The Retrospective

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “You still have a headache?”

  “Who told you I had a headache?”

  “The Spaniard, the teacher.”

  “Aha.”

  “So how is it?”

  “Going away . . . Soon it’ll be gone.”

  “I’m sorry I told you to postpone the blood test.”

  “And I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have no intention of letting anybody take my blood ever again. So don’t be sorry. I’m healthy.”

  “Of course you’re healthy,” mumbles Moses, sensing the old resentment. It was imprudent of him to take her to the retrospective before clarifying in advance what would be screened. The gap between past and present would likely be painful for her. He glances at Roman Charity and notices that the little light above the picture is off. Did the bulb burn out, or did Ruth find the hidden switch? He still resists directing her attention to the painting. She should make the connection on her own.

  “As a matter of fact,” he says, “the handsome young man, our escort Bejerano, an intelligent and honest man, told me that he didn’t get around to telling you that despite all the years that have passed, you still have the allure that was evident in yesterday’s films.”

  “Why didn’t he get around to it?”

  “Because all his talk about the double plot drove you away from the table.”

  “Why should it drive me away? Your recent films are filled with double plots and I tolerate them anyway.”

  “Double plots in my films?” He laughs to mask the sting. “In what sense? Tell me.”

  “Not now.” She switches off her bedside lamp. “We still have plenty of time together here . . .”

  “Not that much,” he mumbles, and puts on his jacket.

  A freezing wind gusts through the huge, empty square.

  “Thanks to your Israeli presence,” says Rodrigo, “we have been blessed with perfectly clear skies.”

  “But very cold days,” Moses adds.

  “That’s not a bad thing. Cold and dry sharpens the thoughts; rain and snow dull them.”

  Rodrigo suggests going first to the museum situated beneath the cathedral. Not a large museum, nor in his view an important one, but since it is included in the schedule, best to get it over with before it is flooded with tourists. And instead of making another visit to the cathedral, he suggests taking advantage of the sunny morning and going to the promenade on the far side of the Old Town.

  Is this teacher, wonders Moses, trying to save him money? For he stubbornly argues with the museum director, demanding that he not make the guest of honor and laureate of the retrospective pay for admission. Moses quickly takes out his wallet and pays for them both. The museum director offers, perhaps by way of compensation, to show him around, but Moses declines. He who pays to get in deserves an exemption from the erudition of an enthusiastic guide.

  Rodrigo is right; even at first glance, the sculptures are mediocre and the paintings boring. No need to impersonate art lovers strolling through the exhibits. Moses picks up his pace and makes for the exit. “Already? Your visit is over?” The museum director is dismayed, and even as Rodrigo tries to apologize, Moses turns and asks him if he happens to have heard of Caritas Romana. He has found a reproduction hanging in his hotel room but without the name of the artist. And with his hands and lips he acts out the scene of the old man and the bare-breasted woman.

  The museum director has heard of this motif in Renaissance art but does not exactly remember the story behind it. Perhaps the reproduction is on loan from the museum archive and listed in the catalog.

  “The museum exhibits pictures in the hotel?”

  “We have dozens of reproductions gathering dust in our storeroom, so it makes sense to lend them for a nominal fee to the Parador, which routinely rotates the pictures for the sake of bored chambermaids, or regular guests who are pleased to find something new each time they visit. Yes, there are still people who are not indifferent to the pictures hanging by their beds in a hotel, even when they stay for only one night.”

  “True,” says Moses. “Like me.”

  He hurries Rodrigo to the square and gladly accepts the suggestion that they go to the promenade for a view of the cathedral on a clear day from another, more distant vantage point. They walk briskly through the alleys of the Old Town, passing squares and fountains and gates, arriving at a grassy expanse with a broad promenade from which the cathedral, in all its sculpted glory, may be seen. Above it, like the veil of a floating bride, hover wisps of morning fog that the bright sunshine has yet to dispel. Farther along the promenade, in a pleasant little garden paved with white marble, stand two stern-faced women arm in arm: one in a fiery red coat with a folded black umbrella in her hand, staring ahead with steadfast grimness, and her companion, a flamboyant woman in a headscarf and shiny blue robe, looking sideways and extending her hand toward the sky as if asking a question. Their thin, straight legs are firmly fixed to the pavement with bolts, needing no further means of support.

  “What’s this?” asks Moses.

  “These pieces are left over from a whole sculpture garden that students from the art college set up years ago as a kind of fantastical secular response to the seriousness of the cathedral and its statues of the saints.”

  “But who are these figures?”

  “They are called the Two Marys, but they are not saints. If you keep walking, you’ll see another sculpture on the bench.”

  Indeed, a few steps farther on, sitting upright with legs crossed at the edge of a public bench, is the figure of a skinny, gray-haired intellectual with a long pointy beard, clad in a gray suit, peering intently into the far distance through oversize eyeglasses.

  “What’s he made of?”

  “Mostly rigid plastic. Like the clothes of the Two Marys.”

  “And he manages in the cold and the heat?”

  “Does he have a choice?” jokes Rodrigo. “Go on, feel him . . .”

  But Moses declines to reach out to the weird intellectual.

