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

by Nathan Englander

  “I get that,” Josh says.

  Arnie is looking pleased. “Now how does it sound?”

  “Is everything a joke with you two? This is a witch-hunt. It’s harassment. Is that really your idea of justice? You’ve got an old man, who’s been through who knows what in life, standing off in the shadows, afraid.”

  “Let him know from some fear,” Agnes says. “Let him know worse.”

  “No,” Josh says. “It ends now.”

  “It ends when there’s action,” Arnie says. “You take it, or we take it. That’s how it stops.”

  “You want action from me?” Josh says. “You really want that? Fine, then. Here … here is action.”

  Arnie and Agnes watch as the director runs off, his own sneakers unlaced like the children’s. He races into the library at a gallop. Seconds later, he bursts back out the open door, his arms impossibly full, books and videos dropping as he charges their way.

  “No more Movie Mondays,” he screams, dropping his pile at Agnes’s and Arnies’s feet. And then, one after the other, he begins throwing books and videotapes into the fire. “Marathon Man, Boys from Brazil, Three Days of the Condor, Parallax View. I’m telling you,” he screams, “every paranoid Nazi favorite, every Ira Levin. I will leave you nothing but Grumpy Old Men and California Suite.”

  Josh stops only when he hears the young people laughing at him, enthralled with his tantrum. And from the old people, the opposite reaction: They are frozen, slack-jawed.

  “What?” Josh screams. “What?”

  They do not answer. And when their gazes shift, Josh’s gaze shifts with them back toward the library. It is one of the Polish girls coming up behind him. She has busied herself picking up the books he dropped. And now, stern-faced, a good helper, she tosses them into the flames from a distance, one after the other. In the firelight, the thrown books flutter, open-paged, like swallows. Josh watches the girl, like seeing a shadow of himself.

  Agnes is at Josh’s ear. “A book-burning. This, we never thought we’d see again.”

  Josh turns to her, his voice high, his eyes brimming and casting back the blaze. “I’m only destroying the ones that incite.”

  Arnie cackles at that. He is the only one of the old people laughing. “It is not those movies that get into our heads,” he says. “It is our heads that get into those movies. It is precisely because of history that such horrible things get thought.”

  · · ·

  The camp director’s table in the dining hall is like the captain’s table on a ship. It is a coveted place to be invited to eat, and Rabbi Himmelman had kept it full every meal, a mix of seniors and kids ferried over from the other side of the lake. Josh favors his meals alone, his only time to be at peace and think. And he knew, all summer long, that he was being judged for this lapse. Well, Josh is fixing that now, fixing it with Doley Falk. He invites him, along with his bridge partner, Shelley Nevins, to sit at his side. He does this for lunch, and then at dinner. To show leadership. To mend fences. But he can feel, oppressive, the eyes of those eight. They sit at one table now. And Arnie and Agnes no longer approach Josh with their requests. It is, Josh knows, now his job to approach them. Josh has lost the reins.

  He does this during dessert course, when young and old alike are most distracted.

  “Please,” Josh says in a loud whisper to Agnes and Arnie and the rest of their group. “It was a nice event in the end, okay? But what you did last night—”

  “A big hit!” Arnie says.

  “Yes, I’ve only just acknowledged it,” Josh says, mustering deference. “Still, the intent behind it … I don’t want to call the police for real.”

  “Who, on us?” Agnes says. “On us—over him? Go ahead,” she says. “Knock yourself out. I’ll break rocks for the rest of my days.”

  “They don’t break rocks anymore,” Arnie says. “No more license plates, either. Now it’s kid gloves, and high school diplomas.”

  “Nobody’s going to jail,” Josh says. “Not yet. That’s what I want to avoid.”

  “Someone needs jail,” Agnes says. “The fat man needs jail.”

  “Let me start again. Let me say it this way. How many nights are left this year? How many days to go?”

  “Two more nights,” one of the eight answers.

  “Exactly. Two. Can we not make it that long? I’ll give you my word. Swear to you—”

  “Jews don’t swear,” Agnes says. “Forbidden.”

