The Hilltop (33 page)

Othniel Assis hurried over to welcome his friend Giora, the Central Command major general, who of course hadn't forgotten his sunglasses, and who in turn quickly introduced the minister to the more typical settler. “I'm pleased you came here to show us, to show all the Jewish people and the American president in particular, that you are behind us and won't lend a hand to the uprooting of settlement, minister, sir,” said Othniel, smiling as he held Shuv-el, who was clad in a white Sabbath shirt. Othniel knew what would look good in the papers. The minister smiled briefly at Othniel and, from the corner of his eye, glimpsed the lanky figure of Milton standing behind him. The ambassador was leaning in to ascertain whether the minister's response to the settler corresponded with his promises to the administration. Regrettably, the minister spoke in Hebrew.

“Come, I'll show you around,” Othniel said.

The minister looked around in an effort to locate his adviser on settlement affairs. The visit wasn't going as planned. He didn't feel in sufficient control of the way events were unfolding. A walk would only serve to intensify the heat and the sweat and the discomfort, and he hadn't had a chance yet to relieve himself of his suit, not to mention the large circles of sweat that must have formed by then on his light blue shirt—he peered down as if to brush away a fly from his tie and noticed its light color—and removing his suit would surely involve a fair amount of embarrassment and yet another opportunity for the cynical photographers to go to town at his expense. He spotted his aide, Malka.

“Come here, Malka,” the minister said, and Malka turned away from a warm handshake with Othniel and an embrace with Elazar Freud (one year his senior at their pre-military service yeshiva) to confer with his boss. Othniel's tour wasn't going to happen.

“Malka, find me somewhere to say a few words and we'll get the hell
outta here. I'm drowning in sweat.” The ambassador approached, and the minister tried not to roll his eyes.

“Milton! Good to see you.” He smiled. “What's got you out of bed so early on a Sunday morning?”

“Ha, ha,” Milton chuckled. “I guess my bosses really do believe it's important.” The minister, his right hand still in the right hand of the ambassador, broke into a loud laugh and slapped the American's shoulder with his free hand.

“Just look at him licking the Americans' asses,” Neta Hirschson whispered into the ear closest to her.

“Disgusting,” agreed Jean-Marc, her husband.

Beyond them, the Central Command major general was in conversation with the sector's company commander, Omer Levkovich, who then briefed the platoon of reinforcements.

Ambassador White, meanwhile, was asked by reporters what message he expected to hear from the defense minister that morning. “A message of peace, and of progress, within the framework of the law and the vital agreements reached between the countries in recent months,” he responded. The defense minister, his back to the ambassador and still speaking to Malka, heard the words and his body responded with another wave of perspiration. Everyone then walked the short distance from the synagogue, where the throng had formed, to the Mamelstein playground. The security guys led the way, followed by the aides of the dignitaries, the dignitaries themselves, the crowd, and the soldiers. Malka instructed the minister to stop alongside a yellow swing set. Ambassador White, Central Command Major General Giora, and the outpost's longest-serving resident, Othniel, then lined up alongside him—click—that was the photograph that appeared the next day in the morning papers: bright, almost overexposed, the minister visibly uneasy and squinting his eyes against the high sun, the Central Command major general authoritative and sure of himself in sunglasses, a tall and content ambassador, and Othniel displaying the ease of a landowner. Close behind, but out of range of the cameras, stood the minister's aide, Malka, and Omer Levkovich. Jehu and Killer trotted jauntily back and forth along the edge of the park, and one of the bodyguards kept a constant eye on them.

“Good evening, everyone, excuse me, good morning,” the minister began. Sporadic laughter rang out.

“Shame on you!” shouted Neta Hirschson. “Coming here as the emissary of the American president—”

“Shhh . . . Let him speak,” someone said. Two soldiers approached Neta.

“I'm not here as the emissary of any president, please hear me out and be patient—”

“Patient? How can you expect us to be patient when you're selling out the country to foreigners and screwing us over?”

