The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  After that Gabi was unable to remain in boot camp or the army. After two weeks in detention, an experience in and of itself, his military service, which had lasted a total of five months, came to an end. He saw no future for himself there, and securing a discharge wasn’t difficult after he told the military psychologists about the violent incidents in his past. After returning to base from the army jail, he hurriedly packed his kit bag and left for the IDF’s induction base before the foursome of cooks learned he was there.

  The Future

  He returned to the kibbutz, where he found a brother. They were both men by then, at peace with themselves, with each other, with the kibbutz, and with Dad Yossi and Mom Gila, too. And they had yet to cast their gazes beyond the brown Galilee mountains that surrounded the kibbutz. They were fully fledged members of the community, rank-and-file residents—workers, active participants in the farming and social life of the kibbutz, living in the simple and adequate rooms. Following his discharge from the army, Roni went back to working with the cattle, again with Baruch Shani, the overseer of the department. Gabi, meanwhile, gave up on working in the fields because he couldn’t stand the sharp smell of tomatoes. The four walls and floor of the food store suited him better, and he began working there under Daliah, who was in charge of ordering the kibbutz’s food supplies. But he didn’t get on with her, and remained in the department for just a few months. He found her patronizing and sensed she was trying to keep him on a short leash, as if she were afraid of him—once she even mentioned the incident of the diving board and Eyal’s jaw. He moved to the kibbutz factory, the country’s largest producer of ready-made lawn, and a big exporter, thanks to a unique patented solution for preserving the grass for the duration of the shipment. Gabi worked in the office, and happily so, and he got on well with the factory manager, an immigrant from South Africa and a founding member of the kibbutz, a happy-go-lucky man and a joker, with a huge nose. Gabi, however, turned out to be allergic to the species of grass used for the ready-made lawns, and following incessant bouts of coughing that led to a series of rigorous medical tests, he was forced to relinquish that career, too.

  Roni began playing again for the kibbutz basketball team; Gabi tried to join the choir. Roni had several brief relationships with volunteers, and one with an Israeli girl, too—a guest at the kibbutz, the Petah Tikva cousin of one of his fellow cattle department workers, who gushed and enthused and charmed and came to visit; but the moment she hinted at thoughts of moving to the kibbutz and sharing Roni’s room, he panicked and stopped her in her tracks. As for Gabi, aside from a handful of fleeting experiences, his future as far as women were concerned still lay ahead of him. And thus the two brothers rediscovered each other, without the army or a girl or the pains of adolescence coming between them. They’d meet sometimes for dinner, and sometimes go on from there to the pub or a movie, or together they’d stop by the room of their adoptive parents on weekends.

  One Friday night, after the festive Sabbath dinner in the dining hall, Gila felt unwell, went to sleep, and woke feeling a lot worse. Dad Yossi went over to Roni’s room and asked him to drive her to the hospital in Safed. On their way to pick up a set of keys for the communal vehicle, they happened to run into Gabi, and he joined them. And thus the entire family—father, mother, and two sons, all together for the first time in ages—headed off to Ziv Hospital in Safed in the kibbutz’s Subaru. Gila was admitted for tests and the three men spent the Sabbath in the hospital corridors, drinking coffee from a vending machine, smoking (only Roni), or walking around Safed’s Nof Kinneret neighborhood, which offers a view not only of Lake Kinneret but also of the Galilee and Golan Heights and almost all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The kibbutz, too, was visible from one point on the ridge, but Gila didn’t get to that point; never again did she get to see the kibbutz of which she was one of the founders. The cancer in her lungs had spread, and because the hospital caught it late, she hung on for less than a month.

  By the time their adoptive mother was admitted to the hospital, Roni and Gabi had already made their peace, and their bond now grew stronger. They spent hours together on the drives to and from the hospital and in its corridors, united by virtue of the need to be there and to be close, out of a sense of concern, of sorrow, and with the understanding that blood ties cannot be taken for granted. They weren’t sure sometimes if they were at the oncology ward to bolster Mom Gila or to spend time together. Whatever the case, they spent that time together.

