The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (55 page)

I was two and a half when they enrolled me in the prestigious Rehavia school. My mother simply wouldn't stand for enrolling me in the one in Ohel Moshe.

“I want the best there is for my daughter,” she told my father.

What a strange woman, my father thought. She hardly takes care of the child, barely pays her any attention, but she wants the best there is for her.

And my mother got her way again. The only time I spent with her during those years was when she took me to school and when she picked me up. Every morning we'd go in through the iron gate, and Mother would say good-bye by the big ficus tree. In a desperate attempt to gain a little attention from her, I'd create heartrending parting scenes. I cried, threw myself on the ground, and held on to her legs and didn't let go, and my mother would be helpless.

“Stop it,” she'd say angrily. “Stop making a scene.” The angrier she became, the more I'd scream, embarrassing her in front of the other mothers.

“You take your daughter to school,” she finally said to my father. “I don't have the strength for her scenes. She humiliates me in front of all the mothers in Rehavia. The children from the Kurdish Quarter are better behaved than her.”

Whenever my mother associated something with the Kurdish Quarter, it was a sign that all hope was lost, her way of saying that she'd had it up to here! How my mother hated the Kurdish Quarter, which before the Kurds came with their thousands of children, so she'd say time and again, was called the Zichron Yaakov Quarter and was a Spaniol neighborhood. And as much as my father told her again and again that she was talking nonsense and the Kurds had always lived in the Kurdish Quarter, it made no difference. As far as she was concerned, the Kurds had taken over a neighborhood that once belonged to the Spaniols, just as Mordoch had stolen my grandfather's shop.

Soon the hard times forced Nono and Nona to leave the house in Ohel Moshe and rent it out. With the money, they rented two rooms in the Barazani family's house in the Kurdish Quarter, and we lived on whatever was left over.

How my mother wept when we moved to the Kurdish Quarter. “Only poor people live here,” she told my father.

“That's not true,” David replied. “The Kurds that live here aren't poor at all, only the Spaniols are, and we're poor now.”

Even more than she hated the Kurdish Quarter, my mother hated their landlords, the Barazani family. Ever since Mordoch the Kurd had robbed Nono Gabriel and got his hands on the shop for a miserable five hundred lirot, all Kurds were the same for her. She held Mordoch to blame for all the bad things that had happened to the family since he'd become Nono Gabriel's partner.

Almost from the day the Ermosa family moved into the Barazani family's house, the feuding began. Rosa in particular suffered, for except at the time of Matilda Franco's murder, she'd always been on friendly terms with her neighbors. And now with the Barazanis every little thing sparked a tiff. She'd wash the cobblestone yard, and they'd complain that she threw out the dirty water on their side. Mrs. Barazani would hang out her washing, and Rosa would complain that she was hanging her rags on her clotheslines. Mrs. Barazani would light a fire under her tabun and make the traditional kada, cheese and spinach pockets, and Rosa would shout at her that the smoke was coming into the house through the windows. Not a day went by without the neighbors arguing about something.

“Dio santo,” Rosa cried out one time, “I can't even quarrel with her like a normal person. She doesn't speak Ladino and I don't speak Kurdish.” On more than one occasion her throat became sore from shouting, and she had to call for Luna's help. And she, mashallah, what a mouth she'd run. Then they'd scramble back inside and shut the windows.

The Barazanis loved Gabriela, and as if to spite her family, the child loved them back. At every opportunity she'd ride into their yard in the little green pedal car David bought her.

“If I hear that you've gone to the Kurds with your car again,” Luna once shouted at Gabriela, “I'll break your arms and legs.”

“What do you want from her,” David had intervened. “What does she have to do with a neighbors' dispute? She's only a child.”

“Child or not, my daughter will not go to the Kurds' side. I want you to put up a fence between their yard and ours.”

The next day David brought some barbed wire and separated the two yards.

Mr. Barazani threatened to throw the Ermosas out, but in the end he too realized that the right solution was the fence that now separated the two families.

