The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  “Woof ! Woof ! Woof !” Beilin roared incessantly, drowning out all conversation, and Condoleezza joined in, running to the scene and barking loudly, and Killer started snorting, and the goats at Othniel’s farm down the slope bleated in panic, and Sasson’s camel cow looked up inquisitively from somewhere near the sentry post at the gate, chewing vigorously on some vegetation. But Beilin appeared to be directing his barks at one of the soldiers, who stared back at him.

  “Beilin?” The soldier laughed. It was Yaakobi, who was part of the squad of reinforcements that was brought in from the base in Hebron. “Is that his name? What’s up with him?”

  Neta Hirschson, no longer in the clutches of the soldiers at the instruction of the major general, began yelling again. “Shame on you, coming here with the American ambassador and talking about adjustments. What adjustments? You’ve got a nerve!”

  The minister threw in the towel. Much to his dismay, he wasn’t going to get to the line he had intended to make the day’s sound bite—a catchy, original phrase to come at the height of his address and later make the news headlines, to be relayed by the ambassador to his secretary of state, who would then convey the same to the president, a phrase he was particularly proud of, because he had thought of it himself. He turned and began walking toward his car, surrounded by bodyguards, sweating, reaching up a finger to undo the knot in his tie, and not caring who took his picture or what would appear in the newspapers. Grumbling to himself quietly, he removed his jacket and deposited it in the hands of Malka.

  Neta Hirschson continued to shout, and approached the dignitaries. “Tell the American president that he doesn’t stand a chance against us, because the king of the world is on our side!” she yelled as the ambassador walked past the slide. “What do Americans understand about the Israeli people’s struggle against Arab brutality? Who asked you to come here? Have you come to weaken the Jewish people, who’ve returned to the Land of Israel after two thousand years of exile and persecution and wars and pogroms and the Holocaust? Are you forcing us out of here—here, God’s sanctuary, the land of our forefathers? You’re throwing us out of here? And you dare to call that peace? Chutzpah!”

  “Will someone shut that dog up!” barked the major general of the Central Command.

  As the defense minister walked past, Neta Hirschson gathered up saliva in her mouth and spat. She hit one of his bodyguards. The minister observed the spit land on the bodyguard’s shirt, turned his head toward Neta, and the next sentence to escape his lips—which, aside from one unmistakable word, wasn’t picked up by any camera or recording device—became the subject of endless debate, consuming liters of ink and creating mountains of words and commentaries over the following days and weeks, and it, instead of the phrase he had thought up, became the sound bite heard round the world.

  According to Neta Hirschson, the defense minister said: “Scram, you insolent savage! You and all your dog friends, scram!”

  According to associates of the defense minister, he said, “Insolent savage,” and then turned to face the other way and said, “Scram! Will someone make those dogs go away already!”

  And Beilin and Condoleezza said, “Woof, woof, woof ! Woof, woof, woof !” and bared their teeth.

  And at that moment, it dawned on Yaakobi from the reinforcement squad: The extra row of teeth! The cross-eyed look! He was a lot bigger than the puppy Yaakobi had cared for a year earlier on the streets of Hebron, the one he’d sent away on the Hummer bound for Jerusalem, but it was him, no doubt about it.

  “Holy shit!” the soldier cried out. “You named him Beilin? I don’t believe it! Come here, sweet boy. Remember me? It’s Yaakobi, from the base in Hebron.” And Beilin stopped barking and wagged his tail and walked toward Yaakobi with his head bowed and his tail wagging and snuggled into his embrace, abandoning himself to his caresses. And Condoleezza followed suit, happy and wagging her tail, and the commotion died down. The dignitaries climbed into their official vehicles, which immediately sped off, creating a cloud of dust on their way out of the outpost, and the residents dispersed to their respective homes, the soldiers to their bases, the reporters to their offices. But as for the reverberations caused by the minister’s visit, and as for the incident that would long be remembered as the “Scram Affair,” they had just then come to life, and wouldn’t die down for a long time to come.

