The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  Gabi and Shaulit spoke reservedly. They had never exchanged more than a sentence or two. She commended him for the synagogue renovation. “Finally there’s no leak in the women’s section.” She smiled. “And the day care. Good for you. You must be very proud.”

  “It wasn’t me,” he said. “Herzl Weizmann and his laborers are the ones who did most of the work. The praise should go to him, and to whoever entrusted the tasks to him and financed them, which is the council, the committee, I don’t know . . .”

  “What are you talking about? Building that place with your own two hands must be a huge source of pride.” And after those words, both thought immediately about his cabin, and Shaulit placed two fingers on his arm and withdrew them and whispered, “Oy, I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” he said to her, moved by the gesture.

  “God have mercy . . .”

  A moment of silence in memory of the cabin. They weighed beginning a political discussion: gripes about the army, the government, the situation, the ongoing discrimination against the settlers. The silence appeared to suffice and they skipped over the idea.

  “You know,” Shaulit said, “you don’t have to spend Sabbath eves alone. You can come here whenever you want.”

  “Thank you, you’re a righteous woman, Shaulit,” he said, and raised hesitant eyes to a reddish curl that fell down her forehead, remained there for two seconds, then was slipped behind her ear with a slender finger, still encircled by a ring, and well groomed following a Neta Hirschson manicure.

  “Usually I’m not alone. My brother’s here.” A crack formed in his voice. “It’s just that he went away today. Or yesterday . . .”

  * * *

  Yesterday. Moran went out of his way en route to his moshav in the Sharon region to drive him into the city. Roni got out on a busy corner and looked around in wonder, letting his senses spin his head: the excitement, the strangeness, the size, the noise; good God, the liberated breasts! Bouncing before his eyes, crying out for attention, perked up under wool and cotton fabrics. He headed toward the sea, thinking and not thinking.

  The ring of a bicycle bell snapped him from the fantasy, and then came a shout, “Muthafucka, watch where you’re going, you asshole!”

  “Shut your mouth,” Roni responded instinctively with claws bared, but the rider moved into the distance, the red light at the back of his bike blinking with ever-decreasing hysteria.

  “Oh my God, these cyclists are a danger to life and limb, you all right?” a woman’s voice asked, and Roni half turned and saw an angel. Okay, a little chubby, but the hair so brown and smooth and glossy, the lips so full. Okay, the schnozzle a little big, but eyes that could melt, a light shade of brown, which for him contained sadness and hope and flirtation. He imagined her on all fours, her ass in the air in expectation.

  “Piece of shit,” he agreed with her, and tried to take in the rest of her body in his look. On the drive here, he had been thinking about just how sexually uninspired he was on the hilltop, and look, Tel Aviv and its female residents required less than ten minutes to wake the beast from its slumber.

  “As long as everything’s okay,” she said, and he, “Tell me something, want to have a coffee somewhere, to calm down?” his gaze wandering already in search of a place, “Where exactly are we? Ah, Ben-Gurion . . .” But she moved on hurriedly, not before fixing her light eyes on him, awash with scorn.

  Oh well, too chubby, Roni consoled himself, and the nose—come on! Such snobs, these Tel Aviv girls. As he gathered himself and continued toward the sea, he thought, God, I used to do it differently. I managed at least to talk to them for a few minutes. I can’t remember anymore how it’s done. I’m all rusty. At the Sheraton, he sat on a beach chair he rented for ten shekels and watched the waves. The girls were few and far between, and taken, but the distinct contours of their breasts were a surprise, almost a stunning blow. For months he hadn’t seen a sight remotely like it, and now he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The sea raged.

  Perhaps it was good to be rusty, he reasoned. The rust protects you, encases you. Rust is not only dirt but an ongoing moment of reconciliation. He fell asleep, and when the cold woke him, the people who were at the beach earlier had disappeared and left behind darkness. He went to Bar-BaraBush. Sat at the bar. Didn’t recognize anyone. He looked the place over, lingering on the changes—new chairs, a bottle rack, German draft beer on tap. What a big chunk of my life I spent here, he thought, and after a while—I’m missing the quiet a little. Maybe I’m done with cities. Maybe I’m missing my trailer, the most fucked-up trailer in the territories.

