The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (23 page)

“But I want to say hello to Papo.”

“Soon. Nona Mercada is with him now. We'll go inside soon.”

“Nona Mercada from Tel Aviv?” Luna was overjoyed and tried to turn the door handle, but Mercada had locked and bolted the door from the inside.

“Quiet, quiet,” Rosa begged Luna not to disturb Mercada, Heaven forbid the sour old woman lose her temper.

It had been years since she had gone to live with Allegra in Tel Aviv, and Rosa was still as frightened of her as she had been when she first came to this house, the poor orphan from the Shama neighborhood, the frightened bride.

Luna didn't listen, the stubborn girl, and banged on the door, shouting, “Papo! Papo!”

She'll wake the dead on the Mount of Olives yet, Rosa thought. Luna didn't stop yelling and pleading with her grandmother. “Nona, Nona, open the door, let me in!”

But Nona was locked inside with her son and the door didn't open. Luna was stubborn, but Mercada was twice as stubborn!

Hours passed and the sun was already setting. It would soon be Shabbat and Mercada hadn't opened the door.

The girls lost patience. Becky started crying and Rachelika, who usually had the patience of a saint, started nagging. Luna stood with her ear to the door trying to hear and climbed up to the window trying to see inside, but the sour old woman had closed the curtains.

Soon the Ishkenazis from Mea Shearim would come past, sound a loud blast on the shofar, and call, “
Shabbes!
” and she'd still be sitting in the yard with her restless girls waiting for Mercada to open the door.

Soon she too would run out of patience. “Heideh,” she told the girls, “we're going to Tio Shmuel and Tia Miriam's.” By the time they reached Shmuel's house in the adjacent Sukkat Shalom neighborhood, it was almost Shabbat.

“Your mother's at our house with Gabriel,” she told Shmuel.

“My mother's come from Tel Aviv?” he asked, and right away wanted to go see her.

“Don't go,” Rosa said. “She told me to stay away, closed the door, and said we could only come back in when she opens it.”

“How long has she been with him?”

“Almost since they closed the shops in the market for Shabbat,” she replied.

While the girls played in the yard with their cousins, Rosa, Shmuel, and Miriam sat inside in a tense silence.

Miriam suddenly said, “She's probably doing livianos for him to drive out the fears that put him in bed.”

As Miriam said this, Rosa's heart was suddenly quiet, calm. There isn't anyone Mercada can't save with her livianos, she thought. Before the night is over, she'll save Gabriel too, and he'll rise from his bed once more.

*   *   *

Rosa and the girls didn't go home that night. When the time came for Kiddush, they sat around the Shabbat table in Shmuel and Miriam's house. She and the girls hadn't bathed, so they welcomed the Sabbath in their everyday clothes, and for the first time since the girls were born, they drank the Kiddush wine at a Shabbat table that wasn't their own and with a man who wasn't their father. The girls, Rosa noticed, didn't complain, except for Luna who constantly shot angry looks at her mother and the door. After Kiddush and the Shabbat dinner, Miriam said to Rosa, “Until Mercada comes to call you home, put the girls to bed with my children. When it's time, we'll wake them up and you'll go back.”

Rachelika and Becky were quite happy about having a sleepover with their cousins, but Luna stomped her foot and insisted, “I want to sleep in my own house!”

Miriam tried to pacify her, but Rosa didn't even make an effort.

“I'm going home!” Luna persisted, bolting through the door with Rosa on her heels. I'll die if I'm seen running after this girl, Rosa said to herself. I'll walk at a snail's pace so people don't think, God forbid, that I'm chasing after her, so nobody in Ohel Moshe sees how this child walks all over me. If I wasn't afraid she'd run to the Ingelish police again, I'd just let her go.

It was a ten-minute walk to their house in Ohel Moshe, ten minutes that seemed like eternity. Rosa was frightened of both Mercada and Luna. Both of them, the old woman and the girl, cast terror into her heart.

Luna stood by the door, pounding it with her fists and kicking it wildly. “Papo, Papo, Papo!” she shouted. “Open the door, Papo, I want to come in.” But the door remained locked, and when Rosa arrived, the child started throwing herself to the ground, doing her usual performance. Rosa was afraid to leave her there. It hadn't been that long since the girl went to the police and told them that she'd thrown her out of the house. She remained standing beside the child, who had deafened the whole neighborhood and no doubt disturbed their Shabbat dinner. But nobody came out into the yard. Rosa was mortified. Even the neighbors had gotten used to Luna's performances.

