by Dalya Bilu
From the aperture in the wall of the projection room Joseph would watch until the last people left, wiping his eyes with a vast white handkerchief and blowing the vestiges of the liquid from his nose with a loud, trumpeting noise, tuck his unruly shirt back into his pants, and go down to the ticket booth to count the day’s takings. There he would pile the tattered notes and worn coins in neat stacks, make complicated calculations on the back of an old poster, and when he was finished he would set aside, with a gloomy expression on his face, a number of notes for the entertainment tax, the recreation levy, the security stamp, the immigrant absorption loan, and the sales tax.
With the money for Rosa in his right pocket and the tax money in his left pocket, he would go back up to the projection room, repair the film, which had torn in several places, evoking angry whistles from the audience, with acetone and clear nail polish, and prepare it for the screening the next day. Then he would thread the new movie for the following week into the projector, watch it tearfully, rewind it, and finally he would cool the machine and lock the door behind him.
In the early hours of the morning, when the sky was pale pink, he would come home to the new apartment Angela had bought for them. Before joining Rosa he would go into baby Ruthie’s room, look at her admiringly, and behave like a loving father in one of the movies he screened. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he would kiss her on the forehead, return a pillow to its place or tuck the blanket around her even if she was already firmly tucked in. During the course of time, as more children were born, he continued to perform this ritual every night. With a clear conscience he would tiptoe into their bedroom, breathe in the air scented by Rosa’s breath, switch on the bedside lamp, and gaze lengthily at his wife’s face in its soft light. Rosa would lie relaxed on her back, her legs parted, her arms outspread, her bosom rising and falling with her heavy breaths, and her belly, sometimes with a new baby ripening inside it, looming up in front of her.
Then he would feel his member stiffening in her honor, and he would hurriedly take off his clothes, hanging his trousers, their pockets swollen with money, over the back of a chair, and throwing the rest—shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes—in all directions. Carefully he would lie down beside her in the narrow space remaining, put his arms around her, and whisper in her ear the Hebrew translation of the loving words whispered to their lovers by the protagonists of the last movie he had screened. When he was done whispering he would feel her nipples, insert his finger deep inside her, and Rosa would moan in her sleep. When he felt the wetness on the tips of his fingers he would penetrate her from behind, his backside moving to and fro in the rhythm so familiar to them, and she would receive him deep in her body and continue weaving her interrupted dreams.
In the morning she would wake up before him, delve into his right trouser pocket, and fish out the notes and coins she needed for the day. After sending Ruthie to day care, she would rejoin the still-sleeping Joseph and make up for what she had missed in the hour before daybreak. Joseph would mumble the new words of love in his sleep and let her guide him into her body.
And when people told him that in the end he would ruin his marriage by working day and night, with his poor wife going to bed alone night after night, he would twist his mouth into his grimace of a smile and say nothing. During all those years, when he screened thousands of movies at Cinema Rosa, Joseph would scrupulously repeat his nightly ritual with Rosa and the children, until the day when the movie theater was closed, rituals and habits disappeared, and a new life began.
Of all the family Angela alone liked going to see the movies at Cinema Rosa, returning with a bright face, soft eyes, and a light heart. She told Rosa that there in the hall, under cover of darkness, she could let herself go and weep at the top of her voice for the dead Amatzia. Once Rosa allowed herself to be persuaded by Joseph to stay with him and watch the new Turkish movie, The Virgin from Istanbul, which had been acclaimed by the critics. With ostentatious boredom she watched the young bride being thrown into the street on her wedding night by her jealous husband, who accused her of having had other men before him, and being reunited with him in the end after keeping faith with him for many years of banishment. And when she left with her dry eyes lowered against the accusing looks of the moist-eyed audience, she declared that once was enough to last her the rest of her life, and since she had no reason to cry she would never watch one of those tearjerking movies again.
Many years later, after Cinema Rosa had closed down and Joseph passed away and the troubles began to pile up, she searched the town for just such a movie theater, so that she could release all her pent-up tears, but she never found one.
seven
A LIFE OF HABIT
During the years when Joseph was busy with his cinema, screening the movies and crying with the audience, Rosa lived a “life of habit,” as she described it in her conversations with Rachelle. One after the other the pregnancies she had initiated arrived, with the easy births in their wake. When she came home from the hospital with a new baby in her arms, its brothers and sisters would line up to inspect it curiously and then to perform the ritual of kissing the new arrival on the cheek and solemnly repeating the name given it by Joseph. The house filled with children and the smell of babies.
In those days Rosa was busy kissing plump stomachs, nuzzling firm buttocks, and nibbling tiny hands. She loved seeing the first heart-shaking smile, hearing the gurgling chuckles, and smelling the special scent of milk mingled with fine soap and laundry powder given off by their bodies. And when the baby was weaned she would quickly get pregnant again and give birth to a new baby, until all seven were born within fifteen years, leaving their mark on her body in the form of double chins, dimpled flesh, and enticingly rounded curves. After the seventh baby was born, she knew that the wish she had expressed in the wishing game she had played with Rachelle, Ruthie, and Ruhama had come true.
