What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories

by Nathan Englander

What she saw when she rounded the house and passed the big tree and stood at the edge was a battle being raged inside Israel like none she had ever seen. The village below was practically afire, not with the force of Israeli aggression, but with the unleashing of a new kind of Palestinian rage. The bypass roads that had sprung up throughout her lifetime were blocked, tires burning at every edge. There was the sound of light arms, at first intermittent and then turning frequent as more Arabs than she ever knew existed streamed out to fight the Israeli soldiers who’d already arrived. In the sky, coming from Jerusalem, she could see the lights of the Black Hawks and Cobras as the helicopters raced their way. And then she saw nothing as the helicopters went dark so as to enter the fight in stealth. Of all the ends to this country she’d imagined, this was not one foreseen. She did not think, since the time of its founding, that it had ever known such violence to rise up within its borders.

  That is when she noticed Rena at her side, handing her an Uzi to match her own.

  “Do you think,” Aheret said, “the whole country is like this?”

  “It’s another intifada,” Rena said. “Look,” she added, pointing to a vehicle of the Palestinian Authority. “Which naïve Jew thought it was safe to give them guns? And on a holy day again they attack.” Rena turned toward the tree and looked down at the battle truly raging below. She said, “Tonight it comes down. We can never let ourselves be sneaked up on again.”

  Rena rushed back to the shack. And, wearing her festival dress, she returned with an ax in hand.

  “It is yom tov tonight,” Aheret said. “Forbidden.”

  “In an emergency such measures are allowed.” She handed the ax to her daughter, who did not take it from her.

  “I won’t,” Aheret said. “The soldiers fight. The Arabs do not yet come up the hill. And still, if the war shifts this way, seeing it overtake us from the window won’t help us to survive.”

  “Insolent daughter,” Rena said. “I’ll do it myself.” And Rena pulled up her sleeves, and she hacked and hacked at that tree. Rena chopped for hours, and no one heard a single blow echo off the mountains, drowned out as they were by the fight.

  This time, Rena did not stop because she was tired. She did not stop because her arms were weak. She would not let age get in her way, or the pains of her body, or the shortness of breath. She did not even heed Aheret’s calls from the shack when the girl told her it was too much and to quit for the night. Rena did not stop until that tree was felled. And it was the sound of it hitting that sent Aheret back outside in the morning light.

  What the girl found was the tree fallen over, and Rena fallen at its side. Her mother held the ax in one hand, and the other reached across her chest, grabbing at that ax-holding arm. Rena’s face had gone slack, a racking pain clearly troubling one side. And Aheret could see on this woman—who’d aged a hundred years in a night, and breathed in the most labored fashion—a terror in her eyes.

  Aheret took mercy. She leaned down to count out Rena’s pulse. She had, as said, done her national service with the aged on those two hills, and was well versed in the maladies that struck its residents with time.

  “Am I dying?” Rena said.

  Aheret thought about this. And the honest answer—she would bet on it—was the one she gave: “No. No, you are not.”

  “Call the ambulance,” Rena said.

  “Yes,” Aheret said, but it was not the Yes of affirmation, but of considered thought. Aheret was consumed with the question of Rena’s current state and how it compared with her own. “I will call, Mother, absolutely. But the issue at hand is, when? It is—you are right—permissible to pick up a phone on a holy day if it is a life-and-death situation. But the fact that you are still with us may mean the danger has already passed.”

  “I think,” Rena said, “a heart attack.”

  And Aheret said, “I think you are right. But if it was big enough to be fatal, I’m fairly sure you’d already be dead. What is at stake now, my guess, from my limited knowledge, is the extent of the recovery you may expect. That is where speed is of the essence.”

  “What do you say, daughter?” Rena said, looking panicked and confused in the dirt.

