The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (41 page)

“Every night.”

“Every night since you got married?”

“Every night, and sometimes in the morning before he goes to work.”

“Even now that you're pregnant?”

Rachelika blushed to the roots of her hair and nodded embarrassedly. “And you, Luna, how often do you do it?”

Luna lowered her eyes and said dejectedly, “Once on our wedding night, and after that, sometimes, but not all the time, not every night.”

“Are you serious, Luna? You haven't been married a year yet. You're still on your honeymoon.”

“It's not David's fault. It's me that doesn't like it.”

“How can you not like it? Don't you want children? Where do you think children come from, the stork brings them?”

“I don't like it.”

“Sometimes I don't like it either, but I never say no. Even if I don't like it at first, I do afterward, and when my husband tells me he loves me, that I'm the love of his life, that he can't live without me, I like it a lot.”

“But David never says things like that to me.”

“He doesn't tell you he loves you?”

“He doesn't love me.”

“God help us, Luna, what are you saying?”

“He doesn't love me. Instead of coming home after work, he goes to the Rex Cinema. He goes to the Rex on purpose because he knows I don't like it there because of the Arabs from the Old City. He plays cards with his friends twice a week, and once a week they go for a drink at the bar over the Edison where only men go and no decent woman would step inside.”

“And you're at home on your own? Why didn't you tell me?”

“What would I have said, that my husband leaves his wife alone in their first year of marriage?”

“But you don't like being on your own.”

“I hate being on my own. I'm scared of being on my own, and in Mekor Baruch too, so far away from everything I know.”

“What about your neighbors?”

“I told you, I don't want the neighbors knowing that I'm on my own. If I don't talk about it, then nobody else will know.”

How naive she is, Rachelika thought to herself. The nosy neighbors must notice the unusual times that David gets home. Luna is surely the subject of malicious gossip.

“Once,” Luna said, “our next-door neighbor asked me why my husband comes home so late at night, and I told her that there are things you don't talk about, so she probably thinks he's in the Haganah.”

“Miskenica.” Rachelika hugged her sister. How dare that bastard David treat her sister like this. She'd show him, her stupid brother-in-law. She'd open his eyes for him.

“Eli, God be praised, Eli,” they heard Rosa burst out from the other room. Luna quickly dried her tears and the two sisters ran to greet Becky.

“When I heard the explosion at the King David I got on my motorbike and raced to Becky's school,” Eli explained.

“Eli drove like a lunatic,” said the excited Becky. “Even if the English had wanted to, they wouldn't have caught him. He drove like the wind.”

“May you be healthy,” Rosa said. “May you be healthy, Eli. I won't forget that you brought our Becky home safely.”

“All my life I'll bring Becky safely to anywhere,” he promised Rosa, who knew that he would keep that promise.

Gabriel nodded and beckoned Eli over to him.

“Well done,” he told him. “I'm liking you more and more. With God's help, when Becky turns seventeen we'll announce your engagement, but in the meantime I want you to know that I consider you one of the family, that you're my son-in-law no less than David and Moise.”

“I'm honored, Senor Ermosa, greatly honored. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Don't thank me, may you be healthy, just look after my daughter. Now she's home safely at last, it's time to eat. Heideh, Rosa, some food on the table.”

Gabriel noticed that Luna and Rachelika had shut themselves in the other room for some time. Luna's behavior had worried him recently. She had lost a lot of weight and the radiance she always displayed seemed to have dimmed. He didn't know why his daughter was sad, but he was glad she had Rachelika. That she didn't have to endure whatever it was alone.

*   *   *

The number of dead in the King David bombing reached ninety-one: forty-one Arabs, twenty-eight British, five foreign nationals, and seventeen Jews. That night David stayed in the carpentry shop and slept on the sawdust together with the owner and the other workers. It was impossible to leave the shop. Had there been a telephone in his father-in-law's house he would have called from the public phone in the adjacent post office and assured them he was all right. He recalled Luna telling him that when they lived in the big apartment on King George Street, their neighbor who was a doctor had a phone, but that didn't help now.

Much water had flowed in the streams around Jerusalem since the Ermosa family left King George Street, mainly muddy water. His father-in-law's health was bad, his business situation even worse. The question of selling the shop was still in the air, and he himself had no opinion. With all due respect to his marriage to Luna, David didn't feel close to his father-in-law, nor did he feel close to his wife. How had he thought that everything would work out if he got married? How had he thought that another woman, even a stunning beauty like Luna, could replace Isabella in his heart?

He missed her. There hadn't been a night since he'd left her weeping on the Mestre pier that he hadn't thought about her, recalling over and over the first time he saw her riding her bike in shorts that showed off her long tanned legs. Her white shirt tied at the waist revealed a tanned, rounded belly, and her large breasts seemed like they were about to burst from the buttoned shirt. David remembered her striking, dark-skinned face and almond eyes, her long hair that she secured with a ribbon.

“
Ciao, bella
,” he'd called to her. She'd stopped and gotten off her bike, and from that moment his life had changed. He, whose friends dubbed “Solomon” because he had a thousand wives, he, who spent every night with a different woman, had fallen head over heels with the gorgeous Italian woman who introduced herself as Isabella. How could he have thought that he would be able to forget her? He hadn't forgotten her even when he was courting Luna. Back then he'd repressed his feelings, determined to marry, have children, a family. But how could he have children when he hardly made love to his wife? Moise and Rachelika married after them and were already expecting. And for he and Luna, where would children come from, the milkman? He had to make love to his wife, he had to give her a child; otherwise there'd be talk. Luna didn't deserve to be talked about. She was a good girl. He had to change. On my life, just let us get through this night, and starting tomorrow things will be different.

*   *   *

“We have to talk,” Rachelika said to Moise.

