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

by Nathan Englander

  “It would be easier if you did,” we told him.

  “And I bet, big as your anti-Semite is, that he, too, in direct proportion, also has bigger friends. Escalation,” Ace said.

  “Escalation built in. You don’t want this to get so bad that you really need me.”

  “But what if we did?” we said.

  Ace didn’t answer. Frustrated and defeated, we left him—Ace Cohen, blowing the outlines of asteroids apart.

  · · ·

  They were all heroes to us, every single one of Russia’s oppressed. We’d seen Gulag on cable television, and learned that for escapes across vast snowy tundras, two prisoners would invite a third to join, so that they could eat him along the way. We were moved by this as boys, and fantasized about sacrifice, wondering which of our classmates we’d devour.

  Our parents were active in the fight for the refuseniks’ freedom in the 1980s, and every Russian Jew was a refusenik, whether he wanted to be or not. We children donated our reversible-vested three-piece suits to help clothe Jewish unfortunates of all nations. And when occasion demanded, we were taken from our classes and put on buses to march for the release of our Soviet brethren.

  We got our own refusenik in Greenheath right after Zvi’s assault. Boris was the janitor at a Royal Hills yeshiva. He was refilling the towel dispenser in the faculty lounge when he heard of our troubles. Boris was Russian and Jewish, and he’d served in Brezhnev’s army and the Israeli one to boot. He made his sympathies known to the teachers from Greenheath, voicing his outrage over our plight. That very Friday, a space was made in the Chevy Nova in which they carpooled while listening to Mishna on tape.

  Boris came to town for a Shabbos, and then another, and had he slept twenty-four hours a day and eaten while he slept, he still couldn’t have managed to be hosted by a fraction of the families that wanted to house and feed him and then feed him more.

  The parents were thrilled to have their own refusenik—a menial laborer yet, a young man who pushed a broom for a living. They hadn’t been so excited since the mothers went on an AMIT tour of the Holy Land and saw Jews driving buses and a man wearing tzitzit delivering mail. Boris was Greenheath’s own Sharansky, and our parents gave great weight to his dire take on our situation. His sometimes-fractured English added its own gravity to the proceedings. “When hooligan gets angry,” he would say, “when drinking too much, the anti-Semite will charge.”

  The first, informal self-defense class was given the day Boris was at Larry Lipshitz’s playing Intellivision hockey and teaching Larry to smoke. It ended with Larry on the basement floor, the wind knocked out of him and a sort of wheeze coming from his throat. “How much?” he said to Boris. “How much what?” was Boris’s answer. He displayed a rare tentativeness, which Larry might have noticed if he hadn’t been trying to breathe. “For the lesson,” Larry said. And here was the wonder of America, the land of opportunity. In Russia, if you punched someone in the stomach, you did it for free. A monthly rate was set, and Larry spread the word.

  That was also the day that Barry Pearlman was descended upon by our nemesis as he left Vardit’s Pizza and Falafel. His take-out order was taken. The vegetarian egg rolls (a staple of all places kosher, no matter the cuisine) were bitten into. A large pizza and a tahini platter were spread over the street. Barry was beaten, and then, as soon as he was able, he raced back into the store. Vardit, the owner, wiped the sauce from little Pearlman. She remade his order in full, charging only the pizza to his account. The Pearlmans didn’t want trouble. The police were not called.

  · · ·

  Barry Pearlman was the second to sign up. Then came the Kleins and cockeyed Shlomo, whose mother sent him because of the current climate, though really she wanted him to learn to defend himself from us.

  Our rabbis at school needed to approve of the militant group we were forming. They remembered how Israel was founded with the aid of Nili and the Haganah and the undergrounds of yore. They didn’t much approve of a Jewish state without a messiah, but they gave us permission to present our proposal to Rabbi Federbush, the founder of our community and the dean of our yeshiva.

