The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (46 page)

David conducted in-depth research on Luna Ermosa. From his mother he learned that there was a schism in the Ermosa family between the mother, Mercada, and her son Gabriel, Luna's father, and that Gabriel, who was very wealthy, was not a well man and his businesses were not doing well. None of this really interested David. He wasn't going to marry her father's businesses, he was going to marry Luna. He'd chosen her for his wife almost from the moment he first set eyes on her. It would be she who removed Isabella from his heart, once and for all.

Every day he'd go to Jaffa Road, stand between the building's columns, and observe Zacks & Son. Occasionally he'd see her come outside for a break and lean against the door, dressed to the nines, elegant and well put together. Sometimes he'd watch her go into Barashi's seed and nut shop in the adjacent alley and come back with a bag of sunflower seeds. Once a week she'd climb into the shop window holding a pincushion in her teeth and change the mannequin's clothes. That, David knew, was his opportunity. He would stand by the window and catch her attention.

Luna had no idea that for weeks now David had been planning to woo her. She of course thought that he'd passed the shop window by chance and was flattered when he'd told her he didn't know which of them was the real doll, she or the mannequin. She hadn't known that he'd been rehearsing that line for a long time. And as he'd expected, she fell right into his hands like ripe fruit.

Luna wasn't shy when David kissed or hugged her in front of other people. On the contrary, she encouraged his public displays of affection, much the same way as she showed her love for him. But between the sheets she was as frightened as a tiny bird. Unlike Isabella, who was a bubbling spring, his young wife was a shy, inexperienced virgin.

If he'd harbored hopes that she'd loosen up with time and let her natural instincts take over, he was disappointed. Unlike Isabella, who was all fire and brimstone and smoke, who writhed like a snake under him, who moved her body to the rhythm of his, who climaxed with a shout that threatened to perforate his eardrum, his wife was quiet and remote.

When Luna finally became pregnant, he, like she, was relieved. He wasn't surprised that she was happy to cooperate when he'd told her that they shouldn't make love until after the baby was born. The months of pregnancy were hard, and her moods had made him spend more time at work and at the cinema. It was lucky that she liked being at her father's house more than in their own home, lucky that she preferred her sisters' company to his. It was lucky that soon war would break out and he'd be able to join the army and do what he loved best, be a soldier.

But David's plans to take off as soon as possible ran aground. He fell in love with the baby. Who would have believed that the baby would restore the light to his eyes, that the baby would give renewed meaning to his dull life? How much beauty God had given her, and what sweetness! Why didn't her mother want to hold her? Why didn't she want to nurse her? His wife had gone crazy. She didn't even look at the baby, and now she didn't want to leave Mount Scopus and go back home to Jerusalem.

Seven days after I was born my mother was finally forced to vacate her hospital bed for another expectant mother, and much against her will consented to leave Mount Scopus in an armored convoy. The convoy drove slowly, the journey seeming to take an eternity to Luna, and even though the windows of the bus were armored and there were soldiers driving in front of and behind it, she didn't feel safe and clung tightly to my father.

She wasn't mistaken, my mother. When the convoy reached Sheikh Jarrah, the bus was hit by a volley of stones. She shrank and tried to hide under the seat, but every movement hurt her, and when she bent down she felt that her insides were being torn apart.

My father, who was holding me wrapped in a blanket, didn't say a word about the fact that she'd first protected herself and not the baby, but he decided then and there that he'd take us straight to her parents' house and leave us there. “Your mother and Becky will help you with the little one,” he told her, concealing the fact that as soon as they got there he was going to enlist for the war.

