The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (50 page)

Dr. Kagan was already there and was being run off her feet. It took only one look for her to say, “She's got dysentery like half the children in Jerusalem. We need to admit her.”

Dr. Kagan treated me with devotion as if I were her own daughter, as she treated the scores of children in her care, but my condition didn't improve and the fever didn't abate. I cried and cried until my strength was spent and my crying became a sad wailing, matching that of the rest of the children in the ward.

I was critically ill. My poor father didn't know who to take care of first, my mother or me. Even Rachelika broke down. She could endure anything, even Luna's suffering, but not the suffering of a baby.

Becky moved into the hospital and slept on the floor at the foot of my crib in a blanket she brought from home. She spent hours pacing in the corridors with me in her arms. Nona Rosa found herself pleading to God as she hadn't pleaded since she lost her firstborn son, holding a Book of Psalms and staring at the letters she didn't know how to read, lighting candles and making vows. And Nono Gabriel withdrew into himself more and more. He hardly spoke and even stopped listening to his radio, for what could it tell him that he didn't already know? The cursed war was inside his own home. Who could tell him anything about the injustices of the war when his own daughter and granddaughter were its victims?

“Why aren't you doing anything?” my father pleaded with Dr. Kagan. “Why aren't you helping my daughter?”

“I'm sorry,” the doctor replied, “but there's nothing more to do beyond what we're already doing. We're replacing the little one's fluids and salts in the hope it will help. We don't have any penicillin, we're out of drugs. We're waiting for them to arrive with the next convoy.”

But the convoy couldn't break through and my condition deteriorated.

“Dio santo, how frightened I was that we'd have to sit shiva for you, God forbid,” Nona Rosa told me. Her nightmares returned, all the memories that over the years she'd tried to repress, the pain of her son Raphael's death assailing her anew as if she had just now lost him. Dio Senor el mundo, she begged her god, don't let me lose a granddaughter too.

And while I was fighting for my life in Bikur Holim and my mother was fighting for hers in Hadassah, Rachelika was fighting to hold the family together. She was constantly rushing around looking after her son and her sister and her niece. She was unafraid of the danger and would leave the house once a day and go from one hospital to the other. Even Nona Rosa's pleadings that she let Becky, who was living in the hospital, look after Gabriela and just visit Luna were to no avail. Rachelika was out of her mind with worry. She finally found some small consolation in a letter that arrived from the field, reading it over and over until she could draw enough strength from it.

“I love you, my soul,” Moise wrote. “I love you as much as life itself, both you and Boaz who I hardly know.” He asked about the family and Luna and only at the end, in one sentence, did he write that he was safe and well. Thank God. She was calmed on that front, and now she had to do the same on the others. But how could she while Luna was still fighting for her life and her baby was at death's door?

One time, before Rachelika went home to Boaz, she told Becky, “Try and rouse Gabriela's will to live. You have to!”

But how could Becky rouse the will to live in such a little baby? She was only a child herself, how could she help Gabriela recover? Where was her Eli now when she needed him so badly? He would have given her strength, he would have helped her save Gabriela.

“You have to get better,” Becky told Gabriela. “Do you hear me, my sweet, my lovely, you have to drink, because if anything happens to you I'll die. Do you hear, my honeybunch, I'll die.”

She put the bottle into the baby's mouth, and with her last remaining strength Gabriela pushed it away. As the doctor had instructed, Becky wet the corner of a diaper and put it between the baby's lips, but she turned her head.

Becky didn't put her down for a moment. She refused to lay Gabriela in her crib, frightened that as soon as the baby didn't feel her thin arms around her, something terrible would happen. The responsibility for Gabriela's life was on her shoulders. Even David was unable to cope and cried like a baby. And Rachelika miskenica, when Dr. Kagan heard that she had a baby at home, she forbade her to come. She could infect Boaziko. So every day she stood in the hospital yard and Becky held Gabriela in her arms by the window so Rachelika could see her, and only once she had did she run to Luna's bedside.

Luna knew nothing of Gabriela's illness. The family decided not to tell her. Anyway, she'd asked them not to bring the baby, and she was so preoccupied with her own pain and troubles that she didn't even ask. It's better this way, Rachelika thought. When the war's over, when Luna gets better, God willing, and when Gabriela gets better too, they'll tell her. Everything will be fine. Luna will find room in her heart for Gabriela, and they'll be able to make up for lost time.

