The Extra (24 page)

Since Lovers of Zion Street is not far from there, she continues on to the home of the parents of the youth who tried to poison his girlfriend so she would never leave him. Unlike that busy night of filming, the house is silent now. Only an old mother is visible through the kitchen window.

She walks downhill to the end of Lovers of Zion and over to the parallel street and stands before the gates of the former mental hospital, now a church, where the parents had installed their son to pacify his demons, thereby enabling his illustrious career overseas.

This journey on foot does not tire the harpist. On the contrary, it gives her pleasure. Her flexible sneakers add spring to her step, and the advent of the Jerusalem evening tempts her not to head home but to go on to Emek Refaim for a look at the first rented apartment she lived in after getting married. Was it really thirty-two steps that Uriah had to carry the heavy harp up and down for her? Old streets have been widened and familiar buildings renovated, so she cannot find the place at first, and when she does it looks different, but she's sure the number of steps is the same. She can't find the light switch on the stairway, so she climbs in darkness and counts. And yes, these are difficult stairs, steep and angular, unlike the friendly stairs in her parents' building, where, when she'd get home from the Gymnasia, a gentle, handsome Orthodox boy would be waiting for a heart-to-heart talk.

Twenty-six steps and not thirty-two lead to the door of the old apartment. In which case, she thinks, scowling, why does a person who always prided himself on his precision need to add six stairs to embellish his suffering for the sake of her instrument? She heads back down, again counting the stairs, to double-check the number.

The gathering dusk prompts the lighting of the street lamps, and the colors of fruits and vegetables glisten in the storefronts on Emek Refaim Street. Baby carriages cross the street in midblock and hold up traffic. Men look at her for long moments, and she imagines herself again as an extra, only this time without a camera or director or story—standing by herself and for herself. She would like to further explore this pleasant, secular neighborhood, but she needs to start packing her bags and prepare for her departure, and the light rail is far away, so she hails a taxi and asks the driver on the way home to stop for a moment in the Valley of the Cross. But the driver doesn't know where he can stop in a valley paved long ago with fast roads, yet he does know where the monastery still stands, and how to approach it.

“Exactly. Get as close as you can, stop for a bit, then continue.”

And he does, and for a few minutes she and the cabbie look at the old, dark monastery, a little light burning in its tower.

Did I forget to shut off a light? she asks herself as the taxi turns into her street and she spots a light in the apartment—or could it be the little
tzaddik
misses me?

As she enters the kitchen, Uriah stands up. His face is tense and tormented, and the fluorescent light intensifies its pallor. The jacket he wore in the morning is gone, in its place a faded but familiar sweater.

“Wait,” she says. “Before you apologize—”

“Explain,” he corrects her.

“You should know that I just got back from our rented apartment in the Greek Colony, and I counted the stairs twice that you complained about this morning, so you should know that it's not thirty-two steps but twenty-six.”

“You forgot to add,” he says calmly, “the stairs inside the apartment.”

“Inside the apartment?”

“Beyond the front door there were six more steps.”

And in a flash the six interior steps come back to her, padded with old carpeting, and small pictures on the wall that she believed added a special charm and enhanced their marital intimacy.

“Yes, you're right. I forgot.”

“Not by chance, not by chance,” he mutters. “But it's unimportant, and I only wanted to explain—”

“Don't explain. I knew you'd hold on to the key my parents gave us, and had no doubt you'd be able to pick it out among all your other keys. Which is why I told my mother three days ago, ‘Uriah won't need to ask permission to come in here.'”

“But I wanted to ask permission, only you weren't here. So I thought I'd simply leave the key.”

“And stay around to protect it.”

“Only because this morning I promised to let you know when the time had come.”

“Which time?”

“The time I would tell my wife everything I hid from her.”

“And what did she say?”

“She cried. The anger and shock dissolved into a long cry.”

“And you?”

“I cried with her.”

“You're an honest man. You're a faithful husband. It's a shame I lost you so easily. But how did you explain to her the fever you've been running ever since Honi told you I was here?”

