The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (42 page)

That's how David found her when he got home late that evening, at a time when young husbands were already making love to their wives. He'd gone to see a cowboy film and waited until it was late so that by the time he got home he'd find his wife asleep.

She was curled up on her side, so small in contrast with the wide bed. He brushed a red curl from her eye and studied his beautiful wife. He felt badly for her, miskenica. She'd probably waited and waited for him until she'd fallen asleep. The needle was still scratching the revolving record and he lifted it, switched off the gramophone, and replaced the record in its sleeve. What's happening to me? He asked himself the question that had so troubled him since their wedding night. Why has my heart turned to stone? He took a blanket from the closet and covered Luna, then quietly changed into his pajamas and lay down beside her. She was lying in the middle of the bed, not leaving much room for him, and he was afraid to touch her accidentally. What would happen if she woke up? Would he have to talk to her? Would he have to hug her? Make love to her? He was so ashamed of himself. What would the guys from the brigade say if they knew he didn't touch his wife?

*   *   *

“I have to talk to you,” Moise said to David when they went out to the yard for a cigarette after Friday-evening dinner at Gabriel and Rosa's house.

“I can't help with the shop,” David said quickly. “I don't understand anything at all about it, so whatever you and our father-in-law decide is fine by me.”

“I don't want to talk about the shop, David. I want to talk about Luna.”

“Luna? What do you have to say to me about Luna?”

“Not now, David. Just the two of us need to talk, without all the family close by.”

“There's nobody here now, there's just you and me. So talk, Moise.”

“What's going on between you and Luna?”

“Everything's fine, thank God.”

“Are you sure everything's fine, amigo?”

“Why wouldn't it be fine?”

“Because her sister thinks that nothing is fine.”

“Her sister? Since when has her sister interfered in our business?”

“That's it, she's not interfering, I am. I think you're ruining your life. I think you'll bring down disaster on the family.”

“Hold it, Moise, stop right there! With all due respect to you being like a brother, I won't let you speak to me like that!”

“Come on, David. What, you think that I
want
to interfere? I'm saying this because I care. You think that people can't see that something's not right between you and Luna? That people don't have eyes?”

“If you mean that you're ahead of me and got your wife pregnant first, then well done you, Moise, but I'm not competing with you. You've evidently forgotten that there are methods that prevent pregnancy.”

“Stop with the stories, David, I know exactly what's going on. Get this into your head: There's no more Isabella! Your life with her stayed in Italy! You're married to Luna now, and listen well, amigo, you start behaving like a man, respect her and do your duty as a husband, be the father of her children, because if you don't, you'll have me to deal with. On my life, David, if you don't come to your senses and get things back on track, I'll break every bone in your body!”

David was stunned. Moise, his quiet, gentle friend, had never spoken to him so vehemently. Moise had always respected him, and it had always been David who had told Moise what to do, who had given advice, arranged things, taken him under his wing and even found him a wife.

But Moise was dead serious, and although his words had surprised and angered David, he knew there was truth in them. He knew that if he didn't start behaving with Luna as a husband behaves with his wife, there would be a disaster and God only knew how it might end.

He stubbed out his cigarette and followed Moise back into the house.

“Heideh, Lunika,” he called to his wife. “Let's go home.”

“What did you say to David?” Rachelika whispered to Moise.

“Me?” he asked, playing dumb. “I didn't say anything to him. We just had a cigarette together.”

“Sure, sure,” she said and hugged him.

*   *   *

For many days the shop had been devoid of customers. Moise repeatedly cleaned the half-empty shelves, and Rachelika must have swept the floor a thousand times. They had stopped setting the larger sacks outside. They were empty and there was no way of refilling them, and even if there was, where would they have gotten the money to buy fresh supplies? They had let Avramino go. Gabriel had almost dug his heels in when she and Moise had told him there was no choice.

And times were so hard that shortly after they had to let Uncle Matzliach go too. And that was much harder. Matzliach was deeply hurt.

