The Retrospective

by A. B. Yehoshua

  It is a volume in Latin, printed in the early nineteenth century. Its text is minimal and illustrations plentiful, some in bright colors and others in black-and-white. Portraits of priests and bishops and cardinals in decorative vestments, each according to his role and rank—apparently clergymen who served in the cathedral, which appears in faint outline in the background of each picture. Inserted at times among the men of the cloth is a man of temporal power—a patron or prince, or a tall gaunt knight wearing a helmet and sword with a small goatee, perhaps a distant relative of Don Quixote. And now and then, a band of armed soldiers, clad in billowy riding pants, preceded by a handsome young man tooting a hunting horn. Less often, he happens upon a well-fed noblewoman reclining in the parlor of her home, or a thin, sad young woman sitting on a horse, and on the next page a portrait of just the horse, and beside it a tall dog, gazing purposefully into the distance. Moses turns the pages drowsily, looks again at his watch. The desire to sit in the confession booth seems childish and unnecessary. Really, why bother with reality? In his next film, he can stick a confession scene in the script and tell the set designer to reproduce a booth, with a curtain and grille, so that during production, between takes, the director can enter it at will and confess to someone he deems worthy.

  The sound of rapid footsteps. The door opens and the radiant face of the monk appears. A confessional has been located on the lower floor, actually the personal booth of the local bishop, intended for visiting priests and monks who wish to confess to him. Manuel has received permission to admit the foreign confessant, but so as not to provoke a theological controversy, he has not disclosed his non-Christian identity, though he does not fear its exposure, since his life’s mission is to be a subversive monk: this is the new word he uses to guide his actions. In Madrid he received a special dispensation to assist immigrants and refugees of dubious identity and illegal foreign workers, among them even pagans. His heart is gladdened by the mere possibility of taking confession in Hebrew from a Jew who denies the existence of any God, so he has now decided, on his own authority, to violate another principle: though he is not a priest but just a monk, he is prepared to grant absolution, and he announces this so Moses will feel free to confess with complete openness.

  Moses laughs. He doesn’t need absolution.

  And why not? It will be given even if not urgently needed now. Moses can save it for the afterlife. Dominican absolution in a bishop’s booth in the historic cathedral may come in handy in the World to Come, should he discover that it exists.

  They descend more stairs, passing the tomb of Saint James, where pilgrims crowd for a touch of the sacred stone, and continue through a maze of hallways to a quiet chapel with a dark booth in the corner. But Manuel’s subversion is not complete. Because he is unwilling to have the aged confessant kneel before him, he turns the tables—he opens the booth, moves aside the red leather curtain, and gently seats Moses on the chair of the priest, while he kneels to hear the confession from behind the lattice.

  3

  TO CONFESS FOR the first time in his life in the depths of a magnificent cathedral just prior to a flight back to Israel is very naughty, downright anarchic. What’s not yet clear is what to confess to.

  He decides on a brief, symbolic confession, a training confession, so that if he ever wants to stage such a scene in a movie, say a detective flick or a comedy, he can boast to the actors that he’s directing from personal experience.

  The booth in the bishop’s chapel is unlike the booths Moses has seen in churches. This one is plush, almost luxurious. The curtain is made of leather and not cloth, and the inside walls are also upholstered in leather, as in a recording studio, to muffle the voices as much as possible. On the seat lies a plump leather pillow, and, remarkably enough, the screen separating the confessor and confessant is not metal but is also made of leather, punched through with holes, so it seems as if myriad eyes are peering from the other side. The overbearing scent of the leather, redolent of the sweat and tears of generations of sinners, makes Moses a bit nauseated, as if he were trapped inside a hippopotamus. But Manuel’s voice is soft and courteous.

  “Here I am listening to you, Moses, you may say whatever comes to mind.”

  “Thank you, Manuel. My confession will be short and to the point. Also, I don’t want to keep you too long in that uncomfortable position.”

  “Please don’t think about me. Think about yourself.”

  “Do you remember the film screened this morning at the municipality before the ceremony?”

  “A most interesting film.”

  “Do you know what your mother said about it?”

  “Verily, she praised it.”

  “In fine words, but noncommittal, and she had strong reservations about the ending, thought it was vague and meaningless.”

  The darkness of the chapel intensifies that of the confessional, and the eyes of the monk disappear intermittently from the grille, but his voice expresses regret. In recent years his mother has been disappointed by all endings of films, plays, and novels; she even rejects the final scenes of older, classic films, surely for a personal reason: her own approaching end. Moses is in the company of respected directors and screenwriters and should not take her words personally.

  Moses smiles and pauses before continuing.

  “But this time, Manuel, your mother is right. This morning, having seen the film for the first time in many years, I understood the weakness of the final scene—it does not relieve any of the tensions that have built up.”

  “If so,” says the voice behind the screen, with relief, “you are not angry with my mother?”

  “Rather than getting angry over justifiable criticism, a serious artist should be angry with himself.”

  “But in those days you were a young beginner, so why be angry with yourself?”

