Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“You want to label it extra-virgin without receiving the Olive Board’s stamp of approval.”

“Everyone does it. Didn’t you read about it in Yedioth Ahronoth ? So we won’t mention the Olive Board. We’ll simply label it extra-virgin. You know what, we’ll write it in English only.” He removed his sunglasses to gaze at Gitit Assis’s long, black hair as she pushed her brother Shuv-el on the swings. Talk about extra-virgin, he thought.

“Did you find a boutique that will buy from us in cash?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do this properly, with books and all?”

The sunset was in its full glory, accompanied by a strengthening wind. Roni scratched behind his ear. “I don’t want to get involved with the tax and VAT authorities until we’re certain that the business is going somewhere. It’s not breaking the law, it’s a running-in period, until we find our footing and know if it’s worth the effort. What do you want, to get started with all the red tape, and to set up a company, and register, and begin paying taxes to those shits before we’ve seen a single shekel?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Jesus Christ! Lighten up.”

“I don’t know, Roni. I need to think about it.”

“What’s to think about? Come visit again. First of all, there’s a check waiting here for you — my share, which you rightly requested. Besides, you need to loosen up a little, you know. It isn’t so scary the second time, you’ll see. Five minutes with the desert spread out before you and you’ll be talking differently. You’re so, so, soooo tight-assed down there.”

“And what if we don’t find a boutique who wants to sell it? What if they find out that it’s oil pressed by some Arab and his donkey?”

“That’s no way to speak about Roni and Musa’s Oil. Put a drop on their tongues and then let’s see what the centrifuges do for them. Tried and tested for five thousand years, nothing beats millstones!” The last sentence, said in a higher tone, caused Shaulit Rivlin to look up from little Zvuli’s baby carriage. Roni smiled and waved at her; she smiled in return and resumed her singing to the infant. “Ariel, you’re wearing me out, man. As they say in Spanish, muqa-muqa , one thing at a time. Come visit, let’s discuss it when we’re chilled. Then you can go to the boutiques. I’d like to see the boutique that doesn’t take it at this price.”

“You know what? Maybe. I’ll see when I can come by.”

Roni chuckled. “I knew this place had grabbed you, you settler boy, you!” He hung up and thought, It hasn’t grabbed me. He was still bristling from the power outage and slow Internet service, and he wanted a haircut and a Diet Coke in a glass bottle and a cigarette and cashew nuts. But where would he get them now? How did people live like this?

Evening settled on the hilltop. Cars passed through the gate and guard post — drivers returning from their daily routines, attending classes and teaching and visits to the hardware store in the city. They waved to the smiling Yoni, pulled up outside their homes, and retrieved their shopping bags from the backseat. The wind picked up when the light faded, in perfect harmony. At this time of the year, the wind can be a real nuisance, rattling the trailers, the swing sets in Mamelstein Playground, the Donald Duck in Gabi’s yard, passing under the floors, through the hole where a window once was in the now-torn-up chassis of a Peugeot 104, rocking the traffic sign near the synagogue, flapping the plastic sheeting of Othniel’s mushroom greenhouse. The wind carried the lonely, angry barks of Beilin and Condi and the cries of the hungry or tired or hurting infants. The wind smacked against Roni’s flesh — he had stepped outside in a T-shirt to take a call — and it caught Gitit’s beautiful hair. It blew up grains of sand and dust, formed small whirlwinds in the distance, swirled clouds in the sky, and sometimes carried a few errant drops of wet rain.

Mothers and big sisters played with the little ones and read stories and began bathing them, together or one by one. The men tossed their newspapers on armchairs and sat down for a while, hugged whichever child chose to jump on them, drank a cup of tea. Those who performed manual labor washed off the day’s troubles and dirt. Others lifted their fingers from their keyboards and rubbed their eyes.

On the way to evening service at the synagogue, they hugged their prayer books and themselves, stooped but determined. Some attended the late-afternoon service before the sun went down, and then went out for a cigarette break on the wooden bench newly arrived from Jerusalem, made inquiries about the bulldozers, and verified gossip. They raised their voices and lowered their heads against the wind, patted down their skullcaps and hurried back inside, and when the final prayer service for the day ended, they returned home to join their wives and children.

Nehama Yisraeli prepared omelets for her husband, Hilik, and her sons, four-year-old Boaz and two-year-old Shneor. Hilik had promised to help out more with the children ahead of the birth of their new baby, particularly at dinnertime. She had hatched the idea of organizing a biweekly Torah study for the women of the hilltop, and he had urged her on, declaring he’d take care of the boys. But Hilik was caught up with the evacuation threat and the absorption of the Gotlieb family and everything, and feeling sudden inspiration to make some headway with his research, he made several trips to the university. He had started to read an excellent book, Arthur Koestler’s Thieves in the Night , which beautifully captured the mood of communal settlement and land redemption that swept the Galilee in the 1930s.

And so, in a state of advanced pregnancy, after a day at the kindergarten watching over seven small children, Nehama found herself on her feet beating eggs for an omelet. Everything’s in God’s hands, she thought, and smiled wearily, recalling how the children that morning, led by her Boaz and Emunah Assis, had tried to sing “Lecha Dodi.”

“Just give me two minutes,” Hilik said on returning from the prayer service. He lay back in the armchair and the boys jumped on him.

“Take your time, rest easy,” she said. “Boys, tell Dad what you did at kindergarten today.” They told him. He was suitably amazed. After dinner and with the boys put to bed, she tidied the mess in the kitchen and living room, washed the dishes, and was on her back in bed by nine. “I’m dead,” she said to her husband just seconds before sleep took her. He folded his glasses and placed them on the bookcase, then removed his skullcap and placed it folded alongside them, and lay down beside her, and caressed her ball-like stomach, and while deciding whether to read the op-ed page in Yedioth Ahronoth or a couple of pages of Koestler’s book, he succumbed to his deep breaths and slipped into the abyss of sleep.

* * *

The chaos in the Assis family had reached new heights. Shuv-el was sitting on Gitit’s lap and they recited the customary blessing over produce from the land and she tried to feed him salad that he didn’t want. All he wanted was “orange juith,” and he sipped from it after it was poured. Othniel was eating salad with a spoon and speaking on the phone with his distributor, Moran. “Yakir!” he yelled. “How much labaneh is on order for tomorrow? Oops, no, Yakir, I mean cherry tomatoes. How much for tomorrow? What? Both together? Can you all keep it down a little? Hananiya!”

“Just a sec,” Yakir shouted back. He was on the Internet, in Second Life, the multiplayer game in which everyone designs a personal avatar that roams through a virtual world, accumulates items — from shoelaces to a home — and interacts and forms bonds with other characters. Yakir’s avatar on Second Life was a settler who looked a little like him with the addition of a beard, and he had found a number of friends, like-minded, religious Zionist Jews, and together they’d settled on an island they’d named Revival, and they’d erected a synagogue and prayed and spoke and roamed the world keeping the flame alive.