  A group of students, boys and girls, sit on a nearby lawn with books and notebooks, apparently studying together for an exam. Some of them spot Rodrigo and rush over to greet him. “Yes,” he explains to Moses, “they are my high school students, that’s actually my main job.” And as he banters with his students, he does not fail to introduce them to an important foreign film director who has fond memories of the days when he, too, was surrounded by students.

  An Israeli retrospective at the archive of the film institute? Yes, they think they may have heard something of it. The sight of the youngsters chatting with a beloved teacher spurs the suspicion that flickered at the museum. Trigano? Who else could have informed the Spanish archive about early Israeli films? Who other than the scriptwriter is still loyal to those ragged old movies? The cameraman is dead, the soundman left the country, the editors dissolved into other films. Only the writer could try to augment the value of his forgotten work in a faraway film archive, thus also tarnishing what his director had later done without him.

  But how did the films get here? Did Trigano ship them over, or bring them himself? The possibility that his scriptwriter had preceded him here as a pilgrim captures Moses’ imagination, so much so that the former collaborator who tore their partnership to shreds hovers in his mind’s eye alongside the kings and saints arrayed in the heights of the distant cathedral.

  Does this explain the mischief of the little priest, who every morning sends him a different escort with a new list of films? Trigano doubtless told him about their breakup and advised him to conceal his visit and also not to tell the director in advance what they planned to screen in the retrospective, lest he refuse to come.

  The students have returned to the books and notes they left on the grass, except for two fawning girls who find it hard to leave the handsome young teacher.

  Yes, Moses is ready to believe that with a bit of tugging, the thread in his hand can be woven into a ful
ler hypothesis. For if the writer brought the films himself, he also helped with the dubbing. All of this in secret, so that Trigano could construct a hidden reproach to the man who rejected him.

  The teacher eventually succeeds in breaking free of the two girls, and he hurries to apologize with a sigh that is also one of satisfaction.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” says Moses.

  “By all means . . .”

  “Are you married?”

  The young man’s laughing face reddens.

  “No . . . but it’s probably time.”

  “Because I was also like you, a young teacher in the upper grades of high school, and though I wasn’t as handsome as you, I still felt I was a constant topic in the thoughts of my students.”

  Rodrigo laughs. “It’s also a teacher’s job to nourish the imagination of his students.”

  “May I ask something else?”

  “Please.”

  “Was there a visitor recently here at the archive, an Israeli?”

  Rodrigo doesn’t remember any Israeli. But Moses persists. “A man around sixty, thin, dark skin, named Shaul Trigano. He wrote screenplays many years ago.”

  The Spaniard closes his eyes, plumbing his memory. But for naught. Trigano is a name clearly accessible to the Spanish ear, and yet, no, he doesn’t remember any Trigano.

  But Moses has a feeling that even if the Spaniard doesn’t remember the name, he knows who he is, so he presses on and tries to portray the wanted man, picturing the young Trigano in his mind and improvising an up-to-date character, blending all possible changes visited by time since last they met.

  The Spaniard turns away and lowers his gaze in one final effort, but he remains faithful to his earlier response. No, there was no Israeli recently at the institute, though of course he cannot claim to know everyone who visits here.

  3

  AS MOSES ENTERS the hotel, the desk clerk points to an old woman who is waiting for him. This is the art history teacher enlisted from a neighboring city; she has arrived early. Though she is long retired, she is pleased to oblige the desk clerk, her diligent student, who has proven that after all these years he has not forgotten her. Moses introduces himself, overcome with feeling for this sprightly old lady with the intelligent face and snow-white hair. For a moment it seems his mother has sprung from the film screened the day before and come back to life to educate him.

  Carefully he takes her wrinkled hand, fragile as a sparrow, and briefly explains his request and its background.

  “Would you like to go up to your room to see the picture, or should we ask that it be brought down here?” she says.

  He hesitates, but decides for the room. If the picture was removed from the wall, defects might be discovered in the frame or glass that would have to be fixed before it could be re-hung by his bed. He would also feel uncomfortable hearing the explication of a risqué painting in the hotel lobby, amid the guests coming and going. But as they step out of the elevator on the fourth floor, he suddenly realizes he should warn Ruth of their arrival, even though the visitor is an old woman. He knocks on the door and waits, then inserts the key in the lock.

  The dark room looks the same as he had left it, disorderly and unventilated, stuffy with the smell of sleep, and Ruth is wrapped in her blanket like an embryo. This is strange, even worrisome. Sleeping this long is rare for her. Without turning on the light he kneels by the bed and gently touches her face, to wake her and let her know that a visitor is joining them, an art expert, who has meanwhile slipped into the room with feline agility and now faces the reproduction, turning on the little picture lamp affixed to the wall.

  The dim light is enough to awaken the sleeper, who opens her eyes and requires a moment to recall where she is. In confusion, she smiles at her companion, who returns an embarrassed grin as he gestures at the old woman with the magnifying glass, scouring the picture for the signature of the artist.

  “The picture? Why?”

  “To explain the background of the painting to us . . . the story behind it . . . who the old man is, and why he is nursing at the breast.”

  “The old man?”

