The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem Read online

  In the end Aunt Becky waited a year until the mourning period was over and only then married Handsome Eli Cohen at Café Armon, where they’d gotten engaged. I wore a white dress and walked in front of the bride, throwing sweets with my cousin Boaz, Aunt Rachelika’s eldest son, who was stuffed into a suit and bow tie. Mother and her middle sister Rachelika had picked out my and Boaz’s outfits together. They did everything together. When Rachelika wasn’t in her house on Ussishkin Street, she was with my mother, and when my mother wasn’t in our house on Ben-Yehuda Street, she was at my aunt’s.

  After Nono died, my grandmother remained in her and Nono’s house, and every now and then she’d stop by ours for a visit. She’d always come with chocolate and bamblik licorice sweets, and fascinating stories about the time she’d worked in the homes of the English.

  “Enough of those stories already!” my mother would say, annoyed. “Cleaning the toilets of the English isn’t exactly a great honor.”

  And Nona would muster up strength and say, “It’s also nothing to be ashamed of! I wasn’t born a princess like you, with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to feed my brother Ephraim, and besides, I learned a lot from the Ingelish.”

  “What? What did you learn from the In … ge … lish?” my mother would reply mockingly, drawing out the word Ingelish for as long as she could. “And anyway, how many times do I have to tell you, it’s English. English.”

  Nona would ignore Mother’s taunts and reply quietly, “I learned to lay a table. I learned Ingelish. I speak Ingelish better than you who learned it in the Ingelish school, and to this day your Ingelish is like my troubles.”

  “Me? I don’t know English?” My mother would become angry. “I read magazines in English. I don’t even read the subtitles at the cinema, I understand everything!”

  “Right, right, we’ve heard all about you. You understand everything except for one thing, the most important thing, respect and manners. That you don’t understand, beauty queen of Jerusalem.”

  And Mother would storm out of the kitchen and leave me with Nona Rosa, who’d sit me on her knee and tell me, “Remember, Gabriela, there is no work that is beneath a person, and if ever, God forbid, you find yourself in a situation, tfu-tfu-tfu, where you have no choice, there’s no shame in cleaning toilets for the Ingelish.”

  I liked spending time with Nona Rosa. She was a marvelous storyteller and I was an excellent listener.

  “Before you were born, a long, long time before you were born, Gabriela querida,” she would tell me, “our Jerusalem was like abroad. In Café Europa on Zion Square an orchestra played and people danced the tango, and at five o’clock on the terrace of the King David Hotel there was tea and a pianist, and they’d drink from delicate porcelain cups, and the Arab waiters, may they be cursed, wore tuxedoes and bow ties. And the cakes they served there, with chocolate and cream and strawberries … And the gentlemen would come in white suits and straw hats, and the ladies in hats and dresses like they wore at their horse races in Ingeland.”

  But my grandmother, so I learned years later, had never been to Café Europa or the King David. She told me what she’d heard from the people whose houses she cleaned. She told me her dreams, some of which would come true years later, when her wealthy brother Nick, who Nona called Nissim, would come visit from America and the whole family would gather on the King David terrace, and he would order coffee and cake for everybody. And as the pianist played, I’d steal a glance at my nona, dressed in her best clothes, and I’d see a rare glint of pleasure in her eyes.

  Nona Rosa had a hard life. She lived with a man who respected her but didn’t love her the way a man loves a woman. She never knew true love, but she never complained and she never cried. Even during Nono Gabriel’s shiva, when rivers of tears flowed from my mother’s and aunts’ eyes, threatening to flood all of Jerusalem, not a single tear trickled from hers. Nona Rosa would never hug. She didn’t like touching and didn’t like being touched. But I’d sit in her lap, wrap my little arms around her neck, and plant kisses on her withered cheek. “Enough, stop it, Gabriela, basta, you’re annoying me,” she’d chide me and try to shake me off, but I’d ignore her, taking her rough hands and putting them around my body, forcing her to hug me.