*   *   *

Gabriela's condition continued to decline, and pain threatened to tear David's heart from his chest when he held her frail body in his arms. Her sweet face was twisted in constant pain, her expression was apathetic. She no longer laughed aloud when she saw him and didn't raise her arms for him to pick her up. She couldn't even cry anymore. He couldn't bear it. He fell apart, wept like a child. Compared to him, Becky, may she be healthy, a fifteen-year-old child, was a rock. Rachelika, Rosa, each of the Ermosa family women is more of a man than me, David thought. He didn't know which one to worry about first, his wife or his daughter. He didn't know who to pray harder for. So instead of praying he cried, not in the dark and not in secret but openly, holding his dying daughter, clasping her tiny body to his heart, defeated.

Like David, Jerusalem too felt defeated. The city looked like it had suffered an earthquake, smoking ruins, people moving like shadows, seeking refuge from the exploding shells. The city center was shelled daily. The crowded, vibrant Jaffa Road and Ben-Yehuda and King George Streets were deserted now, the shops shuttered, the houses darkened. No one came or went. The Arab Legion had taken Atarot and Neve Yaakov. Kibbutz Beit Haarava had also fallen, the Old City had fallen, and if a miracle didn't happen soon, the New City would fall too.

*   *   *

If the makeshift Burma Road into Jerusalem hadn't been opened a month after I contracted dysentery, it's doubtful that I would have lived. When the siege was broken and supplies reached the city, drugs arrived too. My condition slowly improved, I started eating again and put on weight, and I regained my vitality. Now when my father came to visit me in the hospital I'd burst into shouts of joy, wave my arms, and laugh at him, and he'd sink his face into my tummy and make funny noises, lifting me in the air with a big smile on his face.

Two months after I was taken to the hospital I returned home. My recovery was the only thing that lifted the cloud over the Ermosa family home at the time. My mother's condition had improved slightly, but she wasn't yet out of the woods. She had been in the hospital for many months and the end still wasn't in sight.

My father, who had been forced to give up his duties and become a dispatch rider when I got sick, rejoined his unit defending Jerusalem and spent every night in one of the defensive positions, his weapon cocked. When he was relieved in the morning he'd hurry to the hospital to visit my mother, and when Becky or Rachelika came to take over, he'd rush to Nono and Nona's house to be with me until it was time for him to go back on duty. He scarcely slept.

The convoys that brought supplies to Jerusalem along the Burma Road also brought mail from the front. Becky lived from letter to letter. Each time a convoy reached the city, she'd hurry to Handsome Eli Cohen's parents' house, and he'd never disappoint her. Each time he sent a letter to his parents, there was one for her filled with love and longing. She'd open the envelope excitedly and read the letter over and over, kissing it and staining it with tears. At every chance she visited the home of her beloved's parents. She felt that when she was close to them, she was close to him as well.

Optimistic letters arrived from Moise too, relating the advances made in the south and the approaching end of the war. Yet the more he tried not to worry her in his letters, the more Rachelika worried. She could sense his helplessness. His words of love couldn't conceal his anxiety for her, Boaz, her family, and the wounded Luna, but she tried to repress the pain she felt so she could carry on.

While Handsome Eli Cohen and Moise wrote to their loved ones whenever they could, Nona Rosa didn't receive any sign of life from Ephraim. Despite her concern, she felt sure that just as he'd managed throughout all the long years in the Lehi, he'd manage this time too. Her main focuses now were Luna, over whom the threat of death still hung; her husband, whose condition was constantly worsening; and the maintenance of the household. Rachelika and Becky were a major help and took over all her usual tasks, except for looking after the babies. But the money was running out, and even if Gabriel now agreed to her cleaning the houses of strangers, who would she work for? Who had money for a housemaid in wartime?

My mother was still not aware of the danger to my life. She was so worried about her own injuries and in such pain, so why add grief and sorrow? Every now and then she'd ask how her daughter was, and they'd report on her progress: She'd cut a new tooth, she'd begun standing in the playpen, she'd started crawling. Luna would smile and say, “May she be healthy,” and no more.

But one day she said to David, “Maybe you'll bring the little one tomorrow? I miss her.”

