The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (37 page)

As the day of the wedding approached, Luna and her sisters' excitement reached a new frenzy: Luna's wedding dress, Rachelika's and Becky's bridesmaids' dresses, the invitations that the three sisters delivered by hand to relatives and friends. Only Rosa was not involved. Not with the wedding dress, not with the invitations, not with any of the arrangements. She sometimes struggled not to burst out and spoil the mood.

Rosa wasn't always able to control herself either. One evening when they sat down for dinner, Gabriel noticed that she hadn't touched her food.

“Eat,” he told her. “Why aren't you eating?”

“I don't want to eat!” she replied angrily. “Your daughters have ruined my appetite.”

Gabriel glanced at his daughters, not understanding what she was talking about. “What's happened, Rosa? Is there something I don't know?”

“What you don't know you don't want to know!” she answered, getting up from the table and hurrying into the yard.

She was greeted by a starry night. Another thirty days until Luna's wedding, she thought as she took a seat on the stool. How would she be able to stand under the wedding canopy and pretend she was happy when her heart had been pierced by a thousand knives? She closed her eyes and wished Ephraim could be there to stand beside her and give her strength. She sat for a long time until she got the feeling that she was no longer alone. She opened her eyes and saw Tamar.

“Dio santo, you startled me,” she said to Tamar.

“Why are you sitting outside like this all on your own?”

“Well,” she said, “it's a bit crowded in the house.”

“Yes,” said Tamar, “mashallah, you've become a big family what with Luna's and Rachelika's fiancés.”

“And Becky's boy,” Rosa added.

“Becky has a boy?”

“She's not yet fourteen and she already wants to marry him,” she said, managing a smile.

“Well, with God's help.”

Tamar took a stool next to Rosa's. They sat there side by side for a long while, not talking about the rift between them, not saying a word about either Matilda Franco or Ephraim. They didn't talk about the long, difficult period that had passed. They sat in silence, each listening to the beating of the other's heart.

Perhaps there is a God, Rosa thought. Perhaps all isn't lost. Here, in the midst of all the sorrow, one good thing had emerged: Her soulmate vizina Tamar had come back to her.

Calmer, she went inside, but now it was Gabriel who was scowling. “This boy of Becky's,” he hissed at her, “he came in the morning, now it's nighttime and he's still here! Doesn't he have a home?”

“Don't get angry, Gabriel,” Rosa soothed him. “He's a good boy.”

“I don't like him being here all the time. Becky's still a child.”

“They want to get married.”

“Married? What are we, Arabs? She's not even fourteen. I'm going to kick him out!”

“No, querido, don't do that. Now that Luna's getting married and Rachelika will also marry, God willing, Becky will be all on her own, the miskenica. It's good she's got Handsome Eli Cohen around.”

“What's this Handsome Eli Cohen? What kind of a name is that?”

“It's what the girls call him. They say he's as handsome as a movie star.”

“Looks aren't important, woman! The main thing is what a person does with his life.”

“He has a job, Gabriel. He's a good boy, may he be healthy, industrious. He works as a clerk at the post office, and in the evening he's learning clerical work and accountancy at the Nachmani School.”

“Whatever, but I don't want to see him in front of me all the time. I don't want him getting too close to Becky.”

And why not? Rosa thought to herself. Wasn't it better than them roaming the streets? Out there, God help them, it was dangerous. There were signs of war. It was best that Becky and Handsome Eli Cohen be at home where she could keep an eye on them.

*   *   *

In the winter of 1946, Jerusalem was cloaked in white. Heavy snow fell on the city, covering its houses and streets with what seemed like a white down quilt. The preparations for David and Luna's wedding were at fever pitch, and once the sky cleared, the sun came out from behind the clouds, and the first birds heralded the start of spring, the wedding day had finally arrived.

Luna had chosen her wedding dress with extra care after going through dozens of
Burda
magazines devoted to bridal wear with endless patience and deliberation. It was a stunning white silk dress that fell to the floor, with tiny pearl buttons at the front and down to the waistline.

