“What happened? Why’d you come back?” the crew member asks.
“In the confusion of illness and lust”—she laughs—“I forgot to take my clothes, which were hanging on the wheelchair.”
But the wheelchair is still standing between the two beds, and will be accessible only at the end of the filming. The man takes a few steps back, and after he finishes his cigarette and crushes the butt he lights a new one. “I haven’t smoked all day,” he says apologetically. But the smoke doesn’t bother Noga. On the contrary, she asks him for a cigarette and whether by chance he helped build a morgue.
He is happy to light her cigarette. A morgue? Not yet, but if the series runs as planned, he and his crew will need to build a believable set for those who die along the way.
Between cigarettes, the door opens and he darts inside to rescue her clothes so she can respectably enter reality. But until she can find the privacy to change clothes, she decides to try—in the guise of a patient—to solve the riddle of Elazar, still hoping to give him a personal memento before she leaves the country.
From time to time she looks behind her, as if being followed. Can it be Elazar, fired from the production, waiting for the right moment to join her? It’s hard to know, because as the night filming begins, the place is bedlam, crowded with people in pajamas and hospital gowns. Her brain aches and she asks around for a ride back to Jerusalem.
“At this hour? No, it’s too late,” declares a production person, “and to get out of the port you have to be checked by the border police and they might have closed up by now. But why go back? The best part is still ahead.”
“Ahead or not,” she says curtly, “my work here is over.”
“But even if you’re done, Noga”—to her surprise, he too knows her name—“wait till morning, and meanwhile enjoy an excellent dinner that would be a shame to miss.”
Indeed, why pass it up? He leads her to a medium-size hall, crowned by the original, huge warehouse beams intersecting at a great height. Extras sit at tables along with actors and crew members, some still in civilian clothes, some in pajamas and hospital gowns, some bandaged or wearing plaster casts—wounded soldiers, extras fresh from the battlefield, army uniforms soaked in blood. Everyone is joyful and merry, because the generous dinner is expertly prepared, and among the pots Noga finds the meat soup she craved. The happy mood of the diners around her suggests that this is not a random group of extras, but a gathering of acquaintances and friends. If this is so, she consoles herself, when rheumatism and calcification come to pass, when her rigid fingers can no longer coax true sounds from the harp strings, here in my homeland I’ll always have another place to work.
Eating makes her sleepy, and she feels that the doctor who lifted and carried her to the bed also strummed a forgotten string in her soul. Best to spend the night here and leave early in the morning. She exits the dining hall and looks for a suitable bed in one of the little undefined rooms on the set. In one such room, two empty beds have been made up, and she chooses the one close to the wall. She puts her clothes under the pillow, so they will be at hand when she makes her getaway. She closes the door as best she can—insofar as a thin sheet of plywood, painted white, can be considered a door—switches off the light beside her bed and the light by the other bed too.
“Go to sleep, little girl,” she tells herself in the Dutch words the flutist had taught her—just like in Arnhem when she forces herself to take an afternoon nap, to incubate, in her unconscious mind, the work she has rehearsed that morning, so that in the evening concert she can give birth to the right music.
By force of the Dutch command, she falls into a deep sleep. Despite the warm, lively sounds that never cease outside the plywood door, and although she senses now and then in her sleep that the room she has appropriated is wide open to others, who come and go, lie down and get up—the dream is still stronger than reality, and the one who carried her in his arms like an invalid and laid her down in bed and covered her with a sheet might also protect her as she sleeps from a stranger who has come in the night to lie down in the next bed.
When the first rays of sunshine filter through the giant roof beams, and silence reigns, she can see in the adjacent hospital bed a man lying on his back, his folded arms spread like wings, as if in midthought he was suddenly arrested by sleep. And because she remembers well who slept that way by her side for many years, she throws off her blanket and walks barefoot to the one who has followed her since she arrived here, her former husband, Uriah, who has turned himself into an extra.
Her heart flutters wildly as she watches the man whose hair has grown whiter since he left her. Now he has stolen his way to her in a torn army uniform and a blood-soaked bandage. And with the first glimmer of consciousness, the new extra senses the agitated gaze of his former wife and breaks out in an ingratiating smirk of apology for the terrible power of an ancient love.
Thirty-Three
STRUCK MUTE BY THE SHOCK, hands trembling, she strips off the nightgown of the imaginary patient and returns to her real clothes, and without a backward look hurries to the main entrance, but finds it locked. Immediately she heads for the back door, and this immense warehouse, which last night she saw as a metaphor for humanity, is not as huge as the wheels of her chair had imagined, for within a few minutes her legs have brought her to the rear exit, abandoned now by the large security man.
At the end of the loading dock, the rotating gate dispatches her with a rusty creak into reality—at this hour, a desolate city street—yet she believes that the wave of a feminine arm will attract an early-rising driver, and until he comes she lifts her eyes to the dawning sky, to find, as her father instructed, the shining planet, her namesake, Noga.
