The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  Luna remained on the couch, her eyes filled with tears. Why, God? Why were she and her mother not like all the other mothers and daughters? Why wasn’t she like her sisters with her mother, and why was it only she who didn’t get along with her? What had gone awry between them and when? Was it when she was still in her mother’s womb? Because she couldn’t remember one day in her life when they’d gotten along, when they’d exchanged words of affection, when they’d spoken, period. Only shouting, only anger. In God’s name, she swore, when I have a daughter, God willing, I’ll do everything to bring her close to me. I’ll hug her and kiss her and tell her how much I love her, unlike my mother who’s never uttered words of love to me in her life, my mother who most of the time gives me that look of hers that says, Get the hell out of my sight!

  She hadn’t managed to dry her tears when Rosa came back and stood in front of her.

  “What now?”

  “There’s another thing I haven’t spoken to you about,” Rosa said. “You have to put some money on the table.”

  “What money? What are you talking about?”

  “The money you earn. What, can’t you see that your father is barely bringing any money home? Are you so busy with yourself that you can’t see anybody else? You go on living like a princess when your father stopped being a king a long time ago.”

  Luna felt the anger rising in her throat. “Don’t you talk about my father like that! My father was born a king and he’ll always be a king! Never, do you hear, never say even one bad word about my father!”

  “What did I say?” Rosa mumbled, ignoring the insults her daughter had hurled at her. “All I tried to tell you was that your father doesn’t have money like he used to.”

  “How do you know what my father has or hasn’t got? Since when has he told you anything? When has he ever spoken to you about the shop? When did he talk to you about how hurt he is that Nona Mercada hasn’t set foot in this house since the day she ran away to Tia Allegra in Tel Aviv because of you? You, you’re good for only one thing for my father, cooking and cleaning. You who used to be a servant in the houses of the English, now you’re a servant in the house of Gabriel Ermosa!”

  Rosa’s hand came up involuntarily and she slapped her daughter’s cheek hard. Her hand hurt from the force of the blow, and the sound of the slap resonated in her ears.

  Stunned, Luna put a hand to her cheek, and without thinking, started hitting Rosa mercilessly.

  “Stop it!” Becky ran into the room and tried to separate her mother and sister. But Luna didn’t stop. She grasped Rosa by the hair and pulled it hard, yelling to high heaven as her mother tried to free herself from her grip. But she was holding on tight, and at any moment she’d scalp her completely. Little Becky was between them, crying out, “Stop, stop it, Luna. Stop!” and “Basta, Mother!” until she succumbed to tears.

  Becky’s weeping eventually separated them. Mother and daughter retreated, each to a different end of the room, leaving Becky sprawled on the floor between them.

  “Don’t cry, Becky,” Luna said, bending over her sister and forgetting the anger that had engulfed her only moments ago, completely ignoring that, God help them, she had dared to raise a hand to her mother.

  Becky shoved her off roughly and yelled, “Don’t touch me!”

  “Becky, I’m sorry,” Luna said instead of begging her mother for forgiveness. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not!” Becky shouted. “You’re never sorry! You have no respect for anybody, for anything! You’re horrible!”

  Rosa left the room and took a seat in the yard. Her heart went out to little Becky, but she was hurt and wounded and unable to extend a hand to anyone. God help them, how could it have happened that her daughter, the flesh of her flesh, had raised a hand to her as if she were a woman from the street?

  Becky followed her mother outside and sat on her knee. She put her arms around Rosa’s neck, and the two of them wept on each other’s shoulder.

  This was how David found them when he came to pick up Luna. “What happened?” he asked, frightened.

  “Ask your fiancée,” Becky said.

  When Luna came to the door, David said, “Luna, what happened to Becky and your mother?”

  “We had a quarrel,” she said.

  “Who, you and your sister?”

  “No, me and my mother.”

  “You quarreled?” Becky interrupted. “Tell your fiancé the truth. Tell him so he knows who he’s marrying!” Becky shouted through her tears.

  “What happened?” David asked again as he followed Luna inside.

  “Enough, David. Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone or anything else! What happened to make your mother and your sister cry?” He looked at Luna, confused and ashamed.

