The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  “Do you see what’s being visited upon us?” Lillian said.

  Kaddish took up a page and could see, as had the policeman, where the ghost of a name was still visible.

  “It’s just punishment,” Lillian said. “All those Benevolent Self bodies buried in no-name graves. And for us the name is all we have left. That job is a curse,” she said. “You brought this on our house.”

  Lillian had never indulged such hopelessness, not even, Kaddish was sure, in her thoughts.

  “It’s only a bit of stone chipped away,” he said. “That’s all that’s been done.”

  “With his first words, you two started your first fight. Really, though, I didn’t believe you hated him back. I thought it was aggravation. I thought you fought from sadness. Now I know better, Kaddish. You did this. You brought a curse on our house and then you opened the door. You wanted it and you got your wish.”

  She couldn’t know that—from what he most didn’t believe in, from her world of curses and superstitions, of spilled salt and stepped-over legs—there was one thing Kaddish held true. He’d wished on that last night that his son had never been born. “Shut your mouth,” Kaddish said.

  To ensure that she did, Kaddish put a hand over it, closing it for her. While he squeezed her mouth shut, he tried to appease her—to appease himself—with his talk.

  “A new plan,” he said, the hysteria in his voice at a pitch. “Trust me, Lillian. We’ll turn this around.”

  Lillian took hold of Kaddish’s wrist, and the hand came down.

  “How will we manage that?” she said. “Back to the Ministry of Special Cases? I’ll die.”

  “The girl, Lillian. She’s real proof, much better than a baker’s word or a big-nosed photo. You’ll see. She’ll tell the truth and save us.” And then it dawned on Kaddish. “You should have brought her here,” he said. “And you let her go.”

  “The girl is at home where she belongs. Go get her yourself if you want. She’s ruined. There’s nothing left to her.”

  “For part of this you have to own up. For today’s heartache and today’s horror, you’re guilty too.”

  Lillian didn’t entertain any blame.

  “My only mistake was ever letting you and Pato out of my sight.”

  “No,” Kaddish said. “Now we also have on our heads a crushing disappointment. And that’s your doing; it’s you that got us swollen with hope. We’ve done it your way from the beginning, Lillian. So why not tell me what’s next.”

  “The Jews.”

  Lillian rarely managed it. Only Pato was expert at tailoring insults out of Kaddish’s deepest fears. Here Lillian had pulled it off, and as with Pato it left him with no other words but the ones that conveyed his feelings without thought. “Fuck you,” Kaddish said.

  “It’s only from them we’ll get help finding our son. The only safe place in the world for a Jew is with others.” Then, with a real sadness to her voice, Lillian said, “I never should have let you put me on the outside.”

  “It’s them who put us. You can’t give them the satisfaction.”

  “What kind of pleasure will they take? Who do you think these people are? We’re alone in this, Kaddish. Who else at this point will claim us?”

  “You think there’s only one answer, but I’m telling you that answer is wrong. Pity is not acceptance. And pity is all you’ll get from the Jews.”

  “They’ll help us.”

  “They’ll pretend to grieve when really they think there’s a reason why misfortune was delivered upon him. Somewhere deep down, Pato will have deserved whatever he gets. They save all the innocence for their righteous.”

  “Don’t talk like he’s lost, Kaddish. Don’t ever talk like we have no son.”

  “We don’t,” Kaddish said.

  Lillian, with great speed, slapped Kaddish across the face.

  “It is not a sin to admit,” Kaddish said. “Until we get him back, he’s gone.”

  “You listen,” Lillian said. “He’s not anything but ever-present, he is not anything but on his way home.”

  Kaddish went to speak.

  “I’m not finished!” Lillian yelled. “We are Jews, Kaddish. You can choose not to be one yourself, but you are to them. You are to the government and to the people who have our son.”

  “I’ve never been anything else. It’s the community of which I’m not part.”

