by Dalya Bilu
And when Rosa bit into the sandwich and felt the sweetness of the sugar on her tongue, her heart filled with love for her uncle Joseph. At night she lay in her bed next to his and listened to the heartbreaking sighs he heaved in his sleep. And when she was woken by frightening dreams, she always found him by her side, stroking her cheeks and hair. Angela told everybody that Joseph would be a wonderful father because he knew how to take care of babies, and in spite of the serious expression on his face he knew how to make them laugh. She also said that Joseph knew exactly when his niece was going to wake up, taking up his position by her bed a moment before she opened her eyes, which was why she never woke up screaming for attention, knowing that her uncle would always be there for her.
When she grew older, he would take her out to the sunny fields surrounding the neighborhood and teach her all the reproductive secrets of the flowers and the butterflies. He would open the petals and show her the pistils and the stigma and reveal the secrets of creation to her. And Rosa would compare Joseph’s explanations with those of Ruhama, who told her in secret about husbands and wives and what they did with each other at night. At those moments she remembered the struggling bodies she had seen when she peeped through the hole she had drilled in the wall in Ali Hamoudi’s villa: Ruhama’s mother and father rolling round on the bed, writhing and twining and groaning.
When Joseph went into the army it was ten-year-old Rosa who sewed the insignia onto his uniform, pricking her finger with the needle and leaving traces of her blood on the stiff cloth. Every Friday she would wait in suspense for the clump of his army boots on the stairs. The moments of his homecoming were the happiest moments of her life. Then he would pick her up and swing her in the air, kiss her blushing dimples, compliment her on her curls, and tell her that she was growing so fast that soon she would be a proper lady. Then he would open his rucksack and spill its contents onto her bed, chocolate, crisp cookies, cans of preserves, and food he had gone without for the sake of the women he loved. And Angela, tired of standing in line in the half-empty shops during the austerity regime after the war, with all her ration coupons swallowed up in the bottomless pit of Rosa’s stomach, would accept the gifts gladly and bury them deep in the pantry to keep them from vanishing at once. After they had partaken of the food he had brought, Rosa would stroll through the neighborhood hand in hand with him, so that everyone would see her soldier uncle, and all her tormentors who flung the hated number in her face would never dare to raise their heads when Joseph was by her side.
Nobody in the neighborhood could understand how Angela, who read the omens in the dregs of her household’s coffee cups every morning, had been unable to predict the future. And furthermore, how it was possible that she, so sensitive to the feelings of others, had been blind to what was happening in her own house, right under her nose.
It happened when Rosa was fourteen, although she already looked far older than she was. Her height, her elaborate hairstyle, her ripe body, and her heavy breasts drove men wild, and they would stop her in the street and make suggestions to her. Rosa would blush beneath the eyes undressing her, run home, and consult Joseph. And Joseph would pacify her, gently stroke her cheeks, kiss her dimples, and ask her to describe her harassers so that he could beat them up.
In those days, after being discharged from the army, he found a job selling encyclopedias from door to door. The apartment was stacked with volumes of the Hebrew Encyclopedia and the Young People’s Encyclopedia, One Hundred Personalities, The Wonders of the World, Fun with Science, Countries and Nations, and Famous Composers. All the knowledge in the world, Joseph told her, was written there on the finest paper and abundantly illustrated. In the neighborhood they said that at night Joseph read the books he sold, and by day he bedded the women who opened their doors to him. They would stand in front of him, their bodies still warm with sleep, wrapped in flimsy robes, their hair in pins and rollers, and their skin smelling of male sweat and morning coffee. With amused expressions they would look into his sad, liquid eyes, appraise his muscles, let their eyes travel to his fly, and open their purses. Then they would open their hearts to him, unbutton his trousers, and finally part their legs.
And Joseph, with his growing knowledge of the world and the bedroom, would tell Rosa about distant lands, world explorers, famous sailors, and exotic animals whose names she had never heard before. And, whispering into her reddening ears, he would reveal all the secrets of love and reproduction to her.
