The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (54 page)

“She lived with those people in the hospital for a long time, David. It's only natural that she'd feel close to them. It can't be helped that the damned war ruined your relationship. But both of you, you and her, be grateful she's alive. She could have been killed, and then what would you have done, a widower with a baby? You have a short memory, my friend. It wasn't long ago that you almost lost not only your wife but your daughter as well. You should go to the synagogue every day and say Birkat Hagomel, the blessing of deliverance, instead of fighting with your brother and losing your job.”

“I'll look for a new job.”

“Maybe join the police? They're recruiting new people all the time.”

“It's not for me, Moise. I'd go crazy if I had an officer over me telling me what to do. Don't you remember how many times I got on the wrong side of the sergeant in the British army?”

“David, my friend, you'll go even crazier if you don't have a job to go to and you're under Rosa's feet all day. You'll go crazy and she'll drive you crazy. In the meantime, let's go eat,” Moise said. “They have jelly here that's much tastier than at Taraboulos.”

*   *   *

The austerity period in Israel did not bring good news for David, who couldn't find work. Every day he'd go off to the employment bureau and sit for hours with the other job seekers, but there were no offers. He told the woman there that he wanted a clerical job and wasn't interested in manual labor.

Yisrael Schwartz, his friend from the British army who'd found work at the agricultural school that had been established in Ein Karem, invited him to visit and pick fruit in the heavily laden gardens the Arabs had left behind. Yisrael lived on the upper floor of an abandoned Arab house.

“What do you think of my palace?” Yisrael asked him.

“It's a real palace!” David agreed. “You got all this from the agricultural school?”

“It comes with the job. If you're interested, they're looking for workers. I can arrange it for you.”

“Get me a house and a job? What would I do?”

“We'll find you something, it's a great opportunity. Where else could you get a house and a job?”

“I'll have to speak to my wife,” David replied. “But now let's walk to the gardens.”

“There's no need to walk,” Yisrael said. “They're right here, below the house.”

They went down the stairs and through the arched gate into a grand garden overlooking the cultivated terraces and the Church of the Visitation, which stood tall and proud on the side of the hill facing them, its bells ringing loudly.

“My God,” David exclaimed. “Just look at this fig tree. It's bending under the weight of the fruit!”

“Go on, help yourself, enjoy. Fill this,” Yisrael said, handing him a big straw basket.

As if possessed David started picking figs from the tree, putting one into his mouth for each one he picked. “
Yinal dino
, goddamn, they're so tasty,” he told Yisrael.

Vines laden with grapes climbed on latticed fences, and David picked bunches of juicy grapes until his basket was overflowing.

“Here, fill a crate too,” Yisrael said.

“What can I do with a crate?” David laughed. “How will I get it back to Jerusalem?”

“I'll take you in the jeep.”

“God save us, you have a jeep as well, you bastard? You've really done well for yourself.”

“You can too. Just make up your mind.”

“I have. Now I'll just have to persuade my wife.”

“Talk to her, tell her what a great deal this is.”

“Believe me,” he told Yisrael, “you've made me a very happy man.”

They loaded the crate and the basket into the jeep and Yisrael started it up. On the way to Jerusalem they stopped in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood. Yisrael said to David, “I have another surprise for you. There's a potato field here.” David jumped out of the jeep and started pulling potatoes from the ground.

Rosa couldn't believe her eyes when David came through the door with his friend, their arms full of fruit and potatoes.

“What's this?” she muttered excitedly. “Did you rob a bank?”

“No,” David laughed, happy to see his mother-in-law's joy. “It's from Ein Karem and Bayit VeGan.”

“It's from what the Arabs left behind?” she asked.

David nodded.

“God be praised, miracles still happen in this world.”

