The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (45 page)

“God almighty, don't drop the baby,” the nurse said as she quickly retrieved it from Luna's lax arms. She lay back in her bed, covering her head with the sheet, trying to find a less painful position for her aching body.

Rachelika, who had just arrived, hurried after the nurse who had removed the baby from Luna's room. “Where are you taking her?” she asked.

“If we don't want her to starve to death, we have to feed her,” the nurse replied dryly.

“Why isn't my sister feeding her?”

“In some cases the mother's too tired and in too much pain to care for the baby. But don't worry, your sister will be back to her old self in a few hours, and in the meantime we'll give the baby a bottle.”

“A bottle?” Rachelika was shocked. “Giving a baby a bottle isn't healthy.”

“So what do you want us to do, let her starve?” asked the tired nurse.

“Give her to me,” Rachelika ordered.

“Excuse me?”

“Give me the baby!”

She took the baby from the astonished nurse, sat down on a chair in the busy corridor of the maternity ward, took out a breast, and brought the baby's mouth to her nipple. Only when the warm milk from her aunt's breast had satisfied her hunger did she stop crying.

When she'd finished, Rachelika laid the baby on her shoulder, pressing her tummy against it, gently patting her back until she heard the welcome burp.

“Aaach,” said Rachelika, pleased with herself. “Now we feel better, now we've had a good burp we're calmer.” She kissed the infant's forehead, handed her back to the nurse, and told her, “I'll pump my milk until my sister can feed the baby herself.”

After filling several bottles with her milk, Rachelika went back to Luna's room. David was sitting at the side of his wife's bed.

“What's happening?” Rachelika asked.

“She's not speaking to me,” he replied. “She's not talking at all.”

“Go outside, David, leave me alone with my sister.”

He got up and headed for the door, stunned by Luna's behavior. He couldn't fathom why she hadn't even given their daughter a glance.

Despite the fact that he hadn't welcomed a son into this world, the emotion David felt when he'd held his daughter in his arms had erased any disappointment. He was filled with a love he couldn't contain. For the first time since he had parted from Isabella, he felt happiness had reentered his life. He felt that the baby was reparation for the lost love he had left behind in Italy.

After David went out, Rachelika sat beside Luna and stroked her hair.

“I want to die,” Luna mumbled. “My whole body hurts, my down below is on fire. It was a nightmare, Rachelika, a nightmare. Why didn't you tell me it'd be such a nightmare?”

“Would it have helped if I'd told you?”

“Did it hurt you like this too?”

“It hurts everyone. It hurt Mother too, and it'll hurt your daughter as well. It's the curse that God gave our Mother Eve when she tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. You won't remember a thing by tomorrow. It's pain you forget. Otherwise would we have babies again and again?”

“I'm not having any more!” Luna said. “This is the first and last.”

“Lunika,” Rachelika laughed, “you'll see that by your next pregnancy you won't remember a thing. Your baby's exquisite, a princess.”

Luna didn't reply.

“Don't you want to see her, Lunika?”

“Not now. I'm tired.”

“She's the spitting image of you. She has green eyes and red hair like yours. You'll love her.”

“I want to sleep.”

“All right, Lunika, go to sleep, but soon, when you wake up, they'll be bringing her to you and you'll see how she takes all the pain away.”

But I didn't manage to take away my mother's pain. Every time they brought me to her to nurse I'd scream, almost choke. My lips couldn't hold on to her nipple, and when they did, I sucked and sucked, but the few drops of milk yielded by my mother's small breasts didn't satisfy my hunger, and I'd scream to high heaven. My tiny face, swollen from crying, turned red, and my frightened mother would call for the nurse to take me from her. And so, three days after I was born, it was clear to everybody that Rachelika would have to carry on providing me with her milk.

