“Matilda… I can’t believe it!” Ruth laughs.
And the laughter extends, like a fishing line, into the well of time, and out comes a colorful, almost mythological character of indeterminate age and identity, a distant relative of Trigano’s, also imported from that immigrant town in the desert, who turned out to be a natural comedienne. Moses’ mother, a refined and cultured old woman, approaches her tentatively and carefully lays the basket of groceries in front of her rickety wheelchair, apparently on loan from a nearby old-age home, and in the dark hall the filmmaker hangs his head with embarrassment over what he has created, though after many years of experience in gauging audience reactions, he can see that his message, puerile but humane, retains its grip.
Not in a sudden recollection but simply by looking at the flow of images on the screen, he discovers that as a fledgling director, faithful to the script, he did not spare his mother the indignity of feeding the invalid and cleaning her, washing her underwear in the sink, and there is no way of knowing if these actions were in the script or added by the director’s inspiration. And perhaps also because he doesn’t understand a word of the dialogue that flows cheerfully between his mother and the woman in her care, his eyes mist over and he chokes up; it is hard to bear his mother’s humiliation. And like his father, who did not survive long after the death of his wife, he feels great compassion for the ghost of his mother, who plays her role with such devotion, and he rises from his seat. I’ll be right back, he reassures the director of the archive, and hurries for the exit.
The long corridor of the barracks is filled with the shadows of the short winter’s day, but since Moses had made a mental note of the men’s room door, he locates it easily in the faint light. He rinses his face and closets himself in a stall and, after emptying his bladder, sits on the lid of the toilet to weigh his options for this strange retrospective of old films that speak a foreign tongue. Was the promise of a small cash prize, to be awarded at the end of the retrospective, meant to mollify him? Though, really, why be upset? After all, he is not here to represent only his own work, but also the spirit of his nation’s rebirth. And Santiago is a city with an important cathedral. The hotel is opulent, the breakfast generous, and so far his companion is not unhappy. And even if the early films were based on the ideas of a young, opinionated, and unrealistic scriptwriter and are far from a full expression of Moses’ professional growth as demonstrated concretely over the years, he can defend them, provided he can still discern their intention.
He looks at his watch. His mother will soon complete her role, and her departure from the screen will alleviate the remorse of the merciless director. He returns to the hall; the audience is still caught up in the film. He slides carefully past de Viola, who gazes with amused wonder at the Matilda character, now begging the elderly caregiver not to leave her, but his mother covers the huge invalid with a blanket, and before exiting, to relieve the emptiness, she turns on the radio, and an old marching song resounds in the small hall of the former military barracks.
It’s a good thing that the Spaniards did not try to dub the words of the song, thinks Moses, for if they had, it’s doubtful Matilda could have mustered the strength to switch from invalid to caregiver. But empowered by the Hebrew marching song, still wedged in her wheelchair, she wheels herself with astounding expertise toward her own patient as the film shuns the rational choreography of people and objects. By means of clever cutting, the wheelchair moves as in a dream, along streets and stairs and courtyards to a country cottage, again his parents’ house, but this time the tiny residence of a dying man.
“Who was that?” Moses nudges Ruth, still delighted by the sight of Matilda. Ruth shrugs, unable to identify the actor with an oxygen mask on his white bloodless face, a jungle of intravenous bags hanging round his bed, tubes and needles feeding various regions of his body, and a microphone hidden among the IV drips that transmits groans and complaints in Spanish. But who is it? Moses shuts his eyes in the hope of teasing out the truth from behind the dubbing, the makeup, and the accoutrements of illness that fill the screen. For a tiny moment he suspects that it is he himself who, having no alternative, performed an additional role in his film. But surely he hadn’t brazenly misled the audience, turning the muscular young man who had earlier greeted the village girl into a mortally ill patient lying in bed in a white hospital gown. Surprisingly, despite the scary and depressing appearance of the dying man, a few giggles are audible from the audience. Perhaps this is because the big woman, expertly maneuvering her wheelchair, has transformed her passivity as a patient into the hyperactivity of an industrious caregiver. Or maybe the original text was not just dubbed in Spanish, but altered? In any event, it would seem that hidden comic elements, embedded in the script and direction, have improved with the passage of time, and a gloomy moral drama has turned on foreign soil into farcical entertainment.
“Yes, I recognize him,” Ruth blurts out, “concentrate, look carefully, it’s Toledano himself.” “Not a chance,” retorts Moses, dismissing the possibility that the cameraman had become the one on camera. But Ruth remains firm, and even as he throws his arm around her to quash her outlandish recollection, she stubbornly clings to that man who loved her and is now bedridden, deprived of his original voice in the role of a dying man. “Yes, it’s him, it can only be him, take a good look, the actor you picked was afraid of the part, and Toledano volunteered, because Trigano would never agree to portray any character he created. Why do you insist,” she pleads, “on not recognizing him?”
She’s right. The dying man’s eyes above the oxygen mask are the eyes of the deceased and unrequited lover, but then, who operated the camera? “Apparently you,” says Ruth, “and there was his assistant, what was his name?” “Nadav,” says Moses confidently, thrilled to retrieve the name of a person not seen in forty years. “Yes, Nadav,” she happily confirms, her memory merging with that of the director, the two jointly reconstructing the reality behind a forgotten film.
Their longtime cinematographer portrays a man on his deathbed with such understated grace that Moses is nostalgic for his antiquated film, and even the Spanish dubbing sounds familiar. Now the screen is a bit blurry, perhaps from a faulty focus or a smudge on the camera lens that shook in the hands of the director serving as a surrogate cameraman. Though it occurs to Moses that the unprofessional shakiness actually improves the scene, adding a dreamlike dimension at the twilight hour, as an immense woman in a wheelchair tries to soothe the suffering of a dying man in the final moments of his life.