“Senora Sara, do you believe it was Ephraim, do you believe that Ephraim killed Matilda?”
“Yes, querida, I do. Before she was killed he and Yitzhako were here. They had something to eat and drink and sat around, may God forgive me, but I heard them talking. I heard them say that this would be the end of the putana who went with the English.”
“You heard and didn’t say anything?”
“What could I say? I shouldn’t have listened, God forgive my sins, but how was I to know they’d kill Franco’s daughter? Eliyahu and I had already gone to bed, and about ten minutes later I heard the shots and the shouting started.”
“How, how has my little brother become a murderer?” Rosa was numb with pain and grief. “And why Matilda? We’ve known her since the day she was born.”
“Rosa, you must go now,” Sara said. “Go back home and don’t mention Ephraim to a soul. Pray that the English don’t catch him and Yitzhako, because if they do, they’ll hang them. Don’t come back here until it all blows over. Stay in your house with your husband and daughters, and don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you.”
“Where have you been?” Gabriel thundered when she got home.
“I went to talk to Sara Laniado. Her son’s with Ephraim.”
“Don’t you dare go and see Sara Laniado again. Don’t even leave this house. There’s tension in the market and around the neighborhood. I want you to stay home and keep an eye on the girls. Keep them home from school for the next few days. And Luna shouldn’t go to work either.”
“But Papo, I can’t miss work. Mr. Zacks will fire me.”
“You!” Gabriel roared. “Don’t you dare say another word. Shut your mouth and be quiet!”
“How is it,” he turned to Rosa, “how is it you didn’t tell me she’d run away from home and you found her at the police station?”
“It was a long time ago, Gabriel, I didn’t want to bother you. It happened and it’s over. She was just a little girl.”
“And what is she now?” he shouted, pounding the table with his fist. “Her family’s in the middle of a tragedy and all she can think about is that Mr. Zacks will fire her? Selfish child!”
“Didn’t you hear what Papo said?” Rachelika said to Luna when she asked her to go and tell Mr. Zacks that she was sick. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve had enough with all the shouting and Mother crying, so for once in your life behave like a normal person!”
“Rachelika, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll even let you wear my dresses. You’ve got to, you’ve just got to help me!”
“Who wants your fancy dresses anyway? I’ve had enough of you! All you do is make trouble. You go against Papo all the time, against Mother. I’m not going to any Mr. Zacks. As far as I’m concerned he can fire you!”
“In your dreams he’ll fire me. If you won’t go and tell him I’m not coming into work, I’ll go myself.”
“Go, and we’ll see how Papo ties you to your bed so you can’t move!”
Luna didn’t dare go to Zacks & Son without her father’s permission. She stayed home for three days until Mr. Zacks himself showed up at their house.
“Is Luna in?” he asked the surprised Rosa.
“Welcome, Mr. Zacks, please come in,” she said politely and sent Rachelika to fetch Luna.
“Mr. Zacks? Here in our house? But I’m not dressed. I don’t want him to see me looking shabby. Tell him I’ll be out in a minute,” Luna said to her sister and hurried to change, fix her hair, and put on some lipstick. When she appeared in the doorway Rosa’s breath caught in her throat. She was lovely, the beauty queen beyond all doubt. Her dress clung to her hips and accentuated her curves, and her hair was meticulously arranged. An ear-to-ear smile was smeared over Mr. Zacks’s face. He too was captivated by Luna.
“Are you sick, Luna?” he asked gently.
“No, she isn’t,” Rosa answered in her place. “But her father thinks she shouldn’t work, she should stay at home.”
“Stay at home?” asked Mr. Zacks, amazed. “Isn’t that a waste? Luna loves her work. Aren’t I paying her enough? Because if that’s the problem, then there’s no problem. I’ll be happy to give her a raise of a few lirot.”
“That isn’t the problem, Mr. Zacks,” Rosa said. “The problem is that my husband doesn’t want her working for someone else. We’ve got our own shop, so if she wants to work she can work for us.”
“I’ll never, ever work in the market!” Luna burst out, opening her mouth for the first time since Mr. Zacks arrived.
Rosa was close to slapping her daughter, but she held herself back.
“Is there a problem, Mrs. Ermosa? Is there a problem with Luna working at Zacks & Son?” The man’s voice shook her from her thoughts.