  During that period, the Kupper brothers, Roni, twenty-four by then, and Gabi, twenty, became better friends than they had ever been. They used their talks to fill in the blanks of the previous years: Eyal and his smashed jaw, the abduction in the orchard, the dump Gabi took in the butterfly greenhouse, the hitchhiking quest to the Sinai, the ride at Guvrin Junction. Roni’s commando training, his final orienteering drill, his burning love for Yifat, the first and second and third time they did it, and the breakup and the heartbreak. The relationships and the anger; the kibbutz members, Yossi and Gila, kibbutz work colleagues.

  “And what now?” Roni asked his brother one day as they sat on a bench outside the hospital at sunset, smoke rising from the cigarette clasped between the tips of his fingers.

  “Now?” Gabi asked, turning his wrist to see the face of his watch.

  “I don’t mean in the next hour. From here onward.”

  “Onward?”

  Roni glanced around to see if anyone was looking and discarded the cigarette, then turned back to his brother, his beautiful brown eyes smiling. “Yes,” he said. “What’s next for you? Is this it? Are you going to be on this kibbutz forever?”

  “Why? Do you have other ideas?”

  “I asked first.”

  “I’ve got no idea. The kibbutz for now, I guess. I don’t look too far ahead. It blinds me, like looking into the sun. What do I need that for?”

  “Are you content?”

  Gabi bit his lip and moved his head as if to say so-so. “I’m okay in general,” he said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Roni responded. “I feel the same. Things are pretty good for me. The air is clean, and life is simple. I work, sleep, eat, fuck. What more does a man need? Neither of us is going to be prime minister.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. There’s more to life, isn’t there? Look at the old folk on the kibbutz. Look at that generation. They made something. They made something out of nothing. They did something for history.”

  “What history? They built a kibbutz. Did they have a choice? They got screwed in Europe. They got screwed with the Arabs. So they built a kibbutz and went out to fight wars.”

  “I, too, used to think like that,” said Roni. “That we have a country, which works well, and that there’s no need any longer to fulfill the Zionist dream, there’s no need any longer to survive the Holocaust. So why shouldn’t we simply enjoy it and that’s it? Surely we don’t have to go out looking for nobler ideals and greater goals only because the old-timers on the kibbutz built a country, do we? You’ve gotta be kidding. That’s why I quit the fucking commando unit. Everyone there believed that we have to do, fight, conquer. It’s enough already. Look around, everything’s cool, everything’s peaceful. We can enjoy life.”

  “Exactly,” Gabi said. “So I ask again, where’s the problem?”

  “First of all, it’s a lie. Everything can’t always be cool. And second, okay, so they built a country and did great and historical things that we will never do. But that doesn’t mean I cannot fulfill myself on a personal level and do something with my life.”

  Gabi sized him up. “What do you mean on a personal level?” he asked.

  “To achieve things, I don’t know. Money, success. Look at me, at fifteen I was a basketball star on the kibbutz and started working with the cattle, which is the best this kibbutz has to offer. I went into the commando unit, which is the best in the army. So, what now, is that it? Why should I remain
on the kibbutz all my life and continue to do the very same? I can do more, can’t I? What’s with the face?”

  “I’m not making a face. It’s just that when you spoke about fulfilling yourself, I thought you were talking about something else. Something within you.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Roni asked.

  “Not exactly. You spoke about money, about succeeding, external things. I am talking about looking inward, about asking who you truly are and what you are doing here.”

  Roni fixed him with a look of confusion, amusement, perhaps, maybe naïveté—or perhaps all three. “You’ve seen too many psychologists. That’s your problem. Do you know what you really need?” he asked.

  “What do I need?”

  “You need a good fuck, and urgently.”

  “I’ve had a fuck,” Gabi said. Technically, it was true. He had had something quick and unsatisfying with Orit, from Roni’s year at school. She was four years older than Gabi and still had her pilot boyfriend, who was still required to be on weekend duty on base from time to time and continued to go out drinking beer and getting too drunk and ending up in unexpected beds. “Unsatisfying” was an understatement. “Traumatic” would have been a more fitting description.

