The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  Kaddish nodded and went to the bedroom for his tools. He put a sweater on under his suit jacket and over it he put on the navigator’s coat. The suit was tight already. With the sweater underneath and the jacket above, Kaddish’s arms didn’t touch his body.

  Seeing Lillian’s purse on the bureau, he couldn’t help himself. Kaddish rifled through and took a few hundred-peso notes. It was only fair, this dipping into her wallet. He was leaving her the apartment (at least until they were tossed out) and the money from the last job, and he trusted that Lillian always had cash squirreled away. On his way out, Kaddish stopped at the table. Lillian didn’t interrupt the conversation to acknowledge he was there. She wasn’t going to give him a second chance to announce that Pato was dead. Anyway, pretending Kaddish wasn’t there was no great feat. It was the easiest thing in Argentina to effect.

  “I bet Gustavo doesn’t lose any sleep,” is what Lillian said to Frida.

  “No,” Frida said, “not a wink.” She laughed nervously, and gave Kaddish a sidelong glance.

  Kaddish reached right in between them. He took the bottle of wine from the table. Lillian didn’t acknowledge this either. So Kaddish shuffled off with his tool bag and headed out their always open door.

  Kaddish stopped at his kiosk on the way to the car. He put the bottle on the counter while he fished out some cash. It was a windy night and the tears in his eyes—for Pato and for Lillian and for the thought of leaving—could easily have been from the weather. Kaddish raised four fingers, the money pressed into his palm with a thumb. The kiosk man nodded and Kaddish shifted the weight of the tool bag, keeping it close to his body.

  The kiosk man moved the bottle of wine over and plunked down four packs of Jockeys. Two and two.

  He said to Kaddish, “¿Qué tal Flaco?”

  How’s it going, Skinny?

  And, as always, Kaddish answered, “Bien.”

  It’s going good.

  [ Forty ]

  DESPITE BEING CALLED A LIAR, despite feeling like a failure, despite the terrible things that had driven him back to that Benevolent Self pew, Kaddish wondered if his intentions shouldn’t count for more. He’d always meant well, even if lacking motivation and short on success. Thinking this thought through, he had to admit his logic was shaky. The navigator, Kaddish knew, would claim the same. A man who’d meant the best with each one, with every last body he’d fed to the sea.

  But this wasn’t his real concern. It was a momentary deception natural to a man already in the midst of what he couldn’t bear to do. To act brought with it a great dread for Kaddish. It was a shame that much more shameful when it forced him to betray the principles that protected him and to break with the picture that defined him. He found himself driven to take comforts he swore he’d never seek.

  Kaddish Poznan dropped off his pew and dropped to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the floor of the Benevolent Self and, banging his fists, raising up dust, Kaddish let out a wail….

  And he prayed.

  [ Forty-one ]

  THESE ARE THE THINGS Kaddish did not pray for: He did not pray for permission or for guidance, he did not pray for forgiveness or for help, he did not ask for a sign or for solace, he did not beseech on anyone’s behalf. And though Kaddish turned to a God above, he did not wish for a heaven to house Him. For there is shame also in man’s weak imaginings, always eyes and eyes and eyes endlessly peering, as if there is no privacy to be had, as if entering heaven would bring no greater understanding, no context or comprehension, as if every motion of every earthly being is eternally scrutinized by every dead mother and dead son.

  This is why a man in deepest despair might fight it, why Kaddish—born into a world for the sole purpose, it seemed, of being kept out—would never dare turn to God as he currently did. Because he did not want to worry that the doctor might walk in and tease him, that the rabbi might walk in and own him, that all the dead from all time, all those with chipped names and those without, might hear his supplications and think that Kaddish Poznan had suffered so much he’d finally seen the light. It’s a bully’s heaven we have been given, a coercive place where all the self-righteous float around judging, voyeurs with wings.

  All in all, it was not very much and not very long, and—in the way the head works and the way grief works and the way Kaddish himself worked—barely a prayer at all.