“With all due respect, Mr. Zacks, I don’t know you,” she replied coolly. “And I can’t negotiate with you. If you want to talk about Luna’s work, go to our shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market and speak to my husband.”
“No! Don’t go!” Luna said. “My father’s stubborn. If you go, he’ll be even more stubborn. Give me a few more days. I’ll talk to him. I’ll fix this. But please, Mr. Zacks, in the meantime keep my job for me.”
“No problem, Luna, your job’s waiting for you, but not for long. I need somebody in the shop, I can’t be without a saleslady.”
* * *
When Gabriel came home from the shop in the evening, he was like a bear with a sore head. He ignored the food that Rosa set on the table and went straight to the bathroom. When he came out, he sat down in his usual chair and buried his head in the newspaper.
“Aren’t you eating, querido?” Rosa asked.
“The whole market’s talking about your borracho brother who murdered Matilda Franco. I’ve lost my appetite!”
“But how do they know it was my brother? Who can swear they saw him?”
“Senora Franco saw him. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“All right, so what do you want me to do, Gabriel? Am I to be responsible for my brother as well?”
“No, of course not! You’re barely responsible for your daughter. You’re so responsible you didn’t tell me she’d gotten lost and you’d found her with the police, that’s how responsible you are.”
Rosa began to fume. “She didn’t get lost, the street girl, and no, nobody found her. She went to the police on her own and told the Ingelish lies about her mother who leaves her alone in the yard at night and doesn’t let her into the house! She drove me crazy with worry, and she was rude to me in front of the damned Ingelish. She made me a laughingstock in front of the bastardos!”
“How did she go to the police, Rosa? A ten-year-old girl goes to the police on her own?”
“Maybe a ten-year-old girl doesn’t, but your dear daughter did. As soon as you left for Beirut she started making trouble. She threw herself on the floor and started shouting like una loca until all the neighbors came to their windows. I asked her to come inside but she, nada, she went on shouting and crying as if I’d killed her, and all I did was what? It was me who went to Beirut and left her? It was you, so what could I do? I took Rachelika and Becky inside, gave them something to eat, and she still hadn’t come in. When I went outside to look for her, I couldn’t find her and began searching with the whole neighborhood.”
“And how’s poor Matilda Franco connected with all this?” he asked harshly.
“She happened to come home with her Ingelish officer and saw that we were looking for Luna, so she offered for the officer to help us. She came with me in his jeep to the police station, and that’s where we found your daughter talking with the Ingelish policeman, telling him I’d thrown her out of the house. Yes, husband, that’s the kind of daughter you have, one who tells lies about her mother to the Ingelish!”
Gabriel made no further comment. He folded his paper, got up, and went to the bedroom. Rosa returned the food Gabriel hadn’t touched to the pots, took off her apron, and went outside. It was the first time that she’d dare
d to raise her voice to Gabriel. She sat down on a stool in the yard, resting her back against the wall of the house, and inhaled the fresh, chilly Jerusalem air. She’d known that Gabriel wouldn’t take her not telling him about Luna’s misdeeds without a fight, even though it had been a long time ago. And she’d also known that Luna would continue giving her a hard time. But her worries about Luna paled in comparison with her concern for Ephraim. She couldn’t bear the thought that if, God forbid, the cursed Ingelish caught him, he would be hanged. She would not let that happen. The scene of Rachamim hanging at Damascus Gate would not play out again! She had to help him, get in touch with him. She rose from the stool, walked toward Sukkat Shalom, and knocked on Sara Laniado’s door.
Sara opened the door, frightened. “May you be healthy, Senora Rosa, my heart dropped into my shoes. I thought it was the English who’d come looking for Yitzhako again.”
“Forgive me for startling you, but I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do. I have to know what’s happening with Ephraim.”
“Shhh, stop talking nonsense, Senora Rosa! Now isn’t the time to be looking for him. Better to leave him to hide until the English give up searching for him. If you seek him out, you’ll be putting him in danger. How do you know they’re not following you? I told you not to come here. You’re putting us all in danger. If they think we’re in contact, they might accuse Yitzhako of murdering Matilda too.”
“Well, how do you know it was Ephraim and not Yitzhako who killed her?” Rosa asked assertively.
“Everybody knows! Senora Franco saw him running away. Even if Yitzhako was with him, nobody saw him. So why put him at risk for nothing? God help you, Senora Rosa … I beg you not to come here again. Don’t endanger Yitzhako and all of us.”
