The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  My mother was still not aware of the danger to my life. She was so worried about her own injuries and in such pain, so why add grief and sorrow? Every now and then she’d ask how her daughter was, and they’d report on her progress: She’d cut a new tooth, she’d begun standing in the playpen, she’d started crawling. Luna would smile and say, “May she be healthy,” and no more.

  But one day she said to David, “Maybe you’ll bring the little one tomorrow? I miss her.”

  So the next day Becky put me in a pink dress with pompons that Nona Rosa had knitted, tied a ribbon in my red curls, and handed me to my father.

  “We’re going to see Ima,” my father told me. “Ima, say Ima,” and I repeated it like a parrot. “It will make your ima very happy when she hears you say Ima.” He laughed, and again I repeated the new word I’d learned.

  My father was worried that, God forbid, I might catch a bug or some infection and become sick again, so he and Luna arranged to meet in the hospital garden.

  Luna made it down to the ground floor with great difficulty. Every step was very painful for her. Her wounds hadn’t yet healed, and she was worried that each step she took might open the stitches and her guts would spill out. But at each step she forced herself to keep going.

  “Be careful,” the redheaded neighbor had counseled her. “Go down very slowly and hold on to the banister.” He wanted to help her, but he himself was bedridden, unable to move his legs. It broke his heart to see Luna making such a tremendous effort for her daughter. She’d grunt in her sleep, groan with pain, weep into her pillow, covering her head with the hospital blanket so nobody would hear her, but he saw and he heard and he hurt for her.

  Luna limped from step to step until she reached the lobby, and from there she walked, almost crawled, to the gate. She came out just as David arrived with the baby. When she saw the child, she couldn’t believe how much she’d grown. She held out her arms to take her, but the moment my father passed me to her I started crying and kicking, refusing her arms. And Luna, who’d already forgotten the scene I’d made the last time I’d been brought to see her, stood there stunned and hurt.

  “She doesn’t recognize me,” she said painfully. “She has no idea that I’m her mother.”

  “She hasn’t seen you for ages,” David tried to console her. “Give her time and everything will be fine.”

  Luna could not conceal her pain and disappointment.

  “It doesn’t matter, David,” she said. “The main thing is that Gabriela’s well and being looked after.”

  “Don’t worry, my lovely, everyone’s looking after her. Your mother, your sisters, the neighbors, they all love her. She’s a good girl.”

  “Yes,” Luna muttered. “She’s a good girl.”

  “She’s the spitting image of you, everybody says so. The eyes, the hair, the dimples, she’s a real little Luna.”

  “Yes, a real little Luna,” she mumbled, trying to hold back her tears.

  “Go now,” she told my father. “Go and come back another time. I’m tired. I’m going back to the ward.”

  He kissed my mother’s cheek, and in a last desperate attempt said to me, “Heideh, bonica, heideh, my little dolly, say Ima like you did before. Say it, good girl.”

  But I scowled and refused and cried even louder.

  “It doesn’t matter, David, take her home.”

  “But Luna, she has to get to know you. She has to know that you’re her mother.”

  “She’ll know, David. I’ll come home, God willing, and everything will be all right. Take her home now. I don’t like her crying like this.”

  “Look after yourself,” he told her. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He kissed her again and went through the hospital gate, disappointed by the encounter between his daughter and her mother but determined not to give up. He would continue bringing Gabriela to visit.

  Again with great difficulty Luna climbed the stairs, limped to her bed, got under the blanket, and covered her head.

  “Is everything all right, Luna?” the redhead asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “How was seeing your daughter?”

  “She doesn’t even know I’m her mother,” Luna whispered.

  “She hasn’t seen you for many months, it’s only natural,” he said, trying to comfort her.

  “No, it’s not natural. Nothing between me and my daughter is natural.”

  9

  FOR MANY NIGHTS now Gabriel had been unable to have an hour’s undisturbed sleep, night after night waking from a recurring dream. In it he is running, he crosses fields, mountains, seas, and oceans. “Where are you running to, Gabriel?” a woman’s sweet voice asks him. He doesn’t reply and goes on running. He is breathing heavily but he can’t stop, he can’t slow down. He runs and runs and runs, and then—always in the same place and at the same moment—her figure suddenly appears out of nowhere, running in front of him, and he tries to catch up with her, the girl he hasn’t seen for years, the girl with the golden hair and blue eyes. He holds out his hand to touch her but can’t get close enough, and the girl continuously eludes him. And when he is almost there, almost touching her, he wakes up drenched in sweat and with a harsh sense of missed opportunity. He wants to sit up in bed; he is parched, thirsty, but he can’t sit up by himself. He would have to wake Rosa to help him, and how can he wake her, how can he look her in the eye and ask her to help him when the reason he needs her help in the middle of the night is the golden-haired girl whose memory has prevented him from loving her all his life in the way a man should love a woman?

  He lies with his eyes open, praying to God to end his suffering. It is better for me to die than to live, he thinks. What kind of a life am I living anyway, a sick man unable to move a finger unaided? Dependent on the goodness of my wife, my daughters. I am sick to death of this life.