  Once Nono died, Nona stopped inviting the family over for Shabbat, and we’d hold it elsewhere. After the heavy Shabbat meal I’d walk with Nona to her house and stay there until Mother or Father came to get me. What I loved about her house were the glass-fronted cabinets in which porcelain and crystal tableware stood in perfect order, and the wedding photographs of Mother, Rachelika, and Becky in their silver frames. I loved the big picture of Nono and Nona on the wall: Nono, a handsome young man in a black suit, white shirt, and tie, a white handkerchief peeping from his jacket pocket, sits upright on a wooden chair, his elbow on a table and a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. Nona stands beside him in a black dress buttoned to the neck, the hem reaching to her ankles, with a gold pendant relaxing against her breastbone. She isn’t touching my nono but her hand is on the back of his chair. Nono’s face is finely chiseled, the nose, the eyes, the lips almost perfect. Nona’s is broad, her black hair styled as if stuck to her skull, her eyes wide. They are not smiling, just looking at the camera with serious expressions.

  There was the heavy dining table with its lace cloth and center bowl that was always filled with fruit and the upholstered chairs around it, the wide, deep-red couch with cushions that Nona herself had embroidered. My favorite of all was the wooden wardrobe that stood in Nona’s bedroom, which was separate from Nono’s. Lions had been carved into the top, and I would stand for hours in front of its mirrored doors, pretending I was Sandra Dee kissing Troy Donahue and we were living happily ever after.

  Their yard, partly protected by the tiled roof, was surrounded by an iron fence entwined with purple bougainvillea and lined with geraniums in white-painted cans. There were stools in the yard, and the chair with the upholstered cushion in which Nono Gabriel loved to sit as evening fell, and next to it a wooden table on which Nona sometimes served dinner. After Nono died, his chair became a monument to his memory and nobody sat in it.

  The yard was my kingdom. I’d sit on a stool, gaze at the sky, and wait for a rainbow, because I’d once asked Nona Rosa what God was and she’d told me God was the rainbow in the sky. When I wasn’t searching the sky, I’d imagine I was one of the Hollywood actresses my mother so admired. After all, it was in our Jerusalem that they shot Exodus, and the star, Paul Newman, who my mother said was even better looking than Handsome Eli Cohen, stayed at the King David. Every afternoon during filming my mother would take me by the hand and we’d walk to the entrance of the hotel in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. After a few days of failing to see him, we crossed the road to the YMCA tower, bought tickets for five grush, and climbed to the top, the highest point in Jerusalem. “From here,” she said, “nobody can hide Paul Newman from me.”

  But from there we couldn’t see him either because each time he arrived at the King David the black car took him right to the hotel’s revolving glass door, and he slipped through without even a glance back at the crowd that had formed to see him. Eventually Mother managed to see Paul Newman as an extra in the scene where the establishment of the state is announced. She brought the binoculars that Father had bought her for bird-watching on our walks in the Jerusalem hills, and though she had finally gotten to see Paul Newman with the binoculars, my mother was disappointed.

  “I saw him, but he, nada, he didn’t see me. Well, how could he from a mile away?” My mother was convinced that if only Paul Newman could have seen her up close, he wouldn’t have been able to resist her. Nobody could resist my mother. Somebody just had to mention to Paul Newman that my mother was the beauty queen of Jerusalem. But nobody told him, and Mother made do with going to see Exodus every day when it was showing at Orion Cinema. Alberto, the usher who had lain wounded in the hospital with Mother during the war, got us in for free.

  My mot
her very much admired movie stars, first and foremost Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I dreamed that one day I’d go to Hollywood, even though I didn’t know where Hollywood was, and come back as a famous film actress, and then Mother would stop calling me “primitive” and stop saying that I was different from everyone else and asking how, how had she had a daughter like me. And so I would practice until I made it to Hollywood.

  At every chance I got, when Nono and Nona’s yard was empty, I acted like I was living in a movie. I was named Natalie, like Natalie Wood, and I’d dance for hours in James Dean’s arms, and when James and I finished dancing I’d bow to an imaginary audience. One time after I finished dancing I heard loud applause and shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!” I froze and saw the whole neighborhood standing by the fence. Embarrassed to my core, I ran into the house and directly to Nono’s room, lying on his bed and burying my head in the pillow, my eyes filled with tears of shame. Nona Rosa, who witnessed the whole scene, didn’t come after me. A long time later, when I came out of the room, she sat in her armchair in the living room, looked at me, and said, “Gabriela querida, why are you embarrassed? You dance so beautifully. You should tell your mother and father to enroll you in ballet lessons with Rina Nikova.”

