Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

And the plates, and braces, the various kinds of straightening devices, the retainers, those for use only at night, those with the apparatus that went around the head — he had one of those, with its framework covered in denim fabric, so he could look cool. Yes, cool Gabi, at the age of seven, with the plate in his mouth joined to a brace apparatus covered in denim fabric so that instead of resembling a torture device, it looked more like a lampshade that at any moment would connect to the ceiling, where the lighting element known as Gabi Kupper would dangle and thus illuminate the room with his teeth — crooked, yet glowing bright. Images etched into his mind for various reasons: the rides with Mom Gila, to see the orthodontist who came once a week to the neighboring kibbutz, or to Kiryat Shmona, or even to Haifa, when the treatment progressed further; the walks with Roni along the kibbutz pathways, to the pool, to the dining hall; Shimshon Cohen, who had returned to the kibbutz after serving ten years in jail for killing someone in a fight in the army, stopping the two of them, looking at Gabi, and saying with a smile, “What is that, a bird?”

Shimshon Cohen was the talk of the kibbutz ahead of his release from prison. Most of the children didn’t remember him at all, most weren’t even born or were very young when he was sent down, but everyone knew the story, and in the days leading up to his release, the anxiety level among the kibbutz children — and, to be fair, among the adults — rose to unprecedented heights. All went well, and everyone spoke of how peaceful and nice he appeared, and how good he looked, and everyone talked, too, about the VCR that someone had brought him from Lebanon and how no one on the kibbutz dared to say a word to him about it, despite the fact that some thought he should bring the device to the communal TV room. And what was this nonsense about him watching alone in his room, not to mention the sounds emanating from the device, Roni and his friend Tsiki had heard them, they dared to go listen outside the window at night, and they weren’t the only ones to do so.

And here before them stood Shimshon Cohen, curly-haired, wearing a white undershirt, his shoulder tattooed decades before every kid on the block boasted one, his cheeks unshaved. His appearance clearly suited the mythology, the most terrifying fantasies, to a T. The man who, with his bare hands, had killed another for pissing him off. So what then do you say to such a man, a week after his release from prison, when you are eleven years old and he asks if your seven-year-old brother is a bird?

“Yes,” Roni said to him.

Shimshon laughed. “Who are you?” he asked. And Roni, his voice trembling, answered him, and Shimshon Cohen thought for a moment and then said, “Ah, yes, the kids who… yes.” And Roni nodded, his eyes welling up with tears, and eventually Shimshon Cohen ruffled his hair and said, “Look after the bird, okay?” And Roni nodded again.

From then on, every time the released convict saw Gabi, he’d break into a broad smile and affectionately pinch the boy’s cheeks, and whereas Roni’s heart would begin thumping again every time he heard the gruff voice or saw the large tattoo, Gabi would respond to him just like he did to the other grown-ups, one of the nice ones.

Beetles, and the pungent smell, and burning heat on the soles of bare feet, and the pool in the summer. Muddy boots and driving rain and radiators in the children’s dormitory in the winter. Devices on teeth and the regional school and trips to the Golan Heights, and Mom Gila and Dad Yossi, and their room, and Shimshon Cohen. And Ofir’s Yemenite father on bedtime duty, reading to the children from Russian history books in the belief that his voice had lullaby-like qualities, but it always frightened Gabi, and he’d run from his dormitory to Roni’s in the middle of the night, and Roni, half asleep, would always let him in, and they’d fall asleep in each other’s arms. And getting up once whoever is on bedtime duty leaves, certain that everyone is asleep, and making coffee, and frying popcorn in a pan on the gas burner until all the seeds danced about in the utensil and exploded into tiny, crunchy cauliflowers. Getting locked in the dining hall’s cold-storage room and riding at night on tractors to the plum orchards and stealing tampons from the girls and putting them in glasses of water. Who could say they didn’t have a happy childhood?

Roni Kupper spent the long summer holiday between eighth and ninth grades working with the cattle — the kibbutz’s elite unit. He secured the job, for which he had volunteered, of course, thanks to his well-tanned and developing muscles and his serious attitude, and also his basketball talents, which had led the kibbutz team to the top of the Upper Galilee youth league and turned him into a small, local star, and had particularly impressed Baruch Shani, the cattle unit’s manager and a passionate hoops fan. It was the summer in which Orit, Roni’s classmate and the prettiest girl he knew, lost her virginity, thanks kindly to the very same Baruch, who had completed his military service in an elite commando unit two years earlier. It happened at the kibbutz’s summer camp, on the shores of Lake Kinneret, near the banana plantations. Roni Kupper was among only a handful of others who knew about the budding romance between the twenty-three-year-old man and the fourteen-year-old girl, because he had seen her slipping quietly into his sleeping bag in the dead of night.

Roni, for his part, remained a virgin throughout the summer. The girls were usually a step or two ahead of the boys when it came to that sort of thing, but working with the cattle, under Baruch’s command, made a young man out of him nevertheless. His younger brother would listen in awe to the heroic stories he brought home — of mending fences, watering down the herd under the blistering sun, fertilizing and seeding, moving one of the cows that got stuck in the middle of the winding road that climbed north from Tiberias to the Galilee. He was up every day by 4:30 a.m., when he’d get a ride in one of the cattle unit’s vehicles down to the kibbutz’s grazing fields. At 7 a.m. everyone would go back up for breakfast in the dining hall, and then it would be out to the pastures again. Noon meant lunch back up in the dining hall; and at 3 p.m., Roni would go to sleep, except for the days on which he played basketball, when Baruch would release him early. The schoolkids, of course, worked in the various units of the kibbutz during the holidays, but sometimes, in very busy periods, like before slaughtering or when new calves would come in, Roni managed to convince Baruch to call for him during school time, too.

Gabi still had braces on his teeth that summer. He was in the final two years of his long-term orthodontic project, and the tough part was already behind him. Toward the end of the long holiday, with the summer camps over, adult supervision was at its most lax. The adults were hot, and they were busy, and all they wanted to do was to remain indoors with their new, recently installed air conditioners — how they had survived without them, none of them knew. The children swarmed outside without a care, taking full advantage of their final days of freedom, hanging out. Merciless months of accumulated heat had left teenage brains fried almost beyond repair. The tarred roads were scaldingly hot, and walking barefoot along the gray concrete pathways was out of the question, too. With large towels draped over their shoulders and blue-and-white-striped flip-flops on their feet, Gabi and his friends Yotam and Ofir headed for the pool, their slight, browned bodies in swimming trunks only. The heat stuck to their skin. Yotam focused his gaze on the path, trying to stamp on as many beetles as he possibly could. The beetles, too, were at the end of their summer, sluggish, spaced out, their intolerable stench already beyond the point of troubling anyone, let alone being noticed at all, except by random visitors to the kibbutz. Yotam counted… eleven, twelve since they left the dining hall… thirteen.