The Retrospective: Translated From the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman Read Free Page A

to filmmaker. And now, suddenly, the teacher had denied not only the artistic value of his student’s work but its moral quality.
    Trigano bore the offense with a quiet hatred that undermined any chance of continued collaboration. True, creative differences had flared up between them before, arguments over characters and relationships, the content and style of dialogue, camera angles that had been spelled out in the screenplay. But a good partnership had endured, resulting in six films, admittedly unprofitable but unique and original and praised by those whose opinions mattered. But when the actress rebelled in the last scene of the seventh film—a scene that for the writer was the very point of the film—and the director not only made no effort to get her back in front of the camera but supported her action, Trigano quickly tore their collaboration to shreds. For it had been agreed that the screenplay could be discussed and debated during the writing process, but once the shooting started, the director was to honor the script.
    And even though many years have gone by with no contact at all between the two, Moses still feels the stump of amputation, and he believes the screenwriter feels it too, even if he is too proud to ad- mit it.
    After all, once they parted ways, Moses continued to make feature films, first from screenplays written by others and later, as success favored him, from scripts he wrote himself based on original ideas or adapted from books. Whereas the screenwriter’s output was confined to short, esoteric films, and then, when his new collaborators proved incompetent and saddled the productions with financial problems, he stopped making films altogether and went into teaching.
    Sometimes Moses feels a vague desire to get back in touch, but he never does. Reconciliation after a serious breakup is harder than smoothing feathers after an argument. When they ran into each other at public events, at festivals or symposia, they barely exchanged more than a few empty words. Moses had at first believed that Trigano left him because of the affront to his professional dignity, but when he saw that the writer had left his friend and lover too, Moses understood that Trigano’s pride was injured not only by a director’s excessive indulgence of an actress repulsed by a twisted script but also by the extreme kindness of another man to a distressed woman whom Trigano regarded as his own. For had Moses not truly melted at the sight of a frightened female refusing her breast to an old street beggar, he would never have dropped a scene he was previously willing to direct—one never seen on the screen before. Toledano, the cinematographer, in love with Ruth, had adjusted the lighting and the camera so the moment at the end, when the beggar’s head touches her breast, would project the nuanced eroticism, the sense of longing and nostalgia characteristic of Ruth’s performance in those days.
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    Now, contemplating the picture of Roman Charity, Moses dismisses the possibility that Trigano had known about this painting, or another one like it, when he came up with his scene. Shaul Trigano had been a pupil in his class, and he was the type who relied more on imagination than knowledge, which in his case was spotty. Besides, Trigano had not described an old prisoner, hands bound behind him, who can’t touch the woman dispensing kindness, but rather an old beggar on a street corner who grabs like a baby for the breast that feeds him.
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    W ITH THE FIRST glimmer of consciousness, Ruth expands her conquest of the big bed, assuming a diagonal position that sends a clear message:
Don’t come back to bed, my friend.
Other companions might have sought an alternative interpretation of the angle—such as
Come, I wait upon your pillow
—but Moses’ stricter reading had been proven right in the past. He doesn’t go near her except if she asks, and she doesn’t ask unless he gives