The Ministry of Special Cases

by Nathan Englander

  Taking a step forward there was a rasp, along with the sensation of sinking, as a flagstone settled under Kaddish’s weight. The echo built on itself and the sound picked up, growing louder and louder before fading away.

  Kaddish moved forward and back, planting his heel, testing the sound, and calming himself (he wasn’t sure against what) with the thought, It’s only the drop and rise and rasp of loose stone. He aimed the flashlight at his feet. He circled the whole room, with that echo rolling back at him after each step. Weather was all he could come up with. Only weather that finds more energy before petering out. Then he came up with longing and loneliness and, feeling himself turning maudlin, Kaddish—annoyed—shook it off. Like the four-faced statue crowning the roof, it wasn’t anything but an illusion, a trick of the room. Kaddish battled the same feelings nightly when he slept under his pew. These hallowed halls and holy places were all erected to make us seem small, so that we should always feel as if we’re in the belly of a whale. It was nothing more than a geometry applied so one couldn’t help but turn inward, to fear God and fear death.

  More importantly, Kaddish hadn’t found a place to dig. He feared, right then, another plan gone wrong. What if this whole massive monument was built because there was no body? What if this man had suffered a fate similar to his son’s?

  Kaddish turned back toward the doors and began to scour the walls centimeter by centimeter, wondering if, as at the general’s house, they’d built a servant’s entrance behind which the coffin was hidden, a butler mummified along with it to serve in the world to come. What Kaddish found unfolding before him was a mural covering the walls. It was, he thought, a twisted history of Argentina. The family had built itself a pyramid painted in nationalistic style. There were bodies and babies and heaps of people clawing and climbing over each other toward some totalitarian ideal. There were mothers nursing and old people dying and funeral pyres burning so that Kaddish, picturing the man cremated and sprinkled over his oyster beds, again worried that he’d find nothing that night. Pointing his flashlight toward the ceiling, he saw now that the gray was mottled, it was part of the painting: a sky blotted out with smoke. Passing the light’s beam over it as he’d done with the floor, the gray gradually brightened into the purples and oranges of dawn. Breaching these colors from the side walls were horns of plenty and overfed cattle, smokestacks floating above assembly lines, missiles flying and military men saluting below, all the signs of prosperity and might. It culminated on the far side with an enormous sun painted half on the ceiling and half on the wall. At the base of this giant sun, in the middle of that back wall, was an alabaster panel, marbled through with pink. It was so fine and delicate a specimen that, in the light, it was nearly transparent, so that Kaddish could separate out the veins in front from those spreading behind. The name was chiseled in the panel’s center and four brass bolts held it to the wall, each one rounded and smooth. Kaddish couldn’t figure how they’d been screwed into place or how he’d pull them free.

  Considering his options, Kaddish felt hot with shame. Only a son of a whore from the Benevolent Self would bring a shovel to such a place. How was he to know that the rich bury themselves in the walls, that they don’t touch the dirt even after they’re gone? Kaddish pulled at the panel with his gloved hands and couldn’t get a grip. Without pliers or ratchet, Kaddish tried to force the bolts out with his chisel. They wouldn’t budge. Even if they had, the panel itself wasn’t even the size of the front of a coffin. What if they’d built this place around it and bricked the body in?

  Kaddish affixed the head of the pickax to the shovel handle, a wobbly affair he should have tried before. He put the flashlight in his mouth and attempted to fit the blade’s edge between the plaque and the wall. His intent was to leverage it by pressing up on the handle and delicately prying the panel away. Kaddish worked at this for some time until he’d burrowed in behind it and the pickax caught. Kaddish bent his knees and gave a good even shove.

  The sound of shattering stone as the panel gave way and smashed against the floor was greatly magnified in that tomb. It was as if Kaddish had brought the whole place down around his feet. Before he dropped his pickax, before he reached into the nook to see what was inside, Kaddish felt terrible about one thing. He harked back to what the rabbi had accused him of; it was never before true, but Kaddish had finally done it. He’d vandalized his first grave.

