The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  Kaddish, honestly confused, looked to Lillian.

  “We don’t understand,” she said.

  “The letter. The letter from the Ministry of Special Cases, what did it say? In relation to what issue was your presence requested? Have you been abroad in the last six months? Have you requested a visa for travel within the Soviet bloc?”

  “No letter,” Lillian said, “no travel, no visa. We’ve come on our own. We were told—we have heard—”

  “Stop,” the clerk said. He pressed his fingers into his eyes as if to relieve a headache, but he pressed so hard, Lillian thought he might have been trying to give himself one or worse. “I already know,” he said, dropping his arms and engaging Lillian properly for the first time. “I swear the others make sure it works out this way. I don’t know how they manage it. A thousand, thousand things to deal with, and always they send the parents to me. Am I right? Someone’s flown the coop? Someone’s missing at home?”

  “Disappeared,” Lillian said.

  The clerk looked at the other clerks, as if they really had it in for him, as if he were the butt of some joke.

  “Rapscallions,” he said, referring to his co-workers.

  The man then shook it off and extended a hand.

  “Habeas,” he said.

  Lillian kept her own hands on the bag in her lap. She blinked. Kaddish pulled at the legs of his pants and exhaled.

  “Do not threaten me, sir,” the clerk said. “This is not a barroom, it’s a ministry of the government. It’s the same as assault, the threat. It’s exactly the same as far as I’m concerned.”

  Again Kaddish turned to Lillian.

  “He means nothing by it,” she said. “We have no habeas corpus. Our son has disappeared.”

  “A police report,” the man said, clipped.

  Lillian just shook her head.

  “Room two-sixty-four,” he said. “Down the stairs, back to the lobby you entered but on the other side, another door, another stairwell, to this floor on that side.” The man then sneered at his co-workers, giving them a look through hooded eyes. In the quickest turnaround Lillian had witnessed, he then waved at the man who called numbers and another number was called.

  Lillian and Kaddish found themselves going down and across and up, then opening a stairwell door onto the narrowest of corridors. There was a desk, its drawers facing them, directly in their path. Had someone been sitting at it, they’d not have been able to enter. This also was likely the reason that the gentleman on the right side of that desk, on its short side, had placed himself there. His feet, invisible from the stairwell, were up on the desk’s corner and the man had a brown Borsalino tilted over his face, ostensibly to aid in sleep. There was a fan of three short feathers, blue as a bluebird’s, arranged in its band.

  Kaddish and Lillian stood on the left side of the desk. Before they could clear their throats, the man righted his chair and tipped back his hat. At first glance Lillian thought he was a woman, so fine were his features. She imagined this was why he had cultivated a sparse mustache—to help nudge people toward the right guess.

  “We have been sent to room two-sixty-four,” Kaddish said.

  The only thing on the desk was a stapler. Before answering, the man tapped out a nervous little rhythm on it as if he was answering them in code. He then pointed behind them. “Down that way and around.” He tipped his hat forward again and pitched back his chair. Lillian thought, This is why he wears the hat. Even more than the mustache, the hat made her think, Man.

  When they found two-sixty-four, the office was locked. They knocked on the door and its neighbors. They gave it a few minutes, tried again, and then slowly made their way back to the corridor with the man in the bird-feather hat.

  They’d somehow entered the hallway from the other direction, coming up behind him. Lillian and Kaddish slid by, pushing a desk drawer closed to pass. The man neither gave a start nor acknowledged them. He held a wide slice of provolone in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. He cut it in half and then reached for a ruler and a slice of bread.

  “It’s locked,” Lillian said. “No one’s in room two-sixty-four. No one answers the door.”

  “Of course not,” the man said. “It’s my office, and I’m sitting here.”

  “You didn’t just—” Lillian said.

  “Didn’t just what?” the man said, spreading butter unperturbed.

  “Send us,” Lillian said. “You didn’t send us to find your office while you were sitting here?”

