The Fairest Among Women

by Dalya Bilu

  With a terrible sobriety she sensed the catastrophe on its way to destroy her love for her new husband. Precisely at this joyful moment, with her husband cradled warmly in her arms, she was unable to escape from the painful memories of the past and their message of the evil in store. Painfully she remembered Rina and Mischa, the childhood she never had, the birth of the flawed Angel, the deterioration of Joseph, and the cold body of Shraga underneath her in bed. And when she remembered her friend Ruthie, who had died so young, the dam of tears burst, and she wept without restraint and woke Shmuel with her sobs. Blind to what was happening before his eyes, Shmuel rocked her gently in his arms, his mouth murmuring soothing words and his heart brimming over with the sweetness of his love for his new wife, who was weeping tears of joy.

  “I love you,” he whispered into her ears, where the tears had collected like miniature salt lakes. “I love you,” he repeated, as if accustoming himself to the sound of the sentence. “For me you’re all the women in the world, a whole harem of women concentrated in one woman, my queen,” he whispered, and lapped up the pools of tears collected in her ears as greedily as if tasting some rare delicacy.

  * * *

  Afterward, when she told Rachelle about the terrifying premonition she had experienced precisely at the moments of her greatest happiness, her friend would tell her that love was always accompanied by a sense of doom, since nothing ever stayed as it was. Everything passed in life, and even the greatest love would vanish and give way to another. And it didn’t surprise her that Rosa should have felt this way precisely on her wedding night, for great happiness was always accompanied by the fear of its loss. She would also explain to her that happiness and pain were the Siamese twins of fate. They always came together in an inseparable pair, a reminder of the fears of abandonment experienced in infancy.

  * * *

  The morning after the great weeping, Rosa put ice cubes on her eyes to bring down the swelling, and with the help of the sunbeams filtering through the blinds she succeeded in banishing black thoughts and conjuring up a bright future full of happiness, flowers, and bird-song. After eating the breakfast rolled into their room by the waiter, they went back to bed, and remained cradled there until noon, whispering words of love in each other’s ears. And at noon they filled the vast bathtub with hot water and poured in all the little jars of foaming bath salts and oils they found there. With the upper halves of their bodies emerging from the airy bubbles cascading merrily over the sides of the tub, they splashed about in the water, scooped up handfuls of foam and threw them at each other, and soaped each other’s bodies. And when they emerged from the bathroom they devoured the bowl of exotic fruits, wrapped the champagne in the hotel bathrobes, and crammed them into their suitcase together with the little bottles of shampoo, body lotion, shower caps, and unused sewing kit, and went home, exhausted with happiness.

  Ruthie, Dror, and Angel were waiting for them in the apartment, which was full of flowers. And when Angel limped up to them in the fancy party dress she had worn only once, when Rosa married Shraga, her mother hugged her tightly and asked her to welcome Shmuel. Obediently the little girl extricated herself from her mother’s embrace, stood shyly in front of Shmuel, and silently raised her arms in the air in a mute request for him to pick her up. Flushing with embarrassment, Shmuel averted his face from the tiny hunchback standing in front of him with her hands held up in a gesture of surrender and the lace-trimmed edges of her new panties peeking out below the hem of her dress. Rosa watched his evasive look and a pang of foreboding and anxiety tore away a piece of the happiness he had bestowed on her. A tense, heavy silence descended on the room like a smothering gray blanket, and unsaid words hovered in the air, threatening to crash down on their heads. Rosa hurried up to Angel, took hold of the little hands she was still holding up in the air, picked her up, and kissed her hair.

  “Isn’t Angel the prettiest little girl in the whole world?” she asked Shmuel, with a note of uncertainty in her voice.

  “Yes, of course,” he replied unwillingly, without looking at the child, and another piece of happiness fell silently to the floor, where it dissolved into a murky pool of disappointment.

  * * *

  The next day Shmuel’s boxes arrived, a lot of cardboard boxes, containing all the worldly possessions he had collected in his leaking studio apartment in Nahalat Shiva, which Rosa had visited once and sworn she would never set foot in again. Then she had been appalled at the sight of the stacks of cardboard boxes filling the single room, the bare mattress lying on the floor, and the jars full of paintbrushes, empty tubes of dried-up paints, and rags smeared with congealed paint strewn all over in a hellish mess that made her shudder with horror.