  “Then promise. I give you my promise. You give me two days, and you’ll never see him again. I won’t have him back—even if he applies and sends a check.”

  “Not good enough,” Arnie says. “Blindness. Ignoring. These things will not do.”

  “What if,” Josh says, “what if I also accept some of what you say? What if we take that route?”

  “Go on,” Agnes says. And with her “Go on,” the eight seated at the table lean back and face him with a mix of cocked eyebrows and jutting chins, readying themselves for his pitch.

  “What if I admit,” Josh says, “that it’s possible? … No, not possible … What if I say that you’re right? And that maybe the man was there, a guard, in a camp, watching. Can we accept as a group that maybe he witnessed some things—that he took part, but only as a witness—and that if he was there doing nothing but watching, that maybe, at this point, around the world, all these years later, that maybe that’s the same as nothing at all?” They listen; they consider; they stare.

  It’s Arnie who speaks.

  “To murder is to murder. To stand by for a murder is to murder. To hide the history of murder is to murder. The turning away of the head is the same as turning the knife. If Doley was there,” Arnie says, “he should swing like Eichmann from the rope.”

  “Not so,” Josh says.

  Arnie shakes his head. “To watch and say nothing, it is as bad as the killing.”

  “Do you really think that?” Josh says. “Someone is a murderer even if he never laid a hand on a soul?”

  “Guilty is the watcher,” Agnes says. “Guilty, all.”

  · · ·

  That night, Josh again opens his eyes to the Blachors. This time, they hover above him, a dream. Josh screams silently, his mouth twisted up. He pulls wildly at the covers, trying to hide from the floating couple, their smoke detectors no longer detectors, but lenses fitted to their chests. Josh had read an article, seen a terrifying picture of a cow’s four-chambered stomach at work, a ruminating window patched into its side. It is this same setup in the dream, but the windows are set into the Blachors’ chests. And through each of those portholes, where the heart would go, Josh sees a giant solid-gold Jewish tooth beating. Josh stares at them: grotesque stolen artifacts patched up to leaky ventricles—those horrible teeth beating like bloody gold hearts. All the while, he pulls at the covers, whimpering, but the covers, as if carved of stone, won’t move.

  Josh wakes unsettled, unable to believe all is all right. He decides to walk the inner perimeter of the camp to make sure his charges are silent and safe. Josh opens his cabin door to scattered garbage, to a pair of raccoons, masked thieves, tumbling off his porch and ambling fatly away. Josh puts a hiking lamp on his head and walks off behind them. And he thinks, because of his terrible dream, that the light is his own lens to a shiny gold-tooth brain.

  The old folks’ side is perfectly silent, peaceful. Happy to discover this, starting to relax into the night, he drifts on over to the path around the lake. That is when he sees it, on the far side, the shapes moving, splashing around. He turns off his light, he listens to the silence, and now, using the moon, he walks.

  · · ·

  What Josh sees (and it’s not the first time this summer) is a forbidden night swim. It’s off at the far end of the lake, by the wooded dogleg that edges up to the deep. Josh waits until he’s closer to scream, “Kids! Out! And clothes back on.” There is scurrying, and splashing, and the usual signs of feeble escape. He sees a defiant one, maybe the head of swim staff, still fl
oating, not even trying to get away. “Charidan!” Josh calls. “I will dock you! I will dock your pay! This kind of example, for the kids!” he calls. And Charidan goes under the water, so that only one head remains bobbing nearby. “That’s right, stay under!” Josh calls. “That’s where you’ll find your check!” And he keeps calling, keeps threatening, keeps chiding as he moves closer. He does this to feel less alone in the night as he approaches, and he does this to give himself one more moment in the life that was, before accepting what surely woke him. It wasn’t the scritch-scratch of raccoon nails on his porch, or the blood of a gold-hearted dream. What drew him from bed, Josh knows, was the feel of a threat ignored too long. What pulled him to the lake was dear Doley Falk, in the midst of sinking. It was eight aged campers depositing their dead.

