The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  Gabriel’s dream of finding his way back into his mother’s affections didn’t come true either. Throughout the time he lived in Tel Aviv with his wife and daughter, she wouldn’t come to his house even once. Instead he’d visit her at his sister’s and bring along his sweet little daughter, since at least Mercada didn’t scowl at her and sometimes even spoiled her with candy.

  Tired, depressed, and broke, Nono Gabriel and his wife and daughter returned to the house in Ohel Moshe, only to discover that the successful business of Raphael Ermosa & Sons, Delicatessen, was also on the brink of bankruptcy. Regretfully, Gabriel was forced to let Leon go and fired his brother Leito, who had proved to be a failure as a financial manager. Not only that, it was whispered that he had brazenly stolen from Gabriel.

  Gabriel went back behind the counter and tried to return the shop to its good days. But it seemed that good times were a thing of the past. He barely eked out a living, and most of the time the shop was empty of customers and stock, for where could he find the cash to buy stock?

  Then a miracle happened that restored the shop to its former glory and prosperity. The soldiers stationed in the British army camps in Jerusalem discovered Raphael Ermosa & Sons, Delicatessen, and they began coming to the shop to buy the various types of tea, especially the English tea that reminded them of home, which they drank with condensed milk that tasted like cream. Rosa, who had learned to cook in the English homes where she had worked, began making pies that reminded the British soldiers of home cooking, especially steak and kidney pie, which was the most popular. When Rosa began frying fish for them, the English asked Gabriel to make fried slices of potato to go with it, but he drew the line there. He didn’t like the English, but business was one thing and liking was another, so thanks to “the cursed English,” the finances improved and Nono Gabriel was happy again.

  * * *

  Luna was playing in the yard with the dolls Gabriel had bought her on his last trip to Beirut. Whenever he traveled to Lebanon or Syria on business, he came home loaded with presents for his little Luna. Occasionally he even brought a present for Rosa too.

  “Bonica, basta!” the child prattled, mimicking her mother when she got angry with her. She sat on a low bench, feeding one of her dolls, sticking the spoon between its eyes instead of into its mouth. Then she took the other doll from the pram, murmuring loving words into its ear the way her father did with her.

  “Dio santo, give me strength,” Rosa said to her neighbor Tamar as they observed Luna. “Esta chicitica can talk to her dolls for hours, avlastina de la Palestina, she doesn’t shut her mouth. And it doesn’t help if I call her in, nada, she doesn’t hear. What can I do with a child who never listens to me?”

  “What do you want from the girl?” Tamar replied. “She’s bored, the miskenica. It’s time you gave her a brother, with God’s help.”

  Rosa sighed. “Sano que ’ste, may we be healthy.” For what else could she say to her neighbor? That since the baby born after Luna had died two years ago, Gabriel had not come to her bed even once? What could she tell her, that he slept on one side of the room and she on the other? How could she tell her neighbor Tamar that her husband hardly looked at her? That he hardly saw her? And that the only living creature that interested him was Luna, and she, to spite her just like her father, didn’t see Rosa, didn’t hear her, didn’t talk to her. She laughed only with her father, kissed only her father, and her, Rosa, she rejected. Even on the rare occasions when Rosa tried to hug her, lift her up like every mother did with her child, her daughter eluded her and slipped from her arms.

  “May you be healthy, you’re raising the girl like a princesa,” Tamar said to Rosa. “And if you don’t bring her a hermano or hermanita, she’ll grow up into a hoity-toity little brat.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears,” Rosa said, and nodded. “Even now she’s busy all day with her dolls, that one, and nothing else interests her. She dresses them, undresses them, feeds them for hours on end. And I, her mother, call her and nada, she acts like she’s deaf. But her father only has to step one foot into the yard and she drops the dolls and runs to him and jumps into his arms. ‘Papo! Papo! Papo!’ She can’t stop giggling.”

  “And her laugh, praise God,” Tamar said and laughed, “you can hear it all the way from the market!”

  And me, who hears me laugh? Rosa wondered. When was the last time I laughed?