  “I’m ready now. Let’s go,” Luna said, turning to the door.

  “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “What does it matter? We’re always fighting. We’ve been fighting since the day I was born.”

  “Apologize to your mother.”

  “Never!”

  “Luna, she’s your mother. Apologize to her.”

  “I’m not apologizing to her. She should apologize to me.”

  “Luna, we’re getting married in a month’s time. I don’t want a situation, God forbid, where your mother won’t come to our wedding.”

  “She’ll come, don’t worry. She won’t let people talk.”

  “Luna!” he said, raising his voice. “If you don’t go back into the yard right now and apologize to your mother, I’ll walk through that door and I won’t come back.”

  “What?” Luna was shocked.

  “You heard me. I don’t like your behavior. I’ve never heard of such a thing, a daughter acting like this with her mother! What does it say about you?”

  “What does it say about her? She’s my mother. She’s the one who makes me lose my temper.”

  “Go and apologize now.”

  “But David…”

  “Now!”

  Luna realized that she had no choice. If she didn’t want to lose David, she had to swallow her pride and apologize to Rosa. Reluctantly she went back into the yard, and at the sight of Becky and Rosa with their arms around each other, she tried to turn and retrace her steps, but David was blocking the doorway and prodding her. The words stuck in her throat as she went over to Rosa and barely audibly said, “I’m sorry.”

  Rosa raised her eyes to her daughter’s, but there was no remorse there, only a glassy, remote expression.

  “May God forgive you,” she said and turned her back to her.

  Luna stood there not knowing what to do next. David came to her aid and said, “Senora Rosa, I don’t know what happened, but believe me, Luna is very sorry and I promise you it will never happen again.”

  Rosa nodded. “Thank you, David, thank you. Now take your fiancée and go to wherever you’re going. It’s best that Luna isn’t here when her father gets home from the shop.”

  Rosa never told Gabriel what happened between her and Luna. Together with all the family she prepared for her eldest daughter’s wedding, but she couldn’t join in on the great excitement that filled the house. She drew strength from the fact that, gracias el Dio, Luna would soon be gone to her husband’s house and she would no longer have grief because of her, just as her neighbor Tamar had told her all those years ago.

  But no one in the Ermosa family knew that the wedding Luna was so excited about was built on quicksand. Nobody had any idea about the talk David had had with Moise before the wedding.

  “She’s not such a paragon of virtue,” David told Moise when they met after the incident between Luna and Rosa. “She has the face of an angel, but if you saw her face when she talks to her mother, I’m not all that sure I’m getting a good deal.”

  “Come on, David. There isn’t a guy in Jerusalem who doesn’t envy you for catching Luna.”

  “I’m scar
ed I’m buying a pig in a poke,” David confided. “I thought my problems were solved when I met her, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “The fact that she doesn’t get along with her mother doesn’t mean that she won’t with you.”

  “She doesn’t respect her mother, and I think that’s unforgivable.”

  “David, stay out of it. You don’t know what goes on between mother and daughter. It’s none of your business. Your future mother-in-law won’t be living with you and Luna, and her relationship with her daughter won’t affect yours with Luna.”

  “I thought I’d finally met a girl who’d get Isabella out of my mind, but now I just don’t know.”

  “Maybe she’ll get Isabella out of your mind,” Moise said quietly. “But the question is, amigo, whether she’ll get Isabella out of your heart.”

  * * *

  In the weeks that followed, apart from absolutely necessary communication, Rosa and Luna avoided speaking to each other. If Gabriel suspected that something had happened between his daughter and wife, he gave no hint of it. He was very preoccupied with the shop and the arrangements for Luna’s wedding. Becky chose not to tell him about the terrible fight either, and spoke about it only to one person, her boyfriend Handsome Eli Cohen.

  “If I hadn’t gotten there in time they would have killed each other,” she told him, and he’d advised her not to interfere, and more important, not to tell her father. She didn’t speak again to Luna about what had happened, and Rachelika, who was deeply immersed in her new romance with Moise, hadn’t even noticed the rising tension and distance between her mother and older sister. After all, Luna and Rosa had never been close.