Luna's screams and sobs shattered the Shabbat eve silence. Like a dog baying at the moon, thought Rosa, she's screaming like a lunatic! The door of the house suddenly shot open and the sour old woman was in the doorway, banging her cane on the floor as she said in an icy voice, “Basta!” All at once the sobbing stopped and the child stood agape facing her grandmother, who went back inside and slammed the door.

Rosa was petrified. Luna got up and went through the yard gate and into the alley. Rosa followed step by step, making sure she didn't go to the Ingelish police and tell them lies again. But Luna didn't go to the police. She went back to Shmuel's house.

When Rosa arrived a few minutes after her, Miriam pointed and whispered, “In there with the children.” Rosa went into the little space that was separated from the living room by a curtain. The room was illuminated by the moon from outside, and she could see her girls huddled on one mattress, Rachelika in the middle. She looked at her daughters and her eyes caught Luna's. The beautiful green eyes were wide open and filled with tears.

Rosa longed to hug the child, but she was afraid of her reaction, afraid that Luna would push her away again, and she didn't think she could face any more rejection.

*   *   *

The door of Gabriel and Rosa's house didn't open for three days and three nights. For three days and three nights, mother and son stayed behind the locked door and closed shutters. Nobody came out and nobody went in.

“May God forgive my sins, the bread is probably stale by now and the cheese left out is soured,” Rosa thought aloud. “What are they eating?”

“Each other,” replied her sister-in-law, who was standing in the kitchen putting a pot on the stove. “They should stew in their own juice and put an end to this war. It's destroying the family.”

“That sour old woman,” Rosa said, “is probably driving the demons out of Gabriel, but who'll drive out
her
demons?”

“With God's help, her demons will go as well. Don't be frightened, querida Rosa, when her majesty our mother-in-law comes out of your door, you'll see that everything will be all right again. Gabriel was only sick because of his mother. If she forgives him, he'll forgive himself and get better. Don't worry, Rosa, only good will come of them being locked up together for so many days.”

On the morning of the fourth day, just as the sun was rising, Mercada opened the door of Gabriel and Rosa's house. She came outside, walked to the bus station on Jaffa Road, and boarded a bus back to Tel Aviv.

That same morning after his mother left, Gabriel got out of bed, washed his body with soap and water, shaved his beard, dressed in fresh clothes, and headed to the market.

Matzliach, Leito, and Avramino couldn't believe their eyes when they saw him standing in the doorway. Without saying much, he took his usual place behind the counter and went back to work as if nothing had happened.

“Go to Shmuel's house, ask if they know where Rosa is, and when you find her tell her to come home with the girls,” he ordered Avramino, who rushed off.

When Rosa returned home, she was surprised to find the house just as she'd left it, spick-and-span. Gabriel's bed was made, the sink empty, and the tin bath, to which a few drops of water still clung, had been hung up to dry in its usual place on a nail in the wall.

The girls took off the clothes they'd borrowed from their cousins and changed into their own.

“Heideh, hurry up,” Rosa urged them. “Don't be late for school.”

As they went off, she stood in the doorway. Little Becky was flanked by her two sisters, holding their hands. Rosa sighed as if a weight had been lifted from her. If Gabriel had gone back to the shop and the girls to school, perhaps her sister-in-law Miriam had been right and everything was back to normal.

But Luna didn't go to school that day. After she dropped off Becky and Rachelika, she hurried back through the school gate and ran to Gabriel's shop. When she arrived at the door breathless, her father smiled at her and she jumped into his arms, clinging to him like a baby.

“Basta, querida! You're not a baby anymore. You'll be a bride soon! What young man will want to marry you if you behave like a little girl with your father?”

He tried to get her off him and she, who was so happy to see her father smiling at her the way he used to, ignored him and continued hugging him tight, clutching his waist, sticking to him.

“I want to work in the shop with you,” she finally told him.

“Basta, Luna, you're still a child. You have to go to school.”

“You just said I'll be married soon and now I'm still a child? Papo, I want to help you, be here with you. I don't have to learn in school to be able to sell in the shop.”

“You don't have to learn? Do you know that your grandmother and your mother didn't go to school for even one day in their lives? And you, you've got the privilege of studying and acquiring knowledge, an education…”

“What's an education? I can read and write. I've learned arithmetic. I don't need any more than that.”

“Stop talking nonsense, Luna! Heideh, take some goodies and go to school. Heideh, there's a good girl.”

“Papo, please, just today, let me stay in the shop just today.”

Unable to ward off his daughter's pleas, Gabriel gave in. But her charm and beauty worried him. He would have to keep a close eye on the girl, protect her so she wouldn't become one of those modern girls who went dancing with boys at Café Europa and all the other clubs frequented by English soldiers, God help us.