  There was a cubby cut out of that wall and in it was a wooden box. Too small, Kaddish thought. It wouldn’t even hold the remains of a child. He pulled it out carefully and placed it on the floor. Working at the top with two hands, Kaddish lifted it off with ease.

  He’d found what he was after. Here was his man, disassembled. There was a skull on top and below it two hands—the man taken apart and, it seemed, lovingly and carefully arranged. Kaddish lifted out the skull, feeling its heft. He put this in the bottom of his canvas sack, and then, lifting the box and holding the mouth of the bag to its edge, it was very much like what he’d dreamed of as he poured the bones inside.

  It was not yet dawn when, on the other side of Recoleta’s walls, a man—straight backed and head held high—walked along with a sack thrown over his shoulder. He carried a staff and planted it against the sidewalk with a click as he made his way down the street. Had anyone been watching from the start of the night and seen that stiff-legged man hobbling alongside the cemetery walls, only to witness the spring in the step of our friend with the sack, our observer wouldn’t have connected that poor specimen with Kaddish Poznan, full of pride and feeling, after a lifetime of failures, that he’d finally pulled off his first get-rich-quick.

  [ Forty-seven ]

  THE GENERAL’S WIFE WAS RIGHTFULLY CONFUSED. Each night she wrote out her list for the next day on a piece of stationery with her date book open in front of her. This way she could slip it into her tiniest bag. It was late morning and she was expecting to hear from the florist. This was the call she was supposed to receive at eleven o’clock. There was no one but the servants around, and when she’d finished her grapefruit she’d used her list as a place mat, putting the bowl on top so as not to leave a ring on the side table.

  With the telephone in one hand she stretched across the couch to push at the bowl with her fingertips, sliding it over until the entry marked Florist was revealed. It was as if she was confirming that, no, indeed, she had not scheduled for this. She straightened up, feeling irritated, and moved back toward the base of the phone.

  “You’ve kidnapped my father?” she said.

  “For ransom,” Kaddish told her, already the third time.

  “And you’re sure you’ve got the right person?”

  “It’s not a joke,” Kaddish said. He was on a pay phone near the Benevolent Self shul. He tried to keep his voice deep and threatening—this despite feeling frenzied by the unruffled tone of the general’s wife.

  “Because I thought it might be a joke,” the general’s wife said. “My father is dead, you know? Dead and buried, for—what year—it has been some time.”

  “Bones,” Kaddish said. “I’ve kidnapped them.”

  “You stole my father’s corpse?”

  “The skeleton,” Kaddish said. “I’ve got all the pieces right here.”

  “You mean you took them from the grave?” Here the first crack in her voice, the first sign of panic.

  “For ransom,” Kaddish said. He wasn’t sure if he should start discussing the exchange before she’d fully understood. “If you ever want them back—”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” the general’s wife said, interrupting. “It’s shocking news. And frankly, I’m finding it hard to fathom.”

  “Oh, believe you me,” Kaddish said.

  “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t,” she said, “if I choose not to believe you. You being the type of person to do such a thing—or claim to. But,” she said, “it’s easy enough to check.”

  “To check?” Kaddish said.

  “The grave,” she said
. “You be careful with what you have there, if you have it, and I’ll send someone round to Recoleta—”

  “Trust me,” Kaddish said.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Since you already have the number, it’s fairly simple. Why don’t you give us a little time and then call back.”

  “Call you back?” And here Kaddish couldn’t help it, his own voice had risen. He figured it wasn’t much of a slip on his part, because the general’s wife had already hung up.

  [ Forty-eight ]

  LET HER SEND SOMEONE. Let her butler or driver go, let one of her staff run off to check. A businessman himself, Kaddish understood. Who wouldn’t want verification when so much money was about to change hands?

