The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  The Japanese

  The days grew short. August flowed into September. Darkness fell a little earlier, accompanied by crispness in the air. During the day, a gust of air would occasionally rise up, as if to declare, It won’t be long now before the summer gasps its final breaths.

  The babies grew steadily, their rounded bodies drew in fluids from every nipple, plastic or human, that agreed to provide them, and immediately translated them into additional grams. Filled with anticipation, their brothers and sisters were driven into the city and returned with colorful notebooks and shiny writing implements, ready for a year of hard work. The Ki Teitzei weekly Torah portion passed, and the Ki Tavo portion arrived, and soon the season of new beginnings was on the doorstep, white shirts were pressed, and new dresses were acquired. And the synagogue was cleaned and rejuvenated and readied, and rose to the occasion. Verses of the Mishnah were memorized and commentaries lengthened and the festive mood filtered in and took over. The days were beautiful and the nights clear, and clouds gathered, increasingly darker and thicker. The curses of one Jewish year perished and a new one—5770—began to the sound of the shofar and with the turning back of the clocks and the Days of Awe.

  * * *

  Musa Ibrahim looked up at the sky. He could feel the expectancy in the air. The wet days awaited their turn, were assembling just around the corner, and after the first rains came, and washed the olives, swelled them and cooled them and darkened them a bit, they’d be ready for the next stage. His nostrils widened, a hint of excitement. It was his favorite season. The Jews were quiet and focused on their holidays; the skies, Allah willing, would bring their bounty, and the entire family would pitch in on the harvest, assemble in the grove from all corners of the village, spend long days there, collecting olive after olive.

  Standing by his side was his son, Nimer, fair-skinned and balding. Musa smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Soon,” he said. Nimer had told him of the talk among the people in the village about the business deal with the Jews. They weren’t too happy about it, particularly after the story with the bulldozer, when Musa was arrested and soldiers showed up to snoop around and harass them. A good boy himself, Nimer nevertheless had a few hotheaded friends. He trusted his father. He wasn’t crazy about that Jew, Roni, but after learning he wasn’t a real settler, wasn’t a religious lunatic, that all he intended was for everyone to profit from his initiative, and that he had also helped to retrieve the equipment that was seized, he gave him a pass.

  “Here comes your friend,” he said to his father. Musa chuckled.

  “Hey there, Musa, Nimer, how are you today?”

  “Allah be praised.” Musa smiled and shook Roni’s hand. The two villagers accepted cigarettes from the outstretched light blue box, with Musa inserting his into the plastic holder, and the three lit up in silence, casting their eyes over the grove.

  “How cold was it last night, huh?” Roni said.

  “The wind is beginning,” Musa responded. “Soon the first rains will come. And then we . . .”

  Roni nodded. “Is everything ready?”

  “What is there to be ready? We’re waiting. There’s many canvas from last demonstration of settlers. And sacks, and sticks, and ’luminum rakes. We need only first rain, to wash olives and give them good color. And you ready?”

  “Definitely ready. We’ve got a bunch of boutiques in Tel Aviv just waiting for the oil. They love it, they know it’s the real thing, and not that light machine-made piss. Ariel is doing a good job with the marketing, with a picture of me and you on the D-9, and the whole story. He says it’s going to create a stir.”

  “Boutiques?” Musa wondered out loud.

  Roni was there to finalize the deal. Ariel wanted a signed agreement. He had prepared the paperwork and had even had everything translated into Arabic. Musa had said there was no need, and Roni had apologized and made fun of his meticulous partner, but Ariel had insisted and Musa consented.

  Roni gestured with the envelope. “Should we go sign this?” he said.

  “I must first to read paper, so I understand what says,” Musa replied.

  “Sure, sure. Take your time. Sit and read. I’ll smoke my cigarette meanwhile.”

  “No, no cigarette. I give to someone from the village. His brother is lawyer in Bethlehem.”

  Roni’s gaze wandered from the father to the son. An impatient sigh escaped his lips. “Okay,” he said. “So we’ll meet again tomorrow, then?”

