The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (28 page)

“Look, Rosa,” she replied, “I don't know what to tell you. You're like family to me, and so is Senora Franco. I'm between the two of you, and right now she needs me more. She sits on the floor all day, tearing her clothes and pulling her hair out, weeping for her daughter. I'm there with her, helping her during the shiva. What do you want me to do?”

“But how am I to blame?” Rosa said. “Even if Ephraim did kill Matilda, and I know he didn't, how am I to blame?”

“You're not, querida, but he's your brother, you're family, and when there's a murderer in the family, even the best family isn't all that good.”

“You're like a sister to me,” Rosa pleaded. “You can't turn your back on me now, when I need you most.”

“
Ti caro mucho
, Rosa, I love you a lot, but Victoria Franco needs me now too, and if I have to choose between you and her, I have to be with her right now.”

Rosa fell silent, shaken by her neighbor's response. Without a word she turned on her heel and left Tamar's house.

The three-minute walk that separated her house from Tamar's on the other side of the yard seemed to go on forever. She felt as if eyes were peering at her from every window. Everyone in Ohel Moshe, so she understood, had made their choice. Like Tamar, they too had chosen Victoria Franco.

*   *   *

Relations between her and Gabriel became tenser each day. He rarely spoke to her, and for a week now hadn't touched the food she put on the table. The girls became quieter than ever. Rachelika and Becky refused to go to school, and for the first time in her life Rosa decided, without consulting Gabriel, to keep them at home. They stayed in their room for most of the day and left her alone. Even Luna didn't annoy her, and it was as if she were walking around on tiptoe.

One morning, after many days of not leaving the house, Rosa went out into the yard and sat on a stool. On her knees she set a copper bowl of rice from which she picked out small stones.

The yard was very quiet. The neighbors avoided coming outside while she was there, but she was determined to stop hiding like a criminal. Even if her brother had murdered Matilda, and she believed he hadn't, she wouldn't let anybody punish her for something she hadn't done.

As she was sifting the rice, Rachelika came out and sat at her feet. “Mother, what if it's true that Tio Ephraim did kill Matilda?” she asked.

“
Sera la boca!
Don't say things like that! Ephraim hasn't killed anybody! He's being framed, and we don't say anything about Ephraim that we didn't see with our own eyes. We don't say things like that about our family.”

“But Mother, everybody's saying he killed her because she went out with the English.”

“So everybody's saying. Since when have we cared what everybody's saying?”

“They're saying that the Lehi kill Jewish girls only if they informed on Jews to the English, so maybe that's why he killed her?”

A powerful surge of air seemed to fill her lungs, and Rosa felt she could breathe again. That's it! If Ephraim had killed Matilda, then he had a reason. It wasn't just because she went out with an Ingelish, it was because she'd informed on Jews! The whole picture had suddenly become clear to her. In a rare display of emotion she clasped Rachelika's head in both hands and started planting kisses on it.

“Gracias, gracias, querida mia,” she said to her daughter, who was unused to physical contact with her mother, never seen kissing or embracing anyone. “Gracias el Dio, now I understand everything.”

When Gabriel came home that evening, Rosa broached the subject. “Do you know when the Lehi kill Jewish girls? Only when they inform. That's why they killed Matilda. She informed on Jews to the Ingelish, that's why they shaved her head. Rachelika says it's like a mark of Cain.”

Gabriel felt the anger rising in his throat. “Shut your mouth!” he yelled. “Your bastard brother's got us into trouble with the whole of Ohel Moshe, Sukkat Shalom, and the Mahane Yehuda Market. I can't walk through the market. They all treat me like a leper. I'm the murderer's brother-in-law, and I—Gabriel Ermosa, a man respected by everyone—now have to walk with his head bowed and avoid people. Do you know how many years I've known the Franco family? I've known them since the day I was born! And now I can't look them in the eye. Do you know how many customers I had in the shop today, Rosa? Maybe ten. Do you know what that means? It means that our neighbors are boycotting us, and you're talking my ears off about a mark of Cain? A mark of Cain is what your good-for-nothing borracho brother has put on my family,
that's
a mark of Cain! I don't want to hear you say one more word about Ephraim in front of the girls. I forbid you to mention his name. From now on, there's no Ephraim! You want to talk about Ephraim, then go to the Western Wall and leave a note there, speak to Senor del mundo, but in this house Ephraim does not exist!”

