Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

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.

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?”