“I said I'd given you up a long time ago, but was furious about my unborn child.”

“Yours, or ours?”

“It doesn't matter anymore. Any child of yours, wherever he comes from—I'm taking him.”

“But what would such a child give you, if you're not a part of him? You already have your two children.”

“He will give me what will be in him of you. It doesn't matter what—a birthmark, a dimple, the shape of an ankle, maybe a smile, hair color. Little things, physical and mental, that you might not even be able to identify, but they are precious to me, which your music had stolen from me.”

“The music?”

“The playing.”

“And what did your wife say about this child?”

“She cried.”

“And didn't say anything?”

“No. But I know that if she believes that this would quell my fever and restore my calm, she would be ready to adopt a child of yours to raise along with our kids.”

“And that way she would merge herself with me.”

“Perhaps.”

“But there is no such child, and there won't be one. You understand. You know.”

“I know and understand.”

“It's too late.”

“I know that too. Actually I feel it.”

“If you know everything, why did you come?”

“To return the key to your mother and keep my promise to tell you that the time had come and I didn't hide anything from my wife.”

“And you still didn't think to look at my childhood harp, which you ran away from this morning, and which Honi will throw away tomorrow or the next day.”

“Wrong again. I took off the cover and looked at it, to try and understand its power.”

“And did you?”

“I saw a unique and unusual instrument, a primitive
shaatnez
, a hybrid of harp, guitar, banjo and more. I can see why your father, who knew nothing about music, wanted to get it for you, not in a music store but an antiques shop. It can't make music now, many strings are missing, and those that are left are loose and bent, so how could I understand why it enslaved you?”

“You can't. And neither you nor I can resurrect the dead, so go back to your wife and don't torment her anymore with the illusion that you can turn back the clock.”

S
INCE THE RESIDENTS
of the old folks' home in Tel Aviv include some very old ones, soon to depart this world, the management tried to provide the healthy and charming lady from Jerusalem with a pleasant and comfortable stay, so that she might cast her fate with the residence and enhance its image. But as it became clear that the little perks and luxuries, the lectures and the concerts, had not produced a decision in favor of Tel Aviv, and that the popular lady would soon be leaving, everyone was sad, and Honi, feeling guilty for his mother's decision, at the last moment spread idle promises of a repeat experiment. Thus their arrival in Jerusalem was delayed, and the savory lunch prepared for them by the daughter was turned into a half-eaten dinner.

Honi wears a look of dejection. “Don't worry,” says his mother, “you won't have to rush here for every little inconvenience. I'm surrounded by plenty of poor Orthodox people who'll be happy to take care of me for a few pennies.”

“And for the same nickel they'll bring you back to religion.”

“Not me. Abba and I managed to hold our own, and God made us stronger in the process.”

As her three heavy suitcases are hauled to the apartment one by one, she makes a tour of the three big rooms and marvels: “What's this, Noga? Was I really such a good mother that you spruced up the apartment for me?” “Yes, you were great,” says Noga, “because you always made me feel free.” Tears gleam in the eyes of the old woman, whose emotions are usually blocked by irony. As Noga smiles at her mother's tears, her brother storms through the resurrected apartment, grousing about the weak lighting and checking out Abadi's bolt. “This is not a bolt,” he sneers. “It's a parody of a bolt. If you had a dog here, that would stop the bastards.”

“Au contraire,” the mother says, laughing, “a dog will appeal to them a lot more than Israeli television.”

“No need to worry,” says his sister. “No more kids. Shaya personally brought his son to apologize.”

But Honi stands firm. “It all depends on Ima not tempting them again.”

“I am not responsible for the temptation. It was your father. He hoped that the television would make them secular.”

“A futile hope.”

“Of course, but when I saw how they wore themselves out running up and down the stairs out of sheer boredom, I began to feel sorry for them.”

“Beware of pity,” pronounces Honi, fixated again on the lights. “We have to change all the bulbs,” he says, poised to take his sister's two suitcases down to his car.

