Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Ma’aleh Hermesh C. sank into the heart of the darkness. Most of its residents were asleep. Reciting the Tikkun Chatzot prayer before the Holy One blessed be He, his eyes closed, Gavriel Nehushtan heard the silence, the final sputtering, and opened his eyes to find nothing, and above the nothing a few stars and a wisp of moon and the twinkling lights of Yeshua beyond the riverbed. He went down and pressed the switch, and checked it over, and waited and added more diesel and pressed again. Despite his anger, he went to Yoni and knocked on his door, and the soldier slipped into the leggings of his coverall and, gritting his teeth and without complaining, huddled up against the wind and tagged along and came and pressed the switch and checked it over and waited and added more diesel and pressed again. Then said: “Maybe this time it’s done for good.”

The chill seeped in slowly among the blankets, the refrigerators fell silent, the coiled lightbulbs of the cute night lamps in the children’s rooms went out, and from here and there came the sounds of the chirping of babies and cries of alarm and soothing words and the whistling of the wind. More blankets were spread and hugs were exchanged and the future generations crawled into the beds of the previous generations, and men fumbled about in the darkness, put on socks and shoes from the corners of rooms and coats from hangers, and went out into the great blackness and felt their way to the generator and grumbled to themselves that this was impossible, how many years had they waited to be hooked up to the electric grid, how come power lines had yet to be laid from A., and the bastards at the Civil Administration’s electricity division hadn’t given the green light, and the fucking army, and the motherfucking wind… They pressed the switch and checked it over and waited and added more diesel and pressed again. Then said: “Maybe this time it’s done for good.” Returned, undressed, slipped under, pressed up close, caressed, and closed their eyes.

Roni was freezing. Of course he didn’t get out from under his comforter. It was too cold, and he assumed there’d be enough volunteers, what did he know about generators. What am I doing here? he wondered. Over the past year that same question had flashed through his mind thousands of times, and with more intent the last few days, since he’d returned from Tel Aviv. He had slept there on children’s mattresses in a closed kindergarten, wrapped himself in blankets that weren’t warm enough, met someone nice, almost pretty, just a kindergarten teacher. Not the high point of his life, but he felt at home. Rediscovered his old self. Tel Aviv awoke in him the ability to see for a moment from the outside what he was doing on the hilltop: lazing about idly, without the energy to work. He’s too cold. He’s too hot. Freaking out. Frustrated, listening to the transistor, sinking into a depression. There was a period when he tried to convince himself that he was better off there. Why work hard if you don’t have to, if you could sit on a hilltop and look out at a beautiful view, close your eyes, and simply be. But now sleep escaped him into a new clarity, an unfamiliar one, and he opened his eyes wide without seeing a thing and thought, It’s too heavy, this world of Ma’aleh Hermesh C., too dark. If he wanted to stay, he’d have to step inside and become a part of it. And he couldn’t. He had heard sermons, commentaries, lessons — he didn’t get it. He had observed his brother, his sparkling eyes. Saw that he’d moved, seen the light, but he saw only what he saw now: nothing.

He recalled how, during one of his random encounters in Tel Aviv, someone had given him iPod earphones and said, “Listen.” Some acoustic song. The strumming of a guitar. A nice melody. It sent shivers through his entire body. This place, after all, also had the strumming of guitars and nice melodies, but when the sounds diffused from the white earphones into his brain, he felt different. That’s the solace. In the city, you could be a member of the flock, even if you were alone within the flock, that was the best he could do, and that was good enough, if it was his flock. He smiled a bright smile and felt the pressure rising in his bowels and squeezing out a loud, rolling fart, which he hoped would warm him a little. He remembered an expression from his youth and asked out loud, into the darkness, “Who cut the cheese?” and answered himself with a hollow smile in the silence of the befouled trailer.

Meanwhile, a tale of love and darkness. After all efforts to deal with the venerable generator had failed, and after the freezing wind had died down a little, Gavriel Nehushtan left the scene and decided to walk back the long way, in order to pass by Shaulit’s trailer. He didn’t plan to go in, only to check from afar, with a glance, that everything there was quiet, that the power outage hadn’t ruffled the fabric of life in the Rivlin home. As his feet crunched over the gravel along the descent by the gate, he heard the door open and close and footsteps in the dark.

“Ah, it’s you,” Shaulit said in a broken voice. “What happened?”

“Nothing. There’s a power outage. The generator died and they weren’t able to fix it, it’ll be like this all night. I just wanted… Will you be okay? The children? You have enough blankets?”

She smiled a smile he didn’t see and giggled a giggle he heard, and whispered, “Thank you. Yes, I think so. If I can find them in the dark…” He laughed with her. And came with her to look for the blankets in the closet. And smelled her hair, drowsy and warm from an interrupted winter slumber. And heard the breathing of her children: tender, regular, soothing. And bumped into her leg and heard her stifle an uncontrollable stream of laughter that turned into a series of rapid, choked breaths.

Candles she didn’t find; matches, yes. She made tea on the gas burner. He sat on the sofa and she on the armchair in the light of a blue, docile flame, under the kettle. They spoke in the darkness about the darkness: pitch darkness; the darkness falling on the world outside, and the light igniting inside; the ongoing conflict between inside and out; the plague of darkness that brought down death on all the land. And the darkness would become darker — you can feel the darkness. Following a series of invisible but clearly sensed yawns, Gavriel said, “Don’t you want to go to sleep?”

“Dying to sleep… Too cold here in the kitchen… But I want to continue talking, too… Want to come to the other room?”

The pulse from one sentence to the next. The cold air that warmed with every word, every breath. The pulse in Gabi’s wrist, in the vein. Of course he wanted to join her. She got under the comforter and he sat on the edge of the bed, excited and sheepish. They spoke quietly, took care not to wake the children, whose marathon of rhythmic breathing didn’t cease for an instant.

“Okay, this isn’t right,” she finally said.

“What’s not right? You feel uncomfortable, you want me to leave. Of course, sorry…” He got up from the edge of the bed.

“No, silly, it’s not right that you aren’t covered. Get under the blanket. The bed’s big enough. Each on his own side. Do you think it’s allowed? Maybe we should send a question to Rabbi Aviner’s cellular Q&A service? Send a text message: ‘Is a divorced man allowed to share a bed with a divorced woman, at two separate ends, without touching, without seeing one another?’…” Her words were broken up by her laughter, rattling and joyful, Gabi could only imagine her teeth and eyes, and perhaps because she wasn’t able to quiet herself this time, Zvuli woke with a high-pitched wail. Shaulit fed him and hummed to him until he fell asleep again.

“If you carry on humming like that, I’ll fall asleep in the end, too.”