Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“Why’s Yakir on the computer?” his mother, Rachel, asked his father. “He needs to eat dinner. Yakir! Come eat, get off the computer!”

“Just a minute,” Othniel responded. “Moran’s on the line. It’s important!”

Yakir’s friends were about to visit Islam-Online, one of the Muslim sectors on Second Life, to mess with the Arabs a little. He excused himself, logged out, quickly scanned the farm’s orders, and made it to the table just as Hananiya pushed Emunah off her chair and her head slammed into the table leg, causing her to burst into tears, openmouthed and exposing a missing tooth. Shuv-el, in a gesture of kindness, then asked to get down from Gitit’s knees, and Dvora suggested Yakir try “the excellent salad,” to which he replied, “What else is there?” and Gitit said, “Yogurt,” and Rachel said, “Hananiya, apologize right now!”

* * *

“I don’t know what we’re going to do this Sabbath about my sister,” Neta Hirschson said to Jean-Marc. “She eats only strictly kosher food, mehadrin . Do you think I should ask her about it? Perhaps we should ask the rabbi what to do?”

“Or maybe we should simply buy mehadrin,” he replied hesitantly. Jean-Marc, in fact, had been born into a completely secular family, in Yamit. His father, a vintner who emigrated from France, and his mother, the daughter of a World War II partisan and a kibbutznik father, were among the founders of Ma’aleh Hermesh A. in the 1970s.

“And what about the dishes?” Neta asked, complicating matters.

“Ask the rabbi.”

After dinner Neta made coffee and cut some slices of cake. “Do you think we should introduce her to Gavriel?” she asked.

“Which Gavriel?”

“Nehushtan.”

“Gabi? Are you crazy? He’s a reborn.”

“You’re a reborn, too,” said Neta, the daughter of the rabbi of Ofra and a mother who helped establish Sebastia, the very first West Bank settlement.

“Exactly, your poor parents. Do you want to burden them with another one? Besides, your parents knew mine, and me. It’s not like I was a reborn after a mysterious past.”

“I think he’s quite sweet, actually. A little quiet. He has faith. How bad could his past be? The story with his son is awfully sad. He looks like a really good guy.”

“Divorced,” Jean-Marc said, continuing to play the devil’s advocate.

“That’s life. What’s done is done. Look at him now, the way he’s taken in that strange brother of his. So tolerant.”

“He’s a good guy, I’m not disagreeing. But not for your sister. He’s too old. She still has time, doesn’t she?”

“She’ll be twenty-four soon.”

“Oh,” Jean-Marc said, clutching his coffee mug as he contemplated. “I see. Okay, let me think if I know anyone.”

“Never mind. Let’s first see what we’re going to do about this mehadrin business,” Neta said, and then flashed an inviting smile. “I was at the mikveh today,” she continued. “Instead of a new son-in-law, what do you say to giving my parents a grandchild?” Jean-Marc smiled. But his smile soon faded after Neta turned around and walked into the bedroom. They had been trying since their wedding, for more than a year, and not only had the act itself turned mechanical, businesslike, devoid of any tenderness and intimacy, Neta had begun coming apart at the seams. She so desperately wanted children, and in time her want had become an obsession, consumed her entirely and sometimes boiled over — in the form of complaints against Jean-Marc, angry online exchanges with leftists, verbal abuse hurled at soldiers or other annoying government officials who came to the hilltop. Sometimes — it usually happened the day her period insisted on showing up, an unwanted guest whom no one had invited — silence, a turning in on herself, to the point even of canceling beauty treatments she had set up with clients, closing the shutters, and sliding quietly between the sheets. And now, to the task at hand.

* * *

Raya Gotlieb sat on a plastic chair in the corner of the room, unable to hold back the tears. “Is this what we left our home for, Nachi?” she asked her husband. They had just put the children down to sleep. Nachum was half lying, half sitting on the mattress in their bare living room. He wanted to be positive, but he didn’t have a good answer. The list of problems with their “new” trailer was endless: the missing shower door caused a mini-flood in the bathroom, not to mention the lack of privacy, and there was no showerhead, which made for an erratic stream of water and yet more flooding. The kitchen sink was missing its hot water tap, and Raya washed the dishes in cold water only. There were no shutters in the children’s room, so Nachum transferred the ones from the main bedroom, which was then filled with light every morning at six. Perhaps the most humiliating was the square piece missing from the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Who would think of stealing a piece of linoleum? Nachi Gotlieb stared at the vacant square, the sticky edges of which had already collected bits of dirt. The nerve.

Their possessions were brought in little by little in Nachum’s car because Othniel had asked them not to use a large truck so as not to attract unwanted attention at a sensitive time such as this. They had to watch out for the sector’s brigade commander and the company commander, who were frequently in the area, the soldiers at the guard post who would report the arrival of a moving van, and then, of course, you had the left-wing groups and Civil Administration inspectors, and — Othniel paused, looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice — we may have an informant in our midst who’s monitoring and reporting our activities, and the truth, too, is that the neighbors from Givat Yeshua won’t be too pleased to hear that a family has moved into the trailer that was intended for their community and is awaiting a transportation permit from the Defense Ministry. It’s therefore best, Othniel explained, to keep a low profile. So Nachi drove back and forth, to and from Shiloh, taking days off work, packing the car to the brim. But some things simply wouldn’t fit in the Nissan Winner — the washing machine, for instance. So Raya had been doing the washing in the sink, without hot water, or at friends’ houses in Ma’aleh Hermesh B., but she no longer felt comfortable doing so. They were still without a refrigerator and an oven, so they tried to get by with a small icebox and an electric hot plate, which blew the generator every evening.

“But the people are really nice, they brought cakes and toys for the kids, and there was a request in the newsletter to all those who took things to return them,” Nachum said in an effort to lift his wife’s spirits. “And Shimi and Tili love the playground.” Raya responded with another bout of sobbing, and he knew why. Back in Shiloh, their former home stood opposite an amazing playground where the children would play unsupervised for hours every day.

“I just hope and pray this god-awful wind doesn’t keep them up tonight, too,” she lamented.

Nachum was an optician. He loved the fashion part of the job — an aspect of the business that Raya helped with by choosing the frame catalogs and suiting frames to faces when she was in the store — but he also loved the medical element, helping to mend the body, allowing people to see the world as it is.

“The nature here is stunning,” he said, peering into the black night through the torn netting in the window. “You can’t enjoy the view but complain about the wind. You have to see the big picture,” he added, his voice filled with tenderness.

* * *

Roni went out for a walk and stopped to listen to the radio for a few minutes with Yoni at the sentry post. “Don’t you ever go home?” he asked the soldier. “You seem to be here all the time.”