  He met a kindergarten teacher, Rina, at the bar. She started talking to him. And went on talking. For hours. Outside it was raining and inside no one was in a hurry to go anywhere. She wasn’t his type, not in looks, not in line of work, and not in personality. But he enjoyed their conversation. She told him about various kinds of tea. Forms of yoga. Children’s songs. She analyzed the Tel Aviv housing market. He drank beer and moved on to coffee and made do with tepid water from the faucet. She waited inside for him every time he went out to smoke a cigarette, until the rain came down harder and he stopped smoking and remained with her stories, about fathers of children at the kindergarten who had come on to her, the new organic produce store at the Gan Ha’ir mall, a simply divine ice-cream parlor he had to try.

  He told her he had nowhere to sleep, and she didn’t invite him to her place, but offered to allow him to sleep at her kindergarten, if he promised to be out of there by six. And thus, in the middle of a kindergarten on Shlomo HaMelech Street between Ben-Gurion and Arlozorov, Roni spent his first Tel Aviv night in ages, a sweet sleep on a clump of children’s mattresses. Her call woke him at six in the morning, her groggy and cute voice said, “Good morning, time to get moving,” and he kept his promise and tidied up and left, and spent Friday walking around, on benches along the avenues, by the sea, in astonishment—where was the feverish activity ahead of the Sabbath? Where were the odors of the cooking and the dipping of the tableware into the mikveh? Where were the cars that kicked up dust at the last minute? Where was the quiet that rolls in and prevails over everything? The darkness, the white clothes, the smiles in the synagogue?

  He knew exactly where. He’d go back on Sunday, after two more Tel Aviv nights. On Friday night there was another date with Rina, unplanned despite the mutual exchange of telephone numbers the night before. This time they began from a different starting point, no longer a man and a woman meeting by chance at a bar and chatting for a few hours and perhaps going on to who knows what. They spoke this time in a broader context, they spoke about the past this time, and about the present, but went beyond efforts to impress such as “I live in a trailer on a hilltop in the territories” or “I’m a kindergarten teacher on Shlomo HaMelech Street.” This time they confessed the truth: “My trailer is the most fucked-up trailer in the territories, and I have no idea what I am doing there,” and “The municipality is squeezing me and I don’t know if at the end of this year I’ll have money or the energy to carry on.” The time passed quickly, the beer flowed, even a few long-serving Bar-BaraBush customers who remembered Roni showed up; one of them told him that Ariel was working on a new venture, something to do with frozen drinks in a combination of sweet-and-sour flavors. It reminded Roni that he hadn’t spoken to Ariel in a long time.

  At the end of the date, the kindergarten teacher sent him off to sleep soundly in her closed kindergarten on Shlomo HaMelech until the late hours of Saturday morning. On Saturday night the date was an arranged affair, and they dared to speak a little about the future, too.

  The Skullcap

  Ever since blowing up the mosque in Second Life and his spectacular vomiting, Yakir hadn’t gone back. Both from fear of being exposed by the game’s internal police, and out of a sense of remorse and disgust for the actions and words of King Meir and his Jewish underground comrades, and also due to a lack of time, because he was managing the farm’s orders
website, conducting archaeological research, and was in the middle of the school year. Not to mention prayers, occasional work in the fields, and helping to look after his younger siblings. But despite his numerous activities, he was nevertheless a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old with the world at his fingertips and intensely curious and always questioning and thrilled by discoveries, possibilities, opinions, and new, different ideas. He knew that what had happened with Second Life—the aggression, the invasion of privacy and humiliation of others, the sense of superiority that gave license to hooliganism—made him feel uncomfortable. That wasn’t him. What was, he didn’t know. But when you’re fifteen years old and that’s your starting point, and your fingers lead you through the dark corners of the Internet for hours on end, there are many things you can discover, and change about yourself.