  Kaddish used this limbo period to descend into a full-on panic. He became certain that he’d taken the wrong set of bones. He pictured himself misreading the brass plaque and then doing it again with that beautiful alabaster panel bolted to the back wall. Kaddish would hear the sound of it shattering against the floor and see all those scattered pieces, the gypsum letters and half letters spread about. They’d reassemble themselves in Kaddish’s memory, forming in the flashlight’s beam, as if on stage, wrong name after wrong name.

  When the right name held steady, Kaddish convinced himself that the bones themselves were lost. He’d return to the Benevolent Self shul and find that they were gone. Kaddish broke into a sweat at the thought. He walked and then ran back to the building. He ran to the front of the sanctuary past the bench under which he slept and yanked open the ark. This was accompanied by the dull jingle of the curtain rings left hanging after Kaddish tore the parochet down. Reaching into the ark, Kaddish opened the bag and found the bones just as he’d left them. He cinched the sack’s neck tight, closed up the ark, and—feeling momentarily relieved—backed slowly away.

  Take pity on him. It wouldn’t bother Kaddish in the least. He’d gone to his kiosk to beg a pack of cigarettes on credit and the kiosk man shook his head and tsk-tsked. He handed Kaddish a carton and made no move to mark it down. A gift and a good-bye, Kaddish figured. He walked off, his chin tucked into his chest, mumbling Bien, bien, though the kiosk man hadn’t asked him how he was.

  Thankful for this bounty, Kaddish headed to the water by the Fisherman’s Club. He wended his way through the park and went through his pockets for the hundredth time, making sure his last phone token was still there. It was the same panic he’d suffered over the bones—the sense that what he needed most would simply disappear. It was, even to Kaddish, a woefully obvious fear.

  A pair of soldiers approached as he fed the token into the phone. Kaddish wondered how they’d known. The soldiers slowed when they got near and, giving him the once-over, kept on their way. A burst of laughter trailed back. Kaddish knew it was at his expense.

  Never had the silence between rings lasted so long. Kaddish looked out over the water and waited until a maid finally answered the phone. Kaddish asked if he could speak to the general’s wife.

  “Who may I say is calling?” the maid said. Kaddish hadn’t run into this last time. The general’s wife had picked up the phone herself. “Hello?” the maid said, and Kaddish responded with the only thing that came into his head.

  “It’s the criminal,” Kaddish said. “Please tell the lady I’ve called back.”

  The general’s wife got on the line and said, “You’ve put me in a pickle.

  You’ve done something unconscionable and here I reward it by paying you mind. There’s nothing worse than grave-robbing. What has this country come to when a person would sink so low?”

  “There are lower things happening,” Kaddish said.

  “It doesn’t justify such intolerable behavior. It’s a disgrace.”

  “One that can be undone. Pay me and all gets put back as it was. A grave unrobbed and a father at rest.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I need to think.”

  “You’ve had time to think.”

  “I’d like to discuss it with my husband, is what I meant. He’s away until evening. It’s a very big decision to make on my own.”

  “This won’t wait until evening,” Kaddish said, with appreciable fury. “I’m a desperate man taking desperate measures. I swear, it will be over by then—one way or the other.” He’d again attempted his most threatening tone. Kaddish assumed the silence that followed was one of acquiescence, the general’s wife cowed and ready to comply.

  After an interval—and Kaddish was no judge of how long—the general’s wife said, “Well,” and went silent again. Kaddish worried about the line going dead, his token swallowed with a chug.

  Then she said, “It’s not like you can make him dead twice.”

  “What?” Kaddish said. It was barely a croak.

  “Time is not the issue, really. Not on my end.”

  “It is,” Kaddish said. “This is your last chance.”

  “You’ve got my father—and I’m sure you’ve thought this out,” she said, “but it’s not really a your-money-or-your-life situation. We’re talking about an exchange; a retrieval of, for want of a better term, my property.”

