The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  He got dressed, took his umbrella, and left the room. The hotel lobby was empty. Even the reception clerk had realized that he wouldn’t have anything to do on a night like this and had gone to bed. Gabriel left the hotel, and ignoring the wind and rain, started toward the port.

  The stormy night had driven the sailors on the ships anchored in the port to their cabins, and the streets were dark and deserted. Only the brothels and bars lit up the night. Gabriel had never been in this neighborhood. As he stood outside a building with a red light over its doorway, gripping his umbrella, its door suddenly opened and an invisible hand seemed to shoot out and draw him inside. “Ya sidi, come in, come in. Why are you standing like that in this rain? Allah yustur, God save us, you’ll catch pneumonia.”

  The invisible hand was connected to a young woman in a tight-fitting red dress that hugged her bounteous curves. Her breasts threatened to burst out of her deep neckline, and reposing in her cleavage was a gleaming green stone suspended from a gold chain. Her black hair fell to her shoulders, gold earrings hung from her earlobes, and gold bracelets adorned her thick forearms as far as the elbow. Her fleshy lips bore bright red lipstick, and thick makeup covered her eyelids. Gabriel was breathless and unable to utter a sound.

  The room she led him into was large, and on every wall were doors leading to other rooms. Red velvet armchairs and couches dotted the room, a chandelier hung from the ceiling, and burning candles were all around. Gabriel smelled the sweetish scent of hashish mixed with cheap perfume. Sitting on the couches were young women who paled in comparison to the one holding his hand, and there were also men in the room, some sharing a narghile with the women in their laps. The warm voice of Fairouz could be heard in the background and a wood fire blazed in the hearth. The woman removed his damp coat and hung it to dry by the fire, then sat him down in one of the armchairs.

  “Salaam aleikum,” he greeted the room in Arabic, and they responded with a nod and “Aleikum salaam.”

  The woman disappeared for a moment and came back with a glass of Zachlawi arak. “It’ll warm you up,” she said. He downed the liquor in one gulp and felt its warmth spread in his belly. The woman asked his name.

  “I’m Aisha,” she introduced herself with a seductive smile. He liked her. When he dared to look directly at her, Gabriel could see a pair of beautiful black eyes beneath the heavy makeup.

  They sat there for a few more minutes, and then she took his hand and led him into one of the rooms and without much delay started undressing him. He stood there not knowing what to do, his arms too long, his body too heavy. She kneeled and started taking off his shoes, unlacing them very slowly. Soon enough he stood there in his underwear, feeling like a boy with a woman for the first time. She moved close and threw him onto the bed. She was a whore, he knew that, she was working, and he knew that too. But she was so gentle, as if she were making love to him, not simply doing what she was paid for. He was closed, completely tense, and she asked in astonishment, “Is this your first time?” He blushed like a child and shook his head. “So why are you like this, ya habibi?” she asked. “Why are you lying curled up like a baby still in its mother’s womb?”

  He was silent. What could he tell her? That he didn’t exactly know what to do? That the only times he’d done it were when he’d forced his little bird into Rosa’s nest, praying that it wouldn’t lower its head before he’d managed to observe the biblical commandment?

  Fortunately Aisha didn’t ask any more questions. With tenderness she thawed out his frozen body, and he felt the heat course through him to his chest. He had never felt such pleasure, never felt his skin against a woman’s skin like this. Never before had he burned the way he burned in Aisha’s bed in the Beirut brothel.

  For the duration of his trip, Gabriel went to Aisha at the brothel every day, extending his stay in the city to spend as much time as possible with her. Sometimes she was busy with other men, and he waited patiently for her, declining the madam’s suggestion that he try a different girl. He paid generously for her services, always more than the going rate, and the extra money he didn’t give to the madam, he hid between Aisha’s thighs. His visits with her in Beirut every few months enabled him to function and continue with the great charade that was his life. They never met outside the brothel and never asked about each other’s life. They smoked hashish together, drank arak, laughed a lot, and did with each other’s body whatever they felt like doing, and he’d return to Jerusalem sated, feeling that he had been charged with a thousand horsepower.

