The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (20 page)

He looked out the window again. At the foot of the Arab village of Batir, a shepherd was grazing his flock by the railway line. Alongside the line was a forest of almond trees in full bloom. Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees, had just passed. Business boomed at this time of year. The shop had been filled with customers buying goods for the holiday, and now the sacks of dried fruit, almonds, and raisins needed to be replenished with fresh stock. Times were good, thank God. He had turned the shop back around.

“In America, the golden country, there are twenty million people on welfare,” he read in the paper. “And despite all of President Roosevelt's efforts, this is the sixth winter since the Wall Street Crash that all these millions of people will be in need of food and money, for if not they will die of hunger and cold.” The land of opportunity, he thought to himself, there too people are starving. Who knew how his good friend Moshe was? It'd been a long time since he'd had news of him or a letter. It had been very fortunate that Gabriel had been clever enough to return to Palestine. But on second thought, was he fortunate? Perhaps if he hadn't come back, he wouldn't have met Rochel, and if he hadn't met her, his father wouldn't have died, and if his father hadn't died, his mother wouldn't have married him to Rosa, and maybe today he'd be married to a woman he loved, a woman he wouldn't run away from every few months to seek love with another.

When he arrived, Tel Aviv's Jaffa Port thronged with people. Gabriel liked the atmosphere, the chaos, the acrid smells that seared his nostrils, the Arabs' exotic apparel, the voices speaking a mélange of languages—Arabic, English, Hebrew. A ship anchored outside the port, and barefoot Arab boatmen wearing sharwals rowed their big boats to the ship and ferried passengers close to the shore. From there they had to make their own way through the waves, carrying their baggage to dry land. Arab policemen vainly tried to keep order and with sweeping gestures and whistles directed the passengers to the port buildings.

Gabriel laughed. The passengers seemed stunned, their fine travel clothes becoming completely soaked. What caught his eye in particular was an older woman fighting the waves. In one hand she held an umbrella and in the other a big brown suitcase, and at the same time she was fighting to keep her wide-brimmed hat from falling into the water.

Ach, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv. He always felt like a tourist whenever he came to the White City. Tel Aviv is like our own Sodom and Gomorrah, he thought. In Tel Aviv there isn't just one tavern, there are fifty, but not for the Jews, for the British, may their name and memory be erased. He'd read in the paper that five people had been fined for drunkenness, all of them British. The Jews don't know how to drink, it's not in our nature, he thought. He'd once read an article by an English journalist who wrote derisively that in Tel Aviv's taverns they serve whiskey and soda in a wineglass. He'd give those English kerosene to drink if he could. Not whiskey and soda, kerosene—and served in teacups.

After wandering around the port, he looked for a taxi to take him to his usual hotel, the Eshbal on Herbert Samuel Promenade, three blocks from San Remo, his favorite café. A hundred lirot a night and worth every penny. Just outside the port gates he came upon a splendid car. A stunning young blonde exited and asked if he needed a taxi.

“This is a taxi?” he asked, astonished.

The young woman indicated the green license plate, and he got in and made himself comfortable in the backseat. On the way to his hotel, the young woman told him she was a new immigrant from Berlin. She'd come with her parents who'd brought the Austin family car with them, and since she couldn't find a job, she'd been working as a taxi driver.

“What did you do in Berlin?” he asked.

“My father owned a big clothing store, and I studied accounting at the commercial high school so I could help my father manage the store. I'm a senior accountant, but here in Palestine you work at what you can get. I have no complaints.”

“Good for you!” Gabriel said. She wasn't the only one. Among the new immigrants he'd already come across girls who worked at tiling floors, doctors working in factories, and lawyers working as foremen on construction sites. Once a sausage salesman had come into the shop in Mahane Yehuda and told him that he used to be a judge in Heidelberg. There's no shame in it, he thought. When he was in New York, he himself had worked as a butcher's apprentice, soiling his hands with animal blood.

The taxi driver pulled up outside the seafront hotel. He always preferred to stay in a hotel than with his sister Allegra. Being under the same roof as his mother had become unbearable. When he went to visit her with Rosa and the girls, he had no choice, but on his own he couldn't stand being with her for even a minute. Every such visit took years off his life. The anger he suppressed most of the time threatened to erupt, and his mother's lack of interest, which she didn't even attempt to conceal, didn't help either.