  The water is calm at the spot where he’d seen the body floating. The only ripple left to the lake is around Arnie, his head submerged to his eyes, and coming up, guppy-mouthed, for gasps of air.

  The others are barely hidden, shivering behind a thicket of trees. Josh, going to speak, says, “How did you move him?” surprised to hear this as the question that escapes from his mouth.

  “He walks,” Agnes says, “now he does not walk.”

  “Self-transporting,” Arnie says, forever the explainer.

  “Oh my God,” Josh says. “Please, tell me this is another loop in the dream. Please wake me, sweet Agnes,” Josh says. “Come up out of the water, Arnie. Tap me on the shoulder. Wake me with that stiff murdering hand.” It is a light tone that Josh uses, the way he used to talk to them before things turned bad.

  “We can’t wake you,” Agnes says. “It is, all of it, real.”

  “But, a murder?”

  “This is what happens when you fence people in,” Arnie says. “This is always true, and never changes. A rule. A camp is a camp, Herr Direktor. Inside, different kinds of justice will form.”

  Josh looks from face to face, and each one, sure, holds his gaze.

  “What do we do?” he says, beginning to panic.

  “You can call the police if you want,” Arnie says. “Twelve miles, you said. If anyone is awake, they can be here, fifteen minutes. With sirens, maybe less.”

  “Oh my God!” Josh yells again. “Oh my Lord, what have you done?”

  “This,” Agnes says, “you already know.”

  Arnie moves toward the shallows, rising from the water, a frail, brittle-boned man. “It’s not anymore what have we done,” he says. “It’s, what will you do? That’s the question. It’s you who gets to decide the end of our lives, and the end of your camp. It’s you who gets to choose if this moment is remembered at all.”

  “But I don’t,” Josh says. “You have decided already.”

  “We have decided one thing. You decide the rest. You can make it go away if you want, same as with the rabbi. Like Himmelman disappears, dirty fondler, without a trace. That crime your board can swallow? Then let them swallow this—justice served. A ravage avenged. Put this on your list of crimes.”

  “Even if I’d want to,” Josh says. “Even if that would be right—”

  “Simple boy,” Agnes says. “Naïve boy.”

  “Tell them,” Arnie says, “the police, the family, the world. A thousand pills a day between us. Tell them what, about us, they already think. Tell them Alzheimer’s, tell them mini-strokes, tell them brain plaque and sundowning. They will put up signs. They will search the woods. But they will understand; all will understand. There will be different kinds of dementia. They will accept that old Mr. Falk was taken over by one. If you help us to sink him down good, trap him in the weeds, in two days, three, the kids already gone, he will come back up. He will rise, an old man confused in pajamas, and no one will think past it twice. Consider the good you do, young Josh. Think of the good of this camp. Think, can all eight of us be so crazy, or is it possible that Agnes is right? It’s your choice, Director. You take one crime to bed with you every evening, take a second one tonight.”

  “What kind of choice is that?” Josh says. “What have you done to this man?”

  “To which man?” Agnes asks, honestly confused. “To him,” she says, pointing into the lake, “or to you?”

  And off to the side, all of them feel it. There is motion. A counselor maybe, a camper, crawling along the ground. Maybe it’s already a policeman watching, here to haul Josh and his seniors away. Josh turns on his headlamp, giving it a twist. The light follows his gaze, and this he turns to the stretch of grass between the soaking oldsters hidden in the trees and the soft edge of the lake where Arnie now stands, his feet planted in the mud.

  One of the old people says, “Look!” But, again, the light on his head—Josh already sees. Slow and steady, a pair of giant turtles first, and then another trio, slightly smaller, moving slowly behind. They are crossing in front of the thicket where the old people hide. “Like elephants,” Arnie says. “That’s how the turtles remember.”

  At this, Arnie steps up onto the grass, and the old people come closer, moving along with him, to Josh’s side. They watch this procession, standing together, murderers all. They watch those turtles on their slow march and behold those ancient creatures, shell-backed and the color of time, as they lower themselves, turtle upon turtle, disappearing into the stillness of the lake.

