The Hilltop (57 page)

Nir was shown the door after a night of rage when he drank one beer too many and swung a fist just centimeters from Shaulit's ear. The fist struck the wall of their bedroom and left behind an indentation that remained clearly visible. Shaulit looked at it every time Nir begged her to give him another chance. The indentation gave her the strength to withstand the onslaught. What was the punch for? Nir didn't remember, perhaps he no longer even knew he'd swung it, with all the alcohol swimming in his head, but Shaulit remembered well: Zvuli had been crying all that day, he was teething, probably, and perhaps his tummy was hurting, too. He clung to Shaulit. And then Tchelet and Amalia started fighting over a hairband in the other room. Shaulit yelled at them, but because she was breast-feeding Zvuli, she couldn't intervene. She could hear the discordant notes from the hammock in the yard and called to her husband again and again, and then yelled. Finally he came in with red eyes and slammed the door behind him. “What? What? What? Can't you hear I'm trying to work on a song?”

Shaulit ignored his Four Questions. “Go see what the problem is with the girls.” The two girls were shouting and pulling at each other's hair, and Zvuli, perhaps in solidarity, had broken away from his mother's breast and joined in the general crying. Nir went to the girls and forcibly separated them. When he turned around, the battle resumed.

He turned back again, yelled “Enough!” and violently pulled Amalia off Tchelet. He pushed her forcefully to the one side of the room and her sister to the other.

The girls cried louder. Zvuli, too. “What are you doing?” Shaulit shouted. “Have you gone mad?”

“Quiet. Stay in the room, it's none of your business.”

“What do you mean, none of my business?” Shaulit tried to approach Tchelet, who was howling louder still.

Nir blocked her path. “I said stay in the room!” he growled, and pushed her into the room, the look in his eyes wild and unforgettable. The girls' wailing continued, Zvuli was screaming, Shaulit tried again to approach, and Nir pushed her and she yelled and he pushed her up against the wall and slammed a fist centimeters from her ear. And then, bless the Lord, turned and left.

With every visit Nir begged forgiveness and said he'd made a mistake. Explained he was going through a stressful period. Mentioned Jenia Freud's exposure as the mole. “I did something for the hilltop when I uncovered the secret,” he once said, “and in return they throw me out?” His estranged wife shot a glance at the indentation in the wall and didn't respond.

The night of the dent, he slept in the playground. In the middle of the night he opened his eyes suddenly and saw a shooting star and a frightening thought paralyzed him: Everything is so transient, everything can vanish in a second. Not only here. Everywhere in the world. But here especially. Everything you have can be lost. Our holy Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches us to go out into nature, to sit among the trees with the chirping of the birds, the wind on the air, to see the stars, the moon, to speak to God, to tell Him everything, to shout, to sing, to dance, to return home at ease and happy and loving. He fell asleep with a smile and in the morning came home filled with remorse. Shaulit said she wanted to separate. He promised he wouldn't drink. She said it made no difference what he was going to do, she didn't want him at home. When he insisted, she threatened to go to the rabbi, the neighbors, tell them what he'd done. He asked for one night's grace. Pack your things and leave, she said. He packed hurriedly and left, carrying a suitcase to his battered metallic-sky-blue Subaru.

He drove along the ring road, agitated and humiliated, and stopped outside the Assis family's home. Gitit was in the yard with one of her
young brothers. Nir lowered the window and, with a curled finger, instructed her to come over. When she approached, he suggested she get into the car and join him for a drive. She didn't understand why the car all of a sudden, why a drive all of a sudden.

“Do you need my dad?” she asked.

“No, you.” Nir Rivlin, his skullcap slipped forward on his head, looked up at her and smiled. And then said, “I know about you.”

“What?”

“With the Ethiopian.”

Her eyes widened. She tried to hide the panic. “What? What are you talking about?”

Minutes after failing with his wife, Nir again tried to impose his will: “If you don't want me to tell your dad, come with me for a drive.”

“A drive? What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”

Perhaps he had lost his mind? Good God.