She arrives at the assisted living facility in Tel Aviv, and since she has not often visited her mother, she must identify herself to the guard, who is loath to interrupt the morning sleep of an elderly woman. As the smell of diapers from the nursing wing blends with the aroma of breakfast pastries and coffee, Noga knocks softly on the door, which opens at the touch of her hand. It is eight o’clock, and morning light pouring through the open porch door caresses the sleeping resident.
Noga moves a chair to her mother’s bedside and waits to see when her presence will rouse her into consciousness. It would seem that the notion of protected living has persuaded the mother from Jerusalem that even at night there is no need to lock doors and turn off lights, and so the entrance of an unexpected guest does not disturb her tranquility. Even when she hears the whispered words “Ima, I’m here,” she is not surprised, and simply asks with eyes closed, “What did I do, Noga, to deserve a visit so early in the morning?”
“Early? You’re as cozy as a bear, Ima, not locking doors or turning off lights.”
“A bear?”
“A bear hibernating in winter.”
“Fine,” sighs the mother, “if you say so, but why shouldn’t I have the peace and quiet of a bear? There are no children here who break in and watch my TV, and no Hasidim whose beliefs I must honor. That’s also why I put on weight. In the city that never rests, I do a lot of resting.”
“Too much.”
“Okay, too much. But what’s going on? Am I again to blame for something that’s happening to you?”
“Indirectly you’re always to blame. It seems that on top of your experiment, Honi added another experiment, just for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“First of all, please, sit up. It’s hard to talk when you’re lying down half asleep, and even if you stand up, you won’t believe your ears.”
“You’re right, I’m getting up. Maybe I should first freshen up a bit.”
“No, there’s no time.”
“In that case, I’m all ears.”
“Uriah became an extra.”
“Uriah?” The mother laughs. “Why?”
“To reconnect.”
“To what?”
“To me.”
“How?”
> “Last night he sneaked in and lay down next to my bed.”
“What? He broke into the Jerusalem apartment?”
“Not in Jerusalem, in a hospital.”
“A hospital? What were you doing in a hospital?”
“A hospital in a new TV series. I was an extra, a patient.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say a word. He just lay down beside me in the role of a wounded soldier.”
“So why were you scared?”
“Don’t play dumb, Ima. Just explain why you didn’t tell me that Honi, down at Masada, told Uriah not only about you but about me too. Why on earth didn’t you warn me?”
“Noga, stop. It’s true I was surprised, even angry that at a brief encounter by the toilets Honi saw fit to tell Uriah, who by now is a stranger, about my living arrangements. But when I asked him if he also mentioned you, he denied it by avoiding the question.”
“In other words, he lied.”
“Obviously, he lied, not out of malice, but out of cowardice. Honi is a sophisticated coward. But it’s still not clear why you’re so upset, my daughter. Even if your ex-husband lies down in the next bed . . . Wait, are you sure it was him?”
“You’re crazy.”
“In any case, how strange, and just because he missed you, and without a word? And you? Never asking what he wanted, you ran away.”
“Because I know.”
“What do you know?”
“That it’s a sign and won’t be the last. And because of the childish experiment that you’re prolonging for no reason, I’m exposed to him from now on.”
“No, no, Noga, don’t get carried away. It’s not my fault that the husband who left you still bleeds for you, and don’t drag my experiment into it. And it’s not a childish or ridiculous experiment, and we didn’t ask you to come here from Europe for no reason. It’s a test not only of where to live out my life, but more than that—what the nature and value of that life will be. No, Noga, don’t attack me because of the lunacy of a lover who turned into an extra.”
“But I’m sure, Ima, that in your heart you’ve already decided. Please set me free. Let me go back to my harp.”
“Don’t rush me. It’s my right to complete the experiment, as agreed.”
“And while you’re delaying, the craziness can begin. If Uriah had the nerve to follow me at night into a fictional story where I was just an extra, he won’t stop there. Anyway, explain to me why your screwed-up son had to expose me to a man who I was sure had given up on me?”
“No, don’t say screwed-up. Honi is your brother. Yes, sometimes he’s childish, out of control. He loved and respected Uriah, and he feels guilty because you didn’t want to have his child. And you know how attached Honi is to you.”
“He feels guilty? Who asked him to? It’s none of his business.”
“But again, why are you so upset? If Uriah came and lay down next to you and didn’t say a word, didn’t wake you or touch you, then why all the fuss?”
“He’ll be back, I know he’ll be back. He’ll come to Jerusalem. He knows our house well and maybe still has the key Abba gave him in case you lost or forgot yours.”
“But wait a minute. He was the one who left you, not you who left him, no?”
“He had no choice. I didn’t want to give birth.”
“Why didn’t you want to, in fact?”
“Now you ask, Ima? Now you ask?”
“Not asking, it’s too late. But what could he still want from you? He already has children of his own, so what does he want? Two or three years ago he came to visit with his two children, to show them to Abba. To prove that he wasn’t the one at fault.”
“At fault for what?”
“That you two didn’t have children.”
“But why fault? Who blamed him? It was I who didn’t want to, and everybody knew it. I didn’t deny it.”