  “Allah willing,” Musa responded.

  * * *

  The afternoon of that same day saw the arrival of the Japanese, along with a few grayish clouds and currents of air moving at a speed that finally crossed the barrier between a breeze and a wind. A gleaming black Toyota with dark windows—one of those upscale urban jeeps that serve businessmen on off-road trips—stopped at the guard post at the gate, and Yoni, somewhat taken aback by the slanted, smiling features that appeared in place of the dark window sliding down with an electronic hum, waved them in without asking questions. The vehicle cruised along the settlement’s ring road, attracted several curious stares, and then turned off onto the dirt path and headed down toward the edge of the cliff. The Toyota pulled up on the gravel, and from it emerged an elegant-looking man, attired in an expensive silk suit, sporting a dark tie, wearing wide-rimmed sunglasses, followed by two other men. They stepped cautiously, perhaps to avoid dirtying their shoes or to escape a sprained ankle, and then gestured and gazed in the direction of Kharmish.

  Jehu noticed them and rode up and halted alongside them without saying a word. They bowed with their heads. Jehu waited, slipped two fingers into his pants pocket, and withdrew a cigarette.

  “Kamish?” asked the man who had emerged from the vehicle first, repeating the word several times. “Kamish? Kamish?” Jehu turned his head toward the settlement in search of help from someone. The man pointed again at Kharmish. Another anti-Semitic, so-called peace delegation? Lost tourists? Businessmen who had taken a wrong turn?

  Roni, who was returning from his visit with Musa and Nimer, approached, an unpleasant and sweaty expression on his face. The Japanese man smiled at him and said, “Kamish? Orive oi?”

  “Huh?” said Roni. “Josh!” he yelled. “Come here and see what these guys need!” His eyes remained fixed on the visitor and he grumbled quietly to himself, “That’s all we need here now—as if Jews and Arabs and Americans and Russians and French aren’t enough. Now these guys are joining in on the fun. Fantastic.” He smiled ungraciously in response to the hesitant, don’t-understand-a-word grin on the Japanese guy’s face.

  Josh understood a little better. “Olive oil?” he asked.

  The Japanese man nodded excitedly and pointed toward the olive groves of Kharmish.

  “Kupper, they’re asking something about olive oil,” Josh said to Roni. “Isn’t that your game?” He looked at the Japanese, pointed at Roni, and said, “Roni Kupper.” The Japanese man responded with a sheepish smile. “Gabi Kupper?” Josh tried.

  The three Japanese men burst into laughter and repeated, “Galy Cooper, ha, ha.”

  “Are you looking for Arabs or Jews?”

  And still the Japanese failed to comprehend.

  Roni lit a cigarette; he started to feel uneasy. What are three spruced-up Japanese men, in suits from another world and an immaculate Toyota jeep, doing here asking questions about olive oil and pointing at Musa’s groves?

  Efforts to communicate ran aground. The Japanese tried to move the Toyota closer to the olive trees and soon learned that even the four-by-four was unable to blaze a path. Following a series of smiles and handshakes and the presentation of business cards and bows, they got back into the vehicle and headed away from the hilltop, leaving behind a few confused faces—but only for a brief moment, because odd visitors showed up on the hilltop almost daily, and most were erased from memory mere seconds after the last of their vehicles’ exhaust fumes were spat out into the hilltop air.

  Roni tossed his ciga
rette butt and held the three business cards closer to his face. The Japanese characters that covered the cards meant nothing to him. He turned one over and found more familiar English letters. Matsumata—Heavy Machinery Division, it read, along with a Japanese name and a job title. Josh poked his nose in and read it, too, and then shrugged and departed. Roni stuffed the cards into his pocket and walked off toward Gabi’s trailer. Perhaps he’d ask Ariel to check on the Internet.

