The Extra

1.

A

T FOUR IN

the morning her mobile phone rings, its alarm forgotten from the day before, but she doesn’t turn off the wistful melody planted in the gadget by an elderly flautist who wanted to be remembered during her long visit to Israel. Nor, when quiet is restored, does she curl up under her parents’ warm quilt to resume her wrongly interrupted sleep, but instead tugs lightly on the levers of the electric bed and elevates its head, so that while still lying down she can scan the dawning Jerusalem sky, in search of the planet for which she was named.

When she was a child, her father told her to look for that planet before sunrise or just after sunset. Even if you don’t find yourself in the sky, he would say, it’s still important to look up now and then, at least at the moon, which is smaller than your planet, just as your brother is smaller than you, but seems bigger to us because it’s closer.

And so, on this visit to Israel – perhaps because of her forced unemployment, or else her temporary job as a film extra, which sometimes requires working at night – she often lifts her eyes to the Israeli skies, less hazy than those over Europe.

On her brief visits to Israel in the years before her father’s death, she would stay with old friends from the music academy rather than at her parents’ home. Contrary to what her brother Honi thought, this was not out of distaste for the new Orthodox neighbours who were turning the neighbourhood black. Actually she, who in recent years had kept her distance from Jerusalem and enjoyed the secure and liberal milieu of Europe, found it easy to believe in respectful, tolerant coexistence with a minority, even as it showed signs of becoming a majority. After all, in her youth, when she practised her music on Shabbat, the neighbours did not protest.

In the ancient Temple they would play the harp on religious holidays, Mr Pomerantz, the handsome Hasid who lived one floor above, once told her. So it’s nice for God-fearing people to see that you’re already practising for the coming of the Messiah.

But will they also let girls like me play music in the new Temple? demanded the young musician, red-faced.

Also girls like you, affirmed the man, gazing at her, and if, when the Messiah comes, the Priests won’t let you because you’re a girl, we’ll turn you into a handsome lad.

Even this minor memory strengthens her belief in a local climate of tolerance, and unlike her brother, who fears his mother’s being besieged by the ultra-Orthodox, Noga watches their bustling lives with neither grudges nor complaints, merely with the amused eye of a tourist or folklorist who welcomes all the songs of the world to sing out in full colour.

After her marriage she had lived in Jerusalem for a few years with her husband Uriah, but after leaving Jerusalem and subsequently her husband, she preferred, on her occasional Friday night visits, to return to Tel Aviv after Shabbat dinner. Her parents’ intimate relationship, which only deepened in old age, made things harder for her, not easier. They’d said nothing about her refusal to have children, had even made their peace with it, but still she sensed that it was a relief for them, and not only for her, that she not spend the night under their roof. That way she would not intrude on a couple who were fiercely faithful to their ancient, narrow, wooden bed, where they would snuggle together in serene harmony. If one of them was alarmed by a strange dream, or woke up over some fresh worry, the other would immediately wake up too and continue a conversation that had apparently taken place even while they were sleeping.

Once, on a stormy Friday, lacking transportation back to Tel Aviv, she stayed on and slept in her childhood room, and during the night, between whistling winds and the flash of lightning, she saw her father walking with tiny steps through the rooms, his head bent submissively and hands pressed to his chest in Buddhist fashion.

From the double bed, a voice of gentle exasperation: And what’s the matter now?

The lightning and thunder have turned me all of a sudden from a Jew to a Chinaman, the father explained in a whisper, nodding his head graciously at the masses of Chinese who had come to wish him well.

But the Chinese don’t walk like that …

What?

They don’t walk like that, the Chinese.

So who does?

The Japanese, only the Japanese.

Okay, then I’m Japanese, her father conceded, shortening his steps and circling the narrow double bed, bowing politely to the bride of his youth who lay before him. What can I do, my love, the storm blew me from China to Japan and made me Japanese …

2.

T

HE

S

INO

-J

APANESE MAN

was seventy-five when he died, graceful and funny to his last breath. One night his wife woke up to complete a thought she’d had before falling asleep, but was met with silence. At first she interpreted the silence as agreement, until she got worried and tried shaking her husband to agree out loud, but while shaking him she realized that her lifelong companion had left the world with neither pain nor complaints.

During the mourning period, as she grieved with relatives and friends, she spoke with amazement but also resentment about his silent and impolite exit. Since her husband had been an engineer, the supervisor of the water department of the city of Jerusalem, she joked that he had secretly engineered his own death, blocking the flow of blood to his brain the way he had sometimes blocked the water supply of ultra-Orthodox Jews who refused to pay their water bills to the Zionist municipality. Had he revealed to me the secret of an easy death, she complained to her son and daughter, I would spare you the ordeal of mine, which I know will take longer and be harder for all of us.

