by Dalya Bilu
“Are you looking for Peretz?” asked a woman leaning on the gate of the house next door. “He isn’t here. He’s gone away.”
“When is he coming back?” asked Ruhama.
“Nobody knows. He locked up and left.”
“Did he go alone?”
“I don’t know,” came the indifferent answer from behind the fence.
“Do you know Rosa?’ the interrogation continued.
“Fat Rosa from Katamon G?”
“Yes, fat Rosa. Perhaps he went away with her?”
“Search me.”
“Did Rosa come to him before he left?”
“So they say. They say that after her third one died and then her daughter too, she came to Peretz and asked him to perform a widows’ Tikkun for her.”
“What’s a widows’ Tikkun?”
“Peretz told me that when a woman’s husband dies, and she wants to marry again, the spirit of the first husband is jealous and makes trouble for her, and therefore it has to be placated so that it won’t pester her and give her grief. And so Peretz, so they say, performed a widows’ Tikkun for Rosa, and all her husbands are quiet now and they won’t trouble her anymore, and she can get married again.”
“Where is Rosa now?”
“Peretz told her that she had to move to a new apartment, leave everything behind her, even her clothes, because all her husbands are waiting for her in the old apartment, and if she wants to start a new life, she has to leave her old apartment and her old life behind her.”
“Where did she move to?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Maybe she and Peretz went away together?” Ruhama tried to put words in the woman’s mouth.
“I don’t know.” The woman’s voice suddenly sounded sullen and impatient, as if she would be severely punished if she went on talking, and without another word she turned her back, went inside, and slammed the door behind her.
When she went home Ruhama decided not to share her sensational discovery with anyone, including her new husband. A mysterious smile appeared on her lips, announcing that she knew the answer but was not about to share it with anyone else. Some said that she didn’t even tell Rachelle. And when the latter begged to be let into the secret, for the sake of their long friendship, she pursed her lips meanly and locked the secret up inside her as if it were a treasure not to be shared with others. Now, more than ever, she knew that she had been right when she said that Rosa would marry four husbands, because of the four butterflies that had alighted on her head. And even though, when Ruhama had taken one more husband than she’d had butterflies, and told herself it was a childish game, clearly it wasn’t. It was the game of life.
In the evening, when she reflected on the story of her life, which had diverged from the destiny prophesied by the butterflies, she excused the outcome by telling herself that the rules could be changed at any stage of the game, even after it was over. Because the rules of the game were capable of changing reality. You only had to know how to act and how it was possible to change reality. And anyone who wanted to play with their life and make changes in it had to want it very much. Ruthie, Rachelle, and Rosa didn’t know the rules. They didn’t know how to play, and they weren’t strong enough to change the rules. Only she had passed all the tests and succeeded in winning the game. And with a triumphant smile on her lips, she went to the kitchen to make her new husband a cup of strong coffee.
* * *
But many of the residents of Katamon G dismiss all these speculations and believe that the right answer, the one and only answer, lies with Rosa’s grandson Dror, who loved his grandmother and Angel more than he loved himself, and was therefore the only one who knew for certain where Rosa had disappeared to. If they had pressed him, perhaps he would have told them about that clear, starry night when a golden ladder came down from the sky in his grandmother’s dream. Rosa gazed at it in wonder, cradled the doll, Belle, in her arms and asked Dror to join her in her dream. And Dror, who had always wanted to dream his grandmother’s dreams, watched it with her. Like a pair of spectators sitting alone in an auditorium and watching a movie on a giant screen spreading over the entire star-studded sky, with the doll, Belle, lying on their laps, they raised their heads and looked at the angels robed in white silk, their fair hair falling in curls to their shoulders, climbing up and down the ladder, ascending and descending and ascending again, until their eyes tired of the sight.
And when they wanted to wake up they suddenly saw him. The little fallen angel scurrying and scrambling between the feet of the big angels. Rosa and Dror rose to their feet, called out loud, held out their arms to him, and begged him to come down to them. But the little angel was afraid of heights, and he was too frightened to lower his eyes to the ground. And when they went on calling him in loud, demanding voices, he sat down on one of the rungs of the ladder and looked in bewilderment from Dror to Rosa and back again, and when he couldn’t decide what to do he flapped his wings at them and beckoned them to climb up after him. Dror made haste to put his foot on the first rung of the ladder but his grandmother pushed him aside. Tucking the doll, Belle, firmly under her armpit she gripped the ladder with her other hand, then raised her foot and set it resolutely on the first rung of the ladder. When the little angel saw her taking the first step he smiled down at her with a familiar smile and encouraged her to keep on climbing. And when she gripped the ladder with her other hand, and Belle slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground, Rosa did not look back. With her eyes fixed on the little angel, she set her second foot on the ladder and started to climb up behind him, while he hopped lightly from rung to rung, going on ahead and showing her the way, until they both turned into little dots in the sky.
As soon as they disappeared from view Dror tried to follow them. But when he put his foot on the first rung the ladder rose into the air and was swallowed up by the clouds, leaving a blinding flash of golden light behind it. Dror was left alone in the world, holding the doll, Belle, in his hands. Doubled up in a terrible pain that hit him like a fist in his stomach, he knew that Rosa had reached the sky and would never return to the earth, not even for a brief visit. For her eyes were now feasting on the sight of the angels, her ears were full of the glorious music of the harps playing in her honor, and her hands were delighting in the touch of the soft, downy wings spread out to welcome her.
When he woke up crying with his stomach aching, he found Belle next to him, her wide-open eyes looking at him sadly. And when he hugged her, squeezing her soft body in his hands, she consoled him with her high, squeaky voice: “Mama, mama, mama.” Dror promised that he would take good care of her, better care than he had taken of Angel. And when he calmed down he told her that now that Angel had reached heaven at last, nobody in the world would ever dream again of a golden ladder with its head in the sky and angels going up and down it. But he was sure, so he told her, that one day Angel would miss him and want him by her side. Then she would send a new ladder for him, and it made no difference to him at all if the ladder was made of gold, or silver, or metal, or even of wood. As long as she sent him a ladder and he could climb up it and meet the little girl who was an angel, and whom he loved more than anything else in his life.
Also by Shifra Horn
Four Mothers
THE FAIREST AMONG WOMEN. Copyright © 1998 by Shifra Horn. English translation by H. Sacks. Worldwide translation copyright © 2000 by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First published in Israel by Keshet, 1998
First U.S. Edition: July 2001
eISBN 9781466880252
First eBook edition: July 2014