The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  Perón had left his nation with a dancing girl in the Pink House failing to run their lives. At this time of great uncertainty and deadly rumor, a number of the fortunate feared that the envious and ill-willed might start looking into the past. Though bodies mounted, there wasn’t yet any real burying. It was a period better defined by what was dug up. So many secrets were being unearthed in Buenos Aires, anyone might by accident stumble onto another. It was then that the children of the Benevolent Self acknowledged what Kaddish had always known—the wall separating those two cemeteries wasn’t so high. So desperate were they then not to be linked to the Benevolent Self that they turned to the only one who wouldn’t let it go. They hired Kaddish Poznan to cross over the wall. They paid him good money to erase the names.

  Pato crouched down behind Hezzi’s marker. He planted his knees in the dirt and pressed his shoulder to the stone. Grabbing hold of its sides, he braced himself, ready for Kaddish’s first blow. Pato was providing resistance. “The one thing you’re good at,” Kaddish had said. “We might as well put it to use.”

  It was a delicate job. Kaddish didn’t want to knock that headstone over. And Pato was happy enough to take shelter from his father any way he could. He did not want to be there. He did not want to cross through the United Congregations Cemetery, did not want to carry the tool bag or climb over the wall. He wanted no part of his father’s cockamamie and perverse and misdirected plans. At nineteen, a college boy Pato was learning sociology and history, important things that can only be taught in a university setting. He had no interest in the thuggish world Kaddish came from.

  To get anywhere with such a child, it’s best to do as Kaddish did and take Pato’s presence as acquiescence enough. Kaddish didn’t expect much more. For a boy who wants to see himself as tough and independent, who wants to believe, while in the presence of his father, that he’s a self-made man, certain emotions are confusing and shameful. Pato tried to keep them packed down. Despite the many traits that he couldn’t brook, the infinite points of disagreement, and the day-to-day ways he and his father would collide, beneath it all and defying logic, Kaddish was the father he loved. “Swing,” Pato said, pushing back against the marble. “Swing already. Let’s get this done.”

  [ Two ]

  IT WAS ALWAYS LIKE THIS for Kaddish Poznan, always something gone wrong. He shook his head and, acknowledging nothing beyond that, spit between mounds.

  “It’s a body,” Pato said.

  “We’re in a cemetery. This is where they keep them.” Seeing that they were on the United Congregations side, Kaddish stamped his foot. “We’re standing on another right now.”

  “This one’s different,” Pato said, highlighting it. “You’ll notice, unique in its positioning, this one’s above ground.”

  “Where?” Kaddish said. He raised a hand to his brow to better see in the dark and knocked the flashlight loose from Pato’s grip. After fifty-two years in that city, Kaddish’s blindness was as sharp as his sight. He’d learned not to see any trouble that didn’t see him first.

  They’d chipped Two-Blades’ name away and left his headstone intact. They were back over the wall and on their way home. All Pato had needed to do was walk a straight line. Instead, he’d taken them down a row they wouldn’t have passed and had waved the flashlight around. Kaddish could have strangled his son right then—leave a second corpse with the first, God help him.

  Pato fetched the light and headed toward the body. He was already leaning in when Kaddish grabbed him hard by the back of the neck.

  “You’re going to touch it now?” Kaddish said. “You want your fingers all over it, because it’s so easy to explain how we came to be here in the middle of the night? Murdered—I see it same as you. But I promise, Pato, there’s no murderer out there. Everyone would be more than happy to have us volunteer.”

  This is why Kaddish didn’t want to see, and why he didn’t want to walk down the row to the body, because half looking from a distance was so much different from standing right over this kid.

  The body was a young man’s, belly up and shirtless. Its feet touched the ground on one side of the headstone and its head did the same on the other. The throat was slit clean and the body drained of blood. There wasn’t a drop to be found.

  “Somebody moved it here,” Pato said.

