The Hilltop (23 page)

“What was nice?” Gabi responded, wondering what his brother was referring to—the Havdalah ritual, the prayer, or the Sabbath Queen in general.

“A new boy. Received with dignity and joy. With love.”

Gabi's hands were clasped behind his back. He smiled to himself woefully, the pom-pom at the tip of his wide skullcap wobbling as he walked.

Roni glanced over at his brother. “Wouldn't you like another one?” he asked.

Gabi didn't respond. His eyes were fixed to the ground. A familiar pain shot through him—that sharp pain that burned every time he was reminded of his young son, whom he hadn't seen in many years. His Mickey.

“You okay?” Roni asked.

“Maybe. Maybe I'd like another one. I don't know. Everything's in God's hands.”

“Only in God's hands? Isn't up to you a little, too? If you want it, if you look for someone?”

“I'm waiting.” Roni would never be able to understand that a new child could never be a replacement for a child you once had, Gabi thought.

“You said that Rabbi Nachman preached against despair and . . . what was it? Sadness and sorrow and all that.”

“Do I look sad to you? All human suffering stems from a lack of understanding, because when a person has understanding, he is able to see that every single thing that happens to him is sent to him directly from God and that it is all for his own good. And even when he is experiencing some kind of distress, the fact that he knows it is from God helps him to endure and tolerate it and even be filled with happiness . . .”

“Yes, you look a little sad to me,” Roni said.

“Look who's preaching now. You're the right one to be talking to me
about kids, about a wife. You who ran off to America, for what, money? And even that you didn't—”

“Forget about me for a moment. What about you, Gabi? Are you truly happy with the way things are?”

“I truly am. I'm great. I'm surprised that you ask. It is a great mitzvah to always be happy. I couldn't be a believer without joy. Faith is joy. Sorrow leads to idol worship and heresy.”

“It sounds to me like you're trying hard to convince yourself with those quotations.”

“Roni, you're behaving dishonorably. You're a guest here, you're getting what you need, a bed, food. All I ask in return is that you respect the Sabbath, kashrut, the mitzvoth. You sometimes desecrate the Sabbath, presumably not deliberately. I accept it and forgive you. But now you're giving me a hard time about it, too? Can't you help yourself ? If you don't feel the same passion that burns in my heart, that's fine. But at the very least, don't disparage it.”

“I'm not being disparaging.” Roni took out his light blue pack of cigarettes as they entered the yard. “It's nice out. Want to sit for a while?” He sat down on the beach chair, alongside a springy Donald Duck ride uprooted from some playground, which now lay there on its side.

“No,” Gabi said, and went inside.

Roni smoked. The darkness thickened. He had learned to love the nights on the hilltop. At first he was troubled by the silence and missed the incessant hum of the city when he slept, and sometimes the unknown contained in the silence, the threat that seeped through it, would even wake him. Now he was addicted to the silence of the small hours, to the sense of it enveloping him like a comforter. He replayed the argument with Gabi in his mind and suddenly recalled the last time he had seen Mickey—a blond kid, small and energetic. He felt a pang in his heart. Perhaps Gabi was right. He didn't deserve any flak from Roni.

Roni went inside after finishing his cigarette. “I didn't mean to piss you off,” he said.

“Then don't piss me off. Why don't you simply sort out the things you need to sort out and then move on? Resolve your problems and go
back to your life?” Gabi asked, raising his eyes to look at Roni. “It's not that I don't want you staying here with me; really, it's for your own good. You sleep all day, you're messing around with that damn olive oil. I don't know and don't even want to know what kind of scheme you are hatching to try to make some money from it. I'm not judging you, it's your life. But perhaps you should try to cure yourself of the obsession, of these vices. I cry out from my heart to God for you, I shout and weep to Him and plead for Him to help you like He helped me.”

Roni rested a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Thanks, Gabi,” he said. “I know you want what's best for me.” He went into the kitchen to make them both a coffee, and they sat together in the living room. And before Gabi had the chance to reach out for one of his books, Roni told him why he had come to the hilltop.