Rosa’s life in those days was good, quiet, and predictable, and whenever she needed help she could rely on Angela and Rachelle to come to her assistance. When the firstborn, Ruthie, grew up, she enjoyed taking her mother’s place and looking after her little brothers and sisters as if she were their mother and not their big sister. And when Rosa heard the neighborhood women complaining of the hard work involved in bringing up children, she didn’t understand what they were talking about, since in her house, with all her seven children, everything ran smoothly and peacefully, and every new addition to the family added to her happiness. The women said that it was easy for her to talk, since “in your house one brings up the other, your mother and Rachelle help out, and all you do is conduct the orchestra and give the orders.”
The period of pregnancies and births was marred only by Joseph’s insistence on naming his children for movie stars and the protagonists of the movies he showed, preferably the most miserable of them. In the days after giving birth, when she lay and thought about the name Joseph had given the new baby, her anger would well up and she would brood about how different her life would be if only she could stop obeying her husband blindly and doing everything he asked her. But even though she put forward her own suggestions for fresh, original, attractive names, like the names of the flowers and trees she loved, he took no notice and imposed his will on her.
In a regular ritual Joseph would arrive at the hospital at every birth, his face hidden behind a huge bouquet of the flowers of the season, and with a melancholy expression on his face, as if the new baby brought no joy to his heart, he would sit down beside her, stroke her hand, look deep into her eyes, and ask to see the newborn child, so that he could choose the “special name” that would be uniquely suited to it. After deciding on the name he would sit with her for hours, coaxing and cajoling her, until she could withstand his pleas no longer and she would give in to his caprices and accept the weird name he had chosen for her new baby.
Many years later, when the names had taken root in her mouth and become an integral part of their owners, she admitted to herself that per
haps Joseph had been right after all, and her children with their exotic names were indeed special and set apart from the rest of the neighborhood children.
Ruthie, the firstborn, who looked like her grandmother Angela, was the only one who had a normal name, having been born right after the death of Ruthie Sharabi. Ruthie was hardworking and serious, and being the oldest, she was entrusted with a lot of the chores around the house, so that everybody always said that she was a second mother to her little brothers and sisters.
On the day that the wicked Eichmann was sentenced to death, a long, dark baby was born, with an expression as gloomy as his father’s. Joseph decided to call him Leslie, after Leslie Howard in Gone With the Wind, his favorite movie, which had been shown at Cinema Rosa dozens of times. “And it’s a kosher name,” he said to Rosa when he saw the expression on her face. “Leslie was a Jew born and bred.” And since it was unthinkable to register a Jewish child with a foreign, gentile name alone, he paid lip service to the prevailing mores and added the name “Shimon” to his birth certificate. Leslie-Shimon was an introspective, serious child, he liked playing with toy cars and dreamed of being a truck driver.
Jackie was born, named after Jackie Coogan, who played with Charlie Chaplin in The Kid, and in spite of Angela’s opposition he was given the second name of Jacob, after the father-grandfather who had been drowned at sea. Jackie grew into a tall, mischievous lad with golden hands.
Scarlett was born, and named after the heroine of Gone With the Wind. Since this name jarred on Rosa’s teeth like gravel, she added the name Mazel too, the Hebrew version of her grandmother Fortuna’s name. Scarlett-Mazel was a fair, pretty girl, quiet and shy, who spent a lot of time playing by herself in front of the mirror and was always busy trying on hats, scarves, old dresses, and Rosa’s huge high-heeled shoes, because more than anything she wanted to be an actress.
In the year of the Six-Day War, Lana Turner was born, and her name was Hebraicized into Ilana. Lana-Ilana grew up to be a nervous, sensitive girl who cried easily, and Rosa attributed this to her first days in the world. When the baby was a few weeks old the war broke out, and Rosa huddled with her in the shelter of the dark house, listening to the shells exploding outside. Ever since Lana-Ilana had been an anxious child, afraid of closed places, loud noises, and rude people.
During the war of attrition James Dean was born, with the Hebrew name of Gad, a huge, placid, smiling baby who grew up to be a clever boy, outstanding in mathematics and the heartthrob of all the neighborhood girls.
And in a year during which no event of historical significance took place, the last girl was born, Laura, who owed her name to the movie of this name that was shown in Cinema Rosa, and given the Hebrew name of Liora. Laura-Liora, the youngest and most pampered of the children, tried to comply with her mother’s wishes and remain a little girl. When she grew up she went on talking baby talk, lisping, and wearing dresses with ruffles like a little girl’s. And even after she married she refused to part with her childhood and wore her hair in braids.