  The Handyman

  “There’s never a dull moment with you guys, huh, Doctor?” said Herzl Weizmann when he turned up at the outpost that same afternoon. Though he was dark-haired and dark-skinned, the man’s defining feature was albino-white eyelashes over one eye, which added a mysterious dimension to his every stare.

  “Despite all the hoopla,” Herzl continued, “I wanted to come before Tisha B’Av. I’ve let you down too many times. Come, let’s have a look. Oh my, what a sweet child! What’s his name?” He stretched out a finger, with its blackened nail, to touch the nose of the tiny baby girl on Hilik’s forearm.

  Hilik lowered his gaze to his infant daughter and smiled at her under his mustache. He had almost forgotten she was there. “Her name,” he said, “is Yemima.” He didn’t bother revealing to Herzl her full name, Yemima-Me’ara, with its reference to the incident in the cave. He didn’t have the energy to go into the whole story. His memory drifted back to Simchat Habat, the naming ceremony for newborn Jewish girls. How long ago had it been? Two weeks? Three? After the birth of a child, the days and nights all seem to run into one another, a sweet jumble of constant fatigue, adapting to the new family structure, wondrous moments of awareness of the existence of this new living, demanding, nagging being, of efforts to somehow maintain a semblance of normal life—a meeting with the adviser at the university, reading books for his doctoral thesis, the appointment with Herzl Weizmann to move ahead with the renovations. At the naming ceremony, the blessing after the Sabbath morning prayer service, Nehama and Hilik had explained their choice to the community: Yemima, Job’s beautiful daughter, the Hebrew expression yamim-yemima, days gone by, which evokes historical and deep-rooted ties to previous generations, the words yam and mayim, sea and water, which occur in succession in the Hebrew spelling of the name; and the second part of her name, Me’ara, the Hebrew word for cave, the place where she chose to emerge into the world.

  Hilik showed Herzl around the trailer, all the while wondering why he had allowed himself to get involved with the handyman in the first place, why he had given in to Othniel’s pressure. With all due respect to Jewish labor, Hilik wasn’t planning on building a villa. He was merely adding on half a shipping container, due for delivery any day now—a simple job that Kamal could complete within a few days and at a cost of next to nothing. Now this Herzl Weizmann guy, after rescheduling his visit several times, was talking to him about ideas that appeared to be too complicated and far too expensive.

  Why had he given in to Othniel? Why should Othniel care if a local Palestinian got some work and made a little money? Kamal wasn’t a terrorist, he was a good guy. There were some good apples, too, and they’d really had it rough in recent years. Hilik had talked with Roni the previous day. He wasn’t about to speak out in favor of Roni’s olive oil business with Musa—another good guy, as far as he knew, despite having jumped onto the IDF’s D-9—but he was willing to admit to himself that he did agree with Roni on occasion. Herzl Weizmann from Mevasseret certainly talked the talk, but who knew if he was any good, or if his ideas were worth considering, and how much time and money would be involved. All Hilik wanted was a little more legroom and for the children to have space to grow up.

  What struck Hilik the most about Herzl Weizmann, more than the black curls and white eyebrow and odd gaze, and more than the heavy shoes that Hilik suspected were fitted with insoles to compensate for the man’s small stature, were his plaster-casted forearms—two tubes of plaster, no longer white, from the wrist up to the elbow, equal in length.

  “It’s nothing, don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me. An accident,” Herzl Wei
zmann said in response to Hilik’s stare. He didn’t elaborate and changed the subject. “Forget about the container, we’ll get lumber from the guys down there”—he pointed out the kitchen window in the direction of Gabi’s cabin—“and we’ll build a great little extension for you.”

  “Who says he has enough to give me? His entire cabin is about the same size as the extension I’m planning.”

  “So, we’ll ask. And if there isn’t enough, we’ll order from his supplier. Or I can arrange something for you through my carpenter. No problem.” Herzl squinted and took in a panoramic view of the settlement.

  Yemima-Me’ara, meanwhile, had fallen asleep, and Hilik set her down in her crib and went with Herzl to Gabi’s cabin to ask about the lumber. The wood boards, it turned out, had come from the carpentry workshop at Ma’aleh Hermesh A. at a price that Herzl defined as “not bad, not bad at all—relatively speaking.” They returned afterward to Hilik’s trailer. “Whoa, looks like that camel has escaped from the Bedouin!” Herzl exclaimed on the way back, pointing at the animal.

