The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (51 page)

He lies with his eyes open, praying to God to end his suffering. It is better for me to die than to live, he thinks. What kind of a life am I living anyway, a sick man unable to move a finger unaided? Dependent on the goodness of my wife, my daughters. I am sick to death of this life.

When Rosa came to wake him in the morning she found him lying in his bed, his eyes open.

“Good morning, querido,” she said.

He didn't reply.

“Buenos dias,” she tried again. “How are you today, querido?”

He remained silent.

“Gabriel,
que pasa
? Are you not feeling well?” She laid her hand on his forehead. He was frightening her. She sat on the bed, put her cheek to his lips, and the feel of his breath calmed her. He was alive. She stood up and went into the other room.

“Rachelika,” she said to her daughter, who was nursing her baby, “your father's lying there like a dead man and isn't saying a word.”

“What do you mean?”

“I speak to him and he doesn't answer me.”

Rachelika disengaged Boaz from her nipple and he started crying. “Take him,” she told her mother and hurried into her father's room.

“Papo, are you all right?” she asked worriedly.

He was silent.

“Papo, stop scaring me. I have enough on my mind as it is.”

But Gabriel stayed silent.

“Papo, I'm begging you.” She kneeled at his bedside. “We won't be able to stand it if anything happens to you too. Have mercy on us, now isn't the time not to speak, Papo. If something's hurting you, tell me.”

“What's going on?” asked David, who had just woken up and stood in the doorway.

“My father's found the perfect time to take a vow of silence,” Rachelika replied.

“Go back to the baby, he's screaming like he's being slaughtered. I'll stay with your father.”

Boaz stopped crying only when Rachelika put her nipple back into his mouth, and now Gabriela was hungry too and started wailing. Becky took the bottle of milk that Rachelika pumped earlier, poured it into a pan, and heated it on the stove.

“Don't make it too hot,” Rosa said, “so it doesn't burn her.”

“I know exactly how long to heat it. I can be a mother myself, I'm ready,” Becky said proudly.

“May you be healthy, of course you're ready. God willing your Eli will come back from the war and in another two or three years we'll have a wedding,” Rosa said, and at the mere mention of Eli's name Becky burst into tears.

Dio santo, they've all gone crazy, Rosa thought. Gabriel's gone crazy, Rachelika's gone crazy, the babies have gone crazy, and now Becky has too. It's a madhouse! Only she held it together even though she felt her strength draining away each day.

David, who had remained with Gabriel, was at his wits' end. He paced from the window to his father-in-law's bed, not sure how to behave with the old man. He'd never been alone with him.

“Senor Gabriel,” he said, “how are you feeling this morning?”

To his amazement, Gabriel, who had remained silent when his wife and daughter had spoken to him, turned his face away from the wall and said, “I feel like my troubles.”

“Well, everything's fine then.” David laughed. “I feel like my troubles too. I thought that, God forbid, you were going to give us a surprise and be ill too.”

“Healthy I'll never be, son-in-law. I'm old and sick and my life isn't worth a damn. I can't wait for the day when I return my soul to Senor del mundo.”

“God forbid, Senor Gabriel, what are you saying? You're not that old, you're not fifty yet.”

“I'm old, my boy, long in the tooth, a castoff. I can't get out of bed by myself. I even need help to take a piss. What do I have left in this life if God has taken what little dignity I had, when I have to ask my wife to wipe my ass?”

David remained silent, shocked by Gabriel's frankness. He hadn't been prepared for such an intimate conversation with his father-in-law. He thought they might chat about inconsequential things as always. Uncomfortable, he went from Gabriel's bed to the door, praying that Rosa or one of his sisters-in-law would come rescue him. But no one did, and the only words that left his mouth were “What can I do for you, father-in-law? How can I help?”

“You can take care of my daughter,” Gabriel replied. “Because I'm no longer able to.”

David was relieved. He'd feared that the old man would ask him to perform an embarrassing task like wiping his behind or unzipping his pants and holding his penis so he could urinate.

“I'll take good care of her, father-in-law. I swear on my life that I'll look after her.”

“Luna's young, she'll get stronger, she'll recover, she'll go home to you and Gabriela. You've got to look out for yourself so you don't get hurt, God forbid, when you're outside the outpost.”

“Don't worry, Senor Gabriel, the war will end, Luna will get well and come home, and you'll live to a hundred and twenty.”

“David!” Gabriel stopped his son-in-law in full flow. “Swear to me by everything you hold dear that you'll look after Luna.”

“I swear!”

“And as soon as Luna is well you'll have another baby, and this time you'll name him after your father, and afterward you'll have more children and have a big family, may you be healthy.”

“I swear.”

“You know, David, before Luna came into the world I was more dead than alive. She restored meaning to my life. I don't forget that. Not a day goes by when I don't think about it.”

And to his father-in-law, David replied, “Luna loves you more than she loves herself. She named her daughter after you, she loves you so much she gave her a boy's name. She loves you, my dear father-in-law, more than she loves me, more than she loves her own daughter.”

*   *   *

When David arrived at the hospital he didn't find Luna in the ward.

“Where's my wife?” he asked one of the nurses.

“In the doctor's office,” she said.

He sat down on a bench in the corridor and waited for Luna. The sound of laughter came from inside the ward. The patients were a close-knit group, people who'd come a long way together, and their prolonged hospitalization had shaped them into a family.

“
Ahalan,
my friend,” came redheaded Gidi's voice as he parked his wheelchair next to David, rousing him from his musings.

“
Ahalan wa sahlan,
” David replied.

“Are you waiting for Luna?” Gidi asked.

“Yes,” David nodded.

“Have you made all the discharge arrangements?”

“What discharge?”