He drove off. Slept a few nights at his parents' house in Beit El. Called Shaulit every day. Eventually returned and found a room with a separate entrance in Ma'aleh Hermesh A. Promised the landlords that it was only temporary, “maybe a month.” Had been living there for several months by then. One afternoon, after he again tried to persuade Shaulit, she fixed him with an alienated stare he wasn't familiar with and said in a cold, self-confident voice, “Nir, I don't want to live with you, why don't you get that?” He left the house and went to the neighbor's house and saw Gitit. He proposed that she marry him in exchange for his silence. She inquired into the possibility that he had fallen completely off the rails. When he declared that he was serious, she snickered. When he finished with “Well, what do you say?” she turned and walked away. He entered her father's home.

Gitit was sent to the Eshet Chayil all-girls' religious high school in Samaria.

Major General Giora received an urgent call from his friend and promised to punish the out-of-line soldier and remove him from the settlement. But Yoni's discharge date was drawing nearer anyway, and his commander, Omer Levkovich, convinced the battalion commander
to leave Yoni at the settlement until then, and promised to prevent any chance of a relationship or contact between Gitit and Yoni: when she came home to the outpost for Sabbath vacations, Yoni would be sent home.

Gitit didn't tell her father about Nir's indecent proposals, but on one of the cold Sabbath nights on which she returned from the religious boarding school, the Vayigash Torah portion, Shaulit asked her outside the synagogue how she was doing. The “Okay” accompanied by a shrug and a sad smile left much room for interpretation. Shaulit placed her slender-fingered hand on Gitit's arm and asked, “Perhaps you'd like to come over after dinner?” Gitit smiled and didn't reply. Just the thought of the questions her father would ask, his suspicions. She preferred not to leave the house until the ride to Jerusalem on Monday morning. But later, when the house went quiet, after her brothers and sisters had fallen asleep, and her parents were also in bed and the stillness of the Sabbath had settled in; after the Sabbath timer had turned out the light in the living room and left her in darkness, she remembered Shaulit's invitation. She didn't feel like sleeping, too many thoughts and emotions swirled inside her. Silently she stepped out the house into the darkness of the hilltop. Beilin accompanied her a fair distance and then barked in farewell. The crisp air filled her with thoughts and memories and longing and passion, and she inhaled it. When she passed by Shaulit's home, she glanced over and saw her sitting outside on the bench swing.

“Good that you came,” Shaulit said, “I've just made a pot of tea.”

They hadn't spoken much during their years as neighbors, but something about their new circumstances made them bond. A covenant of the outcasts. The women who did the unthinkable—the one threw out her husband, the other guilty of forbidden relations. On that initial night Gitit told of her life after. It was hard for her at Eshet Chayil, but she felt she was moving closer to God and becoming more resolved in her faith and her opinions, was invigorated by the sense of togetherness of the girls when they sang Hasidic songs or danced Hasidic dances—lovely girls, Ethiopians, too. Shaulit nodded, noticed the young girl's gnawed fingernails.

The next time the religious schoolgirl was out for the Sabbath, she
came again, and again they swung outside in thick sweaters and long skirts, and this time she spoke about Yoni. Before leaving, she said, “You're the first one I've told the whole truth,” and Shaulit smiled and caressed her. It was raining the next time, and when Shaulit smiled at her in synagogue, Gitit couldn't wait for the moment her family would go to sleep. This time, clutching cups of tea in the cramped kitchen and taking care not to wake the children, she told Shaulit about Nir's bizarre marriage proposal.

Shaulit remained silent. She stood to pour water from the urn and then sliced a cake. Gitit kept her eyes on her in the kitchen. “Oy, I'm sorry, I was wrong,” she said, “I shouldn't have told you. I think he was joking, he didn't mean . . .” Her voice died. Shaulit sat down again, slowly sipped the tea, stared blankly.

“I don't think he was joking,” she said. “Maybe he didn't mean to actually get married, but he was after something. The fact is, the moment you said no, he went in and told your father.” Zvuli mumbled something and then wailed and they both jumped to attention, but he went quiet. “Don't be sorry for telling me,” Shaulit continued, “it's important that I know. He comes here asking for forgiveness. Sometimes I consider giving him another chance.” She raised her eyes. “Okay, I'm terribly tired.”