When he had saved a bit of money, he bought an old motorcycle with a sidecar, and with Angela behind him and Rosa in the sidecar, he would drive to the Tel Aviv beach. When they reached the sea, after the terrors of the hairpin bends of the road, they would get off the motorcycle with trembling legs, blocked ears, and eyes squinting from the effort of catching the sights flying past them on the way. And once their feet were standing on firm ground, they would begin to fix their hair rumpled by the wind, and wipe the traces of the black fumes emitted by the motorcycle from their faces with their spotless handkerchiefs. Joseph would lead them straight to the wide steps leading down to the beach, where they would lie on towels and expose their white bodies to the sun. When their skin turned red Joseph would take the two women of his life to eat ice cream and chocolate cake in Café Roval in Dizengoff Street. He would wait for them patiently while they window-shopped, inspecting the new summer dresses and imagining themselves in the spike-heeled shoes. On the way back he would stop in Ramleh, buy two ice-cream cones, and present them to the women with a theatrical flourish.
On the day it happened, Angela, Joseph, and Rosa came home, exhausted and red-skinned from the late summer sun, straight to the news of the war being broadcast nonstop by the radio, its lights twinkling in time to the marching songs played by bellicose military bands. In spite of her weariness Angela started tearing old sheets into strips and pasting them, with Joseph’s help, onto the windowpanes. Worn out and worried, her bones aching, she went to bed earlier than usual. After telling Amatzia about the events of the day and expressing her fears of this new war, because even though it was far away in the Sinai Desert, “you never could tell,” she fell asleep after the usual sounds of rubbing, thudding, and moaning.
Rosa and Joseph remained awake in the silent house. Rosa looked anxiously at her uncle pacing the room like a lion in a cage. Nervously he turned the knobs of the radio and listened to the news streaming from the instrument in a number of languages and reverberating tensely in the air. The excited voice of the Voice of Israel announcer dominated the rest, overshadowing the quiet British tones of the BBC and the loud, belligerent voice, solemn and threatening, coming from Radio Cairo. “The IDF invades Suez,” “All leave canceled in the Egyptian army,” “Nasser summons army chiefs,” “Arab armies advance toward the borders”—the radio played these announcements in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Frightened to death, Rosa got into bed, secretly feeling the loaf of bread she had hidden under her mattress in honor of the new war in the Sinai Desert. Her sleep was disturbed by the shouts of “War, war, war!” echoing throughout the neighborhood. It was the old woman in the opposite building with the blue numbers tattooed on her arm. The next day people said that she had run down the street naked as the day she was born until people in white coats caught her and took her away to the hospital.
Terrified out of her wits, Rosa jumped into bed with Joseph, dressed in the brief baby doll pajamas her mother had given her for her fourteenth birthday. As she had done when she was a child frightened by a nightmare, she snuggled up next to him under the blanket and told him falteringly about the things she had never shared with her mother or her friends. She told him about Hitler, about people disappearing from their homes in the middle of the night, about the death camps, about the women with shaved heads, about the people turned into soap, and about the fear that all these things would happen again, to them here in Jerusalem, at the hands of the murderous fedayeen. Joseph kissed her forehead, stroked her cheeks, played with her curls, and whispered de
ep in her ear that here in his arms she was safe, and he would never let anyone harm the little girl he loved.
His whispering in her ear sent unfamiliar shivers down her body, spreading and expanding like cellophane paper crumpled into a tight ball inside a clenched fist and suddenly opening up when the fingers relaxed. From the soles of her feet to the top of her head she felt the new sensation, making her nipples tingle and the hairs on her body bristle, until she could barely breathe. Rosa giggled in delight, uttered little cries of excitement, and asked him to whisper in her ear again, because it made her feel good. Hastening to comply, Joseph stuck his tongue right into the delicate concha and nuzzled the fleshy lobe with his lips. And with her soft squeals of delight making his head spin, he ran his tongue down her throat until he encountered her nipple, and without paying attention to what he was doing he found himself sucking on the crinkly little mound and felt Rosa’s body stiffening in his arms. With hesitant, groping movements he slid his hand between her legs, where a welcoming wetness awaited him. And when he heard her moan he pressed his loins to her body, and soothed her in a practiced, up-and-down rocking motion until a stifled cry pierced his ears.