Gabriel truly believed that Ephraim had murdered Matilda Franco. A man of peace, he was unable to justify murder under any circumstances, whether of a Jew or an Englishman. On the day that Senora and Senor Franco, Matilda's parents and his loyal customers, came into his shop and placed a jar of almonds and raisins on the counter, he realized it was time to move his family away from Ohel Moshe.

“We want neither your honey nor your sting,” Senora Franco told him. “We want nothing to do with your family, certainly not the almonds and raisins that Matilda, may she rest in peace, bought from you before your brother-in-law, may his name and memory be erased, killed her.” She and her husband made a big display of exiting the shop, leaving Gabriel slack-jawed. Fortunately Avramino and Matzliach had gone to lunch and no one was there to witness his shame.

Gabriel felt weak and sat down on the chair behind the counter, his head whirling, his heart hurting. He drank some water from the clay jar under the counter and tried to put his thoughts into some kind of order. For a while now he'd thought about improving the family's standard of living and moving into a modern apartment in one of the city's better neighborhoods, but for some reason he hadn't acted on it. Now they could no longer stay in Ohel Moshe. He would move his family to the best area in Jerusalem so that his daughters could make a fresh start. Nobody in the new building would need to know that his borracho brother-in-law was a murderer.

*   *   *

A month later the Ermosa family moved into a spacious building with an elevator on King George Street, near the upscale Rehavia neighborhood. Rosa couldn't find herself in her roomy new home. In their old house in Ohel Moshe there were three rooms: Mercada's room, which no one had entered since she left for Tel Aviv, a room for the girls, and another that served as the living room by day and her and Gabriel's bedroom at night. In the new house she and Gabriel had a room to themselves and so did the girls, and they even had a guest room that was presently empty because Gabriel decided that they weren't moving all the “junk” from Ohel Moshe to the new place.

They didn't have enough furniture to fill the rooms. Gabriel bought new furniture for the guest room and new beds for the girls. Above each bed were small cabinets; Becky and Rachelika put schoolbooks on theirs, while Luna arranged makeup on hers. On the inside of her cabinet door Luna stuck a picture of Rita Hayworth that she had cut out of a magazine. From the Romano Brothers carpentry shop Gabriel bought a round dining table over which Rosa spread a lace tablecloth she had embroidered herself. They brought the cabinet with glass doors from the old house, a gorgeous piece that had belonged to Mercada and Raphael. The inside of the cabinet was fitted with mirrors that reflected porcelain and crystal pieces so elegant and delicate that Rosa's heart wouldn't allow her to give them away. On the cabinet's marble top rested silver-framed photographs of her and Gabriel, young and good-looking, from the time of their engagement. He is seated on a chair holding a newspaper, and she is wearing elegant black clothes of the kind she hasn't worn for years, standing beside him tense and grave. Beside their engagement picture was a family photograph of the two of them sitting on chairs, with the three girls behind them. And in Gabriel and Rosa's bedroom stood the magnificent wardrobe with mirrored doors and two lions on top.

Every day movers would unload new furniture and accessories. Gabriel picked out everything himself and didn't once ask Rosa to accompany him. Instead of the kerosene stoves and the Primus, he bought the latest trend in kitchen appliances, an electric cooker, and told her, “From now on you'll cook with electricity.”

He also bought a Levitt icebox, which had a top section with room for an entire block of ice. When they lived in their old house in Ohel Moshe, the ice seller would come in his horse-drawn cart and shout, “Ice! Ice!” and ring his bell, and all the neighbors would gather on Agrippas Street and carry a quarter or half a block of ice home with special tongs. The ice cart didn't come to the new apartment; instead, a truck delivered the ice. The driver would stand on the corner of the street outside the Jewish Agency and ring his bell to announce his arrival. But Rosa never went down to buy ice, for how could she go down all those stairs and make it to the ice truck in time? And if she did, how could she carry the heavy block of ice up four flights?

