The Retrospective

by A. B. Yehoshua

  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.

  2

  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.

  3

  “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 Tri
gano.

  “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.”