Afterward she sobbed tearlessly in his arms. Joseph stroked her face, smoothed her hair, and tried to kiss her on the lips. Rosa pushed his head away, avoiding the touch of his lips on hers, loosened the grip of his arms around her body, slid out of his bed, and crept silently into her own bed. Alarmed, he asked her not to tell anyone, not even Rachelle. And with tiredness spreading through her body and making her limbs heavy she fell asleep, the place between her legs stinging like a burn.
The next morning Rosa’s hair rebelled and refused to coil into ringlets under her mother’s practiced hands. With a mop of unruly curls crowning her head she left for school, feeling her mother’s worried eyes on her back, probing and searching, piercing her flesh and penetrating deep into her body, which had grown old overnight. Rosa didn’t remember what she was taught that morning, and the self-defense instructions relayed by the old men in uniform did not reach her ears. When she came home early because of the war, Angela told her tearfully that they had come to take Joseph into the army and sent him to the south. With a feeling of relief at not having to meet his eyes, she shut herself up in her room, and concentrated on the strange feeling that was still pulsing between her legs. She felt lonely and wished that he was there, so that she could confide in him about the events of the night, but then she remembered that he himself was responsible for what had happened to her. Confused, she sat on her bed and tried to feel longings and concern for her uncle fighting in the desert and defending them here. But instead she felt a new anger welling up in her, swelling her throat and pressing on her chest until she thought that she would choke. Swaying on her feet, she left the house, whispering that she was going to visit Rachelle, and slamming the door behind her.
* * *
A few weeks after Joseph had returned from the war, his hair red with desert dust and his clothes stiff with dried sweat, Rosa’s breasts started to swell. When she began throwing up in the morning, Angela’s suspicions were aroused and she dragged her to the doctor in a panic. That night, sitting with Rosa in the kitchen under the bare bulb on the ceiling that was reflected in her eyes and turned them red, Angela stared into her daughter’s eyes and demanded that she tell her who the father was. Then Joseph came into the kitchen, asked Rosa to go to her room, and conferred with his sister at length in a low voice.
Through the closed door Rosa could hear her mother’s sobs and her uncle’s soothing words. “She’s only fourteen. They’ll put you in prison. What have you done?” Angela wept, torn between her love for her brother and her love for her daughter. Later on, lying in bed and telling Amatzia the events of the day, Angela peppered her words with sobs and sighs that went on echoing for hours through the house.
Rosa curled up in her blanket, and for the first time in her life, in perfect coordination with her mother’s sobs, she felt the warm tears flowing down her cheeks. Full of shame she turned her back to Joseph, and, with her wet cheek on the pillow and her hands between her legs, she tried to recapture the painful-pleasurable new sensations she had experienced with her uncle. In the morning he came up to her bed, stroked her curls, gently shook her shoulder, and before she was fully awake he asked her to be his wife. Confused and sleepy, she sat up in bed, covered her bust with the sheet, and since she had always obeyed his commands and never refused him anything in her life, she answered him this time too with a weak Yes.
All day long she lay in bed whimpering like a baby that had just discovered how to cry. She wept for the past, the present, and the future, for all the years she had never cried. The reservoir of her unused tears burst, overflowed, and flooded her. Rosa didn’t know why she was crying. At first she thought the weeping had started because of the father she had never seen and continued because of Rina, the little girl from Katamon who had been expelled from her home. On the way she remembered Mischa the refugee; and when she thought of Shraga, the love who had disappeared from her life, her sobs increased. When she had finished crying for Shraga she cried for her uncle Joseph, who was about to become her husband, whom she loved in a completely different way from the way she had loved Shraga, with a love whose meaning she was unable to comprehend. When she finished crying for Joseph, she began to cry in fear of the baby she was going to have without knowing what she was going to do with it, and in the end she cried for herself, for her ruined childhood and her dreams, which would never be realized. When she had nothing left to cry for she stopped crying.
