The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (10 page)

“From the moment Leito started, he was put in charge of the cash register. Leon helped refill the sacks, metal barrels, and jars with fresh supplies, and Gabriel mingled with the customers and persuaded them to buy more than they'd intended.

“‘
Pishcado y limon
,' Great-grandfather Raphael would say to Nona Mercada at the end of the day, ‘your son, may he be healthy, could sell rocks and say they're salty cheese.'

“Mercada would sigh with pleasure. ‘That boy is a gift from heaven, God loves him. He'll make us truly rich.'

“‘We don't need to be richer than we already are,' Raphael would grumble. ‘We have everything we need. We have a home, we have food, we're in good health and so are the children. We shouldn't be greedy and we don't need people to be jealous of us. We should thank Senor del mundo for everything He has given us and be satisfied with what we have. And now basta, enough of this chatter, make me a cup of tea.'

“And Mercada would fall silent and hurry to the yard to pick sage leaves to infuse for her husband's tea, and in her heart she'd give a prayer that her son Gabriel, may he be healthy, be successful in all his endeavors. Her husband was right, they should be modest, for after all there were many in Jerusalem who had nothing to eat, and they, thank God, had everything a person needed and even more. And to fend off the evil eye she increased the family's donation to the poor, and although they gave handsomely, she knew that there were always people who had something to say and there were always people with big eyes, so she put up several hamsas in the shop and on the house walls, may His name be blessed and may He protect her son and her family from the evil eye,
tfu-tfu-tfu
.

“Like everyone else in Jerusalem, Mercada believed in the evil eye and was afraid of evil spirits. When she came home from the market at dusk, staggering along with her baskets on the cobblestones of the Ohel Moshe neighborhood, she could swear she heard the sound of footsteps following her, and convinced that at any moment she would encounter an evil spirit, she would walk faster and murmur, ‘
Pishcado y limon.
' Like all the other Spaniols she too believed that the combination of the two words
fish
and
lemon
would fend off the spirits.

“Mercada was so afraid of evil spirits and the evil eye that she didn't dare speak their name and called them
los de avashos,
those from below. Like human beings, the spirits were divided into male and female, and they were headed by the male spirit Ashmedai and the female Lilith. Lilith, belief had it, was frightened by red, so Mercada tied a red thread around her children's wrists, her husband's, and her own to keep her away. When Gabriel told his mother he felt like a woman with the thread around his wrist, she grabbed the hem of his coat and ordered him, ‘Hide the thread under your sleeve, but God forbid that you take it off. Querido, there is an eye on us.'

“All she wanted was to keep the evil spirits away from her family and her home. It was because of this belief that she increased her activity in livianos, the healing ritual used to drive out evil spirits. The more she drove out the fears of others, she believed, the more she'd drive out her own.

“Mercada and her livianos became well known throughout Jerusalem, and people came to her house for help. She would seat the person seeking a cure on a low stool in the yard and drape a white sheet over their head, preventing them from seeing what was going on around them. Then she'd take lead pellets and melt them over a fire she set in the yard, whisper a prayer, and pour the molten lead into a bowl of water held over the head of the person. The water would give off a dense, mysterious smoke, and when the smoke dispersed, Mercada would take the lead out of the water and interpret the strange shapes it had formed. If she saw the shape of a dog, she'd ask the person if he or she had been bitten by a dog. When it had the form of an evil spirit, she'd ask if a spirit had appeared to him or her in a dream. And if she saw a human shape, she'd try and understand who it was. The shapes told her the person's fears, and she'd talk to the person about them and provide herbs and instructions on how to behave to drive out the spirit. People were so satisfied with the treatment that although Mercada stressed her services were free, there was a charity box overflowing in the doorway of the house, and once a week Mercada would donate the money to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue. But the longer she treated people with livianos, the more she insisted on curing serious and trivial complaints alike, the more she donated her money to charity—the more her own fears increased, and the feeling that a catastrophe was about to befall her house would not leave her.

