“And Ruth too.”
“I told you. A glimpse of her in a movie poster could get me worked up for days, but all in all I felt sorry for her, for the path you were taking her down, and I didn’t want to punish her in my heart. That way I could respond to a loving and understanding woman, who gave me three solid children. First and foremost Uriel, my special son, who nullified her once and for all in my heart.”
“But he doesn’t nullify me.”
“What nullifies you are the movies you make. And if I needed any further proof that leaving you was the right thing to do, I understood it in Spain. Three years ago, when I sent our old films to the archive in Santiago, I received to my surprise a warm letter from Juan de Viola, who invited me there to coach the Spanish actors in the dubbing. I came to watch the films scene by scene, line by line, and I was able to see that your quick surrender by the green door was not an accident, and not out of sudden pity for a panicky actress. It happened because your powers are limited and the salt-of-the-earth Jerusalemite was looking for something sweet. In retrospect I saw that even when you tried your best to direct my artistic passions, you didn’t understand what you were directing.”
“That’s insulting.”
“Not so fast. It’s pointed at not just you, but me. Yes, me. You were not the only one who did not fathom what I was striving for; I myself was confused. Fantasy and surrealism blurred my thinking and I didn’t always realize where I was.”
“And what were you striving for, do you think?”
“To strike out against metaphysical terror. To reduce its authority. Not to attack religion as such, the rituals and prayers, all that small stuff, which do no harm so long as they give people comfort or provide structure for anxious souls. But those souls must not be dragged into the fear of something hidden and invisible, of a God who is abstract, jealous, and aggressive. I directed my arrows at God. Against the awe of God’s majesty. I thought that if I was incapable of destroying that supremacy, I could at least play tricks on it, make it hazy, mock it, put it to sleep, expose its wickedness, its instability, inject into it elements that contradict its holiness — pagan, absurd elements — put strange animals beside it. Because maybe even then, as a young man, I felt that the rational identity of the salt of the earth, his hedonistic secular culture, is basically a thin, brittle crust that at a time of crisis or conflict crumbles before the terrifying power of transcendence.”
“And it was there of all places, in the dubbing studio of the archive in Santiago, that this epiphany came over you…”
“Which has only grown stronger since then.”
“Grown stronger how?”
“No.” He suddenly withdraws. “It’s impossible to explain such a complicated and fragile idea at such a late hour, especially to a person who is tired and hasn’t eaten all day and needs to worry about making his way home. Even if I find you a bed here, there’s no way you’ll fall asleep. So take my advice: get up and hit the road.”
“You may be right. It is late, and we’re both tired. And the drive back does worry me. So let’s stop here and continue our conversation in Tel Aviv.”
“No Tel Aviv, no conversation or meetings. Even this one was unnecessary from my standpoint, which is why it’s the last one.”
“And what about your epiphany?”
“It stays with me.”
YOU STAND UP and take your car keys from the table, and you head for the big house, followed by the wiry-haired white dog from Kibbutz Re’im. You go through the main hall, where all the screens on the walls have gone blank, and through the hallways between the rooms, but this time you enter one of the bathrooms, remove your jacket and shirt in semidarkness, and douse your half-naked body with cold water to invigorate it. After changing batteries in your hearing aids to refresh them too and petting the dog who waited patiently beside you, you head back to the arbor. From the doorway you hear a reedy wail.
“What happened?”
“Uriel has you mixed up with his grandfather, my wife’s father, who is no longer with us. He was upset to see you disappear.”
“But I didn’t disappear, Uriel, here I am.” You lean over the young man and dare to wipe gently a tear from his pallid face.
“See.” Trigano strokes his son. “It’s not so easy to say goodbye to this grandpa. He keeps talking.”
And you go on to describe Amsalem’s investment offer for a new film, on the condition that Trigano write the script.
“That vegetable dealer? He’s still hanging around?”
“He’s no longer a vegetable dealer, now he’s a successful building contractor.”
“How old is he?”
“Over eighty. But fresh and youthful. After all, you were the one who introduced him to us.”
“He’s still willing to lose money on your movies?”
“He invests small but useful amounts. The film business gives him status among his friends, and he invites them to premieres and helps me fill the hall. You don’t need to worry about him. Even when the movie fails, his contract ensures he won’t lose money.”
“I never worried about him. He’s a wily bastard who knows how to take care of himself. So he’s interested in some Turkish melodrama?”
“It could also be British. On television they showed a boy of fourteen from Liverpool who fathered a son. Amsalem decided that in this permissive generation, basic values are collapsing and the world is growing more absurd by the day, and he fondly remembers our early films, even though after every one he swore that we would never see another penny from him. Now suddenly he misses you. If Trigano is still up to it, he says, he should be the one to write the script. If he could plummet a train into a gorge so convincingly, he can make a schoolboy sire a baby, and concoct a tragic post-postmodern story out of it.”
“Why tragic?”
“Because he suggests that the schoolboy, in the end, should plot against his own child in order to get back at the mother.”
“So, in your old age, you finally found a fitting screenwriter.”
“I listen to everyone. True, his ideas are lowbrow and primitive, but sometimes he comes up with something original, from the marketplace, from the tumult of life, like the idea for Potatoes, which was a very successful film.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“So what do you say?”
“What can I say? I’ve already said everything. You can tell Amsalem that Trigano still exists, but not for films by Moses, because there is a deep abyss between him and the director.”
“There you go again. You deepen it by the minute, make it ever darker. If there’s an abyss between us, let’s explore it. Enough with being proud and stubborn. Look at me. What do you see? An old teacher has come to you with goodwill. A penitent pilgrim.”