  With knees on the floor and head on the floor and fists at his sides, all that passed, all that was directed, the little bit aimed at God (if it were even spoken) would have sounded like nothing more than this:

  “Pato, my Pato, my son.”

  The guard wasn’t supposed to acknowledge Lillian, and yet when she tried to file into the ministry that next morning, he stopped her at the door. “You’re not supposed to,” she said, and her jaw went so tense there was an audible pop. The guard put the heel of his hand against Lillian’s chest. He gave her a shove that served to spin her around and motioned to the café across the way. “He said to wait for him there.” Lillian rubbed at her chest, and when she looked back the guard had melted into the crowd.

  Lillian and the priest strolled along the avenue that fed into the Plaza de Mayo. It reminded Lillian of her mornings before the tanks rolled in and the boy soldiers were posted to the corners, clips loaded in their guns. They’d been walking for some time and Lillian wasn’t even sure if she was leading or following. When she could, Lillian chose a turn that led to the ministry, and then on one street or another she’d found they’d turned back.

  “May I ask,” Lillian said, “if we’re headed in any particular direction?”

  “I’m a clergyman,” he said. “I’ve got countless homilies at the ready when it comes to choosing a path.” He steered them toward the center of the plaza. He chewed at his lip.

  “I used to love this place,” Lillian said. “Crossing it was my favorite part of the day.”

  “And now the buildings have turned sinister for you?”

  “It feels like a Roman coliseum,” Lillian said. “And the government has taken all the seats. They’ve left the whole country in with the lions.”

  “I’m part of that government,” the priest said. “At best, in your analogy, I come out of it a lion.”

  “It can’t hurt to have one on my side.” Lillian tried to catch his eye. “I’m assuming you’re on my side. Why else would you be here? Unless you plan on eating me yet.”

  “That’s the catch when dealing with a dangerous creature. It all boils down to trust.”

  “You have mine,” Lillian said, without hesitation. “I’ll do anything. I will.”

  “You shouldn’t make such a promise until you know what’s being asked.”

  “For my son, I’ll do anything. You can’t ask too much.”

  “Go home,” the priest said.

  “That’s it?”

  “Write down the boy’s name, write down your address, and go home and wait for me there.”

  The priest studied the pictures on the wall in Lillian’s apartment. Again he had her glasses perched on his nose. Lillian thought it sweet, the way he pointed at her likeness or Pato’s, mumbling to himself, his head darting round.

  “It is a lovely apartment and a warm home that you’ve built.”

  “It doesn’t feel so warm these days.”

  “That doesn’t disappear. It lingers for your son to come home to.” The priest smiled. “Is this where he was raised? Did you buy it long ago?”

  “We should have. We’ve been renting for twenty years.”

  “Renting?” the priest said, and turned back to the photos, pointing at one. In it Pato had his feet and hands spread apart, reaching across the narrow corridor in which the priest now stood. Pato was literally climbing the walls of the apartment.

  “Always up to mischief,” Lillian said, and then she led the priest to her chair. She served him tea and put out a plate of cut sausage and the last of Frida’s empanadas. They were the only viable things in the kitchen and she’d arranged th
em as best she could. The priest shifted in his seat. He held the tea but didn’t drink. Lillian thought the fidgeting was hopeful, a sincere sign of a person feeling torn.

  The priest looked out the window. “If you were a couple of floors higher, you’d be able to see the Pink House from here.”

  “The very heart of the city” Lillian said.

  “Can I ask you a Jewish question? I’ve always been interested.”

  “I’m not too well versed but you can try.”

  “Why do you live here?” he said.

  She was wondering if he meant Argentina and, already insulted, she said, “Where? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “In the heart of the city,” he said. “I’m not an expert on Jews either, but I know enough of your history. We live in a vast country that reaches to the very end of the earth, and most of the Jews live in this neighborhood, meters away from the seat of power, at the mouth of the basin into which this whole country flows.”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “You tell me. For a people that doesn’t want to assimilate, that wants to avoid vice and temptation, for a nation formed while roaming forty years in the desert, why didn’t you walk a little farther? Why did the Jews of Buenos Aires drop their bags and build their lives wherever the boat dropped them ashore? It wouldn’t have been so hard to join your gaucho cousins in the North. There was a fine Jerusalem being built there, an uncontested unmolested Jerusalem in Argentina where the Jews might have thrived. Staying here makes no sense when trouble seems to find you too easily as it is.”

