The Extra (29 page)

O
NLY AFTER SHE RETURNED
from the concert to her apartment did Noga begin to fear that the following day, amid the rush of preparation for the long journey, she would not have time to say a proper goodbye to her mother. It's late now in Israel, but she knows that the lonely mother would be pleased to wake up and hear her voice. But the phone rings in Jerusalem with no reply, giving rise to a new worry. Were we too hasty to rule out assisted living? She calls her brother, a sound sleeper, and her sister-in-law Sarai, who tinkers with her eccentric paintings into the wee hours, answers and reassures her: “Your mother hasn't vanished. She's here, sleeping in the kids' room. She arrived two days ago, supposedly because she missed the children, but it's really because she's worried.”

“About whom and what?”

“Hard to know,” Sarai says. “Maybe herself, maybe you.”

“Me? About what?”

“Not clear. Maybe your trip? I'll wake her up. She'll be happy to hear your voice, and you can find out what's eating her.”

“No, no, don't wake her,” says Noga, flustered. “I only wanted to say goodbye, but if she'll still be there tomorrow morning . . .”

“She'll be here, she'll be here. She doesn't seem in any hurry to go back to Jerusalem.”

“In that case, I'll call before we leave for Japan.”

“Japan . . . Japan . . . ,” sighs the sister-in-law. “Wonderful. I envy your freedom.”

“Don't exaggerate. It's not about freedom, it's just a path to the music I'm starving for.”

“But you at least have an orchestra to help you satisfy your hunger. I'm all alone here, wrestling at night with my unfulfilled artistic ambition.”

“But you have your children to make you happy.”

“They don't always make me happy, and even when they do, they're not relaxing.”

Noga is sorry that her work as an extra didn't leave her more time to spend with her sister-in-law.

“Maybe after we get back from Japan you can come for a little vacation here and leave Honi and Ima to look after the children.”

“Thanks. But so long as your mother doesn't let go of Jerusalem, she won't really be able to help us.”

After she hangs up, Noga finds it hard to fall asleep. Lacking an extra bed to seduce the elusive slumber, she swallows a sleeping pill, hoping to awake refreshed, ready for the trip to a distant land where she may or may not be called upon to perform.

Under the influence of the pill she plunges into solid sleep, and in the depths she meets her father, who since his demise has appeared in none of her dreams, but here he is, lying innocently in the electric bed, unaware that it was built after he had died. But is this the childhood apartment she had been assigned to protect? The waves of the dream wash over familiar furniture and kitchenware, lingering on the cumbersome television that won the hearts of the little boys. Yet the flat has undergone a major upheaval: the living room has expanded and her childhood bedroom has shrunk, and a thick, tangled tree she has never seen thrusts its branches through a window that never existed.

The father is pale and silent, and though he slowly turns the pages of a newspaper, it would seem that death discourages reading. Nevertheless, he doesn't look pained or depressed, as if death had been a difficult but successful surgery, and is relieved because further death will not be necessary. Would it be right, wonders the dreamer, to exploit the gift of his resurrection to bid farewell to him too before her trip? She heads into the kitchen to ask her mother whether saying goodbye to a living-dead person would add to his pain, except the kitchen has relocated to some unknown corner of the apartment, and in its place is a small, dark bathroom, its window bolted shut. A pale woman, immersed in reddish foam, lies in the bathtub, her eyes closed, not her mother but a total stranger. The eyes of the woman open wide. She is young, though apparently the owner of the apartment.

In the morning her mother phones, apologizing for calling so early.

“You were looking for me last night, so I'm calling before you vanish in the distance.”

“You did well. It's time for me to get up. But what's going on? Only a few days in Jerusalem and you're back in Tel Aviv. Do you actually regret not sticking with the assisted living?”

“Regrets are also part of life,” says the mother evasively. “But not to worry, my daughter, we won't draft you again for any experiment.”