“If it wasn't for the little girl I'd throw you all into the street,” he said, making sure he had the last word.

“That's how it is, he who pays the piper calls the tune,” said Becky dejectedly. “And there's nothing to be done. The Kurds pay the piper.”

“They pay the piper?” my mother retorted angrily. “Why, they were rich when they came from Kurdistan? They didn't have a shirt on their back or shoes on their feet!”

“So how did they get rich?” Becky asked.

“They found money in Sheikh Badr,” Luna said and laughed.

“Before the Arabs fled,” said David, joining the conversation, “they hid their gold in tins, dug holes in the ground, and buried the tins. They were sure they'd win the war, and when it was over they'd throw all the Jews into the sea and return to their village. But we won the war, and they, thank God, didn't come back. And the Kurds, who were new immigrants, took over the abandoned property in Sheikh Badr, found the tins with the gold, and became rich. They opened businesses, butcheries, kiosks.”

It was lucky that Uncle Moise was a policeman. If it hadn't been for him, the dispute between the Ermosas and the Barazanis would never have come to an end. One day he put on his uniform, ironed the sergeant's stripes on his sleeve, polished the badge on his cap, and knocked on the Barazanis' door. Despite my mother's pleadings he refused to say a word about what went on behind the door, but from that day on the fighting stopped.

And yet I continued to sneak into the Barazanis' yard. I liked sitting on Mrs. Barazani's knee, laying my head on her large bosom, and falling asleep.

“You're not your mother's daughter,” she'd tell me over and over. “How did a woman with a guttermouth have a sweet child like you?” My mother, who'd be out measuring the streets all day, as my father called it, didn't know about my daily visits to the Barazanis, and Nona Rosa, if she knew, chose to turn a blind eye. She was busy with her household chores and looking after my nono, who became more dependent on her from day to day. Inside she was probably happy there was someone to take looking after me off her hands. When I'd come back home as usual with the toffee that Mr. Barazani had given me in my mouth, she'd say, “Just be careful you don't tell your mother you were at the Kurds' house so a third world war doesn't start.”

Father finally found work at a bank on Jaffa Road. Handsome Eli Cohen had told him that the bank was looking for clerks, so he went for an interview, received an offer, and started work as a teller. His brother Yitzhak begged his forgiveness and offered him his old job, but as my father said to Moise, even if he'd offered him the garage for free, he wouldn't go back to working for him.

For a long time after Mother was discharged from the hospital and had recovered, and after Father started work at the bank, we lived with Nono and Nona in the Kurdish Quarter.

“It's not normal that you and Becky sleep in the same bed and your husband sleeps on the couch,” Rachelika said to Luna one afternoon.

“Well, what do you want, that I sleep with him and she sleeps next to us? It's shameful!”

“You have to get out of Father and Mother's house. You need to have a life of your own.”

“Becky will be getting married to Eli Cohen soon and then there won't be a problem,” Luna replied.

“What, you're waiting for Becky to get married so you can sleep with your husband?” Rachelika yelled. “How long do you think David's patience will last? In the end he'll throw you out and find another woman.”

The condition that Mother stipulated to Father was unequivocal. If they left her parents' house, then they'd need to move close to Rachelika's. She was incapable of moving away from her family and was connected to her sister with every fiber of her being. Rachelika was her confidante, the only one privy to the secret life she'd been living behind David's back.

*   *   *

On the day Gidi was discharged from the hospital, Luna began leading two lives, dividing her time between him and her husband without anyone—except for their small group of wounded friends—knowing about it. And their friends kept the relationship between Gidi and my mother a closely guarded secret, as if it were their own, not even talking about it among themselves.

Every day Luna would go to the taxi station and sit inside the dispatcher's booth with Gidi. Even if she was a distraction at work, none of the drivers dared say anything, so in the end it was Gidi who said to Luna, “I don't think it's entirely appropriate for you to sit here with me in the booth all day.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You're a married woman and people will talk.”

“Why, can't I visit my friends from the hospital?”

