The Extra (32 page)

The pain increases, her muscles strain. “Excuse me,” she whispers to Herman, and goes out of the hall in search of the ladies' room, which is tucked someplace far away, and she only finds a large door with the stenciled image of a person in a wheelchair, crowned by one word in Japanese. Does this suggest anyone, male and female? If she had access to the chair she occupied as a disabled extra, she'd roll right in, not as a man or woman, but just a human. In the absence of such a chair, does her distress confer permission? There is no one in the corridor to tell her what is and isn't proper, so she cautiously opens the door and enters.

She finds a big, wide stall, immaculate as a doctor's office. At one side is a diaper-changing table big enough for twins or even triplets. She unzips her pants and discovers that the same bloodstains that she removed from the nightgown have reappeared on her panties, larger and redder than before. Something is wrong with her body. Her periods are long gone. What are the odds of a return visit?

A loudspeaker tucked in the ceiling plays the music from the hall, and while she is convulsing miserably in a public washroom, the notes of the
Emperor
's finale cascade from a piano above her head. In a few minutes the conductor will exchange a few more words with the soloist before moving on to the second part of the rehearsal. But Noga doesn't budge. She waits for the pain to subside, or at least to make its intentions clear. Very slowly she tries to regulate her breathing. The new blood spots cannot be removed right now, and will alas accompany her to the stage, but with all her might she will strive to control the pain, hoping it will actually intensify her performance.

The
Emperor
is finished. According to the program, the time has come for the
Melancholy Arabesques
of Van den Broek. In which case, she has eight whole minutes to recover and calm down. Lucky for her that in the end they didn't cut anything from the already short piece. She waits for the opening shriek of the piccolo, and now, here goes, the third time she's heard these insane arabesques, this one through a little speaker in the ceiling, and quite miraculously, what had earlier sounded chaotic and gratuitously provocative seems cloaked in a kind of decadent beauty. Yes, despite his disdainful objections to this work, the maestro has succeeded, perhaps under the influence of his wife, in shaping it to shock listeners without repelling them.

Her eyes are glued to the clock, and at the fifth minute she gets up, straightens her clothes and quickly applies makeup before the mirror to conceal her pallor, and as the Dutchman's demanding arabesques flow to a finish, she feels a vague flowing within herself. Could this be a vestige of the old abortion? It's crazy just to raise the possibility.

She returns to the hall precisely as the young composer rushes with excitement to embrace the conductor, whose interpretation, in the end, was an improvement. Her new partner is already sitting on the stage, tuning his harp. She walks over slowly and bows slightly to him, and now he does recognize her, but instead of returning the bow he surprises her by extending his hand.

Sitting close to his black harp, she can examine it thoroughly. It looks large and unwieldy, owing perhaps to its extreme age, or in contrast to its tiny player. At the top of the harp there is no portrait of an angel or embossment of a gold crown, but the face of a black bird. The Japanese has his score open, and from the folds of his robe he produces thin gold-rimmed glasses and places them on his nose. At least he won't be playing from memory, Noga consoles herself as she begins to tune her strings. The harpist, her very old new partner, listens with concern as she works, without a word or suggestion—just his tiny hand trembling at every twitch of a string, then relaxing when it reaches its proper pitch.

The musicians who have played three pieces in a row and gone out for a break now return to the stage. Ingrid, the French horn player, walks past Noga and senses her distress. “Is anything wrong?” she asks, placing a soft hand on the Israeli's shoulder. “Yes,” Noga decides to admit. “If you have a little time after the rehearsal, I will need your help.” “Of course I'll have time,” promises the musician, “as much as you want.”

The words are spoken sincerely. Ingrid de Monk is a beautiful young woman who protects herself through generosity of spirit. Well aware of the attraction, envy and confusion that her beauty can arouse, she tries to dull her glamour by means of simple, rumpled clothes, and also tries to be as helpful as possible to anyone who needs help. From her husband, older by a number of years, a family doctor at a rural clinic, she has acquired useful snippets of medical knowledge, plus a little toolbox containing pills and ointments, bandages and tape, a thermometer and blood-pressure gauge, pins and needles and buttons, and even a makeup kit. She carries this box, dubbed the “Wonder Horn” by her fellow musicians, not only when traveling, but sometimes to long rehearsals, possibly as a sort of penance for the gift of beauty bestowed on her.

