifle? There’s an awful word.”

“Then find a nicer one. You knew how important that woman was for my work.”

“But if that’s the meaning of mine for you, then she was also mine, and as a director I had to protect her credibility as an actress.”

“Stop piling up excuses. You simply used her rebellion to take her for yourself.”

“Not guilty. And the many years have proven how wrong you are. I didn’t want her for myself, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have dared tear her away from you. But the two of us, you and I both, had no idea what her rebellion was really about. It was not on account of the sick scene you wrote for her, but because she feared the reaction of the girl who played her young character in the film.”

“What girl?”

“You forgot? In your original script was a girl who played the heroine in her childhood. You wrote her a few scenes in school, her youth group, her teachers’ home. We had nearly ten minutes of her already edited, but then, who knows why, we decided to cut her out.”

“You mean the girl Toledano found?”

“Who looked like her.”

“She didn’t look like her, couldn’t have looked like her. The resemblance was all a fantasy of Toledano’s. I remember her. The general’s daughter, north Tel Aviv. From the self-styled Israeli aristocracy. A little female Moses.”

“Female Moses?” You’re shocked.

“Forget it. Yes, I know who you mean. In fact, I suggested cutting her out in the editing.”

“Ah, you…”

“Don’t you remember? Not just because the film got cumbersome. She was a mistake from the start. She didn’t belong there. I remember her well. A shallow little spoiled Moses type.”

“Again Moses? What is this? Have you lost your mind?”

“What do you care.”

“Her name was Ruth.”

“Ruth? No way. I mean, I don’t remember.”

“But that was her name. It was out of guilt toward her that Ruth decided to take the girl’s name for herself. During production, it was Ruth who coached her and invested time, as if she had discovered a little sister. She was so happy that a real homegrown Israeli would play her as a child and perhaps upgrade her own identity. So when it came time for the last scene with the beggar — and at that point she didn’t yet know we were cutting the girl from the picture — she was afraid that if the girl saw this rough scene, it would frighten her away. That’s the real reason for her rebellion. She didn’t want to disappoint the girl.”

“To disappoint the girl?”

“Exactly.”

“How do you know all this?”

“She told me, in Spain.”

“Aha.” He laughs triumphantly. “If that’s the real reason for the havoc this woman wreaked all around her, it’s clear why she didn’t have the nerve to tell me herself. And if this was indeed the reason, then thank you, Moses, for coming down here.”

“Thank me? Why?”

“Because now I can truly be at peace.”

“At peace in what way?”

“Knowing it was good and right and necessary to make that final break with her. Because that sort of concern for her image, for what others would think of her character, would have made it impossible for me to keep taking her to places I wanted to go. It’s good that I broke with her. Sooner or later she would have ruined me.”

You feel how worked up and confused he is, but you don’t let up, you plunge headlong into the storm to defend yourself.

“Think anything you like, be at peace or not, that’s your business, but one thing is clear: I didn’t reject a scene you wrote in order to separate you two.”

At first he seems hesitant, slow to answer. He has stopped feeding his son, who sits in his wheelchair with mouth wide open, waiting.

“Yes, I admit it,” he finally answers, “I made a mistake. You have no love for her, there is no genuine connection between you, and even if you sometimes sleep in the same bed, you have no influence on her. You had to come all the way to a man like me, who hates you and considers you worthless, to influence her in such a small matter.”

“You see?”

There is suddenly a hope that this trip, to a danger zone on a winter’s night, might not be in vain after all.

“Yes,” he repeats proudly, “I made a mistake. Back then I wasn’t strong or clear-eyed enough to end my partnership with you, so I took the excuse of personal jealousy, instead of realizing the fundamental difference between you and me and accepting the fact that you didn’t have it in you to be a true partner, a partner over time, in the vision that burned inside me. But you can take comfort, Moses, that after the break with you, I also began to understand that it was not just a matter of your own blinkered vision, but something bigger. When I looked for somebody to replace you, various other collaborators but similar to you, Moses, from the same species of human that people here describe with that expression I hate, ‘salt of the earth’—in other words, dedicated and responsible Israelis, progressive in their minds and logical in their thinking — I saw that this salt of the earth was sick of its saltiness and especially repelled by the saltiness of others; people like me, for instance. At the same time, those whose backgrounds and natures were ostensibly similar to my own were still wallowing in resentments and paralyzed by perennial feelings of deprivation that kindled a vague yearning for the grandfather trilling the old prayers or the grandma feeding them stuffed peppers. So I gave up writing scripts for good and started teaching. I want to try to plant a few of my own seeds in the mental furrows of random Israelis, in the hope that over time, something different might grow here. Yes, after I became a teacher myself, I was able truly to forget you.”

“And Ruth too.”