Noga provides her mother with details of the orchestra's trip to Japan. She spells out the names of the cities letter by letter and, for emergencies only, tells her how to get through to her cell phone with an entry code, and of course reminds her of the high cost and the time difference. But she doesn't mention the second harpist who dropped out at the last minute and the possibility that the whole trip might be in vain.

“Good,” says the mother, “this way I'll be able to keep track of you at all times.”

Now the daughter wants to know how old she was when they moved from the apartment where she was born to the one where she grew up.

“How old?” her mother asks. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“You know me, no reason is not a reason.”

“Let's say because of a dream.”

“You have time to dream before a trip like this?”

“It was a dream that didn't ask permission.”

“How can I give you an exact answer if I'm not sure how old you are now?”

“You're not sure? Ima!”

“Yes, it is odd, but I just want to confirm you're forty-three.”

“Why three? Where'd you get three? Not even two, and that's two months away.”

“Not even two? So why do you think of yourself as a hopeless woman?”

“Hopeless? In what sense hopeless?”

“I apologize. In no sense. I already told you that the Uriah story is eating me up inside. But I'm not saying anything. Okay, forty-two. So if we do the simple math, when we moved from Ovadiah Street in Kerem Avraham to Rashi Street in Mekor Baruch—in other words, from the apartment where you were born to the one you grew up in—you were all of five, five and a half. When we moved I was already pregnant with Honi, who was born in the new apartment, which by the way was never new and never will be. But why are you digging into the past? What happened in the dream?”

“You and Abba always refused to show me the apartment where I was born, even though you described it as beautiful and special, with a view.”

“Yes, a wide-open view, from more than one window. But I'm sure that with so many births and so much new construction in the area, nobody has a view anymore. Yes, it was a very nice apartment, in a neighborhood that changed since then, became blacker than black, the usual story.”

“If it was such a nice apartment, why did you move?”

“Why, why, all these whys because of a dream?”

“Why not?”

“All right—we moved because your father insisted.”

“Why?”

“Again why? What was in that dream that upset you so much?”

“Abba was in it, for the first time since he died.”

“Ah . . . Abba . . . It's about time. In my dreams, this week alone he appeared three times.”

“And said something?”

“No. He can only speak if we give him something to say. So far in the dreams he's only an extra, standing up.”

“An extra in a dream? Good one.”

“You see? Sometimes I also have great ideas.”

“Absolutely. Sometimes too many. But still, why did you leave the lovely apartment?”

“You really insist on knowing.”

“Because you're avoiding the answer.”

“All right. The young landlady, who lived on the same floor, died suddenly, and the husband quickly remarried, so the new wife could take care of the baby.”

“There was a baby?”

“I just said, she died in childbirth.”

“You didn't say that.”

“Sorry.”

“But what did Abba care if the landlord found a wife to take care of the child?”

“Ask him when he comes to visit you again in a dream.”

“Now you're hiding something.”

“Because it was a long time ago, and complicated, and if I go into detail you might miss your flight.”

“Don't worry about my flight. It suddenly occurs to me that I also saw this young woman in my dream, the dead one.”

“You didn't see anything. You were five years old then, or five and a half.”

“So that was how Abba started having those strange delusions!”

“Could be. You knew him. The humor, cracking jokes, his little comedy routines, it all came so naturally to him, unless of course something bad happened. Then he would get scared and imagine the worst. And since I was also pregnant when the landlady died, he insisted that we leave the apartment and move someplace else.”

T
HE CHARTERED JAPANESE AIRCRAFT
looked old, but the cabin was spotless. Most of the instruments were stowed in the belly of the plane along with the musicians' luggage, except for the flutes, clarinets and oboes, which would easily fit in the overhead compartments. A few violinists who deemed their instruments priceless received special permission to keep them in sight during the flight. There were only twelve seats in business class, which were reserved for the conductor and his wife, as well as Herman Kroon, the deputy mayor of Arnhem and his wife, the Japanese cultural attaché who initiated the trip and the young composer Van den Broek. The remainder were allotted to senior musicians, most of them not young. Noga was seated, of course, in tourist class, beside a contrabass player, Pirke Wisser, a plump, middle-aged Dutch woman who, it turned out, was a grandmother.