Dennis van Zwol takes the podium and waits for the absolute silence that enables the sounding of the first note. To Noga's astonishment, the Japanese harpist has removed his wooden clogs and is poised to press the pedals with his tiny, wrinkled bare feet. The conductor turns to the two harpists, readies their entrance with a finger of his left hand and then, with the baton in his right hand, gives a clear sign for the timpani to stroke the opening beats, and the old man plucks the first note with a stunning power that Christine could never accomplish, and Noga joins him an eighth note later, plucking rapidly and without accents. Side by side, in partnership and dialogue, with four swift hands and quick, precise pressure on the pedals, the two summon the wail of the wind and the sparkle of the waves from the music of Debussy, convincing the strings and woodwinds, and the percussion in their wake, that they are in fact sailing together on the wide-open seas.

And with love and devotion to her instrument Noga is able to conquer her pain. Inspired by the fierce virtuosity flourishing in the fingers of the old man, whose black harp seems entwined with his body, she discovers that her own instrument has a tone and resonance she had not known or imagined, and these tempt her to pluck its strings with all her might, nearly to uproot them.

The maestro settles down, and instead of waving his arms and jumping, he closes his eyes, and with soft, nonchalant hand motions he lets the orchestra guide its conductor, who sails alone in a simple sailboat, trusting the music not to drown him or betray him, but land him safely on the shore of his desires.

When the last note disappears and silence conquers the hall, the administrative director cannot contain himself and leaps from his seat with the cry of “Bravo! Bravo!” while Dennis's wife rushes from her seat to the stage and bows emotionally to the entire orchestra.

And the conductor sighs and says, “What a pity this is just a rehearsal.”

S
EVEN HOURS REMAIN
until the concert. Some of the musicians run off to see a few more temples, but most, including her roommate Pirke, go in search of culinary delicacies. Only a few, Noga among them, return to the guesthouse. Her nightgown is still damp, and the morning's blood spots are still visible. She will need to find a stronger detergent, but where and when? She takes off her clothes and examines with dismay the new spotting on her panties, then wraps them in a bag and buries them deep in the trash. For a moment she deliberates whether to take a shower or immerse her suffering body in the bath. The dream of the woman with her eyes closed, floating in the reddish foam, was frightening yet seductive. But no, it's too soon. A person must not wallow in her own blood.

After her shower, she curls up under the blanket in a clean, flimsy nightgown, hoping that if the bleeding stops, the pain will too. All is quiet at the guesthouse. The musicians are wandering from temples to restaurants, refreshing their souls before the concert. The warm, clear sounds of a clarinet playing an old folksong waft from a room on the top floor. No, she is sure, these cannot be the signs of a monthly period. Hers ended a good while ago, and why should it return? No, she knows that this is something else, new and serious, plotting against her in this strange and distant land to put an end to the freedom she has allowed herself.

She does not hear the knock at the door, and when her eyes open the French horn player is hovering over her, blushing shyly, here to keep her promise, to which end she has brought her Wonder Horn box.

Ingrid wears no makeup, her clothes are baggy, but her natural beauty triumphs over self-imposed restrictions, and now, with the two of them alone, close to each other in a small room, Noga knows she has no further need to lift her eyes to the sky at dawn or sunset to find the planet whose name she shares, for that planet had descended to her room in the form of a young Venus, a musician in her orchestra, who will try to interpret her pains in order to relieve them.

And since Venus is also the wife of a doctor who between concerts tutors her in medicine, she unflinchingly rummages through the trash to examine the bloodstained panties. She confidently determines that the stains are evidence of menstruation and nothing more serious, and even if her periods had stopped, they have not, on the strength of her age and health, lost their right to return. And the French horn player bolsters her diagnosis with stories of women who visited her husband's clinic.