  “You don’t really think that,” Lillian said.

  “I do indeed. So many times nearly destroyed, one would think you’d look for a place where you wouldn’t draw attention, and always you choose a place where you will.”

  “You think we suffocate the Pink House with our presence? Do you think the generals turn their own selves pink trying to breathe while we suck all the air up with our giant collective Jewish nose?”

  “I wanted to know and I asked. You get yourselves mixed up in politics and the newspapers. It’s either the heart of the city or the heart of the matter. What doesn’t make sense to a bystander is this Jewish hunger, this compass like a pigeon’s for putting yourselves in the center of things.”

  “I’m not really sure it’s the fly’s fault when it gets eaten by a frog.”

  “You make yourselves proximal, and for that there’s no one else to blame.”

  “If others court tragedy, let them. Get me my son and I’ll move to a mountaintop tomorrow. I’ll take him straight to Jujuy.”

  “Yes,” the priest said. “Let’s talk about Pato. You should be warned that everything I offer can come to nothing. And even if there are good people involved in this enterprise, many are not. Some are as hungry for money as you are for your son. Think of how far they’ll go.”

  “There are people to deal with, though?”

  “There are, for a fee. Every last cent of it will go toward a bribe. It’s all dirty dealings from here.”

  “I understand,” Lillian said.

  “There’s one more thing. Engrossed as we are with your problems, I maintain a set of worries of my own. If we’re to do this, I can’t have you around. That means you stay away from me completely and away from the ministry where I work.”

  “I can’t go to the Ministry of Special Cases?”

  “I’ve never met anyone yet who was upset to hear that. But, no,” the priest said. “If you want me to help, then for everyone’s sake you need to stay away. At this stage, even if I manage to get some information it’ll be very little. If the money gets into the right hands, it may be possible to find out where your son is and how he fares and no more.”

  Lillian’s mouth fell open. She tried not to scream. She went over and grabbed the priest’s face in two hands, squeezing as she had squeezed Kaddish’s on the night Pato was taken. She did it with the same fervor—but, happy now, with joy—and she leaned in and kissed the priest on both cheeks. “How much?” Lillian said, letting him go.

  “It’s always too much, and that’s how it will be every step of the way.”

  “Anything. I’ll pay any price.”

  “You mustn’t say that,” the priest said. “They’ll ask. And negotiations can be long.” Here he stopped himself. “It’s better that you don’t hope. It’s better that we first find out where Pato is and confirm he’s alive.”

  “More?” Lillian said. “There are other steps? Other hopes to have?”

  “Let’s first do this,” the priest said, patting the air, trying to be calming.

  Lillian knew every last peso she had in the house and imagined that it still wouldn’t be enough. She made the rounds collecting. There was a stocking with a roll of bills in the bedroom and, in the kitchen, the tin under the sink. In the living room, she pulled out one of Pato’s books, money fluttering as she shook it from the leaves. Finally she went over to the scalloped shelf and brought over Kaddish’s gold. This the priest put right into his jacket. Then they sat on the couch together and counted.

  “Not enough?” Lillian said.

  “No, not really,” the priest said.

  “It’s all I have,” Lillian said. And then remembering, slapping her head, she emptied the contents of her purse. “I can call my friend Frida if you need more this second. She’ll be able to get.”

  “I hate to say this, but maybe we shouldn’t bother starting. I’d assumed that a Jew would be a homeowner—that there’d be collateral of some sort. Tactless as it sounds, if you’re already emptying your purse, what do we do if things progress afoot? What if we were discussing, say, buying freedom, how will you get more? We’re talking about serious sums.”

  “It could go that far—where we could buy him back?”

  “It could,” the priest said.