“I told you. A glimpse of her in a movie poster could get me worked up for days, but all in all I felt sorry for her, for the path you were taking her down, and I didn’t want to punish her in my heart. That way I could respond to a loving and understanding woman, who gave me three solid children. First and foremost Uriel, my special son, who nullified her once and for all in my heart.”

“But he doesn’t nullify me.”

“What nullifies you are the movies you make. And if I needed any further proof that leaving you was the right thing to do, I understood it in Spain. Three years ago, when I sent our old films to the archive in Santiago, I received to my surprise a warm letter from Juan de Viola, who invited me there to coach the Spanish actors in the dubbing. I came to watch the films scene by scene, line by line, and I was able to see that your quick surrender by the green door was not an accident, and not out of sudden pity for a panicky actress. It happened because your powers are limited and the salt-of-the-earth Jerusalemite was looking for something sweet. In retrospect I saw that even when you tried your best to direct my artistic passions, you didn’t understand what you were directing.”

“That’s insulting.”

“Not so fast. It’s pointed at not just you, but me. Yes, me. You were not the only one who did not fathom what I was striving for; I myself was confused. Fantasy and surrealism blurred my thinking and I didn’t always realize where I was.”

“And what were you striving for, do you think?”

“To strike out against metaphysical terror. To reduce its authority. Not to attack religion as such, the rituals and prayers, all that small stuff, which do no harm so long as they give people comfort or provide structure for anxious souls. But those souls must not be dragged into the fear of something hidden and invisible, of a God who is abstract, jealous, and aggressive. I directed my arrows at God. Against the awe of God’s majesty. I thought that if I was incapable of destroying that supremacy, I could at least play tricks on it, make it hazy, mock it, put it to sleep, expose its wickedness, its instability, inject into it elements that contradict its holiness — pagan, absurd elements — put strange animals beside it. Because maybe even then, as a young man, I felt that the rational identity of the salt of the earth, his hedonistic secular culture, is basically a thin, brittle crust that at a time of crisis or conflict crumbles before the terrifying power of transcendence.”

“And it was there of all places, in the dubbing studio of the archive in Santiago, that this epiphany came over you…”

“Which has only grown stronger since then.”

“Grown stronger how?”

“No.” He suddenly withdraws. “It’s impossible to explain such a complicated and fragile idea at such a late hour, especially to a person who is tired and hasn’t eaten all day and needs to worry about making his way home. Even if I find you a bed here, there’s no way you’ll fall asleep. So take my advice: get up and hit the road.”

“You may be right. It is late, and we’re both tired. And the drive back does worry me. So let’s stop here and continue our conversation in Tel Aviv.”

“No Tel Aviv, no conversation or meetings. Even this one was unnecessary from my standpoint, which is why it’s the last one.”

“And what about your epiphany?”

“It stays with me.”

YOU STAND UP and take your car keys from the table, and you head for the big house, followed by the wiry-haired white dog from Kibbutz Re’im. You go through the main hall, where all the screens on the walls have gone blank, and through the hallways between the rooms, but this time you enter one of the bathrooms, remove your jacket and shirt in semidarkness, and douse your half-naked body with cold water to invigorate it. After changing batteries in your hearing aids to refresh them too and petting the dog who waited patiently beside you, you head back to the arbor. From the doorway you hear a reedy wail.

“What happened?”

“Uriel has you mixed up with his grandfather, my wife’s father, who is no longer with us. He was upset to see you disappear.”

“But I didn’t disappear, Uriel, here I am.” You lean over the young man and dare to wipe gently a tear from his pallid face.

“See.” Trigano strokes his son. “It’s not so easy to say goodbye to this grandpa. He keeps talking.”

And you go on to describe Amsalem’s investment offer for a new film, on the condition that Trigano write the script.

“That vegetable dealer? He’s still hanging around?”

“He’s no longer a vegetable dealer, now he’s a successful building contractor.”

“How old is he?”

“Over eighty. But fresh and youthful. After all, you were the one who introduced him to us.”

“He’s still willing to lose money on your movies?”

“He invests small but useful amounts. The film business gives him status among his friends, and he invites them to premieres and helps me fill the hall. You don’t need to worry about him. Even when the movie fails, his contract ensures he won’t lose money.”

“I never worried about him. He’s a wily bastard who knows how to take care of himself. So he’s interested in some Turkish melodrama?”

“It could also be British. On television they showed a boy of fourteen from Liverpool who fathered a son. Amsalem decided that in this permissive generation, basic values are collapsing and the world is growing more absurd by the day, and he fondly remembers our early films, even though after every one he swore that we would never see another penny from him. Now suddenly he misses you. If Trigano is still up to it, he says, he should be the one to write the script. If he could plummet a train into a gorge so convincingly, he can make a schoolboy sire a baby, and concoct a tragic post-postmodern story out of it.”