Her beautiful hair was gathered into a fine white lace net at the nape of her neck, gleaming in hues of gold and red around her heart-shaped face. Her white veil flowed from a tiara inset with precious stones, and in her white-gloved hands she held a bouquet of white carnations. She looked royal.

When David saw her for the first time in a week—as was the custom before a wedding—she took his breath away. He could not have wished for a more perfect bride. She was everything he had envisioned during the long months after he and his comrades had been informed they were leaving Italy and going back home to Palestine. She was the woman he had imagined when he'd decided to get married immediately upon his return to Jerusalem and set up a Jewish home with one of their women.

Luna too couldn't take her eyes off the handsome man who was about to become her husband. He was wearing an elegant black pinstripe suit, a starched white shirt with a stiff collar, and a bow tie that complemented his shirt. From the top pocket of his finely tailored suit peeped a white carnation like the ones in her bouquet. There wasn't a hair out of place in his dashing mustache. Together they were a beautiful couple, the perfect bride and groom.

The wedding took place early on a Friday afternoon at the Menorah Club on Bezalel Street, which they had decorated with all of Luna's favorite flowers. At the entrance, the bridesmaids, Rachelika and Becky, stood in matching dresses made for the occasion, handing out white tulle bags containing sugared almonds from Gabriel's shop. As was standard at the time, the refreshments were modest. On white-clothed tables along the walls were jugs of lemonade and raspberry juice, cream cakes, borekas, and fruit trays.

Gabriel felt immense joy at the sight of his beautiful daughter and her handsome husband, and only one thing cast a pall over his happiness: the frugal refreshments. Ach, almighty God, he thought to himself. In normal times the tables would have been laden with dried fruit, almonds, raisins, sweets, a selection of cakes, all the bounty of the world and the country. But what can you do? Times are not what they were. Thank God that he could even afford to book a hall for his daughter's wedding. He wouldn't be able to rent a house for them, and certainly not buy one. The young couple had been invited to spend their first year of marriage at his table until they were on their feet and could move to their own home. This was the custom of
mesa franca
, the king's table.

Gabriel looked around the hall. All his close relatives were there, even his mother Mercada. She had come from Tel Aviv with his sister Allegra, brother-in-law Elazar, and all their children. His brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and even neighbors from Ohel Moshe, among them Tamar, who had attended despite Senora Franco's dirty looks—they had all accepted the invitation to celebrate Luna's wedding. Even his Kurdish partner Mordoch Levi was there with his wife and all their eight children. He was the only guest whom Gabriel wasn't glad to see. He'd invited him because he'd felt he had no choice.

Gabriel had been growing gradually weaker. His body was betraying him. He found it difficult to conceal the tremors and hard to walk, so he had to use a cane. He had been forced to sell the car he loved so much because its upkeep was costly, but mainly because he could no longer trust himself to drive. His foot trembled on the pedal, his hands shook on the wheel, and now he had to take a taxi to and from the Mahane Yehuda Market.

The financial situation was as bad as it could be, and the state of the shop was going from bad to worse. Matzliach hadn't gotten matters under control, and even the dedicated Rachelika and Moise couldn't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. How could you make money if there weren't any customers, and if there were some, there was hardly any stock left to sell them?

He looked at Luna, radiant in her bridal gown, the smile not leaving her flawless face. He looked at Rachelika and Becky standing with their mother at one end of the hall. Rosa, mashallah, it'd been a long time since he'd seen her so happy, as if Luna's marriage had taken a weight off her. She was even wearing a pretty dress, not like the shmattes she always wore. He turned his eyes from his wife standing at one end of the hall to his mother sitting at the other. The two women, he noticed, hadn't exchanged a single word. As soon as Mercada came in, he'd hurried over to her and kissed her hand. She had nodded, greeted him, and walked as erectly as a proud young girl to sit at the far end of the hall. His daughters had rushed to their grandmother to kiss her hand, and Rosa had taken a deep breath and she too joined the long line of relatives making the pilgrimage to the sour old woman.

