The Hilltop (13 page)

Gabi stood and began walking again, sure now of his direction, with a sense of urgency, bare-chested. He passed by the swimming pool and cultural center, headed down in the direction of his and the younger children's dormitories, and reached the animal pens. The animals were quiet, asleep. But they were of no concern to him anyway. His thoughts were on the garden. Dad Yossi had spoken about it—the garden near the livestock, with its special flowers. What did he say they were? Orchids, irises, rare and beautiful flowers—

*  *  *

I remember now, they planted a garden there—“for the pride of the country,” that's what Dad Yossi said. He called it the groundskeeping department's baby. He might have said Alex's baby, I'm not sure. Alex the asshole, all those assholes and their stares, their smiles of pity, their shaking heads and tutting tongues and condescending goading. The animals begin to stir when they hear my shoes trampling the plants, kicking them left and right. Take that, you rare and precious plants; take that, baby of the groundskeeping department; take that, Alex; my small pocketknife in hand, slicing leaves, cutting flowers, chopping branches, cutting signs; small feet, rabbits, perhaps, run to and fro; a calf stares at me with calf eyes until I threaten it with my knife, but it doesn't budge; peacocks spread their tails. But I don't care about the animals, I'm fixed on the garden. And when I'm done kicking and slicing and trampling
and jumping, my stomach aches, that sweet pressure. The sickening smell of the tomatoes oozes from the pores of my skin, rises from my sweat; I hate that smell. The animals are insignificant—but there's the greenhouse and butterflies. Didn't Yossi say something about them, too? My knife, the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse, an
X;
there we go. I'll write “Baby!” here; maybe someone will be able to read it. I keep cutting, this pocketknife's too small, I should have brought a machete to destroy this garden. What's in here? Butterflies? Caterpillars? Plants? Dozens of species of butterflies, chrysalises, silkworms that feed on mulberry leaves. This is the place, this is the spot, I knew I'd find it, in the middle of the butterfly greenhouse, on top of the shredded plastic and broken wooden installations they built in the carpentry workshop. This is where I'll squat and drop a big steamy dump. And those avocado leaves, or whatever they are, will be great for wiping my ass, and the wet shirt, too.

*  *  *

A dulled sensitivity, a short-circuit in the brain; a rise in testosterone levels, a fall in serotonin levels; temporal lobe disturbances; reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex—all attempts to offer biological causes for social behavior. Do they even know what they're talking about? Needless to say, the story never left the confines of the kibbutz, God forbid. No efforts were made to seek professional assistance. What's the good in that? The father of one of the kibbutz members is a psychologist. There are libraries with books to page through. There are close friends to call and question “in general terms, about behavioral problems among youth.” Yossi, for his part, read something in a book about psychopathy and ruled it apt—high level of intelligence, low self-control, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, and little expression of remorse or regret. He believed he saw all of those symptoms in Gabi—or Gabi in them—certainly insofar as little show of remorse or regret was concerned, and certainly the high level of intelligence.

Roni was called home from his army base the following day. Who else could talk with Gabi after such a direct assault on the fruits of Dad Yossi's labors, on the baby of the groundskeeping team? “He took a dump,” he told Roni on the telephone. “He took a dump in the middle of the butterfly greenhouse. We opened it just this week. Roni, what kind of an animal does such a thing? And, to top it all, on the eve of our trip to Europe?”

Every day now for years, Mom Gila had puffed and puffed away at her Broadway 100s waiting for her and Yossi's first trip abroad, classical Europe, a
Let's Go
–organized tour, defined, too, as their reconciliation holiday, a last-ditch effort to save the floundering partnership. They had waited their turn patiently for several years, had worked like dogs, had ground their fingers to the bone, had raised the two musketeers until they were old enough—Hooray for Rome! Hey there, Paris! “What do we do? Cancel?” Dad Yossi asked her. And she snorted smoke and replied, “As far as I'm concerned, the entire kibbutz could go up in flames; they could torch it to the ground; tonight, I'm in Vienna.”

Shortly after the parents left for the airport with another kibbutz member who was driving to Tel Aviv, Roni showed up in uniform—complete with the paratrooper wings and brown beret and laughing-cat pin of the commando unit and the shouldered weapon and the smell of oil and manly sweat. He entered the room and sat down as he was on Yotam's bed, and looked at his brother, who was lying on his back in jeans and shirtless, the very same outfit he had worn at the time of “the incident” the night before, looking up at the ceiling and throwing a plastic ball in the air—and catching, and throwing, and catching.

“Hi,” Roni said.

Gabi turned his head, hugging the plastic ball to his chest. “Did you get wings?” he asked.

Roni looked down at his chest. “Yes. The unit pin. We completed the training course.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. What happened?”

“I don't feel like talking about it.”

“But why do that to Dad Yossi? What did he do to you?”

“I don't feel like talking about it. He didn't do a thing. It has nothing to do with him.”

“What did they say to you?”

Gabi pulled a face. “Nothing. A short-circuit in the brain. How should I know?”

“Has anyone spoken to you about it?”

“What for? Roni, I don't feel like talking about it.”

Roni stood up and unbuttoned his shirt. “Do you have a towel? I'm dying for a shower; I've been hitching rides since the morning.”

“Yotam has lots in his closet. Take one from him.”

When Roni emerged from the bathroom, refreshed and wearing a green T-shirt with a picture of a Heineken bottle in the center, the plastic ball lay on the bed between the crumpled sheets, but Gabi was gone. Roni's uniform, with the unit's badge and the paratrooper wings and the shiny new commando pin, was no longer there either.

T
hey descended on him like flies. He had barely appeared on the road, had barely stuck out his thumb, and already they were pulling over—white ones, red ones, silver ones, big ones and small ones, fancy ones and sputtering ones, military vehicles and rentals. Within two minutes of standing at the kibbutz's hitchhiking station on the main road, he was in a Renault 4 and on the way to Tiberias with a young, bearded man wearing a skullcap—and then a Simca, and then a Subaru, and then a military Peugeot, and a Tnuva dairy truck when night fell, and in the small hours of the morning, a large, comfortable, fast, quiet car that allowed him to doze off.

They all asked questions. They were all lonely and bored, stuck in their cars and journeys, eyes on the road and dying for someone to talk to. “When did you complete the course, why aren't you carrying a weapon, the MPs are going to get you for that hair, does everyone in the commando unit wear Palladium boots? What's up, have you lost your voice? Where is your unit holding the line?” Gabi didn't respond. He didn't understand half the questions. Holding a line? As hard as he tried to comprehend the question, he wasn't able to crack it. Holding a line? The question short-circuited his brain. So he chose not to answer. He said he was very tired. He tried to nap. He said he wasn't at liberty to talk about it. And they were disappointed, disgruntled. “Honestly, you're the first Golani soldier I've met who plays at being in intelligence.” They wanted
to talk; that's why they had given him a ride—to brighten their own journeys. Only one had said to him just as he was getting in, “You look like a kid, that uniform looks funny on you. Did you steal it from someone?” And Gabi, with one leg through the door, his back half bent, still in the process of getting in, looked at her, stopped, flashed half a smile, and didn't know what to say, and then she broke into a loud, toothy laugh and beckoned him in. “Come, come,” she said. “Don't mind me. Where do you need to go?”

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.