“
Sano que 'stas
, Gabriel, what are we going to do about ice?” she asked him after three days without ice in the icebox and all the food going bad.

“Por Dio, Rosa, what's the problem with going down in the elevator? Don't you want to get ahead in life?”

Nothing could persuade Rosa to use the elevator. She ignored Luna's mockery and stood firm in her decision not to use the services of the monstrous machine. So Gabriel had no choice but to send Matzliach on his bicycle to fetch ice from the truck and bring it up to their fourth-floor apartment.

What am I going to do with all these modern gadgets that Gabriel's brought me? Rosa asked herself, for she didn't have a single neighbor whose advice she could seek. She didn't get used to the electric cooker either, and when Gabriel left for work she'd take out the kerosene stove and the Primus from under the sink and cook on them. Only one device in the new apartment truly amazed her: the ventilated larder, whose back wall opened onto the outside of the building and was covered with mesh, enabling a flow of air that kept the food inside fresh.

Instead of the curtains that covered the shelf under the sink in Ohel Moshe, she now had wooden cupboards; instead of the rugs she hung on the walls for decoration, she now had a carpet on the living room floor. Yet despite the modern amenities, she felt lost in the big King George Street apartment that had so many stairs and so many neighbors who rode up and down in the elevator. And despite their politeness and despite their greeting her and asking after her husband and daughters, she was unable to find anything in common with them.

“Mother, let's go to Maayan Stub,” Rachelika, who sympathized with her mother, once suggested.

“What have I got to do in Maayan Stub, querida? Everything's expensive there. With what they charge for a pair of underwear, you can buy enough food for a week in the market. No, querida, better to take me to Mahane Yehuda. There's nothing for me in Maayan Stub. It's too fancy for me.”

Rosa desperately missed Ohel Moshe, chatting idly in the yard with her neighbors, the shouted door-to-door conversations, sitting on stools in the afternoon with cold watermelon and salty cheese. She yearned for the warm conversations in Ladino, everyone tasting from each other's plate, the unspoken competition over who baked the best borekas and who made the tastiest sofrito. And most of all she missed her neighbor Tamar. She loved Tamar like a sister, and she remembered her fondly for all the times she had supported her without question. Now Rosa felt profoundly lonely. Not even the toilet and bathroom with its two faucets, one for cold water and the other for hot, which along with the elevator aroused the greatest excitement among the relatives who came specially to see these marvels, moved her.

*   *   *

One morning the Ermosa family and their neighbors in the big stone building on King George Street were awakened by a loud explosion. A bomb had gone off in the
Palestine Post
building on Hasolel Street and rocked the heart of the city. The building collapsed and adjacent buildings were badly damaged; people jumped from balconies, some to their death. The wounded were taken to the city's hospitals and the rest of the street's residents were taken with their possessions to the nearby Warshavsky and Zion hotels.

Rosa was scared to death. Afraid of being in the apartment alone, she told Gabriel, “Perhaps it would be better if the girls didn't leave the house today. It's dangerous outside. It's better if they stay here with me.”

“Por Dio, Rosa,” he replied angrily, “at times like this, it's dangerous every day. These aren't easy times, so what, we should shut ourselves up inside our four walls all day?”

“Querido,” she pleaded, “it's dangerous outside. I don't want anything to happen to the girls, God forbid.”

“Basta, Rosa!” he said. “There'll be something new all the time now. We can't stop living. Nothing's going to happen to the girls.” If he recognized Rosa's fear of being in the apartment on her own, he didn't show it.

From day to day Gabriel had found it increasingly difficult to take the Hamekasher bus from King George all the way to the Mahane Yehuda Market. Very few people could afford a car, but Gabriel's success—two years earlier he had expanded his business and in partnership with Mordoch Levi had opened a halvah factory—had swelled his bank account at the Jaffa Road branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank. He bought a used Austin 1933 from an old doctor at bargain price and enrolled in driving lessons.