  Of all our family I was closest to Nona Rosa. While Nono Gabriel was alive his and Nona’s house was the center of the family. We gathered there on Friday evenings for Shabbat, and on Saturday mornings for huevos haminados that we’d eat with cheese-filled borekitas and sweet sütlaç rice pudding, on which Nona would draw a Star of David with cinnamon.

  After Shabbat breakfast we’d play in the yard, Mother, Rachelika, and Becky would chat, and Father, Rachelika’s Moise, and Becky’s Handsome Eli Cohen would talk about soccer. There was always shouting because Father was a Hapoel Jerusalem fan and Eli and Moise were Beitar fans. That’s how the time passed until lunch when we’d eat macaroni hamin. After the hamin Nono would take his afternoon nap, and we children were sent for a nap too so we wouldn’t disturb him. Mother, Rachelika, and Becky would carry on chatting, and Father, Moise, and Eli Cohen would go to my father’s sister’s house. Aunt Clara and her husband Yaakov lived on Lincoln Street opposite the YMCA stadium, where every Shabbat afternoon there was a Beitar Jerusalem soccer game. “Watching a game from Clara and Yaakov’s balcony is better than sitting in the reserved seats,” Uncle Moise would say.

  My little brother Ronny and I nicknamed Uncle Yaakov “Jakotel” after we saw Jack the Giant Killer, which translated to Jack Kotel Haanakim in Hebrew, at the Orna Cinema maybe a hundred times, because the usher there too had been in the hospital with Mother during the war. “It’s lucky that Mother almost died in the War of Independence,” Ronny would say. “Otherwise how would we get to see movies for free?”

  After Nono died and Nona stopped cooking, the Shabbat lunch macaroni hamin tradition moved to our house, and instead of napping after the meal we’d all go to watch the Beitar game. From below, I felt that at any moment Aunt Clara and Jakotel’s balcony would collapse together with the millions of family members on it, so I’d make sure not to pass under the balcony and instead walked on the crowded side of the street next to the stadium.

  Left with no choice, every Saturday Father was forced to watch the Beitar Jerusalem team with us from the balcony, even though he always cursed “the sons of bitches” and prayed they’d lose. Everyone would yell, “Damn you, David. Is this what you came for? To put the evil eye on the team?”

  Nona Rosa never came with us to see a Beitar game and would go back to her house after lunch. Sometimes I’d walk with her, and while she took her afternoon nap I’d rifle through all her drawers looking for hidden treasure, and when she woke up she’d lose her temper with me and say, “How many times have I told you that you mustn’t put your hands into places that aren’t yours? You know what happened to the cat that put its paw into a drawer that wasn’t his? His paw got trapped and his fingers were cut off. Do you want a hand with no fingers?” And I’d be so frightened that I buried my hands deep in my pockets and swore I’d never ever put my hands into places that weren’t mine, but I never kept my promise.

  Every now and again in the afternoon, when Mother went out to Café Atara or someplace else, Nona would come and look after me and Ronny. I’d beg her to tell me stories about the old times before I was born, about the time of the Ingelish and Nono Gabriel’s shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market and his black car in which they’d drive to the Dead Sea and Tel Aviv. And about the time when they lived in a house with an elevator on King George Street, and how the whole family came to see the bath with the two faucets, one for hot water and the other for cold, a bath like my nona had seen only in the homes she’d cleaned.

  I asked lots of questions, and my nona would say that I must have swallowed a radio and I was giving her a headache, but you could see that she enjoyed telling me what she’d perhaps never shared with anyone before.