  “Today,” Kaddish said, “or it doesn’t happen. Desperate measures,” he said, and feeling he’d already said that, stopped dead.

  “I believe that’s why this type of thing is usually done with the living. If you’d taken my son, for instance, instead of my father, you’d be in a better position to make demands. I’ve spoken to people missing sons, and apparently it causes great distress.”

  “You’ve spoken—” Kaddish said.

  “In my own home,” she said. “I feel like I know them and understand their plight. Bones, on the other hand—”

  “Your father’s,” Kaddish said. “I’ll toss them into the river. You’ll never see them again.”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said, “and it’s rather personal—private business. Aside from my father’s blue-blue eyes and vast-vast fortune, I’ve been made to understand that I’ve also inherited his ice-cold heart. As a family, we are not sentimentalists by nature. I feel as I have from him all that I need.”

  “You don’t want them back?” Kaddish said. As he said it, he regretted it. He didn’t mean to raise the question.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I do. I’d love to have my father back. What I don’t want is to pay a fortune for what is mine. And it’s silly to pay so much for one, when I’m in the market for two.”

  Kaddish couldn’t help it; Kaddish asked again.

  “Two?” he said.

  “A second set of bones,” she said. “Feel. Spring is around the corner. There’s a touch of warmth in the air already.” Kaddish listened and felt and thought, yes, maybe there was a hint of spring. “It’s nearly time for planting, and I thought it might be nice to have my father back in his crypt and your bones for my garden. A little keepsake, unsentimental as I claim to be. Either way, it will be good for my roses, and at the very least it will keep the dogs entertained.”

  “I won’t be bullied,” Kaddish said.

  “Then it’s mutual. Now let me give you fair warning: It’s much easier in this country to get disappeared than to stay hidden. They are two very different things.”

  “You’re not going to pay?” Kaddish said, turning hysterical. He couldn’t believe it and screamed into the phone. “You really won’t,” he said, now quiet, totally dejected. “You’re going to let me keep him.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “You’ve finally got it. Well done. A greater mastermind there surely never was.”

  [ Forty-nine ]

  KADDISH WAS IN THE BENEVOLENT SELF shul as darkness set in. He sat in the front pew, where he slept, and stared into the open ark at the sack of bones. He kept his eyes on that spot even after night came, staring steadily ahead.

  What is left for a man to think when he was raised for ruin and it comes. Kaddish had fought against it, striven always for greatness, and not let any of his endless unbroken string of failures drag him permanently down. Knowing wh
at he knew now, he would have lived better. He’d never once have let himself worry about ending up as he had. A lifetime of fearing it, and yet to find himself ruined still came to Kaddish as a surprise. If there was any wonder left in him, he spent it on this.

  Whether it was minutes or hours he sat there in darkness, Kaddish couldn’t tell. He was busy mulling over all the things that had gone wrong in his life that he might have seen as right. None of those failures flipped fully in Kaddish’s mind, but nearly every incident shifted for him toward some central point, neither ruined nor right. In a lifetime spent striving, Kaddish had never before considered that, somewhere below greatness and high above where he now found himself, all could have turned out, simply, no better or worse than fine.

  One thing was sure, however he’d come to see it: Life hadn’t been fair. If there was a God for those who visited the Benevolent Self shul, that God had not favored him.

  This would be his opportunity. Kaddish decided right then. Of all the chances gone sour and schemes gone awry, it was this one that Kaddish would make right.

  It was bones for a reason, Kaddish decided. It was ransom for a reason and the same with everything gone wrong. From here, from now, he would turn it into favor. Even if he had to force his own God into heaven and hold His face steady, Kaddish would make Him smile down.

  Trying to figure what he could settle, what he might fix, it was about Pato that Kaddish felt worst. He never should have tried to bring Lillian that money. He never should have let her try and buy back a living boy that he was convinced in his heart was dead.

  As dead as the man before him.

  Pato as dead as those bones.