He went into the hotel, checked in at reception, and went up to his room. After unpacking his suitcase he started walking along the promenade, observing the suntanned people who seemed to be on permanent vacation. When did these people work? He was a Jerusalemite who loved his city, but there was something in easygoing Tel Aviv that captivated him: the women in their summery dresses that revealed alluring necks, the men in their white suits and straw hats, the young mothers pushing white prams along the promenade, the crowded cafés and the casino that actually stood in the sea. Mashallah, Tel Aviv will soon be Beirut, he thought.

Ach, Beirut, Beirut, how he loved the Lebanese capital, how he loved going to that vibrant city on the sea. He knew that he no longer needed to travel as far as Beirut to buy stock. Chaim Saragusti in Tel Aviv's Levinsky Market stocked everything he needed for his shop. Mr. Saragusti was a big merchant, much bigger than him, and he went to Beirut several times a year to buy stock that was sufficient for all the shops in the Levinsky Market and certainly for Raphael Ermosa's in the Mahane Yehuda Market too. He could buy spices at Chaim Saragusti's, sweets, Turkish delight, and arak that would last all year. But he, so long as he had the strength, would not give up going to Beirut. Only there was he able to remove the burden of life from his shoulders and felt like a young man just beginning to live. And Aisha, only she gave him the air he needed to go on pretending, to not explode. Ach,
ya
Aisha, his life had been changed since that stormy night two years ago when she'd taken him into her bed.

He had never been a ladies' man. He had only ever loved one woman, but she had been driven out of his life with unbearable cruelty. He had never needed more than one woman and one love and never sought sexual escapades. All the years he lived in New York were without a woman.

But with Aisha it was different. For the first time in his life he, a married man with three daughters, felt the way a man feels when he's with a woman. Until that night with Aisha, he'd felt like a virgin. He had loved Rochel with every fiber of his being, and although they had both wanted it, he had never been with her in the way a man is with a woman, despite sometimes feeling he could no longer hold back when she urged him. He had convinced her and himself to abstain until their wedding night that never came. He went to Rosa's bed, but he had never lost himself in the act of love. He came to her to observe the biblical precept of “be fruitful and multiply,” not to feel his body shudder, not to soar on indescribably sublime pleasure, the way he'd felt that first time with Aisha.

That night would be engraved in his mind forever. A strong wind was blowing in from the sea and the heavens opened and sheets of rain lashed the streets. Gabriel returned to his hotel room from a routine day's work buying stock for the shop. Although it was early, the merchants in the Beirut market had hurried to shut down their stalls because the stormy weather deterred customers from shopping.

Normally he would bathe to wash away the day, change into light clothes, sip a glass of arak, and go down to the seafront. He'd sit in one of the cafés, smoke a narghile, and have a demitasse of the strong black coffee that only Beirutis knew how to make. He'd sometimes visit his sweetmeat merchant friend Marouane at his house in the al-Ashrafieh Quarter, and there, after dining on the splendid dishes Marouane's wife made, they'd go out onto the spacious balcony that circled the house, smoke a narghile, sip Zachlawi arak, and inhale the cool air of Beirut. On Friday evenings he'd go to the Magen Avraham Synagogue in the Jewish quarter in Wadi Abu Jamil, and if he was lucky, he'd be able to hear the bell-like sound of the synagogue's children's choir.

But it was too cold and wet to visit friends that night, and too late for the evening service at the synagogue, so he got into bed and stared at the ceiling. He was wide awake and tossed and turned restlessly. Gabriel didn't like lying idly in bed, nor did he like the thoughts stealing into his mind. He didn't want to recall Rochel. He was no longer able to bear the ache that lodged in his chest each time he thought of her. He didn't want to think about his life with Rosa. She was a good wife and the mother of his daughters, and for that he was grateful, but he couldn't feel anything for her apart from obligation. Sometimes he would notice her pleading look and he'd feel her pain, but his feet wouldn't carry him to her.

