One cannot help but notice the brisk activity in the confessional booths. Along the interior walls, on both sides, the booths are arrayed one after the next, many more than generally found in cathedrals. Remarkably, even at this early hour, the confessionals are manned by priests in robes, some hidden behind a curtain, others on view awaiting prospective clients, immersed in books that through the lattices of the booths appear to be novels rather than holy scriptures.
Moses is impressed by the vitality of the religious rite of confession, which he had naively assumed was on the decline. “Decline? Not in Spain,” Pilar replies, “and surely not in this cathedral.” She blushes, her eyes glinting with mischief. Perhaps the visitors from Israel wish to confess?
“I don’t rule it out,” Yair Moses says with a smile, “but I would first need to put my sins in order.”
“In order? How so?”
“Separate personal from professional sins, for which I would need a priest who is also an expert in film. But is it possible for a priest to take confession from someone who is neither a Christian nor a believer in God?”
“It is possible for him to take confession from such a person, but he cannot grant absolution,” answers Pilar confidently, “and don’t be surprised if you find a priest here who also understands film.”
“Then I’m ready to confess,” Ruth chimes in, attracted by the idea of confession at a safe distance of a few thousand kilometers from home, though it is unclear whether her fractured English could express her sins adequately.
The animation teacher smiles faintly, steering the pair toward the large altar at the front. Here, too, one last confessional, isolated and closed, apparently in use. Pilar asks the two to wait until the curtain is opened, and after a huge red-faced man emerges, wiping away tears, she approaches cautiously and pulls from the darkness a short priest in a big robe. His face brightens at the sight of the Israelis, and he cordially inquires whether their hotel room was comfortable and their breakfast satisfactory.
Ruth recognizes him and speaks his name, but Moses is still grappling with the fact that Juan de Viola, their host and the director of the film archive, is also an ordained priest.
“Films and the Church?”
“Why not? If painting and sculpture, music and poetry, choral performance and theater have been nurtured for centuries under the wing of the Catholic Church, why not include their younger sister, the seventh art? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing wrong at all,” says Moses, “but it is odd that I was not warned in advance that my retrospective was organized by a religious institution.”
“Warned?” says the priest, flaring his robe with mild irritation. “And if you had been warned, you would not have honored us with your presence?”
“I would have come.”
“And why not? Especially,” says de Viola, “since the municipality and the government are partners with the institute and archive, which also receive contributions from private individuals. My mother, for one, who in her youth acted in silent films by Luis Buñuel, is a generous contributor. This is why the bishop has freed me from certain obligations, to enable me to join the administration of the institute and make sure that my family’s assets are squandered only on worthy causes.” He winks.
A friendly and unusual fellow, thinks Moses. On the third day, before we leave, perhaps I’ll make a small confession in his booth.
“And your mother,” says the director, leaning closer to the priest, enthralled by the notion of an ancient actress from the silent era, “your mother also lives here in Santiago?”
No, his mother lives in Madrid. She is ninety-four, sharp of mind, though her body is infirm. She knows about the Moses retrospective and is one of its financial backers, and if she feels up to it, she will attend the prize ceremony on the third day. She is even familiar with a few of Moses’ films and believes in his future.
“My future?” Moses blushes. “At my age?”
“‘When the future is short,’” the son quotes his mother, “‘it becomes more concentrated and interesting.’”
They cross the big square on their way to the mayor. About thirty sanitation workers are staging a demonstration, banging pans and blowing whistles, lustily shouting rhythmic protests and waving red flags. Two bored policemen stroll calmly beside them, making sure the demonstrators do not overstep some invisible line apparently agreed upon. Yet every so often, the agreement gives way to rage, and one of the protesters bursts forth with his whistle. As the policemen casually approach him, he retreats with equal ease.
On the magnificent steps of the municipal palace, Moses realizes he left his hearing aids at the hotel. A simple courtesy call should not be a problem, provided he sits close enough to the mayor and tilts his head at a certain angle, but what if the chambermaid thinks they are used earplugs and tosses them into the wastebasket? For a moment he considers asking his hosts to wait a minute on the stairs while he runs to the hotel, but the actress, always sensitive to his anxieties, calms him. “I have brought them, though you seem fine without them.”
“Yes, my guardian angel,” says Moses shakily, “sometimes I can manage without them, but it’s better to have them with me.”
She removes the hearing aids from her bag and sneaks them into his hand, so as not to reveal his disability to strangers. But he no longer considers people who know his biography, and honor him with a three-day retrospective, to be strangers, and he sticks the devices in his ears in front of Pilar and the priest, noting with a touch of irony: “This way I can better hear the possibilities for my short but concentrated future.”
Good thing he has improved his hearing, for the mayor, Antonio Santos, a thickset man and as short as the priest, turns out to be amiable and curious, and to the joyful sounds of the sanitation protest, he shifts the routine courtesy call into a serious interview.
“I’ve read your bio,” he says in Spanish, waving the printout from the Internet with the blurry photo, “but I ask that you expand on it a bit.”
A surprising and flattering request, and though simultaneous translation by Pilar requires that he pause every few sentences, Moses expands a good deal, and looking over the great square of pilgrimage on this dazzling morning, he unspools his life story, the full director’s cut, outtakes and all.
He was born into an upstanding, educated Jerusalem family before the outbreak of the Second World War. After the establishment of the State of Israel, his father and mother both went to work for the state comptroller’s office, in which capacity they spent most of their time scrutinizing the faults and failings of the new government. At work, the mother outranked the father, who reported to her, and so at home, as compensation, she served and coddled him. Yair Moses was an only child, and he learned from his parents that every politician had a little back pocket filled with secrets worth investigating. His parents insisted that after his military service he pursue higher education that would enable him to follow in their footsteps and be useful to society. At first he studied economics and accounting, but then, breaking free of his parents, he switched to philosophy and history, and ultimately got a teaching job at an elite Jerusalem high school, the same one he had attended as a youth. He had no trouble controlling his students. If a teacher maintains a cool distance and occasionally erupts in spontaneous rage, students are careful not to defy him. In those days he still lived at home to save on rent, and his parents would pester him to go out at night to get free of his dependence on them. But as an only child, accustomed to solitude, he didn’t tend to seek the company of others and often found himself wandering about Jerusalem or going to see a film alone, never thinking he might someday want to make motion pictures and certainly not believing he had the capacity to do so.