“We're in the middle of Jerusalem, people are passing all the time, they'll see you. It's not smart.”

She, of course, continued going and sitting with Gidi until his shift ended. Afterward, she'd push his wheelchair to Café Atara, where they'd be joined by their driver friends who'd also just come off their shifts. These were her most beautiful hours. Every day she waited for the time she could spend with Gidi and her friends. She couldn't imagine life without those hours far from her family, her husband, her child, and in the company of the people who'd become her second family, people with whom she felt a profound connection. Nobody could understand, not even Rachelika, whom she'd bound with a thousand oaths never to tell a soul about her secret meetings.

“You're playing with fire,” Rachelika warned her.

“But we're not doing anything,” Luna said, feigning innocence. “We just sit and laugh with the guys.”

“If David doesn't know you're meeting Gidi and your friends at Atara, it's a secret, but secrets come out in the end.”

“I can't tell him. He won't let it continue.”

“If all you're doing is sitting with the guys and talking, why wouldn't he? Do you know what cheating is, Luna? It's when you betray someone's trust.”

“Cheating's if somebody touches you,” Luna replied. “And Gidi's never touched me and I've never touched him.”

“Don't worry, that'll come too. It's only a matter of time, and then that'll be the end of you. Remember what I'm telling you—you'll ruin your life. David will never forgive you for the shame you'll bring down on him. He waited for you to come out of the hospital, he sat at your bedside, he prayed for you to stay alive, he provided for Father, Mother, and Becky, he took care of Gabriela on his own, and this is how you repay him?”

“What am I doing? All I'm doing is meeting my friends from the hospital.”

“Then why don't you tell him?” Rachelika taunted.

“Anyone who wasn't with us wouldn't understand. Anyone who didn't go through the horror with us—the operations, the pain, the death of friends who lay beside us in the ward and didn't survive their wounds, the fear of our own death—they wouldn't get it.”

“I'm worried about you, Luna. There's no way this is going to end well.”

“We're not doing anything we shouldn't,” Luna insisted.

“And in your heart are you doing anything you shouldn't?”

Luna was silent for a long time before she replied. “The heart has its own ways. I can't tell my heart how to feel.”

“Do you love Gidi?”

“Like I've never loved any man in my life.”

“God help us, don't you dare let those words out of your mouth ever again. Don't you dare tell anyone else!”

“What can I do, Rachelika, he's reached into my heart.”

“And what about David? You married David out of love. Nobody forced you to marry him.”

“Maybe I didn't love David at all. Maybe I just imagined I loved him. Maybe I wanted to get married so much that I convinced myself I loved him. I've never felt with David what I feel when I'm with Gidi. I've never cared for David the way I care for Gidi. Every time he doesn't feel well, I'm scared to death. Every time he goes into the hospital for another procedure, my knees are knocking until he comes out.”

“Lunika, my dear, what are you going to do?”

“Don't worry, hermanita, I'm not going to leave David, I won't leave Gabriela. I don't have the guts! I'm a coward. I'll remain a married woman. But you can't ask me to stop seeing Gidi; you can't tell me to stop going to the station, stop sitting with him at Atara. Because even if you do, I won't listen to you. I'll go on seeing him.”

“Does he really not touch you?”

“Touch me? I wish he would. Sometimes he strokes my head. Sometimes he holds my hand for a moment, never more than a moment, and then he pulls his hand away as if he's been burned. And I want to hold him, kiss him on the mouth, caress his handsome face, but I don't have the courage. I know the moment that happens I'll have crossed a line and there will be no way back. So I hold myself back, you see, I restrain myself!”

But Luna didn't know how much longer she'd be able to restrain herself, how much longer she could go on meeting Gidi when her body cried out for his touch.

In the end it was he who made the first move. One afternoon when his shift ended, she pushed his wheelchair toward Café Atara as she did every day. After they crossed the street he touched her hand and said, “Stop.” She did, and he pointed to a small hotel nearby and said, “Let's go there.”