  One day Nona sat down on Nono’s chair for the first time since he’d died and said to me, “Gabriela querida, your nona’s an old woman who’s seen a lot in life. I’ve had a hard life. My father and mother died in the cholera epidemic in our Jerusalem and we became orphans. I was ten years old, Gabriela, like you are today, and Ephraim, may he rest in peace, was five and the only one I had left. My brother Nissim had run off to America, and the damned Turks hanged our brother Rachamim at Damascus Gate because he didn’t want to join their army. We had nothing to eat and nothing to wear, and every day I’d go to Mahane Yehuda after it closed to collect what was left on the ground, tomatoes, cucumbers, sometimes a bit of bread. I had to take care of Ephraim and started doing housework for the Ingelish, and there the lady would feed me and I’d eat half and save the other half for Ephraim.

  “And then, when I was sixteen, Nona Mercada married me to her son, your Nono Gabriel, may he rest in peace, and all of a sudden I had a good life. Gabriel was very rich and handsome. All the girls in Jerusalem wanted him, and out of them all, Mercada chose me. Why she chose me, the poor orphan, I only found out after muchos anos, many years, but back then I didn’t ask questions. I knew Gabriel from the shop in the market. Every Friday I’d go to get cheese and olives that he and his father, Senor Raphael, may he rest in peace, would distribute to the poor. Who could have dreamed he would end up my husband? That I would be the mother of his daughters? What chance did I, an orphan from the Shama neighborhood with no family and no pedigree, have of even coming close to the Ermosa family? And then, out of the blue, of all the girls in Jerusalem she chose me for her son. Dio santo, I thought I was dreaming, and although she told me I could take some time to think about it, I told her yes right away and my life changed completely. Suddenly I had a house, suddenly I had clothes, I had food, I had a family. That’s not to say that everything was rosy. A lot of things were bad because of my sins, but that didn’t matter to me. The main thing was that I no longer had to clean houses for the Ingelish, and I knew that Ephraim would now grow up with clothes and food. Instead of the family I’d lost, I’d have a new one: a husband, children, a mother-in-law I hoped would be like a mother to me, sisters-in-law I hoped would be like sisters, and brothers-in-law I hoped would be like brothers.

  “Gabriela, mi alma, I’m an old woman and soon I’ll die, and after I die, you will be the only one to miss me. My daughters, may they be healthy, will cry a bit and get on with their lives. That’s the nature of people. Time heals, people forget. But you, querida, you don’t forget, not like your mother, who has the memory of a bird. I noticed it when you were still a baby. You never shut your mouth, avlastina de la Palestina, asking questions all the time as if you wanted to inhale the whole world. Now, querida mia, I’m going to tell you about your Nona Rosa and Nono Gabriel and our family and how, from being very wealthy and living in a house with an elevator and a bath, and having the loveliest shop in Mahane Yehuda, we became horanis, poor primitives, with barely enough money to buy wine for Friday Kiddush.

  “Everyth
ing I know was told to me by your Nono Gabriel, who related the family history as he’d heard it from his father Raphael, may he rest in peace. After Raphael died, Gabriel promised to continue telling the family story, from the day they arrived from Toledo after King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, may their souls burn in hell, expelled the Jews from Spain to Palestine. And because Gabriel and I, for my sins, had no sons, he would tell the story over and over to Luna, Rachelika, and Becky, and make them swear to tell it to their children. But I don’t trust your mother to tell you because her head’s in the clouds and her memory, wai de mi sola, so it’s best she keeps quiet. So come, mi alma, come, bonica, sit here on your old nona’s knee and listen to Nono Gabriel’s story.”

  I did as she asked. I climbed onto her knee, burrowed into her bosom, and closed my eyes, inhaling her warm familiar scent that had the sweetness of sütlaç and rosewater. My nona toyed with my curls, rolling them around her thin finger, sighing deeply and pausing the way you do before saying something very important. Then she continued with her story as if she were telling it to herself and not to me.

  “After they expelled the Jews from Toledo, the head of the family, Senor Avraham, and his parents, brothers, and sisters traveled all the way from Toledo to the port of Saloniki and boarded a ship that brought them directly to the port of Jaffa.”

  “And your family, Nona?”

  “My family, mi alma, also came from Toledo to Saloniki and stayed there for many years until my great-grandfather, may he rest in peace, came to Palestine. But I won’t tell you about my family, Gabriela, because from the day I married your grandfather and became part of the Ermosa family, the story of his family became the story of my family too.