The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (31 page)

My God, Rachelika thought, how her coquette of a sister could sometimes surprise her.

“Where did you get so many smarts from all of a sudden?” she said and hugged Luna.

“From you,” Luna replied. “We're the same blood, aren't we?”

*   *   *

At dinner the following day, Gabriel was in a good mood and joined them at the table. They ate in a pleasant silence, though every now and then the girls' gay chatter and Gabriel's request for someone to please pass the salt broke the quiet. The only unheard voice was Rosa's. In general, her mother had become almost invisible lately, Rachelika observed. Since Gabriel had fallen ill, it was as if she had been fading together with him. She considered telling her mother what she'd heard recently from her friend Temima, a member of one of the Lehi youth groups, about Tio Ephraim, who was now going by a new name and was an important commander. But ultimately she decided to keep it to herself. If she wanted to return to the ranks of the struggle, she had to keep quiet. Nobody, not even Luna, could know about her plans.

“Where are you,
querida
? Where have you gone, to America?” Her father's voice cut into her thoughts. She smiled at him, glad to see he was feeling better. She worried about him very much. Lately the rheumatism had had a bad effect on his mood. The tremor in his fingers was still there despite his efforts to conceal it, but the smile and the gentleness were back. Seizing on his good mood, she said, “Papo, I want to go back to school. I can take evening classes so it won't interfere with my work in the shop.”

Gabriel was silent for what seemed like eternity to her, and then said, “I'm not a well man, Rachelika. I hardly go to the shop, I sit at home. So why don't you take over the shop from me, you and your future husband?”

“What future husband, Papo? I don't even have a boyfriend.”

“There will be, Rachelika, there'll be a young man, with God's help, and there'll be a wedding, and this is your dowry, querida. Luna and Becky will marry and be at home for their husbands and children, but you, you've got the head to run a shop. You've learned from me everything you need to know.”

“Papo querido, is that what you want for me? To work in the shop in Mahane Yehuda? Didn't you say you wanted me to have an education? Didn't you say you were working to give us the opportunity you never had?”

Gabriel seemed to reflect on this point.

“Heideh, querida,” he finally said with a big smile, “go and enroll yourself in evening classes.”

She jumped into his arms, kissed him again and again, and danced around the table. Luna looked on amazed at the sight of her always serious sister now deliriously happy, happier than she'd seen her in a long time. She got up from the table and joined her, dancing and laughing, and Becky joined in too, and the three of them danced around the table with their arms around one another's waists. Gabriel watched his happy daughters and his heart swelled. His gorgeous girls, his wonderful girls, the joy of his life. He didn't even notice Rosa, looking as if she'd seen a ghost.

She was sitting at the end of the table watching her happy husband and laughing daughters and thinking about her father and mother who died from that cursed disease, about her brother Nissim who'd lived in America so long that she'd forgotten what he looked like, about her brother Rachamim hanged by the damned Turks at Damascus Gate, and mostly about Ephraim, whom God only knew where he was and whom she missed desperately.
Ya rabi
, oh God, look at her. She had a family, a husband, daughters, but at moments like these not only didn't she feel close to them, on the contrary, she felt further away. And the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. He has managed to distance my daughters from me. It isn't enough that in all our life together he's been aloof from me? Now my daughters are too? Luna, his twin soul, I can understand, I've gotten used to it, accepted it, but Rachelika? Becky? What terrible act did my soul commit before it entered this body of mine? And why am I paying such a painful price in this life for what happened in that one? She shoved the chair back and got up from the table. The noise of the chair tipping over onto the floor silenced the girls' celebration.

“Mother, what's the matter?” Rachelika asked.

“Nothing's the matter. Carry on dancing and leave me be!” she snapped and went out onto the balcony.

It was freezing cold, but she didn't feel it. Insult had seared her body. Her eyes filled with tears as she leaned against the balcony railing and for a fleeting moment considered throwing herself onto the street below, thought about dying and ridding herself once and for all of the pain, of the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of orphanhood that had been with her since the day her mother and father died and left her, a ten-year-old girl, with her five-year-old brother, alone in the world.