  “Because the evasive ending of the film did not come from inexperience. The film had a different ending, a truer one, but I rejected it.”

  “Ah . . .”

  What am I doing in this grotesque and suffocating darkness? Moses asks himself. Maybe I should leave it at what’s been said and go back to Ruth?

  Except the Dominican, yearning to grant absolution, holds on to the confession so as not to lose the confessant.

  “And if you had the right ending, why did you give it up?”

  “The actress was frightened, and I, instead of calming her and letting the screenwriter, her lover, convince her to play the part he wrote for her—I supported her refusal. You probably want to know what the original ending was.”

  “But of course!” replies Manuel, excited.

  “You remember the film: the heroine hands her baby to a social worker, who hurries off so the mother will not have time to regret her action and change her mind. And instead of aimlessly walking, lost in thought, to the beach, the heroine was to have left the clinic and wandered the streets—then, lost and guilt-stricken and exhausted, she would spot an old beggar on the street corner, approach him, toss him a few coins, and ask him to forgive her for what she had done. When she realizes the old man has no idea what she wants of him, she would suddenly throw open her coat, unbutton her blouse, take out her breast, and compel or seduce the beggar to suck the milk intended for her infant child. That was the scene I canceled.”

  “Alas,” murmurs Manuel, but he regains his composure and consoles Moses, tells him not to flagellate himself. Sometimes life is more important than art.

  “What makes you think I’m flagellating myself?”

  “Is it not the regret over canceling that scene that makes you seek confession?”

  “No, I have no regret, only a desire to understand. And in this retrospective, I’ve come to understand that I didn’t cancel the scene out of consideration for the actress but because of the opportunity to sever the connection with the one who conceived of it. I did it in order to distance myself once and for all from this strange and alien spirit that had hypnotized my work in the early years.”
r />   “Señor Trigano . . .” Manuel pronounces the name.

  Moses is alarmed. “You know him?”

  “Only his name.”

  “How?”

  “My brother spoke his name.”

  “And what did Juan say about him?”

  “Not much . . .”

  A long silence.

  “And?”

  “He depicted him as a private person trapped in his own thoughts . . . a unique soul, but hardened by pride.”

  “What else?”

  “My brother admitted to you that it was Trigano who initiated the retrospective in your honor. If, as you say, he is now an alien spirit for you, why do you feel guilty about severing your partnership with him?”

  “And why,” Moses says half seriously, “is it necessary to talk about guilt in every confession?”

  “There always needs to be a little guilt,” replies the monk apologetically, “a minor sin, a tiny error . . . because if not, why have absolution?”

  “But I told you, I have no need for absolution. Your brother Juan has a keen eye for people. If I had succumbed to the ideas and fantasies of that man, I would have slid to a place of no return.”

  “Slid?” The Spaniard tastes the Hebrew word.

  “Slipped . . . sunk . . . descended . . . entangled myself in revolutionary, pretentious stories intelligible only to the cognoscenti, which would have brought me to the point of surrendering my directing to Trigano too.”

  But the Dominican, troubled that his confessant shows no regret, now tries cautiously to cross the thin line between the professional and the personal, to deepen the confession.

  “If you wished to distance him,” he ventures, “perhaps it was because you wished to get closer to the woman so she would be under your wing alone?”

  “The opposite . . . the exact opposite,” Moses answers, after a brief silence. “Like everyone in my crew, I had strong feelings for her, but we all knew that she and Trigano were soul mates. So when he broke with me, I was sure he would take her with him. I wanted him to, but he punished her and me, left her to me as a character for whom I had to take responsibility.”

  “A character?”

  “I mean, not as a woman, but as a character.”

  “As a character?” The monk strains to understand. “A figure that resembles another figure?”

  “Yes, a character.”

  “As a character of whom?”

  “Like a character in a book, a novel, or a character in art,” fumbles the confessant, “characters you see in a stained-glass window. A character who is herself, but not only herself.”

  “You mean symbolic? Who symbolizes others?”

  “Not necessarily. Not always others. Also not an archetype. A real person, an individual, but one who has something else around her . . . a frame of sorts . . . a halo . . . an emotional aura . . . as in a dream. After all, Trigano also brought her to us as a character. A character from whose very existence a story flows. So when she rebelled against him, and he gave her up and left her to others, to me, he handed her over not as an actual woman but as the character of a woman.”

  Deep silence from beyond the grille. Just the muffled moan of organ music drifting from above.

  “Yet when he left her, he punished himself more than he punished you,” the monk suggests to his confessant.

  “His art was more important to him than his loved one.”

  “And she?”

  “She?”

  “Or you?”

  “I?”

  “Has she stayed with you since then as a character alone?”

  “As a woman, she had friends, and still does.”

  “Just friends?”

  “I mean, also lovers . . . they come and go. She even had a son by one of them.”

  “And you?” Manuel dares to step over the fence that has utterly collapsed.

  “Not to be tempted by her solitude, I hurried to get married. Besides, her spirit isn’t a good fit with mine, she comes from a wilder place. But I couldn’t abandon a character who sought a place in my work.”

