Toledano sets up his tripod and camera; this time he clearly needs to make do with the light of the oil lamp, for not only this house, but the whole area is without electricity, and the Israeli extension cord will be of no help.
“This is the place, this is the source,” Moses says, and he takes off his overcoat, his jacket, and then his shirt and undershirt, and he allows the elderly Doña Elvira to place the robe on him but doesn’t invite anyone to tie his hands.
“How is this?” he asks the cameraman. “Are you ready?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Which camera do you want to start with?”
“My father’s old camera. Only film can get the nuance, digital’s not an option.”
“Then let’s begin.”
“Yes,” says Toledano, “but pay attention, Moses, I’m opening the aperture to the max and widening the lens, but you have to hold still, freeze in place, otherwise we won’t get a picture out of this, only mush.”
Moses approaches the country woman, who sits in her bed, and with his own hands he takes off her blouse and exposes her breasts. Though this is a country woman whose face is coarse and witless, she radiates a true and simple light. And Moses says to her in Hebrew, “I know who you are, you are Dulcinea, you are the fantasy, in person, the knight captured in the end.” And facing a massive breast bisected by a bluish vein, he thrusts his hands behind him and declares that only the Knight of the Sorrowful Face may bind them.
A fragrant breeze blows through the window. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Moses asks himself. If Dulcinea can feed me, it means she has borne the knight a child and the fantasy of his love is not merely the fruit of imagination. The director brings his lips to the big brown nipple, and though this is a country breast, a magnificent breast, he is unsure whether he will find it soft or hard. The woman smiles and squeezes her breast, and between his lips Moses feels a first drop of milk.
The milk is warm — strong sweetish mother’s milk with a mysterious taste, a hint perhaps of a country dish consumed by the woman. Well, then, this is the fantasy. The inspiration I craved has returned, he muses with joy, I am drinking it straight into the chambers of my heart, against the reality that strangles us. My heart is intact, my daughter checked it not long ago. If so, this is my true retrospective, a retrospective meant from the start only for me.
HAIFA, 2008–2010
About the Author
A. B. YEHOSHUA is one of Israel’s preeminent writers. His novels include A Journey to the End of the Millenium, The Liberated Bride, and A Woman in Jerusalem, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2007. He lives in Haifa.