The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  Gabriel stroked his clever daughter’s head. She was so different from her big sister, who was interested only in clothes and the cinema. Rachelika, with God’s help, would graduate from the Ohel Moshe School and then he’d enroll her at the Beit Hakerem High School, and after four years there she’d continue her studies at the David Yellin College. Rachelika would be a teacher. And Luna? That one, with God’s help, they would marry as soon as possible, and that would be that.

  * * *

  Every morning Luna met her good friend Sara at her house and they’d walk toward Jaffa Gate. There, opposite the Tower of David, was the English school. Luna hated the school uniform—the blue-and-green-checked skirt, the white blouse, and the blue V-neck sweater—but most of all she hated the black stockings. “It’s so old-fashioned to cover the legs,” she grumbled.

  Each day before lessons commenced, students assembled in the yard for a ceremony in which they hoisted the English flag and blessed the English king. “And whenever the nuns talk about Jesus,” Luna told Rachelika, “I put my hands on my heart to protect it from what they are saying so that Jesus won’t come into my heart, God forbid.”

  Luna suffered. She hated the lessons, she hated the nuns, and she hated Mr. Mizrachi, the Jewish teacher who had an annoying Iraqi accent, and of all the pupils in the class always picked on her. “Quiet, Ermosa!” he’d shout, even if she hadn’t been chattering, and his shouts could be heard even by the prisoners in the cellar of the Kishle next to the school.

  One morning when Luna was in a particularly bad mood, she told Sara, “I’ve had school up to here!”

  “So let’s play hooky,” Sara suggested. “Let’s go window-shop at the Pillars Building.”

  “I wish,” Luna replied. “But if my father catches me skipping one more time it’ll be the end of me. What happened to me after I played hooky from Rabbi Pardess was bad enough.”

  “You don’t want to, you don’t have to,” Sara retorted. “But I’m off!” And she was already through the school gate and walking toward Jaffa Gate.

  “Wait, hold on!” Luna shouted, running after her. “I’m coming. Just pray that nobody sees us and tells my father.”

  Luna and Sara wandered along Jaffa Road. They passed the display windows and looked at the mannequins clothed in suits and dresses that set off the waist. Luna was mesmerized by black high-heeled shoes in the Freiman & Bein window. “Come on,” Sara said, tugging her hand. “Let’s go before your face gets stuck to the glass.”

  They moved on to the next window, the splendid Zacks & Son clothing store. Luna put her nose to the glass, never tiring of the sight of magnificent evening gowns and expensive daywear. The dresses brought her a whiff of the big world. How she’d love to drape one over her body, to feel its folds accentuating what needed to be accentuated and concealing what should be concealed.

  A notice in the shop window caught her eye: WANTED. SALESLADY. Her heart skipped a beat. This is it, this is what I should do! she thought. I should be a saleslady at Zacks & Son, be close to the dresses, the blouses, the skirts, the petticoats. Stroke them, fold them gently, place them on the shelves, put them on hangers. She was gripped by tremendous excitement. Her future had been revealed. Fashion, her future was fashion, not at the mission school and certainly not behind the counter of her father’s shop. No, she wasn’t born to sell cheeses and pickles, she was born to sell clothes. Luna pushed the door open.

  “How may I help the young lady?” asked the man in the handsome suit standing behind the counter.

  “I’m here about the ad,” Luna replied, ignoring the stunned look on Sara’s face.

  “Does the young lady have any experience?”

  “I don’t have any experience, but I’m a fast learner. I promise you that within a week I’ll be the best saleslady you’ve ever had,” she said with confidence that surprised even her.

  “I see you’re still in school,” said the gentleman, indicating her uniform. “So when will you be able to work?”

  “Now!”

  “Now?” he laughed. “Now is out of the question.”

  “Why? You’ll see, sir, that I’ll learn the work in a few hours. You won’t regret it.”

  “I’ve no doubt I won’t regret it, but first you’ll have to get rid of those unsightly mission school clothes. Come back tomorrow in proper clothes and we’ll talk about it,” he told her and showed her to the door.