  “I work hard!” the man yelled. “I’ve earned citations for hardness, for temerity!”

  He replaced the top slice of bread on his sandwich. Kaddish half expected him to staple it closed.

  “Are you on lunch break?” Lillian said.

  “It’s a snack,” he said. “Would you eat lunch in a hallway? I should hope I’d be able to do better than that.”

  Lillian wanted to scream at this man. She wanted to tear into him. Kaddish pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the whole of his face.

  “So you’ll be returning to room two-sixty-four?” Kaddish said.

  “After my refreshment.”

  “And we should wait for you there?”

  “No,” he said. “You shouldn’t.” He took a bite of his sandwich and with his mouth full, said to Lillian, “You should really learn to hate from inside. It is very off-putting when it’s all there on the face to be seen.”

  “You misread me,” Lillian said.

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Nonetheless. Let’s deal with the matter now.” He aimed his sandwich at them. “Is this in reference to compulsory military service?”

  “No,” Kaddish said.

  “Is it about your tax assessment?” he said. “I don’t handle tax assessments, either new cases or existing complaints. Not military-service deferments either.”

  Lillian left Kaddish to answer the questions. She was looking across the span of the desk and wondering how every interaction of even the most minor import took place with a desk in between, as if without a desk keeping people apart, every meeting would end with the weaker party strangled dead. And it might, Lillian thought. She would strangle this man.

  “It’s none of these things,” Kaddish said to the clerk. “Why would it be?”

  The man looked baffled.

  “Because I don’t deal with them,” he said, “and because this is where they’re always sent.”

  “We are here about a disappeared child,” Lillian said.

  “That we deal with,” the man said. “That is here.”

  “And you’re going take care of it in a hallway, with nothing in front of you but a sandwich?”

  “Better on a full stomach than empty.”

  “Then, sir,” Kaddish said, as polite as he got, “we’re asking for your help.”

  “The child,” the man said. “How old?”

  “A son,” Kaddish said. “Pato. Age nineteen.” And then, remembering where they were, he said, “Pablo Poznan.”

  “Has he been gone more than seventy-two hours?”

  “Yes,” Kaddish said.

  “If, indeed, a citizen is incarcerated for matters relating to national security, a file is made, a copy comes to me, and it’s held for forty-eight hours to allow for legal intervention through the Ministry of Special Cases, which is separate from the Ministry of Justice and the courts (it’s a copy of their file that we get). Then—and this taking into account the twenty-four hours it could take to be delivered—after three business days then, the file is closed and sent down to the archives. This part I shouldn’t tell you, but I do—you see the advantage in talking to me on break? It eases me up; I feel like a regular guy. The archives are under this very building, and this building runs deep.” He stopped and took a bite. “So to get it back is like in the National Library. Like any place with underground stacks—we are the same.”

  “I’ve never been,” Kaddish said.

  “You’ve never been to the library?” Kaddish n
odded. “There is a slip to be filled out. The slip you put in a tube, the tube goes down, and it is dealt with by some extremely pale clerks who are consigned to the archive.” Here he laughed. “If you weep over a trip to a locked office, let me tell you, this is the promised land up here. We are the bureaucrats of goodness and light; down there is the bureaucracy of the netherworld. Down there, who knows how long until a file is located. If it turns up, there is a little elevator, like for people but tiny, just for files—VIPs the files. We may abuse people at the ministry, but the files we treat right. They don’t ride with riffraff. They don’t take the stairs. They have their own private elevator, where they’ll be left to themselves.”

  “So when—” Lillian said.

  “If the slip is in by eleven in the morning, the file is often up by eleven the next day. But slips sent down this late in the afternoon are often lost.”

  “So tomorrow we should—” Lillian said.

  “Nothing tomorrow. That’s my job. I’m explaining my part. You give me the habeas corpus—”

  Here Lillian interrupted. “We don’t have one,” she said.

