Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“I should get some sleep.” Roni yawned. “I’m still on American time, everything’s upside down.”

Nir Rivlin turned to him with a look of surprise, as if he had forgotten Roni was there. He looked at his watch. “Almost midnight, the end of my shift!” he said, dipping his hand into his pocket to retrieve a piece of paper. “Let’s see who’s replacing me… Hah! Your dear brother! Thank God. Come, let’s go shake him from his dreams.”

Approaching the trailer, they spotted Gabi stepping out into the darkness. Weary-legged, he shuffled across the hilltop in the biting cold, the coffee in the mug in his hand cooling rapidly. Carried on the wind came the sound of distant Arabic music.

“Hey there, O righteous one,” Nir said.

“Shalom, shalom,” Gabi’s weary voice responded. His gaze wandered back and forth between Nir Rivlin and his brother, Roni, and he stopped in his tracks for a few seconds before turning again to Nir. “How’s Shaulit doing?” he asked.

“God be praised.”

“When is she due?”

“God willing. She’s just gone into her ninth month.”

“Wow.” Gabi smiled. “I wonder if it’ll be a March or an April baby.”

The three stood there in silence. Even Nir, who hadn’t stopped talking for the past two hours, appeared too tired to find another word to say.

“Okay, off to bed, you guys. Good night.”

When Gabi returned from morning prayers, Roni was still fast asleep in the living room. He laid down his tefillin bag quietly enough, but his brother woke to the noise of the teaspoon clinking against the side of the glass cup.

“Good morning,” Gabi said. “Tea?”

“Coffee,” his brother’s sleep-laden voice responded. “Wow! I couldn’t figure out where I was for a moment. I slept like a log!”

“ ‘Sleep is sweet and good,’ ” Gabi said, quoting Rabbi Nachman. “It’s the silence.”

Roni pulled out a cigarette from a light blue box. Gabi glanced at him cautiously. “Should I open a window?” the elder brother asked, but when Gabi stood up to open one, he continued, “Isn’t it too cold for an open window?”

Gabi opened one nevertheless. “Listen, I don’t have much food; I didn’t know you were coming,” he said. “If I get to Ma’aleh Hermesh this morning, I’ll get some. But it’s Friday, there’s not much time.” An idea came to him. “Do you have a car, perhaps? I could take a quick drive before work.”

“I have nothing,” Roni said.

Gabi raised an eyebrow.

“So, tell me, what’s this Gavriel Nehushtan all about?” Roni asked, releasing a plume of smoke through the netting in the window frame. The gray fumes drifted through gingerly, seemingly testing its boundaries.

“It’s me.”

“What’s you? The Gavriel, I get. What’s with the Nehushtan?”

“Kupper in Hebrew is nehoshet . Didn’t you know? Our forefathers in Germany must have been coppersmiths. Copper is the strongest material in the world.”

It was Roni’s turn to raise his eyebrows. Gabi looked at his brother’s body slumped limply in the armchair — no longer the muscular physique of old, but still manly, stubbled and thick-haired, a soft mane covering his dark-skinned chest. His brother was the broader of the two, shorter, and more hairy. A stranger might struggle to pick out any resemblance at first glance. Even though their brown eyes cut the same shape, Roni’s expressed warmth and playfulness, while Gabi had been told his own reflected caution and naïveté. Gabi continued, “Someone once told me that when the Ice Age returns at some point in the future — and it’ll happen for sure; after all, God spins nature in a cycle — the entire world will be covered by a layer of ice several kilometers deep. And the immense weight of this layer of ice will crush the whole world we know today into a thin layer, just a few centimeters thick. Everything will turn to dust. But if someone during that coming Ice Age were to dig deep into the heart of the earth and look at a cross section of that two-centimeter layer of what used to be humanity, they would see mostly copper. And that’s because we use so much of that material and it is so strong. Everything else will turn to dust, into nothing. But the copper will survive.”

“And what is that supposed to say about our family? That we’re strong?” Roni laughed his small laugh. Gabi shrugged. “Did you change your name officially, at the Population Registry?”

“No.”

They drank in silence for several minutes. Then Gabi asked, “What do you mean by ‘I have nothing’? What’s happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m listening.”

Roni opened the screen and threw out his cigarette butt. “Not now,” he said. “We’ll find the time. Aren’t you off to work now?”

“Yes, but I’d also like to know what has happened to my brother. And it’d be nice to know how long you intend to stay. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, no, everything’s great, nothing’s happened. I simply need to air myself out a little. Who’s that? That’s quite a look he has there,” Roni said, pointing at a picture the size of a large postcard that stood on one of the bookshelves, a black-and-white photograph of a bearded man wearing a furry hat.

Gabi looked at the picture. “That’s Rabbi Kook, Ha-ra’aya ,” he said, using the common Hebrew acronym for the revered Torah scholar.

“ Ha-ra’aya ? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Such zeal, right?” Gabi responded, turning to face his brother again. “But why are you changing the subject? Is it ‘nothing’ or is it ‘a long story’?”

Failing to elicit a response from his brother, Gabi went back into his bedroom, returned shortly afterward dressed in blue work clothes over his tzitzit, and sat down to lace up his heavy work shoes. He then smiled and stood up. “Okay, we’ll talk later. I really do need to get going.”

“Don’t worry,” Roni said, “I won’t be a burden for long. I just need to chill, get back on my feet, and then move on. In any event,” he continued, getting up to put his head out the window and look around, “I haven’t got what it takes to live in a place like this for too long.”

Gabi smiled. “Okay, I’m outta here. Have a good day.”

“Have a good day, Gavriel Nehushtan!” Roni exclaimed, breaking into a loud laugh, but when the door shut behind Gabi, the smile on his face instantly disappeared.

* * *

“What an insane morning,” Gabi heard Shaulit Rivlin say to Nehama Yisraeli as he passed by the two expecting mothers and nodded in acknowledgment without looking at them directly. The morning sun felt good on the back of his neck. He walked by the new trailer and then the new playground just beyond it. God must be so righteous, he thought. If He had sent his brother to him on a day filled with new and joyous beginnings for the settlement, surely that must be a blessing. Something caught his eye. A small shoe. He picked it up off the playground grass. A Nimrod sandal, size 23. He took it over to the toddlers’ day-care center before continuing on to Othniel’s farm. Othniel was there already, standing outside with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun and the other holding a telephone to his ear. “Let’s get moving, Nehushtan!” he said, hastening Gabi along. “We need to prepare the crates for Moran. Just a minute, I’m on the phone.”

Fridays were short workdays, and getting hold of anyone at a government ministry was no easy feat, but, thank God, Othniel Assis had the mobile telephone numbers of several influential individuals, the first being MK Uriel Tsur, who had spoken yesterday at the dedication ceremony for the playground.