  He started with music. From Eviatar Banai to black rappers to clips on YouTube to blogs to Internet radio stations with earphones because Mom complained about “that noise,” and he went on to a Yom Kippur filled with thoughts about a million things aside from Kol Nidre. To conversations with Moran about “What do you secular people think about us?” And then to an organic vegetables forum and forums of green movements and yoga forums and liberal religious websites. More talks with Moran about secular people and left-wingers, and thoughts about what am I doing on this hilltop without friends my own age, and from there it wasn’t a long walk to buying a smaller skullcap in Jerusalem to replace the broad woolen skullcap like Dad’s. Dad didn’t notice; Gitit did, snickered, and asked if he had lost his mind, if he was one of those watered-down religious guys whose skullcaps are barely visible, if he was ashamed. Ashamed—no way. But he continued to read a lot of interesting things. He observed Gitit when she returned from the religious school and it all suddenly seemed strange to him, the ease of knowing what’s right, the difficulty of questioning.

  Naturally, most of the things Moran told him sounded way out of his reach, a world beyond an abyss, a world where not only did he believe he couldn’t get by, but one that also appeared to him unreal, odd, in many ways. By and large he loved his life, his family, the synagogue and the prayer services. But he also loved to ask questions. One evening, Yakir went into a forum for formerly religious people, and when he raised his head from the screen, it was two in the morning and his brain was fizzing. Afterward he started playing a game with himself in which he would find small, insignificant ways of desecrating the Sabbath: writing in a notebook, turning on a heater for a couple of minutes, listening to a song through earphones . . . Gitit continued to return from the school energized with belief, new confidence. Sometimes, from within the agonies of his doubts, he envied her. Thought that maybe he, too, should seek a self-assured education, which would take care of any doubts.

  Yakir read an official report on the Antiquities Authority’s website about two valuable coins from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt that were found in a cave in the Hermesh Stream riverbed. He informed his father, and Othniel quickly called Duvid. “Yes, that’s right,” the antiquities expert confirmed, “those are your coins. Those last two.”

  “Well,” Othniel said excitedly, “so we can sell?”

  “Sell what?”

  “The coins, what do you think I mean?”

  “Where are they, with you?”

  “No, the guy from the Antiquities Authority said they wanted to conduct their own tests, but according to this report, I understand they’ve done so. So now I get the coins?”

  Othniel heard a slow chuckle on the other end of the line. “Yes, I believe you’ll get the coins. Let me try to speak to someone there.”

  Othniel closed his eyes tight. He was furious with everyone—with the Antiquities Authority, with Duvid, with himself for approaching Duvid at all. “So when will they return them to me?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Wait. You’ve waited this long, no?”

  Othniel opened his eyes and looked at Yakir. He spoke into the device in a soft voice, but under it a tense tone clearly lurked. “I don’t understand why you let those idiots find out about our coins. First you hold on to them for months. Now they take them, and are telling us what we already knew.”

  “I didn’t let them, I told you, it was a mistake . . .”

  Othniel hung up, retrieved the suited gentleman’s business card from the drawer, and dialed. There was no answer. He tried again and reached the secretary. She put him through to another secretary who didn’t know what he was talking about and passed him on to another one, who knew what he was talking about but said the gentleman wasn’t in his office at the moment and no one else could assist him. “Try tomorrow,” she suggested, “or better still, next week.”

  Othniel hung up and fixed his son with a long stare. Eventually he stood up and said, “Come, son, we’re going to Jerusalem.”

  They searched in windswept Jerusalem for the offices of the Antiquities Authority on Sokolov Street, just off Keren Hayesod, because Othniel remembered the building from his youth. They went from building to building—no sign of it.

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell me you don’t know where it is, I would have found it on the Internet in one second.”

  “But I do know where it is. It’s here. Somewhere.”

  They made inquiries at the adjacent street and then returned to Sokolov and asked passersby, until they found a resident of the neighborhood who told them that the Israel Coins and Medals Corp. was once located there, many years ago.

  “See?” Othniel said.

  “What exactly am I supposed to see?” his son replied.

