This week the New Yorker ran an excerpt from the forthcoming novel by Nathan Englander, an author the magazine predicted, along with writers Jonathan Franzen and Jhumpa Lahari, to be one of the “twenty writers for the twenty-first century.” The story concerned and Israeli father's own war stories and the stories of one of his brothers in arms.
The story began with a vignette in which the father, in 1965, was joined at a battlefield lunch table by four Egyptian soldiers who, through a French alliance re-alignment, wore wearing the same uniforms as the Israeli soldier. In other words, Private Shimmy Gezer did not realize he was sitting with the men he had shot at hours before. Shimmy's comrade, Private Tendler, did realize. He approached the table and shot the four point blank. Gezer tackled Tendler and demanded why he killed the men, why he did not take them prisoner and spare their lives. He landed a few good blows on Tendler before Tendler fought back and beat him until he was level with the sand.
Years later, Shimmy’s son, Etgar, would always ask his father why he gave free fruits and vegetables to Tendler, not ever charging him. When Etgar turned thirteen, Shimmy told him why. He told him a story about Tendler’s escape from a World War II prison camp.Tendler, Shimmy said, had survived by hiding piles of dead Jews. He had food slipped to him until the first American soldiers rolled through. Then, he ran back home to his village. He, now an orphan, ran for days and discovered his house occupied by his family’s nurse, her husband, two sons, and baby daughter. This was a mild shock, but Tendler quickly accepted that he could live happily with them and could start anew. But that night, he overheard his former nurse ordering her sons to kill Tendler as he slept. The mother was afraid the boy would reclaim his property and leave them homeless. Instead, Tendler woke in the night, shot the two brothers, the mother, the father, and the baby sister.
The story's prose is smooth and unobtrusive, allowing the plot to do the heavy lifting. This is not to say the the prose is dreadfully plain, for it is not at all, just that it steps to the side, continues simply, and allows the stories within "Free Fruit For Young Widows" to take center stage.
Englander’s story is one of philosophy, of moral codes. It asks who governs right and wrong, and more importantly, how these questions are answered by people of different backgrounds. Conflicting judgments are passed as result of to the judge’s age, personal history, and nationality. This story expects each reader to respond differently to each moral question.
But aside from personal qualities, what difference does context make when condemning or condoning a person’s actions? The state of mind a person possesses when acting definitely affects how their decisions should be evaluated, and on that basis Professor Tendler’s actions are both somewhat justified. It may be difficult to excuse a young boy for murdering those whom with he was once so well acquainted, but it becomes easier when seen through his perspective. Tendler returned home from the concentration camp, where his life was threatened everyday, and to find himself in a not too different situation. When imagining that Tendler saw the Nurse’s plan as a continuation of the threats on his life, it is not at all difficult to imagine that he killed the family just as excusably as he would have shot the guards at his concentration camp.
Englander’s story did not seem incredible when I set the magazine down. I thought it was very good, but had read many better. However, my opinion of the piece improved greatly when I found myself wrapped up in many philosophical questions about the nature of murder in the context of war. Did that context excuse Tendler’s execution of the Egyptians who sat down for lunch? Questions of this nature still pester me, proving “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a good story because like all of the best ones, it stays with you.
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