The Hilltop (42 page)

As he slowly emerged from sleep after the night at the motel, Gabi thought about Meshulam's work. He didn't like the parasitic element of it, the way the State of Israel sent emissaries to hover like vultures over human carcasses, or worse, even, over living people, waiting for them to become carcasses and then swooping down and scavenging whatever they leave behind the moment they die. There was something disturbing
about the cold and calculated process by which they found candidates for death, secured their bequests, waited for their demise. On the other hand, he thought, they offer the caring and warmth that's missing from the lives of childless people who've come to the end of the road. Even if the motive is a selfish one, it's still caring and warmth that no one else offers, and who says the warmth and caring offered in more conventional ways, by family members or friends, stems from less selfish motives?

The next morning they continued in driving rain. Gabi liked rain, but quantities like that were too much even for him, and in the month of June as well. Meshulam smiled and said it was the norm in this part of America, there were hurricanes sometimes, too, which was a lot crazier. They drove slowly, a bit pensive and withdrawn, the wipers working vigorously and noisily, the rain slamming down on the metal.

After one more night at a motel, they arrived at Meshulam's new house. The foreman called to say the stormy weather had slowed the progress of the truck, which wouldn't arrive until evening, thus leaving Gabi and Meshulam with an entire day to wait in an empty house. Hollywood, Florida, did indeed remind Gabi of the kibbutz. The contrast with New York surprised him. In front of every house was a well-groomed square of lawn, the houses themselves were tidy, spacious. The storm passed, maybe didn't even reach that part of Florida, and it was the most sun-filled day since he'd landed in America. He sat on a deck chair someone had left in Meshulam's yard, sipping the coffee in a paper cup that Meshulam got from around the corner.

Meshulam took him on a tour of the neighborhood. Gabi got into the Chevrolet and three minutes later caught sight of the most beautiful sea he had ever seen, a deep and intoxicating turquoise, and long white beaches, and the girls . . . He took off his pants and went into the sea in his underwear, and couldn't believe how gratifying and familiar it felt when the water engulfed him. Like the kibbutz? The kibbutz wished. It was a hundred times better; it was like the kibbutz, only without strange looks in the dining hall and with the most beautiful beach you'd ever seen, with all due respect to the Sea of Galilee.

He lay on the sand and said, “This is paradise, Meshulam. This is what I dreamed of when I dreamed of overseas. Not about a million people
and tall buildings in which I go up and down with furniture.” Meshulam smiled. He took him to eat at a restaurant on the beach, and when they returned home, he showed Gabi the small apartment adjacent to the main house. It had a separate entrance, one small room with a kitchenette and bathroom.

“I've been thinking about renting this out, what do you think?” Meshulam asked. He meant, what did Gabi think of the idea of renting it out, and of the unit in general.

But Gabi said, “I'm in.”

Meshulam looked at him in surprise. “You're in what?”

“I want to live here,” Gabi said.

Meshulam laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Totally.”

“And what will you do?”

“Don't you need an assistant?”

W
hile his brother left for the United States, and many of his friends for the Far East and South America, Roni remained in Tel Aviv. It was far enough for him. He had ended up there almost by chance. Started dating a girl from Ra'anana, an economics and philosophy student at Tel Aviv University, whose father had an office in an apartment on Shlomo Hamelech Street with a vacant room, and the girlfriend suggested to Roni that they take over the room. During work hours they shared the apartment with the office, and because Roni didn't feel comfortable, he preferred to go out and frequently just went with the girlfriend to the university, started sitting in on classes, and discovered that the courses interested him.

In the evening and on weekends they had the apartment to themselves. They bought a fishbowl and two fish for a few shekels from a pet store around the corner. Their “rent” was to clean the apartment and wash the dishes of the office employees, usually three mugs with
the remains of coffee or water. He decided to register for studies—if he was already investing the time in lectures, why shouldn't he glorify himself with a degree? But just a few months later the girlfriend told him she was pregnant, which ended in an abortion and despair and a teary breakup.