We’ll manage the ordeal, her son solemnly promised, on condition that you finally leave Jerusalem. Sell the apartment; its value is decreasing by the day thanks to the Orthodox, and move to a retirement home in Tel Aviv, near us, near your grandchildren who are afraid to visit Jerusalem on a Shabbat.

Afraid? Of what?

That some religious fanatic will throw stones at the car.

So park outside the neighbourhood and bring the children on foot, it’ll be good exercise for all of you. Fear of the Orthodox is unbecoming, in my opinion.

It’s not exactly fear … more like disgust …

Disgust? Why disgust? They’re just simple people, and like anywhere else, there are good ones and bad ones.

Of course, but you can’t tell them apart … they all look alike … and even if they’re all angels, they’re not going to look after you. So they should stay where they are, and you, now that you’re alone, should come and live near us.

His sister kept quiet, not because his demand wasn’t logical, but because she didn’t believe that their mother would consent to leave Jerusalem – that she’d agree to give up an apartment that was old but comfortable and large, where she had spent most of her life, in order to imprison herself in a tiny flat in an old people’s home, in a city she considered inferior.

But Honi pressured his sister too. Now, after their father’s death, it would be harder for him to look after his mother. If you’ve left the country to escape responsibility for our parents, he accused his silent sibling, at least help the one who remains on duty.

Now she took offence. She had not left Israel to escape responsibility, but because she had not found a position in any of the local orchestras.

You would have been accepted by many Israeli orchestras if you hadn’t insisted on playing such an aristocratic instrument instead of a democratic one.

Democratic? she laughed. What’s a democratic instrument?

The flute, the violin, even the trumpet.

The trumpet? You’ll regret it.

I regret it already, but before you leave the country again, help me convince Imma to leave Jerusalem, that way you can stay in Europe with your mind at ease till the end of your days.

Despite their grumblings and outbursts, mutual trust and affection prevail, and when he teases her in the presence of family, she can retaliate with embarrassing episodes from his childhood – telling everyone how, for example, she’d be summoned from her class in primary school to her brother’s kindergarten, where he played weird pranks on his friends and had to be confined to the toilets until his sister arrived to walk him home and then he bawled the whole way from the Street of the Prophets to their apartment on Rashi Street, while she tried to calm his stormy soul.

Now Honi is thirty-six, with his own media company, producing documentaries and commercials, a man struggling and mostly succeeding to sustain himself and his staff with new ideas. But his life is not easy. His wife, whom he adores, is an artist who enjoys a modest reputation among the cognoscenti, but her works are too intellectual and complex, and buyers hard to find. This may be why she is raising their three children with a certain bitterness which has led to attention deficit in the older boy and chronic crying in the younger girl. And so, when Honi again urges his mother to leave Jerusalem and move to assisted living near his home in Tel Aviv, it’s not for economic reasons, but because he demands of himself, especially after his father’s death, that he be a devoted and helpful son, without making his already hard life harder.

3.

S

HE TILTS THE

bed downwards with a soft electric buzz, hops nimbly to her feet and with small steps, reminiscent of her father’s on that stormy night, heads for the big, living-room window to look for the golden planet through its iron bars. An erudite friend, a violinist at the Arnhem orchestra, on learning the origin of her Hebrew name Noga, explained to her that in mythology Venus is not only female but satanic, but could not further describe that diabolical nature. In the quiet deserted street, a young woman in an impressive blonde wig is leading a sleepy schoolboy by the hand, his pale sidelocks dangling from his little black hat. She watches the two intently until they round a corner, then goes into the old children’s room, where her two suitcases lie wide open, as if yearning to return to Europe. In the corner, wrapped in oilcloth, rests an old musical instrument that Honi had taken out of storage so she could decide what to do with it. When she left primary school her father had surprised her with this instrument, something between a harp and an Oriental oud, which he had found in an antique shop in East Jerusalem. It had only twenty-seven strings, some broken now or missing, and those that remain wobble at the slightest touch. On one of her previous visits to Israel, she considered taking it back to Arnhem and finding young Europeans eager to tackle the historic instrument, but she knew that even in such a cultured Dutch city as hers, situated not far from the German border, she was unlikely to find someone so inclined.