  “You are,” Lillian said. “You’re their pariah, and that’s a special role. Let’s offer you up. Let’s go to them with our heads bowed. I know they can help, Kaddish. What our enemies say about us is true. The Jews have connections; they’ll have their ways. And they’ll take us in like family. Play by their rules only until we get Pato back.”

  “It’ll be for nothing, Lillian. Conditional loyalty is worthless. And we’re going to need more than charity asks.”

  “Who can talk to you? You’re broken.”

  “From them—they broke me. Or so they’d have me spend a lifetime believing.” Kaddish knocked at his chest, a show of solidity. “I’m good, Lillian. I’m not broken at all.”

  “You’re broken in so many places for so long that, like your nose, it has come to pass for beauty. It’s no wonder you only get along with those stones.”

  “Run to them,” Kaddish said. He took up the habeas corpus and the page with the girl’s address and some money from underneath. “Only don’t call whatever they give us loyalty. Loyalty needs to be absolute. Argentina needs to be loyal to all Argentines. And the Jews to all Jews. Never is it so—that’s the problem.” Kaddish stood up to leave. “It’s always conditional. This is the poison of man.”

  Kaddish sat on his bench in the courtyard and tried to catch enough moonlight, enough balcony and bathroom light, to read the habeas corpus they’d been given. It was—Lillian was right—a curse.

  Kaddish checked the girl’s address. He looked at his watch. Then he folded up the papers and wrapped them around the money. Let the girl have until morning. Let her have a good night’s sleep.

  Kaddish smoked cigarette after cigarette, trying to keep his mind clear. He didn’t want to piece together the habeas corpus with the other dark facts he knew. Neither could Kaddish picture himself at the United Jewish Congregations building, standing in the president’s office and asking Feigenblum for help. The thought of Lillian turning to the Jews in his name was already too much. They’d kept him on the other side of the wall his whole life, and now Kaddish wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s where he’d stay forever; it’s where he’d go into the ground.

  Kaddish had done his best to follow Lillian’s lead. He’d thought of Pato as both alive and well. On this night, on his bench under the sky, Kaddish only managed to see his son dead. Kaddish licked his fingertip and tapped quickly at the coal of his cigarette, putting it out with a sizzle.

  He then went back into the building and walked right out the other side. He walked by the Pink House and the ministries. He strolled on past the Liberator’s Synagogue, where the hypocrites and loyalists prayed. And without a thought he stepped right under the window from which the colonel was thrown. He walked the streets of the city for hours. Eventually he stopped at the sealed gate of the Benevolent Self Cemetery and peered through the bars.

  When he was so tired that his body would have to let him sleep, Kaddish made his way over to the old shul. He went up to the ark and yanked down the curtain he’d left hanging. Here in an instant he’d done the rest of the job for the Zuckmans, once and for all and for good. Kaddish lay down on the first pew and used the curtain for a blanket. He made a pile of prayer books, soft from reading, for his head. He gathered them together and he slept.

  Lillian didn’t think her body could take it, not one more disappointment, not one more dashed hope or dead end. She’d made it to the bedroom and was lying on top of the covers in her clothes. Her skirt was unzipped halfway, and the same with her boots. She’d never in her life felt so tired, not even on the day Pato was born. She stared up into the l
ight fixture. Lillian was too tired to close her eyes.

  As Lillian gave herself over to sleep, her eyes did close. She lay there watching the lightbulbs’ impressions changing colors in her mind, and drifted off imagining the only two things that seemed to calm her: Pato walking into the bakery, accompanied by a tinkling of bells, and the feeling of that girl in her arms. The girl, Mónica, sometimes turned into Pato in the bakery, and sometimes Pato leaned into Lillian in the back of the cab. The images wove and unwove this way. For Lillian it felt so good, both the fantasy and a crawling sleep so deep that she began from somewhere else in her head to fear it. It was so nice a feeling and so strong a sleep, she began to worry that she’d not wake up from it, that she wouldn’t want to. Holding the girl, holding her son, hearing those bells tinkling with Pato’s arrival, it was—she couldn’t have asked for more—the dream of all dreams.