He didn't want to think about the life he might have had if he'd been able to marry his beloved, if his father hadn't died and his mother hadn't treated him as if he were a scorpion. True, he had the girls, but was being a father enough to make a man feel alive? He also had respect, the respect of the community, the market merchants, the neighbors, the mukhtar, and his family. They all gave him the utmost respect, all except his mother. His sisters and brother had long since forgiven him, but she hadn't and never would. And the truth? He didn't forgive her either. No, he didn't forgive her for burdening him with such heavy guilt. Was it really him who had killed his father? Were he and Rochel to blame for his father succumbing to a heart attack in the middle of the night? After all, Raphael, may he rest in peace, was not a young man. He was old, over fifty, and it was even inscribed on his gravestone in the Mount of Olives cemetery: “Here lies the wise old man Raphael Ermosa.” And Rochel, what had become of her? He hadn't dared to ask Clara what happened the night his father died. Had Rochel returned in shame to her father's house in Mea Shearim? Had her parents married her off like his mother had married him off, in haste to a man who wasn't a groise metzieh, a bargain, as the Ashkenazim say sarcastically? Did a flawed groom who nobody wanted win the most enchanting of them all?

Ach, how much more pain could fill his heart, God help him. There was no more room in him for pain, no more room in his head for these thoughts. Gabriel got out of bed and began pacing. Through the window he saw it was raining heavily and as dark as the grave, but there, in the distance, in the Marfaa Quarter by the port, lights were flickering. There, he knew, life went on, even when the rain was coming down hard, even when chilly winds threatened the treetops, even when there wasn't a dog to be seen in the streets.

He got dressed, took his umbrella, and left the room. The hotel lobby was empty. Even the reception clerk had realized that he wouldn't have anything to do on a night like this and had gone to bed. Gabriel left the hotel, and ignoring the wind and rain, started toward the port.

The stormy night had driven the sailors on the ships anchored in the port to their cabins, and the streets were dark and deserted. Only the brothels and bars lit up the night. Gabriel had never been in this neighborhood. As he stood outside a building with a red light over its doorway, gripping his umbrella, its door suddenly opened and an invisible hand seemed to shoot out and draw him inside. “
Ya sidi,
come in, come in. Why are you standing like that in this rain?
Allah yustur,
God save us, you'll catch pneumonia.”

The invisible hand was connected to a young woman in a tight-fitting red dress that hugged her bounteous curves. Her breasts threatened to burst out of her deep neckline, and reposing in her cleavage was a gleaming green stone suspended from a gold chain. Her black hair fell to her shoulders, gold earrings hung from her earlobes, and gold bracelets adorned her thick forearms as far as the elbow. Her fleshy lips bore bright red lipstick, and thick makeup covered her eyelids. Gabriel was breathless and unable to utter a sound.

The room she led him into was large, and on every wall were doors leading to other rooms. Red velvet armchairs and couches dotted the room, a chandelier hung from the ceiling, and burning candles were all around. Gabriel smelled the sweetish scent of hashish mixed with cheap perfume. Sitting on the couches were young women who paled in comparison to the one holding his hand, and there were also men in the room, some sharing a narghile with the women in their laps. The warm voice of Fairouz could be heard in the background and a wood fire blazed in the hearth. The woman removed his damp coat and hung it to dry by the fire, then sat him down in one of the armchairs.

“Salaam aleikum,” he greeted the room in Arabic, and they responded with a nod and “Aleikum salaam.”

The woman disappeared for a moment and came back with a glass of Zachlawi arak. “It'll warm you up,” she said. He downed the liquor in one gulp and felt its warmth spread in his belly. The woman asked his name.

“I'm Aisha,” she introduced herself with a seductive smile. He liked her. When he dared to look directly at her, Gabriel could see a pair of beautiful black eyes beneath the heavy makeup.

They sat there for a few more minutes, and then she took his hand and led him into one of the rooms and without much delay started undressing him. He stood there not knowing what to do, his arms too long, his body too heavy. She kneeled and started taking off his shoes, unlacing them very slowly. Soon enough he stood there in his underwear, feeling like a boy with a woman for the first time. She moved close and threw him onto the bed. She was a whore, he knew that, she was working, and he knew that too. But she was so gentle, as if she were making love to him, not simply doing what she was paid for. He was closed, completely tense, and she asked in astonishment, “Is this your first time?” He blushed like a child and shook his head. “So why are you like this,
ya habibi
?” she asked. “Why are you lying curled up like a baby still in its mother's womb?”