The Retrospective

by A. B. Yehoshua

“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.”

  4

  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.”