Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Roni began playing again for the kibbutz basketball team; Gabi tried to join the choir. Roni had several brief relationships with volunteers, and one with an Israeli girl, too — a guest at the kibbutz, the Petah Tikva cousin of one of his fellow cattle department workers, who gushed and enthused and charmed and came to visit; but the moment she hinted at thoughts of moving to the kibbutz and sharing Roni’s room, he panicked and stopped her in her tracks. As for Gabi, aside from a handful of fleeting experiences, his future as far as women were concerned still lay ahead of him. And thus the two brothers rediscovered each other, without the army or a girl or the pains of adolescence coming between them. They’d meet sometimes for dinner, and sometimes go on from there to the pub or a movie, or together they’d stop by the room of their adoptive parents on weekends.

One Friday night, after the festive Sabbath dinner in the dining hall, Gila felt unwell, went to sleep, and woke feeling a lot worse. Dad Yossi went over to Roni’s room and asked him to drive her to the hospital in Safed. On their way to pick up a set of keys for the communal vehicle, they happened to run into Gabi, and he joined them. And thus the entire family — father, mother, and two sons, all together for the first time in ages — headed off to Ziv Hospital in Safed in the kibbutz’s Subaru. Gila was admitted for tests and the three men spent the Sabbath in the hospital corridors, drinking coffee from a vending machine, smoking (only Roni), or walking around Safed’s Nof Kinneret neighborhood, which offers a view not only of Lake Kinneret but also of the Galilee and Golan Heights and almost all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The kibbutz, too, was visible from one point on the ridge, but Gila didn’t get to that point; never again did she get to see the kibbutz of which she was one of the founders. The cancer in her lungs had spread, and because the hospital caught it late, she hung on for less than a month.

By the time their adoptive mother was admitted to the hospital, Roni and Gabi had already made their peace, and their bond now grew stronger. They spent hours together on the drives to and from the hospital and in its corridors, united by virtue of the need to be there and to be close, out of a sense of concern, of sorrow, and with the understanding that blood ties cannot be taken for granted. They weren’t sure sometimes if they were at the oncology ward to bolster Mom Gila or to spend time together. Whatever the case, they spent that time together.

During that period, the Kupper brothers, Roni, twenty-four by then, and Gabi, twenty, became better friends than they had ever been. They used their talks to fill in the blanks of the previous years: Eyal and his smashed jaw, the abduction in the orchard, the dump Gabi took in the butterfly greenhouse, the hitchhiking quest to the Sinai, the ride at Guvrin Junction. Roni’s commando training, his final orienteering drill, his burning love for Yifat, the first and second and third time they did it, and the breakup and the heartbreak. The relationships and the anger; the kibbutz members, Yossi and Gila, kibbutz work colleagues.

“And what now?” Roni asked his brother one day as they sat on a bench outside the hospital at sunset, smoke rising from the cigarette clasped between the tips of his fingers.

“Now?” Gabi asked, turning his wrist to see the face of his watch.

“I don’t mean in the next hour. From here onward.”

“Onward?”

Roni glanced around to see if anyone was looking and discarded the cigarette, then turned back to his brother, his beautiful brown eyes smiling. “Yes,” he said. “What’s next for you? Is this it? Are you going to be on this kibbutz forever?”

“Why? Do you have other ideas?”

“I asked first.”

“I’ve got no idea. The kibbutz for now, I guess. I don’t look too far ahead. It blinds me, like looking into the sun. What do I need that for?”

“Are you content?”

Gabi bit his lip and moved his head as if to say so-so. “I’m okay in general,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Roni responded. “I feel the same. Things are pretty good for me. The air is clean, and life is simple. I work, sleep, eat, fuck. What more does a man need? Neither of us is going to be prime minister.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. There’s more to life, isn’t there? Look at the old folk on the kibbutz. Look at that generation. They made something. They made something out of nothing. They did something for history.”

“What history? They built a kibbutz. Did they have a choice? They got screwed in Europe. They got screwed with the Arabs. So they built a kibbutz and went out to fight wars.”

“I, too, used to think like that,” said Roni. “That we have a country, which works well, and that there’s no need any longer to fulfill the Zionist dream, there’s no need any longer to survive the Holocaust. So why shouldn’t we simply enjoy it and that’s it? Surely we don’t have to go out looking for nobler ideals and greater goals only because the old-timers on the kibbutz built a country, do we? You’ve gotta be kidding. That’s why I quit the fucking commando unit. Everyone there believed that we have to do, fight, conquer. It’s enough already. Look around, everything’s cool, everything’s peaceful. We can enjoy life.”

“Exactly,” Gabi said. “So I ask again, where’s the problem?”

“First of all, it’s a lie. Everything can’t always be cool. And second, okay, so they built a country and did great and historical things that we will never do. But that doesn’t mean I cannot fulfill myself on a personal level and do something with my life.”

Gabi sized him up. “What do you mean on a personal level?” he asked.

“To achieve things, I don’t know. Money, success. Look at me, at fifteen I was a basketball star on the kibbutz and started working with the cattle, which is the best this kibbutz has to offer. I went into the commando unit, which is the best in the army. So, what now, is that it? Why should I remain on the kibbutz all my life and continue to do the very same? I can do more, can’t I? What’s with the face?”

“I’m not making a face. It’s just that when you spoke about fulfilling yourself, I thought you were talking about something else. Something within you.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Roni asked.

“Not exactly. You spoke about money, about succeeding, external things. I am talking about looking inward, about asking who you truly are and what you are doing here.”

Roni fixed him with a look of confusion, amusement, perhaps, maybe naïveté—or perhaps all three. “You’ve seen too many psychologists. That’s your problem. Do you know what you really need?” he asked.

“What do I need?”

“You need a good fuck, and urgently.”

“I’ve had a fuck,” Gabi said. Technically, it was true. He had had something quick and unsatisfying with Orit, from Roni’s year at school. She was four years older than Gabi and still had her pilot boyfriend, who was still required to be on weekend duty on base from time to time and continued to go out drinking beer and getting too drunk and ending up in unexpected beds. “Unsatisfying” was an understatement. “Traumatic” would have been a more fitting description.

“Forget about what you’ve done,” Roni responded. Gabi had already told him about Orit, and Roni had subsequently introduced him to someone else. That episode was slightly less surreal, because there was less alcohol involved. Nevertheless. Roni looked at the setting sun and went quiet for a moment.

“You know what?” he said. “Forget about fucking. You’re right. I always thought it was the answer. For you, for everyone. But perhaps I was wrong. No, you need to fall in love.”