The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (13 page)

“Afterward she'd wander for hours through the streets, stopping at Yemin Moshe to watch the windmill turn in the breeze. ‘Go wherever you want,' Gabriel had told her, ‘but don't come to the market. We mustn't rub salt in my father's wounds and anger him. Let me bring him around slowly, and with God's help he will eventually welcome you into the family.'

“She also avoided the alleys of Mea Shearim, but she did so willingly. Almost from the day she was born, she had felt that the stone walls of the houses, the winding alleys, the yards abutting each other, the laundry hanging on clotheslines, all closed in on her. Her soul yearned for freedom, to venture out into the world. She was an inquisitive child, stubborn and rebellious, always seeking the forbidden, always asking questions, and her parents hadn't known how to deal with her. All they knew to do was beat her or tie her to the bed.

“One evening when the market emptied and she met Gabriel at their usual place on the steps of the Alliance School, he wrapped her in his coat and she snuggled into his arms. ‘Stay with me tonight,' she begged.

“‘It's forbidden, querida mia, it's blasphemy. We can't be together before we're husband and wife by Jewish law.'

“‘I can't be in that home for one more night. I can't stand the smell of death, the people's shouts at night. It scares me even more than my big brother's beatings.'

“‘If you really can't bear it, I'll speak to Leon and ask him if you can sleep there again, my love. Another few nights and everything will work out. A few more days and we will be man and wife and we'll have our own house. Paciencia, my precious, paciencia. Everything will be fine. You'll see.'

“She didn't want to go back to Leon's house. He'd scowl at her in hatred and shout at his wife and threaten that if she didn't get rid of the Ashkenazia, he'd get rid of
her
. Her body shook and she started crying. Gabriel stroked her head. ‘I want to stay with you. I don't want to sleep in the aged person's home or at Leon's house.'

“Rochel was radiant in the moonlight, her golden hair shining and her blue eyes welling with tears. Gabriel dried them and took her hand, and she let him lead her without asking where they were going.”

*   *   *

It was very late and it seemed that Tia Allegra was tired from telling her story. She closed her eyes as if she were about to fall asleep and sighed. “Basta, querida,” she said. “I've told you enough. I'm tired. Perhaps we'll carry on another time.”

“Please, Tia, please,” I begged. “You've already gotten this far. I need to know where Nono Gabriel took the Ashkenazia. You must tell me what happened with their love story.”

“What happened with their story, querida mia, I heard from my sister Clara. I was in Tel Aviv by then, sound asleep beside my Elazar, may he rest in peace. I didn't know that while I was dreaming, my darling brother's life was being turned upside down. I didn't know that when I got up in the morning, the Ermosa family wouldn't be the same Ermosa family it'd been when I'd gone to bed.”

Tia Allegra sighed again and closed her eyes. Another moment, I feared, and she'd be fast asleep. I scooted my chair closer to hers, shook her arm, and urged her on. “What happened to Gabriel and Rochel? Please, Tia, where did he take her? Who agreed to put her up?”

“Stubborn girl,” Tia Allegra scolded me. “You're as stubborn as my mother Mercada, as stubborn as your mother Luna. You all have the seed of stubbornness. When you want something, you bang your head against the wall. You sink your teeth into your prey and don't give up till you get what you want.”

I didn't like the comparison with my mother and sour old Mercada, as Nona Rosa had always called her, but this wasn't the time to argue about it. I so much wanted Tia Allegra to go on with her story that I nodded in agreement.

“It was late by the time Gabriel knocked on the green wooden door of Clara's house,” Tia Allegra said. “Clara, her husband Yaakov, and their children had been fast asleep. Yaakov, bleary-eyed and alarmed, opened the door.

“‘Get my sister,' Gabriel ordered him.

“‘Now? At this hour?
Que pasa
?' Yaakov asked, shooting frightened glances from him to Rochel.

“‘Don't ask questions, Yaakov. Just get my sister.'

“Clara rushed up to them in her nightgown, her hair disheveled. ‘
Qualo quieres,
what do you want?' she asked Gabriel, looking suspiciously at Rochel, who was standing meekly in the doorway.

