The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  * * *

  “Let her go to work,” Gabriel said to Rachelika when she shared Luna’s proposal of going back to Zacks & Son to help with the family’s finances. “She doesn’t help in the house, and anyway you and Becky look after Gabriela while she sits with her legs crossed.”

  “How can she go to work?” said the shocked Rosa, whose voice had been increasingly heard since Gabriel had fallen ill. “Gabriela’s not yet six months old. What will the neighbors say?”

  “What do I care what the neighbors say,” Gabriel shouted. “Let her go to work!”

  “Dio santo, Gabriel, whoever heard of a mother leaving her baby before she’s a year old and going to work?”

  “So what do you suggest, Rosa? That I get up out of this chair and go out robbing for money?”

  “God forbid, what are you saying?”

  “Mother,” Rachelika tried to calm things down, “there’s no choice. The money will run out any minute. Somebody has to bring in an income.”

  “Then I’ll go back to cleaning houses!” Rosa said, not quite believing she’d actually uttered those words.

  “Wait a while longer until I die and then go back to cleaning houses,” Gabriel said. “It won’t be much longer—a few months, no more.”

  “God forbid, pishcado y limon, tfu-tfu-tfu, how can you let nonsense like that out of your mouth?”

  “I talk nonsense and you’re as wise as an owl. Do you hear yourself? The wife of Gabriel Ermosa will clean houses? Do you want to take away the little dignity I have left?”

  “God forbid, querido, God forbid, don’t get angry, it’s bad for you. I only wanted to help so Luna doesn’t have to work and can stay home for Gabriela.”

  “Mother, Luna doesn’t even look after the baby. It’s you, Becky, and me who do. Luna’s in no state to look after the baby right now. We have to let time take its course.”

  Rachelika knew full well that Luna’s chances of getting a job at Zacks & Son were slim. They should pray the shop was even still open and that Mr. Zacks hadn’t closed it because of the situation. But it was better that Luna had something to do, healthier for both her and the family.

  Luna was beside herself with happiness when Rachelika told her the news, but she forced herself to sit quietly on the couch and not jump for joy. There’s a god in heaven who hears prayers, she told herself. And even Rachelika, who warned her not to get too excited before she was sure that Mr. Zacks needed a saleslady at a time like this, couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm. Luna didn’t understand why a war should stop women from buying clothes. Never mind that there was no food—Jerusalem was under siege, and there was nobody to bring fruit and vegetables and even meat or flour to the market—there were plenty of dresses hanging in the shop. The mannequins in the window were still styled in last year’s clothes and were just begging for Luna to come and change them.

  That same day Luna put on a tailored gray suit, and although she hadn’t regained her figure and had to wear a corset, the cut of the jacket accentuated her slim hips. She looked at herself in the mirror and was pleased for the first time since she’d had the baby.

  She slung an elegant black purse over her shoulder, put on a pair of high-heeled pumps that set off her beautiful ankles and legs, and walked through the Ohel Moshe gate, her heels tapping and her head held high as if her whole life lay before her.

  It had been a long time since she’d walked down the slope of Agrippas Street toward Jaffa Road and the Pillars Building. The continuous shelling from the direction of Nabi Samwil had put an end to her strolls, and she’d left Ohel Moshe only when she’d had to. She wasn’t surprised by the almost deserted streets or the sandbags and sand-filled wooden crates in the doorways of houses and shops. People were being killed every day. One day, one of their neighbors, a draft evader, was walking to the Mahane Yehuda Market when shrapnel from a shell exploding nearby sheared off his head.

  “Miskenico,” Rosa had said, “if he’d gone to the war perhaps he’d still be alive.”

  The family of one of Luna’s girlfriends from school, seven people in all, were killed when their house took a direct hit from the shelling. The Jews of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter were imprisoned in the Quarter and could leave and reenter only in armored vehicles. The relentless shelling and the siege choked the city, turning the lives of its inhabitants into one of constant terror and fear. The soldiers of Mishmar Haam, the Jewish home guard, and Meginei Yerushalayim, the defenders of Jerusalem, could be seen everywhere. Young boys, children almost, and men too old to fight on the front stood shoulder to shoulder and did what they could to protect the citizens from the shelling, which had become a daily occurrence.