  “You think they’ve been moving themselves around the city? You think they pop out of the ground like tulips? The police kill them and dump them and the paper reports nonsense to go along. It’s a tragedy among tragedies. Now let’s get home.” Kaddish slipped between graves. Pato didn’t follow. “This is the single worst place in Buenos Aires to be standing.”

  “For us, yes,” Pato said. “And for this boy to be lying.” He then raised the flashlight and lit the Jewish stars and etched hands and Hebrew dates on the headstones.

  “Should we drag him to the car and drop him off in Pompeya? Is that the plan? Trust me,” Kaddish said, “if they want to start slitting Jewish throats, they won’t bother drumming up an excuse.”

  “How do you know he’s not Jewish?”

  Kaddish snatched the flashlight and brought it close to the murdered boy’s head. “Such a nose as this God hasn’t set on a Jewish face in two thousand years. It’s smaller than yours on the day you were born.” Bringing the lens up to his chin, Kaddish lit his own face like a sundial. In the Poznan family it was understood (and oft pointed out) that Kaddish’s ample snout was the smallest of the three. Unscientific a proof as it was, Kaddish thought his point was made. He lowered the flashlight and took Pato by the arm. “Time to go home,” he said. “Let Feigenblum and his board deal with the Jews on this side. We, my hijo de hijo de puta, have Jews of our own.”

  Kaddish coughed his morning cough and scratched the parts that needed scratching. He made his way into the kitchen, surprised to find his wife still there. The paper was spread across the little table, and Lillian, holding a section, looked up at him over half-glasses.

  Kaddish kissed her on the cheek and sat down at her side. “It won’t be in today’s papers.”

  “How do you know what I’m looking for?” Lillian said.

  “An ambush is my only guess if you’re not at work.”

  “Everyone is always against you.”

  “They usually are,” Kaddish said. He patted at the newspaper on the table. Lillian brought out the ashtray from underneath.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” she said.

  “You’re opposed then?”

  Lillian reached underneath a second time. She passed the lighter to Kaddish but she didn’t let go, his hand clasped over hers.

  “I’m worried for my son.”

  “The greater everyone’s fear of the future, the more they want the names gone.”

  “At some point it becomes too much.”

  “I’m finally bringing home real money and now you want me to stop? But you don’t, not yet, do you? The line hasn’t been crossed.”

  “It has for Pato.”

  Pato stood in the doorway in his underwear. “I don’t want to do it anymore,” he said.

  “And I don’t want him to,” Lillian said. “And I don’t want you to either. This time you find a body. Next time,” she said, “who knows?”

  Pato slipped behind his father and went over to the stove. Kaddish turned and stared at him while he spoke. “So the police kill the rebels who would otherwise kill each other and terrorize us. It’s a tragedy for someone, but it’s not ours.”

  “You saw him same as me. That wasn’t a rebel,” Pato said. “It was another kid. I’m telling you, they kill for no reason. Innocents shot dead.”

  “His throat was slit, first of all. And second, if he was innocent, all the better if we keep at it. Let’s stay guilty and then we’ll be safe.”

  “It’s not a joke,” Pato said. He shook the empty kettle and stuck it under the faucet. “Things are spinning out of control.”

  “Jesus, what do you think out-of-control will l
ook like if this isn’t it? The government is cleaning up and when they’re done things can only improve. You’ll see, safer is the way this country is heading. Safer—and you and your stupid friends better watch it—for those who don’t make trouble and keep their big noses clean.”

  “You’re a fascist,” Pato said, setting the kettle on the fire.

  “Good for me,” Kaddish said. He put out his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke.

  [ Three ]

  PEOPLE DIE EVERY DAY, their houses burn down around them, they tumble from ladder and rooftop, swallow fat olives down the wrong pipe. They are also found murdered in many original ways. But a lot more people are afraid of a gory, violent, untimely death than manage to get themselves killed. This is how Lillian’s office made its money. She worked in insurance. People paid them premiums against their worst fears.