My mother was terrified. She had absolutely no idea how she'd manage with me. She didn't know how to feed me, how to change my diaper, how to hold me. Who would have believed that she had to be
taught
to be a mother? She thought it'd have come naturally, but not with her; nothing came naturally with her. Nobody had told her that her body would be ripped to shreds when she gave birth, that she'd be sewn up with a needle in her body's most sensitive place, the place where every touch caused her to shudder. Who would have believed that her body would resist giving birth like this, so much so that instead of having a few contractions and giving birth in no time at all like Rachelika, whose baby had just slid out of her, her baby would refuse to come out and tear her insides apart for seventeen hours? Who would have believed that her body would resist her becoming a mother to the point that her breasts didn't produce milk and that her baby would have to nurse on her sister's breasts?

These thoughts ran through Luna's mind and gave her no peace. As the bus drove through the poor Arab neighborhoods, she closed her eyes and prayed they would make it safely. David didn't stop kissing the baby, clicking his tongue and talking to her. But what would happen if he gave the baby to her to hold? She couldn't, she was afraid she'd drop her, and the shooting that could be heard from all around, and the vehicles all around, she'd never seen so much traffic in the streets of Jerusalem. British police cars with their sirens wailing, groups of soldiers laying out concertina wire. Any minute there'd be a curfew and they'd be stuck on the bus with the baby and wouldn't be able to get home.

She calmed down only once they reached her parents' house in Ohel Moshe. In the yard the neighbors were waiting to throw sweets at them and shout, “Mazal tov!
Mabrouk! Sano que 'ste!
”

David immediately put the baby into Gabriel's trembling arms, and Luna's heart stopped. Just don't let him drop the baby, she prayed. But once she saw Gabriel's smile, her heart melted.

“Preciosa, she's beautiful,” he said. “She's just as beautiful as her mother.” Luna saw a spark of happiness in his eyes, and she recalled how he'd loved her when she was little. Her heart swelled even more, and at that moment she made her decision.

“Gabriela,” she told her father. “Her name's Gabriela.”

David's eyes widened in shock. Rosa, who was on her way to the kitchen, halted. Rachelika, who was nursing Boaz, shook her head in disbelief. Only Becky clapped her hands in pleasure. “Gabriela,” she said, “what a pretty name!”

“Thank you,” said Nono Gabriel. “Thank you very much. I'm honored.”

And that's how I was named Gabriela.

About what happened next between my father and mother, Rachelika told me about it many years later, after my mother died.

“Are you out of your mind?” he'd yelled at her. “How can you give a girl a boy's name, and without even asking me?”

“I wanted to give my father the respect he deserves.”

“But why didn't you consult me? She isn't only your daughter, she's mine too!”

“It just came out, straight from the heart. I saw my father so happy for the first time in so many months and it came out spontaneously.”

“Spontaneously? What will you tell my mother? How will I look now when I go to see my mother and tell her that I haven't named my firstborn daughter after her?”

“Your mother, praise God, has already got five granddaughters named after her. Isn't that enough for her?”

“It's customary to name the first child after the father's father or mother, and you know it.”

“So give her a second name, Victoria, your mother's name.”

“Not a second name. I'll give her a first name, Victoria, and the second name will be after your father.”

“In your dreams! My father's name first, and then your mother's.”

“Don't talk crap! I've decided and that's that!”

“Excuse me,” said my mother, “is that any way to speak to me? What do you think, that I'm one of your buddies from the brigade? I've just given you a baby after seventeen hours of agony and that's how you speak to me?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I apologize, forgive me,” he said and tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she shook it off and left the room angry and hurt. She was already irritable and restless and couldn't bear the sight of the new body she'd been given.

“Just look at these tires,” she wept to Rachelika, revealing her waist that had thickened slightly. “Look at these tetas,” she sobbed, cupping her breasts. For years she'd been called “the airfield” because of her flat chest, but she had liked her breasts and pitied Rachelika for her heavy ones. Now she had to carry her own watermelons, yet with all their size they didn't even produce milk.

“Do you realize that a cow has an advantage over me?” she cried to Rachelika. “Do you realize that a cow gives milk and I don't?”

“It's all mood,” her sister said. “There isn't a woman who doesn't have milk. You just have to calm down and release it.”

“Release what? The milk? What, I'm locking it up in my tetas?”