  “I’d imagine, if we get you help in a hurry, you’ll be fine altogether once again. You will be your old self. This is not a question of life and death; what it is, is a question of life and quality of life. If I leave you here by your tree until the end of the holiday, if I wait until it’s permissible to use a phone, I can’t say that things will turn out well at all. If you think you are weak now, Mother, if you think you are in pain, then understand, just lifting a glass to your mouth for a sip of water will feel like carrying this mountain on your back. I have seen the old people with damaged hearts and soggy lungs. It is not a life to be lived.”

  “A commandment,” Rena said. “To honor your parents. You must.”

  “Not when your parent tells you to break a holy law.”

  “Permissible! No matter what.” And again Rena puffed out a feeble “Life and death.”

  “But you are still living, with all these minutes ticked by. No, I really don’t see it as such. We will ask those three wise rabbis to convene after the holiday and decide, and they will tell us if, by law, I did what’s right.”

  “Cursed girl,” Rena said.

  “What you mean is ‘cursed daughter.’ Not long under this roof and already I learn from you how to get my way. Never in that other house would such a thought have been born. Now listen close, it’s very simple: If you free me, I will call right now. I will see you to the hospital and I will—on my word—tend to you until you are back up on your feet. I will do it, not as your daughter, but as a daughter of Israel and of this settlement. I will treat you as I would have before you ever cashed in your bond. Free me, and I call. Free me, and there is a great chance you will be able to walk again, and live again, and return to a normal life. Free me, and you’ll be able to dress yourself, and walk yourself, and enjoy what years you have left. Don’t you want that? A trade? Your freedom for mine.”

  “Don’t need it,” she said, breathing out short and heavy. “Don’t need to take care, don’t need to walk.”

  “How can you say that?” Aheret yelled.

  “Because I have you to take care.”

  IV: 2011

  Dmitry and Lisa stand on the edge of the hill and stare at an endless stretch of security wall. “Most of it’s just fence in these parts” is what their real estate agent says, “but here, because the village is so close and because the fighting back at the start was so fierce, they’ve got a good rebar concrete wall running the whole way. You can’t do any better when it comes to security than that. And no need even to think about it. Really, put it out of your mind. This stretch has been quiet for going on ten years. Still, no one should be unwary in these parts. God forbid something were ever to start up—look, no direct line of fire, no sniper trouble, no hiding under your bed. Intifada Three starts, and I promise you, it won’t make a peep in your life.”

  “And Internet,” Dmitry says. “Out here in the boondocks, is the building wired for high speed?”

  “Every unit,” the agent says, “and over there,” he says, pointing to the obelisk on the giant boulder at the edge of the hill, “hidden behind it are signal boosters, so even if you don’t get your own router, the whole town, free Wi-Fi, and the best cell-phone service between here and Dubai. Do you want to see upstairs?”

  “Let’s see upstairs,” Lisa says, and then apologizes for her accent. “You’d never believe,” she says, “that the two of us fell in love in the same ulpan class—his Hebrew so much better than mine.”

  “The Russians learn quick,” the real estate agent says, smiling at Dmitry. And Dmitry smiles a strained smile in return.

  On the way into the apartment building, Lisa looks back at the wall. “I mean, are they okay?” she says. “Do they treat the Palestinians all right on the other side of the wall? We are kind of left-wing, you know. I mean, for the
space, we’ll live here, for the extra bedrooms, but, you know, we feel bad for the Arabs, with all the roadblocks and things like that.”

  Now Dmitry smiles a real smile. “She doesn’t want to live among radicals,” he says. “She’s from Cherry Hill, in America. They worry about equal everything over there.”

  “ ‘Radicals’?” the real estate agent says, completely surprised by the notion. “No, always this place, since the seventies, this town has gotten along with its neighbors. Always friendly relations, and attending one another’s weddings. It was all very close over here until the First Intifada broke out. Until then, where one place ended and the other started, who knew?”

  “Because we don’t want the politics,” Lisa says. “I mean the building is beautiful, and the area—it’s just stunning. But we’re not settlers. And we don’t want to be surrounded by that sort.”

  Here the real estate agent walks them through what could be their new kitchen, and what could be their new living room, and presses the button that raises the automatic security shade. He leads them out onto what could be their new balcony, all the while continuing to talk.