  “Are you crazy?” Sara yelled as they headed back along the boulevard. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ve found my calling!” Luna laughed. “I’m going to work in a clothing store! Thank God for opening my eyes. All that interests me is clothes! I read the magazines from Europe and cut out dresses and shoes and stick them in a notebook. I dream about dresses at nighttime and about dresses in the daytime. Clothes are my life.”

  At dinner that evening, Luna helped Rosa serve the meal, cleared the table, and volunteered to wash the dishes. Rosa didn’t quite understand her extraordinary behavior, but she didn’t say a word.

  Only Rachelika, who understood her sister as well as she understood herself, vocalized her suspicion. “What banana skin did you slip on?” she said. Luna gave her a white-toothed smile that accentuated the dimples in her cheeks and whispered, “The banana skin of my life.”

  “What? Tell me what!” Rachelika begged, and Luna shared her plan to leave school and work at Zacks & Son.

  “In your dreams when the stars come out! Father will never agree!”

  “Leave that to me.”

  After dinner, when Gabriel sat down in his usual chair to listen to the Voice of Jerusalem on the radio and enjoy a cigarette, Luna went over to him. “Papo, have you got a minute?”

  “For you, mi alma, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “Papo querido, I didn’t want to sadden you, but for a long time now I’ve been unhappy at the mission school. All the stories about Jesus and the Virgin Mary have entered my mind and I feel, God forbid, that it might influence me to become a Christian.”

  “Dio santo!” Gabriel said. “That’s exactly what I feared, it’s exactly what I was afraid of from the start. That’s why I didn’t want you to go to the mission school, but you insisted!”

  “It was Sara who persuaded me to go to the school, and I followed her without thinking, but I can see what it’s doing to me. I beg you, Papo, I beg you to take me out of there!”

  “Of course, come and work for me in the shop.”

  “No, Papo, I don’t want to work in the shop. I want to work in fashion.”

  “Fashion?”

  “Yes! Clothes, dresses, suits.”

  “You’re working in it already. You’ve got more clothes than Zacks & Son.”

  “Exactly!” Luna seized the opportunity. “I heard that Zacks & Son are advertising for a saleslady. I want to go and ask for the job in the morning.”

  “Do what you want,” he said wearily. He had long since realized that Luna wasn’t cut out for school, so if she didn’t want to study, let her sell clothes. The main thing was that she made something of herself.

  In the evening before they went to bed, he said to Rosa angrily, “You said they’ll make a lady of her? They’ll make a Christian of her! It’s lucky the girl’s clever and realized that they’re taking over her soul. It’s lucky she’s her father’s daughter.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Luna stayed home instead of going to school. She opened the wardrobe and took out her best dress, a red-and-black floral number. She matched it with red patent leather shoes and a handbag of the same color, put red polish on her manicured nails, and applied red lipstick.

  When she laid eyes on her daughter, Rosa felt she might explode. “Luna, don’t you dare leave the house looking like that! You look like a girl who goes with the Ingelish. Look in the mirror, see what you look like!” She stood in the doorway, blocking her exit.

  “And what do I look like?” Luna asked mockingly.

  “
Like a girl from the street.”

  “Who are you to tell me I’m a girl from the street?” Luna shouted. “We’ve heard about who came to my father’s house from the street, who cleaned toilets for the English before she became Senora Ermosa! So don’t you tell me I’m from the street!”

  The vein in Rosa’s neck threatened to burst. She couldn’t face down Luna, who had become more insolent every day, who when Gabriel was not there spoke to her like a market woman. Boca de jora! A mouth like a cesspit! Only one thing could stop her: her father.

  “If you go out like that with all that paint on your face, I’m going to the shop to get your father. He’ll go to the Zacks & Son shop and humiliate you!”

  The threat worked. “What do you want me to do?” Luna asked, deflated. “I’ve got to be dressed tip-top to work in fashion. I can’t wear rags like you!”

  “For a start take off the lipstick, that’s the first thing. Then go to the shop and ask your father to go with you to Zacks & Son, so they can see you’re not just any girl off the street. When they see your father, they’ll treat you differently.”

