The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  Only one time in his life—when was it? way back while he was in Italy, in a life so different from his life today—had his heart caught him by surprise and overtook his common sense. He’d become quite the Don Juan when they’d been posted to Mestre near Venice at the end of the war. As soon as he and his comrades had settled into the houses of the wealthy people who’d abandoned the town in panic, he embarked on a mad pursuit of the pleasures of life. The war years had left him with a hunger for life. The Italian girls shamelessly offered themselves, and he happily accepted, two or three women of all ages every day. He would never forget the day he’d unknowingly slept with a mother and her daughter. How could he have known they were mother and daughter? The mother had looked like her daughter’s older sister. They weren’t whores. They were simply hungry for food and attention. He’d left them a larger wad of bills than usual and took off. Nothing like that had ever happened to any of his comrades. They’d all slept with lots of women, but none had done it with a mother and daughter one after the other.

  Since then David Siton’s reputation had preceded him. Of all the guys, he was without a doubt the Don Juan. And so it went on for many weeks—women, women, women—until he’d met Isabella.

  He and the guys had been sitting as usual in a café in the piazza. Slowly the number of men around the table dwindled as they left with their arms around Italian girls who’d been awaiting their chance to have a good time with a soldier. He and Moise were the last ones left at their table: David, because he didn’t fancy any of the girls that day, and Moise, who was always the last to leave. He was shy and introverted, and David almost had to force him to take a girl out. Just as he was thinking of getting up and trying his luck at a club, David saw her riding her bike.

  Moise had absolutely no idea that while he was leaving the field to his friend, as he had dozens of times before, David the Don Juan was about to lose his head and fall in love with an Italian girl. From that moment on, no other woman existed for him. David spent every free moment with her, riding bikes through the alleyways of Venice, gliding in a gondola and paying the gondolier an extortionate sum to serenade her. He took her to restaurants and cafés, went dancing with her in clubs, pampered her with boxes of chocolate, silk stockings, and the perfume she loved.

  David quickly became one of the family at her parents’ home, a rural stone house surrounded by a garden. While Mestre’s markets were suffering shortages, the army canteen was fully stocked, and every weekend he’d bring the family a basket of provisions. “God bless you,” her father would say as they sat at the big table in the yard for a feast fit for a king.

  Years later he would try to retrieve the taste of the pasta and tomato sauce that Isabella and her mother had cooked, the taste of Parmesan cheese melted into the sauce, the taste of Isabella. Throughout his life he would miss the fragrance of the basil and thyme that grew in big clay pots in her parents’ yard, the beauty of the bougainvillea that blossomed in hues of bright red. The big wooden table, the noisy family around it, the fine wine that was so different from the sweet Kiddush wine of Shabbat eve in Jerusalem.

  “I’m in love,” David had told Moise. “I’ve never felt this way. This woman has stolen my heart.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” replied the always serious Moise. “We’ll be going home in a few months. What will you do then?”

  “I’ll take her with me. I’ll bring her to Jerusalem.”

  “How can you bring her to Jerusalem? Your father will never accept a Christian daughter-in-law.”

  “She’ll convert. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Are you out of your mind? Where are your brains? There’s not even the slightest chance that your father will accept her. Your family will disown you.”

  “We’ll see,” David said. “Meanwhile we have time, and until it’s time to make decisions, I’m celebrating love.”

  Isabella became an inseparable part of his life. They went everywhere together. Even when he went out with his comrades he brought her along and introduced her as his girlfriend. One evening as they lay naked on a secluded beach they’d discovered a few months earlier, David told her, “I’ll give you the moon and the stars if you ask for them.” The lights of Venice glimmered in the distance, and the sky was strewn with stars. They swam naked, and afterward she spread out a blanket and they’d made love. Isabella was a passionate lover. He’d never met such a sensual woman. She loved pampering him; she taught him things he didn’t know, leading his fingers along the hidden curves of her body and instructing him in how to pleasure her. He loved to hear the moans that escaped her sweet lips. Who would have believed that he could enjoy pleasuring a woman so much?

  Then came the day of their parting. Their officers informed them that their mission was complete and they would be going back to Palestine. Isabella begged David to take her with him. He was beside himself. On the one hand, he wanted to be with her for eternity, to marry her, have children with her, but on the other, he knew that his father and his family would never approve. He knew that a devout Catholic like Isabella could never become Jewish, even if she did convert. Deep in her heart she would always be seeking a church where she could kneel before the crucified Christ, and in Jerusalem there were churches on every corner. His heart wanted it, wanted it so much he thought it might explode, but his head told him no.

  “I love you more than life itself,” he told her painfully. “I don’t believe I will ever love a woman the way I love you, but we have no chance. My father will never accept you.”

  Even though he did his best to harden his heart, David almost collapsed onto her shoulder and wept with her. He was unable to change the way of his world. He had to return to Jerusalem, find himself a decent woman, and get married. He could never marry an Italian Catholic even if she was the love of his life.

  On the boat to Haifa, he shared his plans with Moise. As soon as David arrived in Jerusalem he’d look for one of their women and marry her. “A new love heals the wounds of an old one,” he told Moise. “My heart’s broken into pieces, but I’ll put it back together and forget Isabella. There’s no other way.”