  “The prisoner, the one kneeling on the ground.”

  “The prisoner?”

  Has that memory vanished entirely? Can it be that no chord was struck as she stood and stared at the picture that morning, then went back to sleep? Had she truly banished from her mind her little artistic mutiny, to erase the humiliation of abandonment by her lover? Or was she only pretending, to test Moses? With genuine puzzlement he studies the actress, the outline of her breasts beneath her thin cotton nightgown inspiring both compassion and desire. “I’ll explain later,” he whispers, “but say hello, because this woman is an art expert who has made a special trip.”

  The actress is bewildered and amused at the sight of the expert whom Moses has parachuted into a room cluttered with clothes and blankets, but she doesn’t get out of bed, merely props herself up, turns on the reading light, and nods a greeting to the elderly white-haired woman, who gives a little bow in return. From the gleam in her eye it appears she has already identified the artist.

  “Matthias Meyvogel,” she declares, “no doubt about it. Seventeenth century, born in Zeeland—not New Zealand—a Dutchman who worked in Rome; very little is known about him. From the painting he would appear to be a great admirer of Rembrandt, from whom he copied the sitting position of the prisoner Cimon, and the strong light on his naked back—”

  “Just a minute, madam,” implores Moses, still unnerved by the expert’s resemblance to his mother, “please slow down. You say ‘Cimon,’ as if I’m supposed to know who that is, but first of all, what is the act of charity here? And in what way is it Roman?”

  “Oh, do forgive me, it didn’t occur to me that you had never heard of Caritas Romana. For it is a truly wonderful and important story that has inspired dozens of writers and artists, if not hundreds.”

  “An Italian story?”

  “Not Italian, Roman. Rome is greater than Italy, and the original story comes from ancient Rome, one of the thousand stories published in A.D. 30 by Valerius Maximus in his collection Facta et Dicta Memorabilia—in other words, ‘acts and sayings that must be remembered.’ The story is about a young woman named Pero who fed her father from her own breast.”

  “Her father? The old man, this prisoner, is her father?”

  “Of course, he’s only her father,” the art historian says to calm the Israeli who thought the suckling man was a stranger. “He is Cimon, and he was sentenced to die by starvation, so his daughter came to him in secret and nursed him so he wouldn’t die. In the end, the jailers caught her, but they were so impressed by her daring and unique devotion that they had mercy on the father and set him free. That’s the kernel of the story, which inspired many paintings back in ancient times. For example, when they dug Pompeii out of the ashes of Vesuvius, they found a fresco with this motif. Valerius Maximus himself admitted that such paintings were more powerful than his story. People stop and stare in amazement at this picture—they cannot take their eyes off it, they see it come alive. Even you, sir, a citizen of the twenty-first century, were so agitated by the painting that you sent for me.”

  “But is this a copy of an original painting from ancient Rome?”

  “No, surely not. The story enticed many important painters over the centuries, and each one expressed it in his own way. Rubens, who painted it at least twice; Caravaggio, Murillo, Pasinelli, and a great many others before them and after.”

  “Before them—you mean the Middle Ages?”

  “No, in the Middle Ages the motif almost disappears, but it was revived and flourished during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.”

  “Maybe because of the overt eroticism.”

  “Precisely so. In the medieval period, they questioned the honesty of the compassion and mercy of the daughter nursing her father. Perhaps she was exploiting his misery, in an oedipal fashion, I mean . . .”

 
She bursts into hearty laughter.

  “Oedipal?” Moses chuckles. “What did they know in the Middle Ages about the Oedipus complex?”

  “They didn’t know the term, but they felt the essence of it, the same longing. After all, the truth does not need a label in order to be real. Therefore the eroticism tangled up in this act of kindness deterred, and perhaps frightened, the artists of the Middle Ages, as much as it aroused artists of the Renaissance and Baroque and later, into the nineteenth century. Yet each one dealt with the erotic aspect in a different fashion, depending on his personality, his natural inclinations, and his courage vis-à-vis his surroundings.”

  “For instance?”

  “In many paintings, the artists made sure that the daughter looked off to the side, so as not to see the face of her nursing father, out of respect for him or out of shame or not to reveal other motives, his and perhaps hers too.”

  “Hers?”

  “Hers too. Why not? We are talking about human beings who are alive and complicated, not figures made of cardboard. But in some other paintings, such as the one hanging here, or one by Rubens, for example, one sees that Pero is unabashedly studying the face of the old man she is nursing. It all depends, of course, on the father’s situation.”

  “In what sense?”

  “If he is depicted as feeble and dying, she is allowed to look at him directly, because it is clear to the viewer that his approaching death neutralizes any erotic intent on either side. The daughter may therefore permit herself a gentle gaze, or even support the head of the dying man. But when the father is strong and muscular, as in your painting, or one by Rubens, she must be very careful. Look, for example, sir, at Cimon here. Despite the baldness and the beard, I wouldn’t take him for more than fifty, and a man like that is able to desire and take pleasure, is he not?”

  “Why not.”

  “And therefore, when such men are being nursed, it is important that they be tied up, either their feet or, usually, their hands, like the man in your picture.”