“After all I've done for my brother?” he told his niece. “After I've given my heart and soul to this shop you're sending me home?”

“Forgive me, Tio,” Rachelika lowered her eyes to the floor. She couldn't find the courage to look at her uncle. “We don't have the money to pay you.”

“Does my brother Gabriel know that you're throwing me into the street?”

“Papo is broken by it, Tio. We had to let Avramino go, we're letting you go, and soon we'll be left with no choice but to go as well.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Matzliach said, fuming. “I carried you in my arms when you were a baby. You should be ashamed that you're throwing your old uncle out like this.”

“I
am
ashamed, Tio,” she said, wishing she could disappear, “but there's no choice.”

Tio Matzliach spat on the floor, threw his apron at Rachelika, and left the shop. Her eyes filled with tears and she collapsed into Moise's arms.

“Shhh … shhh, my sweet one. Think of the baby. This isn't good for it,” Moise said in a soothing voice.

“I wish my father had done it and not given me this loathsome job.”

“Your father kept Matzliach on for many years even though he was a lazy worker.”

“And he never stopped complaining,” Rachelika added.

“And took home a tithe from the goods, and not only on the first of the month,” Moise went on.

“You saw that?” She laughed. “I thought I was the only one who noticed.”

“Your father knew about it too but turned a blind eye. Don't feel bad. I'm sure that as soon as the situation improves your father will help. It'll be all right.”

But nothing was all right. Matzliach was so angry at being let go that he broke off relations with Gabriel and his family. “I don't want any favors from them,” he told Allegra when he went to Tel Aviv to vent his rage and inform his mother of Gabriel's disrespect.

“Blood is thicker than water,” he said. “And if Gabriel treats me like water, he can go to hell.”

“Heaven help us, what are you saying,
tfu-tfu-tfu
!” Allegra said, upset.

“He threw me into the street like a dog. It's as if he killed me!”

“Are you sure Gabriel knows that his daughter fired you?” Mercada asked, stepping in.

“What do you think, madre querida, that Rachelika would do something without her father knowing about it?”

“You never know,” Mercada said. “Gabriel is at home sick. He hasn't gone to the shop in a long time. Now it's Rachelika and her Maghrebi who are running it. Perhaps they sent you home on their own. The Maghrebis,” she said, spitting contemptuously, “are Scots, they're misers. You go to your brother's house now, tell him that they've left you without food! Do you hear me? You won't give in to his daughter and the Maghrebi. You'll talk to your brother, your flesh and blood. One brother doesn't go against the other. Behaving like that with family is not in our blood.”

“It's not in our blood? Madre querida,” Allegra intervened, “if it's not in our blood, how is it that for years you haven't been to Jerusalem to see how your favorite son is and you haven't shown any interest in his health, when now, God forgive my sins, it's as bad as ever?”

“Don't be insolent!” the old woman scolded her, but Allegra, who had long since lost patience with her irritable mother, went on. “You have to go and see Gabriel in Jerusalem yourself. Tell him you've forgiven him, and maybe he'll get out of the chair he sits in all the time, go back to the shop, and together with Rachelika and the Maghrebi he'll get it back on its feet, and then he'll take Matzliach back.”

“I'm not going to Jerusalem even if the Messiah comes!” the old woman retorted, banging her cane on the floor.

“If you don't go and see Gabriel, then don't send Matzliach to him. I'm sure that Rachelika consulted him before firing Matzliach, so why send him now? To rub salt in his wounds?”

“Why are you defending him?” Matzliach asked angrily. “I gave him years of loyal service. For years I carried sacks on my back, I worked with the broom, with dusters. I covered for him when he took his afternoon nap, looked after the shop so nobody would steal, God forbid, and now look at me—a man who'll soon be a grandfather left without a livelihood. Is that how a brother behaves?”

“I'm sure it's because he has no choice. You said yourself that the shop's in bad condition, that there's almost nothing to sell and no customers to sell to,” Allegra said, trying to defuse his anger.