  For dinner that night Rosa made habas con arroz with a little sofrito, but before Gabriel ate, he put Luna on his knee and fed her. She covered her mouth on purpose, blocking it with her little fist, and he took the spoon, filled it, and brought it around in a big circle, saying, “Toot-toot-toot, where’s the train?” It’s unbelievable, Rosa thought. A grown man, such a serious man, making himself a troncho de Tveria, a cabbagehead, for his little girl. And when Luna opened her mouth and he pushed the rice and beans inside, he was as pleased as if he’d found a treasure trove of gold. Only when Luna finished eating, no more than a few spoonfuls—she didn’t like eating, the flaca, the skinny one—did he eat his own food.

  “Rosa, it’s not hot,” he grumbled.

  “Of course it isn’t hot. How can it be hot if while it was sitting ready on the table you were busy playing with your daughter?” she murmured to herself.

  Gabriel was different from other men. A man only had to step through the door and expected food to be waiting on the table. Gabriel wanted his daughter first, so what could she do? On her mother’s honor, may she rest in peace, she sometimes felt like throwing the food in his face and going out the door to never return! But where would she go? To clean the Ingelish’s toilets again? So she took the plate, put the food back into the pot, and relit the stove. While the food was heating, Gabriel querido got up from the table and went to ready his daughter for bed, his usual routine of changing her into her nightgown, brushing her curls, and tying them with a ribbon.

  As Rosa sat on the windowsill gazing at the olive tree, she could hear them laughing and chattering. What have I done that my husband doesn’t love me? she asked herself. Not only doesn’t he love me, he doesn’t see me. He is generous and treats me with respect in company and even praises me, but when he’s alone with me in the room, he hardly says a word.

  How she’d hoped after Mercada went to live with Allegra in Tel Aviv, gracias el Dio, that things would be better between them, without that sour old woman interfering with her poisonous looks and comments. At least when Mercada had made her life a misery, it meant someone had taken some interest in her life, but now there’s nothing, nada. It’s as silent as death.

  Rosa got up and went into her room. Unlike every other night, Gabriel was lingering on his side of the room. Not yet undressed, he stood by his bed hesitantly, and then all at once he turned to her and said, “Aren’t you going to bed?”

  “Soon,” she replied. “I’ll just do the dishes first.”

  “Leave them till morning,” he told her. “Get into bed.”

  Rosa was surprised. Since when had Gabriel cared what time she went to bed? And since when had she gone to sleep before him? It was she who usually waited until she heard his deep breathing and snores before getting undressed and into her bed. And now he was telling her to get into bed before him? And how, in the name of the compassionate and merciful God, could she get undressed when there was light in the room and he was still awake? How could she change into her nightgown in front of her husband?

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, Gabriel turned off the light. She undressed quickly, her arms getting tangled in her sleeves and the buttons of her dress refusing to come undone. Gabriel was standing with his back to her, but she felt as if he’d had eyes in the back of his head, and she sat down, trying to hide her body with her hands. She finally managed to take off her dress and put on her nightgown and got under the quilt. She closed her eyes and prayed for sleep to come.

  Was she imagining it, or could she feel breath on her face? She opened her eyes and couldn’t believe it. Gabriel’s ey
es were close to hers, his nose almost touching hers, his lips close to hers. His hand groped in the darkness, raising her nightgown to her waist, caressing her belly with a soft hand, and gently removing her baggy underwear.

  Her heart pounded. Her face flushed. She wanted to bring her body closer to his. How she had prayed for this moment when Gabriel would come to her, but here she was, paralyzed with fear, unable to move. Gently Gabriel tried to separate her legs, but they seemed glued together and wouldn’t open. He tried again. Her husband was a very gentle man, never raised his voice, never got upset. She wanted him to get angry, shout, take her by force, feel something! But he never felt. He did only what he had to. He clothed her, provided for her, and finally, God be praised, attended to her bodily needs.

