“I thought you’d decided to forget your atonement and disappear in the country that expelled my forefathers,” the young photographer says half jestingly, half impertinently. The house is quiet and dark. Doña Elvira has eaten her dinner and is closeted in her bedroom; Manuel and the photographer have also had their meal and now sit in the kitchen, where the housekeeper is washing the dishes. Manuel reads aloud from the book of Psalms while the young photographer corrects his pronunciation and explains obscure Hebrew words to the best of his ability.
Moses heads for the bathroom. In a spontaneous decision, he shaves off his bohemian goatee. Even a tiny symbolic beard, he says to himself, might repel a nursing woman and be a barrier between me and the breast. And in the emotion of parting with such an unmistakable symbol of his character, he cuts himself, but succeeds in stemming the blood.
ON THE SECOND night the Dominican doesn’t escort the Israelis on foot but rather takes them by tram to a large building surrounded by a high wall, where three figures await them at the iron gate. I’m becoming famous in Spain. Moses chuckles. Manuel introduces Moses to his friend, a former monk turned social worker in the city district, and to the night watchman of the municipal supervisory department, but not to the third person, who stands removed from the other two. Bundled in a winter coat, she now draws near and is revealed as Pero, the young daughter, the woman, the actress. Strands of blond hair poke from under her beret. The cigarette between her lips faintly illuminates her delicate, pale features, but she is wary of looking straight at Moses, who cordially shakes her damp, limp hand. Toledano introduces himself and says something to her that Moses doesn’t catch, though he notices the embarrassed smile on her gaunt face.
The building was once a prison, and after Franco’s death it became municipal offices. The watchman opens the gate and leads the five down stone steps to the prison cellar, now serving as an archive. A mythological picture, Moses says to himself, with parking tickets and citations for building violations and other peccadilloes of the citizens of the capital of Spain.
The light in the basement is feeble, and the cameraman and director understand that it will have to be significantly enhanced if they want to include the barred window, which is near the shadowy high ceiling. “Are these bars essential?” wonders Moses. “Essential?” The photographer shrugs. “Nothing is essential, but the bars in your picture will make it stronger and more credible. In many renditions of Roman Charity, the bars of the cell are visible. I think Trigano will be pleased to see bars in your picture,” he adds. Hearing the name Trigano uttered by the photographer arouses vague anxiety in Moses, as if the two had conspired behind his back.
“Give it a try… what have we got to lose?”
The cameraman asks the guard for a ladder, takes out the extension cord he brought from Israel, and looks for a suitable socket. Without the Israeli cord we’d be lost, thinks Moses while the cameraman sets up the ladder opposite the barred window and mounts the flash on it, then looks through the lens to find the right spot for Cimon, the old father dying of hunger.
After the spot is designated the director takes off his coat and spreads it like a rug on the stone floor. Then, with expertise attained the night before, he repeats the ritual of undressing and dressing, then stacks up three thick folders of parking tickets to serve as the stool concealed by the robe, sits down, puts his hands behind his back, and waits for the young man to come down from the ladder and bind them.
The woman is frozen in place, keeping her distance. She does not remove her coat or even her French beret, merely studies the old Israeli with a blue-eyed gaze that blends anxiety and contempt. But when the light is focused on her, and with Moses sitting and waiting in his outlandish skirt, she takes off the beret and shakes out her hair, baring her tormented beauty.
“Maybe, like we did yesterday,” the monk whispers to the director in English, “we should pay the woman in advance to calm her?”
“You’re the one who needs calming, not she, but if it will ease your anxiety, take the wallet from the inside pocket of my jacket and give everyone what you promised. I hope you didn’t promise the actress a thousand euros.”
“No, no, only five hundred, she is after all an actress. Though she is also in deep distress, she is a real actress who has come to work here and not get charity.”
He counts and recounts five greenish bank notes and then hands them to the young woman, whose face reddens; she is insulted by the advance payment. She looks at the bills with anger, like someone who doesn’t know what to do with them. Then she sticks them in her coat pocket, quickly removes the coat, and unties her scarf, revealing a very white neck. But before taking off her sweater and blouse, she holds before her, like lines at a play rehearsal, the picture of Roman Charity handed her by the social worker and studies it.
Once Toledano has bound Moses’ hands, she quietly and coolly takes off her sweater and her shirt, and, since she has prepared for the role, she is not wearing a bra. Her bare breasts are shapely and symmetrical, yet arouse compassion in their absolute whiteness, as if no blood flows in them, just pure milk. Only the nipples are red, sunken, as if burned. And when she raises her arms to brush her hair from her face, Moses spots blue track marks.
He looks at the photographer to see if he has noticed the marks, gestures to ask if they will be visible on camera. Toledano gives a little nod, meaning yes, they will, but signaling encouragement. “So,” says Moses, “they brought me a junkie, no doubt about it. Her silence is deceiving.” If he puts his lips on her nipple, he will suck not mother’s milk but a drug. His face turns pale. A primal, childlike fear grips him. How good, he comforts himself, that we’ve paid her; we can make a clean break right away with no contact, but respecting her professionalism. However, the young woman, perhaps from the poison in her blood, does not sense the revulsion of the old man but sticks to the role assigned her and approaches him, no longer herself but Pero, the beneficent daughter who, according to the tale by Valerius Maximus, will now cradle the head of her manacled father dying of hunger and thirst, and nurse him with mercy.