  “I’ll manage anything. Truly.” Lillian knew she was being tested, and she knew she had to lie. “My boss is very powerful now,” Lillian said. “You wouldn’t believe the business he does. He has resources. From him I could get any amount—we’re like family. He thinks of Pato as his own son.” The priest looked skeptical, and Lillian began naming the new clients: factory owners, diplomats, the general, and the judge.

  “For now, though,” Lillian said, “for this part, is it enough?” She pointed at the money.

  The priest waved her away. “I’ll make them take this. I’ll make them understand.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s really everything. Please tell them it’s the truth.”

  Lillian picked up the money and put it in order. She then pressed the fat roll into his hands. The priest stood up to receive it. He pushed the money down into his left pocket. As he did so, he pulled his own wallet out from his right.

  “Let me give you something to tide you over,” he said.

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “I insist. You’ll pay me back one day, I know it. I’ll come,” he said proudly, “and collect it from Pato if need be.”

  “You’re too generous,” Lillian said, “too kind.”

  “A small contribution,” he said, handing her two crisp green American twenties. “We must all bear this burden together.”

  [ Forty-two ]

  KADDISH DROVE TO THE UNITED JEWISH Congregations building intending to punch Feigenblum as hard as he possibly could in the face, this somehow as a message to Lillian, though Kaddish would have been hard pressed to say what the message was. Feigenblum, lucky for him, didn’t exit the building while Kaddish was idling outside. From there he drove to Rafa’s mother’s, thinking she could answer the difficult questions he had. When she wouldn’t let him in, Kaddish leaned his head against the doorframe, and didn’t exactly heave, nor would he say he cried, but made some ugly motion, a broken breath and whine. He’d run out of cigarettes and didn’t have a cent to buy them, and the maddening craving further aggravated his despair. All together Kaddish had the distinct sense, maybe the only thing clear to him, that he was losing
his mind.

  Kaddish went back to the car. He turned the key and pumped the pedals and couldn’t get the engine to turn over. Out of gas and out of money, he abandoned the car and walked to his apartment. Kaddish paced in the street below, looking up at the window where Lillian always sat. He wanted her to look down and take comfort in one of her boys coming home. He wanted her to see he was no longer taking liberties. He was waiting for an invitation, nothing at all assumed or believed beyond the one thing that couldn’t be undone.

  Kaddish cursed at a passing car that forced him from the center of the street. He stood on the sidewalk looking wounded and then went around the corner to peer back with stealth; Lillian might show herself if she thought he was gone. And she did. Kaddish saw her immediately. That is, he saw a sign of her. The lamp in the living room was now off, and only a moment before it had been turned on. Though, thinking about it, he couldn’t really remember seeing it lit and might even remember noting it was off. He still took it as proof of Lillian’s presence, reconciling the disparity with the knowledge that he was going mad—the awareness of which filled him with a kind of ease. It neutralized the confusion in his certainty that he’d seen two opposing things. How nice to hold in his head both the belief that he’d seen the lamp turned off and at the same time the one-hundred-percent conviction that it hadn’t been on. How easily accommodated he was.

  Hands shoved into pockets, Kaddish rolled up onto his toes. He gave a whistle and tried to appear nonchalant as he returned to his original position in the middle of the street. He could tell Lillian was watching him from her chair, watching and ignoring, watching and cursing him. When it became too much, he cursed back up at her and, because Frida might well be up there, he cursed her too. Kaddish threw pebbles at the window. Never once hitting it, he managed to draw some of his neighbors to their own. They pulled curtains aside, and not one of them waved. All of them fuckers. “Fuck you,” he called. “Sister fuckers,” and “Mother fuckers,” and, oddly, cursing those fuckers felt like the least crazy bit of it all, because those blind and silent and complacent motherfuckers couldn’t see him or hear him just like they hadn’t seen his son. But Kaddish had no time to focus on them. He had a question for Lillian, the same one he’d wanted to ask Rafa’s mother, and Feigenblum (after he punched him hard in the face), and the doctor, and the navigator the same. It was critical that he ask it, and he wished any of them had answered. Kaddish more than anything did not want to ask the one man who knew best.