  Gabriel gently turned her onto her side and drew her to him, coming at her from behind like the dogs in the yard. He tried to insert his thing into hers and didn’t succeed. He didn’t say anything, just held her tight, close to him, one hand holding her belly and with the other trying again. She was as dry as the desert. It’d been such a long time since he came to her bed, and it hurt her, it hurt terribly, but she bit her lip and didn’t make a sound. The third attempt was also unsuccessful, and the fear stole into her mind that he’d stop and go to his own bed. She needed to have intercourse with him. It was her only way of holding on to him so he wouldn’t throw her out and replace her with another woman. Don’t let him throw me back into the street, Dio mio. Don’t let him tire of me and go back to his bed and leave me like this.

  Rosa didn’t know the woman who then turned to Gabriel and said to him in a voice she didn’t recognize, “It’s better like this,” and lay on her back with her legs open and took his thing in her hands and put it between her legs.

  Gabriel gripped her shoulders tightly and she felt the muscles flexing in his arms. He moved deep inside her and deeper still. In another moment he’d crush all her bones. She shut her eyes and bit her lip, stifling a cry. Don’t let him think he’s hurting me and pull out, she begged. He moved into her again and again and again until he uttered a muffled cry and collapsed onto her body as if he had fainted.

  His body was heavy, she could hardly breathe under its weight, but she smiled. Her husband had finally come to her. Finally after almost two years they’d done what her neighbors did with their husbands every night. Finally she too could complain about her troncho who didn’t let her sleep at night.

  Not five minutes had passed and Gabriel was already snoring. She tried to slide from under his body, but it woke him. He got up, not even looking at her, and went to his own bed on the other side of the room.

  Nine months later Rachelika was born.

  When her husband told her that the baby would be named after her mother Rachel, may she rest in peace, no one was happier than Rosa. He didn’t explain and she didn’t ask why his second daughter too wouldn’t be named after Mercada. She thanked God, blessed be He, who had given her a healthy daughter, and she thanked her husband for honoring her late mother.

  As for Gabriel, he was incapable of giving the child his mother’s name. On his visits to Tel Aviv his mother never once asked him how Luna was, and certainly not how the pregnant Rosa was doing. So why should he have given her name to his daughter? Even when he sent his brother Matzliach to Tel Aviv specially to inform Mercada that his second daughter had been born, she hadn’t even bothered to get on the bus and come to Jerusalem and see her new granddaughter for herself.

  His sister Allegra came, his brother-in-law Elazar came, his brothers and relatives, even the distant ones, came, but his mother, Her Majesty, didn’t even send her congratulations with Allegra.

  “Ach,” Allegra said, sighing, “don’t expect anything from our mother, hermano querido. She’s a stubborn old woman. Don’t give yourself heartache because of her stupidity.”

  “If that’s the case,” he told his sister, “I’m no less stubborn than her.” And then and there he decided to name his second daughter Rachel after Rosa’s late mother.

  * * *

  Luna was three years old when her sister was born, and much to everybody’s surprise she became attached to her from the minute she arrived. All Rosa’s fears that the spoiled child wouldn’t want to share her father’s love with another living creature were dispelled when she saw Luna’s love for the baby.

  “Have you seen the flaca?” she asked her neighbor Tamar. “Have you seen how much she loves her sister?”

  “Yes.” Tamar laughed. “Wonders will never cease, who’d have believed it? That one loves only herself.”

  “And her father, may he be healthy,” Rosa added as she observed Luna rocking Rachelika’s cradle and singing to her. “And unlike Luna, Rachelika is an easy baby. She eats and sleeps,” Rosa continued. “You don’t hear a peep out of her, where the flaca would cry all day, and her crying sounded like a cat yowling, and there was no day and no night, and she wanted to be picked up all the time. And Rachelika, que no manqui, just opens her eyes and I put a teta in her mouth and dala, she feeds until she falls asleep again. Praise God, that child is pure gold, una hija de oro.”

  Tamar nodded in agreement, remembering Luna’s incessant crying and Gabriel pacing entire nights with her around the yard, disturbing the whole neighborhood’s sleep.

  “Dio mio,” Tamar would whisper to her husband, “that child will drive us all crazy.”