  Harder than waking from a nightmare was trying to wake herself into one. Lillian forced herself to part with Pato and the girl. She willed herself awake. When she succeded—feeling like she’d lost her son again, feeling so physically exhausted that she couldn’t make herself move—Lillian got herself out of bed. She could hear herself whimpering as she dragged heavy feet down the hallway and settled down in her chair with a view of the corner.

  She knew then she could not trust herself to sleep. She wouldn’t let herself lie down again until Pato was at home under her roof.

  Lillian reached over to turn off the lamp and to shut her reflection out of the window. She had her hand on the pull chain beneath the lampshade. She hesitated; the back of that hand looked so familiar, but it did not look like hers. Coming through from beneath was a weathered skin. Creams and potions applied for a lifetime, and all that attention undone by these last days. She looked at how high and heavy her veins were. She’d missed this, their turning prominent. And also the dull blue flow underneath, a tired vein. Lillian had seen these hands before. They were her mother’s. That’s where she knew them. It is not like reading a palm, Lillian thought. There’s no future in it. The back of a hand is all past.

  The concierge was taller than Kaddish and broader than Kaddish, but with his hair oiled and his poor-man-in-a-fancy-suit look, he seemed smaller in some way. That’s why when Kaddish punched him hard in the face he’d thought the man would go down. The concierge partially sidestepped the blow and Kaddish partially abandoned it when something sharp and painful happened in his neck. Though Kaddish only grazed his victim, he did manage to cut the man’s lip. The concierge was apparently unconcerned about this injury since he first tended to Kaddish, laid out on the lobby floor.

  “Call the police if you want,” Kaddish said. “I’m sure we’d both enjoy a visit from them.”

  “I was thinking an ambulance might be better.”

  Kaddish tried to get up onto his elbows and, with a wince, let himself fall back down. The concierge took off his jacket and put it under Kaddish’s head.

  “You’re very nice, considering,” Kaddish said.

  “Thank you,” the concierge said. “It’s my job to be pleasant. Though if you get back up I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Kaddish said.

  “I was serious about the ambulance.”

  “Give me a minute,” Kaddish said. “An old football injury is all.”

  “I still can’t let you up to the apartment,” the concierge said. “I’ll lose my job.”

  “I’ll let myself up,” Kaddish said.

  “I have instructions from the family. They don’t want to be bothered.”

  Kaddish took in the fancy coffered ceiling and the tops of the potted trees. A rich person’s building. Whatever he could try and bribe this man with, it wouldn’t be as much as he got every time he flagged down a cab.

  With the help of the concierge, Kaddish got into a seated position. “Sorry about the punch,” Kaddish said.

  The concierge helped Kaddish to his feet. While he still had his hands on him, he aimed Kaddish toward the door. “I think you did more damage to yourself,” he said. “Let’s call it even.” He gave Kaddish a little push, some momentum to help with his exit.

  “I have to talk to them,” Kaddish said. “I need to talk to Mónica.”

  “The answer is no,” the concierge said. “If you remember, we already got to this part. That’s when you whanged me in the jaw.”

  “I remember,” Kaddish said.

  “You want to make another pass at it?”

  Without his jacket the concierge looked even bigger, his arms filling out his shirt. Even ignoring Kaddish’s physical disadvantage, they both knew he didn’t have enough left in him to try.

  “They’ve taken my son,” Kaddish said. “That’s the reason I’ve got to ask her some questions.”

  The concierge ran his tongue against the cut in his lip. It didn’t bleed much. “I’m sorry to hear that,” the concierge said, “but she doesn’t want to talk.”

  “You’re not going to give in, are you?”

  The concierge shook his head.

  “I’m going to get up there,” Kaddish said. “I’m going to stay here in this building. I can’t leave until I do.”

  The concierge motioned to two long couches.

  “Help yourself,” he said.

  Kaddish glanced toward the elevator. He wouldn’t make it if he ran.

  “If it wasn’t for my wife,” Kaddish said, “that girl would still be missing. My wife got her out.” Kaddish reached into his pocket for the papers. “She’s the one who brought her home.”