  “What Bedouin?” Hilik said. “That’s a camel cow, Sasson’s camel cow.”

  “Tell me, Dr. Hilik,” Herzl said once they were back at the house and were sitting in the living room sipping coffee, “what’s the name of that guy at the cabin? He looks so familiar to me.”

  “Who? Gavriel?”

  “Gavriel?”

  “Yes, Gavriel Nehushtan.”

  “Gavriel Nehushtan.” Herzl rubbed his chin and pondered. “Gavriel Nehushtan,” he said again, as if repeating the name would somehow jog his memory. “No, the name doesn’t ring a bell. Has he been here for long?”

  “A few years, I can’t recall exactly.”

  “A few years, huh?” He rubbed his chin some more.

  After the coffee, he got into his car and placed his plaster-casted arms on the wheel. “I’ll call you with a quote,” he promised.

  “Thanks,” Hilik responded indifferently.

  “Okay, hang in there,” Herzl said, and stepped on the gas.

  That evening, Gabi ran into Hilik at the evening prayer service. “Your handyman looks familiar to me,” Gabi said to him. “Is he from the Galilee or something?”

  Hilik chuckled. “Not at all, from Mevasseret,” he responded. Gabi frowned and returned quickly to his prayer book.

  The Shed

  Nir Rivlin, with his red hair and beard, sat at the kitchen table and sipped from a large bottle of Goldstar beer. Tears flowed from his red eyes. Between sobs, he mumbled sentences like “I don’t understand. What have I done?”

  “You haven’t done a thing,” Shaulit said while Zvuli suckled from her ravenously. “And that’s part of the problem.”

  Nir had come into the kitchen from the porch a few minutes earlier to retrieve the bottle of beer from the refrigerator—his third that evening, and they hadn’t even sat down to dinner. He had been sitting on the porch for the past hour with his guitar, trying to compose a new song. But aside from coming up with the line “All pain is but another scale in the armor,” which he ended up repeating to himself over and over, and consuming two beers and a joint, he didn’t make much progress—until he finally gave up and began playing “Berta.”

  Shaulit, at the same time, had bathed Amalia and Tchelet, had made them dinner and then fed them with Zvuli in her arms, and the infant, too, demanded attention and his own food. Amalia wanted to help but she was too small to hold him, too impatient to play with him or watch over him for more than two minutes. After dinner, Shaulit put the girls to bed, read them a story, and returned to the kitchen to wash their dishes and begin preparing dinner for herself and Nir. All the while, the flat chord had repeated itself, the pain and the scale in the armor. For her, every slap in the face—or simply every minute of the day—was a scale in the armor. But tough armor could sometimes crack, too. And then things were said. Threats were made. And Nir, whom she knew well enough, would immediately revert to acting like the small child within him, that was his defense mechanism, and the beers didn’t help things, weakening the walls of defense and self-awareness of the man he was meant to be, and then the tears would come, and she’d be expected to apologize, to take pity on him, but she had reached her limit that evening. She knew what was coming—an admission to the fact that he had been wrapped up in himself of late, that he didn’t know what had come over him, that he was struggling terribly with his culinary studies (What’s so hard? she wanted to scream. Inserting a piece of cucumber in a sushi roll? Peeling a yam?), and with all this uncertainty concerning the outpost, no one knew if their home would even be there for much longer, the evacuation was on one day and off the next—he wasn’t one for fighting battles, but just let them decide already, all this stress. Nir believed it would soon pass and he’d be able to be of more help to her. He felt that this phase he was going through would spark new creativity and that he’d be able to record these songs.

  She knew he’d never record those songs anywhere at all, it was a waste of time, his and primarily hers, but she didn’t have the heart, despite the anger and exhaustion. She didn’t have the heart to yell at him and to tell him that—and perhaps it wasn’t a matter of heart but of years of habit and upbringing. He could do as he pleased, while she kept the household functioning. And after the tears and the admission and the promise and the hope—she knew, expected it, readied herself—his spirit would be renewed, and with that would come the transfer of the blame.