*   *   *

Right after work the next day Rachelika enrolled in evening classes. She decided that she would pay the tuition from her wages and wouldn't even ask her father for the money. Afterward she ran straight to Zacks & Son so Luna would be the first to know. Rachelika watched her sister stand barefoot in the window display as she pinned a dress to a mannequin. A handsome young man walked up beside Rachelika and looked at Luna as if mesmerized. Rachelika smiled to herself and tapped on the glass to catch Luna's attention. On seeing Rachelika, she gave that big white-toothed smile and beckoned her into the shop.

“
Ya rabi
, my God!” the young man said either to himself or to Rachelika. “I don't know which is the real doll, the mannequin or the doll dressing it.”

Rachelika laughed and said, “If you ask me, it's the doll dressing the mannequin, and she's my sister.”

“And what's your sister's name?”

“Luna, like the moon.”

“Well, tell your sister I'm moonstruck.”

“Good luck!” Rachelika laughed again and entered the shop.

Luna came out of the window display. “Who was that outside?”

“How would I know? Just a boy. He asked your name. I told him it's Luna like the moon, and he said he's moonstruck.”

“Is that what he said?” Luna laughed. “He seems nice.”

“Very nice, but I'm not here for that nice boy, but to tell you I've been accepted to the high school evening classes!”

“That's great, hermanita!” Luna said cheerfully. “At long last you're starting to get back on track.”

“It's all thanks to you, Lunika. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have even thought of evening classes.”

When she got home from work that evening, Luna seemed different. Her usually glowing skin seemed to glow even more, her eyes were shining, and she cast melting smiles in all directions.

At the first opportunity she pulled Rachelika into their room. “As I come out of Zacks & Son and kiss the mezuzah, the boy who spoke to you while I was in the window is standing there with a rose in his hand. He holds it out to me and says, ‘This is for the doll who's more beautiful than the one in the window.' I thank him, take the rose, and start walking, but he follows me. I say, ‘Thanks for the rose, but why are you following me?' and he says, ‘From today on I'm your shadow. Wherever you go I'll be right behind you.'”

“And you didn't get rid of him?”

“Why get rid of him? He's charming! He escorted me all the way home until we reached the bench at the entrance to the Gan Ha'ir park. We sat down, and he told me his name's David Siton and he was in the British army and just got back from Italy. He's a Spaniol like us. He was born in Misgav Ladach hospital in the Old City, he went to school at the Sephardi Talmud Torah, and from one minute to the next I'm liking him more and more. Then he suddenly brings his lips to mine and kisses me. Bells, I swear to God, Rachelika, I heard bells! Would you believe, hermanita, that was my first kiss!”

“I haven't been kissed yet,” said Rachelika shyly.

“Don't worry. David's got friends from the British army. We'll find you somebody who'll kiss you.”

“What's this we, you're already a couple? Did he propose?”

“Of course he did. He proposed we get married.”

“Today, on the park bench? He's only just met you!”

“He said that from the moment he saw me he knew I'd be his wife, so why waste time.”

“And what did you say?”

“I laughed, what could I say? Love at first sight, would you believe it?”

*   *   *

As Luna and David got to know each other better, she was pleased to discover that like her, David too loved life. They spent a lot of time in cafés, in clubs, at the cinema.

“Just look at what fate is,” he whispered in her ear one evening as they sat on their bench at Gan Ha'ir. “The day after I get back to Jerusalem after three and a half years in that damn war, I'm walking down Jaffa Road and I see you.”

Luna blushed. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. She couldn't believe that at long last her knight on a white horse had come. She hadn't the slightest doubt that she'd found the man of her dreams, the man who would be the father of her children. She was so sure of the future of their relationship that she invited David to her home. She introduced him to Gabriel, who was happy to learn that he was the son of Victoria and Aharon Siton, his former neighbors who had “bought” his late son Raphael. A short time after baby Raphael died, the Siton family had moved from Ohel Moshe to Romema and they'd lost touch. Now, thanks to Luna and David, the two families had reconnected, and since the Ermosa and Siton families had known each other for a long time, the relationship between Luna and David quickly became an engagement.