Just after takeoff, at three in the afternoon, one of the pilots came out of the cockpit and with the help of a digital display briefed the passengers about the flight, which would first head north, not east, since the polar route was shortest. Thus now, at summer's end, the sun would shine during most of the flight, and only an hour or two before landing in Japan would they encounter the starry night sky.

Winging over the North Pole struck some of the musicians as a bold, even presumptuous undertaking for an older airplane, and there was macabre joking that the orchestra's crash into a giant iceberg would be a boon for Arnhem, not merely relieving the municipality of a budgetary burden, but obviating any costly search for bodies and instruments. For some musicians, fear of flying is intensified by such black humor, and there are calls for self-control and silence. All are exhausted following the festive farewell concert, and since the sun will stand still in the heavens, it's best to lower the shades.

Crammed in her seat beside a round window, the Israeli harpist floats above white lakes of ice, pondering her interrupted dream. Will her imagination manage next time to chat with her silent father, the extra? Now that the dream has been interpreted, will she be able to dream it again? She smiles sadly at the grandmother beside her, a tall, stout player in whose hands the contrabass seems like a violin that grew up and stood on its feet. The Dutch woman smiles in return, and is well aware of her neighbor's concern. Yes, based on many years of experience with the orchestra, she believes that someone will be found in Japan to play second harp. “Everyone in the orchestra,” she says, “especially after such demanding rehearsals, is determined not to forgo the Debussy.”

Meanwhile, the Arctic Ocean gets bigger and whiter, and the words of the older musician do more to allay her concerns than the promises of the conductor and the administrative director, and Noga asks if she'd like her to pull down the shade on the midnight sun. “Light never bothers me,” the grandmother replies. “I can sleep peacefully even when the grandchildren read or play by my bed at night.” Grateful for her reassurance, the Israeli inquires as to the number and ages of her grandchildren. “Only seven for now,” answers Pirke Wisser, and Noga asks to see pictures, but this grandmother does not carry pictures of her grandchildren to faraway places; they are engraved in her mind. Instead, if the harpist would like, she can tell some amusing stories about them.

Feeling warm and secure alongside the grandmother, Noga leans her head on the glittering window and slips into a cozy nap, until someone touches her gently. The elderly first flutist, her occasional lover, seated up front with the notables, would like to introduce her to the conductor's wife, who wants to thank her.

“Thank me for what?”

“For the whip you brought her.”

“Brought
her?
”

“What you give to her husband belongs also to her.”

On most of the tray tables in tourist class dinner is being served, a combination of Japanese and Western food. “Wait,” she says as Manfred pulls her from her seat, “I'm hungry.” “Don't worry,” he says, “up there wonderful food is waiting.” And he leads her down the aisle, opens a curtain and escorts her into business class, redolent with alcohol fumes, where the inebriated conductor, in stocking feet and short pants, greets her cheerfully and introduces her to his wife, a loud and pretty American, also rather tipsy, who gives the harpist a big hug. It turns out that the maestro's wife is more excited by the idea of the whip than the whip itself. For the gift of a whip to an orchestral conductor is not merely, in her opinion, an amusing stroke of brilliance, but a call to action. So she intends to show the whip to conservative conductors who are wary, like her husband, of postmodern, experimental music. A whip, not a waving baton, can prod the unwilling, among players and conductors both. She points to the young composer Van den Broek—cocooned in a blanket, like a corpse shipped home from the battlefield—and says to Noga, “Here, for example, you have a talented young man who gave the world original, melancholy arabesques, but everyone, my husband most of all, is still plotting how to cut some of its eight little minutes.”