The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (8 page)

I remained silent. At least I'd bought myself one night of freedom.

“What's happened, querida?” Tia Allegra asked gently. “Why have you run away from home again?”

“My father beat me and punished me. I can't leave the house for ten days.”

“Why, what did you do?”

“I was kissing a boy from the navy who'd brought me home from a party at Beit Hachayal.” I was too ashamed to tell her that my father and I no longer got along.

My mother's old aunt laughed. “
Wai de mi sola
, your father beat you for that? What, he's already forgotten that he himself was young once?”

“Do you remember when you were young?” I asked her.

“I remember what happened when I was young far better than I remember what happened yesterday.” She sighed. “I remember what I lost long ago and I'm still losing things today.”

I recalled how Nona Rosa had once told me that nothing ever got lost because there was a land for all the lost things and there, so Nona Rosa told me, lived all the lost memories, the lost moments, the lost loves. And when I asked Nona where the Land of Lost Things was, she replied, “Do you remember, querida, that once you asked me what God was and I told you that it's the rainbow? Well, there in the land where God is, the Land of the Rainbow, are all the lost things too.”

“But how do you get to the Land of the Rainbow?” I asked my lovely nona.

“The Land of the Rainbow, mi alma, is very, very far away. You need lots of patience and you must go far to reach it.”

“But where's the road to it?” I persisted.

“
Corazon,
to reach the Land of the Rainbow you have to walk to the end of our neighborhood and from there to the fields of Sheikh Badr, where the new Knesset is being built. And after you walk through the fields for a long, long time, you come to a little river, and by the river there's a long, long path that goes through the mountains and the valleys. And after days, maybe nights, the path melts into the sea in Tel Aviv, and there the path crosses the sea and goes on and on until it comes to the end of the sea. And there, at the end of the sea, where the sun meets the sky, is the Land of the Rainbow, and in the Land of the Rainbow is the Land of Lost Things.”

I told Tia Allegra about Nona Rosa's Land of Lost Things and she laughed and said, “Your nona, God rest her soul, I didn't know she knew how to tell stories.”

“She told me lots of stories,” I said proudly. “She told me stories about our family and about the men in the family who don't love their wives.”

“God forgive my sins, is that what Rosa told you, may she rest in peace? El Dio que me salva, is that any way to speak to a little girl?”

“She told me that Great-grandfather Raphael didn't love Nona Mercada and that Nono Gabriel didn't love her, and I know that my father doesn't love my mother either.”

“
Pishcado y limon,
hija, what are you saying? Where does this nonsense that your father doesn't love your mother come from?”

“Is it true?” I asked my aunt, who seemed to have shrunk into her chair and now looked smaller than ever. “Is it true that the men in our family don't love their wives? And that Nono Gabriel didn't love Nona Rosa?”

“Gabriela Siton, stop talking nonsense,” she scolded me. “You probably misunderstood your nona. She probably said that Gabriel
did
love her.”

“No!” I insisted. “She said he didn't love her. She told me about Great-grandfather Raphael who loved an Ashkenazia but married Mercada, and she told me that of all the young girls in Jerusalem, Mercada chose her, the poor orphan, to marry Nono Gabriel, and when she was ready to tell me why Mercada chose her, she died.”

“May she rest in peace. I can't understand why she'd tell you such nonsense.”

Tia Allegra, who if Nona Rosa hadn't died would have been the same age as her or perhaps even a bit older, was very different from my nona. Tia Allegra was wearing wide pants, a white blouse, a buttoned cardigan, and round glasses, while Nona Rosa, even when she couldn't see very well, had refused to wear glasses. And unlike Nona Rosa, Tia Allegra knew how to read and write, and on her tea trolley there was always a copy of
Davar,
to which she had a subscription. “Tel Aviv turned her into an Ishkenazia,” Nona Rosa used to say.