  “It’s dank, stinking, dark, full of spiderwebs, and scary,” she told Rachelle and Ruhama when they asked her to describe it to them. After she left, they discussed the subject and came to the conclusion that as a famous painter he must earn well, and the only reason that he lived in such conditions was that he didn’t like spending money. They wondered whether they should warn Rosa about his miserliness, but decided in the end that it wasn’t up to them to do so.

  And now all those boxes were in Rosa’s house. The first box she opened with him contained his clothes—a few long-sleeved shirts gray with washing, frayed at the collars and cuffs; a pair of scuffed shoes with worn soles; and two pairs of trousers shiny at the seat and unraveling at the cuffs. “I wouldn’t insult a beggar by giving them to him,” she told Rachelle later. Shmuel hung these precious possessions in Rosa’s closet, and began happily unpacking the rest of the boxes.

  Dozens of paintbrushes stiff with use fell out of the first box he opened. Some of them were fine, thin brushes with only a few surviving hairs, and others were completely bald, only the paint stains on their handles hinting at their creative past. There were flat, medium-size brushes and thick, stiff ones that looked like the tail of an old horse. The next box contained similar ware, and so did all the rest. The house soon filled up with all kinds of strange receptacles—glass jars, mugs, plastic bottles with the tops cut off, pails, vases, little laundry hampers, and old tin cans, all of them holding what looked like unusual floral arrangements of curious flowers with wooden stems and stiff, hairy heads.

  “Why do you need so many paintbrushes?” asked Rosa in despair as her house filled up with bouquets of stiff, dry brushes.

  “I keep all the brushes I ever used,” replied Shmuel, holding a pail full of paintbrushes in his arms and looking around for a place to put it.

  “But why don’t you throw the stiff, bald ones away? In any case you don’t use them,” she said, and found herself sobbing fearlessly at the end of the sentence. And another tiny piece of happiness fell away from her.

  “How can I throw out brushes that served me faithfully for so many years and even brought me a living?” he replied. “We don’t throw out elderly relatives just because they aren’t any use to us anymore. And that’s the way I feel about my brushes. I know them all, I remember when I painted with them, and what I painted, and if you throw out a single paintbrush I’ll know immediately that it’s missing,” he added with a warning note in his voice.

  But the worst of all was still to come, when the paintbrushes declared war on her plants. On busy days Shmuel would splash his brushes about in turpentine until all the paint came off the hairs, then wash them in water, and afterward he would throw the dirty water collected in the jars and tins straight onto her fragrant herbs. The results were soon apparent. Strange diseases began to attack her precious plants. First the delicate leaves began to shrivel at the edges. And when they turned brown they began to fall off the bushes, spotting the balcony floor with the dry, crumbly, autumnal remains of their premature deaths. And when the stems dried up too and the roots lost their hold, Shmuel would pull them up and empty the flowerpots with a vigorous shake over the balustrade, showering the passersby as he did so in a rain of soil dyed all the colors of the rainbow by oil paints, watercolors,
and gouache. Then he would take the windfall of flowerpots, wash them well, and cram them full of paintbrushes. Soon the rosemary disappeared, the mint shriveled, the lemon balm was uprooted, and the wild thyme in the pickle barrel was usurped by giant paintbrushes resembling brightly colored brooms. And when Rosa gave him dirty looks, careful not to scold him in front of Angel, he would lecture her again on the importance of the paintbrushes in his life.

  On the day the last plant died he promised to make it up to her, and told her that some of his paintbrushes could be used to paint on all kinds of surfaces, not only canvas. And with bated breath, as if afraid of being refused, he asked her permission to paint on the walls.

  “Up to now I’ve lived in rented rooms, and I’ve never had a chance to paint on the walls. Please let me have the opportunity to do it now,” he pleaded. Rosa, whose happiness was marred by his attitude to Angel, agreed on condition that he start with the child’s room. Perhaps in this way, she thought, she would influence him to come closer to her daughter. When she saw the results, she promised him, she would decide about the rest of the apartment.