  Ach, Aisha, Aisha. He couldn’t wait for the instant he set foot in the doorway of the brothel in Beirut. So many times the moment of their coming together on her canopied bed had run through his mind.

  The strong rays of the summer sun in Tel Aviv beat down on him, and he awoke from his daydreaming. In Jerusalem, he thought, the sun has the color of gold. In Tel Aviv, it’s the color of a consuming fire.

  Gabriel continued strolling along the promenade until he reached Café San Remo and sat down at a table. A tuxedoed waiter came over, and in a thick Eastern European accent asked what he would like. He ordered a black coffee and a glass of water and rubbed his eyes at the sight of the people clad only in bathing suits passing by on their way to the beach. He’d just read an article in the paper condemning the behavior of the residents of Tel Aviv and about a new law about to be enacted that would prohibit them from walking in bathing suits on the streets by the beach. He was deep in thought about the terrible state of affairs in Palestine, about the country’s declining morals, about Jewish girls going out with Englishmen, God help us, about the brothels sprouting like mushrooms after rain. Brothels in Beirut were fine for the cursed Arabs, may all their women be whores, but here, in Tel Aviv? He would never cross the threshold of a Jewish brothel. He would never do what he did with Aisha with a Jewish girl.

  He looked around. The café was filled with mothers with prams, young couples, a few men reading their papers, and also British soldiers sitting with Jewish women. He hissed a curse through his mustache and gazed at the sea. And then he saw her. At first he thought he was hallucinating, seeing his own thoughts. It couldn’t be her. The woman walking arm in arm with a man of British appearance seemed far older than Rochel. Rochel was a girl, a thin girl who always wore baggy, long-sleeved dresses that went down to her ankles. This woman was indeed slim but was wearing a flowing floral dress that showed off her arms and legs. Rochel always wore thick black stockings, while this woman was wearing sheer nylons and high heels, and instead of in braids, her golden hair was tied in a ponytail at her neck. He stopped breathing and looked again at the man and woman about to enter the café. He noticed her upright, confident walk. There was something rebellious in the way she clasped the arm of the man. Gabriel tried to persuade himself that he was mistaken. It was impossible that it was her! But then she turned her face toward him and he saw the eyes, the bluest eyes he had seen in all his life, Rochel’s eyes.

  It was Rochel without a doubt. His pure Rochel strolling like a whore with an Englishman. The blood pounded in his temples. He was breathless. His face turned red and his hand hit the glass on his table, spilling its contents over his pants. No, not Rochel, Dio santo! He laid a five-lira bill on the table and hurried out of the café. Had she seen him?

  He ran for dear life. He didn’t remember getting back to the hotel, he didn’t remember how he got up to his room and quickly packed his suitcase, how he paid his bill and got a taxi to take him to the bus station. He didn’t remember boarding the first bus back to Jerusalem.

  He didn’t visit his mother on Rothschild Boulevard, didn’t go do business with Chaim Saragusti in the Levinsky Market, and didn’t go to Beirut. Neither Aisha nor all the wonders she brought him could heal the wound that had been reopened in his heart.

  4

  “ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU FEEL, Drink Carmel Hock with Every Meal.” The advertisement at the bottom of the front page of Haaretz roused Gabriel’s ire. “To hell with them. We alrea
dy have problems with drunks, and now they have to go encouraging people to drink,” he mumbled under his mustache, angrily throwing the paper onto the table and striding out into the yard.

  Rosa picked up the paper and searched for what had made Gabriel so angry. She stared at the printed letters, which said nothing to her until her eyes lit on a picture of a wine bottle.

  “What’s this? What’s written here?” she asked Luna who had just come in.

  “It’s an advertisement for wine,” she replied. “Is that the only thing in the paper that interests you?”

  Insolent child, Rosa thought. But right away her mind shifted from her daughter’s insolence to Ephraim. For a long time young Ephraim had been drinking himself insensible. From day to day she had seen how her poor brother was losing his human semblance, a handsome young man becoming a shadow of his former self, but she didn’t have the strength to halt his decline. As much as she’d pleaded and he’d promised, he hadn’t stopped drinking.