“But what if Ephraim needs help? What if he has nowhere to hide?”
“And if he doesn’t, where could you hide him? Under your bed? Your husband will throw you and him out of the house. You’ll lose your husband and your girls. You’d better go home, sit tight, and then we’ll see. Be well, Senora Ermosa, go now and swear you won’t come here again.”
Sara hustled Rosa out the door, and with head bowed she stepped into the street. Even Jerusalem’s clear air couldn’t relieve the suffocation she felt, torn between her loyalty to her husband and girls and her fear for her brother.
The following few days did nothing to lighten her mood. Wherever she went, people were whispering behind her back, and she couldn’t ignore it. As she went to the grocery, Matilda’s two brothers turned and spat behind her. A different time Becky came home crying and told her that some children had bullied her and pulled her hair and shouted that her uncle was a murderer of Jews. Luna and Rachelika didn’t even leave the house. Rachelika helped Rosa with the housework, and Luna was very quiet and stopped complaining about losing her job.
Even her neighbor and best friend Tamar avoided her. Rosa decided to put an end to the tension and knocked on Tamar’s door.
“What have I done to you that you’re acting like this?” she asked Tamar.
“Look, Rosa,” she replied, “I don’t know what to tell you. You’re like family to me, and so is Senora Franco. I’m between the two of you, and right now she needs me more. She sits on the floor all day, tearing her clothes and pulling her hair out, weeping for her daughter. I’m there with her, helping her during the shiva. What do you want me to do?”
“But how am I to blame?” Rosa said. “Even if Ephraim did kill Matilda, and I know he didn’t, how am I to blame?”
“You’re not, querida, but he’s your brother, you’re family, and when there’s a murderer in the family, even the best family isn’t all that good.”
“You’re like a sister to me,” Rosa pleaded. “You can’t turn your back on me now, when I need you most.”
“Ti caro mucho, Rosa, I love you a lot, but Victoria Franco needs me now too, and if I have to choose between you and her, I have to be with her right now.”
Rosa fell silent, shaken by her neighbor’s response. Without a word she turned on her heel and left Tamar’s house.
The three-minute walk that separated her house from Tamar’s on the other side of the yard seemed to go on forever. She felt as if eyes were peering at her from every window. Everyone in Ohel Moshe, so she understood, had made their choice. Like Tamar, they too had chosen Victoria Franco.
* * *
Relations between her and Gabriel became tenser each day. He rarely spoke to her, and for a week now hadn’t touched the food she put on the table. The girls became quieter than ever. Rachelika and Becky refused to go to school, and for the first time in her life Rosa decided, without consulting Gabriel, to keep them at home. They stayed in their room for most of the day and left her alone. Even Luna didn’t annoy her, and it was as if she were walking around on tiptoe.
One morning, after many days of not leaving the house, Rosa went out into the yard and sat on a stool. On her knees she set a copper bowl of rice from which she picked out small stones.
The yard was very quiet. The neighbors avoided coming outside while she was there, but she was determined to stop hiding like a criminal. Even if her brother had murdered Matilda, and she believed he hadn’t, she wouldn’t let anybody punish her for something she hadn’t done.
As she was sifting the rice, Rachelika came out and sat at her feet. “Mother, what if it’s true that Tio Ephraim did kill Matilda?” she asked.
“Sera la boca! Don’t say things like that! Ephraim hasn’t killed anybody! He’s being framed, and we don’t say anything about Ephraim that we didn’t see with our own eyes. We don’t say things like that about our family.”
“But Mother, everybody’s saying he killed her because she went out with the English.”
“So everybody’s saying. Since when have we cared what everybody’s saying?”
“They’re saying that the Lehi kill Jewish girls only if they informed on Jews to the English, so maybe that’s why he killed her?”
A powerful surge of air seemed to fill her lungs, and Rosa felt she could breathe again. That’s it! If Ephraim had killed Matilda, then he had a reason. It wasn’t just because she went out with an Ingelish, it was because she’d informed on Jews! The whole picture had suddenly become clear to her. In a rare display of emotion she clasped Rachelika’s head in both hands and started planting kisses on it.
“Gracias, gracias, querida mia,” she said to her daughter, who was unused to physical contact with her mother, never seen kissing or embracing anyone. “Gracias el Dio, now I understand everything.”