I finished eating, took my plate and spoon into the kitchen, washed them, laid them on the dish rack to dry, and went back into the living room. My mother's old aunt was sitting deep in thought. I looked at her and wondered what people did when they got old, when their legs became heavy and they couldn't go downstairs to the boulevard and feed the birds, and when they did go down, it was hard for them to climb back up. What did old people do when evening fell and the street noises were replaced by silence, and even the birds stopped their twittering? It was then that I realized I was easing Tia Allegra's loneliness. For years she had taken care of Nona Mercada, who'd lived with her until she passed away. She, I knew, could continue our family story from where Nona Rosa had left off. I couldn't let the moment pass and become another lost moment in the Land of Lost Things, so I asked her to tell me what my nona hadn't had time to relate.

“Why is it so important for you to know all this?” Tia Allegra said. “Why waken the dead from their sleep? Why talk about things that time can't change?”

“I want to understand,” I told her. “I want to know about our family and the men who didn't love their wives.”

Tia Allegra sighed deeply and seemed to sink into contemplation. She remained silent for a long time, and I studied her lovely face that so reminded me of Nono Gabriel's: the same high cheekbones that even in old age gave her a noble appearance, the same slanted green eyes, the same chiseled straight nose. In the light of the lamp I could imagine her as a young woman, as proud as my grandfather, a young woman who admired her elder brother.

Tense, I sat on the edge of my chair, afraid of losing the opportunity. I wanted Tia Allegra to tell me why Nona Mercada had forced my handsome grandfather to marry my poor, orphaned grandmother from the Shama neighborhood. I needed Tia Allegra to remove the veil concealing the curse of the Ermosa women, a curse that maybe I carried with me, even though back then I couldn't yet have known.

And then, when I was sure that the old lady would entrench herself in her silence and that there would be nobody to continue my grandmother's story, she suddenly spoke in a quiet voice. “Our family, querida, the Ermosa family, is a good family, a fine family. But something happened, and since then our family has not been the same. It affected all the women and all the men in our family. I'll tell you about my mother Mercada, who was—how did my sister-in-law Rosa put it?—a sour old woman. But to tell you about Mercada I have to begin with my father Raphael and the time he went to Safed. Listen well, Gabriela, to what I'm telling you, because I'll say it only once, and I'm still not even sure I'm doing the right thing by sharing it with you.”

The soft light of the lamp illuminated Tia Allegra's lined features. It's going to be a long night, I thought and made myself comfortable on the couch. As I gazed at the old woman, I missed my nona terribly. Tia Allegra didn't resemble her: not in her build, which compared with Rosa's was slim; not in the gray hair gathered into a bun at the back of her neck, compared with Nona's braid that she wore coiled around her head. Not in the soft jumper that covered her small breasts or her slim feet in their orthopedic shoes, compared with my nona's swollen ankles that were always in her sapatos. Not even in her body language. But in one thing she reminded me of her very much: her speech, which combined broken and proper Hebrew and Ladino, whose literal meaning I couldn't understand but whose essence I could.

“I'm listening,” I told Tia Allegra like a disciplined child. “I'm all ears.”

“Where should we begin?” Tia Allegra asked herself.

“From where Raphael met the Ashkenazia in Safed and fell in love with her,” I replied.

“Dio santo, did your grandmother tell you that as well? What else did she tell you?”

“That she entered him like a dybbuk and that he hurried back to Jerusalem to marry Nona Mercada.”

“May God forgive my sins, what are you getting me into, chicitica? I truly hope that your grandmother, may she rest in peace, doesn't haunt me in my sleep.”

“She'll come to you in a dream and tell you you're doing the right thing,” I said. “She'll tell you that if she hadn't passed away she would have carried on telling me our family story herself.”

“All right.” Tia Allegra sighed. “May God forgive me if I'm making a mistake.”

 

2

“F
ROM THE DAY HE MARRIED
Mercada, my father Raphael Ermosa, may he rest in peace, became a hardworking man in a class of his own. He'd get up early every morning, bless the Creator for restoring his soul, put on his phylacteries, hurry to morning prayers at the synagogue, and afterward, while the other worshippers chatted, Raphael would already be on his way to his father-in-law's shop at Souk al-Attarin, the perfume market. His father-in-law had brought him into the business right after the wedding. Senor Yochanan Toledo was a big merchant who imported spices and other goods from Lebanon and Syria. As well as turmeric and cinnamon, cardamom, curry, and cloves, he sold medicinal herbs for relieving pain and warding off the evil eye, and he traded with Jews and Arabs alike. There was a big demand for medicinal herbs in those days because many people in Jerusalem were sick.

