The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  Lillian sat. Feigenblum cocked his head, ready to listen. He arranged his hands on the desk, one resting on the other in a way that complemented his welcoming clean-slate expression. She thought it downright aggressive. It was graciousness as a weapon.

  Lillian waited for him to talk, to commit to a position as detestably gracious. She would hold him to everything from word one.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” Feigenblum said. “Let me say, though, that all are equal in my office. Any unpleasantness that has arisen because of your husband—past or present—is today as if it never happened.”

  “Agreeing to forget would be less than prudent,” Lillian said. “Not when this is all the junta asks of us. Not,” she said, “as the mother of a disappeared son.”

  The gasp and sigh from Feigenblum, the sudden smell of empathy in the air, the quickness with which he was around that desk, comforting Lillian, offering an arm, leading her over to sit with him on the couch below the photos, underneath all those powerful watching eyes—it was real. In his haste, Lillian noticed, he’d even knocked down his little dove.

  Lillian had been waiting for this, waiting for anyone at all to do as Feigenblum had, to rush, literally, to her side.

  “You didn’t know?” Lillian said.

  “So much whispering,” Feigenblum said. “A nexus, this building. Every bit of talk makes its way through.”

  “Then you did hear?”

  “I’m hearing what you tell me now. And I swear to you—not even promise, Mrs. Poznan, a Jew swearing—on my honor, I will do my best to bring him back. And all the missing children along with him.”

  That was it. All these days, this was the promise she needed. Lillian was suddenly and deeply consolable.

  “I should have ignored my husband’s wishes from the start,” she said. “The moment Pato was taken I should have run to the United Jewish Congregations, to you, President Feigenblum. This isn’t about defending Kaddish’s pride. This is about larger ideas of family. You should be aware that I’ve already brought this to the top. I’ve sat with generals.” At that Feigenblum gave a nod. “Nowhere have I witnessed such courage; no one else has said it straight. We have to bring the children back,” Lillian said. “Pato and the others.”

  “That is all I work toward.”

  “And how else to do that if we don’t admit they’re gone.”

  “Absolutely,” Feigenblum said. “It is the first step in the battle.”

  “You’ll help, then?” Lillian said.

  “I won’t stop until every Jewish boy and girl is returned home.”

  This was good, Lillian thought. This was family. If being Jewish brought extra trouble onto their heads, why should it not bring extra help.

  “Every child the same,” Lillian said. “You will fight just as hard for each of them, yes? Even for the son of Kaddish Poznan, for the hijo de puta who is also a Jew.”

  “Old talk, old tales,” Feigenblum said. “Why bring back the rumors of long ago? As my grandmother always said, there’s no such thing as a Jewish whore. Let’s leave it at that. Children are children. All the same.” This was already too much for Lillian. But Feigenblum couldn’t resist. “Since you bring it up, my problem with Kaddish has nothing to do with his claims,” he said. “It’s the actions that are at issue. He is a vandal, your husband. He takes money to desecrate the dead. I don’t want to make comparisons. Please don’t push me to say what sort of people topple and smash Jewish graves.”

  Lillian felt a surge to the pulse in her neck, the blood pushing with a shush past the temples and into her head. She felt the fury and speed of it must be apparent to Feigenblum. She dropped her gaze to her hands for a glimpse of those slow, steady veins.

  “It takes too much to understand how you keep my husband on the outside for a lifetime and in the same breath deny the very reason that you do. The grudge against us started long before the names began disappearing. For a people so dedicated to remembering everything, how is it that my husband is punished for doing just that?”

  Feigenblum sat as rigidly as he could against the give of the couch.

  “Nothing is being denied. There is a wall in our cemetery over which is buried a defunct congregation. All the world over, there are such separations among Jews. There are breakaway shuls and breakaway schools. This one calls kosher what another calls tref. It’s in our nature. There are always two synagogues and two cemeteries. This one belonged to the Synagogue of the Benevolent Self, a renegade shul.”

  “Not shul,” Lillian said. “The Caftan Society is what it was. Pimps and whores, why not say it? How can I trust you to take on this government if you employ their tactics?”