  As she walked, Luna could hear shelling and shooting from the eastern part of the city. Fear stole into her heart, but her excitement over the possibility of working in the shop again kept her going. Soldiers whistled at her as she passed. “Hey, sweetie pie!” they called out, and she smiled and was as happy as she’d once been, before she’d married David, before she’d had Gabriela, before the war. Fully aware of the glances of the passerby, every now and then she brushed her red curls aside and tightened her suit against her slim frame. And then, just as she reached the Eden Cinema and the junction of Jaffa Road and King George Street, she heard a terrifying whistle that almost tore her eardrums apart, an awful, petrifying noise. She felt a tremendous force carry her like a tsunami wave, and then she lost consciousness.

  * * *

  All at once Agrippas Street was filled with the wail of ambulance sirens. The shelling had been more intense than usual, destroying houses on the street and in adjacent neighborhoods. Clouds of smoke enveloped the street, and ambulances sped over from Bikur Holim Hospital at the center of the city. Shouts and screams and cries could be heard from every direction. The soldiers barely managed to control the commotion as they set up a fence around the area to prevent people from entering it, and then began evacuating the wounded.

  Rachelika was at the grocery next door to Rachmo when she heard the explosion and immediately started running.

  “Wait a minute,” the grocer tried to stop her. “Wait until we know where the shelling’s coming from.” But Rachelika had already crossed the street, though not without almost being mowed down by a horse and cart. Something told her to hurry, so she ran faster, straining every muscle. She had a feeling that something terrible had happened. Just not Boaziko, just not Gabriela, she prayed. When she reached her parents’ house exhausted, people were crowding around the door. Frightened, she burst in, and only when she saw that Boaz and Gabriela were safe did she breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God, she thought. She’d been scared for nothing.

  “What are all the neighbors doing here?” she asked Rosa.

  “As soon as we heard the noise they all came to hear what happened on your father’s radio.”

  “And Luna?”

  “Probably at Zacks & Son. She’ll come back soon when they let people through,” Rosa replied and scurried back into the kitchen. She didn’t want to worry about Luna. She had habas con arroz on the stove and Gabriel to worry about, and Luna, God willing, would arrive soon.

  “We need to go and look for her,” Gabriel called out.

  “Come on, Becky,” Rachelika said. “We’ll run to Zacks & Son.”

  “Be careful,” Rosa begged them. “It’s very dangerous outside. Only walk where the soldiers tell you, don’t be heroes.” Dio santo, she would have preferred that her daughters stay home and not go out at such a time, but she too understood that her husband would not sit quietly until Luna showed her face. All she could do now was pray and contend with the faces Gabriel made because he’d had enough of eating habas con arroz every day. But what could you do, God forgive her sins, when they couldn’t afford anything other than rice and beans?

  Rachelika and Becky ran down Agrippas Street. Disobeying their mother and avoiding the soldiers who were keeping people out of the shelled area, they took a roundabout route through the alleys, between
the debris of the collapsed buildings, trying not to think about the bloodstains on the sidewalk. Out of breath they finally reached Zacks & Son, only to find that the shop was locked.

  As if possessed, they continued running up Jaffa Road toward Bikur Holim Hospital. They stormed inside, looking for Luna in all the wards, but she wasn’t there.

  “Maybe she’s home already,” Becky said hopefully.

  “Let’s keep on looking,” Rachelika replied. They crossed the street and then ran to Hadassah Hospital, and that’s where they found her.

  “She was wounded in the shelling,” the girls were told when they arrived. “Badly wounded. She’s in surgery. The doctors are doing everything they can to save her.”

  The two sisters sat down on the cold stone floor and burst into tears.

  “I shouldn’t have let her leave the house at a time like this,” Rachelika sobbed. “I just let her go. I knew that Zacks & Son was closed. I knew that nobody’s buying clothes now. I knew it was dangerous outside. Why did I let her go?”

  “Papo knew as well,” Becky said. “And so did Luna, but she was suffocating in the house. We needed to let her feel that she was doing something. You could see she wasn’t bonding with the baby, you could see it was hard for her. It hurt me more for the baby than for her. I could see her sadness. She had to get out of the house.”

