The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (19 page)

Rosa hurried off to search for Luna in the winding alleys of Ohel Moshe and in the garden at the center of the neighborhood. God save us, don't let her have fallen into a cistern, the fear insinuated itself into Rosa's mind. It was pitch-dark in the garden, and Senor Attias fetched a lantern and illuminated the inside of the cistern. He checked every inch of the garden and even sent his son Avramino to climb the tree. Maybe Luna was hiding in the branches. But nada, the child had vanished.

Rosa was on the verge of collapse. Adio Senor del mundo, let the child be found, don't let anything happen to her. God help us. If anything happens to her, it will be the end of my life, the end of my family. And the neighbors who saw her so worried tried to encourage her. “Don't worry, Senora Rosa, Ohel Moshe is a small place. How far could she have possibly gone? We'll find her soon.”

They didn't tell her they feared that something terrible had happened to the child. These were hard times. Jews were fighting Jews and the Arabs weren't like they used to be. They kidnapped Jews and slaughtered them. And there were also sick people,
pishcado y limon,
and a girl with auburn curls and green eyes, you never know, leshos, leshos
, pishcado y limon
. They prayed that nothing had happened to the daughter of Senor Gabriel and Senora Rosa.

They searched and searched, and it was already the middle of the night and they hadn't found the girl. Rosa sat on the steps of the Ohel Moshe gate, her head in her hands as she wept. Then, from out of nowhere a British police jeep pulled up, and Matilda Franco got out, her face painted like, el Dio que me salva, the girls who sold their bodies. She was wearing a dress so tight-fitting it was like elastic, nylon stockings, and shoes with heels so high that if, God forbid, she fell off them, she'd crack her skull. Let her crack it, the putana, who cares. Rosa looked at her as if she'd seen an evil spirit, and all the neighbors stood outside the Ohel Moshe gate with their mouths agape. They'd heard about Matilda and her English officer, but they'd never seen them together. Her father Meir Franco wanted the ground to open under his feet, and her mother Victoria Franco was holding his hand so he couldn't raise it to his daughter. The surprised Matilda was standing in front of Rosa and asking what happened, and Rosa got up and fell into Matilda's arms and wept. “Luna, Luna's lost.”

“How did she get lost?” Matilda asked her.

“She disappeared from the yard. The whole neighborhood has been looking for her for hours,” Rosa wailed.

“You haven't found her?” asked Matilda, surpised. And Avramino, Senor Attias's son, came over and yelled, “What do you care if we find her or not, you whore of the English!” Then a fracas ensued with all of them attacking Matilda Franco, and it was only out of respect for her parents that they didn't lynch her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rosa saw the Francos standing to the side, not coming to their daughter's defense. She saw her brothers' black eyes gleaming in the darkness, but they were standing like soldiers behind their father and mother and not moving a muscle to help their big sister. The whole neighborhood had forgotten her Luna, and all that interested them now was hitting Matilda Franco and cursing her. When a shot was fired into the air, they all fell silent. Matilda's English officer was standing by the jeep with his pistol drawn and shouting in English, “Quiet!”

“Quiet up your
culo
,” Avramino Attias whispered, but then went as silent as the rest.

“What's going on here?” the Englishman asked Matilda, and in English she told him that a child had vanished.

On my life, Rosa thought. That one speaks Ingelish like in Ingeland.

The officer started asking questions and Matilda directed him to Rosa. He asked her name and Matilda translated, but Rosa didn't need translation, not for nothing did she work for years cleaning the bastards' houses. At least one good thing had come out of it, Ingelish, and so she told him in fluent English that the child disappeared from their yard three hours ago after her father left for Beirut on business.

The officer waved to the neighbors to disperse and go back home, and told Rosa to get in the jeep. She hesitated.

“Don't be afraid, Senora Rosa,” Matilda whispered. “He's English, but he's a good man. He'll help you find Luna.”

Rosa didn't care if he was English, Turkish, Arab, Spaniol, or Ashkenazi. All she wanted was to find her daughter.