  “That’s your wife?” the concierge said. “Mrs. Poznan?”

  “Yes,” Kaddish said.

  The concierge led Kaddish to the elevator. It was as the doctor had said: Kaddish had told his story backwards again. When the elevator man opened the gate, the concierge said, “Six.” When they got to the floor, he said, “Do me a favor, Pulpo. Watch the lobby for me until I get back.” The elevator man gave a whistle.

  Kaddish was surprised when the concierge took out a set of keys and let himself in. The apartment had a big open living room. It was modern looking, nothing at all like the general’s, though you could sense the money inside. It was messy too, Kaddish thought. Messy for rich people. There was too much clutter for a place that looked like it was designed to be empty. There was a dress over the back of the sofa and, on the floor at Kaddish’s feet, a belt. Kaddish stepped over it, and looking farther in he saw a silver sugar bowl tipped over on the sideboard and sugar on the floor. Kaddish was about to ask in which room they were hiding, except it was clear that they were gone. His next thought, and it choked him up, was that the police had been, or the army. That they’d done exactly what they had to Pato, letting the girl loose so they could claim they’d released her—or claim nothing—and then snatching her right back up. They’d snatched up the whole family, it looked like.

  But something in those first seconds was different; it changed Kaddish’s mind. The house was not so much ransacked as it was disheveled. Kaddish looked around the room. All the expensive stuff was still there, and all the things you’d break stood unbroken. The place was only victim to a rush. He was about to follow the trail of clothing toward the bedrooms when he better understood. Kaddish faced the concierge and now felt small; he felt tiny, so sincere was the look of pity in the man’s eyes.

  They’d left. The Álvarezes got their daughter back and ran.

  [ Thirty-six ]

  BEFORE FEIGENBLUM GETS A CHANCE to establish himself, his office makes it clear: Here is a Jew of import. On side tables and shelves, on pedestals and windowsills, on the walls and across his desk, from any angle that a visitor might face are visible the honors and accolades, the statuettes and Judaic symbols that those in power procure and acquire and, most often, award among themselves.

  Hung in a grouping was a selection of antique channukiot, with their fingernail wells and Roman design. Freestanding was a large brass menorah, seven-branched as in the H
oly Temple. And if a visitor could not picture the glory of that place, on the pedestal to its right was a die-cast replica of the Third Temple itself, just as it will be lowered down from heaven. Next to it a shofar rested like a samurai sword on a fork-armed stand.

  Closest to Feigenblum’s desk—to keep him full of humility and lest he never forget—was a yellow Jude star, pinned to velvet in a mahogany case. On the other side, in bas-relief, a representation of the Western Wall was hung so Feigenblum also might never lose his cunning.

  Between the threshold and the desk, one wall was covered with photos of Feigenblum and personages of import, proof of his connections to the outside world. There were many grinning handshakes on display and a couple of images, in Lillian’s quick survey, that seemed more questionable, as if Feigenblum had jumped in before the flash. There was also a large portrait of this President Feigenblum with the original President Feigenblum, his father, who’d help found the United Congregations of Argentina and who stood by so long ago while the cemetery was divided.

  Feigenblum sat behind his desk, marking up a letter. He was very very not-busy with this letter. He was so deeply and ridiculously not busy with marking it up that Lillian, who had admittedly been nervous about the meeting, was put at ease. As Feigenblum moved the nib of his pen along a line, Lillian wanted to tell him, I have sat across from the masters, Mr. Feigenblum. I have been to the ministries already. To see such a tepid stab at self-import, to be confronted by a man so obviously aware of her presence and his own, whose faux thinking smelled of thought about thought. It was not only rude, it was funny. Lillian let out a sound that could only be described as a guffaw. Feigenblum redoubled his efforts. He left her standing.

  When ready, he pressed the letter to his desk blotter and moved a paperweight in the shape of a dove of peace atop it. He placed this artifact over the intended recipient’s name.

  “Mrs. Poznan,” he said.