  Shmuel asked her to leave him alone in the room, put his meals on a tray outside the door, and let him work undisturbed. For three days and three nights he worked without a break. Angel would fall asleep happily next to her mother in her big bed, and Rosa would lie awake counting her breaths. When she was sure the little girl was sound asleep she would pick her up and move her to one of the beds in the boys’ room, and then she would go back to bed and wonder what Shmuel was up to in Angel’s room before she fell asleep.

  On the fourth day he emerged from the room with a pale face and his paint-stained clothes hanging on him as if he had lost kilos of weight. With a huge, happy smile he invited them to come in and see the results of his labors.

  “Birds, crows!” Angel squealed in delight when she saw her new room.

  “Angels,” breathed Rosa in astonishment as she looked wide-eyed at the beauty before her. On the ceiling of the little room whose walls had been painted pink shone a bright blue sky dotted with fleecy white clouds, which looked so real that for a moment she thought he had torn the roof off to let in the sky. Between the clouds friendly, smiling gray crows glided on the blue sky. Rosa looked at the crows and it seemed to her that their sharp eyes were following her closely, accompanying her wherever she went just like their real brothers did when she walked through the neighborhood streets with Angel.

  All around the ceiling Shmuel had painted a ring of dozens of plump angels. Their bodies were clothed in white robes, their golden hair shone, their faces beamed, and in their plump hands they held musical instruments. Rosa could have sworn that she heard them playing. She turned to Shmuel and looked at him as if she was seeing him for the first time in her life, too moved to speak.

  “Well?” asked Shmuel, doubt gnawing at his heart.

  Rosa couldn’t say a single word.

  “Do you like what I painted?” he asked, and this time he sounded desperate.

  Speechless, Rosa put her arms around him and hugged him.

  At that moment she remembered the stories he had told her about the camp and how they had forced him to paint angels on lampshades made of human skin, and her joy was dulled at the thought of these very same pictures now decorating the ceiling of her daughter’s room. But she banished the disturbing thoughts from her mind, and that evening she told him it was the most beautiful painting he had ever done.

  “Would you like me to paint the other walls too?” he asked, and his confidence returned.

  Rosa considered his offer carefully, and asked him to paint the kitchen cabinets, which were covered in white Formica. “I spend all day in the kitchen,” she explained. “At least let me have something cheerful to look at.”

  Shmuel didn’t wait for another invitation. For a week the kitchen was out of bounds, and Rosa went down to eat at Rachelle’s with Angel, until he announced that the paint was dry and she could come in and see the paintings.

  He had painted the cabinets a glorious sunset red, and covered them with a field of wildflowers and herbs. The field spread over all the cabinets, and continued to the fridge, the stove, the door, the white porcelain tiles, and the sink. Rosa widened her nostrils, and she could have sworn that they were assailed from all directions by a medley of overpowering evening scents, more intoxicating than anything she had ever smelled in her life. At that moment she knew that her herb garden had not been sacrificed in vain and that she had been richly rewarded for its loss.

  So beautiful were the flowers, and so real, that it was rumored in the neighborhood that Rosa’s kitchen had been invaded by bees, butterflies, and various kinds of nectar-imbibing insects, who had discovered the flowery field and come to feed on its sweetness. With empty stomachs the winged insects flew giddily round the kitchen, trying to force their way into the field and exploding with little popping sounds against the cabinets and tiles, until Rosa took pity on them and set out saucers of sugar water for them on the windowsill, which Shmuel had covered with beds of violets.

  “If they’ve flown all the way to my kitchen, at least let them get something for their trouble,” she said to her astonished neighbors.

  The kitchen became Rosa’s favorite place, and dishes never seen there before began to appear on her table. With her eyes gazing at the field of flowers she cooked more gladly and willingly than ever before. And when she served her dishes to the guests who came flocking to see the blooming kitchen, they would swear that the food gave off a heavy scent of flowers, a potpourri of scents blended into one rare and exquisite new smell.