The girlfriend left the apartment while Roni ended up staying, and continued to share it with the father's office. But now he had to pay rent, and tuition fees at the university, too. Roni spent a few days wondering how he'd manage, until the day the fish died—from overfeeding, they explained to him at the pet store. He went to a pub on one of the corners of Malchei Yisrael Square—it was a few years before they stopped calling them pubs, or the square by that name—and drank so much that by the end of the evening he barely managed to notice the small “Kitchen Help Wanted” ad posted near the toilets.

He washed dishes, and then helped the chef, and then became a barman, and eventually a shift manager. He discovered at university that he was able to breeze through the basic statistics and math courses. A year later Roni was for all intents and purposes already managing the pub when the owner, Oren Azulai, made him an offer. He was about to open a new place and wanted Roni to run it for him: the setting up, décor, renovations, team, inventory, menu, wages. Oren didn't want to spend a single minute there. Roni would earn twice his current salary.

“And here's your real incentive,” Oren threw his way at the end of the conversation. “To give you another shot in the arm, I'll give you a bonus of two percent of the after-tax profit at the end of every month.”

The offer left Roni stunned for several moments, but he maintained a cool façade and said, almost matter-of-factly, “Let me come in as a partner, it'll be more worthwhile for you.”

“Partner?” Oren asked, and tried to suppress the patronizing smile. “Do you have money to invest?”

Roni didn't, but he said he'd check. He checked. The banks he went into showed him the door within minutes. But Uncle Yaron, whom he called without a glimmer of hope, surprised him with the savings account he had opened with the inheritances of his parents and grandfather. Roni went in with a 20 percent share.

He set up the new place from scratch: from the exhausting red tape of the Tel Aviv Municipality, through to the last tile in the bathrooms. All he knew, he knew from running one conventional pub in a square in Tel Aviv, from years of drinking at the kibbutz pub, and from a handful of courses at the university; but he also knew, from intuition, from common sense, that he wanted something different. More appealing, more fun. He started with the name. He wasn't the first proprietor in the '90s to drop the prefix “Pub” and swap “Bar” in its place, but he was certainly a pioneer of sorts when he named the place Bar-BaraBush, after the wife of the not-so-long-ago president of the United States. He then moved on to the design of the sign and façade, the inviting and comfortable interior, paying strict attention to cleanliness, selecting the staff and training them. His most impressive innovation was his approach to the food. Unlike most drinking establishments, which served fries and chicken wings with their beer, Bar-BaraBush offered good food: filling and also diverse, simple and also fresh, inexpensive, and available at all hours. Roni hired a sous-chef who designed a menu, which was gradually perfected and adapted to suit the place and the mood. In time more and more people were converted: a bar that offered not only good drinking but good eating, too.

The business began turning a tidy profit. And despite the skeptical look on Oren Azulai's face, Roni insisted that the two owners draw a modest salary and invest the rest back into the business. Oren went along with it because he could see the results, and realized that Roni's vision, which was backed up by hard work and admirable diligence, though it might not have been precise and clear even to Roni himself, would take them forward. Azulai was smart enough not to intervene, a great business decision in its own right.

Prosperity and growth were the signs of the time, and Tel Aviv teemed with young people and tourists and foreign investors and Russian immigrants and frazzled soldiers, each in his or her own way needing a glass of something, which Roni happily and competently provided. He moved into an apartment in a high-rise on Basel Street with a view of the sea and a sixty-square-meter balcony with a wooden deck, scored the best weed from acquaintances who did reserve military duty in Lebanon, and
puffed sweet smoke into the warm skies of the Middle East, usually in the company of a pretty young girl. He cultivated a trendy beard and allowed his curls to grow.

