Love Conquers All

by Galia Albin

  Chapter 9

  In Haifa, Talia’s parents were known as “The Handsome Couple.”

  Her father, Ernie Rosen, was the biggest furniture dealer in town. He was a tall, fair-haired man, whose green, feline eyes, Austrian manners and gentleness had won the hearts of many women. Her mother was great beauty. Her jet-black hair adorned her head like a halo. Her skin was fair and her eyes as blue as cornflowers. Even after giving birth to three children, she retained her slender, shapely figure. She was aware of her attractiveness and adored compliments and flirtatious advances. Talia had often heard Heidi Rosen referred to as the most beautiful woman in town. Since they were well off and could afford an Arab housekeeper and nanny for the children, her husband acquired an elegant souvenir and gift boutique for her atop Mount Carmel on Irises Street. “That will keep her busy,” he used to say.

  Every evening, when Ernie and Heidi came home from work, they would shower and perfume themselves, put on their glad rags and go off to meet their buddies at the “Opera” coffeehouse in Herbert Samuel Square.

  The children were accustomed to seeing their parents only early in the morning, before going to work, and in the evening, before heading out to enjoy themselves. The iron rule of the house: mother is not to be disturbed in the afternoon when taking her beauty nap, her schlajfstunde.

  Until she was fourteen, Talia considered her parents the epitome of love and perfection. She believed that they lived for each other, and that everything else in their lives, including their three children, was a nuisance and distraction. Sure, her father loved her, but not as much as he loved her mother, or her sister, Dorit, who took after her beautiful mother; at age eighteen, Dorit took part in a beauty contest and earned the coveted title, “Beauty Queen of Haifa and the North.” Father also loved her younger brother Shai more, perhaps because he was sickly and frail, and required a lot of attention. But for all this, Talia did not feel deprived or unloved. “Talinka, mein liebschen, my little starlet,” her father praised when, on memorial days, she stood in front of hundreds of students and parents and recited the poems, “The Silver Platter” and “Michal and Jonathan,” by Nathan Alterman. She was secure in the knowledge that she was the cleverest of his children, and that he knew it. It was for his sake that she attained the highest grades and the star roles in ballet and drama performances at the local youth theater.

  But when she was fourteen, the atmosphere in the house darkened. Occasionally, her father disappeared on unexplained trips abroad. “What, you mean you don’t know about it? The whole town is talking about him,” her friend Ditty informed her. “He fell in love with Su-lin, the beautiful Vietnamese wife of the French consul who lives in the huge villa on Belvedere Street. It happened when she came to his store to buy furniture for her living room.” That explained why her mother had been walking around like a shadow of herself, disheveled, unkempt, and with no make-up on her face, why she often lay in bed with teabags on her eyes and no longer w6nt to the boutique.

  Talia, however, did not sympathize with her mother, but rather with her father. When he finally came home, never to leave again, he had lost a large portion of his capital and of his reputation. Her mother, having the upper-hand, never ceased to tease and chide him; she berated him for his failing business, for having emigrated to Israel rather than Switzerland, like the rest of his family, who had settled there and lived luxuriously off the fat of the land.

  After her husband’s return, her mother made a special effort to prove herself a capable businesswoman. In an attempt to recapture her previous economic status, she opened another store for gifts and household goods in another part of the Carmel. Dorit was put in charge of the store, and she soon proved a veritable asset; people flocked to the store to be served by a beauty queen. The store thrived, and Heidi opened another store in a northern suburb, and later another one in the Neve Shanan neighborhood, all under her own name. “Where is your wife?” friends would ask Ernie at the Opera Coffeehouse. “She’s broadening her empire,” he responded, stirring his coffee.

  One winter day, just before the festival of Purim, Talia was summoned to the principal’s office at school. Her heart sank when she saw Uncle Leopold, her father’s older brother, waiting for her in the office. His face looked wan and sickly. “Talinka,” he said, “I’ve come to fetch you home. Something bad has happened. Your father passed away.”

  Her mother picked up the pieces soon enough. Men courted her and avidly sought her company. She changed suitors almost as often as she changed the dѐcor in the windows of her chain of stores. Finally, she zeroed in on a wealthy lawyer who was able to supply her with all of life’s amenities, without pressuring her to marry him. She managed her stores deftly and, thanks to her own acumen and some good advice supplied by her lawyer-friend, whose expertise was real estate, she accumulated considerable assets. They were now living in a spacious, elegantly furnished apartment on Belvedere Street, not far from the villa of the new French consul. The previous consul and his Vietnamese wife, who had so disrupted their lives, had most likely relocated to another country and new amorous adventures.

  Talia resented her mother, who so openly enjoyed the good life her husband’s death afforded her. How could she have known then that parents never satisfy their children’s demands, that parents ought to live their lives without being accountable to their children. After all, the children, when their turn comes, will do just what they like with their lives. Talia was already doing as she pleased; she was a vivacious adolescent, very popular with her peers, and she wanted all or nothing. She was a counselor in the Girl Scouts, she was the emcee at festivals and ceremonies, she was an excellent student. But when she could not get the attention of a boy she’d set her heart on, she’d lock herself in the house, disconnect the phone and refuse to come out of her room. It was her pride that was hurt, not her heart.

  Outwardly, she looked calm and collected, but inside she was wracked by feelings she could not understand. She did not fall in love, rather, she waited for someone to fall in love with her. Who will he be, she asked herself in the night, lying on starched cotton sheets, trying to decipher her body’s secrets. She yearned for an ideal soul mate that, in her imagination, was fashioned like her father: smart, handsome, gentle yet strong. But she also vowed that she would never shed tears for a man, that she would never become a victim of love, like some of her friends. She could never understand those girls, and even secretly despised for the long hours they spent by the phone, waiting for it to ring and deliver them from misery.

  Her sister got married to the son of the lawyer, her mother’s friend, and a year later divorced him. The rift between the youngsters had an adverse effect on the older couple. Her mother separated from her lawyer- friend, and a few bitter wrinkles were etched around her mouth.

  Talia finished high school with distinction and joined the air force, where she discovered another Israel. Male and female soldiers from development towns, from underprivileged areas, kids from oriental ethnic groups. She was ashamed of her ignorance, and for the first time in her life, she realized that not everybody was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. “Look at that Ashkenazi girl from Haifa,” the soldiers teased her in the mess hall.

  During her second year in the army, she met Amir, a handsome high-ranking officer. He seemed intelligent, brilliant even, and the only one who did not regard her as “that Ashkenazi girl from Haifa,” perhaps because he came from the same background as she. His kisses dispelled the boredom of that remote air force base, and his proposal of marriage offered her a way out of a service that had become extremely tiresome. Her mother reacted with equanimity to her announcement that she was getting married, perhaps because she longed for some happy occasion in the family after the double failure of Dorit and herself. Or perhaps she was relieved that Talia had chosen a young man from a good Ashkenazi home, and not, God forbid, one of the many soldiers who’d phone on their leaves from the service, and whose guttural accents betrayed their Sephardi origin. Wit
hout being asked, Heidi offered to buy the young couple an apartment in Herzlia and a car, in addition to paying the expenses of the wedding.