“You need to relax your mood a bit. You've been as tense as a spring since you had the baby and you're being foolish. I told you it isn't customary to name the first child after the mother's father, but you went right ahead so you could fight with David. Why did you have to name the baby Gabriela?”

“Because that's what I decided, that my child would be named after Papo.”

“But your child's a girl.”

“So what? Gabriela's a nice name, an angel's name. It'll protect her.”

*   *   *

On May 15, 1948, a few months after I came into the world, the Ingelish, may their name be erased, finally left Palestine, and Nona Rosa practically danced on the table in delight. But the immense joy my nona felt on the departure of the hated Ingelish was mixed with immense anxiety regarding the future.

The previous day, David Ben-Gurion had announced the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence that would determine the fate of the Jewish people. My nono's radio didn't stop spewing news. My father joined Ben-Gurion's army without consulting my mother, and when he told her of his decision, she was so frightened, she almost dropped me.

“Please, David, don't leave me alone with the baby,” she begged him.

“You're not alone, you're with your mother and sisters.”

“Let him go,” my nono said. “Don't make a scene. Everybody's enlisting. We have to be part of the effort.”

Gabriel was proud of the fact that his son-in-law had enlisted and wished he could have joined up himself. He was a man of forty-seven who felt like a one-hundred-year-old shuffler, and his health would not allow it. A short time after David, Moise enlisted, and now his two sons-in-law had become fighters in the Israel Defense Forces.

Immediately after Moise enlisted, Rachelika also moved back to her parents' house with baby Boaz. The house was small and crowded, but Nono Gabriel was happy that all his daughters were with him at such a fraught time, and even happier with the babies that filled the house. The little ones' voices somewhat assuaged his pain, and at long last he could sit at a
mesa franca
, a king's table, with his girls.

And then what Nona Rosa called “the miracle” occurred. One morning the gate opened and into the yard strode a stocky, tanned man, his head crowned with curls, a thin mustache on his upper lip. “Dio mio! Ephraim!” Rosa screamed and fell into his arms, almost fainting. Years after his disappearance, Ephraim had returned. He was so different from the young drunkard who had left the house and slammed the door behind him. He'd left a confused youth and come back a real man.

“Rachelika, Luna, Becky, look who's here!” Rosa called. “Look who's here, Tio Ephraim, Tio Ephraim's come home!”

Even Gabriel was happy to see his brother-in-law again. Many years had passed, and despite the animosity he felt toward anyone connected with the Lehi or Etzel, and despite the fact that he had sullied the family's honor following Matilda Franco's death, he was glad to see Ephraim safe.

“You broke our mother's heart, Tio Ephraim,” Rachelika said once the excitement died down.

“Shhh, he didn't break it at all. What happened is past,” Rosa said. “The main thing is that you're back safe and sound. The main thing is that I'm seeing you with my own eyes.” She wanted to take her little brother into her arms, to hug him, kiss his eyes, until something in his look made her hold back. His boyish features now comprised the face of a man. The deep furrows in his cheeks, the wrinkle that formed a path on his forehead told her in one glance that the years that had passed since he'd walked through the gate and not returned had not exactly been paradise for him. Who knew what he'd been through, where he'd hidden from the damned Ingelish, how many times his finger had pulled the trigger. She didn't dare ask him any of the questions whirling in her head, didn't dare penetrate the armor he now wore. She just stood close to him, inhaling his new scent, so different from the smell of alcohol that engulfed him in the last year he'd lived with them.

They sat around the table, the girls quietly holding their babies, still astonished by their uncle's return. Only little Becky chattered away, asking him all the questions that Rosa, and perhaps Rachelika and Luna too, wanted to ask but didn't.

“Where did you disappear to for such a long time?” Becky said. “Mother almost went crazy because she was so worried that we didn't know where you were.”

“I was fighting for the Jewish people,” Ephraim replied. “I helped drive the British out of Palestine, and they left, thank God,” he said and pinched her cheek.