“After the army. After the kibbutz. After Mom Gila. A kibbutz boy in Tel Aviv. The apartment on Shlomo Hamelech Street. The goldfish. The bar in Kikar Malchei Yisrael, Bar-BaraBush. The partnership with Oren Azulai. You remember, right? The good old days, the go-go nineties, the greed. Always more and more and more: more girls, more business, more money.”

He told Gabi about his meeting with Idan Lowenhof, who opened his eyes to New York's world of high finance and helped him get there. About his bachelor's degree in Tel Aviv and his MBA in New York. About Goldstein-Lieberman-Weiss investment bank and the private clients and the endless days in front of the screens and the adrenaline of the trading and the money, sums so unimaginable that no matter how many times he tried to explain it to Gabi, Gabi simply couldn't understand how it had all disappeared, and not only that, but how Roni was now so deep in debt that he had no way of climbing out.

It was the monologue of someone who had worked through the story in his own mind on endless occasions, of someone who had analyzed to the point of exhaustion the drive, the goals, the motives, but had yet to get to the bottom of them. The gambles, the successes, the mistakes, that, within the space of a few months during the American economy's most dramatic fall, had pushed his brief and meteoric career into a fatal tailspin and eventually driven him that wintry day in February from San
Francisco straight to the West Bank, dressed in an elegant Hugo Boss suit and worn-out socks, and in possession of scarcely anything else.

Gabi sipped from his mug, but it was empty, and he peered into it, as if to request permission. “Well . . . ,” he finally said, “at least you've told me something at last.” They had hardly spoken since Roni's arrival, despite Gabi's efforts now and then to question him. Truth be told, they had never been ones for heart-to-hearts.

“And what do you think?” Roni asked.

“You know what I think. Everything lies with God. If He brought you here, then here you should be.”

Roni looked at his brother, astounded, but didn't respond. He went to the bathroom, returned, and found Gabi in the same position on the sofa. “You work a lot, don't you, my brother?” Roni said.

“God willing, blessed be His name,” Gabi answered, lifting his eyes.

“Good, good, that's great. And tell me, you probably manage to save a little, right? Life here is cheap—this trailer, for example, what did you say the rent is, three hundred shekels?”

“Salaries here aren't the same as in the city. I try to save a little, with the grace of God.” Gabi immediately understood the implication of the silence that settled in the room. He had a knack for knowing exactly what Roni wanted. “Roni, I have nothing to give you,” he said. “I mean, I'm already helping you, and quite a bit, too: the food, the bills.”

“I know. Of course. And what about Uncle Yaron's savings plan? Is there nothing left in there?”

“That's long gone. I live hand-to-mouth. And the little I do manage to save is set aside for a sacred purpose.”

“I didn't ask you to forgo any purpose, God forbid. What purpose?”

Gabi wanted to travel to Uman for Rosh Hashanah. He had harbored the dream for several years, and this year, he was going to make it happen. “I will do everything in my power, spanning the length and breadth of the creation, to cleanse and save him. I will take hold of his sidelocks and pull him out of hell,” Rabbi Nachman said of all those who come to visit his grave, and Gabi needed that more than ever before. To air out his thoughts, to see green before his eyes, to feel the rain on his shoulders. To get away from where he was and to get as close as possible to the
rabbi. To lie on his grave, to pray with the thousands at his tomb and in his
kloiz
, his synagogue. To experience the singing and dancing, and the Torah scroll and the outbursts of joy he had seen on YouTube. To seclude himself in the very same forests and under the very same trees that the elderly Nachman had, that Reb Natan from Breslov had, under the tutelage of the Baal Shem Tov in Medzhybizh, and with Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. Nachman promised eternal salvation to everyone who comes to his tomb, everyone who offers a coin to charity for his soul and recites the
Tikkun HaKlali
, the ten Psalms that serve as repentance for all sins.

“Rosh Hashanah is what, four, five months away?” Roni said. “No problem. By then, I'd have sorted out a proper bank loan and orders will already be coming in. For sure. You won't be missing out on Uman this year, bro, and I'll tell you something else—you'll go again next year, on your brother's dime. So what do you have to say about that kind of bonus? That's what you call interest with interest!”

