Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Shaulit’s daughters were crying, screaming, and their mother yelled, “Amalia? Tchelet? What happened? What happened? Come here, I’m outside!”

“Mommy, come here, help!” Sobbing voices.

“What happened? I can’t, I’m nursing Zvuli outside, just a moment. Calm down and explain to me what happened.”

“Mommmmy,” came the sobbing duet from inside again, and was then boosted by another scream, high-pitched.

“Oy,” Shaulit said, Zvuli started crying, Shaulit soothed him, “Shhh… Shhh…” The screaming continued. Gabi looked around at the peaceful settlement that was sleepily welcoming in the Sabbath. He walked through the gate into the yard. “Shhh… Zvuli, just a moment…” Shaulit calmed her son. She heard a noise and raised her head, surprised. Gabi mumbled “Good Sabbath” and quickly headed to the screaming girls inside.

The second time Gavriel heard “Shalom alechem malache ha-sharet” that evening, Shaulit’s voice didn’t hide in the shadows, but was powerful and moving and backed by the voices of her smiling daughters and his own voice. He closed his eyes to focus his senses on the beautiful voices that continued to sing about the Supreme King of Kings and His angels, and noticed when he opened them just how pretty Tchelet and Amalia were, how they had the same eyes as their mother, and when they went on to sing “A woman of valor who can find, for her price is beyond pearls,” he couldn’t hold back and looked straight into those eyes. She insisted he stay. Said there was an empty seat at the head of the table and someone had to recite the blessings over the wine and the bread, and if he didn’t have other plans, if no one was expecting him, the girls were still in a state about the creepy-crawly and would happily welcome his calming presence.

The creepy-crawly: a hairy multilegged creature the length of a finger and a phosphoric shade of yellow. The hilltop was full of weird creatures, every child knew that, but this one was truly out of the ordinary — Gavriel had never encountered one like it during all his years on the hilltop, and even he, at the pinnacle of his manhood, flinched. The creepy-crawly had taken cover in the corner of the room, too close to Shoshana the doll, who was leaning up against the wall and appeared to have been taken hostage by it. Its antennae groped in panic and every now and then it made as if to make a run for it and was answered by a volley of screams from the sisters on the bed, pillows in their arms and tears in their eyes. Gavriel brought his shoe down onto the creature and squashed it— pikuach nefesh, he sighed to himself — and was now moved by the humble and warm sense of family. He had been invited in the past to families on the hilltop, had eaten with Hilik and Nehama Yisraeli and with Othniel and Rachel Assis and with other families, some who were no longer on the hilltop, but ever since Roni arrived, Gabi was no longer thought of as a lonely bachelor who needed to be invited over, and truth be told, he preferred it like that. Shaulit apologized for leaving the fish in the oven for too long, and Gabi said the fish was wonderful and praised Amalia for the salad she’d chopped.

All thanks to a hairy bug and a soft angelic voice. Cake after the food, and after the cake, coffee; the girls disappeared to play in their room, and the conversation flowed, and when Zvuli asked to be nursed, Gavriel turned his back and focused on The Master and Margarita , on Etgar Keret, and on The Kosher Chinese Gourmet by Yisrael Aharoni — bookshelves are always alike in terms of religious literature and differ when it comes to secular books. Shaulit lay Zvuli down in his crib and asked, “Want to sit outside?” And they returned to the bench swing. She hadn’t planned it; the evening, like her life of late, rolled from one incident to the next, from putting out a fire to solving a problem, an exhausting, endless chain of events. But later, before she fell asleep, she thought that the decision to free her hair from its shackles had freed her in more ways than one.

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.