  “If you mean those crazy Levinger-type settlers, then not at all,” he says directly to Lisa, who listens. The words glance off Dmitry, who takes an owner’s stance, leaning on the bar of the balustrade and staring out, pretending that it’s already his view. “Are there stubborn people here?” the real estate agent asks. “Sure! There are plenty of stubborn—like with all good Israelis.” He points to a little shack beneath the balcony, around which the building’s carports were built. “The old woman there,” he says, and Lisa and Dmitry follow his finger, “she needed the money for selling the land, but she wouldn’t, for any amount, let the developer buy her out. There is that kind of steadfastness. And where do you get that from but the real salt of the earth?” As if to demonstrate his point, rolling down a ramp out of the shack’s front door comes a wheelchair with an old woman in it, and pushed by a drawn middle-aged woman behind.

  “Do you see?” the real estate agent says. “Sweet as sugar. Those are the kind of people that founded this place. That’s who the old-type neighbors will be. A sick elderly mother, and a daughter who gives over her life to care for her. Every time I’m here, I see that pair rolling around, just minding their own business. You two will be happy here,” he says, “I promise. This is the kind of hill on which to make a life.”

  How We Avenged

  the Blums

  If you head out to Greenheath, Long Island, today, you’ll find that the school yard where Zvi Blum was attacked is more or less as it was. The bell at the public school still rings through the weekend, and the bushes behind the lot where we played hockey still stand. The only difference is that the sharp screws and jagged edges of the jungle gym are gone, the playground stripped of all adventure, sissified and padded and covered with a snow of shredded tires.

  It was onto this lot that Zvi Blum, the littlest of the three Blum boys, stepped. During the week we played in the parking lot of our yeshiva, where slap shots sent gravel flying, but on Shabbos afternoons we ventured onto the fine, uncracked asphalt at the public school. The first to arrive for our game, Zvi wore his helmet with the metal face protector snapped in place. He had on his gloves, and held a stick in his hand.

  Zvi worked up a sweat playing a fantasy game while he waited for the rest of us to arrive. After a fake around an imaginary opponent, he found himself at a real and sudden halt. The boy we feared most stood before him. It was Greenheath’s local anti-Semite, with a row of friends beyond. The Anti-Semite had, until then, abided by a certain understanding. We stepped gingerly in his presence, looking beaten, which seemed to satisfy his need to beat us for real.

  The Anti-Semite took hold of Zvi’s face mask as if little Blum were a bowling ball.

  Zvi looked past the bully and the jungle gym, through the chain-link fence, and up Crocus Avenue, hoping we’d appear, a dozen or more boys, wearing helmets, wielding sticks. How nice if, like an army, we’d arrived.

  The Anti-Semite let go of Zvi’s mask.

  “You Jewish?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zvi said.

  “You don’t know if you’re Jewish?”

  “No,” Zvi said. He scratched at the asphalt with his hockey stick.

  The bully turned to his friends, taking a poll of suspicious glances.

  “Your mother never told you?” the Anti-Semite asked.

  Zvi shifted his weight and kept on with his scratching. “It never came up,” he said.

  Zvi remembered a distinct extended pause while the Anti-Semite considered. Zvi thought—he may have been wishing—that he saw the first of us coming down the road.

  He was out cold when we got there, beaten unconscious with his helmet on, his stick and gloves missing. We were no experts at forensics, but we knew immediately that he’d been worsted. And because he was suspended by his underwear from one of the bolts on the swing set, we also knew that a wedgie had been administered along the way.

  We thought he was dead.

  We had no dimes even to make a telephone call, money being forbidden on the Sabbath. We did nothing for way too long. Then Beryl started crying, and Harry ran to the Vilmsteins, who debated, while they fetched the mukzeh keys, which of them should drive in an emergency.