“Why tragic?”

“Because he suggests that the schoolboy, in the end, should plot against his own child in order to get back at the mother.”

“So, in your old age, you finally found a fitting screenwriter.”

“I listen to everyone. True, his ideas are lowbrow and primitive, but sometimes he comes up with something original, from the marketplace, from the tumult of life, like the idea for Potatoes, which was a very successful film.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“So what do you say?”

“What can I say? I’ve already said everything. You can tell Amsalem that Trigano still exists, but not for films by Moses, because there is a deep abyss between him and the director.”

“There you go again. You deepen it by the minute, make it ever darker. If there’s an abyss between us, let’s explore it. Enough with being proud and stubborn. Look at me. What do you see? An old teacher has come to you with goodwill. A penitent pilgrim.”

“A penitent?” he says with disbelief. “Penance to whom?”

“To you.”

Is it possible that the word penitent, uttered almost unconsciously, has softened his heart but might invite a daring demand of atonement? In any event it seems that your gentle hand on Uriel’s cheek has quieted the boy. His deformed head has dropped, his eyes are shut, his breathing has grown heavier.

His father carefully wheels him back to the building. And now, alone at the table with no one nagging you, you take a look at what’s before you, and poke around with knife and fork, and your appetite grows, and the hunger suppressed at the start of the evening erupts in force. The meat is cold by now. The unspecified internal organs are submerged in the sweetish sauce. But the fast you levied on yourself renders them delectable.

“You don’t want me to heat up the meat for you?” You are startled by the farmer’s wife standing behind you. “Why eat it cold?”

“No, I like it this way.”

“A few minutes ago two rockets fell in Sderot, but they just sounded the all-clear, no need to worry.”

You are now alone in the arbor, dogs crouching at your feet, mist rising from the earth. Trigano has not returned from putting his son to bed. Maybe he simply lay down and fell asleep beside him. Will a finale of dining alone top off a story about a director who tried his best to appease his screenwriter?

From behind the big house come sounds of screeching wheels and the clanging of cans. The big mule, wearing a sort of dunce cap, pulls the farmer in a little cart, bringing fresh milk for the residents. Raindrops penetrate the sukkah. Someone will need to show you the way home.

You are still as stone. A veteran artist waiting for a sign that will breathe life into a new creation.

SOME TIME PASSES before Trigano finally reappears, looking at you more charitably and apologizing. It was hard getting the boy to sleep. Meeting a stranger was enough to unsettle him. So he had to explain, to sing a song, tell a story. This time none of it calmed him; his father had to lie beside him and pretend he was falling asleep. “It’s late, Moses, let’s part amicably,” he says and puts on his coat and his hat and takes a pipe from his coat pocket. “The way to Tel Aviv is simple, some seventy kilometers, but it’s starting to rain, which doesn’t bother Hamas. Let’s say goodbye.”

You don’t budge.

The abyss…

Yes, the abyss. Trigano fills his pipe and lights it. No, he can’t recall any other instance of a director and a screenwriter still troubled decades later by a scene that got canceled. And yet, an abyss. Even during the dubbing at the archive they all felt that the ending of the film was unclear and seemed pasted on. True enough, a weak and threadbare ending is no rarity in films, or plays, or books. Except that his original script had a proper, powerful ending, which was discarded out of cowardice. It wasn’t to shock the audience that he wrote the closing scene. The thinking behind it was correct and human.

“The gifted former student, a dedicated army officer, who decided out of generosity and with full awareness to give birth to a child for a couple she loved, older people from a world utterly different from her own, Holocaust survivors, suddenly realized that with this noble act she had sentenced herself to be forever bound emotionally to a child whose life she will never really know. And yet, the tragedy of the adoptive parents, and the terror that dominates their memories, will inevitably become hers too and will cast their shadow on her entire future. So she decides to renege on her agreement to give the couple her baby. But out of pain and guilt over injuring those who have waited so eagerly, she wants to prove, mainly to herself, that she is not merely rebellious and independent, but also kind. When she leans over the beggar and pulls out her breast, she is saying, in effect: Even as I go my way as a free woman, after giving up my baby to strangers, I do not turn my back on the world I have disappointed. I will care for you in your old age, I will comfort you, I will give you of myself.

“And the actress and the director, who did not grasp the human content of the scene and saw only childish provocation, also could not understand the depth and the timelessness of its theme, which enriched the arts for generations.”

“You didn’t explain it that way when you fought for the scene… not a word about that.”

“Because I myself didn’t yet know what I was tapping into. Unaware of the historical reference, I still felt the power echoing from the depths compelling me not to give up the scene. I didn’t know but I felt that the ending I invented, with all its ambiguity, was essentially a reconciliation, a potential point of departure for the next film.”