  His approval was granted, but only grudgingly. The old man is not to be blamed. Karate, he knew nothing of; the closest sport he was familiar with was wrestling, and this from rabbinic lore—a Greco-Roman version. His main point of protest, therefore, was that we’d be wrestling the uncircumcised publicly and in the nude. When the proposal was rephrased and he was told that we were being trained to battle the descendants of Amalek, who attacked the Israelites in the desert; that we were gearing up to face the modern-day spawn of Haman (cursed be his name); when told it was to fight the Anti-Semite, he nodded his head, understanding. “Cossacks,” he said, and agreed.

  · · ·

  It wasn’t exactly a pure martial art, but an amalgam of Israeli Krav Maga, Russian hand-to-hand combat, and Boris’s own messy form of endless attack. He showed us how to fold a piece of paper so it could be used to take out an eye or open a throat, and he told us always to travel with a circuit tester clipped to our breast pocket like a pen. When possible, Boris advised us, have a new gun waiting at each destination. He claimed to have learned this during a stint in the Finger of God, searching out Nazis in Argentina and then—acting as a military tribunal of one—finding them guilty and putting a bullet between their eyes.

  We were taught to punch and kick, to stomp and bite, while the mainstay of all suburban martial-arts classes—when you can avoid confrontation, you do it—was removed. Boris told us to hold our ground. “Worst cases,” he said, “raise hand like in defeat and kick for ball.”

  After a few weeks of lessons, we began to understand the power we had. Boris had paired Larry Lipshitz, that wisp of a boy, with Aaron, the middle Blum. They went at it in Larry’s backyard, circling and jabbing with a paltry amount of rage. Boris stood off to the side, his arms resting on his paunch—a belly that on him was the picture of good health, as if it were the place from which all his strength emanated, a single muscle providing power to all the other parts.

  Boris spat in the grass and stepped forward. “You are fighting,” he said. “Fight.” He put his foot to Aaron’s behind and catapulted him into his opponent. “Friends later. Now win.” Larry Lipshitz let out a yawp befitting a larger man and then, with speed and with grace, he landed the first solid roundhouse kick we’d seen delivered. It was no sparring partner’s hit, but a shoulder fake and all-his-might strike, the ball of Lipshitz’s bare foot connecting with Aaron’s kidney. Larry didn’t offer a hand. He stepped back like a champion and raised his fists high. Aaron hobbled to the nearest tree and displayed for us the first fruits of our training. He dropped his pants, took aim, and, I tell you, it was nothing less than water to wine for us when Aaron Blum peed blood.

  · · ·

  It’s curious that the story most often used to inspire Jewish battle readiness is that of Masada, an episode involving the last holdouts of an ascetic Israelite sect, who committed suicide in a mountain fortress. The battle was fought valiantly, though without the enemy present. Jews bravely doing harm to themselves. The only Roman casualties died of frustration in their encampment below—eight months in the desert spent building a ramp to storm fortress walls for a slaughter, and the deed already done when they arrived.

  When Israeli army recruits complete basic training, they climb up that mountain and scream out into the echo, “A second time Masada won’t fall.” Boris made us do the same over the edge of Greenheath Pond, a body of water whose circulation had slowed, a thick green soup that sent back no sound.

  · · ·

  Mostly, the harassment was aimed at the Blum boys and their house. I don’t know if this was because of their proximity to the Anti-Semite’s house, the call to the police, or the Anti-Semite’s public slap in the face. I sometimes can’t help thinking that the Blum boys were chosen as targets because they looked to the bully as they looked to me: enticingly victimlike and small. Over time, an M-80 wa
s used to blow up the Blum mailbox, and four tires were slashed on a sensible Blum car. A shaving-cream swastika was painted on their walkway, but it washed away in the rain before anyone could document its existence.

  When we ran into the Anti-Semite, insults were inevitably hurled, and punches thrown. Larry took a thrashing without managing his now-legendary kick. Shaken, he demanded his money’s worth of Boris, and made very clear that he now feared for his life. Boris shrugged it off. “Not so easy,” he assured him. “Shot and lived. Stabbed and lived. Not so easy to get dead.”

  My father witnessed the abuse. He came upon the three Blum boys crawling around and picking up pennies for the right to cross the street—the bully and his friends enforcing. My father scattered the boys, all but the three Blums, who stood there red in the face, hot pennies in their hands.