  The neighborhood resident didn’t know the current address, not of the Medals Corp. and not of the Antiquities Authority. Following several phone calls, they drove to the new Mamilla complex. They sat outside the office for close to twenty minutes, until Othniel created a scene. It helped. They were told they needed to take the matter up with the unit for the prevention of antiquities theft, which was dealing with the coins from the Hermesh Cave. But the unit doesn’t have an office, there’s the Antiquities Museum, which has offices, but it’s not clear . . . Othniel created another scene.

  If there’s a plus side to the look of the settler with the broad skullcap and beard and tzitzit and muddy work shoes, it’s that when he creates a scene, he’s taken seriously.

  Eventually they got to the gentleman who’d visited the settlement. He was dressed again in a suit, remained bespectacled, and courteous, and graying. “Ah, hello, gentlemen,” he said, “Ma’aleh Hermesh C., right?”

  Othniel nodded. His expression showed no congeniality, only expectation. He said, “I need my coins.”

  “The coins aren’t here,” the man said.

  “What do you mean they aren’t here?”

  “We don’t have them. They were at the Antiquities Authority. They conducted the final tests, and were supposed to pass them over to us, and we in turn back to Mr. . . .” He paged through the papers on his desk. “To Duvid . . . to you. But we have yet to receive them from the Authority.”

  “What do you mean, yet to receive them from the Authority? Where’s the Authority? Tell me and I’ll go get them. What’s this foot-dragging all about? They’re my coins. You said you completed the tests, you confirmed authenticity and age, you published an announcement on the website. Now return them to their owners. What’s all this bullshit?”

  It didn’t help.

  * * *

  On the way home, at the exit from Jerusalem, they spotted Roni Kupper with his thumb out and took him along with them.

  “Thanks, righteous men,” he said, biting into a bagel with hyssop.

  “Honored, honored, good man. Hallowed be His name.”

  From the junction they began the descent toward the desert and the yellowing hills, passed by a new neighborhood under construction that resembled a huge octopus, and then beyond to more yellowing hills dotted with olive trees and the homes of a nonhostile, or formerly hostile, Arab village, and several kilometers later the military checkp
oint that declared territories from here on, and there the air was colored grayish, and the taxis were colored yellowish, and the license plates of the trucks were colored whitish, and the landscape started moving into the distance, and Othniel asked Roni, “So tell me, dude, what was the story in the end with the olive oil?” And Roni, like always, provided, almost subconsciously, the answer that best suited the time and place and, primarily, the listener. Information is modeling clay: the material is the material, but the way in which it is presented can alter it, knead it, flatten it, or inflate it.

  “What could the story be?” Roni replied. “The story is that the Arabs can’t be trusted, that’s what.”

  Othniel glanced cautiously in the rearview mirror. Was he making fun?

  Roni continued. “The story is that I had a great proposal for the Arab, I took his oil press that hadn’t been in use for years, and said to him come let’s start producing here again, bring your olives, your neighbors’ olives, we’ll make real, old, traditional oil with the dust and the hookah smoke like in the past, the Tel Avivians love it, we’ll make a little money together. Initially he kissed my feet, said his grandfather would be spinning in his grave with joy, that I’m a saint. Everything was arranged, stores in Tel Aviv, an investment, marketing, the design of labels for the bottles with the symbol of the millstones like in Italy, so that people would know how pure and tasty the oil they’re buying is . . .”

  “Nice idea,” Othniel said. “I’m not crazy about the fact that you do business with Arabs and help them to support themselves, yes? But the idea’s nice.”

  “And then those Japanese showed up, we have signed agreements and all . . .”

  Othniel blew out air through his teeth and pressed his tongue to his palate: “Tssssss . . .”

  “And the son of a bitch pissed all over me and went with them. Without batting an eye. Why, because they’re Japanese? They’ve got money? But what do they know about olive oil, tell me, the Japanese? What do they know about how to market and sell? I had all those pretentious Tel Aviv yuppies in my hands, they used to come to drink my beer when they were in their twenties-thirties and they would have come to drink my olive oil in their forties-fifties. But no, the Japanese came along with big machines, and his head was turned, how could it not have been turned, an Arab . . .”