  The Reader

  He sits on a box of books in a storage room piled high with such boxes and remembers the old days, as he does every night on the road. A boy by the name of Todd pops in with a cup of coffee. He’s younger than the author, everyone so much younger now.

  “It’s instant,” Todd says, handing over the cup. “I hope that’s okay. The machine—the barista—it’s already shut down.”

  “Instant’s fine,” Author says, and takes a sip to prove it.

  This night, this is city six or city eight. It is the end of another day of Author’s driving around only to find an empty bookshop. Often the stores didn’t even have the books that were ordered, let alone an audience to buy them.

  Author is not ungrateful. The life he’d led, the writing life, it had been beyond his wildest dreams. He’d been treated generously over the years, touted and well received. Still, Author had put everything he had into this latest novel. Not just emotion, not just all he’d got in the gumption sort of way, but literally all he had. All his time, all his money, a hunk of his life. Of course, this is what every book had asked of him, that he forgo all distraction and every comfort, that he simply put his head down and work. But some decades are more delicate than others. And from this one, he’d lifted his eyes up and discovered that he was old.

  Author turns around to find Todd still standing there, observing him in his reverie. The boy pulls a handful of creamers from his pocket. He holds the little thimbles out in his palm, reaching right up to Author’s chin, as if Author were an old goat at a petting zoo.

  “No, thank you,” Author says, turning away. “Intolerant,” he says, “to lactose—among other things.”

  · · ·

  The last time Author read at this store, the barista had not gone home, the staff had not gone home, and the author hadn’t drunk coffee. The owner poured whiskey while chasing her starry-eyed workers away. Still, they rushed into the storeroom excitedly to say, “We don’t know where to put the people. The audience. They’re lined up outside the door.”

  Tonight there is no one, and Todd peers out into the store one final time to check that it’s so. “Let’s give it five minutes,” he says, unpinning his name tag. Then he takes out a phone and his thumbs start flying.

  Author wants to tell the boy certain things. He wants to say, Twelve years. Twelve years on a book—is that now half your life, young man? He wants to tell Todd, One must stand by one’s story. It’s the same commitment the liar must make, but here it’s about sticking by the truth.

  In a sudden display of eagerness, Author offers to sign stock.

  “Can’t return them,” Todd says. “The distributors … signatures they co
nsider—” And here Todd looks up from texting. He has started a sentence he doesn’t want to finish.

  “Damaged,” Author says, doing it for him. Todd nods. And then the thumbs, they are on the move.

  · · ·

  That you haven’t heard of Author—that any recognition you may once have had is beyond recalling—and Author (even in his own estimation) is no longer worth naming, this doesn’t take away from what was.

  It does not diminish the fine books he wrote. It does not take away from the countless copies bought and read, beloved books, maybe one signed right to you, the volume itself fallen behind your shelves, or your parents’, or maybe it is, yes, your grandparents’ book—packed away, molding in the basement, the silverfish eating their way through.

  At his height, the head of the New York Public Library had waited for Author on the front steps of that venerable institution. A patrician man, the librarian stood rigid in the rain between his two sleeping lions, simply to show respect for Author, coming there to perform.

  He then took Author on a tour of the great halls, insistent on exposing him to the wonders of their collection. “This is the cane Virginia Woolf left on the banks of the river when she waded into the waters,” the librarian said, “pockets full of stones.” He laid this relic in Author’s hand for a moment before leading him down below the basin of the old Manhattan reservoir, floor after floor, into the stacks that run deep below Bryant Park. There the librarian turned a giant nickel wheel, parting shelves like the sea, and said, “These are the best sellers of the nineteenth century, where we keep your brothers and sisters, the authors who held your esteemed position one hundred years ago!” Author went to look. Author expected to find the books he cherished from that time.

  “Is this …,” Author said.

  “Yes, yes,” said the librarian, beaming. “The giants of the era!”