*   *   *

Yisrael Schwartz wasted no time and arranged for David to meet the agricultural school's manager. David hadn't yet had a chance to talk to Luna, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of moving to Ein Karem. He saw it as an opportunity to rebuild their life in a house of their own. Even if they paid him a low wage, there would always be fruit on the trees and vegetables in the field.

“We're looking for someone for the school's carpentry shop,” the manager told him. “And I understand you were a carpenter before the war.”

“That's right, sir, I was. And a good one too.”

“In that case, the job's yours. You can start tomorrow. You will, of course, have the same conditions as Yisrael. You can choose one of the houses in the village and live there with your family, and we'll give you a jeep for work and trips into Jerusalem.”

David could feel his heart pounding wildly. It was too good to be true. A house, a job, and a jeep!

“You'll fall in love with the place. The scenery's breathtaking, the air's clear, and when the church bells ring it's a dream.”

“You've convinced me,” David said, shaking his hand. “Now I have to go convince my wife.”

David was thrilled. He couldn't wait for the moment he'd tell Luna he'd found a job
and
a house.

In the afternoon, as Luna was about to leave to visit her hospital friends again, David said, “Instead of going to the hospital today, how about a matinee?”

She was surprised. It had been a long time since she'd gone to the cinema and since her husband had invited her to go to a matinee.

“Heideh, Luna,” he urged her, “nothing will happen if you don't go to the hospital for once.”

“All right,” she said. “They're showing
Singing in the Rain
with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds at the Edison. I hear the song on the radio all the time.”

Luna was in a fine mood when they left the cinema later that day.

“Did you see how he dances, Gene Kelly? How he sings? ‘I'm singin' in the rain,'” she sang and imitated Gene Kelly's dance steps, forgetting her pain.

David laughed and clapped his hands. “Bravo, Luna!” This was the Luna he remembered. Although money was tight, he'd made the right move by asking her to go to the cinema. He'd have to cut down on cigarettes and shopping in the market for Rosa, but it had been worth it. Luna was in just the right frame of mind for what he was about to tell her. Now he'd take her for coffee and cake at Atara, which had been their favorite haunt before the war. The good old days. All that now seemed so far away as if it had happened ages ago, not just a few years. So much had changed since the last time they'd had coffee at Atara, since they'd danced the tango at Café Vienna, since they'd been married at the Menorah Club.

Luna held his arm and they walked from Zion Square up Ben-Yehuda Street, stopping to look in shop windows until they reached the café. Tziona the waitress welcomed Luna as if she were greeting a regular patron. David was amazed that the elderly waitress showed no surprise at Luna's return after such a long absence. He had absolutely no idea that Luna visited the café every day to meet her friends from the hospital who had recovered and gone back to their lives, many working as taxi drivers out of the station on nearby Lunz Street. Like Gidi the redhead, who'd been discharged a few months after her and right away had become a dispatcher at the station, a stronghold of disabled war veterans. Luna had never told David that when she went on her daily visit to the wounded, she went to the taxi station and at the end of his shift pushed Gidi's wheelchair to Café Atara, staying there for a long time with him and the others before coming home.

She and David sat at one of the tables on the second floor and ordered tea. He wanted to order her a hot sandwich he remembered she'd liked, but he didn't have the money.

The café was almost empty at this late afternoon hour, but David couldn't ignore the fact that even the few people sitting there were staring shamelessly at his wife. Luna's famed beauty had been restored as if it had never left, her angelic face as white as snow, her lips plumped with scarlet lipstick. On any other woman it might have looked cheap, but on his wife it was wonderful. He studied her long fingers holding the cup of tea to her lips, the perfectly manicured nails, the tweed suit that set off her waist. From beneath the jacket peeped a white blouse, and around her neck glowed the string of pearls he'd given her as an engagement present.

He was married to the most beautiful woman in Jerusalem, so why the hell wasn't he happy with her?

“Aren't you going to drink your tea?” She roused him from his thoughts.

He sipped the tea and placed the cup down on the table.