“Luna's.”

“Luna's being discharged? When?”

“Today. Didn't she tell you?”

“No,” David said, not even attempting to hide his shock.

“The doctor's talking to her in his office, and after that she's going home.”

“How long have you known she's being discharged?” David asked, trying to absorb the news that had just hit him.

“Three days. The doctor said we're throwing a farewell party for her.”

David was silent. How had Luna known for three days that she was being discharged from the hospital and hadn't said anything to him? Was it because she'd rather be in the hospital than go home? Because she preferred the company of her wounded companions over his and their daughter's? He shut his eyes tight, trying to swallow his frustration. His face reddened and he pounded the bench with his fist.

“Don't take it personally,” said Gidi, attempting to pacify him. “It's not about you. She's scared about going home because she doesn't feel strong enough. She probably didn't tell you because she didn't want to disappoint you if she had to stay in the hospital after all.”

David took a deep breath. How was it that this redhead knew more about his wife than he did? He didn't know her anymore. He had no idea what she wanted. He could barely even talk to her.

When Luna finally emerged from the doctor's office she was sullen and angry.

“The doctor's discharging me,” she said to Gidi, ignoring her husband. “I don't want to go home. I'm not strong enough.” She burst into tears.

“Luna”—Gidi's voice was soft—“this is a hospital, not a convalescent home.”

“You don't understand,” she sobbed. “I'm frightened that the wounds will open.”

“They won't, Luna,” said the doctor, who had stepped out of his office. “Your wounds have healed. You're still not a hundred percent, but you will be. Go home, start living again, get your strength back, and in time you'll be as good as new, I promise. If you want, I'll arrange a week's convalescence at Motza for you.”

And all the while David sat on the bench feeling like an outsider who was present by chance. His wife was ignoring him as if he wasn't there. She didn't need him. She had the redhead, she had her wounded friends. He was just in the way. Only when he stood up and was about to leave did the doctor notice him and say, “Mr. Siton, I'm returning your wife to you.”

“My wife didn't tell me she was being discharged,” David said.

Luna looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and said to the doctor, “At least let me stay for one more day. I'll go home tomorrow.”

“One day, Luna,” the doctor said. “One more day, no more.”

That evening she said good-bye to her friends in the ward and shed a flood of tears. She insisted on taking her leave on her own, without her husband present to accompany her.

“He wouldn't understand,” she told Gidi. “He'd think I'd taken leave of my senses if he saw how many tears I'm spilling here.”

“He'd think they were tears of joy,” Gidi said.

“But you know they're tears of sadness.”

“Why sadness, lovely lady? I wish I was getting out of here.”

“I'll miss you,” Luna said and quickly added, “and everybody else in the ward. My life won't be the same without you,” she whispered.

“Why without me? You'll come and visit, and then I'll be discharged and we'll keep in touch.”

“Do you promise?”

“You need me to promise? There aren't many people who share what we do.”

“What do we share?”

“Love,” he whispered.

“Love like between a man and a woman or love like between friends?” Luna persisted.

“You're a married woman. It can't be like between a man and a woman.”

“And if I wasn't married?”

“And if pigs could fly? And if I could walk?”

“It's a serious question. Stop making a joke of everything.”

“It's a serious question? Then I'll give you a serious answer. If we'd met before the war, before you were married, before you had a baby, before you were wounded, before I was wounded, before I was told I'd never be able to have children, I'd have married you.”

“Of course you'll be able to have children,” Luna said.

“I'm paralyzed, Luna, remember? I won't have children. And you have a daughter and a husband and you'll have more children, God willing, so get out of this damned hospital and go back to your life. Remember me, but forget a man's love for a woman. It can't happen, not for me and you, and not for me and any other woman.”

They were standing on the hospital balcony overlooking Haneviim Street. This was their place, where they went when they wanted to be alone. It was the place where for the first time since she'd been wounded she'd felt alive again, when her heart had skipped a beat in the face of the only person capable of making her smile. It was the place where she realized that what she felt for him was not feelings of friendship and affection, the way she felt for her other friends in the ward, but something more profound. Deep down inside her an emotion had been bubbling for months, and now the reality of her leaving had brought it to its boiling point and she couldn't ignore it anymore.

“I love you,” she told him.

He gave her that jovial look of his and told her, “It's the morphine talking—you're hallucinating.”

“No, I love you,” she said again.

He shifted his gaze to the street and said in a barely audible voice, “You mustn't say things like that to a man who isn't your husband.”

“I love you,” she repeated more forcefully.

He tried to hide the tears welling in his eyes. “Never,” he told her, “I beg you, never again tell me you love me. I won't be able to survive in this place when you're not here. If you truly love me, then please forget what you told me and I'll forget it too.”

But they both knew it was impossible to forget. It was impossible to loosen the bond that had tightened between them. He had breathed life into her wounded body. Her soul was bound to his. It had been many long months since more than her own pain had preoccupied her. She was so worried about him. Most of the time he was happy and humorous, the life of the ward, but there were days, especially when he came back from an examination, when he was depressed and silent. And she, who had been silent for such a long time, imprisoned in her pain and agony, grieving over her ruined body and beauty that would never be what it had been, now that a spark of life had been reignited in her, it suddenly went out in him.

One time when he came back from an appointment with the doctor he climbed onto his bed and closed the curtain between their beds. He refused to eat, refused to talk to anyone. All her efforts to break through were rebuffed. Even his parents, who had come all the way from Nahariya, he sent away. Luna was beside herself. His suffering made her forget her own. Except for her father, she had never been so worried about anybody in her life.

And then one morning he was his usual self again as if nothing had happened. The jokes returned, the laughter and pranks that made him the nurses' favorite and her pride and joy.