“Since she couldn't treat herself, Mercada decided to go and see Jilda la Vieja—Old Jilda—in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Jilda was ancient, perhaps a hundred years old, maybe more, and was thought to be a wise woman with whom even Ashkenazim consulted.

“One morning after Raphael and Gabriel left for the market and the rest of the family had gone off about their business, Mercada took her basket and walked down Agrippas Street to Jaffa Road, and from there until she saw the walls of the Old City and Jaffa Gate. When she reached Jilda la Vieja's yard, there were dozens of people who had been sitting on stools for hours, waiting their turn to see the old healer. There wasn't a single free stool, so she sat down on the stone steps in the entranceway and waited.

“
Wai de mi sola
, she thought. It'll be hours before it's my turn to see the old woman and I'll have no choice but to go back home empty handed. She opened the Book of Psalms she carried with her and began reading. At times like these, she was glad that unlike many of her relatives and neighbors, she could read and write. When they were young, her husband had taught her the Hebrew letters, and it was revealed that she possessed a brilliant mind. Whenever he brought home the
HaZvi
newspaper, she was able to read the news and discuss it with her husband. Once she even attempted to gossip with him about Ben-Yehuda's son Itamar's love affair with Leah, the beautiful daughter of Senor Abu Shadid, that all of Jerusalem was talking about, but he had silenced her with a gesture.

“He, of course, concealed from her the fact that the love story between the Ashkenazi and Leah the Sephardia was giving him sleepless nights. Times are changing, he thought to himself. Now Senor Abu Shadid has no choice and his daughter is marrying an Ashkenazi. Who knows, perhaps if I'd told my father about the blue-eyed Ashkenazia … And then he'd banish the notion, knowing that for all the money in the world his father would not have broken the agreement with Mercada's father to marry their children. Not only that, he would never have consented to a marriage between his son and an Ashkenazia. And though whenever he shared Mercada's bed he never experienced the feeling that had shot through him when he was struck by the Ashkenazia's blue eyes, and even during all the years of their marriage he had never felt excitement when his body touched his wife's, Raphael knew that all in all, fortune had smiled on him and that the good Lord had given him a wonderful wife and mother.

“As Mercada studiously read the Book of Psalms, her body swaying back and forth as she brought the pages to her lips and kissed them, something disturbed her concentration. On a stone wall nearby, a young girl was sitting, swinging her legs. The sound of her heels hitting the wall was driving Mercada crazy.

“‘Could you stop banging your feet?' she asked the girl. When the girl raised her head and stared at Mercada, Mercada saw the bluest eyes she'd seen in her life, set in a face that was a perfect oval with blond hair in a flawless braid. Wide-eyed on seeing the breathtaking beauty of the girl, who looked back at her as if seeing right through her, Mercada felt uneasy. The girl's stare bewildered her. She got up from the steps and sat down again, confused, unable to remember why she'd spoken to her in the first place. And then it hit her: This girl isn't a girl at all. She's an evil spirit! This girl is Lilith, the one that makes Ashmedai, king of the demons, seem a guiltless saint. She immediately picked up her basket, hurried out of Jilda la Vieja's yard, and spat three times,
tfu-tfu-tfu,
her feet quickly carrying her out of the Old City. All she wanted was to get home as fast as possible. Nine times, so her mother had told her, you must repeat the Song of Ascents nine times so that your wish comes true. She had never prayed more fervently, never been more convinced that she had just encountered the evil eye in person, Lilith, may her name and memory be erased, Lilith, who was biding her time to harm her loved ones. The red thread she had tied around her loved ones' wrists had not driven Lilith away, hija de un mamzer!

“She resolved to expel the evil eye, and the next day went to see the Kabbalist Rabbi Shmuel of the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in the Old City. The Kabbalist prayed and read the Talmud deep into the night, and Mercada brought him and his disciples steaming hot tea and her home-baked bizcocho.

“‘Rabbi Shmuel,' she said, ‘I have come to you to exorcise the evil eye that is on me and my family, and because of which I know no peace.'