  Luna was about to scream that she wasn’t a little child and she didn’t need her father to take her to her new job. But she realized that her mother had a point, and it would be better if her father accompanied her so that the esteemed Mr. Zacks would see that she came from a respected family.

  The good impression that Gabriel Ermosa made on Mr. Zacks led him to take on Luna right away. And for her part she proved to be an excellent saleslady. Luna talked about clothes as if they were precious objects, each dress a diamond, every skirt a pearl. Her love for clothes infected everyone who came into the shop, and there wasn’t a customer who left empty-handed.

  The shop employed several seamstresses who made the clothes according to patterns that appeared in Burda magazine, and Luna would devour the magazine voraciously, studying it for hours on end. She spent all her wages on clothes she purchased from the shop, and was always dressed at the height of fashion, accessorized to the most minute detail. The polish on her fingernails matched that on her toenails, which matched her lipstick, which in turn matched her dress, shoes, and handbag. As she dressed, she blossomed.

  Luna grew more beautiful from day to day, and her beauty was renowned throughout Jerusalem. “The beauty queen,” they called her, “the beauty queen of Jerusalem.” And she, who was aware of her beauty and understood the looks of the men who were unable to tear their eyes from her, shamelessly exploited it. It accorded her an advantage and power, and she felt she could conquer the world.

  Suitors began knocking at her door, much to the chagrin of Gabriel, who did not appreciate his daughter’s coquettishness, but none of them appealed to her. She spent her free time with a large group of young men and women made up of relatives and neighbors, dragging them to the cinema every evening. Luna loved movies so much that if she’d had the chance she would have gone to a matinee and followed it with the early showing and then the late one. Her favorite theater was Tel Or, opposite Fink’s Bar, which was always packed with British officers and their Jewish girlfriends. Luna wouldn’t even think of going to a place like that, and after the movie she and her friends would instead go to the Tiv Taam Restaurant under the theater. She loved dancing, and every now and again would lead everyone to Café Europa, dazzle them with her cha-cha or swing, and the boys would be lining up to dance with her. Her joie de vivre enlivened everyone around her. It was difficult not to admire the lovely Luna.

  While her peers were taking an interest in the world around them—the Germans were on the verge of losing the war to the Allies, news of the death camps had begun reaching Palestine, the Jewish underground organizations intensified their attacks against the British Mandate—Luna was completely detached, living her life as if there were no world war and no struggle in Palestine. And when Gabriel and Rachelika talked about the day’s events at the table, she’d ask them to stop because it spoiled her mood.

  When the young Jewish Brigade soldiers returned to Jerusalem after the world war, Luna’s battalion of suitors grew, but she rebuffed any attempt at courtship. “I’m waiting for my knight on a white horse or in a white car,” she told Rachelika. “And until he comes along, I’m not going out with anybody!”

  “And how will you know who your knight is?”

  “When he comes, I’ll know.”

  5

  IN THE MIDDLE of the night deafening shouts roused the Ermosas from their beds. “Dio santo! What’s all that noise?” Gabriel said and quickly went outside in only his nightshirt. Rosa put on a robe and followed. “Stay here and look after Becky,” she ordered the girls, but Luna ignored her and headed toward the noise coming from the garden at the center of the neighborhood.

  “Hija mia, hijica, they’ve killed her, they’ve killed my daughter!” Senora Franco was kneeling in the middle of the garden hitting herself in the face, her shouts piercing the night. “They’ve murdered my daughter, they’ve murdered Matilda!” she screamed. Her husband was standing beside her, his expression stoic. Matilda’s body was lying on the ground, and as Rosa got closer to it, she saw that Matilda’s head had been partly shaved and a large bloodstain had seeped through the chest of her white dress.

  “It’s the Lehi bastardos,” Gabriel whispered. “They shave the heads of Jewish girls who go out with the English.”

