Moses insisted that the reservists in the film all be amateur actors, and he recruited them himself from local drama clubs, preferring men who had served in combat units and knew their ways, so their sleep would make a strong, realistic impression. Right now they’re examining the installation, which they must guard without ever being told what it is, and as they ponder its purpose they also prepare for their first night under the stars and light a campfire.
It’s quite likely, Moses muses, that some of these amateurs, who were then ten or fifteen years older than he was, have since died, and those who are still alive may or may not remember the bizarre movie that must have frustrated them when it became clear that the script afforded no gripping conflict or complex situations, no opportunity to hone their acting skills, that it merely demanded their presence, day after day, night after night, in front of a camera that absorbed their slumber. Like actual reservists, they left work and family, agreeing to go down to the desert without pay for a few days of shooting, and now they were asked merely to act fatigued. He and the cinematographer had tried to cover up the feeble plot with flames and flying sparks and faces flickering in the silver cover of the installation, along with unforgettable shots of the desert by day and by night. Will this audience appreciate their beauty?
Moses attempts to assess the reaction of the few viewers scattered among the rows of seats. True, he does not yet hear whispering, coughing, or fidgeting, but he assumes the audience will be indifferent to this film and perhaps hostile. He steals a glance at Ruth, whose eyes are fixed on the screen in anticipation of her entrance as an elusive Bedouin woman, dressed in black and wearing a veil, spying on the sleeping soldiers. After Ruth’s impressive role as a deaf-mute in Distant Station, Trigano was tempted to bestow a new disability on his beloved, making her lame or even blind, but Moses vetoed it and they compromised on a veiled Bedouin woman who slips through the night like a ghost.
THE BOND BETWEEN the scriptwriter and his beloved grew stronger during the shoot in the desert. Since they knew each other from childhood, their relationship had earlier resembled love between cousins, but after the success of Distant Station they came to believe that their partnership also involved an artistic mission, and the fact that a former teacher had made it a reality heightened their self-importance, and their love as well. And so, during the filming of Slumbering Soldiers, Trigano never once left the location, yet he made sure not to intervene in the directing or cinematography, for he knew that everyone, by the terms of the agreement, would be faithful to his script. But at night, when cast and crew rolled up the silver sheeting and went to sleep inside the ancient Nabataean structure, the screenwriter and actress would disappear with their sleeping bags behind a nearby hill, their laughter echoing within earshot.
But the little screen at the film institute doesn’t feature broken memories, only an old movie driven by its own obsessions. The melancholy moon, whose countenance Toledano managed to capture on the silvery cover of the installation, whitens the faces of the reservists, grown men who nibble the leftovers of their meal before spreading their sleeping bags on the ground and zipping them closed in a way that makes it possible for the camera to move from soldier to soldier. Even the guards who are to patrol the premises are too lazy to leave the campfire. Their conversation dies down, their eyes gradually close. And then, at the top of the crater, appears the thin silhouette of the Bedouin woman, who moves silently as if moonstruck. And for the first time in the film — which so far has been free of background music — the sound of a flute, which from now on will accompany the performance of the veiled woman in black.
“Even now,” whispers Moses to Ruth, who is entranced by her night-walking character, “I can’t understand how I was talked into directing such a movie. How I agreed to build a whole film around the idea of sleep, of slumbering soldiers yet.”
“I also didn’t understand how he managed to drag you into this one. I was easy, I was ready to play any foolishness that came into his head. I had total faith in whatever he wanted. Look how I’m running barefoot over rocks and thorns for the three of you.”
“The three of us?”
“Not just the two of you — Toledano also insisted that in all the night shots I go barefoot, even when my feet weren’t in the frame. It’s a good thing that among the guys you brought was a nice older man, a former army medic. Every night after the filming, he would help me take care of the cuts and scratches. All you cared about was my savagery.”
“Savagery?”
“Yes, Shaul intended that I not be some pathetic Israeli Bedouin trudging by the roadside, but someone strong, wild… Sometimes, you remember, he would call me Debdou, the name of the Moroccan village I came from with my father. He would also insist, in jest or seriously, that my family had traces of foreign blood. The jaw, the height of my tall father of blessed memory, and especially the yellow-gray color of my eyes he thought could come only from a foreign Sahara tribe, because that color didn’t exist among the Jews… That’s how he would talk, the lunatic.”
And she suddenly bursts into loud laughter.
Looks of disgust and fury are directed in the darkness at the creators of this slow and impenetrable film. This time of his own volition, Moses scurries a few rows behind.
A foreign tribe… He laughs to himself in his new seat. I never grasped the extent of Trigano’s wishful thinking. There’s truth to her claim, that the chance to realize his assorted fantasies about the girl he loved was what got him into writing film scripts to begin with. So this is not just some pathetic Israeli Bedouin woman… He insisted the young nomad be free, not dependent on anyone, able to wander about, perhaps as a figure of reconciliation, between enemies who in the 1960s had begun to realize they were trapped in a vicious circle of bloodshed.
It’s now clear to Moses that the soldiers’ reckless slumber serves to protect their sanity from crazy adventurism. Like the sleep of the railroad supervisor in Distant Station, the slumber that spared the midget god from giving the stationmaster a clear answer — earning the acclaim of perceptive reviewers — maybe the prolonged sleep currently onscreen will also be praised, for people believe that slumber oscillates between nothingness and creativity.
Moses remembers that in those far-off days Trigano had a theory: that the energy of the young, industrious state fanned the hatred of its neighbors and fatigued the Jews who came from Arab lands. That might point to a connection between the sleep of the stationmaster in the previous film and the collective, addictive, reckless, and aimless slumber of the military men in this one.
Now and then one of the soldiers wakes up, wriggles slowly from his sleeping bag, goes for a snack or drink or to answer nature’s call, and on returning shoves aside his gear and weapon with such force that it suggests not only the rejection of military duty but erosion of the core of his identity. The Spanish mumbling between the soldier and the guard, who opens his sleepy eyes for a moment, sounds softer at night, if not more intelligible. Whatever they may be saying, Moses knows that the desert, with its shifting colors and sunsets and wailing winds, is meant to overwhelm the reserve soldiers in the absence of their longtime commander.
And so, in this brazen, pretentious script, the vacuum of authority may be filled by a young Bedouin woman, a powerful persona cloaked in black. Now she draws close, approaching the campfire, daring to come near the secret installation itself; the sleepy reservists, who had earlier perceived her as a fleeting reverie, now tolerate her veiled presence fully.