  When Rosa came to wake him in the morning she found him lying in his bed, his eyes open.

  “Good morning, querido,” she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Buenos dias,” she tried again. “How are you today, querido?”

  He remained silent.

  “Gabriel, que pasa? Are you not feeling well?” She laid her hand on his forehead. He was frightening her. She sat on the bed, put her cheek to his lips, and the feel of his breath calmed her. He was alive. She stood up and went into the other room.

  “Rachelika,” she said to her daughter, who was nursing her baby, “your father’s lying there like a dead man and isn’t saying a word.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I speak to him and he doesn’t answer me.”

  Rachelika disengaged Boaz from her nipple and he started crying. “Take him,” she told her mother and hurried into her father’s room.

  “Papo, are you all right?” she asked worriedly.

  He was silent.

  “Papo, stop scaring me. I have enough on my mind as it is.”

  But Gabriel stayed silent.

  “Papo, I’m begging you.” She kneeled at his bedside. “We won’t be able to stand it if anything happens to you too. Have mercy on us, now isn’t the time not to speak, Papo. If something’s hurting you, tell me.”

  “What’s going on?” asked David, who had just woken up and stood in the doorway.

  “My father’s found the perfect time to take a vow of silence,” Rachelika replied.

  “Go back to the baby, he’s screaming like he’s being slaughtered. I’ll stay with your father.”

  Boaz stopped crying only when Rachelika put her nipple back into his mouth, and now Gabriela was hungry too and started wailing. Becky took the bottle of milk that Rachelika pumped earlier, poured it into a pan, and heated it on the stove.

  “Don’t make it too hot,” Rosa said, “so it doesn’t burn her.”

  “I know exactly how long to heat it. I can be a mother myself, I’m ready,” Becky said proudly.

  “May you be healthy, of course you’re ready. God willing your
Eli will come back from the war and in another two or three years we’ll have a wedding,” Rosa said, and at the mere mention of Eli’s name Becky burst into tears.

  Dio santo, they’ve all gone crazy, Rosa thought. Gabriel’s gone crazy, Rachelika’s gone crazy, the babies have gone crazy, and now Becky has too. It’s a madhouse! Only she held it together even though she felt her strength draining away each day.

  David, who had remained with Gabriel, was at his wits’ end. He paced from the window to his father-in-law’s bed, not sure how to behave with the old man. He’d never been alone with him.

  “Senor Gabriel,” he said, “how are you feeling this morning?”

  To his amazement, Gabriel, who had remained silent when his wife and daughter had spoken to him, turned his face away from the wall and said, “I feel like my troubles.”

  “Well, everything’s fine then.” David laughed. “I feel like my troubles too. I thought that, God forbid, you were going to give us a surprise and be ill too.”

  “Healthy I’ll never be, son-in-law. I’m old and sick and my life isn’t worth a damn. I can’t wait for the day when I return my soul to Senor del mundo.”

  “God forbid, Senor Gabriel, what are you saying? You’re not that old, you’re not fifty yet.”

  “I’m old, my boy, long in the tooth, a castoff. I can’t get out of bed by myself. I even need help to take a piss. What do I have left in this life if God has taken what little dignity I had, when I have to ask my wife to wipe my ass?”

  David remained silent, shocked by Gabriel’s frankness. He hadn’t been prepared for such an intimate conversation with his father-in-law. He thought they might chat about inconsequential things as always. Uncomfortable, he went from Gabriel’s bed to the door, praying that Rosa or one of his sisters-in-law would come rescue him. But no one did, and the only words that left his mouth were “What can I do for you, father-in-law? How can I help?”

  “You can take care of my daughter,” Gabriel replied. “Because I’m no longer able to.”

  David was relieved. He’d feared that the old man would ask him to perform an embarrassing task like wiping his behind or unzipping his pants and holding his penis so he could urinate.

  “I’ll take good care of her, father-in-law. I swear on my life that I’ll look after her.”

  “Luna’s young, she’ll get stronger, she’ll recover, she’ll go home to you and Gabriela. You’ve got to look out for yourself so you don’t get hurt, God forbid, when you’re outside the outpost.”

  “Don’t worry, Senor Gabriel, the war will end, Luna will get well and come home, and you’ll live to a hundred and twenty.”

  “David!” Gabriel stopped his son-in-law in full flow. “Swear to me by everything you hold dear that you’ll look after Luna.”

  “I swear!”

  “And as soon as Luna is well you’ll have another baby, and this time you’ll name him after your father, and afterward you’ll have more children and have a big family, may you be healthy.”

  “I swear.”

  “You know, David, before Luna came into the world I was more dead than alive. She restored meaning to my life. I don’t forget that. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.”

  And to his father-in-law, David replied, “Luna loves you more than she loves herself. She named her daughter after you, she loves you so much she gave her a boy’s name. She loves you, my dear father-in-law, more than she loves me, more than she loves her own daughter.”

  * * *

  When David arrived at the hospital he didn’t find Luna in the ward.

  “Where’s my wife?” he asked one of the nurses.

  “In the doctor’s office,” she said.

