The Extra (28 page)

Christine merely shrugs, but Noga, realizing that she and this man are in agreement, intervenes. “You're right,” she says, “Christine must tell them now, otherwise they won't have time to find a replacement.”

Strengthened by the ally he had assumed was an obstacle, he moves quickly. Gently but firmly he puts his arm around his partner's waist and steers her toward the office.

Expecting to be met with anger, Christine considers asking the Israeli to accompany her, as if hoping that the dialogue between the wind and the sea could be played by one harpist alone. But as they approach Herman's office she decides that Noga's presence would make matters worse. She also insists in French that her partner wait outside, and enters quietly to bear the bad news that might wreck the repertoire of the tour.

Slowly the guardian of the pregnancy begins to relax. First he stands by the office door, trying in vain to overhear the conversation inside. Then he sits down on a bench in the hallway, stretches his legs, sees no one around but Noga, takes a single cigarette from his shirt pocket and sticks it in his mouth. But before he can light it there is the sound of rapid footsteps in the corridor, and Dennis van Zwol arrives in a panic, summoned by management to deal with the incipient dropout. Identifying the progenitor of the bad news, he knocks the cigarette from the man's mouth with the flick of a finger and growls in French, “No smoking!” Turning to Noga, as if she too were responsible, he says in Dutch, “Tell me what's going on? What's the story here? What was she thinking?” He doesn't wait for an answer but disappears into Herman's office to fight for the integrity of the repertoire.

Noga looks at the boyfriend, who retrieves the damaged cigarette from the floor, shreds the paper and collects the tobacco in his hand. Without a word or a glance at the harpist, he sits back down, determined to guard Christine's pregnancy at all costs. Now Noga takes a closer look. His dark skin is velvety smooth, his thick curly hair is black as coal, and the northern blueness of his eyes blends the world into one country. Her heart is heavy. From the speed with which the conductor was summoned, she gathers that it will be hard, if not impossible, to find a harpist at the last minute who will be able to get ready overnight for such a long and distant journey. After so many exhausting, exhilarating rehearsals, Noga thinks with a pang of despair, will Debussy be forced to cede his place to some same-old Schubert or hackneyed Beethoven?

And now her memory conjures a movie extra, a disabled woman in a wheelchair waiting outside the closed door of a room that masqueraded as a hospital room. There too, beside her, stood a stranger, a handsome actor whose bare chest gleamed under a white gown. An imaginary doctor whom she would soon be directed to surprise in the midst of forbidden lovemaking, and he, spontaneously, would pluck her from her wheelchair and, with a mixture of anger and pity, carry her in his arms to her sickbed and cover her, as if to blot out the shame he had brought on himself.

But now there is no director to tell her what to do. She has no choice but to direct, produce and write her own script—to give voice and movement to her thoughts so that her harp will play a piece of music whose beauty floods her soul. She gets up her nerve and approaches the man in overalls, who sits on the bench with his eyes closed and head tilted back.

“Excuse me, sir, may I have a few words with you?”

He opens his eyes.

“I wanted to tell you that although I respect your concern, you are going too far. Now you are not only making things harder for Christine, but for the entire orchestra.”

He tenses but doesn't interrupt.

“Millions of pregnant women,” she says, raising her voice, “travel, fly, go about in the world, and nothing happens to them.”

“It takes all kinds,” he says offhandedly.

“After all, our Christine will not be asked to climb mountains in Japan, or dance in discotheques. On the plane she will rest. Others will lift and wheel her harp, so she will only need to put her fingers on the strings and play.”

“I know,” he snaps, “but still.”

“In general,” she insists, “the female womb is far stronger and steadier than men imagine, and pregnancies have survived wars, poverty and famine, even concentration camps.”

Now he is irate, but remains calm.

“Yes, I also sometimes pay attention to what goes on in the world, but Christine is not in good health and not young, and it was not easy for us to get pregnant.”

Although Noga is rebuffed at every turn, she believes that the fate of the sea is in her hands alone.