“We talk all the time, my love,” he replied and kissed her belly.

“It's serious. It's about Luna and David.”

Moise tensed. “What about Luna and David? What's happened now?”

“Do you know that they don't have marital relations?”

“What are you saying?”

“What you're hearing. That ‘Solomon' of yours who's had a thousand women, the famous lover, doesn't have intercourse with his wife.”

“Rachelika, that's none of our business.”

“It most certainly is. We got married after them and I'm already pregnant. I feel terrible for my sister. Soon people will start talking.”

“And I still say, my love, that it's none of our business.”

“Is there something you're not telling me about David, Moise? You're not behaving as if you can't see or hear for no reason. I know you.”

“My love who is more precious to me than life itself, what I know about David is between me and him. I can't talk to you about my best friend.”

“It's long since not been between you and him.” Rachelika became annoyed and got up from the couch. “From the moment he marries my sister and doesn't make love to her at night, it's no longer a kid's game.”

“My heart and soul, with all my love for you and the respect I have for you, I'm not prepared to talk about other people's marriages.”

“And you think I am? Do you think it was easy for me to talk about it with my sister? Do you think it was easy for her to talk about it with me? We don't talk about things like that in our family. No one ever explained to us what you do or don't do on your wedding night. Once upon a time mothers would explain to their daughters, fathers would explain to their sons, but with us, nada. My mother didn't tell me a thing.”

“So you didn't know what to do, querida mia?”

“Moise, not every woman has a husband like you who's considerate and gentle and loving. Not everyone loves the way we do. We're very lucky.”

“I thought that Luna and David were lucky as well,” Moise replied.

“Shit is what my sister's got, not luck. Your dreck of a friend is breaking her heart, and if you don't tell me what's eating him, I'm going out that door to my mother.”

“Calm down, my precious, you mustn't excite yourself. Think of the baby.”

“Then start talking!”

Moise mulled over telling Rachelika the truth about David. Would she be able to keep his love for Isabella a secret from her sister? She was his beloved wife, and he wanted to share it with her, to reveal what lay behind David's behavior, but words had their own way of always reaching the wrong ears. Words had the power to destroy, even when uttered with the best of intentions. He decided it would be better to keep it to himself. Perhaps the situation would change in time and the words would not hold the power they had now.

“Are you going to tell me or am I leaving?” she roused him from his thoughts. Moise cleared his throat and said, “When we were in Italy, David really did have a thousand women, maybe more. He'd change girls like he changed his socks. He was pretty wild, that David.”

Rachelika noticed that Moise was squirming in his chair. “Spit it out, Moise. What aren't you telling me about David?”

“Don't you understand anything I've just told you?” he replied. “How could you not understand, my lovely? I thought I married Senor Gabriel Ermosa's smartest daughter.”

“I don't understand because you haven't explained it, troncho de Tveria. How is David having a million women in Italy connected with him not making love to his wife?”

“He's used to being free, a butterfly. He's not used to being with just one woman. He needs time to adjust to it.”

“God help us! What are you saying, that he's cheating on Luna?”

“Heaven forbid, Rachelika! Did I say he's cheating? God forbid anyone hears you. I'm saying he's like a little boy, he needs time to get used to being married. He'll grow up and you'll see what a wonderful husband he is. I promise you we'll be hearing good news before the month is out.”

Rachelika bought his story, and Moise breathed a sigh of relief. Now he had to have a talk with David and give him hell. He had to get the stupid ass in line before a disaster erupted and destroyed the whole family.

*   *   *

Luna brushed her bronze hair with her fingers, rolling a curl around one finger, then putting the finger into her mouth to wet the curl. She gazed at the mirror. She was still beautiful; it was just a pity that her husband couldn't see it.

It was early evening. A short while ago she had come home from work, since Mr. Zacks had closed the shop early. He had been very depressed lately. The situation in Jerusalem had gotten to him, and even she hadn't been in the mood to buy new clothes.

Instead of going to her parents' home as usual, Luna had decided to head for her and David's studio in Mekor Baruch. Her conversation with Rachelika weighed heavily on her. She shouldn't have talked to her sister about their intimate life. That was a secret nobody else should know, not even her sister. And anyway, what had come of spilling her heart to Rachelika? What had come of seeing her sister's horrified expression when she'd told her that David didn't make love to her? How could her dear Rachelika help? She had only hurt her sister with what she had confided. And what if Rachelika couldn't restrain herself and told Moise, and what if Moise told David, and what if David decided she had a big mouth and left her?

God Almighty, what had become of her? She who'd had it all, suitors just waiting for her to toss them a word, who stopped breathing as she passed, who swooned at a smile from her, now married to a man who hardly looked at her? How had such a disaster befallen her of all people? Perhaps it was because she had too high an opinion of herself? Because she felt she was queen of the world? Had she behaved badly toward people because she was so full of herself? Forgive me, God, forgive me for forgetting the upbringing I was given by my father.

Modesty in all things, that's what her father had always taught her. Never be boastful, do not be prideful about what God has given you, always remember that there are people who have less than you. But she had forgotten and committed the sin of arrogance, which, so her father had told her more than once, was the most terrible of them all.

Despite the oppressive heat in the room, Luna was shivering. She put on a sweater over her dress, but it did not warm her. She went to the gramophone on the sideboard and put on a record. “Bésame, bésame mucho
,
” Emilio Tuero sang in his mellifluous voice, managing to thaw the cold that enveloped her. She began moving her body side to side to the rhythm, closing her eyes, her feet carrying her of their own volition lightly across the room. When the record finished, she put the needle back on and continued dancing, hugging her body, overcome by loneliness and a longing for the man who had not touched her in such a long time, longing for love of the kind she'd dreamed about but didn't have. She danced and danced until she became exhausted, dropped onto the bed, and fell asleep.