The Englishman drove for several minutes until they reached the police station on Jaffa Road. He courteously opened the door for Rosa and helped her out. Ingelish, may his name be erased, but a gentleman, she observed. Then he helped Matilda, who despite her high heels jumped out easily. They entered the police station, and to her shock, praise God, there was Luna, sitting beside an officer. Gracias el Dio! On the one hand, her heart was overflowing with joy on seeing the girl, while on the other, she wanted to kill her. She'd almost died because of her!

“Luna,” she called, and the child looked at her and started running toward her. Rosa opened her arms to pick her up, but she ignored her and leaped into Matilda's arms without even glancing at her mother. Such shame, Rosa thought. What will the Ingelish think of me? What kind of a child is she who shames her own mother? What have I done wrong in my life, adio Senor del mundo, to deserve a daughter like Luna?

Matilda's English officer sat down behind his desk and asked Rosa to sit opposite him. Matilda took a seat beside her and Luna perched on Matilda's knee, like a baby, not a ten-year-old girl. Rosa could hardly conceal her hurt.

“The child,” said Matilda's English officer, “turned up at the station by herself and said that her mother had thrown her out of the house.”

“She what?” shouted the stunned Rosa. “Is that what she said?”

“She said,” the officer went on, “that as soon as her father left, you took her two sisters inside and left her outside.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Officer,” Rosa said in her fluent English, “where are you getting all this from?”

“It's all in the duty constable's report,” he replied. “I'm reading word for word the statement given by the girl, who came to the station at seven this evening, three hours ago.”

Dio mio, she's not a child, she's Satan, Rosa thought. How does she come up with stories like this?

“Is that true?” the officer asked.

And before she could reply, Matilda answered in her place. “Of course it isn't. The child made up a story. I know Madam Ermosa. She's a wonderful mother and a good wife.”

All this time Luna was hiding her face in Matilda's shoulder, not looking in her mother's direction.

“So what did happen? Why did the child come to the station to complain about her mother?”

Rosa glanced from Matilda to Matilda's officer. “What can I say, Mr. Officer?” she replied. “The child is very close to her father, and every time he goes away on business she makes a scene. I thought I'd leave her in the yard for a while until she calmed down. I was sure that in a few minutes the chill and the dark would drive her inside. When I realized she wasn't coming in, I went out to the yard, and when I couldn't find her I turned the whole neighborhood upside down. Do I, Mr. Officer, look like a mother who'd throw her daughter out of the house?”

“Definitely not,” said Matilda's officer as he got to his feet. “So that's the end of it. I'll report that there was no need for police intervention, that you came to the station looking for your daughter, and now that you've found her, you can take her home. And you”—pinching Luna's cheek—“naughty, naughty, naughty girl. Behave nicely to your mother.”

Rosa clutched Luna's hand tightly. Even now, when it was clear that they must leave the police station together, she could feel the child's resistance. Nothing frightens this one, God help me. She goes to the Ingelish police to tell lies about her mother.
Wai de mi sola,
what's she going to do next?

When they got back to Ohel Moshe and passed through the gate, Rosa turned to Matilda and said, “May you be healthy, Matti. I thank you with all my heart. God will help you. You're a good girl, you don't deserve to be with Ingelish. You deserve someone better, one of ours.”

Tears welled in Matilda's eyes. “Excuse me, Senora Rosa. It's getting late and I'm very tired. Have a good night,” she said and walked toward her house, her skinny heels tapping on the cobblestones.

Rosa was gripping Luna's arm so tightly she was almost ripping it off.

“Ay!” Luna yelped. “Just wait till Papo comes home from Beirut. I'll tell him everything! You'll see what he'll do to you.”

Rosa thought she wasn't hearing properly. The child was threatening to snitch on her to Gabriel? Her hand rose in the air and came down on Luna's cheek. “Never! Do you hear me, you bad girl, never ever dare to come between your father and me! Wait till I tell your father that you ran away from home, and of all the places in the world you went to tell lies about your mother to the Ingelish police. We'll see what your father has to say about that.”

The threat apparently worked. When Gabriel returned from Beirut, Luna didn't tell him anything about what had transpired that night, and Rosa kept her mouth shut too. The secret remained between them until the day Matilda Franco was murdered.

