Moses had to improvise these last moments of the film on the spot, and he made do with an atmospheric ending. The young mother is distressed not only over the child she has given up, but by the disappointment she has caused her two beloved teachers, the survivors of hell, who so believed in her, and she begins walking slowly but steadily along the beach, and when she vanishes in the distance, the audience in the dark is meant to believe that she is secure in her newly acquired freedom.
“THE HOUR IS late and the municipal workers must get back to work,” whispers de Viola to Moses amid the robust applause in the room. “Let’s try,” he suggests, “to make the ceremony short. There’s been more than enough talking at your retrospective.”
“Indeed.”
While the credits roll, employees of the mayor’s office bring a small table, cover it with a green cloth, place two chairs behind it, and set up a microphone and next to it a pitcher of water and two glasses. The names keep parading down the screen, albeit in smaller and smaller letters. People stand and stretch and start to chat, but the projectionist has yet to stop the film. And Manuel, picking up a signal from his brother to get things moving, steers his elderly mother in small steps to the table, where a city official shoves an envelope into her hand, at which point the director of the archive nudges Moses from his chair and invites him to the stage.
But on the makeshift screen, with remarkable persistence, continues the recitation of gratitude to all manner of institutions, large and small, and to private individuals, and artisans and drivers, restaurant owners and cooks, all of them engaged, often unknowingly, in the creation of this film. See, Moses says, congratulating himself, even in an early film I had many partners, overt and covert, who supported my art.
Doña Elvira speaks softly in Spanish, with Manuel translating line by line into formal Hebrew, and Moses gets the gist: The prize is not large, but it is presented with appreciation for a director who at the beginning of his career was unafraid of the absurd and metaphysical and allegorical, and we all know, going back to Luis Buñuel, how hard it is to inject authenticity and warmth into abstract ideas and wild, surrealistic dreams cloaked in a shaft of light cast upon a screen, and we thus owe a great debt to those courageous enough to take this difficult path.
Moses kisses her on both cheeks and offers a brief response:
“During my long life I have participated in any number of retrospectives of my films, in my homeland and abroad, but I know that these three days in Santiago de Compostela I shall remember till my dying day. Yes, Doña Elvira, beyond the manifest reality lurks a dark abyss, and we must rip open the screen and look straight into it, for only then will we know how best to handle what is known and apparently understood. But we must not become addicted to it, for then despair will sap our strength. Therefore a prize is also due those who loyally stick to the familiar and day-to-day, to draw from it joy and consolation.”
And Moses again warmly embraces the elderly actress, who whispers to him: “Your film touched me and made me think, but why was the ending so vague and empty of meaning?”
“The ending?” Moses smiles.
“Yes, the end. The very end.”
“The end,” Moses explains, “is always a compromise between what was and what will never be.”
Five. Confession
NO DOUBT, thinks Moses, sticking the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket, this was a far-reaching retrospective, and if the Spaniards drew pleasure from the vertigo they caused me, I earned my prize. He watches Doña Elvira, who has chosen to lean not on her son the monk, whose robe billows mischievously down the marble stairs, but on the arm of the Israeli actress, who makes sure the fragile Spanish lady does not trip on the hem of her long dress.
After her feet land safely on the rain-spangled pavement, the legendary actress does not let go of the helpful womanly arm but asks Ruth to come with her to an antique store in the Old Town. Don’t worry about my mother, Manuel assures Moses, who briefly wondered if he too should not escort the prize giver to the Old Town. Everywhere in Spain people know who she is and attend to her. And he invites Moses to accompany him to the library of the cathedral to browse through one collection or another of the many treasures amassed over the centuries.
Moses politely declines the invitation. The “plenty of time” promised him on the first night was an overstatement, but nonetheless, because of his age and habits, he would prefer to take a quick nap before the long flight ahead. But he promises the Dominican that this is not a final farewell to St. James. He intends to come back, perhaps as the guest of a more balanced retrospective that does not ignore the best of his works. Or he might come on a private visit and bring his eldest grandson. In short, he jokes, he will not rush to relocate to the World to Come before returning for another look at the mighty cathedral.
At the reception desk he is reminded that checkout time has passed and he needs to vacate his room. But when he gets to the room he sees that departure has begun without him. Two African chambermaids are inside, wielding a noisy vacuum cleaner, stripping the bed, preparing to scour the bathroom. When they see him, they freeze in place, then return to work as if a light breeze had blown through the room and not an actual guest whose belongings and those of his companion are strewn everywhere. Moses infers that his presence will not prompt them to leave, so firm is the decree to ready the room for the next incumbent. He points to the door and indicates with three motions of his outstretched hands how much time he will need to get organized — a mere thirty minutes. But they brazenly reject his request, agreeing to one hand only. Five minutes, not more. He holds firm — thirty minutes, not a minute less. But the two, who seem amused by the sign language they’ve improvised with the old man, bargain as if every minute were made of gold. At the end they settle on twenty, and the two women entwine their twenty dark fingers together, to avoid misunderstanding.
“Yalla, bye,” he says as he hurries them out, a fine fusion of East and West, presumably intelligible to anyone anywhere. The two women leave, laughing, taking the sheets and towels with them, as well as the soaps and lotions, lest there remain in the room any temptations to slow down his exit.
He looks sadly at the naked mattress, stained with ancient stigmata of other men, and the room filled with cleaning materials, the vacuum cleaner hose uncoiled like a snake — an afternoon nap a lost cause. The splendid harmony of the attic, which impressed him so on the first night, is shattered. He has to start packing. First he puts his own clothes and other belongings in his suitcase, and then, absent his companion, he takes charge and carefully folds the clothes she wore during the retrospective, plus items, more numerous, that she didn’t. He carefully wraps up her boots and shoes, making sure to isolate in a plastic bag everything destined for the laundry. He takes special care with cosmetics and perfumes and small makeup implements. He does not resist the temptation to ferret through the side pocket of her suitcase, in case the results of her blood test have wandered there. But there is nothing medical in the pocket, only maps of European cities and brochures from hotels, along with My Glorious Brothers, an old historical novel Ruth intends to adapt as a Hanukkah play for her drama class. Once the two suitcases are by the door, he looks under the bed, not in vain, as her slippers have migrated into the darkness.