  “How can you forget her when your kit bag’s filled with photographs of her and you spend all your time looking at them?” Moise asked him. “If I were you, I’d throw them into the sea.”

  “I’m not throwing anything into the sea. Those photos are a memento from the most beautiful time in my life.”

  By the next day he was already back in his parents’ home in Jerusalem. Each day he went out looking for work, and in the evenings he’d go out with the guys, flitting from one of the city’s cafés to another, and then to dance clubs. And it was there, in Café Europa, that David first spotted Luna. He asked about the good-looking girl doing the tango like a Spanish dancer, and was told her name, that she came from a good, well-to-do family, that her father Gabriel Ermosa had a shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market, and that she worked as a saleslady at Zacks & Son, ladies’ clothing, on Jaffa Road. He knew what he had to do and began spinning his web to snare her. He learned that she was a prize catch, that she rejected all her suitors with a flat-out no and didn’t give herself up easily.

  “So who does she go dancing with?” he asked.

  “Her sister and cousins and a few friends from Ohel Moshe.”

  David conducted in-depth research on Luna Ermosa. From his mother he learned that there was a schism in the Ermosa family between the mother, Mercada, and her son Gabriel, Luna’s father, and that Gabriel, who was very wealthy, was not a well man and his businesses were not doing well. None of this really interested David. He wasn’t going to marry her father’s businesses, he was going to marry Luna. He’d chosen her for his wife almost from the moment he first set eyes on her. It would be she who removed Isabella from his heart, once and for all.

  Every day he’d go to Jaffa Road, stand between the building’s columns, and observe Zacks & Son. Occasionally he’d see her come outside for a break and lean against the door, dresse
d to the nines, elegant and well put together. Sometimes he’d watch her go into Barashi’s seed and nut shop in the adjacent alley and come back with a bag of sunflower seeds. Once a week she’d climb into the shop window holding a pincushion in her teeth and change the mannequin’s clothes. That, David knew, was his opportunity. He would stand by the window and catch her attention.

  Luna had no idea that for weeks now David had been planning to woo her. She of course thought that he’d passed the shop window by chance and was flattered when he’d told her he didn’t know which of them was the real doll, she or the mannequin. She hadn’t known that he’d been rehearsing that line for a long time. And as he’d expected, she fell right into his hands like ripe fruit.

  Luna wasn’t shy when David kissed or hugged her in front of other people. On the contrary, she encouraged his public displays of affection, much the same way as she showed her love for him. But between the sheets she was as frightened as a tiny bird. Unlike Isabella, who was a bubbling spring, his young wife was a shy, inexperienced virgin.

  If he’d harbored hopes that she’d loosen up with time and let her natural instincts take over, he was disappointed. Unlike Isabella, who was all fire and brimstone and smoke, who writhed like a snake under him, who moved her body to the rhythm of his, who climaxed with a shout that threatened to perforate his eardrum, his wife was quiet and remote.

  When Luna finally became pregnant, he, like she, was relieved. He wasn’t surprised that she was happy to cooperate when he’d told her that they shouldn’t make love until after the baby was born. The months of pregnancy were hard, and her moods had made him spend more time at work and at the cinema. It was lucky that she liked being at her father’s house more than in their own home, lucky that she preferred her sisters’ company to his. It was lucky that soon war would break out and he’d be able to join the army and do what he loved best, be a soldier.

  But David’s plans to take off as soon as possible ran aground. He fell in love with the baby. Who would have believed that the baby would restore the light to his eyes, that the baby would give renewed meaning to his dull life? How much beauty God had given her, and what sweetness! Why didn’t her mother want to hold her? Why didn’t she want to nurse her? His wife had gone crazy. She didn’t even look at the baby, and now she didn’t want to leave Mount Scopus and go back home to Jerusalem.

  Seven days after I was born my mother was finally forced to vacate her hospital bed for another expectant mother, and much against her will consented to leave Mount Scopus in an armored convoy. The convoy drove slowly, the journey seeming to take an eternity to Luna, and even though the windows of the bus were armored and there were soldiers driving in front of and behind it, she didn’t feel safe and clung tightly to my father.

  She wasn’t mistaken, my mother. When the convoy reached Sheikh Jarrah, the bus was hit by a volley of stones. She shrank and tried to hide under the seat, but every movement hurt her, and when she bent down she felt that her insides were being torn apart.

  My father, who was holding me wrapped in a blanket, didn’t say a word about the fact that she’d first protected herself and not the baby, but he decided then and there that he’d take us straight to her parents’ house and leave us there. “Your mother and Becky will help you with the little one,” he told her, concealing the fact that as soon as they got there he was going to enlist for the war.