“‘She's sleeping here,' Gabriel replied.

“‘Father will kill me if he finds out I let the Ashkenazia into the house,' she said, disturbed.

“‘And I'll kill you if you don't,' Gabriel told her.

“Clara was shocked by her brother's forceful behavior.

“‘She has nowhere to sleep, and starting tomorrow she'll be your sister-in-law, a family member, so let her in!'

“Clara's jaw dropped, but she opened the door without another word.

“Ignoring his sister, Gabriel held Rochel's face in his hands, kissed her eyelids, and said, ‘Don't worry, mi alma. Tomorrow we'll have a home.'

“After leaving Rochel with his sister, he set out toward his parents' house. As silently as a burglar he opened the door and went inside. His parents were in bed, but he knew they weren't asleep. He had fully expected his mother to get out of bed and start cursing Rochel again:
hija de un perro,
daughter of a dog,
hija de una putana,
whore's daughter,
el Dio que la mate,
may God strike her down. But his mother didn't say a word and his father didn't raise his voice. He only said tiredly, ‘You've come home again from the Ashkenazia putana? When will you get it into your head that we don't marry Ashkenazias?'

“Gabriel went to his room, covered himself with a blanket, and before closing his eyes saw Rochel's blue ones. If somebody had told him that he would defy his parents' wishes and marry an Ashkenazia without his family present, he would either have laughed in his face or beaten him half to death. But now he was about to marry Rochel. He hoped his parents would relent once they were married and had children, that they'd accept her once they witnessed the love they shared. But he couldn't deny his feelings. It was bigger than him. It was fated. He closed his eyes and sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Deafening shouts roused the household. ‘
Dio mio! Si murien! Raphael el tsaddik si murien!
'

“Gabriel woke up in a fright. ‘He's dead! He's dead!' he heard his mother screaming. He came out of his room. The house was full of people, his brother, his sister, the neighbors, relatives. He had slept deeply and nobody had thought to wake him. As soon as she saw him, his mother went at him with her fists. ‘You've killed him! You've killed your father, you and your Ashkenazia putana. You've killed your father!'

“The stunned Gabriel didn't understand what was happening. ‘
De que 'stas havlanda
? What are you talking about?'

“‘Your father, your father Raphael, the righteous, sainted man, your father is dead.
Si li rompien el corazon
, his heart broke. You broke his heart, you! You!'

“Gabriel went to his father's bedside, and the relatives made way for him. Raphael was on his back, as pale as a ghost, his eyes wide open. Gabriel brought his face close to his father's and placed a hand under his nose, hoping that his mother was being hysterical for no reason and her fears were mistaken, that his father would start breathing and everything would return to normal. But there was no sign of life. His father was dead. Gabriel collapsed over his father's body and wept uncontrollably. ‘
Perdoname, perdoname,
Papo. Dio mio, forgive me, forgive me, Father. God in heaven, Father. What have I done to you, Father?'

“Mercada couldn't believe her eyes: Her strong son was weeping like a woman. Although beside herself with grief and pain, she realized that this was an opportune moment to set things right. Without hesitation she went to her son, laid a hand on his shoulder, raised him up from his father's body, and in a voice as cold as steel said, ‘You've killed your father. You've made me a widow and bereaved your brothers and sisters. If you don't want to kill me too, swear to me on your father lying here dead because of you, swear to me that you will not marry the Ashkenazia and that you will never see her again.'

“Gabriel fell into her arms and wailed, ‘I swear, Mother, I swear. I beg your forgiveness. I'm so sorry.'

“‘What do you swear on?' Mercada demanded.

“‘I swear on my father.'

“‘You swear what?' Mercada persisted. ‘Say it so your brothers can hear. So your sister Clara can hear. So your sister Allegra all the way in Tel Aviv can hear. Say it so the whole of Ohel Moshe and all Jerusalem can hear. So your father lying here dead can hear. What do you swear?'

“‘I swear that I will not marry the Ashkenazia and that I will never see her again,' Gabriel sobbed.