“Excuse me, madam, you focus on abiding by the law and the Americans won't make any demands on us.” He diverted his gaze away from Neta Hirschson to a nonspecific point above her, beyond her, catching sight of the white desert hills, the crevices of the Hermesh Stream riverbed. “It's beautiful here,” he continued, almost in surprise, “and there's no denying our rights here. But we must respect the law. Mistakes have been made, by the government of Israel, too. There are many legitimate settlements, but there are also some that have been established in places where they shouldn't have been. What I've come here today to say . . .” He cast his eyes over the gathering. The sun had brought out large beads of sweat across his brow. The tie practically choked him. Malka handed him a bottle of water and he sipped from it. “. . . is that we are going to make a few adjustments. And these adjustments will come at a price—”

“How dare you?” Neta now yelled. “What adjustments? What price? What's he talking about?”

“Madam, allow me to finish.”

“Let go of me!” the cosmetician shouted at the soldiers now holding her by the arms. Her husband, Jean-Marc, screamed at them in French, mentioning the Holocaust.

“Guys, guys, let her—” the minister tried, turning to look at the major general. “Giora . . . Madam, allow me to finish. There'll be adjustments, there'll be a price to pay, but the government of Israel won't stop supporting—” His address was then interrupted by the intensely loud barking of a large, angry sand-colored dog.

“Beilin! Quiet, Beilin,” Gitit shouted in an effort to silence the dog. “Beilin! Beilin!” The defense minister, his eyebrows scrunched up, looked at her, and then, unable to restrain himself, a half-smile appeared on his lips.

“Woof ! Woof ! Woof !” Beilin roared incessantly, drowning out all conversation, and Condoleezza joined in, running to the scene and barking loudly, and Killer started snorting, and the goats at Othniel's farm down the slope bleated in panic, and Sasson's camel cow looked up inquisitively from somewhere near the sentry post at the gate, chewing vigorously on some vegetation. But Beilin appeared to be directing his barks at one of the soldiers, who stared back at him.

“Beilin?” The soldier laughed. It was Yaakobi, who was part of the squad of reinforcements that was brought in from the base in Hebron. “Is that his name? What's up with him?”

Neta Hirschson, no longer in the clutches of the soldiers at the instruction of the major general, began yelling again. “Shame on you, coming here with the American ambassador and talking about adjustments. What adjustments? You've got a nerve!”

The minister threw in the towel. Much to his dismay, he wasn't going to get to the line he had intended to make the day's sound bite—a catchy, original phrase to come at the height of his address and later make the news headlines, to be relayed by the ambassador to his secretary of state, who would then convey the same to the president, a phrase he was particularly proud of, because he had thought of it himself. He turned and began walking toward his car, surrounded by bodyguards, sweating, reaching up a finger to undo the knot in his tie, and not caring who took his picture or what would appear in the newspapers. Grumbling to himself quietly, he removed his jacket and deposited it in the hands of Malka.

Neta Hirschson continued to shout, and approached the dignitaries. “Tell the American president that he doesn't stand a chance against us, because the king of the world is on our side!” she yelled as the ambassador walked past the slide. “What do Americans understand about the Israeli people's struggle against Arab brutality? Who asked you to come here? Have you come to weaken the Jewish people, who've returned to the Land of Israel after two thousand years of exile and persecution and
wars and pogroms and the Holocaust? Are you forcing us out of here—here, God's sanctuary, the land of our forefathers? You're throwing us out of here? And you dare to call that peace? Chutzpah!”

“Will someone shut that dog up!” barked the major general of the Central Command.

As the defense minister walked past, Neta Hirschson gathered up saliva in her mouth and spat. She hit one of his bodyguards. The minister observed the spit land on the bodyguard's shirt, turned his head toward Neta, and the next sentence to escape his lips—which, aside from one unmistakable word, wasn't picked up by any camera or recording device—became the subject of endless debate, consuming liters of ink and creating mountains of words and commentaries over the following days and weeks, and it, instead of the phrase he had thought up, became the sound bite heard round the world.

According to Neta Hirschson, the defense minister said: “Scram, you insolent savage! You and all your dog friends, scram!”

According to associates of the defense minister, he said, “Insolent savage,” and then turned to face the other way and said, “Scram! Will someone make those dogs go away already!”