Hadassah Hospital was situated on the eastern slope of Mount Scopus, a Jewish enclave in the heart of an Arab area that from day to day had become increasingly hostile. As soon as the United Nations passed the resolution on the partition of Palestine, traveling to and from Mount Scopus had become dangerous. Luna, who was in pain and depressed after a difficult birth, was deathly afraid of traveling the road from Mount Scopus into Jerusalem, and when the time came for David to take her and the new crown princess home, she adamantly refused to leave the hospital.

“I'm not going in a taxi with the baby, it's dangerous!” she told David.

“They won't give us an ambulance,” David tried to reason with her. “You're not critically ill.”

“Then I'm not going! I didn't survive seventeen hours of hell so I could get killed by an Arab sniper.”

She wouldn't get out of bed, and not even the staff nurse who'd been called to her room and demanded she vacate the bed could do anything.

“You can shout at me from now till tomorrow,” she said in an icy voice. “You can bring Ben-Gurion here in person. I'm not going down from Mount Scopus without protection. As far as I'm concerned”—turning to David—“you can find us a room and we'll move here.”

And David, who had been waiting for the minute when he could bring Luna and the baby home and finally get away to the war that was about to break out and join the forces defending the homeland and the struggle to establish a state, almost lost his patience. Each additional moment with his wife became an even more unendurable punishment.

He had behaved impeccably since Moise had pulled him aside for a talk ten months before. He'd realized that if he wanted to hold his marriage together and not become, with Luna, the leading players in a scandal that would threaten not only their future but that of their family too, he would have to do everything he could to father a child, even though it would be hard for him, even though it would demand tremendous mental effort. After all, he was a rational man and wouldn't give in to his emotions at his family's expense.

Only one time in his life—when was it? way back while he was in Italy, in a life so different from his life today—had his heart caught him by surprise and overtook his common sense. He'd become quite the Don Juan when they'd been posted to Mestre near Venice at the end of the war. As soon as he and his comrades had settled into the houses of the wealthy people who'd abandoned the town in panic, he embarked on a mad pursuit of the pleasures of life. The war years had left him with a hunger for life. The Italian girls shamelessly offered themselves, and he happily accepted, two or three women of all ages every day. He would never forget the day he'd unknowingly slept with a mother and her daughter. How could he have known they were mother and daughter? The mother had looked like her daughter's older sister. They weren't whores. They were simply hungry for food and attention. He'd left them a larger wad of bills than usual and took off. Nothing like that had ever happened to any of his comrades. They'd all slept with lots of women, but none had done it with a mother and daughter one after the other.

Since then David Siton's reputation had preceded him. Of all the guys, he was without a doubt the Don Juan. And so it went on for many weeks—women, women, women—until he'd met Isabella.

He and the guys had been sitting as usual in a café in the piazza. Slowly the number of men around the table dwindled as they left with their arms around Italian girls who'd been awaiting their chance to have a good time with a soldier. He and Moise were the last ones left at their table: David, because he didn't fancy any of the girls that day, and Moise, who was always the last to leave. He was shy and introverted, and David almost had to force him to take a girl out. Just as he was thinking of getting up and trying his luck at a club, David saw her riding her bike.

Moise had absolutely no idea that while he was leaving the field to his friend, as he had dozens of times before, David the Don Juan was about to lose his head and fall in love with an Italian girl. From that moment on, no other woman existed for him. David spent every free moment with her, riding bikes through the alleyways of Venice, gliding in a gondola and paying the gondolier an extortionate sum to serenade her. He took her to restaurants and cafés, went dancing with her in clubs, pampered her with boxes of chocolate, silk stockings, and the perfume she loved.

David quickly became one of the family at her parents' home, a rural stone house surrounded by a garden. While Mestre's markets were suffering shortages, the army canteen was fully stocked, and every weekend he'd bring the family a basket of provisions. “God bless you,” her father would say as they sat at the big table in the yard for a feast fit for a king.