  The most severe attack was the shotgun blast that shattered the Blums’ bay window. We marked it as the start of dark days, though the shells were packed only with rock salt.

  · · ·

  We stepped up our training and also our level of subterfuge. We memorized kata and combinations. We learned to march in lockstep, to run, leap, and roll in silence.

  Lying on our backs in a row with feet raised, heads raised, and abdomens flexed, we listened to Boris lecture while he ran over us, stepping from stomach to stomach, as if crossing a river on stones. Peace, Boris insisted, was maintained through fear. “Do you know which countries have no anti-Semite?” he asked. We didn’t have an answer. “The country with no Jew.”

  The struggle would not end on its own. The bully would not mature, see the error of his ways, or learn to love the other. He would hate until he was dead. He would fight until he was dead. And unless we killed him, or beat him until he thought we had killed him, we’d have no truce, no peace, no quiet. In case we didn’t understand the limitations of even the best-case scenario, Boris explained it to us again. “The man hits. In future he will hit wife, hit son, hit dog. We want only that he won’t hit Jew. Let him go hit someone else.”

  Despite all the bumps pushed back into foreheads and the braces freed from upper lips, I’m convinced our parents thought our training was worth the effort. Our mothers brought frozen steaks to press against black eyes and stood close as our fathers tilted our chins and hid smiles. “Quite a shiner,” they would say, and they could hardly stand to give up staring when the steaks covered our wounds.

  Along with the training injuries, we had other setbacks. One was a tactical error when, post–shotgun blast, we went as a group to egg the Anti-Semite’s house. Shlomo thought he heard a noise and yelled, “Anti-Semite!” in warning. We screamed back, dropped our eggs, and fled in response. This all took place more than a block away from the house. We hadn’t even gotten our target in sight.

  We weren’t cohesive. We knew how to move as a group but not as a gang.

  We needed practice.

  After two thousand years of being chased, we didn’t have any hunt in us.

  · · ·

  We sought help from Chung-Shik through Yitzy—an Israeli with an unfortunate heritage. Yitzy’s parents had brought him to America with the last name Penis, which even among kind children doesn’t play well. We teased Yitzy Penis ruthlessly, and as a result he formed a real friendship with his Gentile neighbor Chung-Shik, the only Asian boy in town. Both showed up happily, Yitzy delighted at being asked to bring his pal along.

  And so we proposed it, our plan.

  “Can we practice on you?” we asked.

  “Practice what?” Chung-Shik said amiably, Yitzy practically aglow at his side.

  When no one else answered, Harry spoke. “A reverse pogrom,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “We just want to menace you,” Harry said. “Chase you around a bit as a group. You know, because you’re different. To get a feel for it.”

  Chung-Shik looked to his friend. You could see we were losing him, and Yitzy had already lost his smile.

  That’s when Zvi pleaded, almost a cry of desperation: “Come on, you’re the only different kid we know.”

  Yitzy held Chung-Shik’s stare, the Asian boy looking back, not scared as much as disappointed.

  “Chase me instead,” Yitzy said, sort of pantomiming that he could be Chung-Shik and Chung-Shik could be him, switch off the yarmulke and all.

  We abandoned the idea right then. It wouldn’t be the same.

  · · ·

  Our failed offensive got back to Boris, as well as the reverse pogrom that wasn’t, the continuing rise in Blum-related trouble, and chases home from school. The rock salt still stung us all.

  We met in the rec room of the shul. Boris had swiped a filmstrip and accompanying audiocassette from the yeshiva he worked at in Royal Hills. He advanced the strip in the projector, a single frame every time the tape went beep. We knew the film well. We knew when the image would shift from the pile of shoes to the pile of hair, from the pile of bodies to the pile of teeth to the pile of combs. The film was a sacred teaching tool brought out only on Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust memorial day.

  Each year, the most memorable part was the taped dramatization, the soundman’s wooden blocks clop-clopping, the sound of those boots coming up the stairs. First they dragged off symbolic father and mother. And then, clop, clop, clop, those boots marched away.