“True, you didn’t deny it. You were honest . . . No, don’t cry.”
“Now you’re making me twice as depressed. Why didn’t you tell me about his visit?”
“We didn’t want you to get angry.”
“Angry about what?”
“Just angry.”
“There’s no just angry.”
“There is.”
“And what did Abba say about Uriah’s children?”
“Nothing much. Children. Ordinary. Nice. Not bad-looking. Kids. Two of them. A girl and a boy. And Abba played with them.”
“Played? Why did he have to play with them?”
“No reason. Children. Why are you getting angry? What did you want him to do, kill them? Abba played with them a little, maybe to prove to himself that he still knew how to play with children. That’s all. Now you’re annoyed with Abba? How can you be? Abba’s gone. Abba’s dead.”
“Not Abba. It’s Honi, who has to have a hand in everything. Why is it his business? The way he used to go through my schoolbag and drawers. Why do you let him take control of everything?”
“He doesn’t control anything. He thinks he controls, but you know that in the end I do what I want, exactly like you. When you were little, I learned from you how to set limits, regarding Abba and regarding you and Honi. Except my limits are friendlier, much more generous than yours.”
“Tell me now, what kind of name is Honi? Who calls his child Honi? I don’t know of a single person in the world named Honi, except for our Honi and the one in the legend.”
“Just a minute, Noga, excuse me—we gave him that name because you asked us to.”
“Me? How could that be?”
“I was pregnant, and you were in the second grade, and in school you learned the story about Honi who drew a circle and made it rain, so you asked me and Abba, if it was a boy, to call him Honi.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“So why did you agree? You didn’t have to.”
“We agreed because we were afraid you would be jealous of the baby and not be nice to him. We said, if we give him the name Noga picked, maybe there’ll be peace between them, even though neither Abba nor I liked the name.”
“So it comes down to me in the end.”
“It was you. You liked the idea that there was a person in the world who drew a circle around himself and didn’t move till he got what he wanted. And now you see how Honi is trying to draw a circle around your story with Uriah and not letting the two of you go.”
“He has no right.”
“Of course he has no right, and I’ll speak with him and rap his knuckles.”
“Your rapping never made an impression on him. I know that Uriah won’t leave me alone.”
“What can he want from you now?”
“The children I didn’t give him.”
“So stop being an extra, enough with other people’s stories, and he will not find a way to get to you. From now on, stand up for yourself, in reality, with the whip in your hand.”
“But I’m talking about reality, Ima. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Then I’ll ask Honi to warn him to leave you alone.”
“No, no. No way. Not one word to Honi.”
“Why?”
“Because Honi will make things worse. Now that it’s more or less clear to him that you won’t move here to live near him, he’ll look for a way, with Uriah’s help, to tie me down to Jerusalem so I can help him take care of you.”
“When did this become clear to him?”
“At the opera at Masada, when you stayed together in the hotel. It takes a while for his crafty mind to get over its illusions, but in the end he understood what I understood from the beginning.”
“You two know what’s in my mind even before I do?”
“It happens sometimes.”
“And if I surprise you?”
“You won’t.”
“Tell me, my daughter, how do you manage to play such a delicate and romantic instrument even though you talk so rudely?”
“When I play I don’t t
alk. When I play I’m not furious.”
“Why are you furious?”
“About the brother you gave me.”
“But your brother loves you. You know how attached he is to you. Even when he was a baby in his carriage, he would scream and nobody could calm him down. Only when you bent over him would he stop crying and start smiling.”
“Except Honi isn’t in the carriage anymore, and now the tears are mine.”
Thirty-Four
OVERCOME WITH EMOTION, she hugs and kisses her mother. “Go ahead, surprise us,” she says, and hurries from Tel Aviv to the apartment in Jerusalem, bolts the front door, and though she’s certain that even a former husband bleeding with love for his first wife will not dare to wriggle down a drainpipe or gutter, she checks the feeble hook on the bathroom window, unplugs the phone and takes a long shower to shed the remains of imaginary reality before huddling in her childhood bed.
She wakes relaxed. The possibility that Uriah may try to come here need not frighten her so long as she maintains the integrity of her boundaries. Even if he still has a key to her parents’ apartment, now there is also the bolt, which will compel him to ask permission. What troubles her is Elazar’s silence. It was he who enticed her to take part in the hospital series, and even if he didn’t get the role of the dead man, he should have at least said goodbye before vanishing. True, she has been stringing him along, but really, a man his age, with a grandson, and an experienced police investigator, ought to know that patience is mandatory, even in the case of a lonely woman who will soon fly away.
How to find a man she knows only by his first name, whom she’s met as an extra, in jobs that he or her brother had set up for her? Undaunted, as evening falls she strolls through the Mahane Yehuda market, stops at his favorite restaurant and describes him in detail to the waiters, imitating his stutter a bit, and they recognize the character but don’t know his family name or address, only that Elazar was a former police commander, so she should inquire at the police station by the market entrance.
The Extra Page 14