Gabriel looked at both of them—his wife standing with her daughters at the entrance to the hall, his mother surrounded by her children and grandchildren on the opposite end—and his heart lurched. For the thousandth time he asked himself how his mother could have become so cold that she'd married him to a woman he hadn't loved for even one day of his life.

He didn't contemplate it further, for the lovely Luna was approaching him, linking his arm, her beauty lighting up the darkness of his thoughts. Arm in arm he walked with his beloved daughter to greet their guests and receive their blessings. As he gazed proudly at his Luna, who on the day she was born was illuminated by the moon and God had restored love to his heart, a thought flit through his mind: Perhaps it isn't so terrible that Mother married me to a woman I have never loved, for it is she who bore me Luna, she who bore me Rachelika and Becky, my wonderful daughters, my very soul. Suddenly flooded with great tenderness, Gabriel passed Luna into her sisters' arms, took Rosa's hand, tucked it under his arm, and said to her, “Heideh, Rosa, let's go and see our eldest daughter get married.”

*   *   *

Six months later Rachelika and Moise were also married in a modest ceremony held in the yard of Moise's parents' home in the Maghrebi Quarter. Gabriel was heartbroken, but the more he had examined his financial situation, it became clear that he couldn't afford to rent a hall for them as he had for Luna and David.

“God forgive my sins, there's no justice in the world,” Rosa said to Rachelika. “You work like a horse in the shop, you abandon your dream of being a teacher in order to help your father, and who gets a princess's wedding? Luna, who doesn't do anything for anyone except herself.”

“Mother, why do you say things like that? If I'd been married first I would have had a wedding in a hall too.”

“You, mi alma, you are oro, gold. You've never been jealous of your sister, but if God forbid it had been you who was married in the Menorah Club and she had to get married in a yard in the Maghrebi Quarter,
wai wai wai
, what a scene she would have made. She would have turned the world upside down.”

“Well, it's not her who has to get married in a yard, it's me. And for me, even getting married in a synagogue with only a quorum present would have been enough. So why get angry when there's no need?”

“Miskenica Rachelika, even when you deserve to be number one you're number two, that's why I'm angry.”

“Basta, Mother, if it weren't for Luna I wouldn't have even gotten married. It was she who introduced me to Moise. It's all thanks to her and David.”

 

7

G
ABRIEL LAY IN HIS BED
listening to the silence of the house. He was still unused to the emptiness. He missed the commotion that had filled it when his three daughters had all lived there. But they'd grown up and that was the way of the world. The fledglings left the nest, that's how it was. At one time young people would carry on living with their parents for the first year of marriage at least, but young people had become modern. They rented a room and embarked on their lives. Perhaps it was better that way. It hadn't done him any good, living with his mother. His mother—it'd been a long time since he'd heard from her. He hadn't seen her since Luna's wedding. She hadn't attended Rachelika's. She'd said that traveling all the way to Jerusalem was hard for her, and Allegra had apologized on her behalf.

In the past, once a month he'd receive a letter from Allegra with an update on the family and his mother, who'd become a cantankerous old woman. But now the mailman brought letters from Allegra only infrequently. How long had it been since he'd last heard from her? Two, maybe three months. Today he'd sit down and write her despite his shaking hand. What once took him five minutes to write now took an hour, and he'd get annoyed. He couldn't stand not having control of his hand, of his life.

The situation with the shop was bad. It was difficult to obtain stock, nobody went to Lebanon or Syria anymore, and commerce with the local Arabs had also ceased. Even the women from the Arab villages had stopped coming to the market with cheeses and olive oil. The scarcity of goods and customers alike had brought the shop to the brink of total disaster. Despite their ambition, poor Rachelika and Moise hadn't been able to restore the shop to its former glory. Yesterday they'd come to see him with more bad news.

“Papo,” Rachelika said, “Moise and I have to talk to you about something important.”

“Then talk, queridos, say what you have to say.”