  “Forget about what you’ve done,” Roni responded. Gabi had already told him about Orit, and Roni had subsequently introduced him to someone else. That episode was slightly less surreal, because there was less alcohol involved. Nevertheless. Roni looked at the setting sun and went quiet for a moment.

  “You know what?” he said. “Forget about fucking. You’re right. I always thought it was the answer. For you, for everyone. But perhaps I was wrong. No, you need to fall in love.”

  “To fall in love?” Gabi asked apprehensively.

  “Exactly, to fall in love. Then you will know who you are and what you are doing here. Yes, to fall in love. And you know what? Perhaps that’s what I need, too, right now.” Roni stood up and stretched. “Let’s go, Gabi boy. Pick yourself up, we’re going.”

  “Going where?” the younger brother asked.

  “I don’t know where. But we’re going to do something with our lives.”

  HOT DAYS

  The Order

  Hilik Yisraeli headed home from Jerusalem, after hours of slogging away on his doctorate at the National Library. The working title for the thesis was “Pioneering, Land Redemption, Ideology: The Pre-State Kibbutz Movement as a Failure-in-Waiting.” In his paper, Hilik sought to point out a wide range of early warning signs, arguing that the manner in which the kibbutzim were established and evolved—beginning with the appropriation of land, the decisions vis-à-vis sources of livelihood, and the receipt of state credit and benefits, including, too, the reliance on slogans and ideology, and through also to the condescension and arrogance of a closed society, alienated and on a pedestal, functioning according to its own set of rules—signaled the failure of the Kibbutz Movement some fifty years before the onset of its actual demise. Or something to that effect.

  On the road back from his one day a week at the university and enjoying Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F Major, he and his car came under a barrage of rocks, one of which cracked the front windshield at the top, on the side, in front of the passenger seat, and ricocheted off the glass. Hilik stepped on the gas, his leg filled with adrenaline, his heart violently pumping blood to every inch of his body, fear shaking and numbing the tips of his fingers, the pianist playing on beautifully, and the car raced up to Ma’aleh Hermesh, and from there, home, to C.

  He pulled up outside his house, got out, and conducted a comprehensive inspection of the Mitsubishi. Seeing him do this, from the window of the house, his wife, Nehama, clearly anxious, hurried outside, followed by their two toddlers.

  “What happened?” she cried out.

  “They cracked the windshield, the dogs.”

  “Sons of bitches! Where? Are you hurt?” Nehama asked, examining her husband with concern. His skullcap sat tight on his parted hair, his thin-framed glasses were in place, and his painter’s-brush mustache was still neat and tidy. She didn’t see any stains on his plaid button-up shirt, his dark trousers, or his Source-brand sandals. Apart from a bead of sweat across his delicate brow and the fear in his eyes, Hilik appeared unscathed and well.

  One by one, the neighbors gathered round.

  “Oh my,” said Othniel, his hand caressing the butt of the Desert Eagle pistol stuffed into the back of his pants, “terror is again raising its ugly head.”

  “That head needs to be chopped off,” Josh said, and he looked up at the young Jehu, who was surveying the nearby village of Kharmish from atop his horse.

  “Was it the good old boys from Kharmish? We could pay them a courtesy visit,” Othniel suggested.

  “No, it happened at the bottom of the road, before the corner. Majdal Tur.”

  “Damn animals need to be wiped off the face of the earth,” Othniel said.

  Sporting a broad skullcap and thick, untamed sidelocks that dangled down on either side, Jehu nodded slowly in agreement.

  Yoni arrived on the scene, followed by Roni and Gabi, and then Rachel Assis and her daughter Gitit in a car, returning from the grocery store in Ma’aleh Hermesh A.

  “What happened?” Yoni asked.

  “Terrorists. More stone-throwing,” said Nehama. “Thank God for the armored glass, I don’t even want to think what would have happened without it.”

  “Oh my God,” said Rachel, her fingers stroking her throat.

  “Go down to their village right now, impose a curfew, do a house-to-house search,” Othniel instructed Yoni. “If not, they’ll think they can get away with anything they like.”