  The Sting

  Nir Rivlin was tormented. What he had heard during Yoni and Gitit’s encounter left no room for the imagination, it embarrassed and thrilled and disgusted him, and the shame and curiosity had not waned several weeks later. He knew he should talk to Othniel, but what would he say? That he had listened in like some kind of depraved voyeur? Why hadn’t he stopped them? And how would Othniel bear the shame, knowing he had witnessed his daughter’s wantonness? Nir thought about speaking to a rabbi at Ma’aleh Hermesh A., or sending a text message to Rabbi Aviner’s cellular Q&A service, but after managing, or so he thought, to formulate a question, he hesitated and changed his mind. He wanted to confer with Shaulit, but the situation at home had gone from bad to worse, they were drifting further apart and their conversations had devolved to the bare essentials: payments, kindergartens, schedules, shopping. They didn’t speak about their own feelings for each other, so how were they going to tackle a large moral dilemma?

  Nir sat down with his guitar one evening and tried to compose a song inspired by what had happened. He closed his eyes and tried to reconstruct the feeling inside the storeroom: the pungent smell, the heat, the stuffiness. What he had heard.

  In a small wooden square

  The smell of paint and glue filling the air

  Standing alone and . . .

  His daughters were crying inside the house, but he had to focus. His hand felt under the hammock for the box of grass. He thought he had a joint already rolled in there, but there wasn’t. Tchelet screamed from inside. Shaulit yelled, “Nir! Nir!” He strummed on the guitar and tried to come up with a rhyme for the third line. Hair? Dare? Wear? He gave up and launched into a rendition of Kaveret’s “Natati La Chayai.”

  The yelling stopped, and with it the crying. A good time to go inside and ask if everything was okay. He put down the guitar and went in. The look he got from Shaulit—red-eyed, despairing, accusing—told him what he already knew. He had already asked for another chance, had already promised to be more attentive, more helpful, more supportive. But it wasn’t working. Her stare drove him away, forced him to say, “I’m popping over to Othniel, something important,” and to turn around and purposefully walk the few meters to the trailer on the other side of the street, knock on the door, and say, “Othniel, I need to tell you something.”

  The sense of urgency was clearly visible in Nir’s eyes. Othniel took him by the arm and led him outside, to a bench in the yard. He didn’t offer tea, didn’t open with small talk, just sat Nir down and turned to face him and waited. Nir opened his mouth and closed it and closed his eyes and opened them and looked at his bearded neighbor and pictured Gitit and Yoni the Ethiopian soldier in a small wooden square, with the smell of paint and glue filling the air, standing alone and stripped bare. He recalled the sounds, and nausea rose in his throat, how could he tell a father something like that about his daughter, why had he come, what a mistake, it was simply an excuse to escape the house and Shaulit’s look, which again appeared in his thoughts and bore into him mercilessly . . .

  “What’s up, Nir? You look worked up. Is everything okay?” Othniel placed a hand on Nir’s freckled, suntanned arm, and Nir almost cried but bit his lip and held back. “What’s up?” Othniel repeated, his voice soft.

  “No . . . It’s . . . Okay, look. A little while ago, in the evening, on guard duty, I passed by the playground, and suddenly I heard something . . .” He went quiet again for long enough to get Othniel to prompt him with a “Yes, and . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. You know what? Leave it, I’m just . . . It’s nothing, I’m probably . . .” Nir placed the palms of his hands on his knees, like someone about to stand up, but Othniel again placed a hand on his arm to calm him.

  “Say what you came here to say. It’s good you came. Sometimes we hear and see things we don’t want to, that we aren’t sure of what they are, but it’s important to share, you probably know you heard something important, even if now it suddenly seems trivial.”

  The stuffiness in the closed shed, the smell of the paint, the animal-like noises of the stooped nigger, the soft whispers, or maybe the distress sounds of the victim? And also—the confusion in his life, the tension at home, Shaulit’s rebuking . . .

  “Jenia Freud,” he finally said, and looked up at Othniel.

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t know. It was weird. She was speaking on the phone all quietlike, or the playground, like she was hiding from someone. About Roni Kupper. About Arabs. I don’t know. It was weird. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.” He placed his palms on his knees again and stood this time.

  Othniel didn’t stop him but looked at him in earnest. “Do you think she’s the Shin Bet informer?”