When Gabriel came home that evening, Rosa broached the subject. “Do you know when the Lehi kill Jewish girls? Only when they inform. That’s why they killed Matilda. She informed on Jews to the Ingelish, that’s why they shaved her head. Rachelika says it’s like a mark of Cain.”
Gabriel felt the anger rising in his throat. “Shut your mouth!” he yelled. “Your bastard brother’s got us into trouble with the whole of Ohel Moshe, Sukkat Shalom, and the Mahane Yehuda Market. I can’t walk through the market. They all treat me like a leper. I’m the murderer’s brother-in-law, and I—Gabriel Ermosa, a man respected by everyone—now have to walk with his head bowed and avoid people. Do you know how many years I’ve known the Franco family? I’ve known them since the day I was born! And now I can’t look them in the eye. Do you know how many customers I had in the shop today, Rosa? Maybe ten. Do you know what that means? It means that our neighbors are boycotting us, and you’re talking my ears off about a mark of Cain? A mark of Cain is what your good-for-nothing borracho brother has put on my family, that’s a mark of Cain! I don’t want to hear you say one more word about Ephraim in front of the girls. I forbid you to mention his name. From now on, there’s no Ephraim! You want to talk about Ephraim, then go to the Western Wall and leave a note there, speak to Senor del mundo, but in this house Ephraim does not exist!”
Gabriel truly believed that Ephraim had murdered Matilda Franco. A man of peace, he was unable to
justify murder under any circumstances, whether of a Jew or an Englishman. On the day that Senora and Senor Franco, Matilda’s parents and his loyal customers, came into his shop and placed a jar of almonds and raisins on the counter, he realized it was time to move his family away from Ohel Moshe.
“We want neither your honey nor your sting,” Senora Franco told him. “We want nothing to do with your family, certainly not the almonds and raisins that Matilda, may she rest in peace, bought from you before your brother-in-law, may his name and memory be erased, killed her.” She and her husband made a big display of exiting the shop, leaving Gabriel slack-jawed. Fortunately Avramino and Matzliach had gone to lunch and no one was there to witness his shame.
Gabriel felt weak and sat down on the chair behind the counter, his head whirling, his heart hurting. He drank some water from the clay jar under the counter and tried to put his thoughts into some kind of order. For a while now he’d thought about improving the family’s standard of living and moving into a modern apartment in one of the city’s better neighborhoods, but for some reason he hadn’t acted on it. Now they could no longer stay in Ohel Moshe. He would move his family to the best area in Jerusalem so that his daughters could make a fresh start. Nobody in the new building would need to know that his borracho brother-in-law was a murderer.
* * *
A month later the Ermosa family moved into a spacious building with an elevator on King George Street, near the upscale Rehavia neighborhood. Rosa couldn’t find herself in her roomy new home. In their old house in Ohel Moshe there were three rooms: Mercada’s room, which no one had entered since she left for Tel Aviv, a room for the girls, and another that served as the living room by day and her and Gabriel’s bedroom at night. In the new house she and Gabriel had a room to themselves and so did the girls, and they even had a guest room that was presently empty because Gabriel decided that they weren’t moving all the “junk” from Ohel Moshe to the new place.
They didn’t have enough furniture to fill the rooms. Gabriel bought new furniture for the guest room and new beds for the girls. Above each bed were small cabinets; Becky and Rachelika put schoolbooks on theirs, while Luna arranged makeup on hers. On the inside of her cabinet door Luna stuck a picture of Rita Hayworth that she had cut out of a magazine. From the Romano Brothers carpentry shop Gabriel bought a round dining table over which Rosa spread a lace tablecloth she had embroidered herself. They brought the cabinet with glass doors from the old house, a gorgeous piece that had belonged to Mercada and Raphael. The inside of the cabinet was fitted with mirrors that reflected porcelain and crystal pieces so elegant and delicate that Rosa’s heart wouldn’t allow her to give them away. On the cabinet’s marble top rested silver-framed photographs of her and Gabriel, young and good-looking, from the time of their engagement. He is seated on a chair holding a newspaper, and she is wearing elegant black clothes of the kind she hasn’t worn for years, standing beside him tense and grave. Beside their engagement picture was a family photograph of the two of them sitting on chairs, with the three girls behind them. And in Gabriel and Rosa’s bedroom stood the magnificent wardrobe with mirrored doors and two lions on top.
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem Page 21