“Wait a minute,” scolds his mother, “relax, what's your hurry? This is the last night, this is goodbye. If you need to get back to your wife and children, have a safe drive home, and we'll call a taxi to take Noga to the airport.”

Honi objects. He is the one who waited at the airport three months ago and will be the one to take her back there and be responsible for her until the last minute. The flight is at five in the morning, and Noga should get there around three—so no taxi, just him. That's what he promised himself.

“If that's what you promised,” says his mother, “you can relax. Instead of taking Noga now to your place in Tel Aviv and going back to the airport in the middle of the night, act logically and get a little sleep here. Even if I turned down protected living in Tel Aviv, I still need, at least on the first night, a protected home in Jerusalem.”

“Protected from what?” Honi asks.

“From loneliness and sadness.”

A pleasant calm settles on the old apartment, and Noga takes the fruit bowl from the refrigerator, sets out three plates and small knives and says, “Here, children, let's polish off the Land of Canaan, but without the blessing.” And they peel and eat the remaining fruit, duly impressed by the beautiful, delicate glass bowl, especially the gold decoration at the rim. Honi says the bowl is fragile, should be handled carefully, and he gets up to wash it in the sink, where it falls and shatters and his fingers drip with blood.

“Was the bowl included with the Pomerantzes' fruit?” he asks his mother, licking his wounded fingers, “or do we have to return it?”

“Let's consider it included, since you broke it, on purpose.”

“Not really on purpose, but I also didn't want Pomerantz to be too happy you're coming back.”

“Don't be a child,” Noga says. “Stop sucking your fingers. You can't recycle the blood. Run cold water on them until we find a bandage.”

But the mother has forgotten what's in the apartment and what isn't, and they have to dig through drawer after drawer to find some ancient Band-Aids.

The bleeding is finally under control, but the shirt and pants are stained, requiring immediate attention, and Honi stands in his underwear before his mother and sister, who dismiss his embarrassment: “We've seen you naked before, no problem.”

Be that as it may, he's cold in the Jerusalem evening, and his sister lends him a big shirt, his mother contributes an old bathrobe, and he sits comfortably, a man dressed as a woman, reminiscing about himself as a child, and instead of complaining again about his mother's failed residence in Tel Aviv, he envisions the fast train of the future that will zip between the two cities in twenty minutes flat.

“Then you can come here every time I sneeze,” his mother teases.

And so the evening goes. They are still in the kitchen, and after they've carefully picked the shards of the bowl from the sink and eaten a bit more of the meal Noga prepared, the talk turns to the past and concentrates on the virtues and flaws of the father who died nine months before, and Noga recalls the rainy night she saw her father shuffling from room to room like a humble Chinese man.

“Yes,” the mother confirms, “in recent years when he would get up at night to use the bathroom, he would turn into a different character on his way back to bed—Chinese or Indian or Eskimo, or somebody disabled or paralyzed. We once saw a wonderful short film called
Aisha
, about a woman of ninety-six, all bent over, who would lean on a pail as she walked, and he was so impressed that he tried imitating her in the dark.”

“But why?” Honi is shocked, hearing for the first time about his late father's nocturnal habits.

“To amuse himself and me.”

“And you were actually amused?”

“At first, out of surprise, then I reprimanded him.”

“Hardly reprimanded,” Noga recalls. “‘That's not Chinese, it's Japanese,' she would tell him, as if Ima really knows how the Japanese walk. Then he'd look bewildered and take even smaller steps.”

And she jumps up and charmingly mimics her father's steps.

The chatter flows freely and merrily as the night slowly embraces their camaraderie. They drift on to relatives and absent friends, and even Uriah's name comes up, but the two women are careful not to let slip one word about his performances and visits, and it would appear that Honi has not only accepted his failure to move his mother near him, but that the failure has lifted his spirits. He walks from room to room in his mother's robe, planning how to renovate the apartment, to put money into it now that they've been spared the expense of the old folks' home. And as he puts together a list of what to replace and what to fix, and especially how to improve the lighting, he arrives at the emptied clothes closet and rocks his father's new black suit back and forth on its hanger.