Gabi didn't know what to say.

And ten minutes later, he had yet to utter a word. Thoughts continued to crash into the roof of his mind. After all, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. The scales weren't even close to being balanced: On the one end, his dream, his money, earned by the sweat of his brow, working the land and building the country. On the other, a dubious enterprise, amateurish, with Arabs, on the part of an irresponsible man, with a chronic propensity for getting himself into a jam, who had cut ties, who hadn't uttered a single word of sympathy during the toughest time in his own brother's life. Not to mention his lifestyle and beliefs on the one hand, and their absolute heresy on the other. Nonetheless, his older brother was in distress, was asking for help; perhaps it was the only way for him to escape his entanglement into the light. Would he deny that to his brother for simply a fistful of dollars? And perhaps Roni was right and it really was a unique opportunity, a safe bet, and the loan really would be repaid quickly and yield the promised interest. Gabi wanted to consult God, the rabbi, his books.

Roni went out into the yard, smoked a cigarette, and returned, waited a while longer, and then asked bitterly, “Why the silence?”

“Silence. As if to say, ‘Be silent, thus is the highest thought.' The righteous man is silent.”

Roni shook his head. He drew himself some water from the tap and went to sit in the armchair. “You used to be different,” he said, “more open, more inquisitive. I don't know.”

“And what good did it do me?”

It was Roni's turn not to answer.

“I suppose it's better to manage a bar in Tel Aviv?” Gabi continued. “Or to go to America and lose millions of dollars—your clients' and your bank's and your own—and to shirk responsibility? Or to come looking for handouts for some shady deal with Arabs?”

“I don't feel the need to apologize for doing business and living the good life. Is your life any better? Are you happier? Are your values any nobler? What are those values? To be silent? To pray? To stop using electricity at a certain time on a Friday? I don't get it.”

“I know you don't get it,” Gabi said.

“Explain it to me, then. What do you get out of endlessly reading and memorizing things said two hundred years ago by some Ukrainian rabbi who told you to be silent, or to sing, or to rejoice, or God knows what?”

“Peace of mind,” Gabi replied. “It brings me tranquility, love, happiness. For some reason, it's hard for you to accept that. Maybe you're trying too hard not to see it.”

“And maybe you're trying too hard to see it.”

“I'm not trying at all. I'm feeling. I feel at home.”

“At home? What do you mean at home? Some home! An illegal home, according to the court. Do you feel at home by puncturing the tire of a military jeep that's here to watch over you? Is there a quote about that? What about the law?”

“Disrespect for the law is better than disrespect for God.”

“And what about respect for people?”

“Now all of a sudden you care about respect for people? All you're interested in is your ridiculous olive oil enterprise. Don't go thinking that people around here are happy about it. People talk. They ask how long you'll be staying and want to know why we're putting you up if you're working with Arabs. And you want me to lend you money for that?”
Gabi's voice rose. He didn't want this confrontation, but if Roni was insisting, so be it, let him know the truth.

“Ah, so that's what it's all about. I get it. I'm working with the cruel enemy, I'm a cynical shit with no values who only wants to make money. I guess opposing hypocrisy and violence, and working with people who, for the most part, have it pretty rough, means having no values. People are talking about me? Great. Let them come tell me to my face, tell me to go.”

Gabi didn't appear impressed. “I see you've adopted the line of the extreme leftists. Do me a favor! The Arabs have it rough, the Arabs are saints, the Arabs, the Arabs, the Arabs . . .”

“The Arabs are to blame, too, for the wife and child who won't allow you near them, right?” Roni yelled. “The Arabs, and secular values, and lust for flesh and money, right? But the sanctity of the Land of Israel and singing praises to God and keeping quiet will allow you to forget Mickey and Anna, won't they?”

Roni had more to say, but the expression on his brother's face stopped him. He went outside and walked down to the edge of the hilltop, to the shining stars carried on the wind, to the dark night. Gabi was asleep already when he returned. But waiting on the table for Roni was a check.