  The lights still dimmed, we would form two lines—one boys, one girls. We marched back to class this way, singing “Ani Ma’amin” and holding in our heads the picture they’d painted for us: six million Jews marching into the gas chambers, two by two; a double line three million strong and singing in one voice, “I believe in the coming of the Messiah.”

  Boris did not split us into two quiet lines. He did not start us on a moving round of that song, or the equally rousing “We Are Leaving Mother Russia,” with its coda, “When they come for us, we’ll be gone.” After the film, he turned the lights back on and said to us, yelled at us, “Like sheep to the slaughter. Six million Jews is twelve million fists.” And then he segued from fists and Jewish fighting to the story of brave Trumpeldor, who, Boris claimed, lost an arm in the battle of Tel Hai and then continued fighting with the one.

  Galvanized, we went straight to the Anti-Semite’s house. Zvi Blum, beaten, bothered, dug a hunk of paving stone out of the walkway to avenge his family’s bay window. He tossed that rock with all his might. Limited athlete that he was, it hooked left and hit the wall of the house with a great bang. We fled. Still imperfect, still in retreat, we ran with euphoria, hooting and hollering, victorious.

  · · ·

  A newfound energy emerged at the start of the next class, which was also the start of a new session. We lined up to pay Boris what was now a quarterly fee. He took three months’ worth of cash in one hand, patted us each on the back with the other, and said, “Not yet leaders, but you’ve turned into men.” Boris even said this to the Conservative boy, though it was Elliot’s first lesson. He then addressed us regarding our successful mission. “Anti-Semite will come back harder,” he said, declaring that only a strong offense would see this conflict to its end. Pyrotechnics were in order.

  We ventured out to the turnpike that marked the border of our town. In the alley behind ShopRite, we worked on demolitions following recipes from Boris’s training and inspired by some pages torn from an Abbie Hoffman book. We made smoke bombs that didn’t smoke, and firebombs that never burned. And though we suspected that the recipes themselves were faulty, Boris shook his head as if we’d never learn.

  We stuck with our bomb making, working feverishly, with Boris timing each attempt and at intervals yelling, “Too late, already dead.” Then Elliot stood up with a concoction of his own, a bottle with a rag stuffed in the top, and announced, “This is how you build a bomb.”

  To prove it, he lit the rag, arced back, and threw the bottle. We watched it soar, easily traceable by its fiery tail. We heard it hit and the sound of glass and then nothing. “So what,” Aaron said. “That’s not a bomb
. By definition, it has to go boom!” We went back to work until Boris said, “Lesson over,” and a yellow light began to chip at the darkness in the sky, a warm yellow light and smoke. “Not a bomb,” Elliot said, looking proud and terrified in equal measure. His bottle, we discovered, had hit the Te-Amo Cigar & Smoke Shop. It had ignited the garbage in the rear of the store. The drive-through window was engulfed in flames. “Simplest sometimes best,” Boris said. And then: “Class dismissed.” We started to panic, and he said, “Fire could be from anything.” Right then, his pocket full of our money, and already in full possession of our hearts and heads, Boris walked off. He walked toward the burning store, so close to the flames that we covered our eyes. True to his teachings, Boris didn’t turn and run. He didn’t stop, either. We know for sure that he went back to Royal Hills and worked another day. All our parents ever said was “green card,” and we heard that Boris continued west to Chicago and built a new life.

  · · ·

  Mr. Blum was still at the office. The three boys Blum were each manning a window at home and staring out into the dark. They had, on their own and in broad daylight, gone down that hill with toilet paper and shaving cream. They’d draped the trees and marked the sidewalks, unleashing on their target the suburban version of tar and feathers. Then they’d run up to their house and taken their posts, holding them through nightfall. When their mother pulled the car into the garage after her own long day at work, she saw only what the boys hadn’t done. She made her way back down the driveway to the curb, where the garbage pails stood empty, one of them tipped by the wind. Basic responsibilities stand even in times of trouble. She had not borne three sons so that she’d have to drag garbage pails inside.