They hugged at the door and Gitit left. Shaulit turned and went to the bed and hugged the pillow and wept. Nir was a good father. He told her every time that he had changed, come to terms with the mistakes he made, stopped drinking, that for the sake of the children . . . Relentless pressure. She didn't want to go to the rabbi or to Othniel because she didn't want to hurt him anymore. She didn't want to distance him from the girls because they needed him and he them. She needed him, too. She had stood firm until now, and as she sobbed into the pillow in bed, she knew she'd continue to do so. It's hard alone but not impossible, her mother did it with six. And now she finally understood, Nir was not the man for her. She didn't want him to sleep in bed with her, didn't want to spend her life with him. He'd always be the father of her children, and with that he'd have to make do. She'd go to synagogue tomorrow without a head covering, she decided, publicly and openly announce her new status, for everyone to know, and herself, too, that it was final.

“Mommy,” suddenly came the voice of Tchelet, her younger daughter, three and a half. She had gotten out of bed and now brought her head close to the head of her mother. “Why are you crying?”

Shaulit burst into another wave of tears and gathered the girl to her. “Oy, my sweet one.”

“Why are you crying, Mommy?”

“I'll be fine,” Shaulit answered, and sniffed, trying to smile.

“Are you sad 'cause Daddy's gone?”

“No, sweet Tchelet. I'm fine. Look, no more crying, okay? Give me a kiss and a hug.” Tchelet spread her small, warm arms and wrapped them around her mother's neck, and then climbed back into her bed and fell asleep.

N
ir showed up that crisp and cold Friday morning, the guitar strap over his shoulder and in his head the songs he'd composed for the girls and the baby, and while he was still on his way over, he saw Shaulit out walking with the stroller and sweet Zvuli with his first two tiny teeth and light curly hair, with a piece of cucumber in his hand, smiling naturally and unconditionally at the sight of his father. Nir kissed his son excitedly, raised his eyes, and noticed the loose and beautiful hair of his estranged wife, and his heart soured within him because he realized he was no longer the only man who'd be able to enjoy the sight of it. And while he considered what to say and how to address the matter, he spotted the ruins of the cabin on the edge of the cliff and his jaw dropped and he asked, “What the hell?”

*  *  *

Musa Ibrahim asked the very same jaw-dropping question that morning. He rose shortly before sunrise, prayed, drank three spoons of olive oil and a cup of tea, ate something, and went on his way. The smell caught him first. What's burning? He reached his olive groves and stood fixed there for several seconds, couldn't comprehend what he was seeing, struggled
to understand the change that had been made to the landscape of his life. Something finally clicked into place in his brain; he took out his cell phone and pressed the buttons and said to his sleepy son, “Nimer, come to the grove.” He did nothing while he waited. Didn't want to go near. Those trees, he thought, were here for hundreds of years before him and were supposed to remain hundreds of years after him, the earth's trees, not Palestine's and not Israel's, trees that don't care who's there and who's in control and who builds above the earth. That's all nonsense to them, the real world is under the earth, and there they are deeply and widely rooted.

Nimer arrived in a gray sweatshirt bearing the words
Battalion 13—The Wild Ones
, and together they went down to the damaged trees. Twelve olive trees had been torched and chopped down. It emerged later that others had suffered damage, too: trees in other groves and plantations, the tires of cars were slashed, windows were smashed. Musa and Nimer worked in silence, cleaned up, cleared away branches, cooled still-smoldering trunks with water, fetched burlap sacks and wrapped the stumps in them. A burial ceremony.

When they had finished, Nimer said to his father, “Go home to rest, Dad. I'll saw the branches and finish cleaning here.”

Musa asked his son, “Do you think it's Roni?” Nimer thought and replied, “Who could it be? Who'd want to get back at us?”

“But why now? A long time has passed since we went with the Japanese. The harvest was already a few months ago, many olives, a lot of money from the Japanese. Maybe he was angry. But the season was over a long time ago.”

“God knows, we spoke about it, didn't we? He couldn't stop pestering us. Didn't stop calling. And came and shouted, clutching that contract and claiming you signed. They said he got depressed. The Jew's a snake, how can you trust him?”