  As the day of the wedding approached, Luna and her sisters’ excitement reached a new frenzy: Luna’s wedding dress, Rachelika’s and Becky’s bridesmaids’ dresses, the invitations that the three sisters delivered by hand to relatives and friends. Only Rosa was not involved. Not with the wedding dress, not with the invitations, not with any of the arrangements. She sometimes struggled not to burst out and spoil the mood.

  Rosa wasn’t always able to control herself either. One evening when they sat down for dinner, Gabriel noticed that she hadn’t touched her food.

  “Eat,” he told her. “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “I don’t want to eat!” she replied angrily. “Your daughters have ruined my appetite.”

  Gabriel glanced at his daughters, not understanding what she was talking about. “What’s happened, Rosa? Is there something I don’t know?”

  “What you don’t know you don’t want to know!” she answered, getting up from the table and hurrying into the yard.

  She was greeted by a starry night. Another thirty days until Luna’s wedding, she thought as she took a seat on the stool. How would she be able to stand under the wedding canopy and pretend she was happy when her heart had been pierced by a thousand knives? She closed her eyes and wished Ephraim could be there to stand beside her and give her strength. She sat for a long time until she got the feeling that she was no longer alone. She opened her eyes and saw Tamar.

  “Dio santo, you startled me,” she said to Tamar.

  “Why are you sitting outside like this all on your own?”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s a bit crowded in the house.”

  “Yes,” said Tamar, “mashallah, you’ve become a big family what with Luna’s and Rachelika’s fiancés.”

  “And Becky’s boy,” Rosa added.

  “Becky has a boy?”

  “She’s not yet fourteen and she already wants to marry him,” she said, managing a smile.

  “Well, with God’s help.”

  Tamar took a stool next to Rosa’s. They sat there side by side for a long while, not talking about the rift between them, not saying a word about either Matilda Franco or Ephraim. They didn’t talk about the long, difficult period that had passed. They sat in silence, each listening to the beating of the other’s heart.

  Perhaps there is a God, Rosa thought. Perhaps all isn’t lost. Here, in the midst of all the sorrow, one good thing had emerged: Her soulmate vizina Tamar had come back to her.

  Calmer, she went inside, but now it was Gabriel who was scowling. “This boy of Becky’s,” he hissed at her, “he came in the morning, now it’s nighttime and he’s still here! Doesn’t he have a home?”

  “Don’t get angry, Gabriel,” Rosa soothed him. “He’s a good boy.”

  “I don’t like him being here all the time. Becky’s still a child.”

  “They want to get married.”

  “Married? What are we, Arabs? She’s not even fourteen. I’m going to kick him out!”

  “No, querido, don’t do that. Now that Luna’s getting married and Rachelika will also marry, God willing, Becky will be all on her own, the miskenica. It’s good she’s got Handsome Eli Cohen around.”

  “What’s this Handsome Eli Cohen? What kind of a name is that?”

  “It’s what the girls call him. They say he’s as handsome as a movie star.”

  “Looks aren’t important, woman! The main thing is what a person does with his life.”

  “He has a job, Gabriel. He’s a good boy, may he be healthy, industrious. He works as a clerk at the post office, and in the evening he’s learning clerical work and accountancy at the Nachmani School.”

  “Whatever, but I don’t want to see him in front of me all the time. I don’t want him getting too close to Becky.”

  And why not? Rosa thought to herself. Wasn’t it better than them roaming the streets? Out there, God help them, it was dangerous. There were signs of war. It was best that Becky and Handsome Eli Cohen be at home where she could keep an eye on them.

  * * *

  In the winter of 1946, Jerusalem was cloaked in white. Heavy snow fell on the city, covering its houses and streets with what seemed like a white down quilt. The preparations for David and Luna’s wedding were at fever pitch, and once the sky cleared, the sun came out from behind the clouds, and the first birds heralded the start of spring, the wedding day had finally arrived.

  Luna had chosen her wedding dress with extra care after going through dozens of Burda magazines devoted to bridal wear with endless patience and deliberation. It was a stunning white silk dress that fell to the floor, with tiny pearl buttons at the front and down to the waistline.