  “Only the character?” Manuel continues to probe.

  “If this is hard for you, we can switch languages . . .”

  “No, no,” protests the monk, “you cannot imagine how the Hebrew lifts my spirit. But I ask that you help me out with another example.”

  “Take, for instance, the portraits and drawings in the book you were leafing through when I came into the library. You weren’t looking only for random individuals from the past out of a desire to learn what it was like then, how it looked; you searched for characters . . . something abstract that would leap out and touch you, something the artist exposed in people who sat for him. Something they embody.”

  “You mean their roles?”

  “The role is one way the character is embodied. But it is possible to move it from role to role, from situation to situation, from film to film, period to period, family to family. And yet we can discern its unchanging essence, which goes beyond a style of acting, more than the mannerism of an actor—do you understand?”

  “I am trying, Mr. Moses, but it’s not easy.”

  “That’s right, it’s not easy to understand the dreamlike dimension that makes a certain person into a character. For example, the woman I was married to didn’t understand the nature of the connection that I maintained with the character the screenwriter left me with, and although during our entire time together she was confident that I never stopped loving her, she ended our marriage.”

  “Even your wife didn’t understand.”

  “Perhaps she did understand, but she did not want to reconcile herself to what she understood.”

  “Because of the beauty of the character?”

  “Her beauty? Is she still beautiful?”

  “Yes, very beautiful. And you should know that the gaze of a monk, for whom the beauty of a woman is forbidden even in his thoughts, is pure and accurate. Since the separation from your wife you have been alone?”

  “I am alone, but not lonely, I am surrounded by people.”

  “And the character?”

  Moses is pleased that his confessor feels comfortable with the concept. “The character continues to turn up in my films, but sometimes also in the films of others . . . by her wish and mine too. We are free people . . . not dependent on each other. She is her own person as am I, even when we sleep in the same bed.”

  “Yes, my brother told me he put you both in one room.”

  “And though he surely didn’t tell you everything he was told about me, you understand that my confession is innocent of sin, and therefore, Manuel, absolution is unnecessary.”

  Manuel’s eyes vanish from the grille, and the rustling on the other side indicates that he is rising to his feet. Has Moses’ refusal to accept absolution disappointed him so much that he has decided to bring the confession to an end?

  Moses glances at his watch. No, time has not stopped. Ruth is doubtless asking herself where he’s disappeared to. He reaches for the cord to get free of the booth, but the curtain fails to move. “Can you get me out of here?” he implores, and Manuel slides the curtain and opens the gate.

  “Thank you, Manuel, this was an unforgettable experience,” says Moses, his head spinning.

  But Manuel has turned gloomy and he neither responds nor smiles, as if he has uncovered a defect in the Israeli’s confession. He grasps Moses’ arm, and carefully, as if the director were feeble or disabled, helps him climb the spiral stairs that ascend to the nave of the church.

  4

  THE MASS IS in progress. Surrounding the high altar are seven priests in elegant vestments conducting the service in various languages before a devoutly silent throng. And because Manuel and Moses enter from behind the altar, they cannot make their way through the worshippers without disturbing the holy rite.

  “What do we do?” whispers Moses. “I can’t delay much longer, Ruth is surely worried about me.”

  “The charact
er?” The word slips silently, ironically, from the lips of the monk, who turns Moses around and leads him through a maze of rooms and dark stairs to a heavy wooden door. He opens the bolt and delivers Moses into the small square where the angel stands, pointing with his sword at the Jew fleeing the cathedral.

  “From here you will easily find your way back to the hotel,” says Manuel in a cool, oddly severe tone; he does not invite a farewell handshake but merely presses his palms together, then turns on his heel and disappears behind the heavy door.

  I disappointed him with my inflexibility, thinks Moses. Was it so hard for me to accept his absolution with an eye to the future? And he hurries from the little square to the great plaza, which is empty now.

  Waiting by the hotel is the car that will take them to the airport. The driver, a directing student at the institute who has volunteered for the job, opens the trunk so the director can confirm that the three suitcases and two pilgrim walking sticks are securely there.

  “But we have another few minutes, no?” asks Moses. “Just a few, not many,” says the student.

  Tranquillity has returned to the hotel lobby as people have gone off, some to rest, others to pray, and from afar he espies the ethereal figure of Doña Elvira sitting alone in a corner, bathed in the soft light of a bright winter’s day. He rushes to her but finds her sound asleep. A shriveled, motionless old lady, breathing so minimally it seems that air flows through her with no effort of her own. He checks to see whether Ruth’s bag and coat are beside her, but doesn’t find them. He goes downstairs to the rest rooms. After urinating and rinsing his face with cold water, he goes to the ladies’ room, opens the door a wee crack, whistles the first notes of a tune, their longtime signal, to indicate his presence, and waits for the response. But no whistling from within completes the melody. He stays in the doorway, and, not to be suspected of sinister intent, he whispers her name and whistles the tune to the end. When one of the booths opens to the sound of rushing waters, and a big strong cleaning woman emerges brandishing a green brush, he withdraws at once.