So the next day Becky put me in a pink dress with pompons that Nona Rosa had knitted, tied a ribbon in my red curls, and handed me to my father.

“We're going to see Ima,” my father told me. “Ima, say Ima,” and I repeated it like a parrot. “It will make your ima very happy when she hears you say Ima.” He laughed, and again I repeated the new word I'd learned.

My father was worried that, God forbid, I might catch a bug or some infection and become sick again, so he and Luna arranged to meet in the hospital garden.

Luna made it down to the ground floor with great difficulty. Every step was very painful for her. Her wounds hadn't yet healed, and she was worried that each step she took might open the stitches and her guts would spill out. But at each step she forced herself to keep going.

“Be careful,” the redheaded neighbor had counseled her. “Go down very slowly and hold on to the banister.” He wanted to help her, but he himself was bedridden, unable to move his legs. It broke his heart to see Luna making such a tremendous effort for her daughter. She'd grunt in her sleep, groan with pain, weep into her pillow, covering her head with the hospital blanket so nobody would hear her, but he saw and he heard and he hurt for her.

Luna limped from step to step until she reached the lobby, and from there she walked, almost crawled, to the gate. She came out just as David arrived with the baby. When she saw the child, she couldn't believe how much she'd grown. She held out her arms to take her, but the moment my father passed me to her I started crying and kicking, refusing her arms. And Luna, who'd already forgotten the scene I'd made the last time I'd been brought to see her, stood there stunned and hurt.

“She doesn't recognize me,” she said painfully. “She has no idea that I'm her mother.”

“She hasn't seen you for ages,” David tried to console her. “Give her time and everything will be fine.”

Luna could not conceal her pain and disappointment.

“It doesn't matter, David,” she said. “The main thing is that Gabriela's well and being looked after.”

“Don't worry, my lovely, everyone's looking after her. Your mother, your sisters, the neighbors, they all love her. She's a good girl.”

“Yes,” Luna muttered. “She's a good girl.”

“She's the spitting image of you, everybody says so. The eyes, the hair, the dimples, she's a real little Luna.”

“Yes, a real little Luna,” she mumbled, trying to hold back her tears.

“Go now,” she told my father. “Go and come back another time. I'm tired. I'm going back to the ward.”

He kissed my mother's cheek, and in a last desperate attempt said to me, “Heideh, bonica, heideh, my little dolly, say Ima like you did before. Say it, good girl.”

But I scowled and refused and cried even louder.

“It doesn't matter, David, take her home.”

“But Luna, she has to get to know you. She has to know that you're her mother.”

“She'll know, David. I'll come home, God willing, and everything will be all right. Take her home now. I don't like her crying like this.”

“Look after yourself,” he told her. “I'll be back tomorrow.”

He kissed her again and went through the hospital gate, disappointed by the encounter between his daughter and her mother but determined not to give up. He would continue bringing Gabriela to visit.

Again with great difficulty Luna climbed the stairs, limped to her bed, got under the blanket, and covered her head.

“Is everything all right, Luna?” the redhead asked.

She didn't answer.

“How was seeing your daughter?”

“She doesn't even know I'm her mother,” Luna whispered.

“She hasn't seen you for many months, it's only natural,” he said, trying to comfort her.

“No, it's not natural. Nothing between me and my daughter is natural.”

 

9

F
OR MANY NIGHTS
now Gabriel had been unable to have an hour's undisturbed sleep, night after night waking from a recurring dream. In it he is running, he crosses fields, mountains, seas, and oceans. “Where are you running to, Gabriel?” a woman's sweet voice asks him. He doesn't reply and goes on running. He is breathing heavily but he can't stop, he can't slow down. He runs and runs and runs, and then—always in the same place and at the same moment—her figure suddenly appears out of nowhere, running in front of him, and he tries to catch up with her, the girl he hasn't seen for years, the girl with the golden hair and blue eyes. He holds out his hand to touch her but can't get close enough, and the girl continuously eludes him. And when he is almost there, almost touching her, he wakes up drenched in sweat and with a harsh sense of missed opportunity. He wants to sit up in bed; he is parched, thirsty, but he can't sit up by himself. He would have to wake Rosa to help him, and how can he wake her, how can he look her in the eye and ask her to help him when the reason he needs her help in the middle of the night is the golden-haired girl whose memory has prevented him from loving her all his life in the way a man should love a woman?