  “That’s why I urged Papo to let her look for a job,” Rachelika confessed. “That’s why he put on a show for Mother as if Luna could save the family with the few grush she earned in the shop, that’s why he told me to give her his consent. Miskenica Lunika, I’m sure she felt she was going for nothing too, that deep down she knew the shop was closed and that Mr. Zacks was sitting at home like the rest of us.”

  “What will happen if she dies? Gabriela’s not six months old and she won’t have a mother.” Becky wept.

  They cried in each other’s arms until Rachelika regained her composure and said, “We have to speak to the doctors, hear what her condition is, and then we’ll have to go and tell Papo and Mother.”

  “How can we tell Papo?” Becky asked through her tears. “He’s hanging on by a thread as it is. If he hears that Luna’s seriously wounded it’ll finish him.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. Right now let’s wait for the doctors.”

  The hours ticked by and Luna didn’t come out of the operating room.

  “You go home,” Rachelika told Becky. “They must be going crazy with worry. I’ll stay here until Luna comes out.”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” Becky insisted. “If anybody goes, it should be you. You have to nurse Boaziko and give Gabriela her bottle. They’re probably so hungry they’re turning the house upside down.”

  “God almighty, I completely forgot,” Rachelika said in a panic. “I completely forgot the babies! All right, you stay here, I’ll go tell Papo and Mother. I’ll feed the babies and come straight back.”

  “Go and be careful on the way. I won’t move from here.”

  But before Rachelika could get up and go, the door of the operating room opened and one of the doctors came out.

  “Is there anybody here from the family of Luna Siton?”

  “We are,” they said as they jumped up and held their breath.

  “We’ve operated on the patient,” the doctor said. “She’s very seriously wounded, almost all her internal organs have been damaged, but she’s young. She’ll live.”

  * * *

  While Luna was fighting for her life, Jerusalem was fighting for its life too. The city was under siege and the water supply piped into the city from Rosh Haayin was cut off by the Arabs.

  “Thank God there’s a cistern in every yard,” Gabriel told his daughters. “Without it we’d die of thirst.” He ordered them to place empty cans on the roof and in the yard to collect rainwater for washing themselves and the dishes, and then they’d use the dirty water to wash the floor. A short time later the Mishmar Haam would distribute leaflets in the city with similar instructions.

  Rosa and the girls emptied a few tins planted with geraniums in the yard and wasted some of the precious water supply to wash them with soap. Then they took the tins to Agrippas Street, where they waited with the rest of the neighborhood for the allocation of water from tankers that went from one neighborhood to the next. Each family was given one can of water for drinking and another for washing, but there wasn’t always enough. Gabriel remembered that there was a cistern at the Etz Ha’Haim yeshiva not far from his shop in the market. He knew the man in charge of pumping. Every Friday before Shabbat he used to fill the man’s basket with free goodies for his family. It was time to be repaid for everything Gabriel had given over the years, so he sent Rachelika, and the man opened the cistern and filled her can, off the books.

  Kerosene was also running out. We’ll soon have to light the Primus with arak, thought Rosa. The kerosene the Mishmar Haam give out in glasses is barely enough for a pot of soup! Many families in the neighborhood had resorted to sending their children to stand by the chimney at Berman’s bakery with tins to catch the dripping oil.

  Life in the Ermosa house revolved around taking care of the babies and Gabriel, whose condition was worsening. His mind was as clear and sharp as it had always been, but his speech was increasingly difficult to understand. They had to bend over him and put their ear to his lips to comprehend him. And yet, though his handsome face was gray, it surprisingly did not bear a single wrinkle. Amazing, Rachelika thought. He has the face of a young man and the body of an old man, and he’s not yet forty-eight.

  Since he’d been called back from the front after Luna’s injuries, David’s life was divided between his wounded wife in the hospital, his baby daughter at his in-laws’ house, and his guard duty at various posts surrounding Jerusalem. Every morning Gabriela’s crying would rouse David from his restless sleep. He’d hurry over, pick her up, and tickle her tummy with his nose, and the child would smile back at him. He’d give her the bottle that Rachelika had pumped the previous evening, change her diaper, play with her a while, and then rush to the hospital to be with Luna.