“Mercada moved away from him. ‘Here,' she said, giving him a handkerchief, ‘dry your eyes. Stop crying. Be a man! We must take your father to the Mount of Olives.'

“From that day on your Nono Gabriel didn't see Rochel even once,” Tia Allegra said with a sigh. “He didn't say good-bye to her and didn't inform her of his decision not to marry her. He simply behaved as if she had never existed in his life. And Mercada, she never mentioned her name again and neither did we. Only the gossipmongers in Ohel Moshe clicked their tongues and in hushed voices related the story of Gabriel's grand love for the Ashkenazia from Mea Shearim that broke the heart of that saintly man, Senor Raphael Ermosa, and ultimately killed him.”

“And Rochel?” I asked Tia Allegra. “What happened to her?”

“Ah, that, querida, I don't know, and to tell you the truth, I was never interested. All I know is that in the middle of the night, after they came to inform my sister Clara of our father's death, may he rest in peace, she threw Rochel out into the street, cursing her and calling her a murderer, and the girl vanished into thin air. No one ever saw her again.

“And your Nono Gabriel, a year after our father Raphael died, our mother married him to Rosa,
una buena boda
, a wedding I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies, a wedding without guests, without family, without refreshments, without joy. Just a minyan, a quorum of ten men. None of us knew the bride, not her or her family. All we knew was that she was an orphan from the Shama neighborhood who worked cleaning houses for the English.”

Pale gray light came through the window of Tia Allegra's apartment as dawn broke and night was replaced by day. Although I'd been awake all night, I was far from tired. I thought about my grandfather and his unfulfilled love for the Ashkenazia, a love that filled his heart and left no room for Nona Rosa. I thought about Mercada, who despicably used Raphael's death to force Gabriel into swearing the terrible oath never to see the love of his life again. I thought about the hasty marriage forced upon him and poor Nona Rosa, who didn't have the faintest idea that Mercada, coldly and calculatingly, was using her as a pawn in the game she was playing against her son.

And I thought about the most terrible thing of all: How could it be that my family carried such a dark secret and lived with it in peace? How was it that nobody had ever let it slip, nobody had blurted a word that might give the secret away? How could it have happened that in all the years she had lived with him, my grandmother had been tormented by her unrequited love without understanding why her husband hadn't loved her as she loved him? And how was it possible that in all the years that had passed, nobody knew what had become of my grandfather's pitiful beloved, thrown into the street from his sister's house that night, and what's more, nobody cared?

I had lots of questions, and I wanted answers. I wanted Tia Allegra to continue the story, but she was tired, very tired.

“Heideh,” she said quietly, “I've talked enough for a hundred years. Help me up and to my bedroom.”

I helped her up from her chair, and with her cane she started hobbling toward her bedroom.

“God help me, Gabriela,” she said before closing her bedroom door, “I can't remember why you came here from Jerusalem, but I remember the tiniest things that happened forty years ago. That's how it is with old age. There are things you miss.”

 

3

T
HE MARRIAGE BETWEEN
N
ONO
G
ABRIEL
and Nona Rosa was my great-grandmother Mercada's way of exacting revenge on her beloved son. She married him to a woman with no family, no pedigree, no money, and no looks. But Gabriel didn't open his mouth in protest.

It was, so they say,
una boda sin cantadores
, a wedding without singers, the way the poor get married, not the Ermosa family. And it was only when he stomped on the wineglass and said, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning,” and they became man and wife, that he realized he had no idea what color his new wife's eyes were.

Despite her plainness and poverty, sixteen-year-old Rosa was an industrious woman. Immediately after the wedding she stopped work as a cleaner in the homes of English people and began helping in the shop at her husband's side. Her husband did his duty as a provider and fulfilled all her basic needs, but no more than that. Ever since his father's death he'd withdrawn into himself.

Sometimes when Mercada looked at her daughter-in-law, the thought flashed through her mind that maybe marrying her handsome son to the thick orphan had been too severe a punishment, but she'd quickly brush it aside and remind herself that grace is deceitful and beauty is vain. Just look at what that cursed Ashkenazia's beauty brought down on us!