At the start of her current sojourn in Israel she greatly missed her music. Even if she were to replace the strings on her childhood harp, it could not satisfy her passion for the rich timbre of a true harp. A week after her arrival, she attended a concert of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and during the interval introduced herself to the harpist, a young woman of Russian origin, and asked if she could practise on the orchestra’s harp when it was not in use. Let me think about it, said the young woman, studying the middle-aged emigrant from Jerusalem, wary that she might be plotting to return to Israel and snatch her job. Leave me your phone number, she said defensively, and I’ll get back to you. And as expected, the suspicious woman has not yet finished thinking about it, but in the meantime Noga’s passion for playing has subsided. In another ten weeks the trial period in assisted living will be over, and she will return to the harp that awaits her in the basement of the Dutch concert hall, ready and willing for the rehearsals of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

For now, she makes do with plucking the levers on the bed, whose electrical mechanism crouches underneath in a dusty black box. This bed, an alien creature amid the old furniture of the Jerusalem apartment, was a welcome arrival after her father’s death, consolation and compensation for the man of the house who had vanished from the world in utter silence. Indeed, only after the man’s demise could it establish residence here in place of the narrow, worn-out double bed – such a sophisticated bed, crafted by Yosef Abadi, a young, talented engineer who had worked with her father at the municipality, and remained friendly after his retirement. During the week of shiva, Abadi and his wife came daily to visit the mourners, bringing them meals and newspapers and offering help with any problems arising from the sudden death. But since the bereaved family had no great need of the Abadis’ concern and generosity, it occurred to the widow to ask Yosef to help her dispose of the old double bed, which might be of use to a young couple in Jerusalem, either Jewish or Arab, since with her husband gone she felt an urge to create more open space in the bedroom and would do fine with a simple single bed. But the young engineer protested. Why simple if you can enjoy a sophisticated bed? A year earlier, in his small home workshop, he had upgraded a hospital bed for his elderly aunt, adding an electrical mechanism controlled by levers and pedals, and now suggested installing a similar bed for the widow. This bed would have a variety of movements but would be easy to operate. It can lay a person down or tip them out of bed. It elevates the head to suit the owner’s eyesight, and soothes aching legs with the appropriate angle.

Because no one understood at first what this was all about, the gracious offer was not declined, and when the shiva ended workers from the water department came and removed their former manager’s wooden bed and replaced it with an electric bed, and the young friend promptly taught the surprised widow how to make her life easier at the flick of a finger.

But why didn’t you tell my husband about such an interesting bed, she exclaimed, you could have built one for him and he would have enjoyed it before he died?

No, laughed the engineer, he would never have given up that old double bed of yours.

That’s true, said the widow, blushing girlishly, you knew him maybe better than I did. No wonder he loved you.

And with an air of victory she challenged Honi, as he too lay down on the bed to test its capabilities: See, there’s no reason to exile me from Jerusalem. A smart bed like this will take care of me all by itself.

But the firm response came at once: even a smart bed cannot do it alone in an hour of need, but if the bed also moves to assisted living, it will be a helpful partner.

4.

T

HE PREVIOUS DAY

, before dawn, Noga waited for her lift at the intersection of Yeshayahu Street and the Street of the Prophets. Ultra-Orthodox men from Geulah and Kerem Avraham strode silently towards the centre of town, taking care not to come near the solitary woman. But across the street, beside what was once the Edison cinema, a massive figure sat immobile at a bus stop, its face concealed by a hat. Was it a living person? Noga suddenly trembled, for her father’s final slumber of half a year ago still weighed upon her. Hesitantly, fearfully, she crossed the street, and despite the likelihood that this was merely a huge haredi who had stopped to rest, she dared reach out and nudge the hat to look directly into the reddened blue eyes of an elderly extra waiting for the same lift.

This man, a former Magistrates’ Court judge, is now a pensioner, and because of his height and girth he is in great demand as an extra. For many years he sat passively on the judicial bench, and is therefore delighted to spice up his later years with new and unusual roles throughout Israel. Despite his considerable experience as an extra he has no idea where and for what role he has been summoned today. The producers, it turns out, are disinclined to reveal the destinations to the extras in advance, lest they back out at the last minute. For example, not everyone is fond of performing in ads. People are happy in general to take part, even in a small, marginal way, in a fictional story, but shy away from serving as meaningless extras in a quick ad, which are sometimes of a dubious nature and unworthy of the participants.

And you, your honour, Noga gently asks the older extra, are you also averse to ads?

It turns out that the retired judge is not afraid to appear in ads for unreliable products or subjects. His son and daughter are embarrassed, it’s true, but his grandchildren are excited to see him on television. I have no enemies to ridicule me, he jokes. As a judge I preferred to impose fines rather than send people to jail.

A yellow minibus pulls up, with one swarthy male passenger of about sixty years old who apparently recognizes her, for after the judge and Noga climb aboard, he hurries to sit beside her, and in a friendly tone mixed with a slight stutter says to her: G-good that you returned from the d-dead.

From the dead?

I mean, from the m-murdered, he clarifies, and introduces himself as one of the extras from that night a week before, when the refugees landed on the coast.

Really, she says, surprised, you were also in the old boat? So why don’t I recognize you? We sailed and landed three times.