  “What?” The idea hadn’t crossed Nir’s mind. He was still thinking about Gitit. “Umm . . . I don’t know . . . Do you think so?”

  Othniel screwed up his mouth in thought. “Listen. Elazar Freud may have been an officer in the army and may have grown up on a settlement, but big idealogues they are not. He does something in computers, he explained it to me once, Google something, searches, advertisements, truth is, I didn’t understand a thing. Do you have any idea what he does?”

  “I only recall that he told me once he was sick of being a teacher and traveling every day to Jerusalem. And Jenia is a math teacher, right?”

  “I have no problem,” Othniel said, “with residents who came here for the landscape and the quiet and rent—every Jewish settler is welcome. But to say I’m in shock that the evil stems from there?”

  “Well, we’re not sure, I don’t want to . . .”

  “Thanks, Nir.” Othniel placed a hand on his shoulder. “You did good. Are you willing to help me check it out? I simply want as few people as possible to know about it right now, so let’s keep it between us.”

  * * *

  Hilik Yisraeli struck up a conversation with Jenia the following afternoon, on the Sheldon Mamelstein playground, while the children ran wild around them. He approached her after a seemingly coincidental clash of heads between his Boaz and her Nefesh (Hilik had lightly pushed his son into Nefesh) and joint pacifying on the part of the parents and the initiation of small talk about this and that.

  Hilik glanced over his shoulder and said to Jenia, “Did you hear about the Japanese who were here yesterday?”

  “Da, I hear Japanese here,” Jenia said. “They wanted something olive oil.”

  Hilik lowered his voice. “Olive oil is just the cover story. There’s talk that they’re collaborating with radical elements. They spoke to Jehu. That kid could get us all into trouble. Do you know what he is up to? That guy sometimes disappears for entire days.”

  Jenia appeared very interested. “Moment, Jehu . . . You think that . . . But what Japanese have to do with it? The Japanese no have olive oil?”

  “There’s no shortage of crazies in Japan, right? They have underground movements, lunatics of all stripes, I don’t know. I understand they may be passing weapons on to Jehu.” He stroked his mustache and leaned in closer to her. “Not that it’s any of my business, but we’ve had enough drama in the settlement. We’ve been under the spotlight ever since the defense minister was here. We don’t need any more trouble.” He tapped his finger twice under his right eye and whispered, “An eye that sees and an ear that hears.”

  When Hilik returned to Othniel’s place from the playground, he apologized for his bad acting and said he was sure Jenia had seen through him and that there was no chance that she, or any self-respecting Shin Bet agent, for that matt
er, would fall for it. Less than twenty-four hours later, however, the sector’s company commander, Omer Levkovich, turned up to visit his friends at C.

  “Well, well”—Othniel smiled at him—“who do we have to thank for this visit of yours? Something happened?”

  “Just a routine visit,” the pink-cheeked captain said, and glanced around. They both knew the visit wasn’t routine. Ever since the newspaper article, Omer was a rare visitor at the outpost. The settlers hadn’t appreciated the hostile quotes of the “high-ranking officer.”

  “Anything happen here of late? Have you come across anything suspicious?” Omer asked.

  “Suspicious?” Othniel played dumb.

  “An unexpected visit, anyone unfamiliar hanging around?”

  “Unfamiliar?” the veteran settler wondered out loud.

  Following Omer’s departure, Othniel ran into Yoni outside his home. Yoni appeared anxious, and Othniel seized the opportunity to press him. It turned out that Omer had questioned Yoni at length about the Japanese, and ordered him to report in immediately if he saw them in the area again. He also told him to keep an eye on Jehu, because there was talk that he was involved with a group of right-wing extremists. To finally tighten the screw, Othniel made a call to his friend Giora, the head of Central Command, to sniff around. The Shin Bet’s Jewish Division, he knew, was as slippery and elusive as an eel. His fellow settlers had tried for years to plant countermoles and find a way inside, but Othniel had learned that Giora was the go-to man when it came to matters of urgency.