Every evening when Luna finished work at Zacks & Son, David would pick her up at the shop and they'd go and see the early showing at one of the city's many theaters. After the film they'd walk with their arms around each other to their bench at Gan Ha'ir and talk. Luna told David about her sisters and of her great love for her father. He observed that she hardly ever mentioned her mother, but didn't ask why. He talked about himself sparingly, but she continually urged him to tell her about his life, and he eventually gave in. Once he started talking she could hardly stop him. He told her about his family, the British army, and the war, and mainly his mother, with whom he had a special bond.

Since their engagement, Luna became one of the family in the Siton home. She couldn't help but notice the big age difference between David's parents. “My mother,” he started to explain once after they went dancing, “met my father when she was a child. Even though she was only fourteen, she was already a widow. A short time after she was married for the first time, her husband died in the cholera epidemic, and what man would take a widow? Only a widower like him with children. Where could she find a young widower? So they found her an old one who was thirty years older than her and they got married. My father hasn't worked even one day in his life. His sons who fled from the Turks and went to America sent money, but it was never enough, and we, the small children my mother bore him, as soon as we reached the age of twelve, we were taken out of the Talmud Torah and put to work. I worked in my elder brother's butcher shop in Mekor Chaim. Afterward, when he moved to Haifa and opened a butcher shop downtown near the port where, forgive me, the prostitutes and the sailors' bars are, he took me with him. I saw the sailors from the ships, I listened to their stories about faraway countries, and I wanted it too. When I was seventeen I heard they were recruiting men for the British army and putting them on the ships. I wanted to travel overseas. I didn't think about there being a war overseas. I falsified my age from seventeen to eighteen.”

“How did you do that?”

“I came back to Jerusalem and went straight to the mukhtar of Zichron Tuvia. The mukhtar, may he be healthy, if you gave him a few grush he'd do whatever you asked, so I gave him a few grush and he changed my age from seventeen to eighteen. I joined up at the Sarafand camp and they posted me as a guard at the Royal Air Force station at Al-Bassa near Ras al-Naqoura. I soon realized I'd only see overseas in my dreams and the sea from Ras al-Naqoura.

“But one day a guy who introduced himself as Gad came to the camp. He said he'd come on behalf of the Haganah to look for volunteers for the British army's Jewish Brigade, and that we'd be going to Europe to fight the Germans. I knew that this was my chance. For me it was an adventure, the opportunity to go overseas. I was recruited into the Royal Engineers and sent on a course where we learned how to build army camps and dismantle bridges. Moise Bechor, my friend from the neighborhood, was with me.”

“Did he want to go overseas too?”

“No.” David laughed. “He wanted to get away from his mother, who nagged him a lot. We'd come home at night and she'd be waiting for him by the door and yell at him, ‘What happened to your grandmother that you've come home at this hour? The sun's already shining!' When he told her he was joining the British army she ran after him down the street, pleading with him to stay home. I'll never forget how the miskenica sat down in the middle of the cobblestone street and wept. Believe me, at that moment I thought that our Moise had a heart of stone.”

“And your mother?” asked Luna, who was fascinated by his story. “What did she say?”

“My mother, may she be healthy, was busy looking after my old father, who worked her like a slave.”

“And does Moise really have a heart of stone?”

“A heart of stone?” David laughed. “Moise has a heart of margarine. He's a great guy. I love him like a brother. We were together the whole of the war. We were with Montgomery's 8th Army at El Alamein, in the 1st Camouflage Company. We fought Rommel's Afrika Korps that was on its way to conquer Palestine. After the conquest of Egypt we were loaded onto boats for the invasion of Sicily. We built an entire camp in northern Italy, and the next day it was attacked by German planes and completely destroyed. Dogfights like in the cinema.