*   *   *

Gabriel leaned his head against the carriage window, closed his eyes, and listened to the sound of the train's wheels clacking slowly. His forehead banged lightly against the glass, but the sensation was pleasant. He breathed deeply and for the first time in months let himself relax. An old tune started playing in his mind, a children's song his mother sang to him. He began humming it, amazed that he still remembered. After all, he hadn't heard it for almost thirty years.

He always traveled first class. Sitting in his compartment were two men wearing tailored suits and straw hats. Their behavior was foreign and distant like that of the new immigrants from the big European cities whose style flooded Gabriel with a yearning he couldn't comprehend, a yearning for something he had never experienced. He felt a sort of affection for these people who had come from Europe, the immigrants from Germany in particular. Sometimes one of these yekkes would come into his shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market by mistake and only rarely leave with a purchase. Among the abundance of goods in the shop, the yekkes never found anything that took their fancy. They didn't speak Hebrew, and unlike the immigrants from Eastern Europe, they made no effort to learn the language. They expected, in a way that awed Gabriel, that he, who was born here, should try and understand
them,
the newcomers. And yet there was something in the way they dressed, their distant politeness, that he appreciated. He would get angry when his brother Leito called them
yekke potz,
and made sure he knew it.

The two men sitting opposite him were yekkes, he suspected. They didn't exchange a word, nor did they speak to him. When he entered the compartment, they were both immersed in
The Palestine Post
and courteous enough to look up from their papers and nod a greeting, but no more.

He preferred to just lean his head against the window, even though he had a newspaper in his bag. He'd been reading
Haaretz
for years now. When he was younger he'd read
HaZvi,
which his father Raphael used to bring home. But one day his father came home angry and agitated, brandishing a copy of
HaZvi
and quoting from an article by Dov Lifschitz against the Sephardi community. “Starting today, Ben-Yehuda's newspaper will not cross the threshold of our house! We will not buy the paper and we will not mention its name!” Raphael had shouted. The Sephardic rabbis joined the boycott and forbade people to read it. There were also rumors, which were never proven, that the leaders of the community, fuming with rage over the racist article, had even informed the Turks that the paper was preaching revolt. From that day forward the Ermosa family had read
Haaretz
.

But this time, for the journey, Gabriel decided to break his habit and buy
Davar
, the newspaper of the workers of Palestine. His father wouldn't have allowed a socialist paper into the house, and he himself had once called it a “Bolshevik newspaper” and had forbidden Leito to read it in the shop. Now it was Gabriel's way of feeling freedom: first, buying a paper it's forbidden to read, then engaging in other forbidden activities before returning home to Ohel Moshe and the stifling routine of life with Rosa.

He could already envisage how he would spend his time in Beirut: how he'd take a carriage from the railway station directly to his hotel on the seafront. How he would be greeted at the reception desk: “Salaam aleikum ya hawwaja, Ermosa, it's good to have you with us again.” And how the clerk would hand him the key to his favorite room, the one with a balcony overlooking the sea. He imagined opening the room door, a cool breeze blowing in and ruffling the heavy drapes, and inhaling the air from the balcony. Then he would take off his suit and put on a pair of thin trousers and a light cotton shirt, and his heavy shoes would be replaced by a pair of comfortable moccasins. After sipping the Zachlawi arak that awaited him in a clear crystal decanter in the sitting area, he would leave the hotel in his straw hat, feeling as light as a feather, as free as a bird, and hire a taxi to take him directly to Aisha in the Marfaa Quarter in Beirut Port.

Ach,
ya
Aisha. He didn't know how he could carry on living with Rosa if he didn't have Aisha. Thinking of her and what she would do to him and he to her when they met made his little bird raise its head, and he shifted uncomfortably on the seat, took the paper from his bag, and started reading. His attention was drawn to an advertisement for Ford cars. “Cut your costs! Buy a Ford!” trumpeted the advertisement, at the center of which was a picture of the car. It's time to spoil myself with a car, to fulfill an old dream, he thought.