No, I wasn’t in the boat with the refugees, they had me up on the hill with the p-police who shot at you. It could very well be, he laughs with embarrassment, his stutter more pronounced, that it was m-m-me who killed you three times even though I felt s-sorry for you.

Why sorry?

Because in spite of the darkness and those rags they gave you to wear, you looked sweet and interesting even from a distance, and I hoped that the director would let you climb up towards us, so we could k-kill you at short range.

Ah no, she sighs with a smile, the director didn’t have much patience for me, and every time we came back for a landing, he killed me off quickly, and told me to lie still, on my belly and then on my back, so that the camera could document your cruelty.

Noga studies the extra sympathetically as he bursts into a hearty laugh. His face is narrow, sharply lined, but his gaze is soft and kindly. His childlike stutter is intermittent and unpredictable. For a moment she considers telling him that she actually enjoyed the long moments of playing dead. The spring skies shone with stars, and the sand retained the warmth of the sun. The tiny shells that pricked her face reminded her of the beach in Tel Aviv, where she and her former husband used to stroll at night.

What did you do after you killed all of us?

We quickly changed clothes and became farmers who shsheltered the heroine.

Heroine? There was a heroine among us?

Of course, she was with you in the boat, a refugee whom the script spared from death and allowed to escape to a village. They didn’t explain the story to you? Or at least the scene on the beach?

Maybe they did, but apparently I didn’t pick it up, she apologizes. That was the first time in my life I was an extra and it was strange for me to surrender to other people’s imagination.

If s-so – his stutter gets stronger – it’s no s-s-surprise they decided to k-kill you off e-early on.

Why?

Because apparently you, as an extra I mean, weren’t a natural, and probably stared at the camera. But how did you get to us, anyway? What d-do you d-do in life? You’re not from Jerusalem?

Though the questions are friendly, she is not quick to reply, and only after a long silence does she say: Why don’t you introduce yourself first?

With pleasure, says the man at once. I am such an old hand at this that they don’t hire me much anymore, because the audience will recognize me from other films. For years I was a police c-commander but when my little stutter, which you’ve probably noticed, got worse I took early retirement and now I can make a living from my p-passions. But today, not to worry, there won’t be any shooting or deaths. Today we will sit quietly as members of a j-j-jury and listen to a trial, until one of us pronounces the verdict.

A jury? interjected the judge, who had listened to the conversation from his seat in front of them. Are you sure, Elazar? We don’t have juries here in Israel.

True, but maybe the scene takes place somewhere else, nowadays in Israel they also sh-shoot foreign films, and anyway, sometimes there are dreamlike scenes, like in Bergman or Fellini, so why not a jury?

The minibus picked up speed on the downhill motorway from Jerusalem, but soon exited at the suburb of Mevasseret Zion. There, waiting at the bus stop, were ten or so men and women, of various ages.

Look, said Elazar, you can count. Including us, there are twelve members of the jury plus one as backup, in case somebody gets tired or leaves. But why don’t you want to tell me how you ended up with us? Is it a secret, or just complicated?

No secret, the harpist says with a smile, just a little complicated …

5.

I

N MID-WINTER

, two months after the death of their father, her brother had sent her an e-mail:

My Noga,

I’m writing you an e-mail and not phoning, because I fear that on the phone you will cut me off as you usually do without letting me finish. I therefore ask you to read this calmly and carefully before any knee-jerk reaction.

I’m well aware that you don’t believe Imma will agree to leave Jerusalem and move to assisted living near me in Tel Aviv. But just as I can’t dispel your disbelief, you can’t disprove my belief that this is possible. Therefore we should both submit to a reality check.

Two weeks ago Imma came down with a bad case of flu – maybe you could hear it in her voice during your weekly phone call, maybe not. She almost certainly tried to hide this from you, just as she tried to hide her illness from me. It’s true that flu isn’t life-threatening, not in a strong woman of 75 which, in light of the amazing performance of our elderly president, seems downright youthful. But one of the neighbours, whom Imma asked at the height of her illness to bring her milk, was frightened by her condition and phoned me.

I cancelled a day’s work, rushed to Jerusalem, found Imma weak and burning with a fever. I called the doctor, bought medicine and decided, despite her objections, to stay the night with her, to take advantage of her condition to weaken her resistance to the idea. And indeed, by pleading and scolding, I succeeded the next morning in getting her to agree to try out assisted living in Tel Aviv for a few months.

I know you don’t believe anything real can come of this trial period. I know you’re convinced it will be a futile exercise. But I’m willing to cling to the imaginary, because sometimes life has a way of making the imaginary into something real. It’s not unreasonable to assume that once in assisted living, with the right care and proper supervision, she will come to understand that this option is preferable to living alone in Jerusalem where she is increasingly surrounded by strangers, and where every illness or accident becomes a threat to her and to me as well, amounting to a