  At the hospital, he’d leap over the sandbags at the entrance and quickly climb the stairs to the second floor. The corridors were crowded with the wounded. Their cries, along with the weeping of relatives and the desperation of the few overworked doctors and nurses who were unable to keep up with the flow of victims arriving every hour, always broke his heart, and the awful stench of urine mixed with ointments and disinfectant made him dizzy.

  “Lunika,” David whispered to her one morning. She was lying in her bed, eyes closed, hooked up to an IV and other devices which although he’d been told their function innumerable times, he still hadn’t understood. She looked so small, a little, broken-winged bird, even the narrow hospital bed too big for her frame. Her face was twisted with pain, her lips, cracked. She was one big wound. He didn’t dare touch her, God forbid he break her fragile body.

  When she didn’t respond, he put his hand under her nose, to her lips. She was breathing, thank God. This he did every morning to make sure she was alive, the way he did at night when he checked on Gabriela.

  There wasn’t a chair in the room, and he was afraid to sit on the bed in case he grazed her damaged body. “Lunika,” he whispered again.

  “She’s alive,” said the man in the next bed. “Barely, but she’s alive.”

  He was a boy of maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, and he was wounded from head to toe, his whole body swaddled in bandages. His face was swollen, and blood had collected on it and in his golden hair. Only his blue eyes burned with the vitality of youth.

  “Where were you wounded?” David asked him.

  “At Bab el-Wad,” the boy replied. “I was in a convoy that tried to break the siege when we were attacked from Beit Makhsir. Luckily they were able to get me out and brought me here in an armored vehicle. The doctors operated and saved my life, but it’ll only be after they take off the bandages that we’ll see what’s been salva
ged.” He grimaced in a short laugh.

  “The main thing is you’re laughing, and that’s something.” David smiled.

  “Well, what else can I do, cry?”

  “And your parents, the family know?”

  “My parents haven’t been here yet. They live a long way away, in Nahariya, and the city’s cut off, so there’s no way they can get here and no way to inform them.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you have family in Jerusalem?”

  “No, all my family’s in Nahariya.”

  “Well, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask,” David said.

  “Thanks,” the young man said. “I’m Gidi, but the guys call me Ginger. I’m sorry I can’t shake hands. And she,” he asked, “where was she wounded?”

  “In the shelling on Agrippas Street.”

  “A relative?”

  “My wife, Luna. We have a six-month-old daughter. I was on the southern front when it happened. I was only told a few days after it happened and was granted permission to come to Jerusalem. I came with one of the convoys, and now I’m here looking after the baby and my wife.”

  “They released you from the front?”

  “I’m currently serving at the outposts around Jerusalem. I’ll go back to the front when my wife’s condition improves. I have to go now, I’m due on duty. If a miracle happens and she starts talking, tell her I was here. Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Two complicated operations were needed to save my mother, and she barely survived either. My father was there when she had the first, sitting for many hours with Rachelika and Becky outside the operating room, praying for her life. He spent many days at his wife’s bedside, and every other free moment he spent with me, his baby daughter. But as sixty days went by and there was no improvement in my mother’s condition, he felt that if he continued living this way he’d go insane. He needed to be at the front, taking part in the war. That’s what he’d done when he’d fought against the fascists in Italy, it’s what he’d done when he’d fought against Rommel’s army, and now he wanted to fight against Kaoukji’s army. He missed the south, the jeeps, the stocking hat. He missed the battalion’s Oras, raven-haired Ora and blond Ora, Ora the kibbutznik and Ora the Tel Avivan. They were always dancing attention on him and he liked to give each of them the feeling that she was the only Ora for him. He’d loved the easygoing atmosphere of his unit, the leather jackets, the goggles, the scarves, the unconditional bond. He loved telling chizbatim, tall tales, and most of all he loved being behind the wheel of the reconnaissance jeep. How he missed speeding between the hills. He’d never forget the fusillade of fire the battalion took near Negba. He’d felt that his life might be over when the jeep’s tires were shot out and it came to a halt, but on the other hand, he’d had this feeling of elation. And right then, just as he’d really begun to enjoy the war, Luna had been wounded and he was sent back to Jerusalem.