The Extra by A. B. Yehoshua Read Free Book Online Page A

sound of it.
    â€œBecause even if you came back to Israel,” the man continues, “you should know that your mother cannot transfer the apartment to you, and you may not even rent it from her.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œBecause this is a key-money flat with only your father’s name on the contract. After his death, your mother was granted, out of pure kindness, the rights of a protected tenant, but not the right to rent it out.”
    â€œYou’re the owner?”
    â€œI am their emissary. I am their legal eagle.”
    â€œHow nice.”
    â€œThe neighbors say your mother left, went into a home.”
    â€œFor now.”
    â€œSo please tell her Attorney Stoller sends his regards. I had good relations with your late father. He would bring me the piddling rent money twice a year. As long as he was alive, we expected nothing. But now, tell her from me that to live in a home near her son and grandchildren is wonderful and important. Why should she live alone among people whose poverty turns them into strange fanatics? Also, we want to get rid of this apartment, and we have buyers. So give your mother my very best regards. If I were able to get into assisted living in Tel Aviv, I would have done it a long time ago.”
    â€œAre you Orthodox?”
    â€œI can be Orthodox when I want, but so far I haven’t found the Orthodoxy that suits me.”
    â€œAnd if I decide to stay here as the daughter of the family?”
    â€œWithout your mother, you can’t. You have no legal standing for tenant protection. Besides, what do you want with an apartment like this? It needs a lot of repairs. You don’t want to go back to your Dutch orchestra?”
    â€œYou’ve even heard about that?”
    â€œI know a lot about your family. Your father, of blessed memory, used to jabber in my ear about you all. What do you do in the orchestra? A drummer?”
    â€œA harpist.”
    â€œThat’s better. More dignified.”
    â€œEvery musical instrument has its own dignity.”
    â€œIf you say so. You undoubtedly know.”
    And he tips his hat and bids her farewell.
    The apartment’s bathroom light was left on by mistake, though the window is closed.
    She undresses, but before deciding in which bed to start the night, she sits in front of the TV, watching a concert with the orchestra on a stage in the middle of a forest, and a crowd of twenty thousand enthusiastic Germans sitting on the grassy ground, listening to popular classics. The camera lovingly caresses the bare shoulders of the women musicians. Until two years ago, she too performed with her shoulders bare, but they grew thicker, and compared with the magnificent shoulders of other female players, they suddenly seemed to her ungainly. So she decided to cover them, though Manfred, the first flutist, found no fault with them and kissed them with passion and joy.

Twelve
    I N THE MORNING Noga phones Manfred in Arnhem and asks him to nail down the promise given her regarding the Mozart concerto. “Not to worry,” he assures her, “the Concerto for Flute and Harp is meant for the two of us, and I will not play it with any other harpist.” Meanwhile, as the keeper of the key to her little flat in Arnhem, he casually mentions a faucet left running in her bathroom, a result no doubt of her hasty departure, but promises all will be dry by the time she returns.
    She wonders if he is only looking after the apartment or also using it, but the distance between the Middle East and Europe dims her concern, and when Honi calls about tomorrow’s work as an extra, she makes jokes as she jots down the details in her father’s old notebook, where he would faithfully record every errand assigned him by his wife or children.
    At lunchtime she cooks herself a real meal, then enters her parents’ darkened bedroom, takes off her clothes and adjusts the electric bed, but her sleep is soon punctured by