What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander

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’spulse. 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.