And Beilin and Condoleezza said, “Woof, woof, woof ! Woof, woof, woof !” and bared their teeth.

And at that moment, it dawned on Yaakobi from the reinforcement squad: The extra row of teeth! The cross-eyed look! He was a lot bigger than the puppy Yaakobi had cared for a year earlier on the streets of Hebron, the one he'd sent away on the Hummer bound for Jerusalem, but it was him, no doubt about it.

“Holy shit!” the soldier cried out. “You named him Beilin? I don't believe it! Come here, sweet boy. Remember me? It's Yaakobi, from the base in Hebron.” And Beilin stopped barking and wagged his tail and walked toward Yaakobi with his head bowed and his tail wagging and snuggled into his embrace, abandoning himself to his caresses. And Condoleezza followed suit, happy and wagging her tail, and the commotion died down. The dignitaries climbed into their official vehicles, which immediately sped off, creating a cloud of dust on their way out of the outpost, and the residents dispersed to their respective homes, the soldiers to their bases, the reporters to their offices. But as for the reverberations
caused by the minister's visit, and as for the incident that would long be remembered as the “Scram Affair,” they had just then come to life, and wouldn't die down for a long time to come.

“T
here's never a dull moment with you guys, huh, Doctor?” said Herzl Weizmann when he turned up at the outpost that same afternoon. Though he was dark-haired and dark-skinned, the man's defining feature was albino-white eyelashes over one eye, which added a mysterious dimension to his every stare.

“Despite all the hoopla,” Herzl continued, “I wanted to come before Tisha B'Av. I've let you down too many times. Come, let's have a look. Oh my, what a sweet child! What's his name?” He stretched out a finger, with its blackened nail, to touch the nose of the tiny baby girl on Hilik's forearm.

Hilik lowered his gaze to his infant daughter and smiled at her under his mustache. He had almost forgotten she was there. “
Her
name,” he said, “is Yemima.” He didn't bother revealing to Herzl her full name, Yemima-Me'ara, with its reference to the incident in the cave. He didn't have the energy to go into the whole story. His memory drifted back to Simchat Habat, the naming ceremony for newborn Jewish girls. How long ago had it been? Two weeks? Three? After the birth of a child, the days and nights all seem to run into one another, a sweet jumble of constant fatigue, adapting to the new family structure, wondrous moments of awareness of the existence of this new living, demanding, nagging being, of efforts to somehow maintain a semblance of normal life—a meeting with the adviser at the university, reading books for his doctoral thesis, the appointment with Herzl Weizmann to move ahead with the renovations. At the naming ceremony, the blessing after the Sabbath morning prayer service, Nehama and Hilik had explained their choice to the community: Yemima, Job's beautiful daughter, the Hebrew expression
yamim-yemima
, days gone by, which evokes historical and deep-rooted ties to previous
generations, the words
yam
and
mayim
, sea and water, which occur in succession in the Hebrew spelling of the name; and the second part of her name, Me'ara, the Hebrew word for cave, the place where she chose to emerge into the world.

Hilik showed Herzl around the trailer, all the while wondering why he had allowed himself to get involved with the handyman in the first place, why he had given in to Othniel's pressure. With all due respect to Jewish labor, Hilik wasn't planning on building a villa. He was merely adding on half a shipping container, due for delivery any day now—a simple job that Kamal could complete within a few days and at a cost of next to nothing. Now this Herzl Weizmann guy, after rescheduling his visit several times, was talking to him about ideas that appeared to be too complicated and far too expensive.

Why had he given in to Othniel? Why should Othniel care if a local Palestinian got some work and made a little money? Kamal wasn't a terrorist, he was a good guy. There were some good apples, too, and they'd really had it rough in recent years. Hilik had talked with Roni the previous day. He wasn't about to speak out in favor of Roni's olive oil business with Musa—another good guy, as far as he knew, despite having jumped onto the IDF's D-9—but he was willing to admit to himself that he did agree with Roni on occasion. Herzl Weizmann from Mevasseret certainly talked the talk, but who knew if he was any good, or if his ideas were worth considering, and how much time and money would be involved. All Hilik wanted was a little more legroom and for the children to have space to grow up.