  Lillian always found it disappointing when she was processing claims. It wasn’t about the money paid out, as none of it was hers. It was the inevitable emptiness in trying to replace property or human life with a company check. It was a sleight of hand that wasn’t. Everyone signed up knowing what they never seemed to understand: You don’t get anything back. The only thing fire insurance has ever extinguished is a nagging doubt. The house goes up in flames just the same.

  She liked to think that she worried with an actuarial specificity, light on emotion and in proportion to actual occurrence. Lately she’d been worrying more and more. And that body—poor child—was simply too close to home. Lillian felt it was time for protection, real and solid to the touch. She wanted a policy of her own.

  Lillian went into the kitchen and took a carving knife from the drawer in the counter. She pulled open the refrigerator and then the freezer door inside—revealing the block of ice that had formed in the compartment within weeks of Kaddish’s bringing it home. When she’d told him, he’d said, “Broken means no ice. This is the opposite, it works too well.” And that’s how it had stayed ever since.

  Lillian raised the knife and drove it into the thick knot of ice that left the freezer in a pucker. The blade cut frost. The tip buried itself a centimeter deep, and Lillian’s hand slid a fraction too far, nicking her palm.

  She worked the knife free. She wrapped a towel around her hand and struck again, this time more carefully. She built up a rhythm, sent fissures through the block, and, with frozen fingers, pulled free loose chunks. Her knife palm burned from the friction, her other hand from the cold. Here and there a swirl of pink clouded the puddle on the floor.

  “You can do better in a house full of chisels,” Pato said.

  Lillian was startled to find him watching. She looked at her progress and said, “Fetch me your father’s tools.”

  Pato sat at the table while his mother attacked the freezer, covering the floor with ice in quickly melting hunks. She didn’t stop until what she searched for was free. Buried in the back corner was a small square package wrapped in silver foil and abandoned with all the others when the ice had formed.

  She ran it under water. Steam rose up. Ice crackled and slid away, the foil shining as if polished. Lillian peeled it back, revealing a tin, rusted at the lip, its sides bulging outward. She flipped the top. She squeezed hard so the tin warped further and worked out the thick wad of bills jammed inside.

  “Best hiding place in the world,” she said. “Even before the freezer froze over.”

  Pato stared.

  “There are others in the apartment,” she said, and pulled another roll of bills from her pocket. “I’ve been to those too.”

  She handed the money to her son.

  “A fortune,” Pato said. He licked his thumb and started counting.

  “A lot of paper. It’s not much in the way of money these days.”

  Pato didn’t seem to agree.

  “A secret,” she said.

  Pato crossed his heart with a handful of money.

  “I used to dream of buying you an apartment,” she said. “Since that won’t ever happen, the least I can do is buy you the door.”

  They stood on a patch of cobblestones where the pavement had worn away and old Buenos Aires pushed through. At the end of the block, in front of a store with chandeliers in the window, two men unloaded Turkish carpets off the back of a truck, laying them out on the sidewalk. Otherwise the block was silent and the security shutters on the businesses pulled down. The storefront they were looking for was lifeless. “You’d think they’d have a decent door,” Pato said. Lillian had thought it was closed.

  The interior, though, was a wonder. The whole place consisted of one giant room crowded with stock. The doors, cheaper, lighter, were stacked six and seven thick all along the walls and standing unbroken end to end. Lillian turned back to the entrance and for a moment could not tell through which one they’d come.

  Looking up, Lillian and Pato found two-by-fours crisscrossing the ceiling and between them, lying flat and edge to edge, end to end, door after door after door. The lights in the ceiling were hidden by the stock below, and a cold blue glow lit the room. “This is a sensible place,” Lillian said. “Nondescript on the outside, asking no trouble, and all its flair packed neatly inside.”

  Pato headed for the deluxe models on the far side of the showroom, where doors stood upright in their frames. Lillian followed him over and the manager made his entrance, stepping through the one Pato tested. He was a young man with straight hair to his shoulders and a handsome face gone ragged from drinking or drugs or a worry so great as to leave black lines under sunken eyes.