“You should also know, sir,” she says, sitting down next to him on the bench, “that in our orchestra there are women who have given birth to children and have a lot of experience, and we have a violinist and an oboist who are grandmothers and were present at the births of many babies.”

With an ironic gesture he salutes the mothers and grandmothers, but does not yield.

“I have respect for them all, but what can they do if she starts to bleed, or if to save the pregnancy she has to stay in bed for a long time, and in a strange and foreign country?”

“Why strange? Maybe foreign in culture and language, but otherwise everything in Japan is modern and rational, often more so than here in the West.”

“You have been there?”

“No, but everyone knows that about Japan. Besides, Christine will not be alone. We will all be with her, look after her.”

His patience runs out.

“But there will be visits to temples and flights to Hiroshima and other cities. Christine is a fragile woman and not young, and this pregnancy is important and precious for us. We cannot take chances.”

But Noga won't give up. She has not played a concert for three months, and she is desperate to perform in front of an audience.

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me your name?”

“Saharan.”

“May I ask where you are from? Where you were born?”

“In Iran, in—”

“Tehran?” She tries to be helpful.

“No, in a place you never heard of.”

“Then please,” she implores, “please, sir, trust me. I personally pledge to be with Christine at every moment of the trip. You were at the rehearsal, and perhaps you noticed the dialogue between the two of us, two harpists who have not only a professional partnership but also a human one, so it's natural for me to take personal responsibility for her well-being.”

“Who are you, anyway?” He tries to get to the root of her stubbornness.

“What do you mean, who am I?”

“Am I allowed to ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“You speak with such confidence—how many children have you given birth to?”

“How many children?” She smiles uneasily and gets up from the bench. “How is that relevant?”

“Why not? After all, you are asking me to trust you.”

She shudders.

“I haven't yet given birth, but . . .”

And to her surprise, he is not surprised, as if he anticipated her answer, but instead of puncturing her arrogance, he studies her with interest and asks gently, “Why? Because you couldn't?”

“No. I could, but I didn't want to.”

Now he won't let go, as if her promise to watch over his partner's pregnancy has exposed her to the same blunt challenge voiced by Elazar, the eternal extra, at their first meeting, though now in a foreign language: “How do you know you could, if you didn't want to?”

“I know . . . I know.” She holds on to the scene that is disintegrating in her hands. “If I want to, I can have a child.”

“Of course, and we shall all pray for his health,” he graciously promises, in his name and in the name of his partner, who at the moment is being badgered by her bosses. “Meanwhile, until your wish for a child is awakened, respect our wishes, for we need our child, and no music has the right to stand in the way.”

As he speaks, his fist springs open and flakes of tobacco scatter like sand. Since he is loath to kneel down before her and pick them up, he stands and brushes them aside with the toe of his shoe. And to indicate that the conversation is over, he strides to the end of the corridor, opens wide a small window, lights a fresh cigarette and expels the smoke into the world.

B
EFORE THEIR DEPARTURE
, the orchestra played a farewell concert for the residents of Arnhem, with tickets for sale at a token price. As a replacement harpist had not yet been found, a frantic request was dispatched to Kyoto to find a musician who could assume the part of second harp in the work by Debussy, but since no reply had arrived, the orchestra held an urgent rehearsal of Schubert's Ninth Symphony, the “Great,” a piece they'd played dozens of times, so if necessary they could plug the gaping hole in the program. Noga's trip, and that of her harp, was assured, but it was not clear whether she would have the chance to perform. Will she be reduced to a mere extra in Japan too? She asks Herman to take from his drawer the score for the
Sacred and Profane Dances
for harp and string orchestra, hoping a way might be found to compensate her with a public performance of this work.