  “Perhaps it’s postpartum depression?” he offered. At that stage, she had already tapped her hand lightly on Zvuli’s tiny shoulder to encourage a burp and then placed him in the rocking chair, broke eggs into a frying pan and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, removed hummus and cottage cheese and cream cheese from the refrigerator and bread out of the bread box, and set the table.

  “Perhaps you should go speak to someone? Perhaps we should consider seeking help? Perhaps someone like Gitit could come over to help out for a few hours every day?”

  She responded with nothing more than a weak “Perhaps,” but she knew that Gitit had her hands full with her five younger siblings, and that they didn’t have the money to pay Gitit, and that the whole idea was stupid anyway—she only needed his help from time to time, goddammit. He couldn’t even say, like most men, that he didn’t know how to cook—he was studying to be a chef, for crying out loud! And as for the postpartum depression, who knew, maybe. Or perhaps they simply weren’t suited to each other. Perhaps they married too young, in their teens, without really getting to know each other and without knowing anything about life.

  The strange thing was that their marriage didn’t come about through an arranged shidduch. They had known each other from a young age, they both grew up in Beit El, and they were members of the Bnei Akiva youth movement together. She remembered him from her father’s shiva, which he had come to every day with his own father. It was as though they had gotten together as secular people do. But after six and a half years and three children—the last one conceived after the onset of this tension, perhaps as a remedy, a distraction—one could now definitively say that it simply wasn’t meant to be. More proof that the secular way of life didn’t work. Shaulit had repeatedly put herself through the mill and agonized, in conversations with herself, and between herself and God, but had come to realize that it wasn’t simply Nir’s help or support that she lacked. After all, she managed somehow. It was more than that. She didn’t know the man, didn’t truly love him. Not that she really believed in the notion of falling in love, but she really didn’t love him. She couldn’t fathom spending years by his side. And as for the songs, well, there were one or two pleasant ones, but she hadn’t heard any breakout hits being cooked up on the wide swing in the yard. She wasn’t holding her breath. His music was not about to save them.

  They chewed on slices of bread with cream cheese for several minutes in silence, their eyes fixed on arbitrary points on the table, and Nir sniffled every now and then and poured beer down his throat. W
hen he was done, he dropped his fork with a clatter on the glass plate. He glanced at his watch. He was due to report for guard duty in forty minutes, he informed her, and left—without a guitar or any religious literature this time, and without another bottle of beer or something to smoke, either. He walked along the settlement’s ring road. The evening sky was huge, and despite it being late July, there was a pleasant breeze, and he stopped, closed his eyes and sucked it in, and spread his arms to allow the air to reach his fingertips from the inside. They must not crack, he thought. There are ups and downs, there are rough patches. But they had to hang in there.

  Shortly before reaching the Assis family home, he heard a door close and footsteps on the path. He pressed himself to the stone wall, disappearing into the darkness. It was Gitit Assis, who looked right and left and set out quietly on foot, hunched over. The manner of her gait, the urgency and the furtive glances, suggested she wasn’t out for some fresh air at the end of the day. Nir followed her, sticking close to the fences, hiding behind whatever he came across—trash bins, cars, heaps of construction material, or empty refrigerators. With the contents of three bottles of beer swirling inside him, Nir could admit to himself—after trial and tribulation and begging forgiveness from his wife and from his God (He knew that “one who is slow to anger is better than a mighty man, and one who rules over his spirit is better than one who conquers a city.” He remembered Joseph, who resisted temptation. He knew that a man who is drawn to the temptations of the world and resists those temptations is no less a righteous man than one who is not tempted at all)—that he was attracted to Gitit. It wasn’t a coincidence when he suggested that Shaulit have her help out with housework. He’d gladly pay for the privilege of seeing her in their home from time to time. Nir entered the playground and stepped on a soft toy, which squeaked. He froze. Gitit stopped and turned. The breeze picked up. Where’s she going? he wondered.