  Rosa talked about her new kitchen to everyone she met, and even allowed a team of photographers from the magazine Homes and Gardens to photograph it for a special issue about kitchens. She welcomed anyone who asked to see it close up and share in the beauty of her husband’s creation. But only to Rachelle and Ruhama did she confide the secret of the sink. When she was washing the dishes, she told them in the strictest secrecy, and looking deep into the sink, she could see four bright butterflies circling around the petals of a particularly beautiful bloom set right in the middle of the plug.

  “How could he possibly have known?” she would conclude, a question that had no answer.

  eighteen

  POOR MADAME BUTTERFLY

  In the early days of her marriage, Rosa noticed that her children were beginning to avoid the traditional family dinners on Friday nights, and when she urged them to come and taste something, they would turn up unwillingly, sit down at the table reluctantly, eat in silence, and get up, make their excuses, and leave as soon as the meal was over. After a few weeks of this they told her they were busy and they weren’t sure if they would be able to make it, and when they failed to show up they would find new excuses to explain their absence, until she decided to leave them alone.

  Only Ruthie remained faithful, and she would drop in to visit from time to time, snooping on Shmuel and his doings, peering at his pictures, fingering the paintbrushes in their various receptacles, examining the shriveled plants, and looking at her mother in concern. At these moments Rosa would feel that the natural order had been turned upside down. Ruthie, her daughter, had become her mother, and she had become the daughter. And when Ruthie tried to tell her that all her children were very worried, and that they were especially disturbed about Shmuel’s attitude to Angel, Rosa would interrupt her angrily, insist that she was happy, and ask her and her brothers and sisters not to interfere in her life.

  Dror, who always accompanied Ruthie on her visits, would listen miserably to the quarrels between the mother and daughter and take Angel out of the house, go for walks with her in the fields, and tell her the story of Jacob’s dream. And when he brought her back in the evening, Rosa would smell the scent of the fields on Angel’s skin and stroke her sunburned cheeks. Then they would eat supper alone in the painted kitchen, because Shmuel, who avoided any contact with Angel, would pretend to be busy with his painting. And when she
put the child to bed in her angel-festooned room, she would tuck her in, kiss her forehead, and try to endow her with a double quantity of love to make up for the love she was missing from her stepfather.

  Angel would lie on her back and stare at the ceiling, and the crows and angels surrounding her would laugh and smile at her. And the moment Rosa left the room and switched off the light, a glittering golden ladder would descend from among the painted clouds on the ceiling and invite her to climb up and reach the sky and play there with the angels.

  * * *

  When Shmuel received an invitation to exhibit the Rosa show at a prestigious gallery in Rome, their excitement knew no bounds. Rosa, who had never been out of the country, began to prepare for the trip a month in advance. Ruthie agreed to look after Angel as a matter of course, and Dror promised to take good care of her and told her not to worry. Before they set out for the airport, Rosa checked again to make sure that all the blinds were drawn, that the gas was turned off, that the boiler was switched off and the fridge empty, and only then made her way laboriously down the stairs.

  Leslie-Shimon’s car was waiting for them downstairs, and this time Rosa was too excited by the prospect of the journey ahead of her to take any notice of the oppressive silence in the car. Shmuel and Leslie-Shimon didn’t exchange a single word throughout the drive to the airport, but nothing could spoil Rosa’s happiness.

  In time to come, when she tried to recall the flight, on which she occupied two seats to enable her to sit comfortably, she could only remember the terrible pressure in her stomach that lasted throughout the four and a half hours, which seemed to her like eternity.

  Her bladder was so full that it threatened to leak, and then to burst, because despite all the combined efforts of the flight attendants she was unable to squeeze into the toilet. Throughout the flight she sat cramped with pain, refusing all the drinks offered her and looking enviously at the other passengers lining up outside the toilets to relieve themselves. And when the plane finally landed Shmuel pushed his way through the crowds, dragging her behind him, and shut himself up in the men’s toilets with her, after ordering all the men standing in front of the urinals to vacate the place immediately. Then she squatted in front of the urinals that assailed her nose with an overpowering smell of ammonia and brought tears to her eyes, and as soon as she had emptied her bladder she emerged from the toilets, free at last to look around her and marvel at the sights.