  “There are no tactics involved, Mrs. Poznan. I simply refuse to do to these people exactly what you accuse me of doing to your husband. There’s a wall, yes. But it’s all the same cemetery. What is the point in stressing differences? These people put themselves on the other side, same as your husband. Sad as that is, it’s a choice.” Feigenblum gave her a warm smile. “To me, all Jews are one. And I feel equally responsible for them all.”

  “It’s not good enough,” Lillian said. “Not when we’re dealing with Kaddish Poznan’s child.”

  “What more can I tell you than I already have? Would you have me agree to bring back the Jew with horns as I would the one without? You dredge up old prejudices. Leave them where they are, Mrs. Poznan.” Feigenblum put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him. “I’ll do everything that’s in my power,” he said. “The same as I would for my own son.”

  With that statement, whatever trust Lillian had mustered slipped away. She knew Feigenblum’s boy, younger than Pato. Looking at the father, seeing Feigenblum as parent, not president, she knew—however far he might go for the community, however much he believed he would champion their sons—that saved up in this man was a secret absolute, a single call, an only favor. He was ready for the day when they might take his child, and Feigenblum in his heart knew that’s when he would do the real getting back.

  “The list,” Lillian said, getting up, pulling him along.

  She led him to the bulletin board in the hallway outside his office. It was the place where they pinned up the flyers for cultural events and holiday services, for WIZO meetings and Israeli folk dance, and for all the other groups that no longer dared meet. The board was behind glass, in a metal case the putty color of file cabinets and hospital equipment, of functional things meant to last. It would hang there as long as a wall stood up behind it and—Lillian gave it a try—it would also stay locked.

  The case had lately been assigned another use. In it hung the list. Double-spaced and single-columned, it already ran two and a half pages long. These were the names of the Jewish missing typed up in alphabetical order, posted for easy confirmation and to keep people like Lillian right where she was—on the outside of Feigenblum’s door.

  Lillian gave the metal frame a solid yank. It didn’t move. So she brought her beautiful new nose right up to the glass. She hunted with a finger, locating the spot where Pato would fit, nestled between Néstor Lewin and María Rabin.

  “There,” she said to Feigenblum. “Right there is where his name goes.” She tapped her nail against the pane. “Let’s open it and write it in now.” She steamed up the glass with her breath and stared with such agony, it was as if the children themselves were right there on the other side.

  “Soon enough,” Feigenblum said, lifting his eyes past Lillian, a silent greeting to a colleague going by. “The moment Pato makes the list, we’ll add him to the rolls. Not in pencil, either. We will type him into his rightful place.”

  “What does that mean, make the list? How to make it except to be added?”

  “Nothing is simple these days,” he said.

  “A million times I’ve heard that,” Lillian said. “A million other places. Only once, only here, have I gotten, I’ll help, my best, all I can. Only from you, Feigenblum, has it been uttered. From your mouth alone have I
heard, ‘I’ll bring the Jewish children home.’”

  “It’s my sworn duty.”

  “Then what could be simpler? It’s silly even. A little concession so a mother feels good.”

  “It would take nothing to add it,” Feigenblum said, agreeing. “Not a bit of effort.”

  “Yes?” Lillian said. “And?”

  “It doesn’t help if we add every name in the world. This is a list as registered with the government. There’s a protocol. They approve every name on it, even if they don’t agree or actually note the same names themselves. But they know we have it right out in the open, for anyone to see. It’s a protest. It’s a list that contradicts and calls the government to task—of this I’m proud. Our staff does the research, working in tandem but independently. We use the government’s very resources to challenge its claims with our own official roll.”

  “So it’s their list,” Lillian said. “A farce.”

  “It’s ours. And it’s more than anyone else has managed,” Feigenblum said. “We negotiate the names, and it’s a fight to get each one. The government still denies that these people are in their custody. It’s through perseverance and pressure, through finagling and back channels, that we have reached this watershed. We have gotten them to admit that these are the people we accuse them of incarcerating.”