  · · ·

  Some whispered that our nemesis was half Jewish. His house was nestled in the dead end behind our school. And the ire of the Anti-Semite and his family was said to have been awakened when, after he’d attended kindergarten with us at our yeshiva for some months, and had been welcomed as a little son of Israel, the rabbis discovered that only his father was Jewish. The boy, deemed Gentile, was ejected from the class and led home by his shamefaced mother. Rabbi Federbush latched the back gate behind them as the boy licked at the finger paint, nontoxic and still wet on his hands.

  We all knew the story, and I wondered what it was like for that boy, growing up—growing large—on the other side of the fence. His mother sometimes looked our way as she came and went from the house. She didn’t reveal anything that we were mature enough to read—only kept on, often with a palm pressed to the small of her back.

  · · ·

  After Zvi’s beating, the police were called.

  My parents wouldn’t have done it, and let that fact be known.

  “What good will come?” my father said. Zvi’s parents had already determined that their son had suffered nothing beyond bruising: his bones were unbroken and his brain unconcussed.

  “Call the police on every anti-Semite,” my mother said, “and they’ll need a separate force.” The Blums thought differently. Mrs. Blum’s parents had been born in America. She had grown up in Connecticut and attended public school. She felt no distrust for the uniform, believed the authorities were there to protect her.

  The police cruiser rolled slowly down the hill with the Blums in procession behind it. They marched, the parents and three sons, little Zvi with his gauze-wrapped head held high.

  The police spoke to the Anti-Semite’s mother, who propped the screen door open with a foot. After her son had been called to the door for questioning, Mrs. Blum and Zvi were waved up. They approached, but did not touch, the three brick steps.

  It was word against word. An accusing mother and son, a pair disputing, and no witnesses to be had. The police didn’t make an arrest, and the Blums did not press charges. The retribution exacted from the Anti-Semite that day came in the form of a motherly chiding.

  The boy’s mother looked at the police, at the Blums, and at the three steps between them. She took her boy by the collar and, pulling him down to a manageable height, slapped him across the face.

  “Whether it’s niggers or kids with horns,” she said, “I don’t want you beating on those that are small.”

  · · ·

  We’d long imagined that Greenheath was like any other town, except for its concentration of girls in ankle-length jean skirts and white canv
as Keds, and boys in sloppy oxford shirts, with their yarmulkes hanging down as if sewn to the side of their heads. There was the fathers’ weekday ritual. When they disembarked from the cars of the Long Island Railroad in the evenings, hands reached into pockets and yarmulkes were slipped back in place. The beating reminded us that these differences were not so small.

  Our parents were born and raised in Brooklyn. In Greenheath, they built us a Jewish Shangri-la, providing us with everything but the one crucial thing Brooklyn had offered. It wasn’t stickball or kick the can—acceptable losses, though nostalgia ran high. No, it was a quality that we were missing, a toughness. As a group of boys thirteen and fourteen, we grew healthy, we grew polite, but our parents thought us soft.

  Frightened as we were, we thought so, too, which is why we turned to Ace Cohen. He was the biggest Jew in town, and our senior by half a dozen years. He was the toughest Jew we knew, the only one who smoked pot, who had ever been arrested, and who owned both a broken motorcycle and an arcade version of Asteroids. He left the coin panel open and would play endlessly on a single quarter, fishing it out when he was finished. In our admiration, we never considered that at nineteen or twenty we might want to move out of our parents’ basements, or go to college. We thought only that he lived the good life—no cares, no job, his own Asteroids, and a minifridge by his bed where he kept his Ring Dings ice-cold.

  “Not my beef, little Jew boys” is what he told us when we begged him to beat up the Anti-Semite on our behalf. “Violence breeds violence,” he said, slapping at buttons. “Older and wiser—trust me when I tell you to let it go.”

  “We called the police,” Zvi said. “We went to his house with my parents and them.”

  “Unfortunate,” Ace said, looking down at little Zvi. “Unfortunate, my buddy, for you.”

  “It’s a delicate thing being Jewish,” Ace said. “It’s a condition that aggravates the more mind you pay it. Let it go, I tell you. If you insist on fighting, then at least fight him yourselves.”