  Gabriel had tried to help, taking him to work in the shop even though he wasn’t able to lift a tin of salty cheese because he was all skin and bones. But the ungrateful Ephraim never got up on time for work. The troncho couldn’t wake up in the morning like everybody else. Gabriel, may he be healthy, would have been in the shop since morning prayers, and Ephraim? Nada, he’d barely make it to afternoon prayers on time, and only after she’d wake him with shouts and kick him out of bed. “If he carries on like this, he can’t go on living here,” Gabriel had warned her. “It’s not healthy for the girls to see him durmiendo all day, and when he is awake he’s as drunk as a lord. You’ve got to do something.”

  What could she do? He was her little brother, he was all that was left of her family. She didn’t know whether Nissim in America was alive or dead. It’d been a very long time since they’d last received a letter from him. So what remained of her family other than her little brother Ephraim, who as soon as he opened his eyes was glued to a bottle of arak and didn’t stop drinking until he fell down, and didn’t know the name his father and mother had given him?

  Gabriel hadn’t been his usual self since he’d returned from his last trip to Beirut. He’d been irritable and testy; he’d lost his famous patience. He hardly exchanged a word with Rosa, and he didn’t laugh with the girls like he used to. She didn’t understand what had made him come home from his trip without warning after only a day. He was usually away for at least a month.

  Rosa was in the yard hanging washing on the line when he came back through the gate the day after he’d left. The moment she saw him she felt the blood drain from her head to her feet. Why is he back so soon? she silently worried. Has he heard a rumor about Luna running away from home? Has he been told that I found her at the Ingelish police station? Dio mio, how can I face him? But he passed her by and went into the house, not even stopping to say hello. The girls’ happy shouts on seeing their father calmed her somewhat, such joy making her feel that nothing bad could have happened.

  When she went inside they were already hanging on to his knees, waiting for him to take the presents he’d bought them from his bag, but there weren’t any presents. Gabriel stroked the girls’ heads and kissed them, burying his face in their necks, seeking consolation in their soft skin. Luna stole a glance at her mother, fearing that she might break her word and tell her father what she had done. Rosa’s unwavering stare allayed her fears. For the first and last time in their lives, mother and daughter made an unspoken pact.

  “Papo, haven’t you brought anything?” asked the disappointed Luna.

  “Queridas,” he replied in a weary, exhausted voice, “I couldn’t. I had to come back to our Jerusalem urgently, but tomorrow I’ll buy you something from the toy shop on Jaffa Road. I promise.”

  He detached the girls, got up from the chair, changed his clothes quickly, and unusually for him, didn’t unpack his suitcase. “I’m going to the shop,” he told Rosa, and he was already out of the house and on the way to the Mahane Yehuda Market.

  At that moment Ephraim emerged from his room. Borracho, drunk, Rosa thought to herself. All I need is for Gabriel to see him like this again. He’s just opened his eyes and already he’s stuck to the bottle. He can go to hell. I can’t fight all these battles. He’s a grown man, I’ve taken enough care of him. From now on it’s his life. If he wants to be a drunk, he can be a drunk, but not in my house!

  “Listen to me, Ephraim,” Rosa said with uncharacteristic assertiveness. “If you don’t stop with the bottle, you can look for someplace else to live, do you hear me? There have never been and never will be drunks in my house. So make up your mind. Either you stop drinking and carry on living with us or you go through that door and don’t come back!”

  Glassy-eyed, Ephraim looked at his sister and retorted derisively, “Who do you think you are, Senora Ermosa? Where do you think you came from? You’ve forgotten we both come from the same shit!”

  “Sera la boca!” she ordered him in an icy voice. “Shut your mouth! Don’t speak to me like that in front of the children.”

  “Who are you, my mother?”

  Now he had really enraged her. “Ya Amalek, who’s been like a mother to you since you were five? Who raised you? Who took food from her own mouth and gave it to you? Have you forgotten, you stupid ass, has the bottle made you forget, eh?”

  “I haven’t forgotten and haven’t remembered. Now leave me alone,” he said and left the house.