  “They admit that you accuse them?”

  “Yes,” Feigenblum said.

  “What’s that worth?”

  “Everything,” he said, “when it’s official.”

  “That’s your best?” Lillian said. “That’s the most the officers of the Jewish community can do?”

  “Do you think more would get done if we chained ourselves to the doors of the Ministry of Special Cases? Aggressive tactics, rudeness and tough talk—that would leave me feeling satisfied at the end of the day but where would it leave us?” Feigenblum gave a sweeping gesture to include Lillian and the United Congregations and, she imagined, all the rest of Once’s and Argentina’s Jews. He raised his eyebrows and made a point of staring. “Why cut off our noses, Mrs. Poznan, only to spite our face?”

  “As worthless as Kaddish swore,” Lillian said.

  “Does that mean you’d prefer I don’t submit your son’s name?”

  “For approval?” Lillian laughed. “You work with them, Feigenblum. You channel the grand tradition of Jewish diplomacy: Never acknowledge catastrophe until it’s done.”

  “That’s a preposterous accusation.”

  “Afterward you’ll raise up a tall building around it. You’ll enlist a great Jewish after-the-fact army to fight with all of hell’s fury over how it is to be remembered.”

  “This is a fantasy.”

  “You’ll deal with the very same officials,” Lillian said. “You’ll fight bravely over how many of our dead they’ll agree to list on the monument.” Lillian gritted her teeth. “What it means, Feigenblum, is that I want my son, my Pato, home alive. Not the Museum of the Jewish Disappeared.”

  “How dare you,” he said. “I risk my life, and my family’s, advocating for this cause.”

  Lillian shook her head. “I can see already in your eyes, I can see how you plan to mourn.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “And you’re worse than them,” she said. She meant to wound Feigenblum, she felt his betrayal was great.

  “Selfish woman!” Feigenblum grabbed Lillian by the arm, the delicacy gone. “How many mothers make their way here, acting as if each child is the only one?” Feigenblum sighed and let go. Then he smoothed the lapels on his perfect suit, adjusted his collar, and centered the dimpled knot of his tie. He pulled at his cuffs—his cuff links, in the motion, gleamed—and pressed carefully against his hair so as not to muss its perfect part. “There is a plague upon us,” he said. “On this community more than the others.”

  “What shock do you think you can give? My son has been disappeared. I know that when there’s death in the air the Jew is more susceptible, more likely to catch it.”

  “My position brings with it an elevation that affords its own particular view. I’m privy to things. And I’m convinced you wouldn’t speak to me this way if you were responsible for more than one son.”

  “If it were your son missing, neither would your best efforts ring so false. If it were your boy he’d be back in a day, wouldn’t he, Feigenblum? There is a different all. There is a most that you save for him.”

  “Honestly, I can’t tell you until it—God forbid—should happen. Right now, though, the resources must be shared.”

  “Do the undoable, Feigenblum. Reach out as if Pato were your own.”

  “I’ll get his name added. Despite this visit, I’ll try.”

  “You’re a weakling,” Lillian said. “You want to lead the Jews while they come for our children, and all you manage is an incomplete list. You want to talk plagues, Feigenblum? In Egypt they took the Jewish children, and do you know what they got in return?”

  “That was miracles,” he said. “That was God.”

  “No, that’s what we say now. Who better than you should recognize the whitewashed version of the story. Do you really think there were frogs, Feigenblum? Do you really believe an angel came down from heaven and took our enemies’ firstborn? There was a leader, Feigenblum. It was Moses and his Jews who rose up and did the slaying.”

  “This is the talk of a desperate woman, God help you. You should wish for rescues as sweet as in Egypt. The waters don’t split for us anymore. I’ll tell you, without metaphor or rumor or lie, there are terrible things happening. There are crimes the Western Hemisphere has not known. You must open your eyes and look up, Mrs. Poznan. Then you won’t expect so much of anyone. It isn’t angels you’ll see. Those are bodies raining down from the sky.”

  “You don’t look so good,” Dr. Mazursky said.