  “You don’t? They sent you over without it? Nobody is supposed to be up here without a habeas corpus, and even those people aren’t allowed up anymore.”

  “Why,” Kaddish said, “would we even be here if we had one?”

  Lillian looked at her husband. He was right. Why would they?

  “It has happened that both files exist, the original and the copy, that the police report is submitted, the habeas corpus issued, but it is the detainee that is misplaced. That’s not my job, but those people are sometimes sent this way.”

  “So what do we do?” Lillian said.

  “What do you do? You get the right paperwork, or you fail to get the right paperwork in the right way, and you open a file. You don’t come empty-handed and expect results. You don’t come here with nothing, and you don’t come to me during lunch,” he said. Then, correcting, he said, “Snack.” He pulled open the bottom drawer and pulled out a Coke. “Either way, it’s the other clerk’s fault. Next time they send you, ask first if it’s right.”

  “Every last one of you will end up in hell for this,” Lillian said. It didn’t sound the least bit aggressive. It was a simple statement of fact, and the man seemed to receive it as such.

  “This country is at war,” he said. “There are things that are done to ensure victory. Right things.” Here he put the cap of the soda bottle against the edge of the desk and brought a fist down on it. The cap rolled off and the bottle gave a hiss. “When the country is safe, the victors will choose their own fates. And I don’t think, as compensation, we will choose for ourselves hell. We’ll choose better for ourselves. Something nice.”

  “Whatever’s been started, you won’t be in power at the end. Nothing lasts in this country,” Lillian said. “This won’t either. You’ll have to answer, all of you.”

  Another bite, another sip, and, mulling over Lillian’s comment, he reset his hat on the top of his head.

  “You’re right that nothing lasts in this country. But you also must know that in Argentina there is no reckoning. Here no one ever pays.”

  [ Thirty ]

  THERE WENT KADDISH TEARING out of the store, the string of bells tinkling in his wake. The sole of his shoe flexed as he caught the opposite curb and, lifting himself, pumping a fist, the package he held, in its festive wrapping, tumbled out of his grip. It flew end over end and burst open against the sidewalk, pastries spreading over the street.

  Kaddish raced on toward his building, into it and up the stairs and through their front door.

  “It’s Pato,” Kaddish said. Not Pato himself but word of Pato. It was, for Lillian, enough. She pulled on her pants and grabbed for a shirt. Kaddish tried to relay what he’d heard.

  He had gone to the bakery. A woman in a corduroy blazer and smelling of perfume was finishing off a joke as she pushed past. The baker was up on her ladder, stacking facturas in a pyramid on a shelf.

  “Flaco,” she said, to Kaddish, “where have you been?” She didn’t say another word until he took out his wallet, not another word until she was behind the counter, the register closed. She handed him his package. “I can’t take your money today,” she said. “Everything is free today.”

  Kaddish accepted and was leaving, looking back over his shoulder as if she was going to change her mind. Then she said, “Come back with your wife.” Kaddish told her that Lillian wouldn’t. There was no way.The baker climbed up the ladder; Kaddish tucked the package under his arm.

  “Tell her,” the baker said as she returned to her stacking, “I was up in the office when they made your son gone.”

  “I almost didn’t tell your husband,” the baker said to Lillian. “I saw him and almost didn’t say a thing. They’ll kill you for less. Your son isn’t my only customer gone. Oh, God,” she said, “I almost didn’t tell.” She turned to Kaddish. “If I’d let you go once, I’d have made it.”

  “It’s all right,” Kaddish said.

  “It’s not all right,” said the baker. “Not all right not to tell, and not all right now that I have. I’m a dead person. I’m involved and I will be dead.” She pulled her apron off and blew her nose on it.

  Kaddish shook a cigarette out of a pack and offered it. The baker took two.