“The rabbi took Mercada into the yard, lit a fire, and ordered her to stand over the flames with her feet apart and say her name, her mother's name, and her grandmother's name. He closed his eyes and said a prayer, and then all at once the embers glowed and sparks shot in all directions. Rabbi Shmuel opened his eyes, looked deep into hers, and told her to repeat the words of the prayer and supplication after him. When he finished, the embers stopped spitting sparks and the fire went out, and the rabbi said, ‘You were right, Senora Ermosa, there was a big evil eye on you. But now it is all over, it has flown with the wind, we have exorcised it completely, and with God's help you are clean. Go back to your husband and children, and may you be healthy.'

“Mercada was filled with a sense of purity. The glowing embers, the sparks, the crackle of the wood as it was consumed by the flames, the kindly eyes of the Kabbalist rabbi, and the sight of Mount Moriah from his yard all made her feel that she had been cleansed. She thanked the rabbi and left a substantial sum of money in the box in his doorway. Before returning home, she stopped at the bagno, immersed herself in the ritual mikvah, and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving to Senor del mundo. When she got home she felt as pure and white as a bride on her wedding day.”

*   *   *

“As the Ermosa family business flourished, the shop became too small to hold all the goods as well as the customers that frequented it, so when two adjoining shops became vacant after their owners passed on one after the other, Raphael purchased them, and Gabriel broke down the dividing walls.

“Raphael handed over the reins to Gabriel and stopped working in the shop almost completely. Instead he would sit in his wooden chair in the doorway leaning on his cane, twisting the curls of his beard that was now white, playing with his worry beads, and looking on satisfied at the growing number of customers, and at his son, who managed the shop so well.

“One day Gabriel came to the shop with white aprons, tied one around his waist, and told Leon and Leito to do the same. ‘Like in America,' he explained to his father, who looked at him in astonishment. ‘Now,' said Gabriel, ‘now we have to give the shop a name, like in America.' And the next morning a big sign was put up over the shop: R
APHAEL
E
RMOSA &
S
ONS,
D
ELICATESSEN.

“The shop continued to thrive and the family's financial situation significantly improved. The family's other children also found their way in life: Clara was married and expecting her first child, Avraham and Matzliach opened a carpentry shop, Shmuel was still studying in a Talmud Torah school, and I, Allegra, who had gotten married while Gabriel was still in America, moved to Tel Aviv with my husband Elazar and gave Mercada and Raphael two grandchildren, may they be healthy, without the evil eye.

“That was when Mercada told Raphael, ‘It's time we found a bride for Gabriel. The boy is twenty already and until he's married his little brothers won't get married either.' Raphael gave his approval and Mercada considered the list of possible young women. It wasn't difficult. After all, the Spaniols lived in a tight-knit community and knew one another well, and they sometimes even married distant relatives. She thought that Estherika, the daughter of Shlomo Molcho, a relative three times removed, might be a suitable match. The community's rabbis encouraged marriage within the family on condition that the couple were not blood relatives, so that defective children wouldn't be born, God forbid. Over the years, as the Spaniol community had dwindled, they feared that their sons and daughters would marry spouses from other communities, heaven help us.

“‘Before you start thinking about a bride, sit down and talk to your son,' Raphael ordered Mercada.

“‘What's to talk about?' she replied. ‘His time to marry has come, and I'll find him the best bride of all the young girls in Jerusalem.'

“But still, she took her son aside for a talk. He was her dear son, her pride and joy. She had raised all her children wonderfully. ‘They were born one after the other,' she liked to say, ‘without a break, the way God wished it.'

“She didn't speak of the four children who had died at birth or before they were a year old. I've already told you, Gabriela querida, that the death of babies in those days was nothing out of the ordinary. Your nono Gabriel had been named after the Angel Gabriel so he would protect him and ensure that he not die, God forbid, before the redemption of the firstborn ceremony. Even after the other children were born, Mercada treated him as if he were her only son. When he went to America, she missed him so, and no one was happier than she when he returned. She felt sorry for Leon, whose son had chosen to stay in America. ‘I'm like Mother Goose,' she said. ‘I like my young under my wing.' Now she was resolved to find the most suitable bride for Gabriel.