  “Still looking,” Lillian said. The manager was already backing off, no pressure at all.

  Lillian moved through the rows, sizing up. She opened and closed, tapped against wood, pulled latches, turned knobs. When Lillian slapped her palm hard against a panel, the manager turned to her from his desk across the room.

  “I’m ready now for help,” she said, and he made his way over. Lillian pointed out a lovely pine model with six windowpanes set in a delicate sash.

  “Beautiful choice,” he said. “Elegant.”

  “Flimsy,” she said. “An invitation. This is exactly what I do not want.”

  Pato shook his head. “You can’t win with her,” he told the manager. “You can’t get the answer right.”

  “I’ll try,” the manager said, fake eager.

  “Then listen careful,” Lillian said. “No beauty. I don’t want anything designed with an eye toward the aesthetic, not a cent spent on rounding an edge or fastening trim. I want density. I want a door that won’t kick in, a hunk of wood that will not splinter. Give me something that will swallow a knock.”

  “Security, ma’am. Is that what you’re after?”

  “I put a lot of weight on doors.”

  “Security is the rage. You’re not alone.” He said this in grave tones and then winked one of his receding eyes. “A woman like yourself needs to know she can keep the men from beating down her door.” The manager gave a sheepish look to Pato.

  “I think the man is flirting with you,” Pato said.

  “Do you see the things money can buy?” Lillian said. She put a hand to her hip, making a cursory acceptance.

  The manager led them to a door in the last row. “How about this,” he said. “Not wood but steel.”

  “Steel?” Lillian said. She honestly hadn’t thought of it.

  He fanned out a stack of cards that hung by a chain from its knob. “Veneers,” he said. “Colors and styles. Black, white, brown, wood-grain. Your choice.” He let them drop.

  The knob was industrial and oversized. There was no spring to its mechanism. It had to be turned, two, three times. Unscrewed. “An extra bolt,” he explained, pulling the door open. The lock was in the center of the door, the key in it. When it was turned, rods extended from top, bottom, and sides. Sixteen dead bolts reached in four directions. “Four sets of four rods,” he said, “plus the bolt in the knob. All steel. A stainless steel cross with a lock for a core.” The manager turned the key and
the bolts withdrew. The key was flat and grooved on both sides, a series of bumps and circles carved to its base. He handed it to Lillian. “No skeleton in the world to match this. And that lock can’t be picked. If you need an extra key, the locksmith won’t even make a copy without a registration card and ID.” He took a step toward Lillian. He turned and joined her in admiring the door.

  “Impressive,” Lillian said.

  The man slapped a hand against it. It did, indeed, swallow the sound.

  “Security in these times is not cheap,” he said. “But”—and he winked at her again—“I could be convinced to jew the price down.”

  “Well done,” Pato said. He laughed and clapped the manager on the back. “I think you just made yourself a sale.”

  [ Four ]

  ABSENT A CORPSE and absent any sign of its presence, it was hard to believe that the body had been there. Kaddish had agreed to check for the slit-throated boy on their way over the wall if he could have an extra stop of his own. It was against his better judgment and he wasn’t even sure why he’d negotiated, since he’d have dragged Pato along regardless. The two of them stood staring at the spot, and Pato again raised the flashlight to better light the stones nearby.

  “What if it was still here?” Kaddish said.

  “Then we’d bury him,” was Pato’s answer.

  Kaddish thought they might as well bury themselves while they were at it but decided to let it pass. There was no need to worry over a solution to a problem that wasn’t. There was also no need for Pato to stand there, slack-jawed, trying to decide how sad he should be. “Our part in this misfortune is finished,” Kaddish said. “For once we get some good luck.” When Pato didn’t respond, Kaddish said it again, adamant. “Good luck—how else can we take it?” It was a shortsighted stance. Kaddish would soon be wishing for a time when there were bodies yet to be found.