Gabriel never spoke about what transpired in the three days he spent with his mother behind the locked door, and Mercada too didn't say a word. But from the moment she stepped through the doorway of his house, he began functioning as he had before. The Ermosas' life resumed as normal with one exception: Gabriel no longer went to the synagogue on weekdays and only attended on Saturdays and holidays. Rosa, who noticed this change in his behavior, as usual didn't ask questions. She had learned that the less she spoke, the better. Better to keep quiet than be answered with thunderous silence. She continued running the household, the friction with Luna lessened, and even though she didn't approve of the girl's ever-increasing coquettish appearance, she made no comment. She preferred a truce with the girl rather than the incessant bickering that exhausted her and almost always left her feeling helpless and Luna triumphant. So she raised her hands up in surrender and chose to avoid confrontation with her as much as possible.

Toward the end of the school year, the principal, Rabbi Pardess, invited the parents to a meeting about their daughters' progress. Gabriel said he would go, and Rosa, who took no special interest in her daughters' education, was quite content to stay home.

“First, I must congratulate you on Rachel's many talents,” Rabbi Pardess told the proud Gabriel. “Your Rachel has a fine future before her, and I recommend sending her to the high school at the David Yellin College of Education in Beit Hakerem. Little Rivka also has good qualities. She is an industrious, diligent, and excellent pupil.

“Levana.” The rabbi sighed, putting heavy emphasis on Luna's Hebrew name. “About Levana, Mr. Ermosa, I regrettably have no good news to report. I would like, sir, to bring to your attention that I take a negative view of the fact that you allow your daughter to be absent from school so frequently. I understand that you need help in your shop, but you must make up your mind: Either you want the girl to learn or you do not. If you are interested in her schooling, then I insist that she attend school every day and complete all her assignments like the rest of the pupils. If you wish to take her out of school so she can work in your shop, that is your right, but you must decide once and for all.”

As he listened to the rabbi's words, a stunned Gabriel didn't know whether he should admit to Luna's lies or cover for her. His own upbringing in his parents' house had taught him never to wash dirty laundry in public, so ultimately he chose to keep quiet and not to tell the rabbi that his daughter had brazenly lied. He rose, looked the rabbi in the eye, and said, “Sir, I am very sorry. From this day on, my daughter will not be absent from school for a single day.”

As Gabriel exited the schoolyard, he was boiling with rage. His daughter, flesh of his flesh, had humiliated him in front of a respected rabbi. Luna, lying so barefacedly and implicating me in her lies as well? What's happened to my daughter? Had she picked up on his vulnerability and taken advantage of it?

Although the school wasn't far from the market, he didn't go back to the shop and instead started walking down the slope of Agrippas Street toward King George. He had to calm himself before going home and confronting Luna. How he needed good advice at a time like this. For a moment he thought about getting on a bus to his mother in Tel Aviv, but the possibility of encountering Rochel again frightened him so much that he dismissed it right away.

It hadn't been that long since his mother had saved him with her livianos and exorcised the demons that possessed him. He would never forget the conversation they had just before she left his house. By the third day, he had been strong enough to get out of bed and sit at the table. His mother sat across from him, her face scored with wrinkles, yet in her eyes glinted the spark of a young woman. She was very grave as she said to him, “Adio Senor del mundo was apparently very angry with you on the day you laid eyes on the Ashkenazia. Who knows what you did for Him to punish you so severely. If it does not have God's blessing, love is cursed and brings with it the torments of hell. And your love for the Ashkenazia, hijo querido, did not have God's blessing.” She sighed heavily, laid her hand on Gabriel's, and went on. “God will forgive us for the sins we have committed against each other. But if God had deemed it fit, He would have taken you a long time ago to punish you for your sins, or He would have taken me. But He didn't take either of us. He took that saintly man your father, may he rest in peace, and reprimanded both of us with a punishment worse than death. If God chose to take neither of us, it means that He wants us to remain here on earth. What is done can't be undone, hijo querido, so at least from this day on we shall behave toward each other if not like mother and son, then at least like human beings. I'm now going through that door and back to Tel Aviv. You will get up, wash yourself, and go back to your life. Try and make the life you have left as good as you can. Do your best for your daughters, for your wife, for your livelihood, and most important of all, do your best for yourself. With God's help, I have erased from your heart the woman who should never have been there in the first place. I have erased the pain and the longing, the memory, and the hope that perhaps one day you will reunite with this woman who was never for you. Now you're clean. Go and start your life from the beginning as if all this never happened.”