  Her beautiful hair was gathered into a fine white lace net at the nape of her neck, gleaming in hues of gold and red around her heart-shaped face. Her white veil flowed from a tiara inset with precious stones, and in her white-gloved hands she held a bouquet of white carnations. She looked royal.

  When David saw her for the first time in a week—as was the custom before a wedding—she took his breath away. He could not have wished for a more perfect bride. She was everything he had envisioned during the long months after he and his comrades had been informed they were leaving Italy and going back home to Palestine. She was the woman he had imagined when he’d decided to get married immediately upon his return to Jerusalem and set up a Jewish home with one of their women.

  Luna too couldn’t take her eyes off the handsome man who was about to become her husband. He was wearing an elegant black pinstripe suit, a starched white shirt with a stiff collar, and a bow tie that complemented his shirt. From the top pocket of his finely tailored suit peeped a white carnation like the ones in her bouquet. There wasn’t a hair out of place in his dashing mustache. Together they were a beautiful couple, the perfect bride and groom.

  The wedding took place early on a Friday afternoon at the Menorah Club on Bezalel Street, which they had decorated with all of Luna’s favorite flowers. At the entrance, the bridesmaids, Rachelika and Becky, stood in matching dresses made for the occasion, handing out white tulle bags containing sugared almonds from Gabriel’s shop. As was standard at the time, the refreshments were modest. On white-clothed tables along the walls were jugs of lemonade and raspberry juice, cream cakes, borekas, and fruit trays.

  Gabriel felt immense joy at
the sight of his beautiful daughter and her handsome husband, and only one thing cast a pall over his happiness: the frugal refreshments. Ach, almighty God, he thought to himself. In normal times the tables would have been laden with dried fruit, almonds, raisins, sweets, a selection of cakes, all the bounty of the world and the country. But what can you do? Times are not what they were. Thank God that he could even afford to book a hall for his daughter’s wedding. He wouldn’t be able to rent a house for them, and certainly not buy one. The young couple had been invited to spend their first year of marriage at his table until they were on their feet and could move to their own home. This was the custom of mesa franca, the king’s table.

  Gabriel looked around the hall. All his close relatives were there, even his mother Mercada. She had come from Tel Aviv with his sister Allegra, brother-in-law Elazar, and all their children. His brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and even neighbors from Ohel Moshe, among them Tamar, who had attended despite Senora Franco’s dirty looks—they had all accepted the invitation to celebrate Luna’s wedding. Even his Kurdish partner Mordoch Levi was there with his wife and all their eight children. He was the only guest whom Gabriel wasn’t glad to see. He’d invited him because he’d felt he had no choice.

  Gabriel had been growing gradually weaker. His body was betraying him. He found it difficult to conceal the tremors and hard to walk, so he had to use a cane. He had been forced to sell the car he loved so much because its upkeep was costly, but mainly because he could no longer trust himself to drive. His foot trembled on the pedal, his hands shook on the wheel, and now he had to take a taxi to and from the Mahane Yehuda Market.

  The financial situation was as bad as it could be, and the state of the shop was going from bad to worse. Matzliach hadn’t gotten matters under control, and even the dedicated Rachelika and Moise couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. How could you make money if there weren’t any customers, and if there were some, there was hardly any stock left to sell them?

  He looked at Luna, radiant in her bridal gown, the smile not leaving her flawless face. He looked at Rachelika and Becky standing with their mother at one end of the hall. Rosa, mashallah, it’d been a long time since he’d seen her so happy, as if Luna’s marriage had taken a weight off her. She was even wearing a pretty dress, not like the shmattes she always wore. He turned his eyes from his wife standing at one end of the hall to his mother sitting at the other. The two women, he noticed, hadn’t exchanged a single word. As soon as Mercada came in, he’d hurried over to her and kissed her hand. She had nodded, greeted him, and walked as erectly as a proud young girl to sit at the far end of the hall. His daughters had rushed to their grandmother to kiss her hand, and Rosa had taken a deep breath and she too joined the long line of relatives making the pilgrimage to the sour old woman.