Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Another question to which he hadn’t offered an answer — because he didn’t have one. He’d respond with “Where are you going?” And when the answer came, he’d say, “Great, that’ll suit me just fine, I’ll go on from there.” And then, almost always, they’d ask, “Go on to where?” or “Where do you need to eventually get to?” And he’d say, “Never mind,” or “Afula is perfect,” or “Atlit is on my way.” And then he was in, inside their world, their scent, their things — the unsightly objects hanging from the mirrors, the piles of clothing, newspapers, bottles on the backseat. The small and bigger children, who always fixed him with the most intelligent stares, the most knowing of the truth about him — an impostor, not a soldier — but didn’t say a word, being, after all, on the same team. The radio, which some insisted on singing along to. Hot air from a fan, which didn’t fan anything and only added to the heat coming in through rickety windows. He went on and on, in and out, sleeping and waking, smiling and humming.

Early in the morning, behind a hitchhiking station in Kiryat Ata, he found a faucet, removed his Palladium boots and olive-green shirt and washed his feet and face and hands, humming the Kaveret song he had heard on his last ride, the one about the boy-gone-wrong who learns his lesson only after falling.

The Gam-zu-Le-tova family — a religious family whose bountiful members appeared to occupy every corner of the car, a Susita Rom Carmel, that it was impossible to tell why they had stopped for him, demanding, insisting, “Come, fellow Jew, come, we’ll make room, God willing Malka, David, move over!”—took him to the first real stop on his journey.

The Susita’s signal lights dangled from their wires down the side of the car. The brown plastic upholstery on the seats provided little protection from the hard springs pressing sharply into his butt. The engine thundered and rattled, and the steering wheel swung freely in the hands of the family patriarch. The hot wind shook the half-open windows and blew in dust particles. A sharp odor of urine rose from at least one diaper, filling the interior of the vehicle.

No one spoke for the first few minutes. Gabi kept an apprehensive eye on the father’s hands on the wheel and the Susita’s snakelike progress on the road. The children, Malka, David, and two others, of various ages, remained silent — perhaps in awe, out of fear for the individual taken for a soldier who, in such a brief instant, had stepped into their lives. The parents were surely delighting in the silence and didn’t want to break it, before the mother rummaged in a packet, extracted something wrapped in aluminum foil, and offered it to Gabi. “Sandwich?” she asked. “You look hungry.” And that was the signal for the resumption of the symphony — David wanted one, too, Malka asked for pretzels, the two others began shouting at each other and pulling each other’s hair, and the father, who realized by then that there’d be no more delighting in the silence for him, asked, “Where do you need to go, my good man?”

The foil-wrapped sandwich didn’t look inviting, but by then, Gabi wasn’t very picky; all he had eaten since the night before were two wine gums offered to him by the student from Haifa. He peeled back the foil and began devouring without even asking what was in the sandwich, but he tasted challah bread, he tasted white cheese, he tasted pickles and tomatoes, it was divine — needless to say, he didn’t voice that sentiment, but the word went through his mind, and after three mouthfuls to quash his hunger, he replied, “Where are you going?”

“To Ofra,” the father said.

Gabi wasn’t sure he had heard Mr. Gam-zu-Le-tova’s response correctly over the canopy of noise of the family and the car.

“Where?” he asked again.

“To Ofra” came the answer once more.

And this time, he heard it and nodded — despite never having heard of the place.

“Great. It’s on my way.”

The father exchanged glances with Gabi in the rearview mirror. He wasn’t familiar with all the IDF units, all its secret bases, or all the points at which it deployed its forces. But one thing he knew for sure: Ofra wasn’t on the way to anywhere. He smiled at the soldier, who now appeared to be somewhat young, somewhat tired, somewhat on edge. “With pleasure, my good man,” he said.

* * *

Late in the evening, packed into the Fiat 127, Asher and Ricki and Roni and Gabi Kupper began their journey south from the darkness of the Golan Heights. Uncle Yaron carried Roni to the car, and Asher bore little Gabi, both asleep, two soft-skinned and innocent infants in the backseat. Ricki embraced Uncle Yaron.

“We had a wonderful time, Yaron, thanks so much for the vacation,” she whispered in his ear, and then added for even sweeter measure, “Just so you know, I was pretty nervous before coming here, I had no idea what to expect from the place, I was afraid of the shelling. But I had it all wrong. We’ll come again the first chance we get.” Uncle Yaron hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, her words music to his ears, and then he embraced his brother, who said, “It was really great, we’ll be back soon.”

Yaron laughed and said, “That’s just what your wife whispered in my ear. Drive carefully!”

They did: they consumed a great quantity of coffee before setting out, remained alert, chatted. Asher told Ricki she could sleep if she wanted, but she declined. They spoke about Yaron, about his friends and neighbors they had met over the past few days, about the kibbutz, and about the children. Ricki even managed to tell Asher that she had spoken with sincerity in saying she’d be prepared to raise the boys on a kibbutz — in the Galilee, perhaps. If indeed she was serious about it, Asher said, he’d make a few calls; he had friends in various places, as did Yaron. Ricki said she was serious, and then they heard the whistling of the artillery shell, and then she said, “Oh my God.” They saw something light up and flash through the sky, briefly illuminating their surroundings like in a movie, and then darkness, and then a huge explosion that lightly shook the Fiat.

“It’s over, that’s it,” Asher said a few seconds later. Ricki turned to see her two angels unfazed, lost in their dreams.

“They didn’t even notice,” she said to Asher, and he, his heart pounding fast, reiterated, “That’s it, it’s over.”

“How do you know it’s over?”

She was surprisingly calm, although they both knew that her reaction came as no real surprise, that that’s how things worked between them. She had been afraid of the unknown, of the danger that lurked, she had been concerned about the artillery shells before actually going to the places where they could possibly fall, as improbable as that may have been. He had been the very opposite and had waved the low-probability card, saying that if something was going to happen, it would, I’m not going to start changing my life now simply because a shell might fall somewhere. But the moment they were caught up in a real scenario, the moment the shell flew through the sky and exploded nearby, she turned matter-of-fact and practical, reacted coolly and with nerves of steel, whereas Asher turned to jelly, quivered like a coward, freaked out, and said things like “I don’t know, but I believe so.”

“Based on what?” Ricki asked, but he didn’t respond. He looked at her, and she at him, half smiling, her lips pulled back slightly, her eyes expressing a measure of disbelief, as if to challenge him, as if to say, You’re merely trying to calm yourself down, you have no idea if another shell will fall or not. She turned her eyes back to the road, perhaps sensing something, an unwanted presence, and he followed suit, perhaps noticing in that instant the glimmer of panic in her eyes, perhaps instinctively slamming his foot down onto the brake pedal before even seeing the cow — large and lost in the middle of the road, having apparently heard the shell and fled for its life, its inquisitive color-blind eyes staring down the pair of lights that approached it, rooted to the spot and unable to process the situation, the noise of the shell still echoing in its ears, the two boys still fast asleep on the backseat, the two parents, widemouthed in shock, hurtling into the large beast that stood in their way.