  He sat down on a bench in the corridor and waited for Luna. The sound of laughter came from inside the ward. The patients were a close-knit group, people who’d come a long way together, and their prolonged hospitalization had shaped them into a family.

  “Ahalan, my friend,” came redheaded Gidi’s voice as he parked his wheelchair next to David, rousing him from his musings.

  “Ahalan wa sahlan,” David replied.

  “Are you waiting for Luna?” Gidi asked.

  “Yes,” David nodded.

  “Have you made all the discharge arrangements?”

  “What discharge?”

  “Luna’s.”

  “Luna’s being discharged? When?”

  “Today. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No,” David said, not even attempting to hide his shock.

  “The doctor’s talking to her in his office, and after that she’s going home.”

  “How long have you known she’s being discharged?” David asked, trying to absorb the news that had just hit him.

  “Three days. The doctor said we’re throwing a farewell party for her.”

  David was silent. How had Luna known for three days that she was being discharged from the hospital and hadn’t said anything to him? Was it because she’d rather be in the hospital than go home? Because she preferred the company of her wounded companions over his and their daughter’s? He shut his eyes tight, trying to swallow his frustration. His face reddened and he pounded the bench with his fist.

  “Don’t take it personally,” said Gidi, attempting to pacify him. “It’s not about you. She’s scared about going home because she doesn’t feel strong enough. She probably didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to disappoint you if she had to stay in the hospital after all.”

  David took a deep breath. How was it that this redhead knew more about his wife than he did? He didn’t know her anymore. He had no idea what she wanted. He could barely even talk to her.

  When Luna finally emerged from the doctor’s office she was sullen and angry.

  “The doctor’s discharging me,” she said to Gidi, ignoring her husband. “I don’t want to go home. I’m not strong enough.” She burst into tears.

  “Luna”—Gidi’s voice was soft—“this is a hospital, not a convalescent home.”

  “You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “I’m frightened that the wounds will open.”

  “They won’t, Luna,” said the doctor, who had stepped out of his office. “Your wounds have healed. You’re still not a hundred percent, but you will be. Go home, start living again, get your strength back, and in time you’ll be as good as new, I promise. If you want, I’ll arrange a week’s convalescence at Motza for you.”

  And all the while David sat on the bench feeling like an outsider who was present by chance. His wife was ignoring him as if he wasn’t there. She didn’t need him. She had the redhead, she had her wounded friends. He was just in the way. Only when he stood up and was about to leave did the doctor notice him and say, “Mr. Siton, I’m returning your wife to you.”

  “My wife didn’t tell me she was being discharged,” David said.

  Luna looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and said to the doctor, “At least let me stay for one more day. I’ll go home tomorrow.”

  “One day, Luna,” the doctor said. “One more day, no more.”

  That evening she said good-bye to her friends in the ward and shed a flood of tears. She insisted on taking her leave on her own, without her husband present to accompany her.

  “He wouldn’t understand,” she told Gidi. “He’d think I’d taken leave of my senses if he saw how many tears I’m spilling here.”

  “He’d think they were tears of joy,” Gidi said.

  “But you know they’re tears of sadness.”

  “Why sadness, lovely lady? I wish I was getting out of here.”

  “I’ll miss you,” Luna said and quickly added, “and everybody else in the ward. My life won’t be the same without you,” she whispered.

  “Why without me? You’ll come and visit, and then I’ll be discharged and we’ll keep in touch.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “You need me to promise? There aren’t many people who share what we do.”

  “What
do we share?”

  “Love,” he whispered.

  “Love like between a man and a woman or love like between friends?” Luna persisted.

  “You’re a married woman. It can’t be like between a man and a woman.”

  “And if I wasn’t married?”

  “And if pigs could fly? And if I could walk?”

  “It’s a serious question. Stop making a joke of everything.”

  “It’s a serious question? Then I’ll give you a serious answer. If we’d met before the war, before you were married, before you had a baby, before you were wounded, before I was wounded, before I was told I’d never be able to have children, I’d have married you.”

  “Of course you’ll be able to have children,” Luna said.

  “I’m paralyzed, Luna, remember? I won’t have children. And you have a daughter and a husband and you’ll have more children, God willing, so get out of this damned hospital and go back to your life. Remember me, but forget a man’s love for a woman. It can’t happen, not for me and you, and not for me and any other woman.”

  They were standing on the hospital balcony overlooking Haneviim Street. This was their place, where they went when they wanted to be alone. It was the place where for the first time since she’d been wounded she’d felt alive again, when her heart had skipped a beat in the face of the only person capable of making her smile. It was the place where she realized that what she felt for him was not feelings of friendship and affection, the way she felt for her other friends in the ward, but something more profound. Deep down inside her an emotion had been bubbling for months, and now the reality of her leaving had brought it to its boiling point and she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  “I love you,” she told him.

  He gave her that jovial look of his and told her, “It’s the morphine talking—you’re hallucinating.”

  “No, I love you,” she said again.

  He shifted his gaze to the street and said in a barely audible voice, “You mustn’t say things like that to a man who isn’t your husband.”