The Retrospective

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “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.

  5

  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 emo
tion 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.

  6

  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.”