On the morning of the concert Noga tried to decide what to wear onstage. Should it be the black silk dress, whose hem nearly reached the floor but which left her neck, shoulders and arms bare, or should she go with a delicate black pantsuit, purchased in Israel, which she felt accentuated her slenderness and flexibility? She was tilting toward the elegant black silk, befitting the formality of a concert to which notables had been invited. But her shoulders seemed bulky to her compared with the younger women players', so she combined the two outfits: to hide her shoulders and arms, she will wear the jacket of the pantsuit over the long silk dress.

But is the black of the two outfits the same black? She didn't feel herself competent to judge this, so she enlisted her landlady, a great admirer of her tenant, to view the combination and render an opinion. And the landlady, whom Noga had invited to the concert, was adamant. Even if the Dutch black does not clash with the Israeli black, Noga must wear only the long dress and leave her shoulders and arms exposed. Yes, she too noticed that they had thickened a bit during her vacation in Israel, possibly the result of hearty meals and juicy fruit, yet at the same time, perhaps from the desert sun, they have a rosy golden sheen not easily acquired in the Netherlands. So why conceal an attractive body that will blend with the beauty of the harp?

It was impossible to exclude Christine from the farewell concert, despite the anger directed at her, and she too turned up that evening in a long black dress, albeit of slightly threadbare wool. The appearance of the two harpists in their long dresses encouraged interest in a complex piece of music.

During the intermission Noga asked the conductor if there had been an answer from Japan. “Not yet,” said the maestro, but with cheerful optimism promised that the entire Japanese army had been deployed to find a substitute. “We will not give up the sea after we polished every one of its waves.” Indeed, the Debussy was received with surprising warmth and enthusiasm at the farewell concert, even though it was not an audience of the usual music lovers, but of municipal workers and members of trade organizations, including transit employees and industrial workers, plus excited high school kids and German students from across the border. And since the printed program, distributed free at the door, explained why
La Mer
had been selected for the Japanese tour, the Dutch were flattered that such a large and strong nation as Japan, whose technology had conquered the world, was in need of inspiration from a small, modest people in a spiritual and artistic contest with a cruel sea.

Knowing that the farewell concert would be attended by the general public, some receiving free tickets, Dennis van Zwol asked the musicians to play the Haydn symphony at an especially sprightly tempo, but with the Debussy he would allow no compromises. During the many exhausting rehearsals, the orchestra had perfected various refinements, and any deviation from them would ruin the musical flow.

Having gotten past her torment over leaving the tour, Christine was newly serene. She no longer bothered to hide her pregnancy, and under the long wool dress that smelled slightly of camphor, the bulge that would force the Belgians to grant full European citizenship to her partner was clearly visible.

The dialogue between the two harps was executed flawlessly in the concert's second half. Sometimes the first sang out and the second answered, sometimes they sang in unison, till the second subsided and the first went on to trill another phrase. The breathtaking glissandi played by the two evoked the sparkling foam of the waves, cresting and ebbing. The conductor was focused on them, and they felt his constant presence. Since the harpists sat on a riser above the other strings, the eyes of the audience were fixed on them even as they rested, waiting for the moment when the two women, with perfect timing, would tilt their gilded, regal harps toward their hearts and spread their fingers on the strings.

The cheers at the conclusion of the Debussy were loud and long. Backstage, a chattering crowd of friends and relatives said their goodbyes to the musicians. Christine was upset and parted from Noga in tears. She too had yearned to travel with the orchestra instead of returning this very night to a small apartment in Antwerp with the knowledge that perhaps until the birth of her child, and perhaps thereafter, she would have no opportunity to perform. Moreover, it was reasonable to assume that an orchestra that had been dealt so severe an inconvenience would never again invite her to play. The father-to-be showed up at the concert not in overalls but in a suit and tie, and interpreted the musical struggle between the wind and the waves in his own fashion, perhaps as a port worker.

He studied Noga with a friendly look, and at the moment of parting dared to hug her, feeling the chill of her bare shoulders. She sensed he bore her no grudge over the words they had exchanged, and thought of telling him about the dear father who feared the death of his daughter in childbirth. But was this man the right audience for such a strange confession?