“Raphael Ermosa fell in love with the market's vibrant atmosphere. He loved the long lines of fellahs, the Arab farmers from the villages around Jerusalem who brought their produce to market every morning. He looked on amazed as the Arab women carried their wicker baskets filled with fruit and vegetables on their heads.

“There were a thousand smells in the market, the intoxicating fragrance of flavors from all over the world: the smell of burnt chickpea clusters that were sold in the market's alleys by vendors calling ‘
Hamla malana, hamla malana!
'; the smell of pita bread baking in the tabun; the sweet smell of tamarind juice; the stink of the dung dropped by donkeys loaded with sacks and jugs that passed through the narrow alleys; the smell of the people, Arabs and Jews, who shouted, jostled, shoved, and together with all the other scents and flavors formed a colorful throng.

“When Raphael's firstborn son, your grandfather Gabriel, reached the age of twelve months, he went to Souk al-Khawajat and ordered a gold bracelet for Mercada. He'd kept the vow he'd made on his wedding day to make his wife the happiest of women and treated her like a princess.

“And Mercada, the weeping girl who had been scared to death of the moment she would have to leave her father's house and marry, became an industrious, assertive woman, a balabusta, as the Ashkenazim say, who took good care of her husband and children. She ran her family with an iron fist and her home was held in high esteem by neighbors and relatives. And the more strength, influence, and power she gained, the more she treated her husband like a king. She was an inquisitive woman who didn't stop at cooking, cleaning, and raising her children. As the years went by, Mercada became a well-known healer who was in great demand by the residents of the Jewish Quarter. Her expertise was in livianos, curing anxiety and fears.

“And yet Raphael still searched among the Ashkenazi women in the market for the girl from Safed. Even though he'd done everything in his power to expel her from his heart, more than once he found himself thinking of her. Sometimes his feet would carry him to the Mea Shearim quarter, where the very religious Ashkenazim lived, and he'd wander between the closely packed houses and through the alleys, surreptitiously glancing at the women. Even if she were covered from head to toe, as was the custom with pious women, he would have recognized her by her blue eyes. But he'd never see her.

“In the early years of their life, Raphael and Mercada lived in a house next to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not far from her parents' house. After her father's death, when Raphael sold his father-in-law's shop and bought a shop in the Mahane Yehuda market in the New City, outside the walls, they moved to the Ohel Moshe neighborhood, where houses were arranged in rows around a central yard with a cistern that provided water for residents.

“Their house in Ohel Moshe became a magnet for the Jews of their neighborhood and the surrounding ones too. Neighbors would come to Raphael for donations and to Mercada for treatment. The house was always spotless and the yard around it was enchanting, flooded with light and big clay pots of herbs and geraniums. And so life progressed smoothly. Senor Raphael Ermosa met success in business and traveled once in a while to bring fresh goods from Lebanon and Syria. When his son Gabriel turned ten, Raphael took him along, training him in commerce so he'd be ready to take over the business when the time came. When they weren't traveling, Gabriel attended a Talmud Torah school in the morning and worked in the shop in the afternoon. He so excelled at the shop that it wasn't long before Raphael put him in charge of running it, while he himself spent more and more of his time sitting idly on his wooden throne in the shop's doorway.

“During the First World War, the Turks started recruiting young men into their army, forcing them to join against their will. To save Gabriel from a fate faced by many Jewish boys, Raphael decided to smuggle him out to America. And so that he wouldn't have to make the long journey alone, he decided that Moshe, the oldest son of his shop assistant Leon, would join Gabriel at Raphael's expense. So the two boys sailed from Jaffa to the Port of New York and settled in Manhattan, where Gabriel found a job as a butcher's apprentice and Moshe as a tailor's apprentice. For almost two years there was no contact between Gabriel and his parents. Raphael almost lost his mind with worry, but Mercada kept her composure and strengthened him: ‘
Que no manqui,
we should not lack anything, amen! Trust in Senor del mundo. He is watching over the boy, and when the accursed Turks go back to their own country, he will come back to us,
sano que 'ste,
well and in good health,' she'd say.