“Luna,” he said, finally mustering courage to broach the subject, “I've received a wonderful job offer.”

“Really? Where?”

“In Ein Karem.”

“The Arab village?”

“There aren't any Arabs there anymore. They fled and the village is abandoned. Now there's an agricultural school there. My friend Yisrael Schwartz works there, and he set up the interview for me.”

“What kind of job?”

“A carpenter, in the school's carpentry shop.”

“And how will you get to Ein Karem?”

“They've offered me a house there too.”

“A house in Ein Karem?”

“That's what I said.”

“Great!”

“Great?” he asked, astonished by her reaction.

“I'm happy for you,” she said. “It really is a wonderful opportunity.”

“And you don't mind leaving Jerusalem to live far away from your sisters, your parents?”

“Who said anything about leaving Jerusalem? You're leaving Jerusalem, me and Gabriela are staying with my parents, and you can come and be with us on Shabbat.”

He felt anger stirring inside him. Once again his dear wife had managed to humiliate him.

“Luna, don't you think it's time we had a home of our own, just you and me and the child?”

“In Ein Karem?”

“In a big house, a palace.”

“Not in a palace or anything else! Ein Karem's the end of the world. What would I do there on my own with Gabriela, without my father, without my sisters? You can go to Ein Karem and work there. I'm staying in Jerusalem.”

He barely swallowed the insult. “You were in the hospital for such a long time,” he said quietly. “At long last you're out and I want us to live in a house of our own like any normal couple, and you want me to live in Ein Karem alone while you stay at your parents'? It'd be better if we got divorced and ended it!”

“Are you crazy, David, who's talking about divorce? What, do I look like a slut to you? Why get divorced? Today lots of men work a long way from home to make a living. There's no work in Jerusalem. It's no secret.”

“Why not come along and see the place for yourself?” he said. “And then decide. Yisrael Schwartz and his wife live there in a mansion with a huge yard. There are a lot of houses like that there—we can pick and choose. They promised me that a jeep goes with the job, so we could drive to Jerusalem whenever you'd want.”

“It's out of the question! You want to hide me away in some abandoned Arab village? You want to cut me off from my family? I know exactly what will happen. You'll be working and I'll be on my own with the child all day. If I haven't already gone crazy, you want me to go crazy now? How can you even think about something like this? Why do you think only of yourself?”

“I'm thinking about our future. I'm thinking that if we don't take this offer, we'll never have a home of our own.”

“What kind of a man are you who can't give me a home?” she asked tauntingly.

David was silent. What kind of a man
was
he? A man whose wife repeatedly humiliated him, a man who submitted to his wife's every whim? He had to force her to come with him. A wife must follow her husband. Why was he even asking her? He should be stating a fact.
Ras bin anaq,
she'd go with him to Ein Karem come hell or high water!

“In the morning,” he told her, “I'll go and see the school's manager and tell him, ‘Thank you for your generous offer, but my wife's not interested.'”

“Exactly,” she replied, ignoring his sarcastic tone. “Now let's stop talking about it. It's been so long since we went out and you had to go and spoil my good mood.”

*   *   *

As with everything else, my mother eventually got her way. Father bent to her will and declined the job offer, but not a day went by in my mother's life when he didn't remind her that he'd missed the chance of a lifetime because of her. As the years went by Ein Karem became an artists' village and house prices there soared. The distance between the village and Jerusalem was shortened, and the village was annexed to the city as a northern neighborhood.

“Why, why did I listen to your mother like an idiot?” he'd say again and again. “Why didn't I accept Yisrael Schwartz's offer? His house is worth millions today and I have zilch.”

Living in Nono and Nona Ermosa's house became unbearable for my father. He'd had enough of sleeping on the living room couch, seeing my grandfather sink ever deeper into his illness depressed him, and he was sick of hearing the nitpicking of his mother-in-law, who'd become more irritable from day to day and whose arguments with Luna were exhausting.