“Well, at least he could have kept me on out of respect.”

“His respect for you doesn't allow him to keep you on without paying you. You have to go to him, kiss his hand, and ask him to forgive you for your behavior.”

“
Bukra fil mishmish
, out of the question.
I'll
ask
his
forgiveness? He won't hear a single word from me. Not from me, not from my wife, and not from my children! I'm finished with my brother, do you hear, Mother? I'm finished with Gabriel!”

“Do what you want,” Mercada said. “I have nothing to say in the matter. Nobody respects my opinion.”

“And you've brought that on yourself, madre querida,” Allegra said and flounced out of the room.

*   *   *

The falling-out with his brother hurt Gabriel very much, but his body hurt him more than anything. From day to day it became harder for him to move, and he stumbled with his speech, on many occasions choosing to keep quiet rather than utter such heavy, clumsy words.

Rosa too was not the woman she had been. Even though Gabriel was increasingly engrossed in himself, he could not help but notice how old age had crept up on her, how wrinkles now furrowed her face. It pained him to see that not only had her relationship with Luna not improved since his daughter's wedding, it had worsened.

For years he had ignored how his favorite daughter treated Rosa as if she were nothing. After Luna married and left the house, he'd hoped that she would change her attitude toward her mother. He'd thought that now she was a wife herself and had her own home to run, and with God's help would become a mother and give him and Rosa a grandchild, she would finally grow up and stop being the child who bickered with her mother about every little thing. But Luna didn't change. Even though it vexed him, he was in such pain and so weak that he was unable to speak to her about it, and his heart filled with great sadness. The child who had restored light to his life, the joy, the love who had filled his most difficult times with happiness, who had to some extent eased the pain of longing for that woman whose name he didn't even want to remember, had grown into a woman whose personality he despised, a woman whose only interest was clothes and having a good time, who lived in a world of her own as if people weren't getting killed every day, as if war wasn't on the horizon, as if the whole world was her stupid magazines and Hollywood. She wasn't even carrying a child in her belly yet, and it had been months since the wedding at the Menorah Club that had cost him almost all the money he'd had left.

Rosa had been right: Luna was different from all other people. She wasn't like her sisters Rachelika and Becky. They'd all come to their house, sit around the radio, and she, she wouldn't be interested in hearing what they'd have to say. She'd go into her childhood room and occupy herself with nonsense. Rachelika had made him very angry when she'd gone to Haganah activities without his permission, but at least she'd cared, at least she'd wanted to be part of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. But Luna, nada. Her magazines and lipstick were her culture. He felt he had failed in her upbringing, and what hurt most was that he had been slowly drifting away from her and now preferred the company of his clever, good Rachelika.

Gabriel tried to ease his position in the cushioned chair, but every movement hurt him. He turned up the volume on the radio. Lately he'd also had difficulty hearing. The radio was permanently set to the Voice of Jerusalem station, and it had become the center of his life. From the moment he'd open his eyes in the morning he'd switch on the radio and not turn it off until he went to bed. Since he'd stopped leaving the house, the sound of the radio had become his pipeline to the outside world. He'd learned from the radio that the curfew imposed on Shabbat had been dubbed Operation Agatha by the British, and the Black Sabbath by the Yishuv. More than a hundred thousand soldiers and policemen had surrounded Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and imposed a curfew on dozens of settlements and kibbutzim. Some three thousand Jews had been arrested, including members of the Jewish Agency. He'd also heard on the radio about the hanging of three British sergeants. Everything announced on the radio immediately became the talk of the day.

The situation in the country seemed to be changing quickly. Rachelika told him about a bunch of children who encountered English soldiers as they exited the Alliance School near the shop. The children stood facing the soldiers and began singing “Kalaniot,” which had become a song of mockery of the British soldiers. The soldiers lost their temper and started chasing the children, cursing them in English, but the children evaded them to the joyful shouts of the vendors and merchants, who all gave the English the finger.