  My mother was terrified. She had absolutely no idea how she’d manage with me. She didn’t know how to feed me, how to change my diaper, how to hold me. Who would have believed that she had to be taught to be a mother? She thought it’d have come naturally, but not with her; nothing came naturally with her. Nobody had told her that her body would be ripped to shreds when she gave birth, that she’d be sewn up with a needle in her body’s most sensitive place, the place where every touch caused her to shudder. Who would have believed that her body would resist giving birth like this, so much so that instead of having a few contractions and giving birth in no time at all like Rachelika, whose baby had just slid out of her, her baby would refuse to come out and tear her insides apart for seventeen hours? Who would have believed that her body would resist her becoming a mother to the point that her breasts didn’t produce milk and that her baby would have to nurse on her sister’s breasts?

  These thoughts ran through Luna’s mind and gave her no peace. As the bus drove through the poor Arab neighborhoods, she closed her eyes and prayed they would make it safely. David didn’t stop kissing the baby, clicking his tongue and talking to her. But what would happen if he gave the baby to her to hold? She couldn’t, she was afraid she’d drop her, and the shooting that could be heard from all around, and the vehicles all around, she’d never seen so much traffic in the streets of Jerusalem. British police cars with their sirens wailing, groups of soldiers laying out concertina wire. Any minute there’d be a curfew and they’d be stuck on the bus with the baby and wouldn’t be able to get home.

  She calmed down only once they reached her parents’ house in Ohel Moshe. In the yard the neighbors were waiting to throw sweets at them and shout, “Mazal tov! Mabrouk! Sano que ’ste!”

  David immediately put the baby into Gabriel’s trembling arms, and Luna’s heart stopped. Just don’t let him drop the baby, she prayed. But once she saw Gabriel’s smile, her heart melted.

  “Preciosa, she’s beautiful,” he said. “She’s just as beautiful as her mother.” Luna saw a spark of happiness in his eyes, and she recalled how he’d loved her when she was little. Her heart swelled even more, and at that moment she made her decision.

  “Gabriela,” she told her father. “Her name’s Gabriela.”

  David’s eyes widened in shock. Rosa, who was on her way to the kitchen, halted. Rachelika, who was nursing Boaz, shook her head in disbelief. Only Becky clapped her hands in pleasure. “Gabriela,” she said, “what a pretty name!”

  “Thank you,” said Nono Gabriel. “Thank you very much. I’m honored.”

  And that’s how I was named Gabriela.

  About what happened next between my father and mother, Rachelika told me about it many years later, after my mother died.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he’d yelled at her. “How can you give a girl a boy’s name, and without even asking me?”

  “I wanted to give my father the respect he deserves.”

  “But why didn’t you consult me? She isn’t only your daughter, she’s mine too!”

  “It just came out, straight from the heart. I saw my father so happy for the first time in so many months and it came out spontaneously.”

  “Spontaneously? What will you tell my mother? How will I look now when I go to see my mother and tell her that I haven’t named my firstborn daughter after her?”

  “Your mother, praise God, has already got five granddaughters named after her. Isn’t that enough for her?”

  “It’s customary to name the first child after the father’s father or mother, and you know it.”

  “So give her a second name, Victoria, your mother’s name.”

  “Not a second name. I’ll give her a first name, Victoria, and the second name will be after your father.”

  “In your dreams! My father’s name first, and then your mother’s.”

  “Don’t talk crap! I’ve decided and that’s that!”

  “Excuse me,” said my mother, “is that any way to speak to me? What do you think, that I’m one of your buddies from the brigade? I’ve just given you a baby after seventeen hours of agony and that’s how you speak to me?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I apologize, forgive me,” he said and tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she shook it off and left the room angry and hurt. She was already irritable and restless and couldn’t bear the sight of the new body she’d been given.

  “Just look at these tires,” she wept to Rachelika, revealing her waist that had thickened slightly. “Look at these tetas,” she sobbed, cupping her breasts. For years she’d been called
“the airfield” because of her flat chest, but she had liked her breasts and pitied Rachelika for her heavy ones. Now she had to carry her own watermelons, yet with all their size they didn’t even produce milk.

  “Do you realize that a cow has an advantage over me?” she cried to Rachelika. “Do you realize that a cow gives milk and I don’t?”

  “It’s all mood,” her sister said. “There isn’t a woman who doesn’t have milk. You just have to calm down and release it.”

  “Release what? The milk? What, I’m locking it up in my tetas?”

  “You need to relax your mood a bit. You’ve been as tense as a spring since you had the baby and you’re being foolish. I told you it isn’t customary to name the first child after the mother’s father, but you went right ahead so you could fight with David. Why did you have to name the baby Gabriela?”

  “Because that’s what I decided, that my child would be named after Papo.”

  “But your child’s a girl.”

  “So what? Gabriela’s a nice name, an angel’s name. It’ll protect her.”

  * * *

  On May 15, 1948, a few months after I came into the world, the Ingelish, may their name be erased, finally left Palestine, and Nona Rosa practically danced on the table in delight. But the immense joy my nona felt on the departure of the hated Ingelish was mixed with immense anxiety regarding the future.

  The previous day, David Ben-Gurion had announced the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence that would determine the fate of the Jewish people. My nono’s radio didn’t stop spewing news. My father joined Ben-Gurion’s army without consulting my mother, and when he told her of his decision, she was so frightened, she almost dropped me.