  Yoni mumbled something about having a word with Omer. The crowd slowly began to disperse a few minutes later, but not before Nehama and Rachel sought to ease the anxiety by exchanging notes on a recipe for a spicy fish dish with potatoes and a tomato sauce.

  Yoni called Omer to report the incident. Omer said he would dispatch a patrol to Majdal Tur as a show of force, and come up to the hilltop.

  “Meanwhile,” he said to Yoni, “tell Othniel and his buddies not to try anything foolish. The army’s here, we’ll handle it.”

  “Gotcha,” Yoni said, and looked around to see if Othniel was still in the vicinity. Aside from him, however, only Gitit Assis remained. She had returned to the car to get the grocery bags.

  “Need some help?” he asked the tall, slender, straight-haired young girl. “I have something to tell your father. Let me get those for you.”

  “Okay,” she answered shyly.

  He adjusted the strap of his weapon, picked up all the bags, and smiled at her. “Okay, shall we go?” he said.

  She returned his smile, blushed, and walked lightly beside him.

  * * *

  The military demarcation order handed over in February by sector commander Captain Omer Levkovich to Othniel Assis may not have had a practical, or rather, immediate effect on life in the settlement, but it did spark an unusual sense of urgency in and around Ma’aleh Hermesh C. the moment it arrived. With the help of lawyers from the regional council and Natan Eliav, the secretary of Ma’aleh Hermesh A., an appeal against the order was lodged with the defense minister. As a result, implementation of the order, originally due to take effect within eight days, was suspended indefinitely, and a team of state officials was sent to the outpost with the task of determining the nature of the land rights in question. Is the land state-owned land that was allocated by an official entity for settlement purposes (or state-owned land that hadn’t been allocated); is it survey land (under ownership review); is it private land purchased by Israelis (and if so, had the Israel Lands Authority authorized the purchase) or is it privately owned Palestinian land?

  Othniel, Hilik, and Natan Eliav accompanied the surveyors, two women in suits and a young man, and attempted in every way possible to explain to the honorable delegation that the land on which Ma’aleh Hermesh C. was established fell within the
jurisdiction of Ma’aleh Hermesh, despite its distance, as the crow flies, from the homes of the mother settlement. Over the days that followed, Natan Eliav got word from an associate who was a member of the review team that the findings were inconclusive. It emerged, as was already known, that the settlement was erected on land of mixed status. Some of it—at the entrance to the settlement—was indeed state-owned land that fell within the jurisdiction of Ma’aleh Hermesh. Some, in the playground and the center of the hilltop, where most of the trailers were located, was survey land. The southern slope, where some of Othniel’s crop fields lay, was private agricultural land owned by a Palestinian living in Beirut, while the area on the edge of the cliff that dropped down into the Hermesh riverbed was in fact designated a nature reserve, meaning it was owned by the State of Israel and could not be used for settlement or construction purposes.

  As expected, the appeal filed with the defense minister was rejected. The council lawyers then filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, hoping for an actual court date far enough into the future to allow for the arrival of a few more families, for Othniel to expand his farming enterprise, and for the outpost residents to cover their prefabricated mobile homes with stone. Trucks laden with rocks, sacks of sand, mortar, and gravel turned up one day and unloaded their bounty, courtesy of the regional council, and almost all the residents eagerly set about the business of stoning over their homes. (“The stone enhances the aesthetics of the structures, blends with the surroundings, serves as thermal insulation, and gives added protection against stray bullets, God forbid” read the brochure.) They erected timber piles, mixed cement in a single mixer on wheels that was moved from place to place, or manually in tin basins. Othniel’s home had had stonework done long before then. And, apart from the newly arrived trailer and the trailer that served the IDF (the outpost residents did indeed offer to give it the same treatment but were turned down by Captain Omer, who argued that the stone could create the impression of a fixed structure, and that the army wouldn’t want to come under fire for erecting a fixed structure in the area of Judea and Samaria without the appropriate permits, and certainly not with a High Court decision pending), not a single trailer on the hilltop remained bare. The walls of the trailers were thus turned into a mutation of geological layers that told of the passage of time: drywall, spray foam insulation, thin aluminum, cement, Jerusalem stone.