* * *
Even though Rosa loved the smell of a newborn baby’s skin better than anything else in the world, and was grieved by the speed with which her children grew, after giving birth for the seventh time she decided to stop. And when people asked her why she wasn’t prepared to get pregnant again in spite of her love of babies, she gave her identity card as an excuse, citing the fact that it had “seven places to register seven children, and there was no room for an eighth.” And when she was told that you could always add another page, she explained that then she would have to fill the new page to the bottom, which meant that she would have to have another seven children, and who had ever heard of a woman with fourteen children? And anyway—she would add the flimsy excuse—the number seven was a lucky number and it would be a shame to spoil it.
Rosa’s life was good and tranquil. But while life in her house ran its quiet course, day following day and week following week and pregnancy following pregnancy, things were happening far away that changed the world: The Six-Day War expanded the borders of the state; the peace accords reduced the borders of the state; famines and plagues devastated populations and changed the colors on the demographic maps. Revolutions that took place, regimes that rose and fell, leaders that were assassinated dictated new history books; natural disasters and earthquakes destroyed cities, flattened mountains, changed the courses of rivers, and brought distant continents millimeters closer. All these events stopped at Rosa’s door and never penetrated her realm. For her nothing changed; she imposed order and regulation on her life and it went by in a blessed routine, following a course determined in advance.
Only the seven births, the festivals and holidays and the changing of the seasons, and especially the different menus she set for every day of the week, distinguished between one day and the next and accumulated in her memory cells, layer on layer in the gray matter of her brain. New memories would force their way in, assailing the old ones and forming a new stratum of memory compressing the previous one and flattening it with its weight. And one memory followed on the heels of the other until all the memory cells in Rosa’s brain were full of the sounds of babies’ crying and laughter, sweet smells of bathed bodies and repellent ones of urine and bowel movements. Bottles of milk, wet diapers, emerging teeth, childhood diseases, first days in kindergarten and elementary school, school parties, fancy-dress costumes, PTA meetings, report cards, hairdos, drawings and paintings, graduation parties, entrance exams, stiff army uniforms with stripes on the khaki sleeves, weddings, births, briths, and the touch of a new baby’s skin. Sometimes, when she tried to dig out of her memory cells an old sight, a familiar sound, or a beloved smell, a newer memory would pop up in her head and usurp the older one, until she no longer knew which of her seven children or ten grandchildren it belonged to and when it had happened. And when she fished facts and figures out of the muddle of memories spinning giddily in her head, she would find herself calling a boy by his brother’s name, a girl by her sister’s, her grandchildren by the names of her children. And when she tried to tidy up the drawers of her memories, she understood that it was all the same, and rearing one child resembled rearing another, and what was would be, and what had been done would be done, and there was nothing new under the sun, and nothing in her daily life with Joseph would ever change.
Rosa didn’t like changes or surprises. “No news is good news,” she would say to anyone who asked her how she was and what was new, sure that if she was happy with her life the way it was, any change could only be for the worse. For if something good changed, what could it bring but evil?
“What do I lack?” she would say to her friend Rachelle, who had divorced in the meantime and was supporting her only son with difficulty by her job as a bank teller. “What do I lack?” she would repeat, spitting sideways and making the five-fingered sign against the evil eye. “I have a husband, children, a mother, a roof over my head, and enough to live on, thank God. Any change could only be for the worse.”
And so she believed that if in the predictable course of her life she shifted a piece of furniture unnecessarily from its place, did the wash on a day not intended for it, bought the groceries somewhere else, combed her hair in a new style, put her children to bed half an hour later than usual—the change she had made in her routine would lead to another change, which would lead to another change, and so on. Until her whole life would be upset, nothing would be the same, her fate would change for the worse, and calamities would come down on her head. Therefore she took pains to see that nothing changed, as if her life depended on one day being the same as the next.
You could set your clock by Rosa’s daily schedule, the neighbors said. Everyone who saw Rosa at Tzadok’s grocery store knew that it was exactly half past nine in the morning, and when she went home with her shopping she would do the cooking and the chores allocated to that day of the week: On Sunday she cleaned and straightened up the house; on Monday, Nehama came to remove the hair from
her legs and armpits with wax; on Tuesday she laundered, dried, and folded the wash; on Wednesday she did the ironing; on Thursday she did the cooking and cleaning for the Sabbath, and in the evening Aliza the Hairdresser came to shampoo her hair and set it in elaborate curls.
At half past twelve every weekday she had lunch for Joseph and the children ready on the table. After the meal she allowed them to play for two hours, during which time she went to visit Angela, who lived opposite them, and Rachelle, who lived in the apartment below. When the two hours were up, she seated all the children around the big dining table, saw to it that the big ones did their homework and helped those who had problems with their arithmetic or their Bible lessons. Then she would go out for her daily walk and invite them to accompany her.