  “I have my own kids,” she said. “How could I not say anything when I’m a mother? And as a mother who will leave orphans, why have I said a word? These, mind you, are the most sober of thoughts.” She blew her nose again and then leaned toward the flame Kaddish held. “At night, full of sorrow, I picture myself dead and think, Who will take the cookies from the oven when they’re done?” She snorted at herself and smoked.

  A customer came in and the baker waved the balled-up apron at him. “Closed,” she said. “Closed for an hour.” The man looked from face to face and left.

  The baker flipped over the open sign in the window, turned the lock, and all three went behind the tallest display case, where Lillian sat on a footstool. She leaned her head against Kaddish’s hip. He rested a hand against it, moving only to light cigarettes for the baker or himself.

  On the night of the abduction, the baker had been upstairs in the office doing her bills. It was late for her to be working, later than she liked to stay awake.

  “A baker rises early,” she said. “I saw a couple making out in the back of a car. I figured with parents in both apartments and no money for the telo, they’ve got the backseat. They were wrestling around, and I was smiling. I’ve got a good angle from upstairs, a view straight into the car. Right as I’m going back to my bills, giving them their privacy, the boy rears up for second, pulls back an arm, and gives the woman a few quick punches to the face. Businesslike punches, not from anger.” She stopped to demonstrate for them. “It’s then I see the boy is very much a man, ten years older than I’d thought. He sits up higher, not rushed at all, and he starts punching these longer, lazier punches. I could see that the man was explaining something with the slow punches, admonishing the girl.”

  “It was a girl?” Lillian said. Her stomach dropped.

  “I still say girl,” the baker said. “I thought even through the punching that it was a girl, but that was leftover from the making out, from the first glimpse. It was,” the baker said, “a boy a shaggy-haired boy.”

  “Was it Pato?” Lillian said. It was an odd mix of feelings, Lillian wishing that it was her child hit in the face.

  “I couldn’t see that much, but owning a shop is peculiar that way. Your customers, there are so many—yet you know them from the subtlest things, a bit of hair, a familiar motion. The shape of a head.”

  “Of a nose,” Kaddish said.

  “How many times have I seen Pato make his way in here, rubbing the sleep off his face? It was dark and there was the other man blocking, but I knew. I spent many hours pretending otherwise. I spent a few days trying to convince myself. And I’m sorry for that.”

 
“My God,” Lillian said.

  “When was it?” Kaddish said.

  The baker showed them the dated stubs from the checks she’d been writing.

  “I stayed on my knees all night in that office. The whole of it wishing that your son would come in.”

  “There was only one man?” Kaddish said. “There had to be more.”

  “There were more,” she said. “The punching one got out and spoke to a man in a hat. I couldn’t tell if they were arguing or not, but the one with the hat waved his hands a lot, as if excited, and then he put his hat on the roof of the car. That’s when three others came over.”

  “Four altogether?” Kaddish said.

  “Five,” she said. “Five, plus Pato, beaten in the car. The one who did the hitting got back in, and the three who arrived last got in the other doors.”

  “And the hat,” Lillian said, the bird-feather man still in her head. “Were there feathers?”

  The baker looked baffled, and Kaddish caught her gaze.

  “Where is Pato right then?” Kaddish said.

  “The floor, I think,” the baker said. She looked deeply ashamed when she said this, as if this was the worst part. “I think under their feet on the floor. That’s when I figure, if I can see them they can also see me. It’s also when I notice that the car is a Falcon, a green Falcon, and I duck. When the car started up I peered over the edge of the window. The man, the fifth man, reached for his hat. He didn’t lift it so much as hold it as the car drove out from underneath, so that he was left with his arm sticking out and the hat in the air.”

  “And then?” Lillian said.

  “Then nothing. He put the hat on and walked in the other direction, in the direction of your building. He just walked off down the middle of the street like anyone.”

  “And you?” Lillian said.

  “I was working with a banker’s lamp. I yanked out the plug and stayed on my knees in the dark, and—I told you already—I wished until morning that your son would come in.”