The dam of tears remained dry throughout her marriage to Joseph. The unused tears collected again and flooded her, so they said in the neighborhood, when her last daughter, Angel, was born.
Five rabbis sat on the bench and debated the question of how to permit the marriage of a minor. In the end they decided that if she brought them two hairs “from the nether regions of the body, the place where hair is known to grow, she is a girl and may be considered henceforth to be mature.” After this they discussed the situation of the widowed mother; her brother, Joseph, who had been orphaned at an early age; and Rosa’s delicate situation, and they permitted the marriage to take place.
One month later Rosa stood beneath the wedding canopy, surrounded by her friends, her little stomach peeping out, while Joseph’s erect member threatened to rip his trousers in anticipation of the night he would spend with his wife under the protection of the law. Rabbi Elbaz, pale as death, looked from the low neckline of the bride’s dress to the swelling in the trousers of the groom.
Rosa’s marriage made her famous. A week before the wedding, without any advance warning, a reporter who introduced herself as Galya turned up at their house, praised her beauty, told her that she looked far older than her years, and asked her a lot of questions. Then she asked to look at the photograph albums. Pleased by the attention, Rosa sat by her side and explained to her in detail who the people in the photographs were, and also showed her willingly the studio portrait taken of her in the nude by Rahamim when she was one year old, a big baby with a diaper wound around her chest, her body padded with layers of fat, her bottom sticking up, her head crowned with yellow curls, her eyes wide open, and her lips parted in a smile to reveal two glittering teeth. The next day Galya arrived at the school accompanied by a photographer, and Rosa saw all the children, especially the girls, crowing round her in the playground at break.
The article, spread over the two center pages, was published on her wedding day, and the guests sitting at the tables passed the paper from hand to hand. The story was accompanied by pictures and described the beautiful little girl from Jerusalem who was getting married in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In the long and detailed article her closest friends, Ruthie and Rachelle, were also interviewed, telling the story of the butterfly game, describing their secret dreams, and boasting that Rosa was their best friend. The rival newspaper too carried an article about the wedding, containing i
nterviews with a psychologist who dwelled on the catastrophic consequences of marriage at such a young age; and with a doctor, who spoke of the dangers of marriage between relatives and the harmful effects of giving birth at such a young age. Rosa’s homeroom teacher also contributed to the article, expressing her hope that Rosa, an outstanding student, would continue her education—not at her school, of course—and recommending that she go to evening classes. And she added that she hoped very much that Rosa, the queen of the class and a social leader, would not set her friends a bad example.
During the service Rosa couldn’t rid her eyes of the sight of Ruhama, who had turned up at the wedding even though she hadn’t received an invitation. With her sharp elbows she pushed her way straight to the canopy, stationed herself there between Ruthie and Rachelle, and raised her index finger high in the air, as a sign that this was husband number one.
Rosa glanced at Joseph’s strained face, and at that moment she felt that she loved him and she would never have another husband. She knew that her love for him was not like her love for Shraga. It was a different kind of love. But when she tried to clarify the difference to herself, she was unable to do so. In time to come she would understand that she loved him out of habit, and love that grows from habit isn’t like real love.
With the marriage contract in his hands and Rosa and Angela hurrying behind him laden with gifts, Joseph made for their bedroom, pushed their two iron beds noisily together, and tied them to each other with stout wire that he bent easily in his strong hands. Then he asked Angela to give him her thickest sewing needle, laboriously threaded the eye with string, and while Rosa and Angela were busy unwrapping the presents, he sewed their mattresses together, enveloped by the pungent smell of seaweed bursting from the holes in the cloth. “So that no one will find himself sinking into the gap between them in the middle of the night,” he explained when his wife asked him to come and help them open the wedding presents.