  The sight of Matilda’s body lying spread-eagled in the garden shocked Rosa. She hurried back to her house, pulled a blanket from one of the beds, and ran back to the garden, fighting her way through the crowd of neighbors that had formed, then knelt down to cover Matilda. At that moment Senora Franco noticed her. “You! Don’t go anywhere near my daughter!” she screamed. “Take your filthy hands off my child!”

  Rosa paled.

  “Get away from her!” Senora Franco screamed. “It’s your hermano, your brother the borracho, who killed her! It was him, I saw him with my own eyes. Why? Tell me why? What have we done to your family that the hijo de un perro, the son of a bitch, had to kill Matilda? Is this what she deserves after she found your daughter when she ran away from home? Is this what she gets?” She began hitting Rosa, who was frozen to the spot.

  Gabriel took Rosa’s arm and led her away from Senora Franco. “Come home,” he ordered Luna, who had tears welling in her eyes. “Come home—now!” They were silent for the few minutes it took to get home, Gabriel holding Rosa’s arm as she walked blindly beside him and Luna trailed behind.

  Once they were inside Rosa sat on a chair at the table and burst into tears. It was the first time that Gabriel and the girls had seen her truly cry. She sobbed for a long time, and he sat beside her but did nothing to calm her. Only when she had regained her composure did he ask her quietly, “What was Senora Franco talking about? When did Matilda find the child, and which child ran away from home?” Rosa couldn’t believe her ears. The flame ignited in her chest threatened to consume her.

  “El Dio que me mate, may God kill me!” she screamed, losing control of herself. “Senora Franco says that Ephraim killed Matilda, and you’re asking me which of the girls ran away from home? Ask your daughters yourself who ran away from home, who went to the Ingelish and told lies about her mother and made her mother ride in the Ingelish officer’s jeep to the Ingelish police so they could question her like a criminal. Ask, ask! If you don’t know, ask Becky. It couldn’t be Becky mi alma who went to the Ingelish police? Maybe you, Rachelika? Didn’t you, querida, tell the Ingelish that your mother threw you out of the house? Tell Papo, querida, tell him if it was you!”

  Rosa’s rage frightened Gabriel. He had never seen his wife so angry. Of course he’d guessed right away which of his daughters was the culprit and fixed Luna with a hard stare. She had withdrawn into herself, not daring to look at him, her eyes filled with tears. Gabriel didn’t say a word. He went to the clay water jug and poured a glass for Rosa. “Drink this,” he told her gently. “Drink and we’ll go back to bed. Perhaps Senora Franco is mistaken. Perhaps
she saw somebody who looks like Ephraim. And you,” he commanded Luna, “go straight to bed. I’ll deal with you in the morning.”

  Matilda Franco’s funeral was held in the dead of night, for in Jerusalem the deceased had to be buried immediately. That same night, the British police came knocking on the Ermosas’ door and searched the house. Once again Rosa was taken to the Russian Compound. This time Gabriel went with her and told the policemen that his wife hadn’t seen her brother for years and that he personally opposed the Lehi thugs and wouldn’t have helped his brother-in-law even if it meant leaving him in the street. Of course that wasn’t true. He would have risked his life to help Ephraim. But right then he said whatever was needed to get his wife out of this mess.

  Rosa sat for hours in the interrogation room. The British interrogator tried to extract details about Ephraim from her, and she repeated that since he’d left Jerusalem for Tel Aviv she’d had no contact with him.

  “He’s a filthy murderer, this brother of yours,” the officer said, “him and his whole gang. He murdered an innocent young girl.”

  “But how do you know it was Ephraim who murdered Matilda?” she burst out. “It could have been anyone!”

  “Mrs. Franco testified under oath that she saw him. We don’t have any doubt at all that your brother’s the murderer,” the officer replied vehemently. “All we have to do now is find him, and when we do, I will be present in the gallows room when he’s hanged.”

  * * *

  At the first opportunity, when Gabriel went to the shop and the girls about their business the next day, Rosa hurried to Sara Laniado’s house. “Dio mio, Rosa, why have you come? It’s dangerous,” Sara said. “You mustn’t come here. We mustn’t be seen together.”