“How old is your husband?” asks Noga, basking in a new serenity.

“Forty. Ten years older than I am.”

“And children?”

“Just one for now. Age five, staying with my parents at the moment.”

Noga closes her eyes and asks if there is something in the Wonder Horn that will lessen her pain but won't knock her out like the sleeping pill the contrabass player gave her at midnight. Ingrid produces a small bottle and shakes out two golden pills, deciding after a moment's thought to leave the bottle with her patient, to guarantee her peace of mind for the whole Japanese tour. And from the bottom of the box she removes a few sanitary napkins, since the blood flow will increase.

“The main thing, our Venus, is that you stay as sharp and confident as ever. Because in the last rehearsal, if I'm not mistaken, there was a bold new sound, a sort of wailing from your harp strings, or possibly the strings of your fellow harpist.”

As she closes the lid of the Wonder Horn and leaves to get ready for the first concert on Japanese soil, Noga wants to tell her, No, don't say “our Venus” anymore, you should all just call me Noga. But she is not sure the time is yet right.

The concert hall glitters with bright lights, and along with subscription holders and paying customers are local elders and dignitaries who have been specially invited. Dennis van Zwol has passed up his light, flexible Chinese jacket, much in vogue among conductors, in favor of his old tuxedo, with an artificial lily pinned to its lapel. The male musicians have donned their black suits, and the women have endeavored to look their best. In honor of the orchestra the French horn player has elected not to conceal her beauty. She has let down her hair, adorned it with an orange flower and polished her horn to a dazzling golden sheen. In the wings, before taking the stage, everyone marveled at the metamorphosis in the Japanese pianist—in the morning she had looked like a student or waitress, and in the evening had turned into a woman of mystery in a cherry-colored silk kimono and silver high-heeled shoes that greatly increased her height.

“Listen,” Herman alerted the musicians before they went onstage, “don't expect a long wave of applause, because the Japanese are restrained. Don't be demoralized if the audience response seems moderate.”

But the audience response to the Haydn symphony was actually wildly enthusiastic, and the
Emperor
was awaited with tense anticipation. The house lights were turned off, contrary to typical concert procedure, a hush fell over the crowd, and the soloist entered to the sounds of applause and roars of joy. No doubt the family of the pianist, residents of her home village, friends and teachers, and perhaps her former employers from her days as a waitress and babysitter have not missed this chance to witness her greatness. For she is a local girl who has been away a long time, and her return is cause for celebration. Who knows how many have come to the concert just for her?

Perhaps for this reason, in the first movement she slowed the galloping tempo of the rehearsal. And from the start of the second movement there has been a dramatic change. Her playing has become soft and dreamy, as though the emperor were napping in his chamber and the piano had come not to hail him but caress him. And the slow, soft caress has unsettled the percussionists sitting backstage with Noga, so the waiting musicians have decided to fortify themselves with strong drink before the cafeteria and bar are swamped during intermission. The harpist was invited to join them, but declined, and remains alone backstage in her long black dress with her neck and shoulders bare, waiting for the blood to flow, and to her surprise also yearning for the accompanying pain.

Then a side door opens and into the darkened backstage space comes her partner, the elderly harpist Ichiro Matsudaira, who has replaced his gray robe with a magnificent colorful one, a samurai sword embroidered on it in red silk thread. His braid is neatly combed, and seems for a moment to be a bit blacker. He approaches her with tiny steps and bows deeply. It would appear that in the afternoon rehearsal he came to appreciate her playing. This musician is essentially a teacher and not a competitor, and therefore he can be happy about every student or partner who is likely to surpass him. And as Noga stands up to bow her thanks in return, she feels the bursting flow that soaks the sanitary napkin given her by the good Ingrid, and despite the pain that seizes her, she feels relief. This is indeed her period, no doubt about it.

The wrinkled old man studies her with interest. Soon they will sit onstage side by side, a golden harp beside a black harp, to give sound and color to the sea.