  To hell with him. Let him go and not come back, Rosa thought. But when Ephraim didn’t return that night and the following night too, Rosa’s heart filled with concern. “Who knows where he’s wandering?” she said to Gabriel. “Maybe the Ingelish have arrested him? Maybe he’s lying in some pit drunk? How can we know?”

  “The English haven’t arrested him and he’s not lying in a pit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “What do you know? Por Dio santo, Gabriel, tell me what you know.”

  “Your borracho brother is all right. I’ve fixed him up.”

  Rosa was stunned.

  “I’ve sent him to work for my brother-in-law Elazar in Tel Aviv,” Gabriel continued.

  “How can he work? You know he’s a drunk.”

  “It’s better he’s drunk in Elazar’s grocery than with us! It’s no good for the girls seeing their uncle in bed all day. And even when he’s not in bed, it’s better not to have to be near him with his breath stinking from arak, and the words that come out of his mouth.”

  “And where will he live and who’ll look after him?”

  “He’ll live in a room over the shop and start looking after himself. Basta! He’s old enough to be married.”

  “Gabriel querido, I beg you, he’s my brother, the only one I’ve got. Bring him back to Jerusalem. I’ll be so worried I won’t sleep.”

  “It’s all arranged!” Gabriel replied vehemently. “Ephraim’s staying in Tel Aviv and that’s that! He’ll manage, you’ll see.”

  Ephraim didn’t come back to Jerusalem again, and neither did he make it to Elazar’s grocery in Tel Aviv. Rosa didn’t hear from him again until one day the British police, may their name be erased, knocked on her door. “We’re looking for Ephraim Meshulam,” they told her and entered the house without her inviting them in. They turned over the rooms, searched the cupboards, under the beds, in the bed linen chests. They took out all the pots and pans from the shelf under the kitchen sink, all the books from their shelves. Frightened and crying, the girls hung on to her, and only Luna escaped from the house and ran to the market to fetch Gabriel.

  It didn’t help when Rosa told the British policemen, “I haven’t seen my brother for months. I’ve no idea if he’s alive or dead. I haven’t heard from him since my husband sent him to Tel Aviv.” They didn’t believe her and took her to the Russian Compound, not even letting her make an arrangement for the girls.

  “Don’t worry, Rosa,” her dear neighbor Tamar called out, “I’ll take care of the girl
s and Gabriel will come straight to the Russian Compound and get you out.”

  Within minutes of the police arriving, the whole neighborhood was outside. Rosa was taken away by the Amalekites, her girls running after her crying, the neighbors watching helplessly, not understanding what the British police wanted with Senora Rosa, Senor Ermosa’s quiet, obedient wife.

  They questioned her for five hours.

  “But why?” she asked. “What has he done? All in all he’s a good man. He’s just a drunk.”

  “A drunk?” The interrogating officer laughed. “A drunk I can understand, but your brother’s not a drunk, Mrs. Ermosa, your brother’s a terrorist!”

  “A terrorist, what terrorist? He sleeps all day, Mr. Officer, so excuse me, but are you sure you’re talking about Ephraim Meshulam?”

  “Madam,” he said, taking a photograph from the file on his desk and showing it to her, “is this your brother Ephraim Meshulam?”

  Rosa saw Ephraim looking at her from the photograph. His face was a little fuller than it was when he’d left, and he didn’t look blank like he did when he was drunk. He looked, well, determined. He looked, thank God, like a human being.

  “Is this your brother?” the British officer asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, “that’s my brother. But it’s been a long time since I last saw him. I’ve had no contact with him since my husband arranged for him to live over my brother-in-law’s grocery in Tel Aviv.”

  “Doesn’t he visit you? Hasn’t he asked you to hide him? Hasn’t he asked you for help recently?”

  “Why help him? Why hide him? What has he done?”

  “He’s caused a lot of trouble, madam,” the officer said. “He’s wanted for murder!”

  “Murder? God forgive my sins. Ephraim wanted for murder? He’s as weak as a little girl. He isn’t even capable of killing a fly.”