He worked hard—harder than he had ever worked before. Being a boss was a learning curve for a kibbutznik: managing finances, wages, income tax, and social security. Being tough, unpleasant. Maintaining a daily routine. In the morning, after a coffee and cigarette on the deck, he'd arrive alone, sit in the office, and go over the bills, the orders, and the calls, and receive suppliers. The first workers showed up toward noon, and the initial customers began trickling in. Afternoons he freed up for his studies. His second year suffered significantly due to the workload at the bar, but he didn't want to stop school entirely and focused his efforts on those hours. He returned to the bar in the early evening, made sure everything was ready, and at some point lost track of time. Time stretched and whirled like a small tornado that came through the gates of Bar-BaraBush a little after nine and exited its doors after midnight: shards of memory, a conspicuous incident or two—usually shouting in the kitchen or a celebrity customer—and a general buzz in the air, sore feet, the smell of frothy beer at the pouring stations. The time he liked most came just before one. The pressure eased, but the place still teemed with people, who continued to pour in from cinemas, from restaurants, or after a long day at work. Those were his favorite customers. They had more time on their hands. That was when Roni took charge of the bar, poured, chatted, flirted. Invited customers to join him for a chaser on the house, and at some stage turned to fill his glass with water. If things were really quiet, he'd move to a barstool and cradle a glass of Scotch on the rocks between his fingers.

H
e didn't have friends. But in the small hours, the quiet ones, people came to sit with him. Customers he met there and who became regulars, random customers who passed through and whom he'd never
see again. Colleagues from the restaurant and hospitality industry who talked business. And faces from the past: from the commando unit, from his kibbutz, from the surrounding kibbutzim. How they knew to go there, Roni didn't have a clue. But they drank. And after they drank, they rambled on.

Yifat came in one night. His sweet Yifat from high school who'd broken his heart. She was with another guy and ignored Roni, apart from a few glances. She came in the following day and apologized. She didn't want to have to explain things to her boyfriend. They were serious, she said, and she didn't want to jeopardize anything. She really hoped it would work out this time. She ate lunch and drank a little wine and told Roni that she was doing well. She had “found herself” in Tel Aviv, studied fashion at Shenkar, didn't miss the kibbutz.

“And I think that Yoav,” she said, “is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He has a band. Wow, it's so weird for us to be sitting here and talking about it. You don't mind, right? I'm sure you have lots of girlfriends.” She giggled.

He glanced at his watch, bored, and told her he needed to head out for a while, she could join him if she liked.

“Out for a while?” she asked.

He showed her his apartment with the wooden deck and poured her another glass of wine. At some point she told him she wanted to tickle his funny beard, and they spent the next two hours in bed—since her childhood she had learned a few things, loosened up—until she looked at the alarm clock and said, her hair disheveled, “Wow, I have to get home,” and he never saw her again. He didn't care.

A few weeks later, as the night was winding down, Baruch Shani came into the bar. Holy shit, what happened to him? was Roni's first thought. Baruch from the cattle, from the commando unit, Roni's mentor, who'd transformed a few young girls on the kibbutz into women. Now—balding, unkempt, a strange twitch at the corner of his mouth—he drank with an unhealthy disposition. Not an end-of-the day drink to air out the thoughts, but drinking for the sake of drinking. He appeared to have been through a rough time; however, Baruch didn't want to talk about it but rather about days gone by, and Roni didn't press him, he
had learned not to press, whoever comes by is welcome, whoever wants to talk can talk, and whoever wants to can keep quiet.

After a few beers, Baruch recounted how he had slept with Orit from Roni's class at school, when she was fourteen and Baruch twenty-three. It wasn't news to Roni—he remembered seeing Orit slipping into Baruch's sleeping bag at the summer camp—but he was curious now to hear all the details. Baruch told him that Orit was now happily married with two children in Kiryat Ono, and that efforts he'd made to renew the connection, including recently, were met with stubborn resistance. “She's still beautiful,” he summed up, as if to explain the reason behind her refusal.

Baruch came to the bar from time to time, always looking the same, swallowing words and drinking and rambling on about the past. Roni wasn't able to understand what he was doing with himself. He mumbled something about a job in insurance, but Roni couldn't imagine him selling insurance to anyone in his state.