  “Always seeing beyond the surface,” Kaddish said. “It’s touching, that kind of sensitivity.”

  “Better than mentioning the smell.” He gave Kaddish a pat on the back. “Any news of the boy?”

  “You sound concerned for a man who won’t let me get near him.”

  “When have I turned you away?” the doctor said.

  Kaddish tilted his head toward the pillar he’d been hiding behind. He’d loitered there for more than an hour, waiting for the doctor to walk the few paces from office building to waiting car. The doctor turned and looked at the pillar. He gave a big shrug.

  “Considering our dealings were most secret,” Kaddish said, “your people are very good at identifying me. The maid at your house is one thing. Here I can’t even get into the lobby.”

  “You exaggerate, I’m sure,” the doctor said. “Either way, it’s not about you. It’s a global tightening of security. These are volatile times.”

  The doctor’s car pulled forward and the driver, seeing Kaddish, seemed to be in a panic as he got out and came around the front of the car.

  The doctor held up an open hand and the driver stopped mid-stride.

  “Leave the engine running,” the doctor said. “We’ll just be a minute or two.” The doctor looked to Kaddish and Kaddish nodded. “Should we take a walk?”

  “That would be good.”

  The driver got back into the car. Instead of idling as instructed, he put the car in gear and drove slowly, keeping a car’s length behind the two men.

  “If it’s not about me, why don’t you take my calls? I must have tried a dozen times this afternoon alone. It’s not like I’m not also a patient. How strange would it be to have me back for an exam?”

  “Some very important titties up there today, patients that not even by face should be able to identify a tit such as you.” Mazursky pointed toward the Botanical Garden, and they started to walk that way. “It’s really nothing personal. I don’t know how better to prove it than by strolling with you now. It’s riskier to be seen with you outside than in.” The doctor looked up at the sun disappearing behind the city. “The air today is very nice. I should snea
k out more.”

  “Not enough fresh air at the track?”

  “Plenty. Except all I breathe in there is horseshit, and it smells like money to me.” Mazursky stepped off a curb and, nearly clipped by a taxi, stepped back up. His driver honked the horn.

  Kaddish popped a cigarette into his mouth and followed the doctor across the street. He smoked quickly, feeling unsteady. “I’ve got some business,” he said.

  The doctor shielded his eyes.

  “Do we have any left?”

  “A question,” Kaddish said. “You said when I had the right one that you could maybe do something.”

  Mazursky sucked in his cheek. “If I said I could maybe do something, that would be a very unbinding promise. Not much to cash in on.”

  “It wasn’t even a promise. It was a kindness that you offered. And it wasn’t with a maybe. Definite. You said you would.”

  “Well,” the doctor said, his second shrug of the day. “As you know, I’m a man of my word.”

  Kaddish dropped his cigarette to the ground.

  “I wanted to know,” he said to the doctor, stepping on the butt and staring down at the grinding tip of his shoe, “I wanted to know,” Kaddish said, “if my son, Pato Poznan, whether he’s alive or dead.”

  [ Thirty-seven ]

  KADDISH HAD TAKEN TO SLEEPING under the front pew instead of atop it. He’d told himself the bench was too narrow for a man of his bulk. It was really that the synagogue was too wide. He was amazed at how easily a man adrift could make himself feel at home. Only, he’d discovered, the space in which one could manage it got tighter and tighter.

  He piled the prayer books in stacks right in front of the pew, each stack with a pair of bricks on the bottom so the books wouldn’t touch the floor. Kaddish left a space by his head and closed himself in. Should he ever reconcile with Lillian, should he have the good fortune of a dignified death and the foreknowledge that the end was near, Kaddish would ask for a coffin cut extra tight to his body. Let the worms find their own place to sleep.

  It was not two days after Kaddish had made his request of the doctor that he woke with a start. He guessed from the light that it was barely yet dawn. As he blinked his way to focus, careful—in his shock—not to bang his head, what came into view right in front of his eyes were two feet and two legs planted in the space he’d left open. He was a little bit afraid and a little bit curious and felt a rising sense, in his cozy space, of being trapped.