  While Luna’s features resembled Gabriel’s, Rachelika was the mirror image of her mother. Like Rosa she had a broad face with a flat nose and small brown eyes, and her build was big and relatively sturdy for her age.

  Luna was four when Rachelika began running after her in the yard, falling and standing up and falling all over again. The yard was filled with the girls’ happy cries, Luna’s rolling laugh and Rachelika’s sweet squeals as she began learning words. “And what’s the first word she spoke?” Rosa said to Tamar as they watched the girls. “Nuna, even before she said mama, even before she said papo, she said Nuna, that’s how much she loves her sister Luna.”

  Since Rachelika’s birth Rosa had been calmer. She now had two proofs that Gabriel came to her at night. Even though her neighbors had four, five, and even six healthy children, not counting the ones that had died in infancy or at birth, she, praise God, gave thanks to the Almighty for her two daughters, sanos que ’sten. In any case, the flaca was like ten children. God bless her, how much strength she needed for that child. One minute she was here and the next she was there. One minute she was in the yard and the next she was in the house, one minute on the bed and the next on the table.

  “Basta! You’ve given me a headache!” Rosa always shouted, but she was invisible to her daughter. Only if Gabriel told her—he never shouted—“Basta, querida,” only then she’d calm down a bit until she started up again.

  “I don’t know, adio Senor del mundo, I don’t know where this girl came from,” Rosa said to Tamar.

  “Well, who’s she like?” Tamar asked.

  “Like a little devil,” Rosa said. “Believe me, vizina, if they hadn’t given her to me right after she was born, I would have thought they’d swapped her in Misgav Ladach.”

  “Go figure,” her neighbor Tamar chuckled. “Perhaps they did swap her. She looks like an Ashkenazia, that one.”

  “They didn’t swap her at all!” Rosa replied. “It’s enough to see that her eyes are just like her father’s, it’s enough to see her red hair just like her father’s, so she’s my child and flesh of my flesh and she’s like … how can I put it, may God forgive me, like a child who came into my house by accident, as if she’s not mine.”

  “Quieta, quieta, shut up,” Tamar cut Rosa short. “Heaven help us if you utter words like that. True, Luna gives you trouble, but she’s only a child. Wait till she grows up, she’ll change, she’ll calm down. Paciencia, querida Rosa, paciencia. Just as you had paciencia until the Great War ended and the Turks, may their name and memory be erased, left the country, so have patience with the child. That’s how it i
s with children. They don’t always come out the way we want.”

  Rosa knew that Tamar was right. She needed patience, lots of patience. She hadn’t gotten along with the child from the moment she’d been born, and the child hadn’t gotten along with her. Perhaps she sensed her mother had no room in her heart for her. How worried she’d been that, like baby Raphael, Luna too would die before she was a month old. And like Raphael, Luna didn’t stop crying. No matter what Rosa did, the crying didn’t cease. The baby screamed and screamed until Rosa felt like screaming back at her. She’d cover her ears and pray to God to stop the child’s crying before she went crazy.

  Gabriel didn’t know, but every morning after he left for the shop she’d be scared to death by the thought of remaining alone with the child. She’d close the shutters and sit in the dark, waiting for the sun to come up when she’d be able to put the beautiful child in her beautiful clothes into the beautiful pram. But her heart was hollow. Even when people complimented her on the child’s beauty, she would smile politely, yet her heart was hollow. Painfully, she saw how her husband melted at the sight of the baby, and her heart was hollow.

  She would burn in hell for these thoughts, but she couldn’t help but envy the hugs, the kisses, the attention her husband lavished on the child. As far as the neighbors were concerned, everything was fine, thank God, she and Gabriel were lovebirds. But deep inside she was burning. She never understood where her good fortune had come from, how of all the young girls in Jerusalem, Mercada had chosen her for a quick marriage. At first she was content, but what could one do when the heart has its own ways? She hadn’t planned to fall in love with Gabriel. All she’d wanted was a roof over her head, food, and a family. She hadn’t thought about love, and now she loved her husband and was envious of her own daughter, the flesh of her flesh! God help her, what kind of a mother was jealous of her own daughter?