And he stops, falls silent.

“Please, keep talking.”

His look stabs you. He seems to be weighing whether you are worthy of further revelation. He looks at your plate then fills it with scraps from the table, and the dogs run to the trough near the arbor, where he tosses the remains of the meal.

“So?” And in your heart the possibility has already become certainty.

“You know or have maybe heard of the Latin concept of Caritas Romana?” he asks.

“Of course. Roman Charity.”

“You knew? How did you—”

“Later,” you interrupt in a teacher’s commanding tone. “First tell me what about it moves you so much.”

“In the cathedral museum, I stumbled upon a reproduction of a painting of Roman Charity by an unnamed artist. It seared my heart, and I realized that even as a young man without much education, I had tapped into an ancient story about a daughter who nurses an elderly father in prison. I understood then that the early scripts I wrote for you were not created in a vacuum but issued from something deeper and wider than my own little soul. I invented something that had been invented two thousand years before, in Europe. I, who came to Israel from a small town in Africa. Juan de Viola explained to me—”

“Juan de Viola!” you exclaim. “He hung that picture in our room, over the bed.”

“Over your bed?”

“Yes, over our bed. The hotel borrows reproductions from the museum for their rooms.”

“Wonderful, wise Juan…” gushes Trigano. “I told him about the other ending, the discarded one, and he went and hung it by your bed.”

“He said nothing to me.”

“Was this the first time you came upon the image of Roman Charity?”

“Yes. Despite my bourgeois upbringing, despite the home full of books, despite the history I studied at the university—”

“Studies that gave you no historical depth. Now you can understand the root of my anger. When you canceled that scene, you also trampled my self-confidence… my faith in my intuition, in the spiritual sources of my creativity… It’s no accident that I then began to decline.”

“Decline? Just a few hours ago I sat in that wonderful class of yours. Make no mistake, I now understand well the harm I caused you. Which is why I came to you tonight as a penitent.”

“A penitent,” he sneers, “a shallow word if not accompanied by an act of atonement.”

“Atonement?” You smile. “What kind of atonement?”

“A simple atonement. I ask you, Moses, to reconstruct the lost scene.”

“What? Shoot the film over again?”

“Not a film. The film is over and done. I want a scene of the myth that inspired me without my knowing, a scene of an old man, tied up, nursed by a young woman. I want you to reconstruct Roman Charity for me. A worthy classical theme.”

“But how? One scene?”

“One shot. Just for me.”

“What, get actors?”

“A young woman, whoever she may be. But a woman nursing.”

“Nursing?”

“Yes, drops of milk must be seen on the old man’s lips.”

“You’ve gone too far…”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And the man?”

“The man? The man is the actual penitent.”

“You mean—”

“That’s the point. The old man on his knees is you.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You are the man who suckles. You are the prisoner tied up. In body and character.”

“Me!”

“Yes, who else? This is your atonement. The atonement of the director. You’ll be in the scene, tied up and half naked, kneeling before a young woman who will nurse you. Look on the Internet for Roman Charity and you’ll find dozens of pictures, and you can choose the one that suits you best.”

“You’re insane…”

“The insane one is you, who came down south on a winter night and asked to do penance. You junked a scene that was important and precious to me, and I will accept one still picture, on condition that you are the protagonist.”

“Trigano, in the depths of your soul there is madness, and also cruelty.”

“Perhaps. Do as you like. You came to me, not I to you.”

A long silence. He sits stubbornly facing you, puffing smoke from his long pipe.

“You just want to disgrace me, humiliate me.”

“There is no disgrace in art. The hour has come, Moses, at your age, for you to come to terms with that idea. Art makes the disgraceful beautiful and the repulsive meaningful. That’s what I tried to explain to you then and you didn’t understand. But you will understand when you perform the act yourself… with your own body. It will serve you well in the few years left you to make films.”

Did he come up with the idea when he saw you in his studio, or did it crop up as he lay by his son, pretending to be asleep?

Again silence. Is he really waiting for an answer, or has he given up on you?

“And if I present you with such a picture,” you say, challenging him like a partner in crime, “you’ll agree to ask Ruth to repeat her blood tests?”

He tenses.

“Why is that so important to you? Do you intend to marry her?”

“Maybe. Why not? The hour has come.”

He falls silent, shocked.

You put it more strongly. “If I present you with such a picture, you will convince her to repeat her blood tests.”

He looks straight at you with the same hard eyes that were fixed on you long ago in the classroom.

“Yes,” he says.

“Perhaps we’ll renew our partnership—”

“Not so fast,” he interrupts, then adds: “But no one will threaten any baby. Tell Amsalem he should confine his murderous fantasies to his own family.”