Years later he would try to retrieve the taste of the pasta and tomato sauce that Isabella and her mother had cooked, the taste of Parmesan cheese melted into the sauce, the taste of Isabella. Throughout his life he would miss the fragrance of the basil and thyme that grew in big clay pots in her parents' yard, the beauty of the bougainvillea that blossomed in hues of bright red. The big wooden table, the noisy family around it, the fine wine that was so different from the sweet Kiddush wine of Shabbat eve in Jerusalem.

“I'm in love,” David had told Moise. “I've never felt this way. This woman has stolen my heart.”

“Don't exaggerate,” replied the always serious Moise. “We'll be going home in a few months. What will you do then?”

“I'll take her with me. I'll bring her to Jerusalem.”

“How can you bring her to Jerusalem? Your father will never accept a Christian daughter-in-law.”

“She'll convert. Stranger things have happened.”

“Are you out of your mind? Where are your brains? There's not even the slightest chance that your father will accept her. Your family will disown you.”

“We'll see,” David said. “Meanwhile we have time, and until it's time to make decisions, I'm celebrating love.”

Isabella became an inseparable part of his life. They went everywhere together. Even when he went out with his comrades he brought her along and introduced her as his girlfriend. One evening as they lay naked on a secluded beach they'd discovered a few months earlier, David told her, “I'll give you the moon and the stars if you ask for them.” The lights of Venice glimmered in the distance, and the sky was strewn with stars. They swam naked, and afterward she spread out a blanket and they'd made love. Isabella was a passionate lover. He'd never met such a sensual woman. She loved pampering him; she taught him things he didn't know, leading his fingers along the hidden curves of her body and instructing him in how to pleasure her. He loved to hear the moans that escaped her sweet lips. Who would have believed that he could enjoy pleasuring a woman so much?

Then came the day of their parting. Their officers informed them that their mission was complete and they would be going back to Palestine. Isabella begged David to take her with him. He was beside himself. On the one hand, he wanted to be with her for eternity, to marry her, have children with her, but on the other, he knew that his father and his family would never approve. He knew that a devout Catholic like Isabella could never become Jewish, even if she did convert. Deep in her heart she would always be seeking a church where she could kneel before the crucified Christ, and in Jerusalem there were churches on every corner. His heart wanted it, wanted it so much he thought it might explode, but his head told him no.

“I love you more than life itself,” he told her painfully. “I don't believe I will ever love a woman the way I love you, but we have no chance. My father will never accept you.”

Even though he did his best to harden his heart, David almost collapsed onto her shoulder and wept with her. He was unable to change the way of his world. He had to return to Jerusalem, find himself a decent woman, and get married. He could never marry an Italian Catholic even if she was the love of his life.

On the boat to Haifa, he shared his plans with Moise. As soon as David arrived in Jerusalem he'd look for one of their women and marry her. “A new love heals the wounds of an old one,” he told Moise. “My heart's broken into pieces, but I'll put it back together and forget Isabella. There's no other way.”

“How can you forget her when your kit bag's filled with photographs of her and you spend all your time looking at them?” Moise asked him. “If I were you, I'd throw them into the sea.”

“I'm not throwing anything into the sea. Those photos are a memento from the most beautiful time in my life.”

By the next day he was already back in his parents' home in Jerusalem. Each day he went out looking for work, and in the evenings he'd go out with the guys, flitting from one of the city's cafés to another, and then to dance clubs. And it was there, in Café Europa, that David first spotted Luna. He asked about the good-looking girl doing the tango like a Spanish dancer, and was told her name, that she came from a good, well-to-do family, that her father Gabriel Ermosa had a shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market, and that she worked as a saleslady at Zacks & Son, ladies' clothing, on Jaffa Road. He knew what he had to do and began spinning his web to snare her. He learned that she was a prize catch, that she rejected all her suitors with a flat-out no and didn't give herself up easily.

“So who does she go dancing with?” he asked.

“Her sister and cousins and a few friends from Ohel Moshe.”